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This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I don't know what to say, but I'm Karis Swisher. Scott, are you there? OK, let's just call out the elephant in the room.
You are questioning your sexuality. No. So what's going on? You saw my photo and you're thinking, I don't know.
Maybe I'll get this whole outdoor plumbing thing that's hooking up with guys with new sweatshirts and baseball caps on backwards. Maybe I'm in a mistake. Look at the dog. No, it's actually solidified my commitment to lesbianism.
I have to say, there is no way I'm going back at this point in my life. Listen, for those who aren't following everything Scott Galloway does, he posted a photo himself with the caption on waxed and waxed, and he was showing off his gun show. Gun shows in town. Boom!
I need you to explain yourself, because I got pummeled last night by people. Rebecca dead. You're so embarrassing. So embarrassing.
My third channel boy, but she used to go to school to smile. OK, all right. Thank you. Everybody is like, what the fuck?
Explain yourself, Scott Galloway. I don't use the term lesbian. I just say ex-girlfriend. OK, excellent.
Excellent. Listen, Kim Kardashian. I don't know where to be getting japé. He shows off his pegs.
He's like, you know, Christopher Maloney? Chris Maloney was in this new SVU version, whatever. That guy's a great ship. Yeah, yeah, he is in good shape.
He shows his butt off a lot. You have yet to do that. And the bad happens. I'm not, I think, when you have a divorce.
But explain yourself what possessed you, because literally I was slammed. My texts were slammed. The internet, the Twitter was gone nuts. Explain what you were doing in that moment.
This may come as a shock to you. But like many of my tweets, I didn't put a ton of thought into this. Yeah, like zero, with less than less than one. No, honestly, Kara, honestly, I think it's important to raise awareness around the world that exercise plays in mental health, and how important it is to stay fit during COVID.
That all is a lie. That all is a lie. So you want to really know what it does now? I'm not hesitating then.
But OK, all right. First off, first off, what's amazing is no one's noticed. And in everything I do, I'm constantly in a state of undress. I love to wear drag.
I constantly wear women's clothing. I'm constantly taking off my shirt. You are. I did it on vice TV.
I love physicality. I love being profane. And let me ask you this. First off, I did a tweet.
And immediately, Stephanie will kick things off with. I just threw up in my mouth. Yes, I know that because she also tweeted texted me. But go ahead.
My mom's roof went crazy. There's not enough bleach in the world. That was one of my favorites. But my favorite was definitely raising us back.
Yeah. That was a good one. But here's the thing. She just wrote insane as she texted it to me.
Why, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma. And then someone else was, Amanda was, it's a lot. Hillary Rosen was, Bill Mayer influenced question mark. That's right.
You know, what is happening here? Well, hold on. Before we deep into it. So let's be honest.
I'll break it down for you. 51% vanity. 40% insecurity. Actually, it's lit.
51% insecurity, 40% vanity. And I've been working out four times a week for 40 years. I like to signal my fitness. I like to say to people I'm a fucking monster.
It makes people a masculine. And it's totally vain. The question I have though, the question I have. You know, Chamont did this.
FYI, Chamont's falling off. Yeah, that's everyone was comparing me to it. Yeah, they were. And then Bezos, sure, with the shirt off.
I don't mind. I don't mind either of those comparisons. Anyway, so let me ask you this though. They're not being serious.
What if I had exact same thing? Yeah. Hot, hot, hot, hot. You're clean.
You look amazing. You look amazing. Yes. We don't have to wonder what happens if a gay man does it.
George Hahn, who's my Twitter friend and granted, he's more handsome than me. And he's the one you and I am. Within 10 seconds of my tweet, he put out basically something I thought was going to be banned from Twitter. I felt the one.
Basically naked. And everybody's like, oh my god, girl. That's how I was trying to do that. He was covering his junk.
He was covering his junk. But yes, he's making a situation. So let's be honest. Straight white males.
There is systemic bigotry. We need a root out. We have the right to flex. After earlier this week.
And you're also sad that white people can't say exactly what we have the right to flex. Yeah, OK. But let me just say, let me tell you. So I did defend you to people.
I said, oh, whatever. I said, everybody posts themselves a lot. It doesn't matter if white guys do it. I am for whatever people want to post re-body, even Hilary.
You know, Hilary Baldwin. She got attacked, interestingly, when she posted those very in-shade pictures of herself, which is interesting. Some people got attacked. Some people don't.
So I'm for all body showing off, if you'd like. I was defending. This is not bad. I'm going to shock.
Just so I trigger more people. Yeah. I'm disappointed that Fauci and when we do the forensics around the pandemic and because we're so woke and afraid to, the virus has not been politically correct. And 88% of people who have been admitted to the hospital have one comorbidity and 80% have two comorbidities.
And oftentimes, those comorbidities are related obesity. All right. And the nation needs to get serious. I don't know if I'm making this leap, but OK, go ahead.
The nation needs to get serious about providing people with the economic wherewithal to eat better and have more time for exercise. And we don't want to talk about it because the fashion industrial complex pivoted from saying everybody should be bulimic to everybody should have diabetes. They have diabetes. They have diabetes.
They have no out of control. Darian, so I take a look at a supermodel these days. Take a look at any fashion show. Take a look at any magazines.
Messages to women are still just awful. Just awful. And it's not, oh, please be yourself. That's just a dove commercial.
For most part, you have to look as superb. There was an interesting article about how, I think the Wall Street Journal about how plastic surgery is going to come back. Everyone's going to get plastic surgery. Can you have plastic surgery?
Seriously, Kara, look at my face and ask that aguette. I decided to have plastic surgery. Would you have? Would you?
Would you? Would I? Yeah. 100% I would.
But fortunately, here's the thing. What would you get? Wouldn't I get done as a better question? OK, all right.
Would you have a list of? Here's the fortunate thing for a dude like me and dudes in general. Women get turned on with their ears, men get turned on with their eyes. So if you are the number three reasons women make with men in third order, third order, is their kind.
It doesn't matter how powerful or else smart you are, you have to be kind. Number two, and this is all, this is research, not me, pontific dating. Number two is intelligence. Women are drawn to a guy who will make smart decisions and not fuck up their family and do something stupid because their kids killed.
But first and foremost, women select mates based on or men, based on their resources. And we don't like to admit it, but 80% of divorce filings in America are filed by the woman. And those filings typically are triggered by three things. The man losing his job, the man's business going out of business or the man beginning to show signs of mental illness.
In sum, the female species of humans selects mates based on who can protect their children. And we like to pretend that we're equivalent, and we pick each other for the same reasons. It's just not true. And so the reality is if you're a young woman.
I want to get back to your photo. OK, go ahead. Sorry. How did we get that to your photo?
How did we find a shit fascinating? OK, all right. But you just put it up because you didn't get good, right? Is that really pretty much it?
Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah, full stop. You did look good.
I got to say, you look like me. Little dog, little hot the dog, little dog in his pound. Little dog in his pound. You just love the dog.
You just love the dog. What are you going to do next? Is it full of things? I have 56 years old.
You know how crazy terrible I'm going to look in 10 years? Probably. When I'm on my dad bed, and this is how I make every decision. I'm going to look back and I go.
Yeah, that was stupid and I'm glad I did it. OK. Embrace the sloppy vein part yourself. All right.
You know what? You have Kim Kardashian to do it. And Kim. You and Kim.
You and Kim. All of them do it. I don't have a problem with people doing that. I know people go crazy.
And it's a little performative. Let me just say. Oh, just a coach. You take the wee bits.
I was going to drag you, but I'm here for you. If you need this, if you're your mental health. I'm like you. That's unlike you.
You usually pile on. Well, it's so easy here to do so. Don't you think so? Usually pile on.
Yeah, I know, but not so. I appreciate your defense of my vanity. I did. I defended it to everyone who said what the fuck Scott, you need to dump his ass immediately.
You need to dump his ass immediately. It's true. I know I was like, no, not today. What's your next shot?
What are you going to show off your butt? What are you looking at? I can't imagine this has really helped my steam in the world of academia a whole lot. Oh, yeah.
That's right. I literally need to start. All the professors. What do you think they're going to say?
I already heard from it. I already heard from the PR department. I'm like, you know, we're processing this. You know what Scott, you make me feel unsafe is really what's happening.
Oh, here we go. Here we go. I'm thinking a lot. I still think I was absolutely.
I think you're going to think about John McWhir. This is a reasonable person. That's a bit. Defending unreasonable people.
Most of the people, he's sort of a man to set this. He's a fig leaf for unreasonable people in many ways. That's what I think of him. I think it's very smart, but a lot of the stuff is not our biggest problem is not that professors in this country is not that.
I don't think you said, but you're putting words in his mouth. He said it's not an even mindful. He gave examples of professors who couldn't say different things on task. Anyway, speaking of people who I don't want to see a photo shoot up, Peter Teal, just announced that Google and Apple and some other companies, not only Facebook was left out of the group or to Woke.
They're all Woke and they're too close to China, Google and Apple specifically. Thoughts and that Bitcoin is a plot by the Chinese government to to ruin all fiat currencies. There's a mix in Institute, by the way, which put it nice. It's a great brand halo when you start trying to out with civil discourse.
And by the way, it's on a panel with Pompeo. There's a kernel of truth in everything he says. You should assume any business you do with China, you're doing it with the Chinese security apparatus. I think there's really a lot of legitimacy to the notion that China has a vested interest in Bitcoin because a huge weapon for us globally is that the dollars of default currency, 60% of our default currency, but only 60% of GDP is the US, which kind of means that the nation or the world using the dollars of default currency is sort of sitting on a fairly tenuous foundation.
It provides unbelievable advantage. If we want to shut off the taps to Russia and Iran, we can do it by basically demanding that they can engage in a swift network and can transfer dollars. And if you're transferring a commodity, it's so clean and elegant with our existing global financial institution to transfer the default currency USD. And when you can't do that, you're just immediately a secondary provider of goods.
It is an enormous weapon for us. So China has a vested interest in delegitimizing the dollar. And a lot of Bitcoin is mine there, by the way. Yeah, it's in everyone's place of mining.
But to his specific comments, they are engaging, and I love PR and I'd like to get your book on here to talk about this. But they are engaging in kind of Trump PR and its very effective warfare. And what they've said is, okay, it's come out that a hack of a half a billion of our consumers took place. And rather than give the media time to respond to that, let's create a diversion and accuse Google and Apple of being embedded in China.
Yeah, let's point out Peter Teal on the board of Facebook and it's constantly... And it's come out that half a billion people have their information. Apple has a moment here. Teal on behalf of Facebook have stuck out their chin.
And the response from Apple should be very simple and it should be. We constantly invest and think about national security and work with national security agencies every day. And so constantly invest in the national defense of our citizens data. Period.
It basically highlights that one of us takes our users data very seriously. That makes you the other guy. That is what I would try and say very elegantly. I think Facebook has stuck their chin out and I think Apple actually should probably respond and not mention that by name but say we did national security interest seriously and we take the security of our consumers data seriously.
Because all that does is basically say, all right Facebook, let's get back to that 500 million consumer data hack. Yeah. Anything comes out of here and Teal's mouth. You know there's nine agendas going on.
He's playing Scott Bach chess with everyone. And he is very smart and I often am like, huh interesting. He's so persuasive and yet such a such a manipulator of information. Very self actualize over thing.
I really like Peter Till. I generally don't think he gives a shit with anybody thinks. He doesn't but he always has an agenda every single time. And so I think you're right.
And I think this idea he's been attacking Google and Apple with the Trump administration for a long time because on Facebook's behalf he's of course has to carry his Woke banner thing constantly. It's he's tireless and tireless. Oh you mean to say this is like this let's throw this out and they're woke. Like give me a break.
You know. And I think what and then he always does indeed always have a kernel truth. That China is a major threat to the United States in many aspects. It'll be he said he's a maximalist Bitcoin or two.
So he likes to have it both ways. Right. He likes to say you're all a tool of China and and yet this. And so again he's also right the government has to get involved in the regulation of cryptocurrency.
So that's what he does. And it's so clever that he sort of spreads truths in with his manipulations manipulations. There's involvement in Apple is really or Apple's involvement in Chinese relations. Apple now has more employees in China than they have.
I believe it. I'm not going to cook about this. It's my regret and interview book. But there's the bottom line is nations that do over a certain amount of business with each other.
And I think the codependence that Apple represents between China and the US actually reduces the likelihood that China will ever invade Taiwan or be even more aggressive in the South China seas that China says everyone says, oh, Apple has to kiss China's ass. Well, that's what China has to kiss Apple's ass too. Because if all of a sudden China for whatever reason or decided or Apple can all operate in China, you would have towns just I mean, entire cities kind of decimated. And China's very worried about that because they can't just vote one party out.
The thing that makes China so unstable and I'm channeling now first Neil Ferguson here is that you can't when you get upset with the party, you can't then vote in the Republicans and we do that back and forth. And that's an incredible shock absorber and makes our system much more resilient. If you decide to vote out the Chinese Communist Party, it's not a vote. It's a revolution.
Yeah. And so they have to be very, very cognizant and thoughtful about the middle class. The notion that they don't care about their populace is just not true because they realize that their populace decides to vote them out. They'll do it with pitchforks and language.
But I do think as a means of control, they're going to increase, you know, they want to have that power of Bitcoin and also they are also, you know, so deeply into AI. You imagine this is the first time it's going to run entirely on AI because they can run rough shot over issues of bias or surveillance, you know, one of the things I didn't issue interview yesterday was someone who's an AI expert. And one of the things that was interesting to me is someone who's pushing around racial bias in AI and other biases in AI and gender biases. And they said one of the issues is if it's effective in getting these more fair, it also means they work better on everybody, which is not a good thing, right?
So it's kind of a really unusual. There's all kinds of issues around what China's doing in AI and facial surveillance. But you know, Peter tells a very clever guy and he definitely is trying to make noise against Facebook. And that's he's a sort of a close in knife in the chess player, you know what I mean?
Like he'll go right in the way. You mean like funding a professional wrestler to the tune of $10 million to figure out a way to put a media company out of business. He just goes right in and he doesn't mind. That is fearless.
He does aggressive and by the way, there's a brilliant star. Yeah, that's how I feel about your shirt pictures. Let me just go on. Go on.
Might as the brilliant spark aggressive. Mine's the brilliant. Anyway, let's get on to the big story. Go ahead.
Twitch, Amazon's live streaming service is making changes to its conduct policies. It will enforce its policies on extreme behavior off the platform as well. This will include policing everything from deadly violence, membership and hate group terrorism threats of mass violence, non-consexual sexual activity, exploitation of children, threats against Twitch staff and any threats of violence at a Twitch event. Twitch's rules used to focus on behavior on the platform but didn't specify the rules to be enforced in other areas.
This is response to allegations of harassment against women, video gamers on the platform and some of the people who are the most popular on the platform. So this is really interesting. Brian Chesky has talked about this when we did the interview talking about not letting people use the service that are convicted of say the capital attacks or use the service. So what do we think about this?
What do we think? I absolutely love it. And I think it gives capitalism a better name. And that is, I think this is shareholder driven and it happens to be the right thing to do.
And it's wonderful when those two things intersect because if you look over the last 12 months, there's been a widely accretive what I'll call move to purity. And that is snap and Pinterest have outperformed their peers because they're seen as a safer place. And Twitter's most accretive action was kicking off the ground zero of misinformation our former president. And I think everybody public, I'm an investor in is the antidote or the immunity, call it an immune response to the lack of concern for stakeholders and commonwealth that you hope you get from capitalism.
But public is the immunity to Robinhood. NIVA is going to be the immunity to Google subscription search. Open Web, another company I'm trying to invest in is going to be the immunity to the toxicity of comments on media. There is an investor play, a capitalist driven move of being the immunity to some of these tech companies that are so damaging from America.
In my opinion, one of the most exciting examples of capitalism is Moderna. You know, incredibly smart, hardworking, humble Turkish immigrants become billionaires by coming up with a vaccine. By an tech, the Pfizer vaccine. That was Pfizer?
That was Moderna. Thank you for that. They're billionaires. They've become billionaires.
Moderna. They were before. Stop fucking correcting me with your whole truth. I think they're inspiring.
Can you say more about them? Actually, it's it's by an tech and by an tech did this not Moderna was and it's the Pfizer vaccine and the founders are a Turkish couple who immigrated to Germany and their names are Ugar, Sahin and Aslam, Terechi. And inspiration. And they had previous companies, a number of biotech companies who I can't recall at the moment, but they were they're billionaires.
They ride their bikes to work. They're very, they're Turkish immigrants to Germany. They created the vaccine. And actually when I got the Pfizer vaccine, I sent them a photo of myself getting a vaccine and I didn't and I wrote and I didn't post it either.
It was interesting. And I think I did later when I had the second one, but I said thank you so much. Thank you so much for doing this. And they were like, okay, sounds good.
Like you're so good. Yeah, we got to get back to saving you man. We got to get back and they're using now they're taking that technology is going to go into a lot of other things, including cancer and other. And they deserve to be billionaires.
And I think Moderna, that's the other, Moderna's first product was the vaccine. And they have made an absolute shit ton of money for their shareholders and their employees. And I think it's wonderful. I have been thinking a lot about, because I'm bored and in between shirtless photos, I've been thinking about money, my other favorite thing other than my vanity.
And I'm taking money out of the public markets, which I actually think are going to disarticulate from the real economy of the next two years and go flat to down. I think the markets are just overvalued. Nobody knows. We'll see.
But I've been putting money in private companies in my theme. My entire theme for the next five years of my life around investment strategy is citizenship. And it's not because I'm a good citizen. What capitalism is that what you're doing?
That's what they're calling it. No. That's not being woke. That's what I'm talking about.
I'm not talking about boycotts. I'm talking about people want people want an alternative to Google, people want an alternative to Robinhood, people want an alternative to social media that is a handmade disadition. And I think that there's going to be a lot of money in that. And power corrupts.
And I think there is an immune response. I think the government is going to go after these guys and make it difficult for them to kill competitors as easily as they happen to pass. The thing about maintaining it though, that's going to be difficult is sort of monitoring people. And you know, some of these things are pretty easy.
They participate in the capital riots, for example, are they a member of a haker that can be found out. And so I think it's going to be difficult enforcement with these things. But I think the behavior, there is no thing. There's no such thing.
I've been told there was nothing that's in the storm. People, one of the guys who created H.A. The guy who created H.A. and Fred Brennan, I think his name is who got sort of, you know, it's a complex story.
And then he's the one that freaked out about it, right? And started to wear a shirt. And he said, I thought that online and off because he had got, they had sued him. He had to escape the Philippines because of a lawsuit.
And so the people who took over H.A.A. and from them and who were thought to be cute. And one of the things he said is I thought online and offline were separate things and they're not. That's a great, I mean, it's a simple but genius insight.
Yeah. And so he was talking about his own situation, but he's absolutely correct. And what's interesting is what does it mean? You know, if you do things that are capitalist, it also helps it.
There was just, you know, Patagonia just gave him a million dollars to voter registration. He's just a Georgia and the voter suppression stuff. And of course, immediately Ben Shapiro, that guy, the non-smart version of Peter Deal. Ben is really smart.
I mean, I think he's like you said, he brings... Who is Peter? I think Ben is very smart. I do not think he's not in any way.
And he actually made him stupid. He's not a great company, too. He's not a great company, so I think he's a troll. I agree with that.
He's also very, very smart. I guess. But he made a stupid one to wait where he was talking about that they gave him this money and then they said, and then here's our $65 shorts. And of course, everyone pointed out the reason they're $65 is because they have childcare.
They don't use, you know, they can sell them for $10 at Walmart because they get them from places where the work conditions aren't good. And I wrote, I wrote, who did this new capitalism? Like, it's so what? You against capitalism?
Well, you just love yourself. You just took your shirt off. No, I do not take my shirt. You know, Pat Goney is a very good example of this.
They've got Cheryl. Would you have an atmosphere on the show? No. Okay.
100%. No, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to.
Life's too short. In any case, and he'll make pay out of this for some reason. In any case, I want to talk about this. The idea of what you can combine capitalism with this and not be a coos necessarily woke is that it's good for the customer, the customers are expecting this.
And that people do think very hard about their money. Now, listen, Twitch is owned by Amazon. So, you know, meanwhile, over here where they're tweeting mean P things at the reporters who are questioning their work stuff in, or congressman in that case, which is fully valid for congressman to do that. Here they are doing this.
So, it's kind of interesting. Look, I think Amazon, I think all these companies have recognized that at least the perception of citizenship is now a creative and it used to be capitalist, just be Darwinian and harsh and people respected and it's manly and it's all about shareholder value and all it's forgiven as long as the share price goes up. I do think that the sun has passed. I'd like to think, sun has passed me a day on that.
And there's a great strategy that you are going to see, you know, the ecology S.G. right now or sustainability. You're going to see a citizenship portfolio that says we're not doing this to save the whales. We're doing this because we think these stocks are going to go up because the marketplace is looking for immunities around each of these viruses, specifically the biggest virus, which is Facebook.
And I think Mark Zuckerberg realizes that and is trying to pivot away or trying to diversify. And I think Jeff Bezos, who is clearly in my view going to go down is the clearest blue flame thinker in business history at this point, is saying, okay, any opportunity we have to come across, you know, to start our hat white and be the sheriff that shows up and acts responsibly. I think they've actually been pretty disciplined around this. What's it?
What's it they do in Alabama? Because if they take a really, the direction they were going in was not a pretty one. I'll tell you with all those sweets and the aggression. That was wrong.
That was wrong. They did apologize. They apologized. And also, I wouldn't be surprised.
I just don't know the situation down there. But if I had to bet, I don't think the union is going to win. Because 16 bucks, I went to Kentucky to pick up our puppy and I said, how's the economy here? I was driving through Kentucky in the beautiful day and they said, the economy is booming because of Amazon.
And if you have a couple and each is working at the Bessemer factory and each is making 16 bucks an hour plus benefits, that's an upper middle class lifestyle in Bessemer. In addition, what Amazon has done, and this is the key component of any successful company in my view, is that they have created an internal brand of incredible acceleration. And that is no matter where you started Amazon, there is a chance you can crawl out. Because one of the most dangerous things about the cluster of low paying jobs is that all of us have been in one of those clusters.
Not all of us. Maybe you didn't. But most of middle class and lower middle income household, I parked cars. I was a box boy.
And then a lot of young people, 60% of those people make it out of those clusters. But if you don't make it out of those low wage clusters within 10 years, the 40% who remain in them, only 2% escape. And so the key to creating better jobs is not that we do away with low paying jobs. It's just that we create acceleration and trajectory.
And what out of those clusters? And Amazon has done that. And it's not incredibly says to anybody on the warehouse floor. If you work your ass off and you're good and you have specific domain expertise and talents, we will elevate you.
You have an opportunity to make a career. They're still credible discussion of how they treat their workers that they need to address. No doubt. No doubt.
No doubt. They absolutely have to address it. It's their biggest issue, given how many people they've added on. They've hired half a million people in 12 months.
And also we're at a different point, but what a worker is and what the worker's right here. There's a lot of political pressure and there's a lot of populist pressure. And so even though, you know, thank you so much to Bezos for $15 an hour, some people say those jobs in their warehouse used to be 20, you know what I mean? And so Amazon has set the price.
So there's lots of arguments you made, but I do appreciate this Twitch move. So whether it's, as you say, lipstick on cancer or it's actually a very good move, this is really great. They crafted this initiative. We'll see if they can enforce it.
I think I have issues around enforcement and we'll see what companies do better and not just they're not just virtue signaling, but actually are woken the way we appreciate. You know, I mean, sort of walk the talk and do things because they mean about it. A lot of people feel this is all bullshit. But there's a huge, I think there's a real learning here and something that endures from this decision and very little endures about these decisions.
And the enduring future of this decision is a recognition by the wealthiest men in the world that you can separate, you cannot separate online behavior and offline behavior. And what I would put out to a lot of people, individuals, famous, successful, blessed people on Twitter, it's like, how can you behave that way online and not believe that it's going to impact you offline? How can you be this weird, aggressive, toxic online? And for some reason, think that it doesn't impact your perception, people's perception of you offline.
It's just you would never say that to someone in person. You would never be this aggressive or thoughtless if you had to face somebody. And Jeff Bezos saying that, the recognition. But you know, Mark Zuckerberg, when he lets anti-vax content run amok, that means in communities of color, they're just less likely to go sign up for a vaccine.
That the online content, online behavior, it should not be distinct or have different standards in offline behavior. Oddly enough, Mark Zuckerberg, if you met them in person, is an easier person to deal with than Jeff. It's interesting. It's easier to deal with them once in.
It's pleasant, earnest, if you met him in real life. Really? Can't imagine saying shitty things. I heard Mussolini was fucking charming.
I mean, really charming, like a great guy to party with. Yeah, yeah. It's incredibly charming and handsome and nice. Anyway, let's go to a quick break.
We endorse this. When we come back, we'll talk about YouTube and the videos that violate their policies and a listener. By the way, most sociopaths are usually very charming. All right, thank you.
That's it. Thank you. That hurts. I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.
Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. So pretty tough, wherever you get your podcasts. So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'm saying it's going OK.
I give us like a C plus. There is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past because humans are going to human. That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people.
What's going to determine the next 250 years of America? And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve? OK, so I'm just going to be a jerk here because I'm a historian. You know, we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people.
OK, you know, I just don't remember it from schoolhouse rock. We the people in the form of our for you, yeah, that established justice. What is it? Insured domestic tranquility?
So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy. That's this week on America, actually. OK, Scott, we're back.
YouTube is revealing how many views videos on the platform are getting before they remove or violating guidelines. They used to talk about takedowns, which doesn't really give you much of anything. This week, the company disclosed a new metric. They're calling Violative View Rate VVR.
It calculates the percentage of total views on YouTube that come from videos that you not meet as guidelines for the videos are removed and blog posts YouTube said in 2020 for every 10,000 views on YouTube 16 to 18 over content that broke YouTube's rules and let the removal of the video, the Violative View Rate has dropped over 70% since it was first tracked in the fourth quarter of 2017. It adds more data on certainly. So what does this tell us about? What's going on there on YouTube?
What do you think of this new metric that they're trying to put out there? And I have some thoughts, but how do you feel about this? Oh, this is total bullshit. They've had this metric forever.
It's just the moment the metric turned to casting them in a good light. They decided to make a public. Basically, what they're saying here is our bad content isn't it? It's damaging as you think of the media reports, but they're trying to say it's.
Well, yeah, they're saying, look, once bad content goes up, we immediately recognize it and take it down. And that metric, they've been tracking this metric for years, but they haven't made a public because it's just now it's starting to reflect them in a good light. This is quite funny. I just think it's bullshit.
It has nothing to do with trying to. This is just plain and simple. A PR move to say, hey, we're bad, but we're not as bad as you think. What do you think?
What do you think? Look, more data than better as always. And I think the ones where they just said we took down this many, I don't even know what it means. What kind?
It was so unspecific. That's how they do this. And so that wasn't very helpful as a metric. So better metrics are okay.
But I would love them to allow, along with Facebook, independent researchers to get in there and look at this stuff. So I can actually hear from them about what matters. And we get very different skews on what's happening. I also don't know.
And I think Casey Newton pointed this out in his excellent newsletter, the platformer, was that you also don't know what's the adjacent content that almost got took down and why aren't what's the impact of those posts, right? So there's a lot of stuff that's right on the edge that they don't pull down. And so I think their favorite thing is to give data that is slightly insightful, but yet not vetted by people who are not working for YouTube. And so great.
I'm glad to take this one. I think a lot of the researchers aren't. But at the same time, there's lots of questions on what it means. And so maybe they're moving better to better moderation, but I'd like to more like almost full transparency on how they do these things.
And the excuse they use is that we want to catch the people if they know how we catch them. They'll know. And I don't know. I just, you know, we know how cops work.
We know, you know, I mean, of course there's not enough transparency there either. But it's just, it's just their take on it. I think you're right. I think they knew this and it looks better.
And the fact that they hadn't done this for a long time seems kind of odd given all the issues around it. I don't know. You're right. It looks better, but I think we need more.
There's a general role in research. And that is if you want to know the conclusion, any research, just find out who's funded the study. And so Google is funding, you know, this study or this data that's the data I would love to see. And of course, Google and Facebook will never work.
I'd love to see an academic and maybe this research is out there. And if it isn't someone forward to Tamil, we'll talk about it. There's a big struggle with research from Google and all this. Well, Google has weaponized the academic community because at the end of the day, every academic sits around and asks himself one question.
How can I hold myself less accountable and make more money? Anyways, so what you have, what would be great, what would be great research from the strong and still president cohort in academia that is pursuing the truth and trying to make the world a better place and is fearless with data and data is their valerian seal is what would be really interesting is to look at all the media consumption and how amongst mass shooters and how it's different from other people that are up in AR 15. And I think what we're going to find, I'm going to go out on a limb here, the YouTube and Facebook over index among young men who decide to find an AR 15 and go re-terror on our communities. Yeah, that's my thesis.
That's my thesis. I would love it if it would be great if an academic peer review research to validate or nullify that thesis. The other part is how they link with each other. That's why I went independent researchers is that a lot of the YouTube videos are seen on Facebook.
So, you know, when they go over there and so even if they take them down, what, you don't follow the train of impact, you know what I mean, and where it is and who's watching it. It's an attribution. It's a heart center. Yeah, exactly.
And so it's just kind of interesting that there's all these interesting researchers like Daphne Keller from Stanford Cyber Policy Center talks a lot about these issues. We should have her on because it's a really, it's a really, you know, you want to say good, we're getting more data at the same time as can you just let us look at the data. And we just have it and of course they have all kinds of excuses not to. And that makes them vulnerable.
That makes them 100% vulnerable to hand over their thing. But there's all this interoperability between these companies that is not clear, right? Who sees the whole picture? And so when you're understanding like where did it like in this Q&A video, remember, H.M.
was taken down because that's where he put his manifesto. But he had been, as it turned out, more radicalized on YouTube. So sort of they went and shut down H.M. but then they didn't do anything about the YouTube part of the equation.
So I think it's much, much more complex and if we get independent researchers in here, it would be great. That would be my ideal and not funded by these companies. You know what I mean? Not funded.
This would be a government thing too. 100%. And not a difficulty which Daphne just wrote, we imagine that platforms can bring the whole sprawling chaos of human behavior into compliance with the law, make our lives policeable and police to no degree, no government history could have ever imagined. Not only do we think it's possible, we think it's a good idea.
So it's just, it's an interesting time right now where these companies are, you know, speaking of what companies they should give this data and see how we can all figure out how they react with each other, et cetera, et cetera. But look, at the end of the day, Google won't even tell us how they decide and program algorithms to push content and answer content with a great veracity than God or super being to 93% of the world. I mean, so the notion that they're going to release other data, we don't know how they're making a decision between whether to give someone instructions on how to build a bomber or a voter registration form when they voice intent around changing government. They won't even let us know how to do that.
So the notion that they're going to put out any data that hasn't been totally starch clean and reflects them in nothing but a positive light is just, is absolutely wishful, wishful thinking. I love that Q and Noun's brand is totally, I love how with a Matt Gates scandal, they're like, well, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. I mean, all of a sudden they're very thoughtful and measured. You have your child trafficking.
I'm telling you, Scott, if you want to watch a great show, it's like one. What's it called again? End of the kill storm. End of the storm.
Oh, that's how you've been talking about that. So good. It's so good. It's so interesting.
And it's like, makes you realize like one person can really mess up a world, like, you know, kind of stuff. And it's not even clear that it might, you know, might have started off with someone else, like Steve Bannon or something. I always thought it was Steve Bannon, but it turns out that's not the case. But at this point, at least they think it's been had.
But what's really sad is all these incredibly sad people gathered around it, making their livelihoods around sad, sad things. And again, it comes back to the same place. When you attach to a job, when you attach to economic prosperity, when you attach to a great relationship, when you attach to learning, when you attach to helping others, you don't attach to conspiracy theory. And if we find it, I think the biggest antidote to all of this is economic opportunity for people under the age of 30.
I think if you're ridiculously, when you get a mate, you comb your hair, you put on a clean shirt and you don't go to 8-chan. This is a lack of opportunity. I know, but this stuff is more interesting to think about Gates putting a chip in your body in that way two weeks. You know what I mean?
It's very creative. I'll tell you that. A lot of this stuff is crazy. I'm talking about the scary stuff where you believe where you're inspired to do something really heinous.
I think that is directly important. The people who put this, one of the things I do in this stuff is a lot of people who, if you could channel their intelligence in this way rather than crazy, it would be quite something. But anyway, speaking of which, we should all do is smoke a lot more. We, moving on.
We're going to take this. Hello. I know. I know.
I know. I go everywhere. This is a wild day just because I'm still reeling from your photo. Okay.
I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, Karen Scott. My name is Adam.
I live in Los Angeles, California. Big fan of this podcast and you too. I have a question. I own stock in Medmen.
We'd retailer. I've noticed the stock has gone down tremendously since I went to it. I mean, it was like at a three and now it's like 10 cents or something. Other wheat stocks aren't fairing well.
With opening up of legislation across New York City and New York State, Pennsylvania and Virginia, when do you think stocks will be doing better? These companies will be doing better. Is this a long term thing that I should hold on to or just give up now? Thanks.
Scott, this is interesting. The lack of these shares not doing well. I've read the stories. I don't quite understand it because it doesn't make sense to me because I know a lot of people smoke wheat.
In California and everything, the stocks and the businesses are much more problematic. Do you have any insight? You know, I don't. The only advice on stocks is to tell people the stocks I don't own.
I joke a lot about marijuana. I actually don't smoke that much. I occasionally take an edible and I need to sleep. But I'm a big fan of legalizing marijuana.