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Well, maybe it could be
easier but it's easier than you think it is
easier than you think it is. That's a good model.
Will you see that that to our model list?
July 1st India versus China what was really interested me though. Is it sort of struck me as I was thinking and writing about this that banning stuff is way easier in 2020 than it was in, you know, the early 2000s or wait 1990s when China started building the great firewall because of app stores, right? If there is a point of centralization that means there's a very easy and obvious place for sort of governments to put their foot down.
Whereas China had to
deal with like the
That as we traditionally think about the internet which is this sort of wild decentralized place and they had to find the points of beverages were where to like the internet inter China and put their wall there.
The internet was designed. I mean, I guess the idea, you know, the catastrophe everybody was thinking about was nuclear war. I mean and again it is sort of becoming a theme here that on this episode that there's this decentralized setup wasn't really an anti censorship setup.
It was more like a resiliency sort of. Yeah, and that's not have a central. You know, we're not going to have one Central server at Urbana, Illinois where if something happens then all of a sudden the whole thing blinks out, which is really how A lot of networks worked before the internet, you know, this decentralized scheme, but it also you know had the most of our minds by happy byproduct of also making censorship more
difficult July third Facebook's advertisers.
The classified ads in newspapers. We're
They were the Facebook of the 20th century and especially the second half of the 20th century in terms of just being able to Mint money
at a local
level. It's not what you think of though. You think of the big ads in the newspaper? You think it like the big full page ad at the back of the a section, you know, you pick up the front page of the newspaper turn around to the back page and there's a full page ad that's obviously very expensive was always for big Brands like the big
Local department store maybe or but all the money was coming from the classified ads, you know, Facebook is sort of like that. But what they've made is a newspaper with like thousands and thousands of pages in the Middle where all the little tiny classified ads are and they're making all that money but yet the signifier of what is a major platform still comes to those Major Brands, right? Like part of what makes 80 percent of those advertisers who
Just tiny little company spending a little bit here and there but it adds up to 70 billion a year, but part of what makes Facebook feel like a place to do that is that those big brands are there too and if they go away, I feel like that that really helps put the stink on Facebook as this there's something you know, rotten a foot here on this platform.
I have to say I completely disagree hmm, July 6th
Sports. You remember the 1994 baseball strike 1994 the Major League Baseball
I had a player strike that took effect in the middle of the season and they never resolved it. So their 1994 had no World Series. There is no Champion. They just settled it all in the offseason and went to 95 terrible. Right? I mean the worst the catastrophe for a strike because there's no natural disaster like now that cause it was simply personal arguments attendance was down TV viewership was down for years afterwards, right and everybody then attributes the steroid Spike to baseball looking the other way because they wanted to get
People's action back but everybody knows attendance was off viewership off for a long time. Was it really because fans were mad because of the strike or did they just break the Habit right? I've always wondered about that. I've always thought that the plate that the idea that the it was because fans were mad was overblown I think fans were mad about it, but it wasn't what kept him from coming back. I think they broke the habit
you figure out new things to do. I mean I've the thing about this if the NBA came back now or winning if they come back like I've
We Dad we started this podcast. This is a great example right now. Like we talked about dinner. He's like, oh well kind of talk about sports. Occasionally. The reality is the lack of sports for all you haters out there who hate us talking about sports. The lack of sport is like made this possible.
This would enable interrupts 9 out of every 10 Yankee
games July 8 consumer messaging they actually do exactly what Zach Phillips said where that is your ID. There is no sort of account that goes along with it. Whereas Apple has sort of is both you can you send a
It's to an ID or to a phone number which can get very confusing but particularly because you can start messages from your phone number and then if you switch your sim card or a different phone I deal with this because I travel a lot then you can lose messages. So I've to always have it set to initiate conversations from my Apple ID, right but this idea of phone as universal identifier and not being a phone number. It's kind of been a parallel evolution of the phone from not being a phone to be a computer and your phone number has evolved from
I'm not being a phone number to being an ID.
Yeah, and signal is an interesting case. I guess what's apps in the same boat? They
work basically the same as far as the ID stuff goes. Yeah same developer.
I don't know if you know even when I get into it, but you know part of the news on messaging this week is that with this the new security law or whatever they want to call it in Hong Kong bunch of companies, but specifically Facebook, you know hats off to them but it's easy because they're banned in China, but they've said, you know, they're going to stop look, you know, they're going
The take a couple of months. I think this is actually what they said like take a few months and review their options on what to do if the Hong Kong government authorities request information about users and Signal had a pithy little tweet where they, you know said, well, we're going to continue doing what we've always doing and that's nothing because we have nothing to turn over the way signals and then encryption is set up there is nothing to turn over and I saw like the top tweets replying to that pithy tweet. We're all like, whoa.
Let me know when I can do something other than sign up with something other than revealing my phone number
July 10th. Stringent. Bunco squads a good point that has been made is people like oh well Apple might Market your app. It's like, well number one. You can't run a business by hoping that someday like apple might feature your have like they're just not realistic. But what there be a check box, it'll be like you could be an explicit trade-off. I'm going to check this box, which says that I forgo all future opportunities of Apple featuring my app and an
He'll put a freaking web link in my app that links to a page where they can sign up. That's another example of taking people make these arguments like oh well Apple features you that's worth a lot. Apple distribute your app. You don't get a say that Apple distribute your app when they've passed basically a law for all intensive purposes that says you have to go through the App Store while apple pays a lot of money to host these apps. It's like well, yeah because you don't get us that you don't get to plead poverty when you passed a rule that everyone has to use your store,
right?
I think calling at the App Store is a misnomer,
July 13th, Amazon and tick-tock.
I'm on Tick Tock side. Oh, are you I think they got railroaded. I didn't they got I think Tick-Tock really got hit Square in the nose by a media shitstorm Friday that they I don't think they did anything. I found the whole story very very strange and it's such a terrifying example of mob mentality in the me.
Idea, so there's a lot of tick-tock stories. Goalie. I presume you're not talking about them being a Cayman Islands company which things like story specifically
I'm talking about the story that the New York Times broke. Although I think it would have broken by somebody else anyway, but we're Amazon's it Department apparently set. Well, not apparently but they did send out a company-wide email saying that people had to everybody had to remove tick tock from their phones if they use those phones to access company mail for a security.
To and they had till the end of day Friday to do it and this hit the New York Times and then within hours Amazon had to walk it back
July 15th Disney the NBA and take tuck and tech stocks. The whole point of it is that it's not a social network. It's the reason why it works is because you're not constrained by your network you can do so they can pull great videos from anyone on the service, which means they get all the
Benefit of server user generated content where there's just a massive amount of stuff out there without being constrained by it has to be in your network so you can see it and that's a good that's a constraint that Facebook faces people forget that Facebook's original FTC consent decree was about trying to make private post public to Facebook was actually trying to get to where a tick tock already is where everything is public and that gives you a much greater pool of stuff to push to folks but but sort of implicit in this where the algorithm is, actually what's dominant not The Social Network.
Is that we have no idea or view or insight into what that algorithm is. What's put into it? What influences are going in that and you combine that with a country in China that one definitely has sort of the laws and expectations that they can lean on and tell her how companies what to do or look at what's in them and also is a ideological project like folks think about China as they think about like the US and think I'll be all it's all commercials all economic but China is an ideological country.
That sees itself in opposition to the US and to think that they're not going to use a tool like Tick-Tock given that they blocked u.s. Social networks because they fear the exact same thing in Reverse I think is just a risk. That's too large to Bear July 17th. The Twitter hack. Well, the other thing about the Bitcoin angle is because of the nature of Bitcoin being you don't like once you still Bitcoin like it's gone, right? There's no unwinding it and this is the case with lots of cryptocurrencies is that there's
Aspect where the processes for stealing Bitcoin are well developed at this point. You know what I mean? Like we talked about the wholesome hacking thing. Some hacking has been a huge problem in the cryptocurrency space because that's how folks did a big way they profited is by stealing someone's account information and then doing the same hack and then transferring a whole bunch of Bitcoin or III or whatever might be and then boom it's gone. So there's I always make this analogy that you know the poor like analog world like dick like
Tech companies were like, you know eating each other for decades and then suddenly they started attacking the rest of the world. It's like all these fat companies had no chance against these like we mean killing machines from Silicon Valley. This is kind of the case. But with with Bitcoin attacking everybody else they've been stealing from each other so much that they're really good at it and like the normal companies like Twitter or just totally unprepared July 20th Twitter, lulz, by the way, if you change your view on the Twitter thing at all, you know, there's been Taco is like
A state-sponsored sort of thing that people, you know, the theories are sort of spinning up any changes in your evaluation the situation.
No, I don't think so. I certainly haven't seen any evidence of it. I think it's just another one of those cases where the explanation is relatively maybe simple is the wrong word, especially given the evidence that's been put out but it's relatively boring and it is kind of simple and people see that the potential Madness of
of Bad actors taking control of any almost any Twitter account. They want short of trump and probably Jack and think well, it can't just be a couple of guys doing it for the lulz including one guy who's username was lull wall did it for the lulz
July 22nd Geo and the Indian internet?
All right. Well, and I just think that in hindsight it with the benefit of a couple of other.
Years of hindsight and knowing more about Facebook. It's like I think the best argument against it was no come on. They wouldn't do that. There's you know, they're really trying to do something good and now it's like and you know in 2020 look back, you know. Yeah, they were trying to be real real jerks and Colonial
sure. I don't think I don't think it was actively evil what I think what I think it was that the case that's the case of most human Endeavors, which is people always view what they do in positive light.
It's and view what other people do and more negative light sees just like a human failure and I can absolutely believe that Facebook believed in and and recent believed genuinely that look these folks don't have anything and now they're going to have something and that is better than nothing. You can put yourself in their shoes and say yeah that that makes sense. It's so fascinating because again, it's not just that people got the quote unquote real Internet. It's the knock-on effects of having the real internet that inspired this this massive amount of
listen for these people that are in extreme poverty are being competed for and that competition for them is doing more to raise them out of poverty than any amount of Charity ever would
write raise them out of poverty and multiple levels, you know it both the traditional sense of physical poverty, but also the information and communication and poverty
July 24th slack and apple relive the
90s one is
Is it really was a big mistake for slack to say that teams wasn't a competitor and I'm not quite sure if they meant it in the way that everybody took it which is that this is not a competing product. It just looks the same on the surface but it really doesn't compete with us at all or did they mean it a little bit more as a dislike teams is so weak. It's not even really a competitor. But either way it comes back in May bites him in the bites him in the ass, right?
Now to say that you've got to go to Regulators. It's a competitor. I think
it's a little bit of both. I really think a mistake slack is made from the beginning is not taking Microsoft seriously and I think this is something that companies in Silicon Valley make again and again relative to Microsoft, which is especially these single-use companies get so focused on their specific use case and like what we do it so much better than Microsoft does and they forget the fact that Microsoft people that are buying Microsoft products aren't worried about
Out your single-use case the right about like doing their job writing either work done. And the fact that all of the Microsoft stuff works together pretty well is a huge benefit compared to trying to stitch all these different sorts of pieces together. And that's the real Advantage my shop halves in the marketplace is it's like a One-Stop shop you go there and everything sort of kind of works together and it is every single individual piece the best not necessarily but who wants to be an IT administrator if you don't have to be July
7th an antitrust preview
all of these companies are different which is another reason why I think it's problematic to have them all at the same time. We're the only way you can say they're all in the same boat together is if you just say we as a society and as a country have a bunch of problems you for companies are in some ways involved in some way with all of these problems and you're all very successful again. Not even making the Judgment of the merits of
of the antitrust legal arguments against each of the four companies. None of them are the same really I mean, maybe some of the advertising stuff with Facebook and Google is two peas in a pod and so far is that they're the two companies that have taken over the entire advertising industry. But anything you really want to say about Apple in the App Store really doesn't really relate to the other companies. Yeah.
It's exactly right. I actually wrote an article last last summer which we will put in the show notes again the show notes which only appear in your podcast.
And on the web, but about tech and I trust her I went through every company and I said like where the actual antitrust issues where the actual risks of The Happening where the actual possible remedies and you're exactly right in in even with the advertising thing. The real concern with Google is kind of like the way they run the ad exchanges and the ad tech and and you know, it's funny. What are the best fossil examples of how you know, Google is probably being abusive in this area is that Facebook try to get into it and then abandon it because they realize that Google is taking all their
data that's control over the whole Space July 29th aggrieved Apple you guessed. It was also the New York Times story about the the air B&B and class passing. By the way. This is what I heard a lot about when the whole Haiti was waiting around. I heard from multiple companies that were Apple nailed them and this exact thing where the pandemic came along so they moved what used to be offline classes whether it be yoga classes Fitness classes counseling sort of things. They used to be sort of a Marketplace.
Facilitated these connections and they then move them online because people could meet in person and Applewood after a bunch of these companies saying you have to now pay us and leaving aside the fact that what a awful look it is to basically be leveraging the pandemic to make some more money. I think there's a really important distinction to be made between stuff like in-app purchase for games and things like these unique sort of experiences where if you're providing some tokens in a game.
Mmmmmm, or even some software. It has zero marginal cost you can duplicate it endlessly and there's a certain perspective where Apple it doesn't really matter. What share Apple takes of that because it's kind of free money anyway in a certain sense but things like an in-person experience like I'm hiring a coach to do something for me or a counselor or a fitness instructor. Like that's not a replicable experience in taking a cut of that. I think it's is way more problematic just from a we're going to kill businesses that might exist in a way that taxing.
We're or taxing consumables in games is not July 31st big Tech in Congress again, I wasn't watching I could only hear it but he just started had this sort of like befuddled tone is like why wouldn't we have a negotiation? Right? That's what companies do and I thought that was something that was the Democrats way. It sounded reasonable, but then you listen to what they actually said is like wait like you seem to be legislating against the very Act of business itself. That doesn't come across as a more reasonable than being your tile eschewing your glasses it as
Asking about Don jr. On Twitter.
Yeah, I thought Bezos was the most interesting to me because he takes he seemed to genuinely be trying to answer their questions and and that was part of his if there was a theme to his answers it was this is the nature of doing business. That's how a a really and it almost felt like if there was a time when he almost broke not broke character because I feel like he was actually not in a character he was genuine but where he almost broke the political protocol of being
Front to the Congress was at a point where I felt like he wanted to say. Yeah, that sound to go. She ation Works dipshit,
right? Yeah. I think I've heard all the same thing.
Yeah. He really really, you know somebody because he tried to explain it then got pushed back and was like, how do you think negotiation Works other than both sides giving things until everybody agrees. They have an equally crappy deal.
What are the favorite things is will put this on the preview episodes is that
We month has a different cover and the we did it we know this baseball one is amazing for July because the guy was actually wearing a mask. This is not a photoshopped image. This is a real image from the time of the Spanish flu, and they had the best thing figured out back then
and my thought was this is great Ben and I are big Baseball fans. It is very apropos of current events, but my thought when we went with it was hmm. I know the baseball season isn't starting till July 23rd. Maybe we should save that one for August when there's a full month of Base.
All but now now with what's going on. I realize now there's probably going to be more Major League Baseball played in July in one week. Then there might be an August period because the whole thing is I think on the verge of collapse because the Miami Marlins have a serious Outbreak on their team,
but not not not on the verge of collapse is dithering dithering is going strong. If you could subscribe let's do all these clips as the full episodes again. It's three episodes per week 50 minutes per episode. Not a minute less time in a more go to delivering dot f m
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