Algorithms and Oligopolies with Thomas Germain

Also media.

Hello and welcome to Better Offline and we are live from beautiful New York City, Nevada. I am edzit Tron, I am your host, and I'm joined by Thomas Jermaine of the BBC Today it's Better Off Life.

Welcome Thomas. Glad to be here. So it's been a very funny few weeks.

The Google is a monopoly, and of course you'll the next episode will be about that monopoly money stuff. And it feels like something is breaking in tech, not necessarily in a bad way.

In that we're finally moving.

It looks like the government is saying it's time to not have five companies that do everything in tech.

Yeah.

I mean, we're clearly at some kind of turning point, right. I think you know, if we'd been talking about this five years ago, I never would have predicted that we would seen any meaningful antitrust action against any of these companies. Now it's all of them, and it seems like we're actually trending in the direction of doing something about it.

And I'll even take that a step further.

Two weeks ago, I would have probably said I don't think Google loses the anti trust case.

I think that they're gonna win. I don't think the epic.

The federal judge on the epic case, did you hm, So with that one for the listeners, we'll have the links in there about this. The federal judge, during the remedy stage of Epic suing Google over their monopoly over the Playstore, has been very clear that he does not intend to let them let Google off easily, and has said because Google has estimated six hundred million dollars of costs to fix the play store, and it's kind of multifested.

And the judge basically said, when Google said, this is.

Going to be really difficult, not my problem, which is one of the funniest ways of putting it.

But okay, he didn't say it literally.

He said, I'm paraphrasing, Hey, if you didn't want your monopoly broken up, maybe you shouldn't have built it in the first place. And it's it's awesome, and I know I can delight in this. Perhaps you come like we all know our oppositions here, but I think that there is something kind of magical happening because this is a good thing.

Competition is good.

I think even the tech companies would agree. Yeah, competition is good.

At least in their public statements, right, yeah, publicly, and we're you know, there's been a lot of talk in recent years about all the ways that progress in technology has slowed down, not necessarily in the development of the tech itself, but you know the way that the landscape plays out, you know, innovation things just feeling like fun and interesting and weird, and a lot of people are arguing that that's because there's been so much power amassed among a couple of very large companies.

And it feels like at this point we're at the end of whatever started in like twenty ten. We're getting to the point where venture capital doesn't seem to be being spent in the same way, where actually it's kind of returning to how it wasn't twenty ten. Like I think it was like two hundred and something million last year, it's probably gonna hear about three hundred million this year.

And the mask and slut.

You're not really seeing the massive acquisitions anymore. You're just kind of seeing the consolidation of industries. But I just I don't know what's gonna happen with generative AI at this point, because that in itself seems like monopoly of sorts.

But also it's all gone very quiet. It feels like we're all waiting. I'm hearing about it so much all of a sudden, but also we're all waiting for something to happen. Uh huh.

Because we went from recording this, we're obviously in this slight delay. We went from this period where everyone's like, generative AI is over. It's over too, not necessarily saying it isn't, but just everyone's sitting there waiting for someone to blink.

Right, and like we're The conversation is constantly about like, well, when the technology gets better, X, Y and Z will happen, We'll get all this innovation, the whole world will shift around it. And it's not at all clear that that getting better thing is going to be real.

But also they've stopped even saying that. Now. I started to see people say things like.

Well, we've got to look at the smaller language model, maybe the large ones aren't good, right. And what what I do like though, is the Google's pixel event was just pure AI.

The week after everyone.

Was saying this is a terrible idea, like this kind of looks bad. I don't like how this looks and the it's like, nah, you gotta have AI and your earbuds. Now you need the thing you use for listening. You need to talk to it as well.

And it's funny if you look at all the marketing that the big tech companies are doing, like you know, from Google to smaller companies, it's all about like we swear that this is useful, and they have like people you know, doing different things that you maybe you should try using AI for this. I think because they've really built a product that, for a lot of people is not intuitive. It's not clear what it's good for. It's clearly good for something.

Is it?

And I realized it's good for something? And I got a very annoying email this morning. And I get very annoying emails from someone's saying here is the use case. I use it every day. Just to be clear to that listener, I have no problem with you. Thank you for actually emailing. I love to actually hear how people using it bomb. I feel a lot of the biggest difference with general if AI is everything else that I'm being sold something. I'm being so oh Airport's what are good?

I don't want the noise. I want the noise from the music I'm listening too. And then general IFAI comes along this AI stuff and it's like, well, you could use it for this, I guess what do you think of this? Do you want to try this?

And you're like, no, I don't need to write a letter to an Olympic athlete at all, And if I did, I don't need it to be written like Grock.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been working really hard over the past couple of months to try and find things I can actually do with it, and I've come across a couple of you know.

You tell me like genuinely I would love to.

Yeah, I mean I like it for I. I'm a writer, right, Yeah.

So when I'm stuck with like a sentence that I'm having a hard time getting from my brain onto the page, sometimes all you know, write out some like terrible.

Version of the sentence. Yeah, you know, stream of consciousness.

Ask one of the AI's, you know, for an idea of where I could go with it. I don't ever take that and then use it. But it's like it's I heard someone say it's kind of like talking to a smart brick wall, right, You're not gonna get anything new, but it can kind of help you sort through your own ideas. But that's not what the tech companies are promoting.

I'm never gonna pay for that.

And I fully admit that's kind of how I've used it. If it's especially some boring workshit Like I don't know, if I'm trying to come up with four ideas to talk about AI and healthcare, I will throw something at it and then none of the ideas will be good. I will be just really clear, it never really get a good idea. But I'm like, oh, that kind of makes me think about it. But again, is this worth one hundred two hundred billion dollars?

Is this is this really?

Because if they had launched this and the entire thing, this will be like a very twenty tens thing where they're just like, yeah, it's an ideation machine. You throw some shit in, it bounces it back. Because really, that's what of them's are They just kind of repeat the past back to you. If that was what they were saying, and it was like, this is an ideation machine. Open Ai had raised fifty million dollars and this is what it did.

I'd actually be.

Kind of like, right, sick core product, Yeah, sick.

This is just it's kind of a churning machine.

This is this is something where oh like it's kind of it's not really creative, but it's kind of lets me bounce things off of it.

What a great idea the brick wall, like you.

Said, but it isn't it is And that's it's like the opposite of how they're describing it, almost as if well, what you see today it sucks, but what if it didn't Yeah, one day in a non specific way that I cannot describe as I am yet to work it out.

It's just but actually back to the question, what have you found any other useful things?

Because I really, I genuinely actually feel like this is a useful conversation.

Yeah, I mean I I went and did a ton. I read everything I could find from people that I respect about what you can do with AI, how you can use it, how you can figure out how to use it, And what I landed on was really you just have to try everything you can think of and spend like four to eight hours in total, and eventually you'll find a way that you can bounce back and

Like what kinds of things should I include? It was kind of useful for that. It probably saved me half an hour.

And maybe that's something it's useful for, where it's like an aed own business copy. But also the very boring structural stuff that no one enjoys writing like bios. Yeah, I think it's actually very threatening, specifically for writing press releases, express releases.

Anything that's formulaic. Yeah. Yeah.

And also maybe that's a good thing for it, but again that is not worth plagiarism. That's not worth the insane amount of money it costs.

It is really.

Crazy, though, how distant these things are, where you've got like this kind of useful thing and just this out outlay of money, this insane amount of money. I have never seen a single thing in tech history anything close to this ever, ever, ever, ever, Like, I.

Don't know, is there anything.

I mean, there's always a hype cycle thing, right, there's the metaverse or when you know Facebook first blew up. Everything had a social media component but I've never seen write anything close to this level of investment where the whole industry acts as though this really is the wave of the future and it's happening now. That's it. I think it's kind of unpressive.

Even the metaverse was the forty five billion that Mark Zuckerberg put into it, which is so funny, still remains funny. That turned out this great Yahoo Finance story about it. Yahoo Finance still still doing stuff, all right. They had a story about how it's mostly just mismanagement. It's just like they keep firing and hiring people.

It's just like I love that that. I love the GOV.

There is no law about like running a company remotely sustainably. But even then, outside of the metaverse with Meta, I don't think the spend was there. And I'm sure that some smart person who reads things no things very rude do not email me that might say, yeah, the overall

So white is what do we do with this? Yeah, well, my thing that I've wanted to do, and I don't think I'm gonna be able to do it because I think everyone will work out on my dickhead immediately. I kind of want to just ask multiple leaders in tech what is chet GPT and just see if they can tell me because I cannot gun to my head describe, like what is Google Search? It's a way of searching for stuff online. It indexes everything. What is chet GPT?

It's sometimes it answers questions?

Correct, it's a question answerer.

Well, I think And this kind of brings us back to the anti trust conversation right the a year and a half ago. The big discussion was this is an existential threat to Google, right, this is going to be an alternative to search, and you know, whether or not it's good for that, the hallucination problem is a real issue. But I you know, in my own life, I'm trying to use AI as often as I can to understand it.

It is useful for you know, the other day.

I can't remember what it was, but I needed to look up an acronym, you know, where it's like low risk. I can probably tell whether it's I it yeah, And I'm not like putting that in a story. It's just for my own understanding or something. But I've also heard a lot of speculation that this is part of why Google has put AI at the top of search results.

Right.

It's this anti trust stuff because there's a very real, once unfathom unfathomable possibility that Google is going to get broken up, that they're going to separate the ads business from the search business.

And you know, all of the moves that Google.

Has been making to change the way the search algorithm works, which you talked a lot yeah about, could be an effort to shift over to where we don't really need to scrape the open web because we're just giving you the answer.

But what's crazy is a story came out from Bloomberg the other day where so there's robots dot txt that.

And I'm going to fumble this and someone's gonna email and correct me. It's very rude. Again, but how does the internet actually work?

Which computer?

Is this a phone?

But it says that if you try and cut Google off, specifically Google off from your using your website for training data, it will also stop Google indexing it, right, which is what you were saying, is correct. If they were using generative AI as means of distancing themselves and saying we're no longer just not play is a We're not just indexing. We have created this knowledge ourselves, this is our own material. This is not just we're not just passively keeping people

Away from Google.

Google will fuck you over in the event that you try and stop them stealing your stuff.

It's just it's so frustrating as well, because there's no real there's no need for them to do that.

They could have probably made a very small amount of effort to not make that the case, and maybe they will indeed, it's just like it's like these companies don't even know how to operate normally anymore. They've kind of they're too big, they're too messy. But also their natural configuration isn't We're going to do a thing so that we interact with the ends because it is kind of how it used to be. It's like, we're scraping this, but we provide a service, we send you traffic, you

We need a fairer deal for everyone right now.

I mean, I've talked to people who work at Google who've told me that it really does seem like there's been some kind of mission creep and the people who run in the company aren't really clear what the company does. And I think part of that, and it's not just Google, is because all of these companies are such behemoths, right and they touch every part of the world. Every decision they make is about a strategy that's expanding to every

I mean my chat GPT thing. What is chat GPT? What does Google do? What does Google do?

Now? Yeah?

Google is a search company, an ADS company, a phone company, a phone provide a company that have an MVNO with Google Fi, which for listeners is a basically they are on the T mobile network. They are a cloud storage company, a data center company. They are also they have all sorts of business lines. They make robots.

No, do they own Boston Dynamics now? Is Boston Dynamics to nevertheless demic robuts Yeah, yeah, Well they're doing something in every ar VR yea what the like? Well?

Google is the Internet, right, That's what's going on, not just with Google, but with all these companies. It's this platformization where the open Web is dying and everything exists on a platform that some gigantic company is running. Not universally, but that's the direction we're trending.

It's most of them and it's but Google is I think, and this is the thing. I don't hate technology. I actually really would love Google to be where they work.

It's great. I love tech a lot.

Fifteen twenty years ago Google I didn't mind like they were doing a decent job.

Yeah they were.

Even the old Facebook in like two thousand and five is a pretty good product.

Ye.

And then mox Zucker Book's kind of evil and I've done plenty of episodes on him. But Google is just I think symbolic of the problem. They are symbolic of the too big not too big to fail because they've kind of proven that as well, that they seem incapable of failing despite their failures. It's just maybe we shouldn't

I don't know how many units.

Of Google are profit without Google Search, Like how much of it is bankrolled.

They're making sixty percent of the company's money. It's coming from search.

Yeah.

And also it's a terrible way to run a company. It's an awful way to run a company. And it isn't how they used to do things. But in and breaking them up I think is good. I think we need an example in the tech industry we get going well.

I mean, we're at a point where now we can, you know, officially say like Google is legally a monopoly.

Yeah at this point, right, like we.

Don't have to we don't have to edge Google is a monopoly at least in the search business. There's a bunch of other anti drust cases. Maybe other parts of the company are going to get declared to monopoly. But that's how monopolies work, right, Like, once you achieve enough market power, you don't need to make a good product, right, Like I talk.

To people all the time.

It used to be I think back, you know, fifteen years ago or maybe even long with the early two thousands, Google was the best search engine.

Yeah, right, Google came out. It was better than AltaVista, it was better than Yahoo.

Excited.

That's why excite, ask jeeves, right, that's why go one originally?

Right?

At this point, is Google actually better than Being? I think most people couldn't tell you the answer that question because they they don't use that.

They kind of seem the same.

I try, you know, I switched my default search engine to being for a while. It was not as good because I'm not used to it, But in terms of the results, it seemed fine.

Being news is better, which is you like being? What a horrible sentence? Being is also really terrible to say. I don't I don't like to say. I don't like saying Google's fun. Being is.

Maybe it's just because we're not used to it, you know, but I tried saying, you don't want to be sitting at.

Home going being being, but it's kind of nice. But also being is not great, But neither's Google? And what is a good search engine? Anymore.

And I think again, it comes back to the incentives. It's do they know what's a good search engine anymore? Do they actually? I I will admit I've been kind of black and white over this.

I say Google doesn't care.

I know that there are tons of people inside of Google I've spoken to who are like, I fucking hate this.

I hate how this is happening.

I mean the Department of Justice, emails and Ben Gums you could see the pain and Shashi Thakur and Ben Gums as they fought against this. And I think that what sucks is it never had to be this way. Never did not once they could have kept fucking that chicken and get so much money they forever, but it's like.

No, we must grow forever.

But also, on some level, it's horrible to say, why would they bother? They had the monopoly they have, they have the world by the bulls, Why would they? Why why bother being good? I just don't get why they let it be so bad? Like it's so bad, it's so bad. It's so awful. When you go look at something and it's just four Breddit posts and four forum posts, four other things. You've got a technical support thing, and all the forum posts are it's people saying I too

Uh?

Yeah, it's pretty insane.

And also, like now Reddit is having problems because Reddit users and businesses have realized that's how you get to the top of Google.

So all of the SEO stuff that.

Was happening on the web is now happening within conversations on Reddit, so that's being polluted in the same way.

Have you seen how coorra has had a DAI. I don't know if I'll come across that now.

Okay, so listeners, I want you to go and look up something on korra right now, because right now on Cora, if you look, most of the time, it will have a chat GPT response at the top. This is why for a while on Google you could look up can I melt an egg? And it would come up and say, yes, you can melt an egg, because I will keep trying

I don't really know, like there's some sort of points system.

Like any good thing on the Internet, it's mostly just degenerate posters who really love stuff.

Except now it's that.

After just the world's most awful generative thing and then an obvious ad and then an answer to a different question. Now you may think, why did this happen? Well, the CEO of Cora, Adam di'angelo, is on the board of open AI.

That's why. It's just it's like the death of the open web because these guys just went I got mine, bitch. I don't need to find stuff anymore. I know everything.

Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to look at the way that Google has changed in the past year two years and see well, I mean it's also hard to say whether it's better or worse because like what is good Google? First?

What is good?

But then also just what is Google Search? Like it's such a gigantic, diffuse product, like there's no way to really examine it wholesale from the outside. But you know, people were adding Reddit to the end and their search queries because the things that were coming up on Google weren't what they wanted. They wanted like some kind of authentic human response. So Google shifts and now they're showing Reddit at the top. Maybe, well, people were putting in it.

Yeah? How is that better?

It's it's it's because I don't think Google. It may just and I'm hypothesizing here, we don't actually know, but if I had to guess, it might be because when you build a monopoly that's this successful in any case, you stop learning how to build products. You just you don't have those muscles aren't in there to say, oh, right, I need to serve a customer, and if I don't serve the customer, they might go to a competitor. So it went from being like what is the best search result?

To fuck? What do people want? Now?

Who are these people who keep bothering me with questions? Ah, these little pigs?

They want Reddit? I guess credits where things happen now?

And there are ways that I sympathize, right, Like, because of the system that Google set up, you know, because of SEO search engine optimization, everyone who you know has the time and the money has figured out how to set up their web page to game Google search receipts. So it's the system that they developed to sort through what's good and bad and what should be at the top kind of, you know, it's it's harder and harder to make that work because the signals that they identified

I agree fifty percent. Like I agree that there is an adversarial nature with SEO and the people have been trying to screw with Google forever. The other thing is, this company makes like one hundred billion dollars a year. My sympathy for the challenges here is so low. And also SEO people get There are good SEO people, Lily ray Rox's she's great.

There are good people out there.

But I would argue the majority of SEO is fucking evil and it is adversarial to the web.

And also Google should fight it. Google should make war with them. Google should make it. They lie. Google lies. I'm fucking saying that you don't have to. They lie and say, oh yeah, we're making helpful content updates. Screw you. No, you're not shut down.

Every shut down Dot Meredith, shut down every single company that has re engineered their content to rip off others, and screw SEO.

He hello, not Hello fresh, that the house house fresh. There you go, they're a great article about SEO. Thank god you remember that.

I was talking about how Dot Meredith basically outdid them on SEO by working out the signals.

What Google could do is, I don't know. I'm not some genius guy, but here's an idea. If you mess with Google, Google messes back, Google says you want to mess with me, I will cut you in out of Google.

Well that and that happened, it does it happened? Well, not not on a large scale. But there was a case recently that no one really talked about. But I didn't even know this. Every gigantic news publisher, you know, from CNN to tiny little companies, has like a vertical on their site that has coupons on it. Yes, right, and Google went in and decided and it's not original content.

Right.

They were like white labeling stuff that coupon companies were giving them. Right, Google went in it said this is not allowed anymore. You're abusing the authority of your domain name and we're not gonna let you do this. And you know, I think there's an argument that that's better for consumers that if I search for a coupon, it's now presumably I'm gonna get sent somewhere where a guy who just makes coupon's posted it.

But there are all these other.

Cases that you're talking about where it seems like Google either is okay with the way that they're being abused or they don't have a solution in mind. But they have so many like their resources are so enormous.

And the thing you're talking about with the it was there's a specific term. I'll probably be emailed as well, but it was basically that they would have content like coupons and other things on that they'd have high domain authority posts from completely different shit. But the way I'd push back on that, you're right by the way they did do that, and that's a good thing. Is Google a coupon right now? Google, look up a coupon, listeners, go and do it. Look at the amount of sites

Oh? The majority of this content is outright fake.

Right, And that's the counter argument, right, And I don't think that the coupons on retail me Not they're the same ones that you're seeing on CNN, dot coupons or whatever it is. Yeah, not literally, but for the most part they have the same problems. But maybe it's the wrong question is this better or us? Because the other one that we can ask is and it's the one the government is asking. Should Google be the one who gets to decide what is and isn't okay on the web?

The La Times is in big trouble.

Right.

This was bringing in I don't know the exact figure, but lots of money every year, probably to the two and of million millions of dollars. And Google says, you're done with this. You don't get to do this anymore. This is not a way that you are allowed to make money on the Internet.

Right.

That's a lot of power for one company to have over something that is infrastructure.

The Internet is infrastructure, I think.

And that's a really interesting point because I believe that any such engine is if their job is to get you the best results, should have that power. Conversely, I also believe that there should be a quality level, because you can do that theoretically. I think that that's a good thing that they carve if you maintain quality elsewhere. If it's just arbitrary. I've decided that.

This thing doesn't work for me and it's a black box like everything with Google, then it needs to absolutely needs to go. But I would actually be a little bit okay with Google being more forceful with stuff if Google actually did the thing it's meant to do.

The original Google.

The thing that made it good is it cut through the noise that there was always a lot of noise online, not just social just shitty websites, good websites, and Google would get you good results. It was the thing that helped you search the web. Can we even argue it helps you search it anymore? It doesn't feel like it's doing the job it's meant to do.

It doesn't.

It indexes everything, fine, who gives a fuck. I don't need it indexed. I need the good stuff brought to me so that I don't have to go and find it, except now I have to, which is fine. But I'm also a horrible online gremlin. I'm online. I know all the websites. I've memorized all the URLs. Now, I don't think most people have, and I think most people's because that is really what this is about, not you or me or people who are like online all the time.

Get exposed to.

But also, I don't know how about you actually protect people from the malignant stuff in the ads. I was on Google the like month ago and I actually emailed Danny Sullivan the search of Liason.

Hi Danny, now you love me?

And I bought a GPD Win four pocket from what I thought was the GPD Win four website. GPD website GPD is a they make little gaming console PCs. They're fantastic. I put down thousand dollars this thing. I then realized when I looked in the PayPal that it was some Chinese guys email at gmail dot com. And this was because the first result was a sponsored ad for a

All of my.

Hates O, my hater has found out they were outside my applauding. It was terrible for me, very bad very unfair, But Jesus Christ, you can't keep the fake ads off the page, Like.

Come on, well, it's bad enough. I think that it was last year or the year before. It might have been twenty twenty two. It was bad enough that the FBI, do you remember this, They issued a statement that said consumers should use ad blockers because there's so much spam and abuse in ads that in order to protect yourself, you just shouldn't even be seeing the ads anymore.

So just to cut to ads for a second.

If you want to protect yourself, if you really want to make your life better, I really recommend the first thing you do immediately is to listen to this following ad, which will directly and precisely aligned with every belief I have had and will have in the future.

And we're back.

And I think the funny thing about all of this as well, is these companies always say.

Well, the web is too Basil's too our jobs are too hot. But it's like even just one guy in Google who's just trying to search for the worst stuff, not even the obvious words like horrible, like like, because I think they're probably quite good at c SAM and like outright illegal stuff but just I don't know a dickhead, just the I'm the guy at Google, who's the dickhead. I just search for the annoying stuff. We fix it. I know they can do that.

I refuse to believe that they can't pay a guy to just find this stuff, to be a regular john who just sits there and go googles things like coupons, who searches for fake websites. For a while, on Google News, there was a website called good Morning Kashmere I think it was called, and it would just rip off everything. And when I say everything, I mean pretty much every

When I told him, he was like, well, you shouldn't be.

Using Google news chronological view because it doesn't really work. I'm like, what the what the what?

What? Excuse me? What? That's the thing.

And I think that this is the problem with a lot of these big tech companies. They just see customers as like, well, you.

Are the problem. And I think that actually this is an industry wide thing where consumers have been gas lit and this is definitely me doing like a book pitch. But it's true.

I think that consumers have been made to feel like, oh when tech fails you.

This is a lack of awareness of how good tech is. You didn't read the privacy parlast exactly. You didn't use the manual.

You didn't do this Apple, And I know my listeners want me to bag on Apple as an app store thing coming. It's gonna be mean, it's gonna be nasty, very unfair to mister cook.

But we'll get to that. Apple does a generally better job of not treating the consumer well, maybe treating them like an idiot, but sometimes you have to. If you're selling things, sometimes you're an idiot.

Well and I am regularly, But if there are hundreds of millions of people, you should assume that the base level understanding is as low as it can be, and that the manual is a backup plan. But it's the opposite. Now, Chat GPT, well, you don't know how to use it well enough. And I'm not saying you said that like you were saying this in this manner, but you need

Fuck you, this is meant to be artificial intelligence. I'm not meant to be smart. It's meant to be smart.

Yeah, and especially when it comes to the content moneration issue. Yeah, the search results are on Google or getting worse, or they're being abused, or the ads. You know, there's just a report the other day about ads for illicit drugs on Facebook, and you know, I hear the argument that there's so much content that it's just not possible that human beings could go through all of this. You know, that's only an argument that's acceptable if you start with

It's called Alo now used to be called mind.

Geek in fascinating.

They told me that every single video on porn hub gets reviewed by human being, every video on Pornhub, which I can't imagine a worse job than that, because I mean, like the things that people must be uploading on there that don't make it onto the site.

But it is possible. That's a terrible job.

Like then you have to you know, pay for therapy for the people who are doing it to say that it's just not possible.

Maybe you should be running fewer ads.

But that's the porn hub. That's an interesting one. Me. I've never used porno, but I imagine now, but with something like porn hub, it proves it's possible, because, yeah, you'll get fucked up as a porn hub if you don't do this right, if you don't review everything and make sure that there's no copyright, that there's no underage, that there's no outright illegal stuff, and because there are very clear, very stark penalties for that, there aren't for ads. And I think one of my favorite.

Ideas that i've I've read is Darren Asamoglu previously on the show Becoming on in the Future Mit Economist, he made.

A suggestion put the CEOs in jail.

Now I realized that's a little much, but drilling down the idea, if there was personal liability for Mark Zuckerberg, I bet all those problems go away immediately. I think Mark Zuckerberg make it his mission to have the cleanest ad experience in the world because the reason that they do it is they can get away with it. I refuse, Like, to your point, maybe there should be less ads. Maybe if I walk around and I have a crowbar in my hand, I think I've used this example before, and I'm swinging.

It will in nearly and I hit a few windows on the smash.

I love my crowbar. It's so much fun. But if I do that, do you think I have to pay for the windows I smash? Do you think I'm gonna get arrested? Of course I am. Well, my job, I'm paid to swing the crowbar. The crowbar must be swung. That I make four million dollars a year swinging the crowbar. This is my job. The cops aren't going to be like, well, this is just commerce. We're not going to mess with

There should be actual things. And I think that that is the problem.

It all happened relatively fast, like a couple of decades, which seems like a while, but for legislation isn't. Yeah, But to your point, like, do these companies have to exist?

Probably not.

It's good they do, but if they can exist, they should be held to some account. There should be Now that you've said that, I'm really thinking about, like do they need to exist? But why can't they deal with this stuff? What they never seem to be asked? Why they never? Oh, there's too many of them. No, there's not, Like there's.

Just no we can say that there shouldn't be scams and Google ads. I don't think that they have a legal obligation to make sure that there's not.

I'm aware they don't, so you know, you like they could put.

Soon Arpachina jail, or you could you know, just you know, write a law and have there be some penalty that affects the company's sack price, that they'll address the problem.

Oh, yes, we don't. There are no rules about the Internet.

And there are definitely false advertising. There's definitely lying it like it's FDC. I believe it's FCCC. Always get those wrong cases.

Probably listening going to.

Get mad, But that's the thing, like those they need to be enforced. But on top of that, when I say put them in jail, IM mostly joking, right. I think personal liability, however, would do really well. If they will like I will lose Pshai makes like two hundred million a year, mostly in stock. How about he loses percentage, not dollar amounts, percentages zero point five percent, not for everything.

But perhaps that's an aggregate thing.

If they are like, oh my wealth will be directly attacked, I think some UPSHI would immediately. There would be this insane quality improvement. Same with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg right now is unfireable. But if we set these things for the chief executives who are paid three hundred times their employees' salaries, if they were paid this insane amount of money but it was a job with inherent risk, Hell yeah, I think that would start changing shit really quickly for the better.

So good. I love it.

Well, what I'm really excited to watch is presumably there's going to be some kind of consequence here. Right the government says Google is a monopoly, We're going to see what they do. Maybe they break them up, maybe they give them some enormous fine. And then there's another antidos case for Google in the United States. There's yet another one in the EU. Then there's all the cases that all the other companies are facing. I wonder whether or not it's too late to turn the web around, Like

I don't think it's collapsed. But I will also say something a little controversial. The Internet wasn't great fifteen years ago. I think we all need to.

Like, it's not like it's worse now, but oh waw live journal? Did we love live Journal?

I had friends on there like it was cool, but like was it? I love Twitter in its prime. I love Blue Sky. I love the fact that I can text you and my friends and I can signal people. There's it's really great things on there. And I think that what we perceive as the open web is to your earlier point, like maligned by Google. Google has fucked it up to the point that we don't think it exists. It does, and I think the companies like substack are nakedly evil. I think substack is one of the most

It's sickening.

And substack now is making it so you can create publications on there which don't involve email addresses or newsletters anymore, becoming another platform, and that's what sucks, and that's what really sucks about how things are. But platforms as a service are not necessarily a bad thing. My journal was a platform and then they, like every company, got acquired by a larger company, which got acquired by a larger company.

Ghost I love because they're mostly just yeah, it's a service.

You can run it your own. Molly White hasars self hosted. I run it on a website with the person who helps because I'm stupid. But the sloppy point I'm getting to is the open web is still there. It's still being built, and thanks to the good services, it's still growing, and it's still accessible and it's still cool. If we can realign these search engines, or maybe there is a future Google competitor it is not search GPT, I think that,

There is plenty of original human created content out there. It's just that Google and Being and all of these sites have kind of defaulted on that position of showing us it and we have to search for it through social networks. It's why as an independent journalist it's tough to build a following because all of the algorithms people are built to rely on are broken now.

Right, And if you're not doing it the way that the TikTok algorithm or the Google search algorithm wants you to do it exact, no one's going to find your stuff, right, Like, It's absolutely true. There's a nostalgia thing going on. The Internet used to be better, you know, I remember when I was a child.

I was happy.

It must have been because of the way things were then that they are not now. That's that's true. But the one thing you can say is the internet is not as weird as it used to be. Right, there's less opportunity for just total, like absolute free expression that is not limited by trying to please some kind of algorithm and to fit into some kind of box.

I don't I.

Think that that's how to prove right or wrong. I know what you're getting at. Yeah, you're seeing less of that. I don't know if it's not being created.

Right. There are wonderful, weird.

Strange communities, unique community There are like I don't know, I said this to someone earlier, like furries are probably doing some of the most interesting things online. Not my cup of tea, but respect to them. Also they do some of the funniest hacking things ever. Yeah, but like the fact that a community like that can thrive online is lovely. If whatever you're doing, as long as everyone's

Yeah, this stuff is out there, but can you find it? Is it the stuff that we're all consuming way we go on the internet? Will it be served up to us? The stuff that you're seeing is the stuff that you know, keeps you staring at TikTok for the longest, which you know, maybe that's good. You know, it helps TikTok more money, helps them make a platform that makes it easy to

There's you know, there's two sides to everything.

But and I think that the problem is that these algorithms are so easily gamable. But there's this wonderful Jason Kobler legend at for or for Media that this amazing piece about the Indian guys basically defrauding Facebook.

Did you read this? Yeah, where these guys.

I need to have Jason on just to talk about this story. It's insane where there is a Facebook Creator program and all of that AI slot. The shrimp Jesus at al that you see is these Indian guys who are just using him as generators and have worked out I can throw this rock in this puddle and it

And Cory Doctor on the last Better Offlies said this very well. He was saying that.

There is something inherently conservative about generative AI because it and any kind of auto complaint. Indeed, because it's just you say I love and it's gonna say you, you kind of normalize this one point.

They don't. There's no incentive for them to.

Build interesting algorithms, so they just build the one that kind of works for everyone, that shows you the slop, the slop that works for you, and it kind of pushes everyone in one direction. And I think maybe you know, think about it, maybe that's You're right about the nostalgia aspect, and that's what we miss in the The web doesn't feel exploratory anymore, right, We're not like looking or searching anymore.

Right? Is it popular?

Because the algorithm shows it, or because a lot of people like it, or do a lot of people like it because the algorithm chose it to be popular, And as that falls apart, I don't know, man, And.

It's like, what is popular? What is culture right now? Is actually a very open question.

Right, Well, we just put out a story about this where it's not the shrimp Jesus. But if you've seen the AI cats, there's this thing.

No, it's incredible.

Should we just put it out?

It started on TikTok and it's spread to Instagram. It's AI generated images of cats in very upsetting situations, like there's one cat and his son like gets kidnapped by a pigeon, or they're at this they're in the sea and Godzilla comes and attacks them, and this stuff is blowing up. It's getting tens of millions of views. Is it because that's what people like and want? Or is it because this is what the algorithm is serving them?

I like it as well.

But something that a lot of Internet culture reporting I feel like kind of fails for this reason because instead of analyzing the source. They analyze this instead of analyzing the problem, they analyze the symptom. Right, So it's like, why is Brat so big? Why is is this brat? Am I Brat?

It's like, that's a fucking Charlie x X. I'm so old. I'm so fucking old.

I just say, even saying that out loud, I age ten years.

I am neither brat nor cap.

And but even then that she's a famous musician, people like a music.

It's not for me. People seem very happy with it. The Brat thing I want. That's one where I just look at it.

I'm like, is this something that was popular because she's a popular musician or is it because the algorithm made the specific Brat thing popular? And it's like, I don't even we don't know how these algorithms work, so we don't actually know how to say that.

We don't we don't actually know how to pull this apart.

So I think with these algorithmic situations as well, maybe them falling apart is a good thing, or maybe these companies having to do more than just make the algorithm make stuff popular is for the best, Because I do miss accidentally finding stuff and the way we find things accidentally used to be the goofiness of the Internet, but also sharing. It used to be we got things through

I often do because I don't think about it.

I open Twitter and that's just what I'm looking at and then I realized that I haven't scrolled over. Yeah, And I mean, here's a place where I think we could get some useful government regulation, because you know, I don't know if I want, you know, Congress to write rules about how content recommendation engines work.

I don't know if I it's a propaganda thing to have.

And it's also like a free speech is ue.

Do we want them dictating what content you see and what you don't. Probably it's probably not even constitutional.

But what they could.

Do is they could mandate that the company be more transparent about how the algorithms work. They tell you how does hinge decide which people you see? In which people you guess? How are they judging you? How is Google determining where the search results go? What's showing up on

I agree, But I think the other thing that needs to happen is, and I don't know how you do this, is there also must be an incentive for these companies to have quality control.

Because I don't know.

Elon musk Oh, yes, I've made the entire epic based algorithm public and he's like, there's definitely something though in there, because they've definitely get The reason I ever use twitters for you feed is within two seconds that will see an actual Nazi.

I'll be like, no, thanks, I don't need to see like the fourteen Yeah, yeah, I don't need to see the the latest iteration of a Hitler account that's been allowed on there. But I think that there needs.

To be a quality level because otherwise, well, actually it gets back to the SEO thing. I want these companies and I don't know how you create this as an incentive to want to attack those who manipulate them because SEO has an idea.

I get it if SEO because there's really, from what I understand, two things of SEO. There is the qualitative side, where it's like Google is saying this so that the quality of the website on Google is good. This is the original idea for it is that when you click on a website, it won't scam you, it will load fast, it will have good information, it will make for it, it will be a good result. Google has given the hell up on that. That is gone.

We are no longer in the Google that actually does that. But that actually is a good thing. And Lily Ray was explaining this to me on the episode. It's like that as an idea is actually very very very good. I wish that more companies, including Google, stuck to that where it was we're making sure we're doing a quality service. But the other side is, okay, this is the stuff we like, this is what we will promote on here. And what sucks is I actually think that side is evil.

If they it is surprising that they encourage SEO. It seems counter to the whole point of search engine that you would be able to game it.

I think it's just laziness. I think it's laziness is probably the wrong word. There's no incentive for them to not do it because some ICEO is good.

And that's the thing, right, Like, how do we solve this problem? Like again, I don't think that most people want the guy verh dictating the way that Google works.

Engine you want to use.

Most people are going to pick Google, but there's gonna be some sizeable percentage that goes over to Bing, that goes over to Duck dut go, and all of a sudden there's pressure to make the products better, both for Google and for these companies.

What's in as well is Microsoft Being is profitable. By the way, what would be crazy? And this is such an adela as one of my lesseners.

I'm sure you're listening, but you're not. What if being was really good? This is a crazy idea I had.

What if being was good? What if when you use being it found really good results?

I have this crazy idea that people might go, Wow, a search engine with good results. What if this whimsy, this curiosity we're talking about. What if a search engine I don't know search the web? What if the algorithm at being prabagar Ragavan's left over dinner that he left from when Yahoo connected to it. What if there was actually something that being found that was cool. What if Being became a very useful search engine that found good results.

I just don't think they want to. I don't think any of them.

They all realize it's slop and that their little pigs have to use there. But if literally one of them was just.

Like, what if we made it good? And all the guys in the boardroom are like, it'll never work. It's never gonna work. Man. People don't like good things. They like bad things.

Look at Google, But I think that that would if they saw if one of these people just saw it and went, wow, why was the internet good before? Well, there were less websites, which isn't really true, Like, okay, there were a billion versus a trillion websites. You still can't read all of them. Like, what if they did the job that we wanted to.

One of the reasons Twitter used to be.

So good was because it was kind of a live fire hose of the Internet. The reason that Facebook was used to be so good was that it was for evil reasons as well. At Database of People, you could find your real friends that you lost connection.

And it was a little bit better than MySpace. Yes you know that's it doesn't have to be night and day. If it's two percent better, people will realize that they'll go over and then there will be more money flowing and then it can get even better. It's it's real.

And Facebook was insanely profitable right up to the IPO and it was pretty good. There was to be clear, and I did it in the Facebook episode. There quite

Just don't do it. They just don't want to. Like, they could probably make a.

Great search experience for everyone because they know like your blood type and the last time you went to the toilet, but they can't do that. But they can use it to advertise you scam versions of PCs.

You want to buy. It's just like the incentives are gone.

But also transparency might be really fun for this, just because when they show how much they.

Can do well.

First of all, I think the government's going to be quite pissy, and also I don't know. Maybe they could get creative and earn their customers. But also I don't think on a complete different subject, I don't think Google can survive being broken up. I don't think it's possible. I don't think they can do it. I don't think that they as a company operate in a way that is like if you separate the ads from the such the fuck.

If you separate ads from search, I don't know what Google is anymore. You can have a very powerful, big search company, yeah you can, and there are very powerful large ads companies, but nothing approaching the power and heft of Google can exist without those two things being paired. And I think that the anti trust case against Google's advertising business from the outset appears to be even stronger.

Oh yeah, and there's a place.

Where you know they there's a lot of discussion about what's going to happen with this search case, maybe they'll break off Chrome or Android from Google. That doesn't seem super likely because the case didn't address either of those products. It's just about search. But with the ads case, I think there's if we're breaking up monopolies now, if we decide that they're monopolies, Yeah, that seems like a very

And something that some of the louder, more annoying tech guys are saying is this is a bad thing.

This is the.

Government scaring away innovation. No, I actually think that this is a utopian idea. I think that we need fear in their hearts. But also we need to make it clear that big companies like this aren't a good idea. It's not a good idea to have a giant company that does this the app store on I like Apple in general, but I think, yeah, keep your keep your laptop business, your phone business. That's all fine. App store needs to be separate. Make the Apple App Store a

You can you can install whatever apps you want on your fucking that mac. Why call it them on my iPhone?

It's hard to argue that more choice is not better for people.

And it is. And actually that's the thing.

I can be kind of cynical, but all of this stuff makes me very optimistic because what might stop happening is these companies might stop anticipating antitrust and changing themselves to avoid it.

Well, that's the thing.

And I mean, you've heard this argument the story before, but I wrote about this for Gizmoto. No matter what happens with all of these anti trust cases like Google lost this one, maybe the tech companies win every other case. They're still in trouble, right Yea tim Wu called it the policeman at the Elbow effect, where the fact that these companies are under such scrutiny they need to move slower, They need to be more careful, they need to be

It also feels like we're right now.

The thing I've been described to people is there is a tension in the air with the tech industry where it feels like all of those medicine consequences of actions are popping up. Like Intel right now. Intel a lot of their new generation processes might be entirely like a form of broken that might be very hard to fix. The blackwell GPUs that are coming out the next generation GPU is necessary to push Generator VII, so it's sometimes

Right, And I mean clearly things have changed.

Like if you just look at the rollout of AI, the fact that if you go up to some random person on the street on Fifth Avenue and ask them how do you feel about AI? I think more than half of people are going to tell you that they don't like it or something that.

I don't think it's.

About AI so much as it's about just changing feelings about the tech business. Ten fifteen years ago, people loved Google. They just thought Google was a nice, good company. People loved Amazon. It was like the two day shipping. This is so great. Now every company has a really serious popularity problem, which you know, when we're talking about social media platforms, like that's existential. If I just like TikTok more than I like Instagram reels. I might just hang

Going to happen.

I think things are going to start to feel different than they have for the past couple of years.

And if you want to feel different, perhaps you could engage one of the wonderful advertisers that will follow this message true as usual, will align precisely with the things I believe and love. Please buy the products or don't. I can't make you. And we're back. And I think what you're saying is really interesting, because it is.

It used to be that they're afraid of just like using it, losing a user, But now it's because they're so precisely and like granulally and like analyzing every interaction and monetizing every interaction. Every impression makes them a little shred of money so that they can sell to someone else and here and there and everywhere. It's more than just it's not just oh, I've lost Thomas to TikTok. It's that percentage of time that you're not spending on Instagram. If that that is a kind of an hard to

Now.

I will go on Facebook.

I check it like like that like a nest camera outside my house, to make sure like there isn't like a dog trying to scratch a whole know why they'd be happening, Just trying to choose a thing that would happen.

Very normal guy. But it's you look at it because it's there.

Say, with Instagram, I like check seet, I maybe messaged someone, But I'm not focused on any of these. I'm focused on Twitter and Blue Sky. I read that shit, I love it. Maybe I'm more of a text based guy, but with threads, I barely touch it. And I think the thing is that these companies have forgot how to compete entirely. They're not trying to make good shit anyway. They're not making sure the cool stuff is that they're just like, well, you have to be here.

From the outside. It really did seem like Facebook in particular got complacent, like, yes, there were there were so many stories. No one's using Facebook anymore. It's a wasteland. It's just baby boomers falling for misinformation. You know, that was the story everyone was hearing. It seemed to be true to some extent. I actually think that that's changing.

I now open Facebook every single day and I'm not going on there to look at my feed.

It's because of Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace is an incredible product.

People love it. You can sell your stuff, you find really bizarre thing. I know, tons of people it's like become like sharing memes. A bunch of my friends will like send each other the weird thing that we'll find on Facebook Marketplace. And I think that's because there was pressure, right, all of a sudden, Facebook was in trouble. People were leaving, and they had to shift the way that the platform worked, and they built this product that is, you know, I think, kind of phenomenal.

It's very useful to my life. You know, half the things in my apartment now I bought a Facebook Marketplace and the feed is getting better. You know, I think if you.

Go and you look at the concept, I don't know if I agree with.

I mean compared to how it was a year ago.

No, man, I I maybe your Facebook fee is better in the mind.

Maybe it's maybe. And then you know, tunorth I get.

Like recommendations for the most insane groups. Yeah, I mean I want to say right now, I want to see Facebook. Yeah, I'm actually going to pull up Facebook.

This is always good to do it a fine Yeah, Gary tan One on an audio show, immediate second thing is an ad, So then it's reels that it's a picture of a guy.

Is is Facebook serving me content that I want? I'm not sure, but I do find myself.

Person enjoying it in a way.

That I didn't one year ago.

Maybe stress it's chilling a little bit less ads.

Yeah, it's I think the experience has gotten better, certainly for me.

And that's the kind of stuff that happens.

I don't like when there's a constumption firm my biases.

Yeah, but I think marketplace is an interesting one as well, because it is useful. I bought she off of that product, but it's being poisoned already. You've started to see direct consumer.

Shait on that. Absolutely, yeah, but also.

I think it makes them let it makes them enough money that they keep it alive, but not so much that they want to just they can't.

You can't really make it more evil.

Like I doubt that it's making the money, like there are ads in it. Maybe it is directly making a profit there, certain if you buy something through Facebook, Marketplace or taking cut, I think it's just getting people to use.

Facebook with a useful product.

Mark Zuckerberg has woken now he hasn't. It's so weird though, because the more I think about it, I don't. I just don't think that there's much way to reduce engagement from marketplace. It isn't something that marketplace is only useful if it's interesting or funny. It's not like someone engaging for two minutes on marketplace is like an ad impression.

Well there, I mean you see ads.

On that, but it's not like a meme or a viral. Oh no, it's definitely you can't really do engagement bait.

You're not gonna get I think on marketplace there's only a handful of people who have whatever particular blend of OCDA at ADHD that I have that they're going to look at the marketplace for an hour straight clear.

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. The shit on the shit on there is it would be like, yeah.

I stole it.

Incredible, I stole a bunch of shit. Classic better offline listener from the Blastio. I am on the lamb. Please meet me in this parket lot. I will be at a different one in an hour. The law is behind me.

The ship that people the cars that people sell on there as well, incredible, Like I've seen multiple cars with not all of the wheels.

Well, my favorite thing is Vice shut down its office in Williamsburg, right, and some guy stole the signs like the big Vice signed dam and he hasn't been able to sell it. But every couple of months I'll put it back up and he wants like twenty thousand dollars.

For a damn. I was gonna say, if it's cheap.

I mean you could crowdfind. Right, there's a lot of people I'm.

Not giving I'm not giving a criminal twenty thousand dollars. They just listen to this show. Maybe he is one of them. And but that's the thing, like what we're describing is the magic of the Internet, because the best things of the Internet are delightful watching people be like, yeah, everyone does broccoli milk, right like, just like some weird they think they're normal and they find themselves into the regular world and like, yeah, this is how normal things and they're not normal at all.

And sometimes it's quite.

Distressing, but most like, there's this horrible meme of like a guy he's screaming at his dog right now because he like fed it roast duck, and then his mother comes back and he screams at the dog that saying, this ate the roast duck.

It's horrible.

It's creating a horrible discourse right now. That's horrible. But also right now, you can go on Instagram or TikTok and look up most wildlife reserves and they're all doing the same thing, which is they put a camera on a spoon and they feed animals. It's magical, it sounds good. I could watch it for hours. There are so many

They're like they just automatic like uh signal and now this is popular. It's why shrimp Jesus popular on Facebook because they don't really care about the algorithm. They don't really care that it shoves good stuff. This is popular, so it's popular. It's this weird self fulfilling prophecy. I mean.

And my real, you know, concern with it is that it only allows for a certain kind of content. Right, Like there's mister Beast, he's got a gigantic empire. The next person down the wrung of like the content creator, it's like thousands of miles away. Yeah, and he's kind of got a media business that he started. It's only focused on him, and there's basically no other media businesses

How it hallucinates. It's great.

But if I want like high quality journalism or you know, a TV show, you know, with like comedy writers, that can't exist when the platforms take as much of a cut as they do.

Or when the platforms promote stuff. Miss the Beast Jimmy. He doesn't seem like a good or a bad guy. He seems like the first truly mid person. Absolutely like the first truly mediocre human. Mediocre doesn't mean bad, just means middle.

And he's really good at it.

But also is he good at it?

Is he actually good or did the algorithm simply choose him because nothing. I've watched his stuff. I've watched a lot of it just to try and find out. And it is just like being slapped in the head repeatedly.

Are you paying attention? You pay? Yeah, you don't need to pay attention. I'll be here.

I'm not content content content, And people like, oh well, kids love it.

It's like it's what's top of the algorithm, it's what they stop watching it.

But also you can watch other shit, like how much of this is a self fulfilling prophecy? And I am three hundred and eighty years old, right, and thus maybe some of this just bounced off me.

Maybe this is what kids like. But also I don't know, people like what's popular, and what's popular is what's chosen by the algorithms. How much of that is really intentional on these kids or what? Maybe this is just the.

Algorithms create their own miniature cults. How much of this high quality stuff, like really high quality like comedy and such would do well if it was given a chance to be the algorithm? How much of this algorithmic stuff actually offers this stuff up and gives it a shot, because that's what's missing. It's not really giving anything a chance. It's not thinking, well, this is new and unique, this journalism is really fucking good. I need to show more people.

Well, there's also the business side of it.

There's like what the algorithm is showing you, but then there's also like you've got a really great one man.

Journalism operation going here.

But it's a certain kind of journalism, right, if you want to do like beat reporting, you need a team of people focusing on individual things, or you just or you just have one beat, or you just have one beat. That's true, maybe that's what the future of news looks like. But like I think having an editor is helpful.

Oh I have an editor.

Yeah, well yeah, of course exactly, But like you can't if you were only doing this on TikTok, you probably couldn't afford to have an editor until you became huge, you know, And that it only permits like not just what the algorithm is showing you, but in terms of where it's possible to make money. There's only a certain kind of thing that the algorithm allows.

I wonder how much of this as well as just demographic and that algorithmic stuff where it's just like this person seems this age and this gender. Will just show them this and they just like, this is what this person will see? That transparency thing you're saying earlier, it would be great to know if that's what it was doing, because if that's what it's doing, that is actively bad.

It's actively bad.

And also how commerce works, it's just I have decided they will target you and you are like this, but when you're providing content, I don't know how much of this is.

I'm not saying you have to do that.

Vacuous thing where multiple news companies have been like, what if we showed polarizing content the challenge their views. No, I'm just saying, give me a little bit of the people I follow on Twitter and Blue Sky especially, there are multiple people I follow because the shit they raise is really interesting. My mate Casey will talk about a lot. He sends me links all day and it's great one of my dearest friends. But that's what I actually like

It's cool. I enjoy it.

These what we're missing from Google search? Is it kind of used to be that? What we're missing from Twitter? Is it kind of used to be that this kind of zeitgeisty feeling. But also the unique stuff that would pop up didn't really come from the algorithm at all. That came from people finding it and look like really great internet culture reporting, like Rebecca Jennings of Vox great

She's amazing. I don't know.

I think what we're the nostalgia we have is it's so much. It's not so much the open web has gone. It's just it's become obfuscated. Yeah, it's kind of like the commercialization of all content. It's when we see mum and pop stores go away. And there are cases where mum and pop stores weren't good. But yeah, having unique, competitive stores that sold different things, competed on prices but also on supplies. A big comics fan here at least used to be the death of having lots of comic

And maybe we go back to that, you know, like why is this stuff happening? Like it could be because the algorithm is directing us towards you know this like monoculture, or it could be that's what people wanted at this moment in history. Things do go in cycles.

And also monoculture is real, it happens, happened before, it happens now, and I think that just I get a look of people who listen and they're like, ah, what can I do to change things? And what can I is? Everything is it. Don't be a doomer about this.

There's no need to be the best thing I think anyone can do right now is when they find something cool and unique to share it. I know it's so fucking boring, but like, one of the best things you could do is if you find someone who says something very funny, who has like thirty followers, please share that, Please share it with everyone, because that is where the old magic of the internet was. One of my famous

I'm sorry.

Kane of the Stone Age is one of the best albums of all time. It's insanely good. He did a LP run the Jewels album. He has done so many weird things. I found him by accident. He doesn't have a huge following potem totom on Twitter, and this guy is just digging away. I've known he made a mash up that I played at my brother's wedding, and I only found him by accident. It's one of the best things that's happened to me. And the Internet tons of people have stories like this. I think that that really

It's that there's a weird guy running a website about a thing he's obsessed with, and it feels like he's your friend and you're supporting him. My favorite right now, there's a guy on TikTok who has this like comedy thing he does called walk News where it's like a news show, but it's in just it's like the style of TV news, but it's about what the walk that he just took this morning, so he like sees a weird you know, like stick that looks like a duck

Right, That's it.

It's building a connection with people that those creators and publishers and artists control, that they can operate on their own terms instead of just doing whatever the algorithm wants.

Today, if we can.

Go back a little bit to a world where we're supporting individual people and connecting with them one on one, I think that does a lot for the health of the Internet. And you know, I don't want to be a Pollyanna about this, like that's not going to counteract the power of Google dot Com. But I also think

It was only on the place.

And that's the thing.

Like two others I'm gonna I just I love I actually think it's cool to highlight these people. One is real Dan Yang on Instagram. His new thing he does is he does like sports breakdowns, but he does them for very weird things. He did one where it's a guy a woman throws a sprite at a guy in Miami and the guy elbow drops the window off of her car, the mirror off her car, and he's just going like, now you look at the classic Corvette elbow guy and he does like a play by play breakdown.

It's fucking hilarious.

Dan Yang is actually one of the most gifted comedians, and Instagram's actually good finding comedy. But the way he does this dead pan stuff is so marvelous, and every time I see his shit, I feel like just so happy because it's like this is what I miss. But the other one, and probably one of my favorites ever, is a woman called Vicka vk goes Wild on YouTube. She is one of the most gifted pianists I've ever seen. I mean like insant, like she plays redmannon off and

But also, and to really wrap this up, it's this shit is still happening.

It's very easy to look at everything in a monolith and say, oh, well, all the Internet is is just people. Dearnet's messing with the algorithm, and I just don't think that's productive. And I know, yeah, these small things won't change things, but we've got a lot of listeners now. The best thing any of you can do while listening is when you find this weird little thing something like this, share it, share it, aggressively, send it to your friends,

Because the Spotify algorith blah blah blah blah blah, and these breakout hits aren't really breakout hits on a qualitative level. Their breakout hits because the algorithm decided to show it to a lot of people and it was popular enough to take off. And yeah, there's a situation where it would have been popular anyway. But I don't know. I think that the best thing you can do is find your weirdos, Find your weirdos, share your weirdos, post them

But that's a different problem. But what's magical about it is it's real people dicking around and they allow that, the real ones.

Yeah, I'm really hopeful about the state of the web, right and it's you know, maybe again it sounds like, you know, I'm wearing rose colored glasses. But the fact that if you agree that these things are problems, the fact that it bothers us so much as Internet users is a very positive thing. Right Because Lily Ray, the SEO expert, said to me a couple of weeks ago. She was saying, I can't believe that normies are complaining

Maybe that changes. But if you aren't happy.

With Spotify or with Instagram and you go looking elsewhere, that creates a business oper unity for someone to fill. And I think that's where the Internet is going. We're going to find.

New things that we like, and in some ways the services are going to change.

I want to read one last thing as we end, and this is from Nick cave On Stephen Colbert. Not the place that you should get it, he said, and I quote. Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It's adversarial. It's the warrior emotion that can lay wasteed cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act as small as you like, such as reading to your little boy keeps the devil down in the hole. And I fucking agree. The thing that you can do as a listener right now is to

But you find some weird song you find like the Demon Cleaner for by Caius, the cover I found from tool.

It's fucking cool. That is where the magic of the Internet is, and that is where you can find your hope. It's there, Thomas, thank you so much for joining. Where can people find you?

I am on Twitter and TikTok It's at Thomas Jermaine Jermaine's with.

A G and how do you spell that?

It's ger m ai n Yeah, they.

Make spelled stuff now and you can of course find me at Google dot com and I'm on Twitter. All the things are gonna come afterwards, but thank you so much for joining me. Thomas and Daniel. Thank you my wonderful producer in studio, Daniel Goodman. Thank you so much for listening everyone, and I guess I can say it here. Even though the season two doesn't start, we have been renewed. If they couldn't keep me down. Thank you so much to everyone for listening. And I'm so grateful.

To be doing this every week. I can't believe tolerate me. I love you all. To quote the end of the menu, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Metasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M.

A T T O S O W s ki dot com.

You can email me at easy at better offline dot com or visit better offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot Where's Youread dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash.

Better Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.