Netflix Co-CEO Steps Down, Issues With 2016 Tesla Demo

to stop hackers taking your money, and they're working. New research shows that the fewer companies are paying ransoms, that doesn't mean the number of attacks is actually down. We're going to discuss that, but first let's dig in on all of that, because it's interesting. We're getting succession planning and a chairman remaining over at Texas Instruments is similar

for Netflix succession planning, unlike over at Disney. For many would argue, it's interesting, therefore, to bring on Lucas Shore, who so intimately understands this company and indeed the in the workings of Read Hastings. He himself, of course, a man who's focused on culture in so many ways. Lucas, what you make of who now steps up, Greg taking the co CEO roans and ultimately who's going to have the ultimate decision making power here because he remains as

executive chairman. Yeah. Look, my assumption is that that Read will say that that Ted and Greg get ultimate authority there now the CEO obviously as chairman of the board, as co founder, as a major shareholder. If there were some huge transaction Netflix decided to sell itself by something significant, I imagine Read would get would get more involved. But he has been gradually stepping back from the day to day operations of the company already. You know, he delegated

most of the Hollywood stuff to to Ted. He's put Gregg in charge of these two big initiative advertising and password sharing, And I think that's how the company is mostly going to keep operating with sort of Gregg looking at a lot of the kind of product and strategic fit, Ted looking at a lot of the you know, the

more entertainment focused and programming operations. Hey, Lucas, let's think about the forward looking nature of this, you know, because Greg Peters kind of was already leading the charge on the ad supported tier, already leading the charge on the crackdown for password shared Ted Surrandos, the man about Hollywood doing the deals, thinking about content, given the numbers we just got, which was strong beats right, subscribers and on the top line is post bond line a bit weaker.

Where will they focus their energies going forward? Fore, you know, it's going to be continued execution on advertising because remember that that app here is only two months old, so that will be kind of improving some of the technology behind it, you know, targeting sales. You know, it got off to a relatively slow start, but I think they

like what they're seeing. It will be rolling out this whole password crackdown, which I think is going to start this quarter and really ramp up in the middle of the year. Um, it's going to be kind of continuing to try to improve of programming in certain areas. You know, they've they've done really well recently on English language television programming, not quite as well on the foreign language television programming.

I think they want to keep improving their hit rate on movies because they release a lot of movies people don't know, you know, don't watch. And then there's all gaming piece of it, which is still a small part of the business, but they're investing a lot of money into it. I don't think you're going to see a ton of news around that in twenty three, but it is something that they will continue to talk about as

with the future. The one point I do want to make is while they had a really strong final quarter of the year, at least in terms of subscriber growth, the thing to keep in mind, just sort of big picture, is that for the full year, they did still post their worst subscriber growth since two thousand eleven. Alright, bloom bags Luke is sure great reporting on what's changing at Netflix and good analysis of the numbers, which I think we need more of. So let's bring a branding cats

industry analysts at Para Analytics. It's interesting the third party data suggested that actually in the final three months of last year, Netflix is facing great competition from likes of Warned, Discovery and Disney, and actually demand over rule is starting to pull back. Well, when you saw those net subscribing ads for Netflix seven point seven million, what's your reaction, Brandon, I'm still not totally surprised. I mean, Netflix has always

been savvy with its guidance. It likes to set the stage for positive narratives, which we are now very much engaging in. And we look at Netflix from our angle, is still the streaming industry leader. It's the most global surprise subscribers, and is the most in demand overall catalog with US audiences in all of two and that includes original and licensed movies and TV shows. And it also still leads the entire industry in global original demand and

US original demands. So yes, that is shrinking as it seeds ground to you know, very hungry competitors that are gaining market share, but they still have a massive, massive lead. And I think all the doom and gloom around Netflix last April perhaps a bit premature, as we're seeing now even with what Lucas accurately pointed out there a subscriber

total in a year since two thousand. Later, Lucas at the end of his Bloomberg News report, uh summed up the comments about the ads supported tier and they were a little bit muted from Netflix there. Please, with the progress on the ad supported tier, they're saying that it's bringing in cost conscious consumers. Do you think that that was part of the beat when it came to subscribe

a growth in the last three months of last year. Yeah, and they even pointed out in their letter to shareholders that they aren't seeing a lot of conversions from premium subscriptions to add tiers, which is exactly what they wanted. They want the ad tire to expand the total addressable market from Netflix, and particularly at a time when consumers are weighing concession fears and maybe our recession fears, maybe

a little bit more cost conscious. Now, yes, not the fastest, most explosive rollout, but this is going to be a must have for all advertisers looking to get into connect the TVs and digital TVs. So we are going to see that grow throughout. And we gotta remember they turned around and from years of an anti ad stance and created their ads here and only six months so there is a lot of upward potential and room to grow here. Yeah.

Interesting in that earning statement they said, the early results they say they're pleased with, but there's much still to do. Can you run in any way talk about sort of the culture of innovation over a Netflix, because that is of course what we've come to know having read the No Rules Rules Book by read Hastings himself. I mean it's all about the way in which they set apart

on different corporate culture. Now it's interesting to compare. Should we see succession planning with Disney Plus versus Netflix and the kind of operate opposite end of the spectrum. But we are seeing Disney Plus and Warner Brothers Discovery taking chunks perotentially out of market share from Netflix. How can Netflix ensure that it's stunding in goodstead to keep on growing,

keep on innovating, keep on personalizing. It's funny because Netflix has always fanacied itself as the greatest disruptor in Hollywood history, and now it's really reached a point where it is recreating the playbook of its linear rivals instead of vice versa. So the market emphasis has shifted obviously towards profit and revenue, which they are clearly emphasizing, and their strategy and public narrative has followed suits. So clearly they are adjusting to

the times. And frankly, they're in a better financial situation than every other major streamer. They're the only one really that's profitable at the moment. With Disney Plus, HBO, Max, Paramount Plus and Peacock all looking at or beyond to

finally get into black. But in terms of continuing to grow, they're really really going to emphasize not only the ads here as a more cost effective alternative to cost conscious consumers, not only password sharing, where if they convert just ten percent of the hundred million or so password shairs, that's

ten million new subs. But they also want to continue investing in non English content and create not just regional hits that resonate with the Latin American market or Asia Pacific, but that travel globally and we're seeing that steadily increase in frequency over the past several quarters. Yeah, really interesting to bring up the global perspective of this business. And I think what's really interesting is the way in which

investors have started to buy in. And it was you that was on Twitter just saying what we're off more up from the lows that Netflix's share price that hit analysts looking more far more on the buy side than they are on the cull side in terms of ratings. Brandon, from your geographical perspective, which leaders can they pull where it's going to be growing the most at the moment.

Is it Latin, is it Asia Visa v U S Europe. Yeah, I mean Netflix has years long unrivaled investments in overseas content regions, so they really do have a lead on the competition in that regard. Asia Pacific has been their biggest growth arena over the last five or six corners quarters, so they're going to continue to hyper focus on that. Obviously, we've seen South Korea become a major international hub for content, both his regional hits and hits that can hopefully translate

to the domestic audience as well. And then there's the big White whale and streaming. Everyone is trying to crack the code in India. Now. Netflix has gotten off to a slow start there. They're behind Amazon and Disney Plus in terms of market share, but they continue to experiment with morbil only plans with six months and annual plans that offer discounts, and they continue to invest in original

content that covers a variety of regional dialects. So they're going to hyper focus on on that area while still serving the areas that have proved to be fruitful to them, such as Latin America. Alright, Para analytics industry analyst Brandon Cats, I think we're gonna have being this conversation about the future of Netflix for many weeks to come. Thank you

so much for joining the program. I want to bring a quick correction to our audience, Caroline, because earlier we showed a board of the share price of a T and T, and after ours when we meant to show T mobile, which is disclosed, it will take a significant charge from a cybersecurity vulnerability that it disclosed in a regulatory filing. After the market close. You can see in

your screen te Mobile down one point five percent. I got my Bloomberg terminal in front of me and I can confirm it's down one point five in after hours. Will continue to track that story. Now coming up some emails shedding light on Elon Musk's involvement in a twenty sixteen demo. What does that mean for the ev maker? Could it face probes? How does it market its technology? Will discuss all of that next. This is Bloomberg. Quite

the scoop coming from Bloomberg use today. Elon Musk oversaw the creation of a video that exaggerated the abilities of Tesla's driver assistant system called Autopilot. He even dictated the opening text that was claiming the company's car drove itself. This is all according to internal emails viewed by Bloomberg and our own Dana Hall is here to join us

and discuss your scoop DNA. And it's extraordinary, really the relevancy that this still has, because what's six years on, we're still debating whether autopilot is really what it says it is. Yeah, and this is pretty extraordinary. I mean, this video that I'm referring to is still on Tesla's website. It's a pretty seminal video in the history of the company. It is this, you know, a great video sent to the tune of the Rolling Stone song um Painted Black.

It's still on Tessel's website, and it purports that this car is driving itself and that the only reason why a drivers in the cars for legal reasons. But what we learned via these emails and via deposition that we got a hold of this week is that, you know, Musk really oversaw the production of this video, and dozens of Tesla staffers were involved, and Musk himself wrote that language that you see when the video first starts playing.

I want to go back to the basics of this story because it's important so we're talking about some emails that Elon Musque sent to quite a large group of the Autopilot team. We have some of it that we can bring up that I'll read you. Since this is a demo, it is fine to hardcore code some of it since we will backfill with production code later in an O tier update O T over the air update.

What is Elon must talking about here? So this was so the first email that we got is an email that went out to the entire Autopilot team in mid October, and he's basically like, all hands on deck for this demo, and he's basically saying, don't worry, like we're going to continue to work on this code. We're going to continue to refine it we find it through over the air updates and over their updates. Is something that Tesla regularly does.

But what's important is that nine days later he in a second email, He's basically like, this is the language that I want in the video, and the language is basically ultimately saying this is going to drive itself. I'm telling you where we are going to be rather than where we are in this here and now. The here and now. Dana is also that there's loads of probes into autopilot right from various authorities in the US. Yeah, so this is the this is the thing that I

think will be interesting to watch going forward. You have sort of two simultaneous things happening. The first is families of drivers that died in crashes where autopilot was engaged or may have been engaged, are suing the company. I mean, there are several civil cases ongoing, including the case of Walter Huang, which is here in the Bay Area, and

that trial begins in March. And then secondly, you have you know, NITZA and the California Department of Motor Vehicles looking you know, autopilot kind of on two fronts, both the technology itself as well as how it was marketed

to customers. And you know, bureaucracy moves very slowly. I don't know what the latest is on those investigations, but this is technology that has been you know, under scrutiny for quite some time now, and I think what's what's relevant is that, Okay, yes, we got emails that are frankly six years old, but they are they show just how heavily involved Musk himself was in the creation of the video, the production of the video, and what the language of the video was going to say. Alright, bloom

bags down the hole. Just terrific reporting alongside Seawan O. Kaine is at in Austin. Thank you so much. Just a few years ago people were writing stories about how this is stigmatized and how people should not talk to AI and this is creepy and strange. Now this is not a question anymore. But again, now the question is it okay to have any golfer? Is it okay to

have that outwork? Jenni Acuta, CEO of the AI chatbot Replica, which we spoke to last week, And now let's bring in Andrew Straight for more context on all of this, because he's an Associate director of Emergent Technology and Industry Practice over at the Aida Lovelace Institute in London, focusing on research on policy on practice. Basically, sure and the data and AI work for people, work for society. But what's so fascinating about your background is you've long worked

in AI ethics, you've long worked in content moderation. You worked DeepMind, such a standout AI performer over in the UK and which is ultimately bought by alphabets. Google talk to us about when we're thinking of chat gypt, when we're thinking of replica and all the innovations around chatbots and AI, are we up to speed with the ethical ramifications here. It's a very good question. I would say that in general, we have continued to not do the

best of jobs of communicating limitations and risks. These kinds of technologies can raise people society. Um, these are very exciting technologies. I think there's no doubt to say that general models are raising all kinds of exciting applications from home writing to co generation. But they are not magic. They're built on hidden a process of labor that are oftentimes relying on exploited and underpaid workers, and they can have very serious impacts and people's society that needs to

be better communicated. So it's critical as developers these technologies, as policymakers that we create the conditions for these technologies to be beneficial to people in society. That's something we certainly can see these technic these tech companies doing a bit more of. Yeah, it feels like open AI, for example, which is behind chatching Piece, is very much trying to have the narrative of how do we ethically introduces, how do we ensure that it's iterating at a safe pace?

But what more can be done where in the world, for example, is working well with private, with public, with academics, with governments, for example. It's a very good question. Um. One thing I think that we can see more of is initial consideration of the potential uses or misuses of these technologies and building in safeguards that are meaningful to

prevent those misuses. So, to give up a credit, they when they release chat GPT, they were very careful to put in place safeguards to prevent certain types of toxic or harmful content or dangerous content from being shared. But as you can see, these these kinds of safeguards could very quickly be overcome. If you typed in the appropriate response. You could get chat GPT to give you instructions now

to make a Molotov cocktail or how to hotwire a car. Um. And even more concerning is that it's not just the story of chat GPT. Even if Chat GPT and Opening Eye put in these kinds of of safeguards, other types of companies doing creating generative models may not do the same. So I think a few things are needed. One is there needs to be more cross industry collaboration, communication and

discussion about the kinds of risk these technologies pose. There needs to be more discussion and clarity of the kinds of standards need to be met in order for these technologies to be released safely. And there also needs to be a bit more clarification and communication with members the public about those impacts. Um I'm thinking particularly there of educators and creators who are most impacted by these technologies at the moment. And lastly, we need really strong and

stringent regulation. We do a lot of public attitude surveying and research in our in our institute, and one of the most clear messages that comes across is people want regulation for AI. They want to feel safe, They want to have some sense that government has a grip on these technologies and is putting in place the right safeguards,

keep them, keep them stick, Andrew. The big news headline that that I saw on Thursday today in the world of AI was the FBI Director Chris A. Ray saying he's deeply concerned about China's research in the field of AI and it in it's AI program and what it might use AI for an independent research group like yours. Do you see what China is doing in the field

of AI is a worry. I think what the FBI talking about here and broadly what others have talked about, is the military applications of AI that could pose a threat to society. It's a it's a concerning development, certainly whenever you are kind of rushing into the use of AI from military and times weapons. But it's important to

acknowledge that's not simply a China problem. Many militaries around the world are are developing these kinds of technologies, again oftentimes without much consideration for the kinds of race dynamics that doing so can create between other countries. So in the UK and the US, in other parts of the world these kinds of Tina's weapons systems are being developed.

There are as I understand, it's some some excellent work being done to develop ethical codes of practice groups like them defense, but it is important to acknowledge that those are are nut risks unique to China, that those are very serious ethical and legal considerations that need to be seriously considering the dress on the international level. All Right. Andrew Straight, Associate Director of Emerging Technology and industry practice at the aid of loves Lace Institry. Thank you for

staying up so late for us. Welcome back to the technology. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York and I made lovelow back in San Francisco. And let's get straight back to the Netflix news and the future of the company and Read Hastings and bring in John Klein, the CEO of hang and a former president of CNN. Let's be honest while we've got you on the show. You know this industry,

you know the names in the industry. There was a big stock reaction to the news that Read Hastings would step back as co CEO go to the executive chair position. Greg Peters, a name well known, steps up to cocy uh Um, what do you make of all of that? Is just an example of good succession planning well. At first, Blush, it feels like the opposite of the Bob Eiger situation, where he decided to dive back into a horribly messy macro environment in the hope of fixing it. Whereas Reid

looks like he is stepping back a little bit. But then as you think about it a little further, you know, an executive chairman is very different than a non executive chairman. Executive chairman sort of says, I still have to clear everything if I want to. I've still got an office right there, and you're gonna see me all the time.

Plus the fact that they brought in a co CEO. Still, I thought when they elevated Ted Serrando's to co CEO that that was the sign that he was the success So imagine now the idea that he was not the successor, and in fact he's sort of pemmed in on both sides. I don't know how that's gonna play out. I don't know any of the psychology involved among these people, but I just wonder how that's going to play out. John, You've led sort of legacy traditional media companies, You've led

digital media companies. Um, where does Netflix sit right now? For you? And I guess the leadership of this growing and increasingly competitive field, you know, Disney, Warner Brother, Discovery. The data shows they're growing. They're also considering whether they aggressively spend, whether they pull back. You know, is Netflix a healthy company despite kind of the shake up they've

had it management? Well, Netflix transform the entire media industry, not so much by the content choice as they made, but by deploying AI data crunching to better understand what content they ought to make and how to market it. So they belong in the Hall of Fame for that. But I think everybody's ignoring TikTok. TikTok has passed Netflix as the number two streaming choice for US audiences under thirty five, and that is huge. Gen Z is part of They are a tsunami and they're making their choices

with short form video that doesn't cost barely anything. And and meantime, everybody's obsessing over Netflix subscriber growth, but the people are voting with their with their swipey fingers. And

you know, I run a gen Z platform. Hang enables fans to watch sports on TV alongside athletes and entertainers and celebrities, and we spend next to nothing on content, but we've grown one thousand x primarily with gen Z users because they care about the immediate, they care about meaningful moments, and they want to be able to dip

in and out whenever they feel like it. That's very different than the beautifully constructed content models that all the streaming the traditional streaming platform are using so I think everybody's ignoring the TikTok elephant in the room. I think that's really interesting ring that, John, because I always remember the surprising competitor that Netflix used to reference was gaining and really felt that that was where the eyeballs were.

And of course now setting up their own sort of gaming focus, you're saying, look, it's actually really social media, but this new generation of social media, and John, to that point, let's talk about culture for a minute, because you're someone who's had to think about this long and hard.

Whether you've been in the original media this CNN roles, whether you're now with hanging thinking about cultivating that that innovative style and and that's really also what Read Hastings was known for was shaking things up when it comes to a corporate culture, when it comes to reinventing the way in which people have responsibility but also freedom. Are

they able to innovative? Are they innovator? Are they able to take over and take on the likes of TikTok and there are other competitors at the space with this new leadership, do you think it's very, very difficult for established incumbens to to change a culture but we've seen it happen at Microsoft, and you know here they are still players and and so it can be done, but it's a big mission. It's a little harder to do with three people at the top, which is what Netflix

now has. And and maybe I'm a little colored by the fact that I am the media consultant for the show's succession where it's always uh, some sort of diabolical, underhanded goings on in the corporate suite and the living room. But it just looks to me, you know, culture starts at the very top. That's how cultures are set. It's a big part of why I think Eiger came back in because he was one man who one person who

created the culture and can enforce it. Um trickier when you've got three, especially when you've got the founder of the company still there. You know, when I ran CNN, Ted Turner had not been there for a good ten years, and it would have been kind of awkward for the management to make decisions with the founder still sitting there. He had a good grace to exit. A lot of CEOs and founders realized that it's time to move on. You know, when you're done, you're done. I'm not sure

how this is going to play out. Interesting you talk about and it is such a question of corporate governance, is also a question of bench now and better Bajaria, that was an interesting move that now she takes the role of chief content officer, having been heading up the global TV side of Netflix. Content is king. We all know that. So from your perspective, what are the innovative ways she can think about content? Is she going to have to start to think about how she keeps people

glued amid the distraction of social media? Well, you know they're they're lucky and neclix And I guess I shouldn't say lucky because it was on purpose. They have built an incredible data capture and analytics engine that eliminates the gut instinct of executives which are so often wrong. They're

usually wrong. Look at how many news shows are launched on a TVCs and versus how many last even a month um And I think what she's probably doing even as we speak, is doubling down on drilling into those thousands of different taste clusters that tell them what you like to watch versus what ED likes to watch versus what d other people like to watch, and you're all getting hit with different suggestions and each presented in a different way because they also understand what kind of thumbnail

pictures you respond to, what kind of previews and highlights you tend to click on, rather than anybody else. So they say, everybody gets their own Netflix, and that's true. That's an advantage for Netflix in in kind of figuring their way through this desert. They've doubled down on the amount of Korean programming that they're buying now, and that's because their algorithms are telling them to do that. So

you were just talking a lot about AI. Another way that a I impacts the entertainment industry and and will do even more moving forward, is by its ability to make us dumb humans have insights that we never could have achieved. Do our own interesting all about the tech backbone here and sendly something you're interweaving with Hang. I'm sure, of course the sports streaming eventually you're now doing. Co founder CEO of Hang, John Klein, we thank you so much.

Let's pivot here a little bit and let's talk about well AI. We've already been worrying about its implications to cyber let's talk about cyber attacks more generally now still a big concern these days, but few of your companies are actually infected with ransomware. Then they're actually having to yield to the extortion payments demanded by the hackers. That's according to new research on the blockchain forensics firm Chain Analysis. What's the reason behind this? Jackie Cohen's with us, head

of cyber threat intelligence at Chain Analysis. Wonderful Jackie to have you right here in the studio and just talk to us a little bit. Ransomware, Well, ransom attacks haven't died down, but it feels as though companies have some of the protections in place to stop them having to

hand over crypto or whatever they're being asful exactly. It's rare we get a good news story associated with ransomware, and so it was encouraging to see our results this year in terms of ransoms being dulled out, it has decreased significantly, as much as forty However, that's not to say that ransomware attacks are on the decline. They're actually on par or maybe slightly depressed of since last year.

So what this means is that victims, representatives of victims and their insurers are deciding not to pay, and that's in part because of concern over sanctions whether they're paying a sanctioned entity, but also they're better defended, most of them to be able to recover without having to pay the ransoms. Jackie, I want to go back some breaking news we've got in the last hour or so, which

mood markets. T Mobile is disclosed that a hacker obtained thirty seven million customer accounts data, but it did not include payment or card information. The company saying that it discovered the hack back on January five. It traced that hack to the source and stopped it within a single day. They're investigating, but saying early indications that this threat was able to obtain the information through a single entry point serving customer data. It did not breach the company systems

or network. I'll ask you, PAS for your reaction to that. You know, the information that we have, How common is that as a threat that Corporate America Global corporate space. Yeah, unfortunately, we do see victims get re victimized. I believe this is not the first data breach that has affected T Mobile, And what this goes on to to prove is that the underground economy that is fueling data breaches and including ransomware,

is still thriving. There are still threat actors out there that are able to sell data for money, whether or not they encrypt the victims systems, and there are vibrant markets selling user credential as for various purposes. And we cannot let our defenses down in despite the promising news that we be uncovered in two can you tell us about the defenses being used and how we're able to

keep up with ransomware? With these new threats that Corporate America does face and individuals house insurance protecting us, now, how are we able to ensure that we feel we don't have to call full for the money every time. Well, part of it is that insurance companies are now being more stringent about the companies that they cover, and then in order to cover them, they must incur some security practices.

They must have backups is a big one, so that if the systems do go down, that the company can very quickly recover and resume resume businesses. It's not full proof. Um, there's no organization or company that is immune unfortunately, and companies need to have a plan what happens if they do get attacked, how are you going to handle it?

From illegal pr as well as a security standpoint, and go back to the roots of how crypto is involved in all of this, because much of the aggravation from the crypto community is that it's always tarnished with money and laundering speculation and used to drug money, etcetera. But the whole beauty of crypto is that you're meant to be able to see where it goes, how much is the washing still happening, how we're able to ensure that the money is moving, and we're able to see who's

actually at the bad acting front of this. Right, We've actually calculated this year that of illicit cryptocurrency use reached

an all time high. However, only point to four percent of all cryptocurrency activity was illicit, and so while the raw numbers did increase overall, it is a very small fraction and we're only able to calculate that because of the transparency of cryptocurrency in the blockchain, and that also enables us to track bad actors, to recover funds, to pinpoint which cryptocurrency exchanges are our rogue or be able to dismantle, and like we did UH like the bits

Latto exchange yesterday, which was taken down as far as an international action dismantled by international law enforcement agencies UM also the hydro darknet marketplace, which was taken down to We're able to have these successes because of the traceability, and it's only a small fraction of overall cryptocurrency activity today, Jackie.

We started the year with the fascinating conversation with Jenny Stilly, the director of SISSA, and her message at CS was the private sector has to do a lot more, right from when you're designing your producted its origins through to how you conduct business. That's why she was there in Vegas to kind of get that message. Then, do you see the private sector doing enough to ward off the

threats that you yourself are warning about Now? I really view this year's findings of two's ransomware payments on the decline as a representative of public and private sector for it's working together. We have government entities doing takedowns and sanctions. We have private sector partners, insurance companies tightening UH as far as what they're willing to pay, being adhering to

to sanctions concerns as well. As the research community that is actively finding vulnerabilities in the encryption that these ransomer actors are using. And it really is that fine balance of not um not penalizing victims, but being able to help them when needed um. It's it's been a really phenomenal public and private sector effort, and we rarely get the opportunity to quantify what that impact is. Jackie, great to have you here in the studio, Jackie Coven think

you had a slider threat intelligence hutch analysis. I mean while coming up the tech behind fake neat and why the industry but love by Silicon Body VCS. It's now prestling back. We have got to talk about Bloomberg's Big Take because it is one of the most read across all of our platforms. But it's also about the big fake meat a few years ago. Just remember lap made meat seemed poised up in the world's one trillion dollar meat industry, and now it's belling to look like a fads.

Tina Shanka wrote the Big Take, joining us, and ultimately this is a technology story. It was an idea that you could use laboratories, you could use innovation to be able to get something that felt and tasted like meat, but wasn't had a better footprint on the environment. Now we're all putting that we hope that maybe actually lab grown like from sells meat is going to be our answer, because it feels like Beyond Meat, for example, didn't grow

in the right way. That's right. Basically, we had these founders come out. Ethan Brown founded Beyond Meat in two thousand nine, pet Brown in two thousand and eleven with impassable Foods, and they made these really big premises. Ethan Brown talked about basically copying the structure of meat, but

doing it with parts that he extracted from plants. Pat Brown talked about him which is found in large concentrations in in red meat, and he was going to make it with a genetically modified yeast and soy and it would be uh soily. He like hemoglobin, what he called his magic ingredient, and this was going to give his burgers this meaty taste. And both companies promised to basically up end uh well impossible really went out and said

they were gonna upbend animal agriculture. Ethan Brown's promises were more along the lines of saving uh the world from health and environmental disasters. Yeah, just just just little things. UM. And that they were going to create products that were so identical to the meat that people love that people would just swap them in um and sidestep the animal. UM.

It really hasn't worked out that way. And I think most people would agree that these burghers are more a lot closer to beef than you know, their forebears, UM, like say like morning Star farms from Kellogg. But they're they're certainly not close enough and meat eaters just aren't that interested or as one expert told me, he said,

they're just not that into it. Adina. You know, Ethan Brown likened it to technology doing away with the horse pawn cart, right, that what they were doing in the lab would change what's on our plate, do away with the meat. I guess it's not quite materialized. We ask our own audience, you know what their attitude is too, lab grown, lab generated meat. That's the answer for center. Respondents said, you know, uh, does you're reporting back up the findings of that poll. What is the attitude of

consumers right now? So basically the market for these products is is declining. People UM. A lot of people tried them when they first came out, they were really excited about them um. And now people are moving away and they're going either to maybe they maybe they want to keep their meat consumption down, so they're going to something like say like lentils or beans um, or maybe they are going to chicken, which is less expensive than these

products and certainly less expensive than beef. A lot of people try the products once or maybe even twice, but they just don't stick with it. It just does not stay as part of their normal routine. The people that eat the most of this stuff are vegans and vegetarians, who were very much not the target. Interesting and I have to say, like from a lincdotal evidence, you know, we pour in a lot of beyond meat and impossible into our family home, largely because we've got an a

pair who's vegetarian. But also my husband really didn't like the way that meat made him feel. He wanted to cut down. But ultimately they weren't kind of healthy enough, like they didn't felt like lentils was a better option. Ultimately, all these companies trying to uproot themselves, are they trying to change, to listen to feedback, to innovate that little bit more or is it all just going to go quat? Well, yes they do. They do talk about more innovation um,

and they constantly release new versions. Um. You know the Beyond Burger. There's a new Beyond Burger almost every year that they say, Um, this one's gonna be juicier, moister, or more meat like. Um. And Impossible also does the same thing. They also say by doing some of the improvements,

were also going to make it healthier. But I think for a lot of people the the idea of further processing is sort of antithetical to making it healthier and so um that they might say lower the calories or lower the sodium, but that doesn't change whether or not it's an ultra processed food. Dana, such great reporting. Fascinating to see how the McDonald's deals and this, that and the other. Go to Dana Shanka, thank you. Going viral today is the influx of venture countal money flowing towards

social media apps focus on happiness. Take the Berlin based Slay app, which lets users send anonymous compliments just raise two point six million dollars. Slave reached number one on the German iOS app store four days after launch. Then there's Gas, an app bought by Discord this week. It's here in the US, and it uses anonymous polling to

send compliments and boost components of users. These apps, said, are just putting kind of a spin on social media landscape that has kind of improven to thrive on toxicity. And I think it's gonna be so fascinating to see how basically the science of happiness of kindness, it makes you feel good as well as the other person feel good. And I wonder if advertisers get into that too. Yeah, I mean, Discord's ownership of it is being debated out there.

But the data behind this was staggering. So in the month of October, apparently the app was adding thirty thousand new users per hour in October, you know, it's reaching a million. And I think everyone needed some feel good at that time, right when Twitter was kind of all up in the air. And yeah, an interesting one. As I say, the kids are going to save us. Keep on growing those sorts of happiness and positive apps out there. Meanwhile,

that does it for this edition of Boomberg Technology. Yes, so something very special coming up Friday at noon, Easton will round up the biggest tech news of the week on our weekly Twitter spaces, Carrol, We've loved doing this, hosting our biggest names across Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Intelligence, and if you're lucky, if you're lucky, this Friday, we will

have a special surprise guest in our Twitter spaces. Yeah, we're going to talk a bit of VC, the biggest stories and let's also interesting anything I'm not promising, I'm promising. Tune in and you'll find out this is Bloomberg