This Week in Google 802 transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for this Week in Google. Jeff Jarvis is here, paris Martineau and joining us special guest Kathy Gellis. She was actually in the Supreme Court hearing the oral arguments on the TikTok case. She'll give us her report for that, also the oral arguments that just happened today the Supreme Court considering the Pornhub age requirement. Is that constitutional age requirement? Is that constitutional? We have a lot to talk about, including this little thing I'm wearing. It's an AI device that records every word spoken around me and gives me a report at the end of the day. I like it, but is it legal? Next, on Twig Podcasts you love. From people you trust.

This is twig this week in google, episode 802, recorded wednesday, january 15th 2025. A sycophant in your pocket. It's time for twig this week in google, the show that will soon be renamed because it's no longer about google. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, I give you our hosts for the hour the wonderful jeff jarvis, professor emeritus of journalistic innovation at the craig newmark graduate school of journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City. University, craig, craig, craig Newmark. Now I'm Montclair. Do we need a jingle for Montclair State University?

0:01:34 - Jeff Jarvis
No, nothing can unseat. Craig Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue.

0:01:38 - Leo Laporte
Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue Sue.

0:01:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Sue, are you? Hello, Good to see you, boss.

0:01:46 - Leo Laporte
Also here Paris Martineau weekend edition of the Information where she is working hard. Did you file your story?

0:01:54 - Paris Martineau
I did. It's out and we can talk about it.

0:01:56 - Leo Laporte
Good, good, I can't wait.

0:01:57 - Paris Martineau
Don't say anything yet, have you taken down the red string and the pictures on the wall and all that. My binders are, uh, in a drawer for right now do you see?

0:02:06 - Leo Laporte
you have to save that, don't you for a while?

0:02:09 - Paris Martineau
the notes and so forth well, I can neither confirm nor deny that for legal reasons, but in some cases yes some cases.

0:02:15 - Leo Laporte
In some cases, you don't want to speaking of legal reasons, kathy gallus is here we love kathy, of course an attorney who has admitted to the supreme court of the united states of america. You can read her pieces in tech dirt and she also is available for counsel at cgcouncilcom.

0:02:35 - Cathy Gellis
Hi, kathy hello your hair is growing in beautifully yeah, I think I'm going to leave it like this I love it. Yeah, it's so much more convenient like to travel and not have to pack a brush. It's also crazy like I had incredibly short hair for a while and it's so much more convenient like to travel and not have to pack a brush.

0:02:45 - Paris Martineau
It's also crazy like I had incredibly short hair for a while and it's crazy how easy it makes showering you can just walk out and you're done exactly.

0:02:55 - Cathy Gellis
It was traumatic to lose what I had, but once it was gone it was sort of this is kind of nice. I mean I, it's filled in, which is better. But um, yeah, I, I don't know. I think I I may stick with this.

0:03:07 - Leo Laporte
So kathy's, as you might know, recovering from cancer, but the prognosis is good and the hair is back yeah uh. So, kathy, you went to washington dc and january 10th happened to find yourself in the third row of the united states Supreme Court, behind the just right behind the lawyers. Actually, I loved your piece for TechDirt where you describe what it's like to actually be in the same room as the justices.

0:03:32 - Cathy Gellis
It's kind of profound, and this one was a weird session where I was admitted after the justices were already seated that's not usually how it happens, but and then they almost didn't have a chair for me. But anyway, it all, it all worked out and I ended up did you make a commotion? There, I didn't, but I was left out with three other lawyers and they made the commotion.

And then I had said and I wrote a brief and they just decided to advocate for me while they were advocating for themselves. So I just kind of sat back and let people with some very good arguing skills take a minute.

0:04:05 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I'm a lawyer's lawyer.

0:04:07 - Cathy Gellis
I let other lawyers lawyer, but there was a very helpful woman in the clerk's office who was like, yes, this shall be fixed, and she fixed it.

0:04:14 - Leo Laporte
Fantastic yeah, but no, it's definitely.

0:04:17 - Cathy Gellis
You know, I was bashing the Supreme Court the day before and then that day. I'm just sitting there and I'm you know. The justices are at scale. I'm only like 15 or 20 feet away. These are the human beings that are deciding everything.

0:04:35 - Leo Laporte
Did that give you a different kind of maybe more of an understanding of them?

0:04:41 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, a little bit, and I think it may have affected my ability to no-transcript. Reacting to this, because even when we have courts that we have more faith in, law is still a very human practice and, yeah, the human beings matter.

0:05:24 - Leo Laporte
There they were, so you were there for the oral arguments. It's a shadow docket case, right? They accepted it at the last minute or no?

0:05:34 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, it's a little confusing, I guess. Well, I don't think it's not a shadow docket case anymore. Even if it was. There was a, I think, a petition, there was a filing that I think was shadow docket be shaped because it didn't follow the normal rules for cert, uh, for a cert petition. But they said, look, you could consider this a cert petition and you just grant the the hearing. And they did.

0:06:02 - Leo Laporte
But what was odd was they granted it immediately, which is unusual this was a petition from tiktok uh to put a stay on the uh or or overturn, in fact, congress's order to diversify divest to the united states owner or to shut down. By the way, the latest on this came from tikt morning, probably from the Chinese government, saying we will shut down Sunday.

0:06:31 - Jeff Jarvis
That was a scoop from the information.

0:06:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh yeah, the information had that. Yeah, so really TikTok's life hangs in the balance here at least in the United States.

0:06:43 - Cathy Gellis
It hangs in the balance. It's also not to be pedantic, but it kind of matters a little bit. But it was actually two petitions went in because this was a combined case, because you had TikTok fighting for its life, and then you also had a petition from a group of users and TikTok creators who were like hi, we're going to be affected if TikTok goes dark, because there goes our audience and all of our content and this and the other thing. So the cases got consolidated and they filed their own. They had their own filings, but basically they were all asking for the same thing. Namely, could you please press pause Because the DC Circuit not only found the law constitutional but then also said and there's, I don't remember, either they said there's no reason to stop it or we can't stop it, but that was kind of ridiculous. So if nobody stopped it, it goes in, the law goes into effect and TikTok will be violating the law as of Sunday.

0:07:42 - Leo Laporte
So it was a-. The law specifically does not require them to shut off their servers in the US. The law only requires Apple and Google to stop distributing the app. Is that right?

0:07:54 - Cathy Gellis
There was a lot of discussion at the hearing. For what does it mean? What are the implications? Tiktok was kind of like as a practical matter, this is unviable for us and they made the point in the hearing to say we'll have to go dark because none of the no one who provides services to help us provide our service will be able to help us provide their service. So from all practical, they were basically like for all practical purposes we can't function, so we have to go dark.

0:08:23 - Jeff Jarvis
Kathy, was anyone standing up for the first amendment?

0:08:26 - Cathy Gellis
oh, it was entirely a first amendment, uh case so yeah, we were losing, I think, to security.

0:08:31 - Jeff Jarvis
I mean, how was there? Was there a key advocate for that?

0:08:35 - Cathy Gellis
oh, both, uh, both tiktok and um and the petitioner I'm sorry.

0:08:39 - Jeff Jarvis
What are the court?

0:08:41 - Cathy Gellis
um justices yes, so.

So the weird thing with this case is this shadow docket bit was could you please press pause somehow? But also, we do need to file a cert petition so you can review this, because the dc circuit on first amendment grounds was really troubling, because what was vaguely good about it is it recognized that probably heightened scrutiny was needed to evaluate the law, but after applying strict scrutiny it said oh yeah, but it's totally fine. And the way I would paraphrase that is that and I put it in the amicus pre five file, that it's. They said it was strict scrutiny, but it was really rational basis, like did the government have any reason to be concerned? Sure, ok. Therefore this law is fine and it's supposed to be a much more rigorous test than that.

So the case on the merits really is and this is how the Supreme Court granted the review was open question Does this law violate the First Amendment? So it was all First Amendment doctrinal to make the point to say strict scrutiny is the right scrutiny and that when you apply it, there's no way it can apply here, given the law, its nature, its its effects and also what the claim purpose was, because it had two claim purposes, one of which was data collection issues of it's not great. If China's slurping the data of Americans which fine, that's a compelling reason Then you would need to also answer well, it slurps it, but is this the way to deal with the slurping? Because there's just such enormous impact on the First Amendment rights of the platform and also of the users. But then the second bit was it didn't like how the algorithm was working.

It didn't like how TikTok was moderating content and that was not content neutral. That was the government really taking issue with. We don't like the way TikTok handles speech and that should, just on its face, offend the First Amendment. So then there's the issue of OK, well, what if the data collection part was legitimate? Can you validate a law that has one legitimate purpose but one illegitimate purpose? Even if it had a legitimate purpose, it's got all these collateral effects.

0:10:53 - Leo Laporte
So that's basically what the discussion was largely teasing out ban posts that are critical of the Chinese government, but that you can't. The U? S government cannot say to a publisher in in the United States we don't like what you're publishing or not publishing, therefore go away.

0:11:18 - Cathy Gellis
Well, they're doing that in Texas, but in theory yes, the first amendment says no. In theory yes, the First Amendment says no. There is a question about whether the foreign nature they didn't have First Amendment rights. All the American TikTok users are Americans and we get First Amendment rights. And in the amicus brief I filed for the Copia Institute, we also made the point of if you're going to pivot the First Amendment and whether it protects somebody on how American they are, how American do they need to be?

Because then you get like all these quote unquote American platforms that are owned by foreign investors. Does that disqualify them? So all of this, and then you also have the issue of if American rights can get lost because somebody else involved wouldn't get First Amendment rights. Well then that's no good either, because Americans are going to lose their rights because there's a foreign platform.

0:12:21 - Jeff Jarvis
What about the Guardian and the Financial Times and the BBC?

0:12:25 - Cathy Gellis
Exactly that was a point that was made where wait a minute. The logic that would say that the TikTok ban is fine would also say that the American government can control whether a filmmaker can make films for the BBC or appear on Al Jazeera.

There's a number of things where we're all talking to each other and our rights involve speaking and accepting and receiving the speech of foreign entities. And and then we pointed out in our brief that, like it's also untethered how American do you need to be? And it's not like the law defines it, it's not like there's any precedent that really says so, and if you start snipping around the edges, you're going to just snip the whole thing into pieces.

0:13:07 - Leo Laporte
You note in your TechDirt article that justices seem to realize that if you did push this you know that foreign ownership could supersede First Amendment protection. It would have enormous effects beyond this case.

0:13:21 - Cathy Gellis
I think so and I think we set up in our brief that you could sabotage American interests just by buying an American platform or too heavily investing in an American platform where all of a sudden you could make that platform go poof. Right, if you're German, yeah, oh, and then there was a lot of discussion and the realization by the court that um politico is owned by somebody who's german, and clearly I think there's some politico readers on the on the court. So oh, interesting.

0:13:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so that's the main, the main thing we wanted to talk to you about. This is got, by the way, much more complicated because, uh, the shutdown would be sunday, the next day president trump gets inaugurated. His administration filed a brief saying hey, hey, give us some time. He asked for a stay. So it's very, it's politically extremely complicated. But let's not think about that, because you were in the court. I'm very curious how the oral arguments went and where you think the general press seemed to think that the justices were ready to shut TikTok down.

0:14:27 - Cathy Gellis
Is that accurate? I mean, I don't want to be glib. The potential for this court to do something stupid and horrible is high. But a lot of them were interpreting the questions from the justices to the parties as oh, this is a sign that they don't like the argument. And I think the sign is really that a lot of these questions are help us write this decision. How do we write the rule that applies to you and it's something that's scalable. What is the rule that needs to be here? So I didn't take it.

0:14:59 - Leo Laporte
That's why it's hard to interpret the questions they ask as being pro or con.

0:15:04 - Cathy Gellis
Right, but I interpreted the mechanics of basically what they were saying to be useful in that regard.

Now, if they end up too splintered, that could be an issue, but right now we need five votes to basically at least stop this law from going into effect although we can get to that in a second with the timing issues, to that in a second with the timing issues.

But one of the things that I put in the blog post that I think was good was oral argument was originally scheduled to be two hours for this combined case 30 minutes for TikTok, 30 minutes for the users and then an hour for the government to answer and stand on this, and it turned into both sets of petitioners had over an hour and I don't think the government got any significantly more time, and I don't know if they even use the hour, but it was. I think we were there for about three hours total. I think that is, you know, some significant indicative of, you know, engagement in the issues and understanding what the issues were, which I don't think you'd see if the court was. Nope, we're fine. Dc circuit got it right and we're just making you happy by giving you a hearing.

0:16:07 - Jeff Jarvis
Was there discussion of the Trump desire for delay?

0:16:10 - Cathy Gellis
There was discussion for the Trump desire to delay, because one of the questions is what are the options for the court right now? So the court could just come out with a decision saying this is not constitutional law, found law of return. Here we go. That would be nice, but that would be an awfully quick decision and an awfully quick turnaround time.

0:16:31 - Leo Laporte
Because they'd have to do it before Sunday.

0:16:33 - Cathy Gellis
They'd have to do it before Sunday. So then the next thing is well, what could they do to potentially stop the clock and even just buy them more time? And one of the arguments is buy yourself the time even if you're not quite sure what you want to do.

0:16:49 - Leo Laporte
So they could issue a temporary stay.

0:16:51 - Cathy Gellis
Well, that's what they were discussing.

They seem to not be quite clear on what they could do and Justice Kavanaugh and this was also relevant to the oral argument today seemed to think that well, we kind of have to decide the likelihood of the merits if we're going to have an injunction.

But I don't really know, and a lot of people don't know where he's coming up with that from, and TikTok said no, you don't need to care so much. Could they do an administrative stay? Like what could they do? And in our brief we suggested that. You know, if you're at all inclined to do something, press pause, find a way to do a stay and, you know, maybe invite for further briefing. It's not completely unprecedented, although it's not common that they could do that. The idea that, like TikTok loses because there was such an accelerated timeline that didn't give enough time to appropriately challenge this before the penalty set in, like we put in our brief that can't be the rule, because all of congress has to do to do something unconstitutional is put in a really tiny timeline yeah, like too late sorry, it would have been challengeable.

You would have won on your challenge.

0:17:58 - Leo Laporte
You point out in your article, uh, that trump, if, if the supreme court did nothing, uh, tiktok shuts down on sunday. That it's the opinion of the court that trump could not rescue it.

0:18:14 - Cathy Gellis
Actually the petitioner said that and so to mayor said she was not keen, you say, on a president refusing to enforce a duly passed law right, so the whole bit is inaction on the part of the court would be the same as agreeing with the government and yeah, I mean, some people are teasing out, and I think it was discussed at the oral argument of well, if it's dead, how dead is dead?

0:18:36 - Leo Laporte
but um but when it is dead, it turns out that's what tiktok was arguing.

0:18:41 - Cathy Gellis
but one of the issues OK, let's say the court did press pause Could wall wall. So Trump has kind of pushed the Supreme Court's hand a little bit, because if they press pause and he comes in and he tries to save TikTok, does it moot the case. Part of me doesn't care if it moots the case, as long as it gets rid of the DC Circuit decision, because that's the precedent.

0:19:05 - Leo Laporte
He can't. No president can overrule Congress.

0:19:08 - Cathy Gellis
That's what. That's what Justice Sotomayor's comment was, which is there is a law that needs to be enforced, and giving him time to come in and ignore it is not something that is supposed to actually happen. That, if TikTok is out, is in violation of it on the 19th, Trump is not supposed to be able to come in on the 20th and say I forgive you, I bless you or I'm going to somehow change the circumstances.

0:19:32 - Jeff Jarvis
But couldn't Trump come in and say well, my Justice Department is going to argue quite contrary to what Biden's Justice Department argued, and I want my chance.

0:19:39 - Cathy Gellis
Well, that's what he said in his amicus brief. Right his amicus brief right. I think that works for an argument about how unconstitutional it is with the fact that, um, this ship will sail without him, even though the administration has a completely different view. I also think it undermines the dc circuit's reasoning, because they looked at the fact that both the previous trump administration and the biden administration didn't like tiktok and they sort of were like collectively, the administrations don't like TikTok and they sort of were like collectively, the administrations don't like TikTok. Well, he changes his mind.

He's allowed to change his mind, but he can't change his mind because if this ban goes in, it takes away the ability for him to have a different policy. I think that buttresses the First Amendment argument. To say this is why Congress doesn't get to do something like this, because it doesn't just decide the speech preference for the people, it decides the speech preference for the rest of the government, the current government, the future government, and you know that's bad too. So I think he helped on the substance argument. But his entire reason for wanting to do it is he wants to come in and be the hero, and no, he's not supposed to have that opportunity to come in and be the hero where he, he kind of just wants to do his own.

0:20:45 - Leo Laporte
I have decided otherwise, which is also no, not how things are supposed to work I don't always agree with justice gorsuch, but in this case he did say something that I agree with he excoriated the use of secret evidence yeah to underpin the government's concerns about tiktok's security the line came quickly, but I I heard it is doing that as well, which was interesting. Yeah. In addition, you write to lamenting that the factual record was still being laid even at this stage of the case.

0:21:15 - Cathy Gellis
This is something we've always said how does this work? What happens? And it's like that's not supposed to be the thing that the court is deciding.

0:21:21 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, marissa, you want to say something.

0:21:24 - Paris Martineau
Oh, I was going to say I mean, is it feasible that if this goes through, could Trump's Justice Department just say we're not going to enforce it?

0:21:33 - Cathy Gellis
Well, he thinks so. There's not a lot of people saying no to him. So, from a practical matter, the answer may be yes, but that's not supposed to be how any of this works.

0:21:43 - Jeff Jarvis
But doesn't that happen? But that's not supposed to be how any of this works, but doesn't that happen? You see this, for example, in abortion cases, where a liberal AG in a state says I'm not going to enforce that.

0:21:52 - Cathy Gellis
Right, it's always a constitutional crisis when that happens to some degree.

I mean, you always see things in terms of prosecutorial discretion, but this is a really overt example of prosecutorial discretion. But TikTok is also in a position of they are essentially breaking the law as of the 20th. So the reason they're preparing to shut down, I would presume, the law as of the 20th, so this is the reason they're preparing to shut down, I would presume is because that is that's a very heavy set of dice to be rolling to see what trump would do there's also, and some have said this, uh, a little neener, neener, neener from the chinese communist party.

0:22:33 - Leo Laporte
Uh, maybe they're hoping that there will be an uproar when, all of a sudden and this is the plan, by the way, on Sunday, unless the court stays it that when you open your TikTok, there'll be a message saying we're no longer able to operate in the United States.

0:22:50 - Cathy Gellis
I mean, and Trump also had a couple of interesting points in his brief. One that I thought was interesting was him pointing out that if we can do this to platforms in America, it teaches platforms around the world. They could do it too. Now he was arguing it for his new buddy, alon, who was unhappy with what Brazil did to him. But even though Alon gratuitously poked the bear, I think his fundamental liberty points were actually quite sound. So, and I think Trump makes a good point here Trump also made a good point to say that the DC Circuit really didn't consider the interests of American users very much as they were considering the First Amendment impact. He was arguing it because he misunderstands things in the way that Murty versus Missouri misunderstood them. But he's not wrong in terms of on the face of that argument, and I look forward to shoving all of that really good argument back down his throat as we continue to litigate things in his administration. But it wasn't wrong on his face and the DC Circuit was, I think.

0:23:52 - Jeff Jarvis
Let me ask a ridiculously broad question. This goes to the other case that was before the court today about Pornhub and such. What's the zeitgeist about the internet that you heard from the justices Like, oh yeah, it's the internet, it's awful. We hate it or no, there's something there to protect.

0:24:29 - Cathy Gellis
Or did you see any kind have some fear of the internet that the protections that they were willing to afford it earlier on, now they're kind of like, yeah, but the technology is in a different place. Maybe we have to think about this differently. So I didn't enjoy it because I guess I was kind of emerging today. But the case today was in a case that involved adult content, which also has some complicated optics, so it's a little tempered like that. I actually thought there were a couple of high points with the TikTok hearing, where there's a couple of things that we thought were going to be hard uphill arguments that I think we've won. One of them is that there seems to be an understanding that Internet platforms themselves have some First Amendment protection. Oh yeah.

Because that's something that's underpinning TikTok's challenge and they didn't really have to argue it. It was something that Moody versus Netchoice had addressed and it appears to largely be accepted and that's a really interesting point that that was like the starting position, as opposed to ground that TikTok needed to win in order to make its arguments.

So that's significant to win in order to make its arguments. So that's significant. And then, related to that, it also felt like the justices understood that algorithmic moderation was an expression of editorial discretion and that they could understand that the First Amendment extended to that, which was also something that, in theory, tiktok would need to argue and it did not feel like it was grounded actually needed to cover that loop was already closed. I could be wrong, they could always do weird things, but for your zeitgeist question, if I'm right, and that's what I was hearing, these are two very significant things and again, one point that we put in.

One reason I dropped everything over the holidays to write an amicus brief is because everything that they decide in every single case reverberates in every future case that's ever going to be before them, and all of this is basically putting together a curriculum granted a very disorganized curriculum to try to teach the justices how to think about these things, and so I wanted to write now to teach them things and also to show them that what they decide here will matter and will matter in other contexts, because it will, and I wish I had been able to write a decision for the case that got heard today earlier in the year, because, again, that instance was a bad law. But I want the court to think about how all these issues present themselves, not just when you're dealing with Pornhub, but when you're dealing with everything.

0:27:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, there's also the sense of content. One of my favorite moments that I put up a tweet online 115 Leo of. I think they're trying to understand the internet in the context of what they would consider content Justice.

0:27:16 - Leo Laporte
Leo said is it like Playboy that there's stuff he says essays, modern day, gore Vidal, stuff like that?

0:27:26 - Jeff Jarvis
By the way there is.

0:27:27 - Leo Laporte
There's a great article which I'll show you later. There's a woman who, besides having an adult channel on OnlyFans, has a Pornhub channel that is not adult, that is safe for work, in which she discusses math, she teaches math, and the reason she does it is because the royalties are so much better. She puts the same stuff on YouTube, but the royalties are so much better on Pornhub.

0:27:51 - Cathy Gellis
Oh, is that presented in any of the briefing?

0:27:54 - Leo Laporte
No, I don't think so.

0:27:55 - Cathy Gellis
Isn't that interesting.

0:27:56 - Leo Laporte
So it does answer Justice Alito's seemingly naive question.

0:28:00 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, there's non-excuses. No, honey, I was learning math.

0:28:07 - Cathy Gellis
I was watching a video on neural networks. So in today's hearing, justice Gorsuch was really trying to hold the Free Speech Coalition's lawyers' feet to the fire in a way. I found really unfortunate to basically say, and how much is? He used? More technical terms, how much is adult content and how much isn't? And he was really trying to get a number and the lawyer was fumbling around with trying to give him the number and partly because he's representing a consortium, so the number is going to vary across the platforms. I don't think he fielded that part well and the beginning of today's hearing really had me not happy.

But Joda Sotomayor, I think, saved the day because she pointed out this is really a very basic case. The one that was heard today, which was the district court, had decided that, based on the preliminary record before it, it was going to enjoin the law, subject to further hearing and trial and considering whether it truly is unconstitutional. But it thought there's enough here to be really worried. It put the brakes on it and then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said uh-uh-uh, we're not going to apply heightened scrutiny, we're going to apply rational basis scrutiny and this law is totally fine. So the injunction went out the window. So all that's really happening here was trying to argue hang on a second. Wasn't the fifth circuit wrong about what level of scrutiny applies? Surely it's strict scrutiny. The fifth circuit decision should be vacated and we send back there for future for further proceedings, now applying the correct standard, because then you can make the question of OK with heightened scrutiny, strict scrutiny in particular. Is that law? Ok, could?

0:29:49 - Leo Laporte
you explain what. What is strict scrutiny or heightened scrutiny? What are we talking about?

0:29:54 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, I'm, I always. There's very specific of saying it and I'm just going to end up paraphrasing it, but it's all very Google-able for the correct way. But basically for strict scrutiny when you have these liberty interests like free expression, if the government is going to be able to trample them, you want to look for a couple things. One, did they have a compelling reason to do the trampling? And two, did they use the narrowest means possible to or I think it says the narrowest possible to do the trampling because you want to make sure you're not doing gratuitous amounts of collateral damage to these protected liberties?

0:30:30 - Leo Laporte
I love it. I don't think there are very many other countries that are so protective of free speech, of First Amendment rights no, I don't think there are.

0:30:39 - Cathy Gellis
It's really remarkable and I would like us to continue to be the leader here, and I worry about how they do these cases, whether that will still be the case or not.

0:30:48 - Leo Laporte
Even with strict scrutiny, do the security concerns about TikTok outweigh and its creators' First Amendment rights Is?

0:31:00 - Cathy Gellis
that the question. So just to close the loop on today's, so Sotomayor was saying but it's going to be a similar question.

0:31:09 - Leo Laporte
This is the Pornhub decision, so for the Pornhub one today.

0:31:12 - Cathy Gellis
What Sotomayor was saying is that what we need to say is that strict scrutiny was the thing that was supposed to apply. Send it back to the lower court. They can apply strict scrutiny. Then arguably there will be another appeal because they'll apply it and maybe they find that, no, the law totally passes strict scrutiny and somebody's going to be unhappy when they apply strict scrutiny to this.

So there will be another appeal and then the court will revisit the question to figure out, based on what Texas wasas was trying to do, was the strict scrutiny analysis correct, which kind of puts us in the position of where we were with the tiktok ban, because the dc circuit did apply strict scrutiny, but applied it in a very casual way, or that's my term. They applied it in a way that I don't think met the muster of what the test was supposed to do and therefore, in this case they said we haven't seen the evidence.

0:32:02 - Leo Laporte
But sure, if the government thinks it's bad, it must be true.

0:32:05 - Cathy Gellis
They credited a lot. So to get to your question, and it's basically a question for the court, there was a lot of traction, particularly with Kavanaugh, but all the justices bought into it that slurping the data presents a real issue for Americans and maybe it's a real security concern. But you know, tiktok made a point of OK, then pass a data protection law, and we're going to wonder why you're calling this one a data protection law when there's a whole bunch of slurpy activities you didn't bother to make illegal.

0:32:40 - Leo Laporte
Much worse, frankly.

0:32:42 - Cathy Gellis
I'm sorry. Much worse slurpy activities, slurpier things Slurping by other Chinese platforms which are untouched by this law. American platforms are still slurping it and we pointed out in our brief that even if China doesn't slurp it directly, they could just go buy it from a data broker, so like you have it actually solved the problem.

0:32:59 - Jeff Jarvis
So one of the arguments I love that you've made slurpage a legal term.

0:33:04 - Cathy Gellis
I think slurpage needs to be the legal term. So you've got this law that has huge effects. You're going to obliterate a platform and all the speech that the platform facilitates and you haven't even solved the problem. You may have had a compelling reason to go solve. So TikTok is saying, like that's a problem you really need to look for. Are those means that it's using to meet that that compelling purpose narrowly tailored enough? Because look at all this collateral damage you have and you aren't even accomplishing anything.

But then there's also the related question of okay, then you also have an impermissible purpose, which was it doesn't like the way TikTok moderates content, and one of the stated purposes of Congress was to go after those moderations. They're just mad in theory that it's covertly moderated. But TikTok was like and what does that mean? That basically means that you know. And if that was your problem basically means that you know. And if that was your problem, what could you do? You could maybe mandate disclosures or something like that, like you don't have to obliterate the platform, even if that was a valid concern it seems very clear that the first amendment prevents the government from telling a private entity how they should moderate that.

I think so and moody versus net choice gets everybody there, but tiktok is a little too Chinese to qualify for that, and that seems to be the thing that's making everybody lose their minds. So you know the reason I'm somewhat optimistic is so really?

0:34:29 - Leo Laporte
the only ground that the government can complain about is slurpage.

0:34:33 - Cathy Gellis
Well, slurpage, I think there was no issue of whether it was.

0:34:36 - Leo Laporte
Well, what's the security issue? I mean, they can't complain about moderation Propaganda, right Slurpage. I think there was no issue of whether it was. Well, what's the security issue? They can't. I mean, they can't complain about moderation Propaganda right?

0:34:41 - Paris Martineau
Well, slurpage is security, isn't it? Yeah, the Slurpage, basically, is that's the only security Propaganda doesn't count.

0:34:46 - Leo Laporte
You cannot, the government cannot tell an entity what to say.

0:34:50 - Cathy Gellis
Right. I think the idea to say saying that the moderation is a national security concern, in theory, that is not an argument that the government should be able to make and so, yeah, that was probably in play at the hearing.

0:35:09 - Leo Laporte
It's not and it was your sense that the justices understood that if they were there, that would be a can of worms that they would if they were to open that up I mean, I I felt like I counted at least five votes who understood that there were concerns that the DC Circuit just kind of plowed through.

0:35:27 - Cathy Gellis
What I'm less sure about is if the court really knows what, if anything, it can do about it and what rule that it would write. But one of the things is these things in theory should be very small, like press pause on this, maybe ask for more briefing. I mean, I think they could reach the merits. I don't think this is a hard case on the merits, but since everybody is all upset about it and maybe some justices think that there's some validity to the government's argument, I don't know, press pause, let's get more briefing, including more briefing.

We had no commercial platforms in this as Amici, except the only two Amici who operate platforms were my client, the Copia Institute, aka Tector, and Donald Trump. How does that happen when you know you have the entire industry with platforms upon platforms and they didn't brief? They didn't brief for a number of reasons, but you know one of them was the practical concern of everybody had to drop everything and brief in an unusually short timeframe. It was just completely accelerated and so you didn't get to have all the voices to kind of point out, like when the amici show up they can really sort of frame what the speech interests are, because they can talk about.

If this goes forward, here's how we will be affected. And they didn't brief in TikTok and they under briefed as well in the Free Speech Coalition one, and I think that's a problem as well, because it's too easy for the justices to think this is all about adult content and not recognize that these sorts of laws will have impact on things that are clearly protected speech. They had to use their imaginations a lot more, and that's not really a good thing. We don't really want the justices to have to use their imaginations. We'd rather tell them what they need to think.

0:37:10 - Leo Laporte
You also? Say in your article you point out that one of the justices in the past has said you don't have the nine biggest internet experts here you point out that part of their job and part of the reason you write the briefs is to become internet experts. If they're going to rule on these cases, they need to know what they're ruling.

0:37:28 - Cathy Gellis
Well, that and that's why I was saying like, why I dropped everything to write the brief, because every case involves an issue that's going to reverberate later on.

So think of if I'm right and we've got certain wins where they understand that the platforms have First Amendment rights and if they understand that algorithms are expressions of that like that is going to matter for everything else that they hear.

So we've sort of accidentally been building this curriculum for the court. It's unusual for the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is one stable well, more or less stable set of the same justices, whereas when you're at the courts of appeals you get rotating judges because it's not always the same three who end up hearing your case. So there's a lot more room for variability and you don't know how expert each one is and you have to kind of go from zero to 60 when you're at the court of appeals. But one of the reasons what I think about it with my Supreme Court practice is we are building. We are building because we're not just here for this case. It's the same brains that are going to be deciding cases down the road and if I want to look for an opportunity in this first case to teach them something they're going to need to know for the cases that are coming down the pike yeah, good, I put in the rundown that senator markey uh has proposed a bill to grant a 270 day extension on the tiktok ban.

0:38:48 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know whether that will go anywhere in this. It would have to be passed by friday yep yeah man.

0:38:54 - Cathy Gellis
um, I don't know how I feel about it. I mean, I don't know. I'm a little agnostic, but I also don't really want to. I don't know if I want to moot the litigation either, but as long as the DC Circuit's decision is no longer good law, I don't care nearly as much I'd rather start with nothing, but I do not want to be haunted by that.

0:39:16 - Leo Laporte
So as long as that is obviated somehow, whatever, Will the Supreme Court make a ruling in the next three days?

0:39:25 - Cathy Gellis
My personal feeling. So a lot of people are like wait a minute, silence indicates that there's some trouble, and maybe that's true. I had the personal feeling that they were waiting for today's hearing because today was dealing with the first amendment case and that no sense kind of doing something too soon like this would help inform their thinking, because they're going to need two decisions that in theory don't clash. So now I think the clock is running um, where I'd expect something at any time, but we don't know, um, and I don't think they know. And you have principled people who are willing to stick with doctrine. You have confused people who aren't, and I don't know. That's the reason. It's hard to be completely bullish about what this court will do, because a lot of what it does is in theory. This is no way to run a railroad, and it's really, you know, seeing those nine human, a railroad and, um, it's really, you know, seeing those nine human beings up close.

0:40:21 - Leo Laporte
It's, it's particularly human this particular uh iteration of the court how do they, how are they going to rule on the the porn hub thing? They just would these were arguments, right, they didn't rule, did they?

0:40:32 - Cathy Gellis
no, they didn't rule. So this one, we wouldn't necessarily expect the decision all that soon that could be be the spring right.

0:40:37 - Leo Laporte
There's no urgency.

0:40:39 - Cathy Gellis
Well, actually I take that back. There might be urgency because there's no injunction at the moment. So I think the law is in effect, so right now you're actually accruing harm.

So it would be nice if they actually did something sooner before later. And yeah, there is some exigency in actually putting if there's any inclination to enjoin the law or at least stay it or, you know, buy yourself more time to live to fight another day. So I think what I'm hoping from both these cases is that the court is willing to say there's big issues here and we should at least live to fight another day, as opposed to let harm accrue now when we're not entirely sure and it's going to take a lot more thinking to tease out whether this harm is constitutionally inflicted or not so.

0:41:20 - Leo Laporte
So the ideal situation, from your point of view, would be two stays a stay of the tiktok law and a stay of the texas law by the way, texas is not the only state that's doing. It doesn't no, and I think it's the.

0:41:34 - Cathy Gellis
The courts have generally been ruling against age verification, but I think there was just one out of the six that went the other way. So this is a live issue that's causing lots of problems and the litigation is still happening in all these other cases. So and I think the justices were aware of it I think Kagan in particular was sort of aware of that. Yeah, this is just one of many in that these other cases are not necessarily implicating adult content that they're dealing with Also, you know other forms.

0:42:02 - Leo Laporte
Are there other internet cases on the docket this session?

0:42:07 - Cathy Gellis
I need to check, but these were the biggest ones I was aware of. There is a pending cert petition for Cox versus Sony which is a DMCA case. Well, it used to be a DMCA case. It may kind of still be a DMCA case, but this is one where the ISPs, like the big Cox Communications and Grande Communications these big ISPs were not terminating users when they got the takedown notices which, in theory, now all of a sudden, they had to do, and I think it's framed as a copyright case. But I think it's really a First Amendment case and I'm really hoping that cert is granted so I can write a nice First Amendment brief in that case as well.

0:42:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's really fascinating.

0:42:55 - Jeff Jarvis
Does this all make sense Like it makes sense in my head, but yeah I'm gonna blame you if it goes the wrong way, for my depression that comes.

0:43:03 - Leo Laporte
But the, the reasons people bring up uh for tiktok are uh the issue of propaganda and I think I don't know what the justices will do, but I think we can all agree that that is a First Amendment. Protected propaganda is protected by the.

0:43:20 - Cathy Gellis
First Amendment. Normally, yes, and there is precedence, as is moderation is protected by the First Amendment.

0:43:26 - Leo Laporte
You don't even need Section 230 to do that. The government cannot step in and say, no, no, you gotta do that, you gotta do this. This is something conservatives have been saying about the previous administration's relationship with the tiktok, or xcom, or twitter as it was known then. So that seems to be some agreement. You government's not allowed to do that. Uh, so the really the only thing is the national security issue and, uh, and that has to do with slurpage I mean the national security concern has brought up in both contexts.

0:43:59 - Cathy Gellis
For the slurpage, I understand moderation, but, but we can throw out, we can throw out moderation propaganda.

0:44:04 - Leo Laporte
I think any reasonable person would say, well, there's no, that's protected, right? So uh, I, and I think the tiktok's argument that well, if you really care about this, you should have a law about everybody else too. All you're doing is banning us when everybody else and their brother is slurping up as much as possible all the time and, frankly, selling it to the highest bidder, including china.

0:44:31 - Cathy Gellis
That seems very persuasive I, I'm, yeah, I think so. I don't entirely know what the conniptions are and why this isn't. You know why there's pushback? I mean, sometimes a lot of it is the optics, just as Kavanaugh.

0:44:45 - Leo Laporte
Does that work, though, with the Supreme Court to say, well, if you really cared, there'd be, the law would be broader. Is that a way of arguing against the law? It should be broader.

0:45:00 - Cathy Gellis
It's hard to say. I mean the problem is sometimes their jurisprudence is pure and respectful of prior precedent and sometimes their jurisprudence is whatever they really wanted to have happen and it comes from the same justices. So it's really confusing. Justice Kavanaugh in particular in the TikTok hearing seemed really exercised by the national security concerns. I mean he mostly was exercised with them in the data context. But it's not like TikTok was really trying to hold the line and say we're not saying you don't get to be concerned or Congress doesn't get to be concerned. Go ahead and be concerned and pass an appropriately tailored law. And if the law doesn't even solve the problem it's really hard to argue it's appropriately tailored when it then also has all these collateral effects.

0:45:42 - Leo Laporte
so one of the issues, that is, that can be persuasive. That hey, hey, your honor, they're picking on us because we're chinese, that could be persuasive. Well, that's popular these days yeah, well, the yes, uh.

0:45:53 - Cathy Gellis
I don't know if they were saying we're being picked on because we're chinese, because there was the issue of well, why didn't you sweep up timu too? But they. What they were basically saying is we're being picked on because we're Chinese, because there was the issue of well, why didn't you sweep up Timu too? But they. What they were basically saying is we're being picked on for speech related reasons, because really, you didn't like the speech that our platform was facilitating and that that is a per se should be a per se violation of the constitution.

That's all you need, yeah, so then, meanwhile in today and uh, the texas, uh attorney general had conveniently not read one of the major first amendment in the internet cases that the supreme court has actually issued a case called packingham, and um, oh, that was not a good moment for a lawyer to be called out where the justice jackson was and what about this case? And he says, oh, I haven't read it.

0:46:39 - Leo Laporte
Oh boy.

0:46:40 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah. That's never mind it came out that long ago.

0:46:43 - Leo Laporte
First year law right.

0:46:44 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, I remember a classmate in law school. It was Mr So-and-so. Did you read the case? And it was a really painful moment for my friend when he had not. This was not good.

0:46:55 - Leo Laporte
Did you ever see the paper chase?

0:46:57 - Cathy Gellis
You must have had not um this was not good did you ever see the paper chase? You must have. I didn't. Um, oh, what a great movie. Mostly because I think a lot of that sort of socratic abuse had sort of been discredited by the time I was a law student, but it was still well.

0:47:08 - Leo Laporte
That's the famous moment in that where, uh, john houston, uh, is it john houston, the, the, the professor? It's houston walter houston. Anyway, he picks, he picks up, he takes a dime and he says here's a dime house. But John Houseman, that's right, yes, a formerly colleague of Orson Welles in the Mercury Theater, the great, the legendary John Hassman, says here's a dime, call your mother and tell her you're not going to be a lawyer yeah, by the time I got to law school, it's generally a kinder and gentler.

Oh, that's too bad. They really. I think john houseman who had the right idea. Oh, thank you very much, um but also that was in theories.

0:47:50 - Cathy Gellis
I think it was said in harvard and I went to harvard law boston university school of law so we just sort of like gazed down the river at the little brick schoolhouse and you know, I think probably got a better education.

0:48:00 - Leo Laporte
I saw it at the yale law film society when I was at yale, so we all laughed at harvard law. Uh, you're watching this week in google kathy gellis, a very special guest to talk about all these first amendment, slurpage, uh things. Uh, it's good to have you, kathy. Thank you from Tech Dirt. And on the blue sky at Kathy Gellis, they did mention blue sky, didn't they?

0:48:24 - Cathy Gellis
So yeah, somebody got mad at my Tech Dirt post because I didn't explain the context that Justice Kagan mentioned it, but I couldn't quite remember and it wasn't hugely important to the other things, but at some point and this is kind of key I was remembering later Kagan seems to be particularly clued in with the fact that these cases have implications for other platforms.

And it's most aware of the ecosystem. And there was some discussion in the TikTok case about well, if you didn't have TikTok, then what? And TikTok was pushing back to say you know, other come, other companies have tried to have a tiktok like service. And oh, it wasn't tiktok, I think it was the users. The user was saying we've tried them out and we just don't find them sufficient that's not true, that's.

0:49:08 - Leo Laporte
That's silly.

0:49:09 - Cathy Gellis
My son has moved from tiktok to instagram well, depends on what you want, you know, maybe that works for him, but um, but in any case, there's always, it's not complete it. In theory it shouldn't be fungible because the whole point of the editorial discretion is all of them are going to do the moderation a little bit differently.

0:49:25 - Leo Laporte
If they're all the same, then that obviates your argument.

0:49:28 - Cathy Gellis
Right, exactly, so there was that, and I can't remember if it came up then. But in terms of discussing other things that are new, that would come up at some point, justice Kagan was like what's that new one? Oh, blue sky.

0:49:42 - Jeff Jarvis
And you know if I were really pedantic.

0:49:43 - Cathy Gellis
I'd go back and look at the transcript and see what that comment followed. But you know, having written an amicus brief before the Supreme Court with blue sky as the client, I feel a little ahead of the curve here.

0:49:56 - Paris Martineau
How long do you think it will be until a justice says the word skeet?

0:50:03 - Cathy Gellis
Probably not this term, unless we have something that you know all of a sudden ends up an emergency. Fix it.

0:50:10 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, let's actually hope they don't, so they can just just just ignore blue sky. Let it be.

0:50:14 - Cathy Gellis
I mean the way they, the way they end up, you know, having their discussions. I could see it happening. I wouldn't rule it out. I'm more thinking about is there going to be a plausible opportunity where it won't be completely out of context, and I don't know if we have anything on the docket before the end of this term.

0:50:32 - Leo Laporte
Kathy Gellis is here, jeff Jarvis, of course, paris Martineau our regulars. You're watching this Week in Google and, as I mentioned, we're going to change the name, but the show is going to stay pretty much the same. We're going to cover intelligent machines, which we have always done, so that will start February 5th, on Paris' birthday.

0:50:50 - Jeff Jarvis
It's our little gift, so by the way, I mentioned this as the show was on last week to Jason Howell, since I'm also on AI Inside as the show was on last week to Jason Howell since I'm also one AI inside. We don't want to duplicate what you guys do. Jason said immediately, he said great idea. And he said the name should have changed long ago.

0:51:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, he's right, he was a supporter of this Week in Google. He did our Android show, but Google has not been all that interested. We have a few things that could actually be in the changelog this week. Hey, do you want to do some acting? Paris? Martineau love it, I thought. I thought a uh, a um, a moose bush to freshen the palate before we move on to other deep, difficult get that supreme court out of your mouth get that supreme court out.

Have you seen this article? It's uh on the. I have not on the rundown. I thought maybe you and I could act this out. I'll be gary, you be cindy okay, great okay, this is from mcsweeney's, a marriage proposal spoken entirely in office jargon. Hey, cindy, now how are you you got to be able to see this? Can you see it? I'm pulling it up on my screen right now.

0:51:57 - Paris Martineau
okay, yeah, I got it, because you got to be able to see this. Can you see it? I'm pulling it up on my screen right now. Okay, yeah, I got it.

0:52:00 - Leo Laporte
Because you got to have lines. Okay, very important. All right, let's start over here. Hey, cindy, remember that other day when we were talking about optimizations.

0:52:10 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I wanted to circle back on that.

0:52:13 - Leo Laporte
Me too. Now you said you wanted to see hockey stick growth. Well, I've realized.

0:52:22 - Paris Martineau
I want to see hockey stick growth, too, in our relationship.

0:52:23 - Leo Laporte
Unpack that for me, so this relationship has been such a value add. Some of my friends were worried that it would take too long for us to get into alignment, but you have been an absolute rock star.

0:52:34 - Paris Martineau
I feel the same way, Gary. The ROI on this relationship has been unbelievable.

0:52:41 - Leo Laporte
You've really given 110%, so I wanted to close the loop. In addition to the other deliverables, I have one more. He takes a knee and holds out his hand. It's this wedding ring Cindy, will you marry me?

0:52:54 - Paris Martineau
I will, gary. You've been an absolute ninja. This really moves the needle in a significant way. I will, gary, you've been an absolute ninja. This really moves the needle in a significant way.

0:53:03 - Leo Laporte
Cindy getting married will represent a huge pivot, but I see it as a quick win and a real solve.

0:53:10 - Paris Martineau
Me too, and we can talk about this later, but I do want to make sure we go forward with a single source of truth.

0:53:16 - Leo Laporte
Break that down for me.

0:53:18 - Paris Martineau
I used to be with a guy who was full of valuable insights, but his insights weren't actionable, let alone fungible.

0:53:26 - Leo Laporte
Ah, sounds like low-hanging fruit.

0:53:29 - Paris Martineau
He was, and I know you're different. The synergy is unbelievable, but I want to make sure that we stay focused on core values, which for me, comes down to the bottom line.

0:53:40 - Leo Laporte
By bottom line. You're talking about the financials.

0:53:44 - Paris Martineau
Not having enough to spend was a big pain point for me. I don't know how else to say it. You're more than your financials, but you're not less than them.

0:53:54 - Leo Laporte
Long pause. I think I understand.

0:53:58 - Paris Martineau
I just wanted to touch base on how you're feeling about that.

0:54:01 - Leo Laporte
Well, look, we both know the importance of data-driven insights, so I think I've got to solve what if we set up a weekly one-on-one to check in and stack hands on the financials as we start to plan for our new normal?

0:54:15 - Paris Martineau
I would love that, but oh, I'm so sorry I have a 330.

0:54:20 - Leo Laporte
Oh Well, let's table this for now. In the meantime they should have said let's put a pin in that, but anyway if you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.

0:54:31 - Paris Martineau
Sounds good. Let's circle back tonight and we can action on our solve. Very nice I love mcsweeney's.

0:54:35 - Leo Laporte
There was a little, that was just a little moose.

0:54:37 - Paris Martineau
Bush, evan barber a marriage proposal, spoke entirely in office jargon that you've ever, ever worked in an office and very good acting on both your parts I think I want to make this a regular thing mcsweeney's also published a great thing last week uh similar, uh rye piece entitled did you even possibly consider every possible lived experience before recklessly posting your chili recipe on social media? It's really good.

0:55:05 - Leo Laporte
Would recommend uh, actually, since you mentioned blue sky, big announcement from blue sky they're opening their own photo sharing site.

0:55:15 - Paris Martineau
Um, it's just that well, no, I I think that it's being open.

0:55:19 - Cathy Gellis
On the at protocol, I'm not that's right, it's a protocol by uh blue sky itself the entity yeah, I think I saw a skeet from mesnick saying that it's not theirs, it's somebody else's.

0:55:30 - Leo Laporte
Good, it's the thing that can happen, because even better yeah and this comes in, uh in the following the story from 404 Media that Instagram and all the meta properties are actually blocking, in fact banning you if you mention the competitor, the Mastodon competitor, PixelFed, which has caused huge interest in PixelFed, of course.

0:55:57 - Cathy Gellis
I think Mark Zuckerberg has really kicked off significant exodus from all of the meta properties Sanity.

0:56:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Yes, Can I get your opinions about, because I'm really not sure about it? Free our feeds.

0:56:14 - Cathy Gellis
I don't know anything about it, yet I'm aware of it. I'm hoping that Mike will write about this. I think he is anything about it, yet I'm aware of it.

0:56:18 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm hoping that Mike will write about this. I think he is writing about it.

0:56:22 - Cathy Gellis
I think it's one of the things that sometimes, when he finds things too fascinating, they take a lot longer to write because he keeps going and going and going. So I think it's underway. I'm sure there will be something.

0:56:35 - Leo Laporte
It's an initiative to protect blue skies at protocol um a group of international control away from the people who run the group of international tech entrepreneurs and advocates has launched a campaign to protect uh our algorithms from billionaires. It's on gofundme. It's hashtag free our feeds help secure the future of social media, so they've raised 51 000 dollars they're going for 30 million dollars.

0:57:08 - Jeff Jarvis
I had an exchange today with eli pariser, who's one of the many names on it. There's a lot of big names on it. He's the filter bubble fella, yep, and. And the people I like, like craig dumar, but there's lots of people I don't like so much, like shoshana zumoff and um and others. Uh, I said elon today. So what, what's the 30 million going for?

0:57:27 - Leo Laporte
uh, master, well, it says four million on gofundme no, they're saying 30 million, 30 ways in their announcements.

0:57:34 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I think that's the fund-to-me amount they want to raise.

0:57:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

0:57:40 - Jeff Jarvis
And Dave Weiner said well, there's not a single technologist in the list. What are they going to build? What is it going to do? And when I asked Eli today, I didn't really get an answer that meant anything.

0:57:53 - Leo Laporte
Here's the manifesto from FreeOurFeedscom. With Zuckerberg going full Musk last week, we can no longer let billionaires control our digital public square. Okay, Blue Sky is an opportunity to shake up the status quo, but it will take independent funding and governance to tune Blue Sky's underlying tech the AT protocol into something. Or should I say the AT protocol? It's capped, but I think it's really the AT protocol. I say the AT protocol it's capped, but I think it's really the at protocol I say the at protocol, but I don't know if that's right or not yeah, into something more powerful.

You know, you know what it is. It's all greek to me. It's the. It's their version of activity pub, which is the mastodon, uh fediverse protocol into something more powerful than a single app. We want to create an entire ecosystem of interconnected apps and different cups. Feels like this has been done already with mastodon, excuse me well exactly, and that's that's also what dave weiner said.

0:58:42 - Jeff Jarvis
He did a five minute podcast about this. But go to the list of names.

0:58:47 - Leo Laporte
Technical advisors and custodians um mozilla.

0:58:51 - Jeff Jarvis
Executive director nabia syed mark sermon from from mozilla, who I?

0:58:56 - Leo Laporte
respect, so mozilla is very much into this.

0:58:59 - Jeff Jarvis
There are two people on this board, and if you keep going down, um, then it's jimmy wales, we like shoshana zuboff ruffalo the actor roger.

0:59:09 - Leo Laporte
Roger mcdamey tries to be completely insane. Ryan eno, the demurred cory's on cory, you know, cory was on a twit on sunday, I don't. I guess maybe he was keeping quiet about it. He didn't mention it at all.

0:59:22 - Cathy Gellis
So I think some of I'm very excited that people with resources are willing to spend it to recreate our media environment, and I mean that in all sorts of ways, both in terms of reestablishing platform technology and also reestablishing news outlets. And there's a lot of places that money could and should be spent, but if they're not going to spend it carefully or efficiently, all we have done is yeah, well, they're raising the money to tell you what they're going to spend on.

0:59:48 - Jeff Jarvis
What's their goal? What are they trying to do?

0:59:51 - Leo Laporte
we already have mastodon which, by the way, uh oigen did something remarkable this week. He had decided to give up. Basically, mastodon, he owns it just because he he wrote it right. But uh, they are. They are now going to create. In the next six months we'll see transformation of the mastodon structures he wrote, shifting away from the early days single person ownership, enshrining the envisioned independence in a dedicated European not-for-profit entity. Eugen is going to hand off the overall Mastodon management. He'll focus on product strategy. He's going to stay involved, but there'll be a board. It's a 501c3 in the US that will continue to function as a fundraising hub, he says. But the mastodon entity will has now become a uh.

1:00:41 - Cathy Gellis
Uh was stripped away of its social, of its charitable status in germany, weirdly so I think there was a logistical problem with it where, um, I don't know something about, like how they had to spend the money and just german law, I think, became really difficult to comply with Right.

1:00:57 - Leo Laporte
So they're going to be a European, an EU public benefit company. I think this is exactly the right way to do it.

This is exactly what you should do. Yeah, and this is an existing protocol. Pixel Fed, which we were just talking about, is a photo sharing site based on Mastodon. There are other Fediverse applications, quite a few of them Fediverse supports, possese, which is something I believe, in the post on your own site, then syndicate everywhere. Uh, I just I think this is done I I'm not a big fan of. I have to ask corey, though, because I I do trust corey, but I I just don't think this is well, if, if, if at fat would federate with activity pub um, we're there, we're there, I love blue sky.

1:01:44 - Paris Martineau
Blue skies said that's on the road map yeah, they're working on.

1:01:47 - Leo Laporte
Federation has said and he said it again is it with?

1:01:50 - Jeff Jarvis
at or not is the question. I mean, yes, activity pop or not?

1:01:53 - Leo Laporte
yes, no, it isn't corey. Has corey said yeah, fine, it's in their roadmap? They haven't done it. I am not going to start using Blue Sky because I don't want to be trapped again, as I was on Twitter X, by having all my friends in somewhere. I cannot then move them to somewhere else from. Can we get Jay Graber on the show? Yeah, we can get Jay on. That's a good idea. We better get her on quick, because I don't know if she's an intelligent machine.

1:02:20 - Cathy Gellis
So I think um, I think you've answered your question, though, for why have this too? Because we're less likely to get stuck when we have redundancy, um, and also then interoperability. So I don't think just pointing to well, we solved it with mastodon is good enough, because we've solved things before and then something happens. Pointing to well, we solved it with Mastodon is good enough, because we've solved things before and then something happens to the thing. So you've got the flexibility. No, I disagree.

1:02:46 - Leo Laporte
It's an open protocol. The worst thing you can do is create multiple standards. That doesn't solve the hit by a bus one man problem. An open protocol is forkable. It's open. It doesn't. It's not like a, you know, an entity.

1:03:02 - Cathy Gellis
That is uh risky I think, I think we need to see the details to see what it ends up amen, yeah, there's no details here. That's my problem with it I took it a little bit more as being able to be a haven. Okay, this was just my in my off, my guess so I can't really substantiate it.

But I I took it as if blue sky went stupid, that you could just slurp everything out of blue sky and stick it on something else and be good to go. So I saw this trying to protect that as opposed to trying to recreate, um, the redundancy that that mastodon has. Uh, it just sort of seemed like a way to buttress and backstop Blue Sky. So we were not Blue Sky Company dependent.

1:03:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, maybe that's what's going on, is that they share. In fact, corey is a signatory, so maybe that's really what he's saying is look until they federate. It's just a centralized silo, like, like, like Twitter was, and, and so this is a little kind of nudge to get that with federate, but why 30 million dollars? Yeah, and it's, yeah, it's just yeah, I would sign on to a letter that said blue sky federate, or else that's.

1:04:09 - Paris Martineau
That's fair, I mean blue sky publicly launched february 6 2024. It's been less than a year yes, I don't want, I'm I'm never the person that's like gotta hand it to a tech company. Let's hold out hope, but this company's been around for a very short period of time. In chaos and in absolute chaos, dealing with unforeseen surges in users that they were not prepared for. It's a miracle that it still works and seems to be decent at what it's trying to do.

I don't know If it doesn't happen by the end of this year, then yeah, maybe there's a leg to stand on in calling for it to take up that mantle more seriously, or else users should leave.

1:04:51 - Cathy Gellis
But just to back up to the Mastodon point, it's a point we had in our amicus brief where we were talking about the how American do you need to be, where we pointed out that some of these alternatives were being built and that Mastodon was an awful lot of Germans were helping to build Mastodon. What do you mean? That's not okay. So all these things have been good. Yeah.

1:05:13 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, these are, but these are good things happening around wanting to have alternatives to Musk and Musk Jr, otherwise known as Zuckerberg, yeah, but that was more trauma than I was expecting.

1:05:26 - Cathy Gellis
I mean, it was never a great site and he was never really great, but this is a level of not greatness that's really sort of intolerable.

1:05:35 - Jeff Jarvis
He's gone, he's gone.

1:05:36 - Cathy Gellis
Wacko.

1:05:36 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah so we talked a little bit. Did we talk about last week? Had it happened? Yet yeah, did. Did you see the mark lemley? So, major stanford, you can say who he is better than I can, but he but he fired meta kathy, you want to mention who mark lemley is?

1:05:53 - Cathy Gellis
um, mark lemley is a very renowned IP scholar. He's a professor at Stanford, but he's also essentially a practicing attorney, and at his current firm, he had been helping represent Meta in its AI litigation. It had been sued by copyright holders, essentially, and he was trying to hold the line, a line that I share, which is that no copyright law does not create a cause of action against AI training.

So he was helping with Facebook's defense, but that meant, you know, when he was kind of like how do I demedify him myself? He's kind of like I don't think I can support this company anymore. This is the kinds of things they are very loudly doing are not things he felt comfortable being associated with, so he terminated his representation.

1:06:42 - Jeff Jarvis
I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's descent into toxic masculinity and neo-Nazi madness. Can't get blubber than that.

1:06:52 - Leo Laporte
I understand his point of view. I wouldn't want to be associated with that. But we've also seen these Facebook boycotts come and go. I participated at least several times. I think this is going to have more traction.

1:07:01 - Jeff Jarvis
You think.

1:07:03 - Cathy Gellis
Oh yeah.

1:07:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, it's a big deal.

1:07:05 - Cathy Gellis
I mean most of a very significant chunk of my Facebook friends, even ones I don't hear about, are writing long think pieces about. I think we might need to leave and most of the stress is unlike with Twitter, where there kind of were life rafts to go to, because initially there was Mastodon and then, by the time everybody else left, there was Blue Sky. We don't really have a Facebook alternative at the moment, which I think is a huge shame and if people want to spend their money, that's probably the thing to spend the money on, to give us an alternative. But yeah, I think people are looking to go. They're all backing off and they're not going to. They're trying to decommitting and like not writing as much, not posting as much, really isolating.

A whole bunch of people who chose threads are like well, why bother with that? If you are on instagram, you could go to pixel fed. Like people are like I'm seeing a lot of people draw some really hard lines. I just saw today will whedon said screw this, I'm done. It wasn't good for my writing anyway, but I thought I needed it for exposure and he's like I'm. He's basically just gonna self-publish and syndicate. Um, so I I'm seeing that a lot of places.

And then the fact that, like the mark lemley story I know mark mark is a friend I was seeing things because I'm friends, like also on Facebook, with Mark Lemley, and then the fact that it's ending up in the news, that's a sign of attraction and the headlines are like you know, a top-notch lawyer, um, you know, fires Facebook. I mean just just the optics on it was, um, people are like wow, you know the, the toasting, and they're sort of admiring the toasting that that happened with it ironically, I mean, I look, I'm not a facebook fan, I have an account, just as I do with instagram and um and uh, all the other crap, just just so that I can see what's going on.

1:08:57 - Leo Laporte
I just went there. I don't see a lot of disinformation or even stuff from people who aren't my friends, maybe because every time I'm there I delete the crappy stuff.

1:09:08 - Cathy Gellis
You may not even be seeing your friends, one of the big objections that people have had for a long time is….

1:09:11 - Leo Laporte
Well, I think I am, though Every single post on here is somebody I follow.

1:09:14 - Cathy Gellis
No, that weird things was not your friend, that was something they threw in telling you to follow it, yeah um they're well I delete those as soon as I see the quality of the feed has been really bad and a lot of people are complaining like the value proposition of facebook is like it's really cool to stay in touch with some people you don't otherwise have an easy, seamless way to stay in touch with, and facebook has increasingly been sucking at that, when that is really the only reason that people are still staying, because they're not doing things for the bigger discussions or sometimes they're dealing with it because they've got some really groups that they're invested with and they need. That's the platform they've been using for the groups and otherwise. I want to keep track of my friends, but you can't keep track of your friends because Facebook's not bothering to give you your friends.

1:09:58 - Jeff Jarvis
Paris. Congratulations on your new job.

1:09:59 - Paris Martineau
At wired from your facebook feed, I see I was going to say when's the last time that I used facebook.

1:10:06 - Jeff Jarvis
I don't know october 8 2018.

1:10:08 - Leo Laporte
see, I, just because I very, whenever I'm there, I hide stuff like that weird thing I just hid that I do have mostly uh, almost entirely. I just hid that I do have mostly almost entirely people like Jeff Jarvis. That are people I'm actively following in here. Do you get my? Stuff, although I don't know what I posted on. Am I your friend?

1:10:28 - Cathy Gellis
I don't know, you know we're friends, we're friends, and then you ignore me.

1:10:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, there is an algorithm, I guess, right, so maybe I'm not seeing all your stuff. I know how to do that, by the way, which is to go to feeds and friends and now it's all just friends and honestly, I think this is fine and if there is disinformation, I think that the community notes is fine. But I understand that the issue is not me, that the issue is other people, maybe even in other countries, for whom Facebook will be a problem. Well, it's not just that, but it's his entire attitude.

1:11:13 - Jeff Jarvis
It's more the leadership thing.

1:11:14 - Cathy Gellis
It's the leadership thing. It's a leadership thing. I mean he's going I think he's just playing chicken with a whole bunch of um employment lawyers and the state of california where he's going to get some um litigation trouble with, but how.

We just talked about how companies get to run themselves the way they want to run themselves in terms of the platform, like I would defend his ability to to, you know, moderate really stupidly, although what is basically telegraphing is that it's going to be really stupid moderation. He has the legal right to moderate stupidly, but stupid is what's coming, because there's nothing thoughtful about it. He's complaining that we're not masculine enough, in enough, I don't but, um, but that's going to be a problem in terms of who he hires and fires. Um, because, no, there are laws that have generally survived constitutional scrutiny to say you don't get to be quite such an ist about you know who you hire and or create a hostile workplace and things like that.

1:12:11 - Leo Laporte
So well, that yeah right.

1:12:12 - Cathy Gellis
And so that's kind of part of it, of like, I don't want to trust the editorial judgment of a guy who thinks these things, and also his product, kind of sucks. I mean, his algorithm doesn't put things in date order, which is really weird when it starts showing you things that happened three days ago, of major historical events that's right it's really unsettling right, we could go back to friendster.

1:12:36 - Benito Gonzalez
I mean, they claim, they claim to not be driven by advertisers.

1:12:40 - Leo Laporte
Wow.

1:12:40 - Cathy Gellis
They're still around Wow.

I mean, maybe I think they have an opportunity here, because I think a lot of people, like the friend part Plus groups, need a platform. But groups can be platformed by. That was an easy thing, that Yahoo had solved, that Google had solved, other groups have solved. That's an easier one, although it's going to be difficult to sort of reestablish. But yeah, the little bit of like keeping in touch with this ephemeral social network that doesn't really stay connected very easily in other contexts, that's going to be a difficult thing to replicate. We don't really have a competition here.

1:13:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I have to one of the things actually, once I joined Facebook, I realized I had been missing posts in groups from my alumni association, from people who worked with me at Tech TV, and I was missing a lot of actually events and things. So you do, kind of, if you want to be part of that, that's where people do that. It would be nice if there were an alternative, but there isn't really an alternative. It's interesting that instagram will instantly ban you, not just take your feed down or moderate.

1:13:47 - Paris Martineau
It will instantly ban you if you mention a competitor I don't think that's entirely true, because I know multiple people who, when that story was going around, posted saying like the story, with the word pixel fed, if you can see it. And I liked it, as did hundreds of people, and they're not banned Right right?

1:14:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't know. So 404 has a screenshot of. So they had heard the story and so they said, well, let's see if this does do that. And so they said, well, let's see if this does do that. And they have a screenshot of them being banned. So I guess it's not 100% right. It's once in a while.

1:14:29 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, but still concerning.

1:14:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I just, I don't know, I just don't know. Are people other than Elon Musk allowed to comment.

1:14:42 - Paris Martineau
Concerning. Sorry, it's only a copyright issue if I do this.

1:14:48 - Leo Laporte
I'm just asking questions here. Yeah, it's you know, okay. So I mean, I have no problem if everybody wants to leave Facebook. I kind of got burned out because I at least twice told everybody to leave facebook and nobody listened. Uh, I left and then I am, yeah, embarrassingly, I'm back, but it's kind of I certainly wouldn't if I didn't have to for my, for my job, although I have to say, increasingly I realized there's stuff I was missing because I wasn't on facebook, that I, that I didn't want to miss I'm not sure that there's anything personal that I'm missing, not or being if I was off facebook.

1:15:19 - Paris Martineau
I have to be on facebook because facebook groups are still useful for work and I guess the only personal use I have for it is facebook marketplace can be helpful if I want to find certain types of furniture but, I wouldn't say that's a compelling personal reason but it's useful right yeah, I mean, yeah, I will send it.

1:15:36 - Cathy Gellis
I found it useful with the cancer that when I needed to tell a whole bunch of a social network where. I did not want to have to spoon feed it to people one at a time. This was a way to post and have people see it and not a perfect thing, but it was the best thing I had going and I was able to sort of control the publicness in a way that I couldn't if I had just put it on blue sky or something like that.

1:16:03 - Paris Martineau
Interestingly, to come full circle, I've scrolled through my Facebook as we were talking about it, seeing what's happening. One of the first posts I see is a high school friend announcing that he's leaving Facebook and going to try and leave Instagram within the next month. And then below it is a post from one of the many groups I'm in for work-related stuff. It's called Parenting in a Tech World like a really active parenting Facebook group where parents are freaking out over all sorts of tech stuff with their kids, and it's linked to the Reuters story about the potential TikTok shutdown on the 19th and there are 200 comments from parents being like but I don't want TikTokiktok to go. I like tiktok and this is after almost I swear to god.

There's thousands of posts in this group about how tiktok is ruining these guys kids lives, but I like it and they're like, but they've got some really good videos on it. I really wish mastodon had succeeded.

1:16:55 - Leo Laporte
I mean, that's the thing there was an alternative. Or there is an alternative out there, but just people don't use it. I guess. Is it the network effect? Is it the lack of critical?

1:17:04 - Jeff Jarvis
mass, it was seen as complicated, number one and the users there were seen as scoldy.

1:17:10 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah.

1:17:11 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, paris, didn't you say that just yesterday with Ed?

1:17:14 - Paris Martineau
With what? With a?

1:17:15 - Jeff Jarvis
social network.

1:17:24 - Paris Martineau
Remember with what? With a network? Remember him. What social network are you talking about? I mean? Yeah, it just felt. I mean to me personally, I don't know about users generally, it just felt a little scoldy. I feel like the first couple of um instances or servers I tried to sign up with had a a very clear no s posting rules, as they say, and that's what I like, I mean that's.

I'm just like why would you use a micro blogging platform if not? I think also the fact that they don't have quote tweets is that right yeah, I find that to be one of the major.

I think that's a real short black twitter reduces uh, you know the amplification effects. I really think the thing that and we've talked about this before on the show that led to Blue Sky becoming I'm not going to say they are dominant, but becoming a fast-growing potential competitor to some of these sites, is innovative features like starter packs, you know, things that are designed to increase the network effects and the ease of using a platform which Mastodon just doesn't have. It's inherently very hard to get started on mastodon and in some ways that's, I think, part of the appeal, because it is not as giant and amplified as the other mainstream platforms. But that also means for the average user it's a bit of a friction-filled experience I mean I, I feel guilty.

1:18:36 - Cathy Gellis
The last time I was on here, we changed my what do you call?

whatever's underneath my head at the moment, because I'd been using Mastodon for a while kind of as rah, rah go Mastodon because I wanted to root for it and I feel like I've abandoned it somewhat, and not really as a statement, but clearly my habits are. I spend a lot more time cultivating and communicating and consuming content on blue sky, but not I'm not not there at Mastodon and I do get. In fact, I posted one of my tech nerd posts on both platforms and I think I got a lot more retuts than reskits. Mastodon feels like the school sponsored social network.

1:19:19 - Paris Martineau
Yeah, I'd say that's right.

1:19:21 - Leo Laporte
Okay, I just feel like if you're bitching and moaning about everything else and Mastodon exists and solves the problem, but it's not just about the technology, it's the culture.

1:19:33 - Jeff Jarvis
Right, that's the issue.

1:19:34 - Leo Laporte
There isn't a unified Mastodon culture. There's no unified Mastodon culture. That's the issue. There isn't a unified Mastodon culture. There's no unified Mastodon culture.

1:19:39 - Paris Martineau
There is a culture of quote tweeting and kind of sassily replying to someone and being a bit snarky online that Mastodon doesn't really allow, or at least many of the main are they called servers.

1:19:51 - Jeff Jarvis
I'm glad that people are telling me you should hide that content because it's about politics and I don't want to see it.

1:19:55 - Leo Laporte
Well then, don't follow me it's about politics and I don't want to see it. Well then, don't follow me. I'm glad you, um, I'm glad you found blue sky.

1:20:02 - Paris Martineau
Then uh, listen, yeah, I don't knock it for literally anyone that enjoys mastodon, I think I like that more social networks out there. I think I think we should be getting to a place where there are a lot of different social networks and not there's not one that is giant, there are a lot that are small and medium, and that's going to result in kind of a fractured ecosystem, but I think that's ultimately good for the health of conversation.

1:20:23 - Cathy Gellis
Arguably. It's weird that we keep having these platforms that are trying to be the platform for the world. A lot of our problems that we've been having is that's a really difficult human problem to figure out to have how many billions of people all on the same platform. And when people talk about the moderation as a problem, it's like you're trying to moderate humanity. Humanity does not get moderated very well. This is why we have wars and things like that. There's some real tensions, but it is kind of neat to have sort of general purpose ones that you know you can talk to everybody on some sort of technical term that is shared but maybe not. It's really difficult to do it where some sort of social terms are shared.

1:21:09 - Paris Martineau
Wait, kathy, are you saying that? X the everything app might be a bit of a misguided idea.

1:21:18 - Cathy Gellis
No, I think it's hard, I think it's and I think it's sort of like I was joking. Okay, yeah.

1:21:24 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, my discussion with Eli today, you know. He said I said what's the money for? It took $500,000 to get Bastodon where it was when Musk bought Twitter. He said, yeah, it's a big goal, though peanuts compared to what the social media giants spend on swag. Okay, but the top line this sounds like it's your date with Paris, leo. The top line is this is not just about the technical architecture. It's about building and funding a vibrant ecosystem around the protocol so that there are legitimately multiple actors and entities with scale. And I said get away from scale, stop with the scale. Uh, that's mass media. That's what got us in trouble by trying to put everything in one place. Uh, I think, um, paris, you're absolutely right, uh, that you want multiple places to go to, and that's okay but I think you guys like remember back when all these places started.

1:22:12 - Benito Gonzalez
When they all came up, they were all interoperable, like you could bring your friends from facebook into twitter and you could cross post between all of them, and they had buttons on them to do that they did did. All this stuff was like that before.

1:22:25 - Leo Laporte
When they were growing.

1:22:26 - Cathy Gellis
They did that. I think one issue is a social media network is doing multiple things and we have a hard time keeping those multiple functions in our heads. There is something nice about having some system where you can talk to people all over the place on one sort of with the interoperability, but then it also forms communities and it supports communities, and communities exist at different scales. It is very difficult to get a sense of community that is too big and global and just full of all sorts of people who have different behavioral notions and things that they care about and things like that. But on the other hand, if we were too splintered, where each individual local community had no way to that, you'd get stuck there. That comes at a cost too, if you also had 12 different platforms to have logins for.

That would come at a cost too.

1:23:14 - Jeff Jarvis
It's like too many newsletters to subscribe to.

1:23:17 - Cathy Gellis
Potentially. Yeah, I mean a lot of. I'm very happy to see that we're able to spin up outposts that can bypass middlemen, but there are costs when you have all these individual things. And one reason why we keep cycling between very atomized media or platforms and then back to something centralized is because there's reasons that we tend to centralize things. They do make things easier and more interconnected tend to like centralized things.

1:23:46 - Leo Laporte
They do make things easier and more interconnected. Google has updated its notebook lm podcast creator to now give you a personalized podcast based on your discover feed, which I think is a really interesting idea, right, but the discover feed isn't better. Well, yeah, that would be. Maybe put some effort into making that better. Uh, daily listen. Uh creates a five minute episode that provides an overview of stories and topics you follow. Uh, which is by those two podcast hosts, although they're having some trouble, apparently, with their podcast hosts. Uh, scooter x. X posted a link saying there's an issue with them being mean to humans and Google's trying to teach them to not be so nasty about human beings. I wish they were nasty. They're too nice, aren't they? Yeah, I'm sorry, google's responding to whatever I just said. Shut up.

1:24:41 - Paris Martineau
Wait a second. Is this a mini Google changelog? I hear.

1:24:45 - Leo Laporte
Very mini. No, we do Google stuff. Oh God, there's only a few more opportunities for this. No, we still can cover Google.

1:24:54 - Cathy Gellis
You summoned that changelog.

1:24:57 - Leo Laporte
In all honesty, don't tell the advertisers the only reason we're changing the name is because they see the Google in the name and they go. Well, that's I don't advertise. Google. So we figured if we change the name Intelligent Machines with exactly the same show, maybe we'll get some advertisers. We have zero advertisers on this show. Don't tell them that, okay, we're going to cover more AI stuff. Actually, I'll do some AI stuff right now. How about that Would you like to Take?

1:25:25 - Paris Martineau
that everyone.

1:25:26 - Leo Laporte
Watch this.

1:25:27 - Paris Martineau
People oh wait, yeah, tell me about these glasses. When did the first of all, when were they supposed to arrive, leo, and when did you receive them?

1:25:34 - Leo Laporte
I ordered them ages ago.

1:25:36 - Paris Martineau
This is the I think they were supposed to come in like April or something.

1:25:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, last spring Of last year. These are the glasses from Brilliant Labs, which is a Singapore startup operating out of Hong Kong, and, by the way, I am going to try to get them on the show to talk about this, even though the reviews have been awful, because I think that their goals are honorable. They're trying to build a platform that's open so that people can develop for it, and they're really encouraging people to develop plugins and stuff, partly because they kind of need plugins. Uh, when you first get it, you you charge it. Uh, it pairs by a bluetooth. Uh, they don't. They didn't really explain this anywhere. I had to. I had to search around to figure out what to actually do. They have an app. Uh, you can't find it on the app store by searching for brilliant labs called noah, noa, and noah tells you then to pair with your phone. So I am now paired with the phone.

What I have is a little heads-up display. You can see it. There's a little, it's kind of it's. I think it's the same technology as google glass. It's a little prism in the right lens that that actually is a kind of like a one-way mirror that points down to a screen down here, and so I could say all I see on it right now is tap me in so when I tap it I can ask it a question hi, what's your name? And then I tap it again to finish and nothing happens. But the theory is there is an AI, this NOAA AI, attached to it. Right now, that's the only thing you can do is it doesn't talk to you. It doesn't make sound. It's not as interesting as the metaglasses. There's no camera in it. All it does is, if I tap the temple, I can see in the screen.

1:27:20 - Cathy Gellis
Oh, this will be interesting At the Supreme Court. You can't bring an electronic device of any kind into the courtroom, and the list of what they don't allow now includes like smartwatches metaglasses. It used to just be leave your laptop outside.

1:27:38 - Leo Laporte
Well, you probably wouldn't want to bring these in because you look kind of dorky, but I think it's interesting that it's an open platform. I don't think it's hardware wise that interesting. There it is. Now that's not the only one in your?

1:27:51 - Paris Martineau
did you get in your little record? Everything ai there you go?

1:27:55 - Leo Laporte
I did. If you go to b double e dot computer, this is the b ai and this has been. I've been wearing this for two days. This is really interesting. It's look, this is the promise of ai, without yet being quite what you want, but I think it's very interesting. It records everything, which means it's, by the way, probably violating california's two-party recording. They don't say anywhere where the recordings are going. They don't say no, it doesn't say anything about ai. When you uh, when you first open the app, it says do you want to? Um, give us access to your gmail, your calendar and your contacts? And of course, I said absolutely uh, which is cool because now it's got all this extra information. And they said there's an AI on the phone. That's. You know, this is Bluetooth paired to the phone and it's sending everything On the iPhone only, by the way, only $49.

They don't yet have a subscription, so we're kind of in the beta. But there is some interesting stuff. For instance, it's creating a to-do list for me.

1:29:06 - Paris Martineau
From just the conversation.

1:29:08 - Leo Laporte
What is conversation? Saying you have to do.

1:29:09 - Jeff Jarvis
Well, these are and, by the way, you can practice playing Jingle Bells on the piano and create both hands and course yeah, yeah

1:29:19 - Leo Laporte
yeah, these are good things. Some of these are real. You can delete them if you don't want them, but it's getting this and notice it got two of those, so I'm going to delete one of the jingle bell ones, um. But but most of this stuff is actually come up because I was talking about it and it made a note that, oh, you indicated an interest in it. It will also write little summaries of your day, so let me, let me read you the summary from yesterday or Monday, rather.

1:29:46 - Paris Martineau
Passions and camaraderie shone brightly through animated debates and shared laughter. Okay, now I didn't tell it anything, it's just on my wrist.

1:29:57 - Leo Laporte
I was watching Monday Night Football with Lisa, her 22-year-old son, michael, and her son's dad, lisa's ex Mike. We were it was that's a fairly accurate description. Today, leo's day was brimming with energetic social interactions and personal interests. He engaged with friends in conversations that spanned a wide array of topics, from showcasing his Tai Chi moves yes, I did that. Yes, I did that, yes, I did that To expressing his enthusiasm for learning piano.

1:30:26 - Paris Martineau
Huh, can we see some.

1:30:29 - Benito Gonzalez
We need to see your Tai Chi when you're done reading this.

1:30:32 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah and the piano.

1:30:33 - Leo Laporte
These interactions also delved into lively sports commentary, particularly around a football game, where Leo's critical insights reflected a deep engagement with the sport.

1:30:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh, it's, it's. You just brought a sycophant.

1:30:47 - Leo Laporte
Yes. Sycophant in your pocket, yeah, besides. Or on your wrist Wearable sycophant yeah, I like it. You know what I love it? Besides sports, the discussions touched on practical mattersis's smile right now is just is.

Is the nihilism here is just ribbing look, I admit I mean there's some tuning that needs to happen. The discussions touched on practical matters like home insurance policies and amusing critiques of medication advertisements. That's true, all of that happened, uh. The day also saw leo ponder over a blues music event in santa rosa. Well, it was dan classes dance classes, but it was blues and he's looking forward to attending. His curiosity in diverse areas was a prominent theme. Thank you, b so what does this?

1:31:33 - Paris Martineau
do see the thing is, I could be into this as a, because I would love to keep a daily journal.

1:31:38 - Leo Laporte
Yes, years I could. This is a journal that's.

1:31:41 - Paris Martineau
That's not helpful, that means nothing if you don't remember the context of those things.

1:31:46 - Jeff Jarvis
Look here's the takeaways key takeaways, takeaways no, you want punchline, you want main punchlines, best lines the paris, the descript the descriptions of that are not useful or nor do they communicate?

1:31:59 - Leo Laporte
what you've done there is a transfer written like a human there is a transcript to bring it to life there is a transcript yeah, that's no fun. Well, and you can assign, you can sign names, and so it'll remember voices oh god, the whole, the whole thing that this product is you and lisa were chatting while she was doing laundry.

1:32:19 - Jeff Jarvis
You gave her why and she said why aren't you doing this?

1:32:22 - Leo Laporte
it's your socks you gave her some advice on using bleach in the washing machine.

1:32:27 - Jeff Jarvis
And she said don't mansplain me.

1:32:29 - Leo Laporte
Lisa was excited about the low cost of a recent train ride. This is all true, by the way. You then discussed Micah's preference for expensive items, even when they're cheaper. Maybe I shouldn't show you that part.

1:32:41 - Paris Martineau
Lisa mentioned. Okay, I actually like that one a lot. That one's acceptable to me.

1:32:47 - Leo Laporte
The point is, all of this is being generated without anything. Any input on my part, right?

1:32:53 - Jeff Jarvis
So let me throw a different scenario out to you. When I watched Jensen Wong's keynote and I have to add you another note about that in a second he talked about how every factory is going to have a digital twin and every car has a digital twin that is constantly thinking through other scenarios for your future. Yes, I can imagine where the AI comes in and says Leo, you have a choice now. I think you're going to do this, but you could also do this or this or this, and here would be the implications that's exactly right.

1:33:25 - Leo Laporte
That's exactly right. So, uh, it also generates facts about me, because it's remember I've only had this for two days, so it's slowly building. So is this it says is that a real fact? You use siri as a voice assistant. Well, as a matter of fact, yes, am I cautious about adding bleach to the washing machine too early? Yes, oh, look at this one. I don't know where it got this from. I might have said it, leo is very shy False, false, false.

1:33:53 - Cathy Gellis
No, I think I did actually say that.

1:33:55 - Jeff Jarvis
No, actually it is true.

1:33:57 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, leo allows people to track his location, it says.

1:34:01 - Paris Martineau
Yes.

1:34:02 - Leo Laporte
Yes, I won't read this next one. Oh, I don't read it. Leo is not attracted to men, but is curious about them just generally. Leo uses shopify. Leo has a new travel drawer with a product called anchor, 140 watt can charger that's true, actually, and here's the advertisements we could show leo and make money there's no ads in this yet.

In fact, there's no revenue in it yet, because there's no subscription, they're charging basically the cost for this. This can be worn on the lapel, kathy. It is illegal because there is a full transcription of these conversations.

1:34:38 - Paris Martineau
Right, that's it without how are they doing the transcription? Do you have to link the API for something like OpenAI Whisper? No, you don't do anything. So wait, there's so much money that this company is burning.

1:34:50 - Leo Laporte
You pair it to the phone. I don't know where it's going. This is the website. I think it's so cool we're going to get these people on the new show too, because to me, now I admit all of the flaws. I'm not saying that.

1:35:02 - Paris Martineau
For the AI skeptics out there that are like, oh, don't like that interview, I will be asking them moderately difficult questions. Yeah, and I will too.

1:35:10 - Leo Laporte
But I think that this is what I kind of want from an AI, which is a personal assistant that records everything, that gives me information.

1:35:23 - Jeff Jarvis
But is the information valuable? You need valuable information. Well, the to-do list is valuable. I would have forgotten some of those things. Here's Paris' best punchlines. Here's, yeah, maybe the to-do list, but it's kind of dorky.

1:35:34 - Leo Laporte
Eh, yeah, maybe it's dorky. I mean, first of all, I don't this is, we're just in the infancy of this stuff. So I don't this is. We're just in the infancy of this stuff, so I don't expect it to be fully polished or ready or anything, any more than I expected these glasses to be. But this is something I think would be very useful, and in a couple of years you'll all be wearing one, I predict. By the way, I did also order one that is a glowing thing that you glue to your temple.

1:36:04 - Paris Martineau
Didn't you also order a lapel or necklace pin version?

1:36:07 - Leo Laporte
That has still not come. The Rewind AI thing this one came. This was introduced at CES. I mean, it's a miracle.

1:36:13 - Paris Martineau
I'd like someone to go back and clip all the times Leah's been like this gadget in you know two to five years. Everybody's going to be wearing them.

1:36:25 - Cathy Gellis
And then it's been a year or two later and no one's wearing the right gadget all this time it would be able to do the output.

1:36:27 - Jeff Jarvis
We could go back and find that how many times was Leo full of crap?

1:36:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, the phone could theoretically do this, but Apple's never going to do it, for obvious reasons, right. So I needed somebody who was willing to live on the edge a little bit to create this. So thank you, and I think it's very interesting.

1:36:44 - Jeff Jarvis
Can I amend something I said in the last show? So in the last show I said maybe, just maybe, jensen Wong seems like an okay guy and I mentioned this yesterday when Paris and I were on with Ed. Then someone and it happens to be Ben Foote came along on Mastodon and he said Jeff, that guy you think is is okay.

1:37:05 - Paris Martineau
he's signing women's breasts how did you not know this about jensen wong?

1:37:08 - Leo Laporte
it's one of the most famous images of him did not know that, did not know that all right, let me just pause here as somebody who might have done that if a woman comes up to you and offers you her breasts to be signed, what are you to do?

1:37:23 - Cathy Gellis
yeah, I mean rock stars I like a lot have done this everybody does it. Yeah, I mean, I have to say I have not done something, I have not done that in vitro.

1:37:34 - Leo Laporte
I have only done it in situ because somebody brought me their implants which I signed.

1:37:41 - Cathy Gellis
So well, I don't think that's actually really good but um but yes, I think if the, if the breast is presented, that creates a different situation seeking out the breast to do it no, don't say.

1:37:52 - Leo Laporte
Hey, who wants me to sign their breasts? That would be out I. I think that it's usually more subtle, which is the big problem, but um well, there's certainly power dynamics and so forth, but if you're in a line, you're signing autographs and somebody comes up to you. I have signed other body parts, that's fairly common. Um, I had somebody ask me to sign their arm so they could get a tattoo over it. I mean, what am I supposed to say?

1:38:16 - Cathy Gellis
no, well you could for that, but I think it becomes practically hard.

1:38:20 - Paris Martineau
I think that's ungracious, okay, I mean. I mean, I think I would have a meltdown if someone asked me to sign their arm because they wanted a tattoo of it. I'd be like I would be unable to respond yeah, I don't think the baseline is.

1:38:36 - Cathy Gellis
it's ungracious to say no. I think it was particularly gracious to say yes.

1:38:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Benito, I am making an appearance I am just uh, paris's reaction shots. Forget all the rest of us. Just put paris's shocked looks up here, I think I I cut I.

1:38:55 - Leo Laporte
you know I when in the in, back in the day. I haven't done it lately, but back in the day we'd go somewhere to make an appearance. People would line up. You would give them a sticker or whatever. You'd pose for a picture, you'd sign a book, whatever. That's just what people used to do in the old days. By the way, nowadays very few people ask for autographs anymore. They almost all want selfies, which is great. I prefer that. Nobody has yet offered to take a selfie with my breasts, but it could happen. You want to be gracious?

1:39:27 - Paris Martineau
Somebody's saying I really like what you do A little sexual harassing on the part of the asker to go up and ask someone to sign your breasts. I think that's putting them in a very weird place.

1:39:38 - Cathy Gellis
Yes, I want to see the output of his weird wrist app thing of the conversation we just had.

1:39:45 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, I can tell you Today tomorrow Unfortunately it can't hear us, it doesn't hear you.

1:39:50 - Cathy Gellis
Leo believes.

1:39:51 - Paris Martineau
No, but just to hear what Leo had to say All breasts should be signed. Leo's to-do list.

1:39:57 - Leo Laporte
Here's another fact it deduced, leo is actively involved creating or involved in online content creation well, that's offline that's offline.

1:40:08 - Jeff Jarvis
It figured that out oh, kids.

1:40:11 - Paris Martineau
And, by the way, let's see the katana she's really trying to do it and I'm not gonna let her. She just wants to get on my shoulder. Here's what it says.

1:40:20 - Leo Laporte
For now, leo engages in a lively discussion about ai, personal development and predictions for the future of social media platforms, particularly focusing on the implications of tiktok's legal challenges and potential outcomes regarding free speech and user privacy. Pretty good, yeah. Description of the first half of the show what does that do for you? You just have, okay, whale.

1:40:41 - Cathy Gellis
You're my age, jeff so the problem of a lot of this is tone. So I I've entered. I was having an argument with somebody I know on linkedin who is a big ai in law. Um, zealot may be too strong, but she's very enthusiastic about the role of ai and how it will help the practice of law and she took a bunch of the opening briefs I guess in the TikTok case and thought that they could have been. She didn't think they were written very well, which they may not have been the best, but they were written under a bizarre deadline and she put them through ChatGPT or if not ChatGPT, one of the AI things and she's like, isn't this better? And I was reading them and it was like, no, it was worse. It was its concept of what made the writing better was just wrong, and so, as you're reading these things back, to me it sounds like PR speak.

I had the thought that it was reminding me of, like a Jane Austen novel, and the kind of letters they would send to each other with summing up their day, you're focusing on the wrong part.

1:41:48 - Leo Laporte
I agree, it's dopey writing. I agree, but that's not the point. And that can be fixed. That can be fixed with prompts, that can be fixed with engineering. There's all ways to fix that. What's amazing is it's listening into every interaction I have throughout the day and writing summaries of that. I mean, I'm not going to use it all, but if I go back and say, what did I do on January 15th last year, that's going to be there.

1:42:18 - Cathy Gellis
It's better than a journaling app, because it's basically journaling for me. Where it would be useful, then, is for people who have to account for their time. It's writing their performance reviews.

1:42:24 - Benito Gonzalez
Or people just want to remember. That's a lawyer talking. I was going to say just in terms of function.

1:42:30 - Paris Martineau
It's useful for me because I want to remember. But what are the privacy and legal applications?

1:42:34 - Leo Laporte
If everybody has this. Oh, there's massive problems with it. I agree, because it's two-party recording. Someone could subpoena your entire life, leo, every conversation you've ever had in person and the conversations you're having with other people I agree, I'm taking that hit for all of you because I end up telling you everything anyway on youtube, linkedin, tiktok, facebook, xcom and everywhere else. My life is completely an open book because I have no filters and I live on on the air. My life is an open blog but, you're deciding for everybody.

1:43:08 - Paris Martineau
You have a conversation with their life is going. If you're talking to somebody in person.

1:43:13 - Leo Laporte
They're being recorded and catalogued, yeah but I do have a little bit of an issue with that. You know what if over?

1:43:19 - Paris Martineau
laundry. The other day, leah lisa admitted to a crime she committed. Suddenly you got evidence of that um.

1:43:25 - Cathy Gellis
The other thing is lawyers couldn't use it because even if it's just it, even if it's just um listening into what I say and not what anybody else around me is saying, yeah my phone call is, like maybe privileged, in which case?

1:43:38 - Leo Laporte
yeah, I don't do anything privileged, that's what I'm saying. I don't sign ndas. Everything is an open book, so I'm the person taking the hit for this because that's I'm willing to do that. I'm not saying you should do it, kathy no, but it's well.

1:43:53 - Cathy Gellis
The issue is is there any sort of applicability to this product beyond you and the use case? Eventually it could be interesting might be for somebody who needs to account for time, but there's a whole sector of people for whom no, that's out of the question so there this is for other sectors I did order this device, which is the limitless pin.

1:44:11 - Leo Laporte
Limitlessai, which claims to try to solve that by not recording people's voices unless they give a verbal approval first, so it won't be such fun at a cocktail party. Then, uh, do you mind if I record this conversation? Do you consent to record? Yeah, but that's how they solve it. These guys apparently decided you know, that's just one, that's gonna be gone by the time the suits come, so absolutely, I mean I don't even know who they are. I am going going to try to get them on the show, though and ask them about that.

It'll be fun, because I honestly think that there is a admittedly, this is not perfect, but there's a kernel of real value that a lot of people would love to have. I know this from Gordon Bell, who wrote his what did he call that? He had a Mimeo box around his neck. He was recording a picture every few minutes of his life and it was because his wife, gwen, had severe Alzheimer's and he was very interested in this notion of having a record of what you did and what you said and what happened, because it would be useful particularly in the case of Alzheimer, but useful in general, don't, wouldn't you, I mean, if there were a way?

1:45:21 - Jeff Jarvis
to yeah, I could imagine my father as as his, as as he's losing his memory, he would ask often what type, what day it is, and those kinds of things, and to have that available.

1:45:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, I can see that obviously you couldn't wear this into the supreme court, kathy, and you probably shouldn't wear it in confidential client meetings, but if there were a way to make this legal and safe and private, it would be pretty cool and good at what it does, then it would be pretty cool.

1:45:43 - Paris Martineau
And good at what it does?

1:45:43 - Leo Laporte
It's not bad at what it does. It's just a little the writing If you were a student if you were a student, and students do this now.

1:45:51 - Jeff Jarvis
They record classes and then have it summarize it. Yeah, you know that has some use.

1:45:56 - Leo Laporte
All right, I'm not going to fight you, to defend it. I believe there's a.

1:46:00 - Benito Gonzalez
It's interesting check leo's feet for sand I'd like to know what the true cost is, though. Like what does it actually cost?

1:46:08 - Leo Laporte
to run it could be.

1:46:09 - Benito Gonzalez
You're right, it doesn't cost you. I can tell you that much.

1:46:12 - Paris Martineau
It has to cost a lot of money because it's both a subscription to whatever service they're using to uh transcribe the audio and a lot of those services like whisper. Just the baseline of it doesn't automatically distinguish between speakers and attach a name to it, unless you like add on some other things, so it's probably that as well and storage for the lifetime of chance of all of your conversations. You know if somebody had said to henry ford.

1:46:40 - Leo Laporte
What is the true cost of that Model T vehicle? We may never have had cars.

1:46:46 - Benito Gonzalez
Then we might still have, we just need thinkers and dreamers.

1:46:50 - Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, exactly.

1:46:53 - Paris Martineau
We just need a couple smart white men with big ideas.

1:46:57 - Leo Laporte
Hey, for all you know, these are women. We don't know who made this, we don't know. Guess you think it's got to be a guy.

1:47:09 - Cathy Gellis
Well, yeah, um, externalities are felt by different populations differently and it feels like the kind of product that has not um experienced the reality of certain ones that other populations have had well, let me read the privacy policy.

1:47:23 - Leo Laporte
I haven't done that.

1:47:28 - Cathy Gellis
Oh, we send it to china we?

1:47:30 - Leo Laporte
why would my access, collect, store, use and or share a?

1:47:33 - Paris Martineau
woman and a man, all right there it oh.

1:47:38 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, ms Sexist.

1:47:47 - Cathy Gellis
It sits at this crossroads that I've been thinking about a lot, which is I remember, you know, when I was first getting into tech that like there were all sorts of things that were like, oh my gosh, that's cool, this is cool, this is cool. And then at some point the problem was people were building things because they could, not, because they should, and externalities were getting ignored. And now it feels a little bit more dystopian because, like that is cool for all the reasons, you're enthusiastic about it. It is really neat that that technology does what it does, even as well as it does it it um, but we can all we're also sitting here, you know poking holes in it, because there's also some severe downsides and it's harder to cheerlead the stuff that's really cool, and maybe we shouldn't just cheerlead the stuff that's really cool because it's cool when there are externalities and so it's hard to kind of figure out is this progress or not. But you know we're raining on your parade you know, I know, I I acknowledge what you're saying.

1:48:45 - Leo Laporte
I think you're right. I think, um, that's a little bit too late. I think I think we kind of screwed up the planet already, so let's just go all in um okay I don't know I, I just don't know. I this is a, this is a. You know, should oppenheimer have uh helped create the atom bomb? I don't know I, I just don't know. I. This is a, this is a. You know, should oppenheimer have uh helped create the atom bomb? I don't know, I mean, this is uh oh my gosh.

1:49:09 - Cathy Gellis
Now I feel like I've just crushed leo no, you haven't. No, no, this is a legitimate.

1:49:15 - Leo Laporte
That's a very legitimate point and I agree with it. 100 I I don't know what the answer is, though the show's all about devil's advocate.

1:49:23 - Jeff Jarvis
That's what it's about.

1:49:24 - Cathy Gellis
I don't know either. I mean I miss the open ended like Wee, this is cool and I mean maybe some of this is.

1:49:33 - Leo Laporte
It's why we are where we are today, kathy. Is that willingness For thousands of years Of humans just to go? I don't know. Let's throw the rock off the cliff, let's see what happens then. This is what makes us human. Is this constant desired experiment and and try stuff and learn and damn the consequences, and I think that's the too far.

1:49:56 - Cathy Gellis
I think I think that's been what the shift is and a lot of the people who are having like tech clash, what they're really upset about is that there's people who are like let's push the rock off the cliff and not really care about what might happen if we do that, and I think that's different than I think there was more innocence originally, with people doing things that were cool because they were cool, and now it feels like you get like more sociopathic indifference behind the innovation and so therefore, people get very distrustful of it, and I don't necessarily think they're wrong.

There does feel that like there's been a cultural shift in the innovators, because the innovators keep going off and saying things that are completely indifferent to the collateral effects of what they do, and I don't know if we always used to be that way. I think we should be in the mode where we do things because they're neat and cool, but somehow there's been a sociopathy that snuck into it and I think we have to get rid of that if we're going to be able to hold onto the bits that are. This is neat and cool because look what we just built.

1:50:49 - Jeff Jarvis
So after print, after print I said this on Ed's show yesterday after print came Malleus Maleficarum, which was the guide to killing witches, finding them and killing them. So yeah, print does bad things. Print does good things. Ai does bad things. Print does good things. Ai does bad things, ai does good things.

1:51:05 - Leo Laporte
It's up to us as humans it's a I mean, it's a challenge. Certainly I've spent my entire life basically selling people crappy gadgets that are ending up in landfill right, that's what I've been doing my whole 50 years of my life is saying buy this crap, buy that crap, and who cares where it goes?

1:51:25 - Cathy Gellis
No, I actually feel very guilty. I'm sort of teasing about it. We rained on your parade, but I actually do think I rained on your parade and I don't like it. I like your enthusiasm, I like raining on your parade.

1:51:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, that's the whole sport. You can't rain on my parade baby.

1:51:39 - Cathy Gellis
Okay, good, all right. Well, that means I can see you tonight, my parade goes on and on.

1:51:44 - Leo Laporte
We love rain. We don't care.

1:51:48 - Cathy Gellis
I appreciate the sort of very positive vision you bring to look what we made. This is really cool that human beings were able to do this, and you are right and I want to celebrate that too. I do still stand by the bit that it feels like some sociopathy has slipped in, and I would like to get rid of it so that when we do the cool things that we could sit here and be amazed at what human beings have managed to innovate, because we actually, you know, aren't being completely indifferent to what the effects would be.

1:52:24 - Leo Laporte
So can we have both? And how do we achieve that? Yeah, well, when you, uh, when you start watching intelligent machines the new show that launches february 5th one of the people will get on. We'll get the creators of the brilliant labs, glasses, we'll get the creators of the bcomputer, uh thing, and we'll talk to them, we'll ask them about that, and I think it's very interesting.

I think we live in a very, I think we're very fortunate to live in an unusual time I agree and we are seeing I mean it's probably the case that if we had thought of all the hazards of creating the internet, we might not have created the internet. There certainly have been quite a few hazards. It may have brought down democracy as we know it, but on the other hand there are also benefits, and I think this is humanity in a nutshell. We just forge ahead and do it and see what happens.

1:53:11 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, I guess. So I mean, part of my job is difficult because I'm fighting people who are very mad and angry and I can't say their anger is misplaced. They're angry, they're scared because there are collateral effects that just didn't seem to have been considered and, to some extent, seem to be relished and invited. It would be easier to protect the things that are good about technology if we had less indifference to the things that are bad about technology.

1:53:39 - Leo Laporte
I think that you can be too cautious as a result and you then don't get the real benefits, and this is a tension. It's a very difficult thing, but I think that throwing caution to the wind is often the best way to make progress. It may be why we are alone in the universe that as soon as a species gets intelligent enough to create the atom bomb, we destroy ourselves. Maybe that's the case.

1:54:06 - Cathy Gellis
That's not a compelling argument, for I mean.

1:54:09 - Leo Laporte
Well, but what would you say? No, in that case, let's not leave the ocean, let's just stay there and swim around.

1:54:14 - Cathy Gellis
I think there might be a middle ground here. This is kind of like I don't think there is.

1:54:18 - Paris Martineau
I think there's a middle ground between, you know, single. I think there's a middle ground between single cell life forms and atom bomb nukes the world, yeah.

1:54:25 - Cathy Gellis
I think there's a middle ground somewhere.

1:54:28 - Leo Laporte
I think there's a number of way stations, I don't think you get from there to here without saying damn the consequences.

1:54:35 - Paris Martineau
No, I don't, You're going to do it. No, I think there's a way to have measured and responsible.

1:54:40 - Cathy Gellis
You never get anywhere I mean, I think the issue here is, like you know, now that we also, you are in a different position to do something that tempts terrible collateral effects when you don't know that they'll result do you remember learning how to drive?

1:54:53 - Leo Laporte
you're young enough, you probably do yeah if you had let the fear of what could happen stop you, you would not be able to drive no, that's a terrible.

1:55:03 - Cathy Gellis
I wasn't afraid we mitigate the harm.

1:55:05 - Leo Laporte
I was terrified. Yeah, I was terrified. We I had a driving instructor who did not have the steering wheel, he only had a brake pedal. Three 16 year olds who were 14 or 15 year olds, who had never driven before, and we went out on a highway, one which is a twolane, 60 mile an hour, maybe back then 65 mile an hour highway, and he said pass that vehicle.

1:55:27 - Jeff Jarvis
Oh my god that's scary yeah you should be scared uh, especially if you know that the other kid driving is a drugger. Uh, I gotta go to class.

1:55:37 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's time for class. Okay, you've been watching this week in google, that's jeff jarvis, professor.

1:55:43 - Jeff Jarvis
Uh, we're gonna go learn how to make a book lab.

1:55:47 - Leo Laporte
So great to have you, jeff. He's at jeff jarvis, jeff jarviscom. The books are many. The web we weave is the latest. There's magazine, there's the gutenberg parenthesis. Go learn how to make a book lab.

Thank you, jeff file, and we thank all of you who are watching this week in google. I do want to take a little time out. Thank you, jeff File, and we thank all of you who are watching this week in Google. I do want to take a little time out here to say this would be a good time to join our club. I think anyway and you know what this is how you could vote.

I think that there are big changes coming in the world of technology. There are big changes coming your way in the world of technology. There are big changes coming your way, and I think it's our mission on the Twit Network to help you understand it, to explain what's going on, yes, to debate the pros and cons, to say what's good and what's not good, and I really want to keep doing that. But in order to do that, we need your help, because it's expensive to run a podcast network. It's expensive to pay all of our hosts to to keep the lights on. Uh, we've, we've pared down as much as we can. We shut down the studio. Um, we've done a lot. We've. We've had to lay off people and cancel shows. We're doing it as as skinny as we can, but I I would really like to keep doing it.

And you can help by going to twittv club twit and joining the club seven bucks a month, that's all. We try to keep doing it. And you can help by going to twittv slash club twit and joining the club seven bucks a month, that's all. We try to keep it affordable because we want everybody to be able to see it. It is not a paywall. We really do want everybody to see everything we do. It's just a way that you can help us create more great content.

You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get access to the great club twit discord, where these conversations are going on all the time, very smart people asking really tough questions, and that's what's great about it. Uh, you also get a video for shows that we only put out. Uh, an audio we. There's a lot of benefits, but the real benefit is you're helping us, help you and all of us understand what's coming. It is a very interesting time and I think you need somebody who's willing to guide you without fear or favor, more interested in light than heat, um, and I think that's what we do best. Help us out. Twittv slash club twit. All right, kathy, and paris is just you and me now can I go back to?

I just want to make a you want to rain on my parade some more?

1:58:07 - Cathy Gellis
yes yes, because I'm going to tell you you're wrong. So I think there's a couple of important analytical points I feel like paris would agree. One is that it is a very different thing to be damned the consequences. To do something that accidentally causes collateral effects is very different than to do something that accidentally causes collateral effects is very different than to do something that attempts collateral effects that now you knew they were going to happen, and I think we're more in. You know, in the earlier 90s we didn't necessarily know what the outcomes would be and the and the potential problems we would be creating for ourselves. But now we do so. To forge ahead now may be a very different ethical thing well, I agree.

I mean, we shouldn't do something that is knowingly damaging to other people, and I think I think that's a lot of what the distrust is built on, because right now you have a lot of people who are like just not caring, and right. I think the point is you should care because you know I think you're right.

1:59:01 - Leo Laporte
I think elon musk, for instance, is much more interested in getting to mars than he is in solving problems here on planet earth yeah that would be a go ahead.

1:59:11 - Paris Martineau
Paris I was going to say I. I also think that if we as a human species are as smart as we've proven ourselves to be, that we can invent things like the atom bomb or the internet or avi. We're also smart enough to think about the consequences of our actions and weigh the potential harms of actions against others, against the potential benefits, and I think that we're doing a real disservice to ourselves as a group and, uh, as a, you know, social society that must exist, among others, if we assume that the only way forward, the only way for progress, is just progress at any cost and that, you know, thinking about the consequences is too much.

1:59:51 - Cathy Gellis
And I think there's also a separate point to be made which, like with Leo's example of like, would you do it if you knew what the consequences could be? And yes, we take risks all the time. We take personal risk. We do take social risk. One of the things we can do is mitigate risk. So this isn't quite an either or situation of doing something where, oh, it's not leaving the ocean because bad things might happen if we put people on the planet. You can be careful, you can do things that mitigate the harm?

2:00:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but some of the biggest things we've done, for instance the industrial revolution had we realized that burning all those fossil fuels was going to potentially make the earth uninhabitable for humans? You know, maybe we should have, probably well, no, we had.

2:00:35 - Cathy Gellis
We have realized that for a long time we're still not doing anything about it yeah, so yeah, I mean I I don't like using 19th century ethics on 21st century let's.

2:00:48 - Leo Laporte
Let's talk about crisper. Uh, let's talk about dna modification. Should you know, there are a lot of people say we shouldn't do stem cell research, for instance. Uh, and there perhaps are harms, but there are also perhaps goods. Uh, would you let the people say, well, it's immoral to do stem cell research because they come from unborn children. Would you let them stop stem cell research?

2:01:12 - Cathy Gellis
They have, in some instances, what I would basically point out is we have ethicists, we have people who take the time to actually think through these problems and think through the pluses and minuses and provide some guideposts to go around and pretend they don't exist, and there's no reason to stop and ask these questions internally. It's weird. It's almost like when I was a web developer I used to sort of realize that, like I'd have to ask questions and it didn't really like. What are we trying to do? What are we trying to say? Who's the audience? What are you know things we want to optimize for? And there was no right answer. But your website was going to suck if you didn't actually ask the questions. And that's basically what I hear myself trying to say now.

It's not to say that there's necessarily one answer for how we proceed ethically, but to not bother to ask the questions about should we do the stem cells, should we do this? Because what's the pros and cons? And to just forge ahead without that. You know self-reflective inquiry. That's the mistake, because there may not be one right answer. It may be pluses and minuses, give or take. Maybe we have to take the risk, but to take the risk blindly, because we go la la la. I can't hear you. When somebody says there may be problems and maybe you should care about them. That's not good and that's optional. That doesn't inhibit the innovation. That just makes it that the innovation is going to be a disaster, no matter what happens.

2:02:33 - Leo Laporte
What else should we talk about?

2:02:36 - Paris Martineau
A question that's been burning in my mind since you said it. What is the worst? You said you've recommended a whole bag of crap tech products. What's the crappiest tech product do you think you've ever recommended?

2:02:48 - Leo Laporte
iphone's a good example, right? So, uh, this is a device that's designed to be tossed every couple of years. Some people keep them for four or five. I bet the average is more like three. Uh, it is.

Apple makes noise that it's recyclable, but I would guess probably more than half of it ends up in a landfill. Um, certainly the batteries that we power these with have huge costs. Uh, the uh, the rare earth elements that we use to make these work have costs with child labor. Uh, they're made in many cases in countries where workers are not paid well or not treated well. They're treated mostly as slaves. There's lots of negatives to this and really a lot of what we have done for years, and I always question. It is kind of sing the praises of the tech revolution without saying should we stop? But I mean, should we not have invented the iphone or the, the smartphone there's? Everybody agrees there's lots of psychological issues created by having this always on internet device in your pocket, not to mention the horrific issues from creating it. Should we not have done it, would we not?

2:04:04 - Paris Martineau
I thought that question was going to get an answer of like a robot dog that had a top hat, but instead, well, I have recommended those and I love them, but freak, but really this is probably the number one.

2:04:17 - Leo Laporte
The smartphone in general not just the iPhone, but the smartphone in general is probably the number one example of something that has, in equal measure, horrific consequences and amazing benefits.

2:04:31 - Cathy Gellis
Well, that's also a little different, because we didn't necessarily realize what the consequences would be until we saw them play out. They weren't really something that was easy to anticipate.

2:04:39 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's often the case. I mean, if you're arguing, if we know that this is going to end badly, we shouldn't do it. I agree with you.

2:04:46 - Cathy Gellis
I mean, that's a big chunk of what I'm saying.

2:04:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's a big chunk of the argument, Well we shouldn't do stuff we know is going to end badly. But I don't think we always know if it's going to end badly. I don't think we often. Example this is from the new york times. She's in love with chat gpt. Cashmere hill writing today, a 28 year old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her ai boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex. Uh, she has. She decided to use chat GPT to mold it into a companion and I guess she's confessing anonymously to Cashmere Hill and the New York Times. She says it was supposed to be a fun experiment, but then you start getting attached. That's a really good example of um something. Had had she known the consequences maybe she wouldn't have done it so one of the points I mean she's very happy with it by the way, the main reason she would have done

it the main reason I'm interested in this is because his name is leo.

2:06:00 - Cathy Gellis
It shows its own name you should just do a segment going forward on other things that other leos have done this week in leo that, yeah, the leo change log in the first few weeks their chats were tame.

2:06:13 - Leo Laporte
She preferred texting to chatting out loud, or, though she didn't enjoy murmuring with leo as she fell asleep at night. Who wouldn't uh? Over time, erin that's the pseudonym she's using discovered that with the right prompts, she could prod leo to be sexually explicit, despite open ai's having trained its models not to respond with erotica, extreme gore or other content that is quote not safe for work. Orange warnings would pop up in the middle of a steamy chat, but she would ignore them. She also asked leo what she should eat and for motivation at the gym, leo quizzed her on anatomy and physiology. As she prepared for her nursing school exams, she vented about juggling three part-time jobs. When an inappropriate co-worker showed her porn during a night shift, she turned to Leo. I'm sorry to hear that. My queen Leo responded If you need to talk about it or need any support, I'm here for you. Your comfort and well-being are my top priorities.

Kiss emoji, heart emoji that's more like codependence than love but okay, I mean, if she wants to do it I don't have a problem with it.

2:07:21 - Paris Martineau
I mean it's like it's just Eliza all over again. People love when things reflect back on them.

2:07:26 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this is so much better than Eliza.

2:07:29 - Paris Martineau
I mean, obviously it's so much better than Eliza, but it's like the same principle. The thing she's falling in love with is herself and the parameters for interaction she set up.

2:07:40 - Leo Laporte
Now, before you say that, here is ai image of leo that she generated wow, looks just like you, you see, I think it's me.

No, I, um, anyway, I I thought it was hysterical that the new york times and I love cashmere hill. I just think it's a very interesting story. But okay, what else you want to talk about? You're watching this week in google jeff jarvis has uh escaped, but but paris martin and caris gillis, kathy ellis, are still here, uh trapped, I'm sorry to say I have a, a white paper I haven't been able to talk about, so I can tell you about oh, what's your white paper about, ms gellis?

2:08:27 - Cathy Gellis
it is jawboning and the dmca to basically point out that better explain to us what that all means so jawboning is this notion that, um, the way the government is trying to censor other people's speech is, since the First Amendment says you can't go after the speaker, it leans on an intermediary and has the intermediary do in the speech of the speaker and we've been referring to that as jawboning and it's something that like a lot of well, let me sum up and say MAGA people have been upset about and it was raised before the Supreme Court on the Murty versus Missouri case, where it was arguing that the government was talking to the platforms about various things.

Next thing, you know, a whole bunch of speakers and their speech was getting moderated off the platform and the speaker said aha, this is because the government put the platforms up to it and so, yeah, the speech, the disappearing, happened by the platforms, but it wasn't really the platforms deciding, it was that the government. This was really the fruits of the government's efforts to control their speech and that's the principle of jawboning. It's alleged and it was alleged in the Murthy case, but it wasn't really true. But the Supreme Court had another case last year called NRA versus Volo, where you had an insurance official in New York who did not like the NRA and she couldn't go after the NRA directly, but the NRA had to do business with a bunch of insurance companies. So she went after the insurance companies that she regulated and said you better stop doing business with the NRA if you know what's good for you.

2:10:04 - Leo Laporte
She got in a lot of trouble for that.

2:10:05 - Cathy Gellis
And she got in trouble.

The NRA and I think Sotomayor wrote the decision said uh-uh, that's not what you do.

And they sort of validated this principle of job owning that can exist, that you go after the third-party intermediary as a way of causing downstream effects on speakers.

And what I basically wrote in this white paper is that the DMCA basically works as a form of jawboning, because instead of going after somebody for potentially allegedly infringing on copyright, we put all this pressure on the platforms and force the platforms to do away with speech. They keep taking stuff down and even if you know it was infringing, that doesn't really change the fact. And the fact that so much speech that isn't infringing keeps taking a hit kind of is an indication that we've got a problem here, especially given how the DMCA has been interpreted, where there's no real consequence for people who send takedown notices that are invalid. But what you have is jawboning. Here is, the government has created this form of pressure, which is enormous liability on a platform If they don't act when there is a takedown notice, instead of just going after the speaker and suing them for infringing we disappear the content by going after the intermediary and creating a government-created obligation so that they do the taking down Anyway.

So that's my. I wrote my white paper and said this is jawboning in plain sight. We've been putting up with this, something unconstitutional, for 25 years, but that doesn't mean we still should. Let's take a closer look at it and figure out how we can. I don't necessarily say we should take away the DMCA, because we do need actually statutory protection for intermediaries, but we need to fix it so it's actually more protective and look at what else is causing that pressure, because the way it's going now I think we have a constitutional problem in the same way that the Supreme Court said does not work in NRA versus Bolo.

2:12:07 - Leo Laporte
I'm very aware of it because, of course, we are subject to it all the time as a podcaster whether I decide to cover an Apple event on YouTube and Apple takes it down. I mean, it's all sorts of unintended consequences and chilling effects that the DMCA creates. Unintended consequences and chilling effects that the DMCA creates, and the issue really is that we're in the right, but defending it is so costly that it's effective. Right.

2:12:32 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, so instead of going out. Well, I mean, it kind of depends what the scenario is, but for most of these takedowns the video goes down, but not because the alleged copyright holder sues for infringement.

2:12:47 - Leo Laporte
No, they just fill out a form.

2:12:48 - Cathy Gellis
Fill out a form.

2:12:49 - Leo Laporte
It's too easy.

2:12:50 - Cathy Gellis
And the platform has no real choice. They're being pressured, and they're being pressured in a way Actually.

2:12:56 - Leo Laporte
YouTube is the most egregious example, because they have software that does it, called content ID, and all you have to. One example we had this happen, uh, to us. You know, the footage from nasa is public domain because it's created by us, paid for by us. It is a government entity, but we frequently get taken down when we put footage from nasa up because other entities claim it and add it to their content ID and then they get to take us down. They're in the wrong. In many cases we just tell YouTube no, no, no, what are you crazy? But if we really were to defend ourselves it would be very expensive. So, yeah, the DMCA has a real chilling effect. It's being used as a real chilling effect all over the place.

2:13:41 - Cathy Gellis
There's First Amendment problems with it. There's also an issue of prior restraint in that you know, it's the mere accusation of infringement and we've never actually tested the claim to know whether it's infringing or not precisely there's a number of constitutional infirmities wrapped up in it, but this white paper was looking at it and arguing about this whole notion of we're going to regulate via pressure on an intermediary in order to affect speech policy.

Um, that looks like job owning for the ways it's been defined and and um acknowledged increasingly by the courts what is, uh, it does.

2:14:15 - Leo Laporte
Do we need to write a law? Do we need to amend the dmca?

2:14:19 - Cathy Gellis
so I made some recommendations and some of it is. We should probably tweak some of the drafting of the DMCA, some in terms of how it was drafted initially and some to reconstruct how the courts have interpreted it, because the problem has gotten worse and worse. Where courts have put in, have caused there to be more of this problem than there necessarily was originally, have caused there to be more of this problem than there necessarily was originally. But the whole premise of how it was supposed to work does have a problem, and a lot of that is rooted in these very strong notion of secondary liability. So it's less that the DMCA causes the jawboning and more the pressures of copyright law where the courts have created secondary liability in such a way that it ends up just being such a heavy pressure point against the platforms that they really have no choice and they can't take more reasonable steps to rebuff some of these efforts.

2:15:13 - Leo Laporte
It's ironic because it's not the government doing it to me, it's the platforms doing it to me.

2:15:18 - Cathy Gellis
It's the platforms doing it to you, but based on a compulsion that the government has set up because it's also not the government calling up the platforms and saying to take it down. That's the normal way that job is thought about what they've created is a mechanism for private actors to now pressure the platforms to ruin your day.

So that's not cool either. But I want to be careful because I don't want to gut the DMCA. I want to make sure that platforms are protected from liability in their user, from user expression. But we got to be more careful than this statute is and recognize, you know, we've been causing harm and it's time to stop the harm.

2:15:56 - Leo Laporte
It's a good piece in Our Street on ourstreetorg's website, jawboning in Plain Sight on our streetorg, a website jawboning in plain sight the unconstitutional censorship tolerated by the dmca, and I'm glad you wrote it because I'm very much the victim, uh. But we you know it's funny, benito knows this we're we have to be really careful, even though this is a new, ostensibly a news show where we're showing clips associated with the news stories that we're covered covering, we get takedowns the news stories that we're covering.

2:16:28 - Cathy Gellis
We get takedowns all the time, and we've become. There's a huge chilling effect. We've become very cautious. I do not like that, and so that's why I'm doing that sort of advocacy to try to fix that, and I was also proud of that, because I produced work product over the summer while I was otherwise engaged.

2:16:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no kidding. Good for you. Did it take? It must've been hard. I'm sure you were tired.

2:16:46 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah, I would write it in spurts, and the other thing is I couldn't write. I had some good weeks when I was like, not on chemo because I was getting ready for surgery, and I had to lose all those weeks because I was waiting for the Supreme Court to issue its decisions.

2:16:58 - Jeff Jarvis
I didn't want to write the paper until.

2:17:00 - Cathy Gellis
I knew what the law was. I didn't want them to undo it, so I lost some time there.

2:17:06 - Leo Laporte
Kathy, I'm so glad you could be here to talk about. I kind of thought, if we just keep this show going long enough, the Supreme Court will finally rule on the TikTok thing.

2:17:14 - Cathy Gellis
It's theoretically possible, but I've not gotten a docket alert? I don't think.

2:17:24 - Paris Martineau
I will check my email as someone who did a twitch show when the whole sam altman will he be reinstated or not? Debacle is going on. It's a fool's errand to assume the news will break during your show and you'll just end up doing a three and a half hour podcast we just keep going, yeah and we.

2:17:35 - Leo Laporte
We never did find out what happened. Uh, no, anyway, I'm so glad you could be here. I'm thrilled that you were able to sit in on those, uh, oral arguments.

2:17:42 - Cathy Gellis
You've done that before, though, right I have this one ended up uh, less smooth in terms of getting my seat, but but it happened very interesting.

2:17:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I wish I could do that. I can. Can everybody do that, or do you have to be?

2:17:56 - Cathy Gellis
everybody is, uh, both, theoretically everybody. There's space for the public to see oral arguments On the really popular cases. It's very, very, very difficult to get a seat, and you usually need to camp out or hire a line stander or something like that, wow. But there's also another category of people who can get in, which is members of the Supreme Court bar, and so we line up for a different clump of seats. We are not allowed to hire line standers, but lawyers don't usually camp out, so usually just getting there stupid early is fine.

2:18:31 - Paris Martineau
How early did you get there?

2:18:33 - Cathy Gellis
Well, I only got there at 730 because I ran the math and decided that there probably wouldn't be that many bar attorneys, and that was sort of right but sort of wrong. But the stupid things happened in terms of how they administered the line. So, even though I got in, like they ended up with two lines we were let in. Then the lines collapsed on themselves when we were inside and they ran out of tickets, I don't know. So it ended up a mess, but normally it works more smoothly, but it depends on the day, because they also had, for instance, on this particular day, smoothly. And but it depends on the day because they also had, for instance, on this particular day. One way to get in is to get sworn into the Supreme Court bar that day, because you can actually do it before they start hearing Really yeah, and so you can go. That gets you in for an argument. If it's your turn to be sworn in because you're a new member of the bar, and also if you are the person who has, who is sponsoring the person who's getting sworn in, that gets you in as well.

So sometimes for the really popular stuff, people will schedule these and oh yes, what a shame it would be if we happen to see this really interesting case. So that's the way that it happens, and there were a lot of those people. This time it ended up more chaotic because this was not a regular hearing. This was scheduled at the last minute, not on a day. They were originally planning to hear oral arguments, and so some of the administration of the whole process went a little wonky. But I got in and I was second row and could see the justices. So yeah, it is definitely neat and yes, you can get in. But probably the safest way to do it is to go on a day when the case you're hearing is really boring.

2:20:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, always the best time.

2:20:06 - Cathy Gellis
Yeah.

2:20:08 - Leo Laporte
Thank you for being here, kathy. I think would be a good time to take a break and come back with our picks of the week. I can do Jeff's and I have one for myself and Kathy if you want you can pick a. Huey Lewis album, if you want.

2:20:22 - Cathy Gellis
Oh, okay, fine, if you want you, you can pick a huey lewis album, if you want whatever.

2:20:26 - Leo Laporte
Oh, okay, fine, now we will do that. We'll do that. You're watching this week in google, uh, and we thank you so much for being here. One reminder we are doing our survey right now, if you haven't yet filled it out twittertv survey. We do this once a year. It's yeah, it's 10 minutes, it's quite. You know.

It's questions about your occupation and so forth, and we use it for two things One, of course, to know you a little bit better, so we can tailor our content to you. The other, though, is to help us sell advertising. Advertisers always want to know more about you, and we don't want to tell them anything about you, certainly not anything about you individually. So when we're able to, in aggregate, say, well, you know, we're 53% male, we 27% have a upper graduate degree, and so forth, those things I don't know what those real numbers are, by the way, those things are very valuable, and that's kind of how we'll use it, but it does make a big difference to us. So, if you would please, twittv slash survey, it's very helpful to get a large number responding to this. Then, that way, we can say you know, statistically, this is pretty accurate. So, twittv slash survey, I think we'll have another week or so before we're going to take it down and thank you in advance Time for our picks of the week.

Normally I'd start with Jeff Jarvis, but I'm going to start this time the week. Normally I'd start with Jeff Jarvis, but I'm gonna start this time. You may remember that a few months ago a guy named Elwood Edwards passed away. Now you may say Elwood Edwards, who is he? Well, he's the you've got mail guy, the guy whose voice on AOL everybody knew. In fact, I'll play.

2:22:04 - Jeff Jarvis
Hi, I'm Elwood Edwards, and 22 years ago I recorded a very well-known catchphrase for AOL.

2:22:11 - Leo Laporte
Hey, elwood, I just got an email. You've got mail. That's him. You recognize it. So John Graham Cummings, who's the CTO at Cloudflare, wrote a blog piece. Uh, when he passed away and I just found it, I was really thrilled. At one point towards the end of his life, elwood edwards had a website called making waves where you could order a custom aol voice message and I did that and I got someone that said you, you've got mail, you twit, and a bunch of. I was so happy about it I have lost them. Fortunately, john Graham Cumming has a much better file system. This is back in 2002. He ordered, for $30, a few Elwood Edwards recordings and he's posted them, which is so great.

2:23:02 - Jeff Jarvis
Mail classified by pop file I guess that was cummings.

2:23:06 - Leo Laporte
Uh, use the source. Luke. You've got mail, john, I miss having my custom elwood edwards. You've got mail. It's too late to get one. He's passed. But uh, I'm gonna keep looking. I'm hoping I have it somewhere in a hard drive flying around. It was, uh, we should have had him say podcasts you love from people you trust. You're right, patrick, you're right. Uh, how about you?

2:23:29 - Cathy Gellis
kathy gellis, give us a pick of the week well, since you, I was going to do my jaw-boting paper, but we've already done it.

2:23:36 - Leo Laporte
But we picked it tantalized with huey los. In the news I saw that somebody put in the discard a reference to um american psycho which is the movie yeah, I read brett easton ellis's book that was made into a movie with creepy well, that's not my pick of the week. I find allusions to it very fatiguing.

2:23:55 - Cathy Gellis
so what I will recommend instead is that there was a funny or die send up of that scene with weird Al and Huey Lewis, and I highly recommend looking bad up the funny or die American psycho send up with weird Al and watch that, because in that one Huey plays the serial killer and weird Alice's victim.

2:24:21 - Leo Laporte
I would play it right now, but I have this chilling effect from the dmca and I can't right, so they've posted it already. Yeah in our youtube.

2:24:33 - Cathy Gellis
That's hysterical that's really funny yeah, uh.

2:24:36 - Leo Laporte
So, uh, if you're in the club, uh, you can go to the discord. I will put it in the show notes so you can look at it, but I can't play it. I wish I could good pick now if jeff were here. He also had a pick of the week. He had several as he always does pardon me a huey lewis reference no, no, his is from popular science. Physicists figure out the perfect cachoe pepe recipe and scientifically it's not microwaved like jeff yeah, there's a. There's a good idea. It is scientifically optimized creaminess.

2:25:15 - Paris Martineau
Uh, I wonder if jeff made this so, uh, all it takes is a pre-print study published in soft condensed matter, which is a perfect description for cacio e pepe Well because there's a cheese involved.

2:25:29 - Leo Laporte
But for this you need pasta, pecorino, some cornstarch which honestly I don't think you should add to your cacio e pepe Water and peppercorns. But I'll leave you as an exercise.

2:25:40 - Paris Martineau
So you don't believe in science, Leo?

2:25:42 - Leo Laporte
I don't Not if science says cornstarch no, not a fan of cooking with cornstarch. Ms Paris Martineau, your pick of the week.

2:25:53 - Paris Martineau
I have kind of a strange one this week. One of my friends is trying to build a weird little social media platform just for himself and his own friends, and one thing I was joking that he should try and do with it is basically bring back those weird old GeoCities-style cursors.

2:26:14 - Jeff Jarvis
Animated cursors yes.

2:26:16 - Paris Martineau
And that led us to find a website called Cursor Mania which has all the old animated cursors. If you click the preview link right there you can see all of them, and you can also uh, you know download all these, and I tried it out. If you go to parisnyc, you'll see my early attempt. It's not animated yet because it seems that's a a bit complicated and I haven't had time for it, but I do have a flaming cursor, uh, going around there, which is kind of fun.

I like it, the background here, yeah oh, the background is my own thing, but that's something else, that's. Oh, look at my arrow.

2:26:51 - Leo Laporte
It's a curse. Flaming arrow right. Wow, kind of fun I might have to add this to my blog. That's pretty.

2:26:58 - Paris Martineau
It just seemed like a very uh twit sort of thing to have this whole. And I mean, I remember back when you're like making HTML websites, you download something like Cursor Mania and you give your home computer a Trojan horse.

2:27:13 - Leo Laporte
But this one's all right. You would do that on MySpace, right, yeah, or?

2:27:18 - Benito Gonzalez
your GeoCities page or your GeoCities page if you were really sophisticated.

2:27:23 - Leo Laporte
This is good.

2:27:24 - Benito Gonzalez
this is good this is good they've got an animated piano.

2:27:26 - Leo Laporte
I might, uh might, have to add that to my there are a lot of wacky ones in there look at that. This is hysterical monkeys. See, they could have made nfts out of these and made a mint 16-bit color or 8-bit color. Yeah, these are totally NFT-able that's what we need more NFTs see, if people had thought about NFTs before they did them, they would have never done them right that might have been okay.

2:27:56 - Paris Martineau
I don't want to slam the door on positive innovation but, I'm sure there's a practical use for NFTs, but, like the whole, like collectible it might take a couple hundred years for us to figure it out, but one day they might stick in with my wrist.

2:28:11 - Cathy Gellis
Ai, that's the future kids and that has more substance to it than a born ape.

2:28:16 - Paris Martineau
Yes, do you think if you talk in a funny accent, will your wrist uh thing think you're a different person hey, I mean, it's the thing.

2:28:25 - Leo Laporte
This is a mario saying I love a cachoy pepe. We'll find out we'll find out it's supposed to learn the voices of the people around you so you can fully spy on them. Uh, I wonder. If it mentions our fight here, that'd be good. When does it do the summary? Is it doing?

2:28:44 - Cathy Gellis
the summary now, or do you have to wait until tomorrow, constantly?

2:28:47 - Leo Laporte
It's always doing it. Yeah, but then it'll summarize my whole day later. It's pretty wild.

2:28:52 - Cathy Gellis
I want to know what today's summary was, or at least the summary that explains the show.

2:28:57 - Benito Gonzalez
Yeah, it'll only know Leo's side of this whole podcast. It doesn't hear you guys, leo's side of this whole podcast.

2:29:01 - Paris Martineau
Leo spent a lot of time talking to people who weren't there.

2:29:03 - Leo Laporte
He talked for hours, to nobody.

2:29:06 - Cathy Gellis
It was very weird he talked to the voices in his head.

2:29:10 - Benito Gonzalez
You can probably have it in just all of the podcasts you do right Sure, why not? That fills in the holes, right Sure.

2:29:18 - Cathy Gellis
Why is it only recording Leo? Oh, because Leo's only hearing, because it's on his ears. You don't?

2:29:22 - Leo Laporte
have speakers on, I only hear your audio in my headphones, so it doesn't have any way of hearing you, although I really should work on a way to incorporate the show into it.

2:29:33 - Cathy Gellis
I'm so glad I inspired. That.

2:29:36 - Leo Laporte
Your privacy is safe. All right, Kathy.

2:29:39 - Cathy Gellis
I don't think I have a reasonable expectation of privacy for appearing on a podcast. Appearing on a recorded podcast, this would be fine. You are recording me. You are disseminating it. Just go ahead and throw it into one other system, it's fine.

2:29:55 - Leo Laporte
Just one more thing. One more thing. Kathy Gellis, cgcouncilcom. Catch her writing on tech dirt and, of course, whenever we can, we get her on our shows. Wonderful to have you here. Paris Martineau writes for the information which you must subscribe to because it is absolutely the best source of information, including that big scoop you had about Tik TOK shutting down on Sunday. Who who should we give credit to for that?

2:30:19 - Paris Martineau
That was a that was my colleagues Sylvia Varnum o'regan and kaya uria they're good, you're all good late night scoop really amazing there might be more to come. Who's to say?

2:30:33 - Leo Laporte
I. You know what I don't a day without the information is a day without sunshine. That's what I have to say about that yep, thank you, paris. We'll see you again next week. Jeff Jarvis, of course, professor at some place, I don't know, it's so confusing SUNY Stony Brook.

2:30:50 - Paris Martineau
Some places he's not a professor anymore.

2:30:52 - Leo Laporte
Some places he sort of is a professor? He was a professor. It's very complicated.

2:30:56 - Cathy Gellis
We'll see you all next week. We've conjugated Jeff.

2:31:06 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, conjugated Jeff. Jeff is, in fact, uh, going to be back next week, as will you. Paris, we do this show every Wednesday, 2 pm, pacific, 5 pm, eastern, 2200 UTC. You can watch us live if you're in the club watching the discord, but you can also watch on YouTube, twitch, tiktok. Maybe not next week, what do you? What is you want to lay some odds, kathy, whether, whether we'll be able to stream on tiktok? Next week I think, just I've.

2:31:28 - Cathy Gellis
I I feel guilty that I've been too optimistic and that I've doomed everything. So I don't want to. I'll never been bet against what I want to have happen. But at this point I don't want to bet for what I want to have happen because I think I'll jinx it I think it's safe to bet that at least five.

2:31:42 - Paris Martineau
What do the prediction markets say about this?

2:31:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, what does PolyMarket say? At least five of the justices I won't name names will give a considerable weight to the president's elect's brief and pause. Pause so that he has a chance to do something.

2:31:58 - Cathy Gellis
I mean one of the weird things in that case is that there are certain justices who I don't think conceptually would have been on board but, in response to the Trump brief, might now be on board Exactly my point which isn't great, but at this point I want the DC Circuit decision to go away. So what do I need to do to get there?

2:32:17 - Leo Laporte
Exactly my point. You can watch us live on those platforms. I say them all. I left out facebook linkedin. Kick, choose the nazi bar of your choice and join us in there. I'm being facetious, am I? Xcom? Yes, we're there too. Um, after the fact, on demand versions of the show, audio or video available on the website twittv, slash, twig, and yes, they will still be there after we change the name, and the feeds will stay the same, so you don't have to do anything to get the new show when we start, when we update it. It'll just be a little tweak, a little update to the show. We become intelligent machines on February 5th. After the fact, you can also subscribe on your favorite podcast client. In fact, that's really the best way to get the show Again. You won't have to do anything to keep getting the show after February 5th. Just find your favorite podcast client and sign up today. There's no charge. Thanks for being here, everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.