My guest today is Ryan Mac, a technology reporter at The New York Times and co-author of the excellent book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which came out in 2024. I wanted to have Ryan on today because we’re on the cusp of the SpaceX IPO, which promises to be one of the most consequential public offerings in history for a variety of reasons.
Its biggest-ever size, of course, at nearly $2 trillion dollars. But also because all kinds of rules that keep our markets fair are being bent, if not outright broken, along the way. And, also because buried somewhere inside SpaceX is X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk purchased in 2022.
Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.
Links:
Welcome to hell, Elon | The Verge
The SpaceX IPO is great for Elon Musk and terrible for you | The Verge
In SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is the risk factor | The Verge
For Wall Street, the only thing worse than SpaceX flopping is missing out | NYT
How SpaceX Is structured to favor Elon Musk | NYT
As the SpaceX hype machine steamrolls ahead, Wall Street jumps aboard | NYT
The SpaceX IPO Reveals What Really Happened to Twitter | NY Mag
Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kara and Scott discuss Microsoft's plan to reopen Three Mile Island to power its data centers, and Qualcomm's potential takeover of Intel. Then, Nike gets a new CEO, but will the corporate shake-up get Nike back in the game? Plus, Trump's bizarre messaging around abortion, and Kamala Harris's attempt to get another debate on the calendar. Our Friends of Pivot are New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, who are out with a new book, "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter." Kate and Ryan share behind-the-scenes stories from Elon's Twitter takeover, and weigh in on the latest chaos in Elon-land.
Follow Kate at @KateConger and Ryan at @RMac18.
Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial.
Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast.
Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
We started this year with layoffs and the whole "Tech Recession" narrative. So, as we wind up the year, did tech recover this year, and if so, how? Also, self-driving cars and speculation on Monday's Apple event.
Check out Big Technology here!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ryan Mac is a tech reporter at The New York Times, Bobby Allyn is a technology correspondent at NPR. The two join Big Technology Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion touching on: 1) TikTik's ban in Montana and its potential spillover effects. 2) The rise of Instagram Reels. 3) Twitter's Role in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. 4) Elon Musk as Republican kingmaker. 5) Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison. 6) AI regulation's long road ahead.
--
Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice.
For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/
Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emergency bonus episode! Is this the moment for Twitter alternatives? T2.social is one of them and the founder of that project, @gabor, joins us to kick it all around. So does our friend Alex Kantrowitz from @BigTechnology.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our friend Alex Kantrowitz returns to my kitchen table for a crossover episode with Big Technology Podcast (subscribe here) to discuss whether or not Meta is going to see its promise land Metaverse? And are we in a recession or just a tech recession? Oh. And tips to survive plane travel.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
F*** it! We did it live! Chris and me and @Kantrowitz around my kitchen table! Are we in for the biggest week of Facebook's life? Check out Big Technology!
Sponsors:
VPLS.com/goit
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Facebook wants to push pro-Facebook material in News Feed. Also, Kara and Scott dive into Google's big bet on back-to-office, and Apple's plan to diagnose depression with iPhone data. Friend of Pivot Craig Silverman discusses his latest reporting on the problems with Facebook Marketplace. Plus, Scott gives us a dire prediction on Facebook's legal woes.
You can find Craig on Twitter at @CraigSilverman.
Send us your Listener Mail questions, via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
lex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology newsletter comes on to try to help us work out what happened with that Facebook Antitrust case blowup. Also, what does this mean for regulating other companies.
Hosts:
@chrismessina
@brianmcc
Check out Alex's Big Technology Newsletter Here
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
BuzzFeed News executive editor Mat Honan has long covered the way society interacts with technology. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the “Zoom Class,” the rise of NFTs, and how San Francisco may change after the pandemic.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In India, the Narendra Modi government is threatening to put Twitter officials in jail unless they block approximately 250 accounts of people they don’t like. They include activists, political commentators, a movie star, and an investigative news magazine.
That’s why we’re doing a bonus, emergency podcast on this quick developing situation, and what it means for the future of speech on the internet, and social media more broadly.
Joining us to discuss is Pranav Dixit, a reporter at BuzzFeed News based in India who has been covering this closely and brings us the perspective from the ground.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Over the past week, both Facebook and Twitter suspended President Donald Trump’s account. These companies don’t take such aggressive action lightly, and it took Trump sending a mob toward the U.S. Capitol, which they eventually breached, to force the issue.
For years, BuzzFeed News senior reporter Ryan Mac and I have been watching these companies’ every move. Previously as colleagues at BuzzFeed. Ryan joined me this week on the Big Technology Podcast for a discussion on whether the social platforms’ moves were merited, where they go from here, and how he thinks about all the internal Facebook communication he’s obtained in his reporting.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
China’s mass internment of Muslims in its Xinjiang region is one of the world's most under-covered stories The country has detained one million people there, putting them through a “re-education” program meant to erase their language and culture, sometimes through forced labor and sterilization.
Though comprehensive, on-the-ground reporting from Xinjiang is sparse, BuzzFeed News reporter Megha Rajagopalan has been on the story from the beginning. She joins the podcast to discuss her reports from Xinjiang itself, and how she worked with BuzzFeed contributors to monitor the internment camps using satellite imagery, finding that they are expanding.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The TikTok saga. It’s gonna end. Or it’s gonna happen. Or it’s gonna… something in the next few days. Will it be sold? Will it not be? Will it be banned in the US. There are so many angles here. So many interesting ways to tease out something that is unprecedented in the world of Tech. Alex Kantrowitz pinged me to talk about it and he’s a good dude to do so because he wrote a book about the big tech platforms, and, as we get into… this is so rare. A big up and coming platform that is just, for weird a-historical reasons, being offered up on a platter for the other powers that be to… maybe take over? I quoted Alex when he was at Buzzfeed for years. But as we discuss at the end, Alex has gone solo! Check out his newsletter Big Technology. Check out his podcast, Big Technology.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Alex Kantrowitz is a Senior Tech Reporter at Buzzfeed and an author.
The biggest tech companies on the planet are incredibly dominant and today we discover what is inside each of them that drives their competitive edge.
Expect to learn why powerpoint is banned from Amazon, what a one-to-one meeting with Mark Zuckerberg is like, why Apple might need systemic change if they're not going to fall behind, how Microsoft was turned around by a single man, why CeeLo Green is a good spokesperson and much more...
Sponsor:
Sign up to FitBook at https://fitbook.co.uk/join-fitbook/ (enter code MODERNWISDOM for 50% off your membership)
Extra Stuff:
Follow Alex on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz
Buy Always Day One - https://amzn.to/2LM6tNe
Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast
Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom
-
Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast
Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
BuzzFeed News reporter Alex Kantrowitz talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, Always Day One: How The Tech Titans Plan To Stay On Top Forever. He discusses how coronavirus may change consumers’ relationship with tech giants, the opportunity for a new major labor movement, and how the companies he profiled in the book — including Amazon, Apple, and Facebook — keep from getting out-innovated. Kantrowitz says education, and not automation, is the larger problem for the long-term future of work, and argues that TikTok is one of the only places young people are learning to be creative; he also explains why Apple is stuck in a similar rut now to the one Microsoft was in under Steve Ballmer. Plus: Can you steal from Amazon's cashier-less grocery story?
Featuring:
Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz), author, Always Day One: How The Tech Titans Plan To Stay On Top Forever
Host:
Kara Swisher (@karaswisher), Recode co-founder and editor-at-large
More to explore:
On Reset, Arielle Duhaime-Ross explores why — and how — tech is changing everything.
On Recode Media, Peter Kafka interviews business titans, journalists, comedians and podcasters about the collision of tech and media.
On Pivot, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway talk about the big tech news stories of the week, who's winning, who's failing, and what comes next.
And on Land of the Giants, Jason Del Rey chronicled the rise of Amazon. Season 2 will focus on Netflix and is coming soon!
About Recode by Vox:
Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
Follow Us:
Newsletter: Recode Daily
Twitter: @Recode and @voxdotcom
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
I couldn’t tell you the amount of times, over the last two years, I’ve quoted pieces from Alex Kantrowitz on this show. Hundreds of times? Easy? Alex is the senior tech reporter at Buzzfeed News, and, while I don’t have favorite people to quote from on this show (I shouldn’t anyway) the sheer number of times I quote from someone should tell you something about the amount of news they break. The insights they have. Alex has an amazing new book out called Always Day One- How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay On Top Forever. And as I said yesterday, it’s an amazing breakdown of not only the cultural DNA of each of the tech giants, but also a useful playbook to their success… a way to understand how they do what they do and why they win more often than not. Amazing book. Anyone who listens to this show every day will find it useful in informing the competitive analysis we always engage in.
Sponsor:
Tovala.com/ride
Buy the book here! Always Day One - How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay On Top Forever
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week on The Vergecast, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks with Jeremy Singer-Vine, the data editor for the BuzzFeed News investigative unit, about his story that was published recently regarding the fake comments on the Federal Communications Commission’s online net neutrality debate.
If you haven’t read the piece, you should. The investigation details where all of the fake comments in the FCC’s net neutrality process came from, including dead people leaving comments and shady political operatives involved in the scam.
It’s not really a story about net neutrality; rather, it’s about how systems designed for public participation in the government are so easily scammed, and what the challenges are for preventing such scams from happening.
Nilay and Jeremy discuss why it happened, how it happened, and what happens next if we want to use the internet to encourage open access participation in government without corruption.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
.jpg?width=400){kind=small}
