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Support for this show is brought to you by Vanta. Managing

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go to vanta.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com. Hello and welcome

1:22

to Decoder. I'm

1:34

Hank Green. I'm a science guy. I help run

1:36

an educational media company called Complexly, and

1:38

I'm also a big fan of this podcast. I

1:40

am not, however, the editor-in-chief of

1:42

The Verge, but Neelai Patel is,

1:44

and Decoder is Neelai's show about

1:47

big ideas and other problems. One

1:49

of those problems is that one of the

1:51

best possible guests for Decoder is unfortunately also

1:53

the host of Decoder. So while

1:55

we get to hear a lot of Neelai's thoughts on a lot of this stuff,

1:58

when I listen to this podcast, I often think, think, man,

2:00

I would like to hear Neelai interviewed on

2:02

his own podcast. And so I went onto

2:04

threads and I made that joke and Neelai

2:07

responded, let's do it. So now

2:09

this is it. We are doing

2:11

it. Neelai has got some weird ideas about

2:13

the internet. For example, that he is going

2:15

to revolutionize the media through blog posts. He

2:17

keeps saying it, but what the hell does

2:19

he mean? While I was busy

2:22

building my business on other people's platforms, Neelai has

2:24

built something very rare in the year 2024. A

2:27

website that publishes content and isn't

2:29

behind a paywall yet still makes money.

2:32

How does he do it? How does

2:34

he make decisions? How is the Verge

2:36

structured? The tables have turned.

2:39

You'll also hear Neelai try to convince me that

2:41

the Fetaverse isn't just happening, but that it's also

2:43

going to be important and that we should be

2:45

paying attention to it and that it is going

2:47

to make the internet better. And

2:49

I think I maybe even got a Fetaverse-related Verge scoop

2:51

in here. One of the

2:54

wildest moments of this conversation for me was

2:56

when I made a comment that I thought

2:58

was just like a universally believed truth about

3:00

the post-platform internet, that people these days prefer

3:03

individuals to brands. And then Neelai told me,

3:05

no, that's wrong. It's not people who are

3:07

doing that. It's the systems that deliver that

3:10

content to people. A distinction that I'm going

3:12

to be thinking about for a long, long

3:14

time. He won't say it, of course,

3:16

so I will. Neelai is a

3:18

defining voice of this very bizarre

3:20

moment in the history of media.

3:22

And his leadership and strategy have

3:24

proved that content can win, especially when

3:27

you stop chasing every shiny object

3:29

that platforms place in front of you

3:31

and think instead about your audience

3:33

first. All right, Neelai Patel,

3:35

Editor-in-Chief of the Verge, let's do it.

3:51

Neelai Patel, you are Editor-in-Chief of the Verge

3:53

and co-founder of the Verge and co-host of

3:55

the Vergecast and, of course, host of Decoder

3:57

most days. But this one, Neelai... Welcome.

4:00

To decoder uses Terrifying. I wanted to raise

4:02

a lot and ah I'm I'm gonna tell

4:05

us how this feels. It's money when I

4:07

first proposed as You like this is amazing

4:09

because it's so much harder to host and

4:11

to be interviewed. and I'm like yeah after

4:14

doomed to work on this. Whereas.

4:16

When interviewed me I just like showed up. Now you

4:18

just showing up. Now you get a feel though. Is

4:21

it a few? What it's like? Literally my way into

4:23

See. I taught myself how to make decisions. What's

4:26

our org chart? Yeah well

4:29

get ready to as those questions are are

4:31

coming I'm I'm super excited about this is

4:33

very cool Very cool that we get to

4:35

do this. You think a lot and have

4:37

a lot of good ideas and talked a

4:39

lot of people about I think things that

4:42

are very presence suddenly more present now than

4:44

they have been. The internet is feels like

4:46

has been tossed a bit of the and

4:48

we we could see it all fall down

4:50

and see where our lands a little bit.

4:52

ah it's an election year that's awful a

4:55

hate those and this is a lot of

4:57

a lot of reasons. To be thinking about the

4:59

kinds of things you think about right now. So

5:01

I'm really glad. To. Get to talk

5:03

to you. But let's start. I.

5:06

Read about you being up The person

5:08

who runs the last website on earth.

5:11

Because. You say things all the time and

5:13

he don't explain them which I love of

5:15

but now I've got you and so you

5:17

have to explain to me why the verge.

5:20

Is quote unquote the last website on earth.

5:23

Is. A little bit of a jug.

5:25

it's fifty percentage of. I'm aware

5:27

that there are other websites and

5:29

I specifically mean this is. we

5:31

were founded in a boom time

5:33

of web sites. We were founded

5:35

in Twenty Eleven. We started talking

5:37

on the site, and Twenty Ten

5:39

we remain part of a venture

5:41

backed digital media start up. There

5:43

are a lot of those. Back

5:45

then we had a lot of

5:47

competition, and Twenty Eleven meaningful. Like

5:49

we were scared of them. Competition,

5:51

read, write. Web existed. And he fights

5:54

Tried to beat them every day. Techcrunch was

5:56

very different kind of publication back then we

5:58

try to beat them all the time. I

6:00

really respect that he bought competed against. I

6:02

came up. Adding gadget competing cirrhosis

6:04

we against the People I gizmodo and

6:06

we became the first rivals and and

6:08

really good friends out of that competition.

6:10

Don't summer side stories as some of

6:13

them are still in great works on

6:15

them. Saw gay people. But.

6:17

That moment when there was

6:19

ferocious. Brush of

6:21

energy and money and attention into web

6:23

sites has obviously says we're not. We're

6:25

not making those those same way we

6:28

used anymore. And then I look at

6:30

my peer group. And.

6:32

So many of them are gone deaf and that's so

6:34

that to me there's I had. It's

6:36

that. It's it's. All. The

6:38

things that. The. People in their properties

6:40

least at wake up in fear as.

6:44

Many of them are radically different. The nice

6:46

to be and will and were so here

6:48

and axles since me feel strange it to

6:50

it a new one and it's like oh

6:53

I don't actually like the turns out that

6:55

when you put into the arena and you

6:57

the last man standing this just like up

6:59

a lot of carnage around which it isn't

7:01

that much of a triumph. it feels like

7:03

it hurts a little bet. It's weird to

7:05

to be us our age and hear that

7:07

the word website. Feels.

7:10

Almost anachronistic, It feels death of another

7:12

era. The way I think about

7:14

it is that I don't have any.

7:16

one else is algorithm to think about

7:18

and as a really important to me.

7:20

But then I look at all of

7:22

the most important creators and the most

7:24

influential members, the new media and what.

7:26

They are so successful that they have

7:28

transcended algorithms on other people's platforms. So

7:30

ah, Splinter Marquez promise Where thing is

7:32

it's amazing reviewer and great tacky tumor.

7:34

He has transcended the to the algorithms

7:36

and. Is afforded him a kind

7:39

of success and possible for free which also has

7:41

some have some sort of it. But.

7:43

I never think about you tube and I'm

7:45

very happy with never really thinking I easy

7:47

been that way. I think there's a tension

7:49

there were that's what the website for do

7:51

if you if you can build an audience

7:53

for the website. But. building our

7:56

entire website is almost impossible rates you

7:58

have also said that you are going

8:00

to revolutionize the media with blog posts.

8:02

This is a similar sentence

8:04

in that we are also referring to

8:06

an anachronistic thing almost

8:08

in the form of blog

8:10

posts, but we're going to move forward by moving

8:12

backward a little bit somehow. What do you mean

8:15

when you say that? I'm going to make

8:17

you explain yourself. I

8:20

say we're going to revolutionize the media with blog

8:22

posts all the time. That is a joke that

8:24

we started making about our redesign on the verge.com

8:26

where we added these things called quick posts that

8:28

just let us post more frequently. It

8:31

is all tied to that notion

8:33

of just fighting back against the

8:36

pressures of an algorithm. The platform

8:38

world. Yeah. The last platform on

8:40

the web of any scale or

8:42

influence is Google search. Over time

8:45

web pages have become dramatically optimized

8:47

for Google search. That means

8:49

the kinds of things people write about, the

8:52

containers that we write in, are

8:54

mostly designed to be optimized for

8:56

Google search. They're not designed for ... I

8:58

need to just quickly tell you about this

9:00

and move on. Our little insight was, what

9:03

if we just like don't do that? What if we

9:05

only write for people who come directly to our website

9:07

instead of the people who find our articles through search

9:10

or Google Discover or whatever other Google

9:12

platforms are in the world? We just made these

9:14

little blog posts. The idea was if you just

9:16

come to our website one more time a day

9:18

because there's one more thing to look at that

9:20

you'll like, we will be fine. I

9:23

think if you look around the media

9:25

landscape right now, we did that a year

9:27

or so ago, more and

9:29

more people are starting to realize, oh, we should just

9:31

make the websites more valuable. The easiest way to make

9:33

the websites more valuable is to have our talented people

9:35

make more stories. Not

9:38

just more stories, but have more ... openly

9:40

have more fun on the website. Business

9:42

Insider is doing that. Semaphore is doing

9:44

that in other ways. That's what I mean.

9:47

If you start writing for other people, which

9:49

is the heart of what a blog post

9:52

really is, it's you trying to entertain yourself

9:54

and trying to entertain just a handful of

9:56

other people, you're going to go really

9:58

much farther than trying to saddle by

10:00

the robot. It does feel like there was a

10:02

time when blog posts were first a thing. It

10:05

was very sort of like, I have a blog, this is

10:07

me, and I have this relationship with my audience and

10:10

there was a lot of like, you know, there was

10:12

snark and there was creativity and I

10:14

see this tossed in with stuff at the

10:16

verge today that that influence still sort of

10:18

like comes through. It

10:21

feels like, and like

10:23

I struggle with this as a YouTuber and you

10:25

know like the sort of transcendent, transcending the algorithm

10:27

kind of thing. It feels like the way to

10:29

do that is to have a community, not just

10:31

like numbers, not just

10:34

views, not just impressions, but like humans

10:36

who you have a relationship with somehow. How

10:38

do you imagine those people? Let me answer

10:40

that question two different ways. You're touching

10:42

on something that we talk about a lot. People

10:45

might have heard Casey Newton get

10:47

at this in the last 10 years on the show. It's

10:50

pretty easy to get traffic in the world. You

10:53

can go on TikTok today and get some traffic

10:55

and get some views. It is really hard to

10:57

build an audience and I think a

10:59

lot of the destruction we see in the media

11:01

community right now is no one

11:04

built an audience. They try to get traffic and then they

11:06

try to sell that traffic and they assume the traffic would

11:08

last forever. The platforms have

11:10

no incentives to let

11:12

you keep having traffic forever and they

11:15

absolutely do not have incentive for

11:17

you to have so much audience that you get leverage

11:19

over the platforms. Right. This

11:22

seems very destructive. It

11:24

seems very destructive to the media ecosystem. That

11:27

thing that you just articulated there doesn't seem like a little

11:29

deal. It seems like a big deal. I

11:32

think the defining economic

11:34

reality of the modern

11:36

platform media world is

11:39

that all the platforms realize that an

11:41

infinite supply of teenage creators are cheaper

11:43

to deal with than

11:45

media companies or groups

11:47

of media individuals or powerful

11:50

creators. I'm

11:52

curious for your read on the number of

11:54

YouTubers that you see retiring or taking a

11:56

step back. It just feels like

11:58

eventually you hit a point where like... There's nothing left

12:00

here for me. It's

12:03

just me. I have to just extract more

12:05

from myself and put it on this platform every day to

12:08

succeed, and that stops being valuable.

12:10

Whereas I think if you were able to build a company

12:13

or a brand or an institution, at the

12:15

end of that, you're like, well, I made this. Maybe I could

12:17

sell it. Maybe I could just let some other people run it.

12:19

Maybe it stands for something. Maybe we

12:21

could shut it down and everyone could talk about how much they missed it, but

12:24

it's more than you. I

12:26

think the platforms are not organized

12:28

economically to ever allow that to happen

12:31

because that is expensive. You

12:35

can replace individuals all the time. Yeah,

12:37

you can. Also, it

12:39

seems like people have an easier

12:41

time trusting individuals now than trusting

12:45

larger brands. Oh, I

12:47

totally disagree with that. I think

12:49

that's your platform pill. I totally

12:51

disagree. In

12:54

the biggest, most serious ways that I can

12:56

possibly think of, the platforms

12:59

are designed to create that

13:01

idea and reinforce it. They

13:03

want that to be true. They want

13:05

to say people don't trust brands. They trust people,

13:08

and that the brands stand for nothing. That's

13:11

because when you shove a brand into the

13:13

same incentive structure as a group of individuals,

13:16

an infinite supply of teenagers who

13:18

will work for free, the brands

13:21

debase themselves, and now the brands are worth nothing.

13:24

But you know what? All the celebrities still want

13:26

to be on the cover of magazines. They

13:30

want the validation that the big brand,

13:32

the institution can provide. There's

13:34

a reason for that because the brand stands for

13:36

more than just an individual opinion, or

13:39

at least at its best it does. There

13:41

are a lot of problems with that. My

13:45

little blog that people now think of

13:47

as an institution started out in opposition

13:49

to big magazines. We

13:51

were the upstarts. I

13:54

feel that tension all the time, But

13:57

I think the idea that people trust people more

13:59

than brands is a. The Creation. Of.

14:01

The algorithmic media environment it is thought

14:03

the natural result as people getting smarter

14:05

or becoming savvier media consumers. That's just

14:08

the water where where it up in

14:10

a stair my ceiling tonight And think

14:12

about this cause I've never heard anyone

14:14

even make the case. That.

14:17

That. Is and I get it on

14:19

the verge is a collective right? It's a

14:21

group as individuals will make something together in.

14:23

that means when we go to play on

14:25

a platform is organized around. Someone. Talking

14:27

to you like to talk on Instagram rails

14:30

ready to France or whatever. It's a different

14:32

person every time. It stands

14:34

in for this other things, but if you

14:36

look at. The. Cover of

14:38

Vogue this month as like all of the

14:41

Vogue legends and all the icons and expo

14:43

prize in the center of that texture. And

14:45

it's all these super models and around Oprah

14:47

and like. Know tic toc

14:49

or can create that moment. Only

14:51

and institutions and create that moment and that

14:53

that the moment has to provide value. Back

14:55

to all of the people you're on the

14:57

cover of Vogue with all these other people.

14:59

So interesting Board as I come from the

15:01

doesn't come from any individual that comes from.

15:04

Yeah, and though being though and focus like

15:06

making it work kind does in a way

15:08

that a lot of magazines are before we

15:10

get to magazines as I want to talk

15:12

of a hassle at this is a good

15:14

time to ask me. I. How

15:16

is The Verge structured? The

15:19

verge is struck. Service of script physical

15:22

aspects I have I have like a

15:24

real answer than a cell South Lancer

15:26

Edifice. I'm glad you're ready for that.

15:28

Quests him I had a think about

15:31

this a lot. To

15:33

that, we're suckered. Into ways

15:35

or to organizing principles of infrastructure

15:37

by topics We've desks when a

15:39

policy does square transportation desks Are

15:41

we ever have used apartment like?

15:43

ah? That's

15:45

like topic expertise, subject matter experts, he

15:48

says. word. Is one set of

15:50

organizing principle. Them were also structured

15:52

by format. Rights. we have

15:54

like a news team we ever see

15:56

trust him previews i think bridges the

15:58

gap are you to be a subject

16:01

matter expert in laptops and then reviews or

16:03

a particular kind of format. So

16:05

those are kind of the two ways and we have teams

16:07

that kind of address each of those buckets

16:10

and they all work together and we try to

16:12

make sure our team is constantly moving across formats

16:14

and desks because I think we're at our best

16:17

when the things collide. But

16:20

the real way that we're organized is by cadence.

16:22

What? And that is actually like a very difficult

16:24

thing to explain and you can't actually say that

16:27

out loud. What do you mean cadence?

16:29

So our news team operates in 20 minute increments.

16:31

They wake up, the news hits, it goes on

16:33

the website, they're done, they move on to the

16:35

next thing. If you want a piece of analysis

16:37

or you've got a scoop and you need to build it out, we

16:40

call those reports, that's like a day

16:42

or a couple of days. A

16:45

feature might take a year or a review might take a week

16:47

and a half, a video might take two months. So

16:49

we have all these systems that kind of

16:51

organize those cadences of work so

16:54

that they can get the appropriate amount of focus.

16:56

They can also be finished because the

16:58

hardest thing is to finish what you're working on and

17:00

be like, okay, we're publishing it now. And

17:02

so for the news team, everything is always finished.

17:05

It's finished before it's started. The news has occurred.

17:09

For the features team, it's like, is it done? Have

17:12

we done everything we need to do? Do we set the deadline? Did

17:14

the people respond? Has it gone

17:16

through legal review? There's all these things that prevent

17:19

you from being finished. We try to give things

17:21

space to be finished on their timeline and you

17:23

can really see how if

17:25

you just stare at the structure of the verge long

17:27

enough, you can see how it's mostly organized around those

17:30

cadences and then all the other things just

17:32

allow sort of like-minded people to work together.

17:36

How many people are those

17:38

people? I think right now we're about 50.

17:42

I might be wrong about that actually. We're

17:44

hiring so I don't know. We have some people coming

17:46

in. We're growing in fits

17:48

and starts again, which is exciting. That

17:50

is exciting. Has the things

17:52

been good since the redesign? I love the redesign.

17:54

It was very exciting my first day. I was

17:57

like, this is just like on the

17:59

edge of being finished. too weird where

18:01

my brain isn't quite sure what to do, but

18:04

on the first day I feel like I know how

18:06

to use this website and on the 10th day I'm

18:09

like, I know how to use this website. We

18:11

definitely changed too much too fast. We dialed

18:13

it back a little bit and now we're

18:15

starting to reintroduce some of those other changes.

18:18

But the core piece of it, which

18:21

is are we making our own website the

18:23

most valuable place that we work? Has

18:26

been wildly successful. To the

18:28

point where I'm sometimes like, we're doing too many

18:30

quick posts. We

18:33

should make longer things again. Yeah, nice. I

18:36

think that's a good sign because my number one

18:38

goal in this is,

18:40

remember this is pre-Elon. My

18:42

number one goal was, boy I'd like the

18:44

reporters who work here to write for us

18:46

in the text box that pays us money

18:49

instead of over there in the text box

18:51

that extracts our. I should be asking that

18:53

question of myself. Like why am I writing

18:55

the text box that pays money to Elon

18:57

and Mark and not my. Why do we

18:59

all work for free? This

19:02

is, look, we wanna talk about the platform era

19:04

in media, why do we all work for free?

19:06

Everybody's insisting. I don't know the answer to that

19:08

question. We can't shut up about how

19:10

our work has value but then we

19:12

can't stop giving it away for free.

19:15

Yeah, fuck you, pay me. He typed

19:17

for free into another box. It's very

19:19

confusing and there's a lot of reasons.

19:21

If you just sit back and think about why,

19:24

there's a million reasons why. One,

19:26

the software is nicer

19:29

to use than most CMS's.

19:32

It doesn't, you just pick one. Name a

19:34

company that makes a CMS. Is this as fun to

19:36

use as Twitter? And the answer is no. Yeah.

19:38

Flatly no. Even the one we have now for

19:41

QuickBooks is not as fun to use as Twitter

19:43

was in a day to day. Will this immediately

19:45

bring me the dopamine hit of immediate feedback? No.

19:49

I just want my little cookie and my little cookie is

19:51

people being mean to me. Yeah. Ow, yeah.

19:54

Yeah, will someone just tell, will

19:57

someone willfully misinterpret this

19:59

joke? Let's find out. The

20:01

answer is yes. Is there like

20:03

a fake revenue source, like a creator fund

20:05

here that will make me believe that there's

20:07

like, of course, are there people

20:09

here who are actually making real money? Right?

20:12

Which on YouTube in particular, I think

20:15

is like YouTube

20:17

has figured out monetization in a way that

20:19

feels healthiest and most stable.

20:22

But there's also the haves and have nots.

20:24

And I think that YouTube loves having the

20:26

haves because it provides the infinite

20:29

incentive to the have nots. None

20:31

of that is true on a regular media company's website. None of

20:33

that, if you started a WordPress site tomorrow, none of that would

20:35

be true about your WordPress site. But

20:37

the first instinct was, let's at least make it

20:39

easier to publish. Like let's at least remove the

20:41

barriers to entry to getting on the website. And

20:44

then we can do comments and then we can

20:46

think about how we can distribute in different ways.

20:48

So that is working. Like my team is happier.

20:51

We did not know that the Twitter thing would

20:53

happen. But the Twitter thing happened and

20:55

our desire to publish in the boxes we controlled went

20:57

up as a group. And then on

20:59

top of it, our audience saw that we were having fun. And

21:02

once you are having fun anywhere on the internet,

21:04

people sort of gravitate to you and that the

21:06

sort of traffic has gone up. We

21:10

need to take a quick break. When we come

21:12

back, Neelai and I discuss how to build an

21:15

audience in the age of platforms and also how

21:17

the Verge actually makes money. Support

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Visit klaviyo.com/Vox

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to learn

24:17

more. That's

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klaviyo.com/Vox. This

24:26

is Hank Green, guest host of Decoder,

24:28

and we're back with the Verge editor-in-chief

24:30

Neill Ei Patel about building audiences on

24:32

the internet and how to turn that

24:34

into a profitable business. That

24:39

goes back to the conversation we were having before

24:41

about audience and how do you imagine those people?

24:43

Like who are they in your head and

24:45

how do you feel like you understand them? This is a huge thing for me.

24:48

I think about it all the time. Our mission

24:50

statement is that the Verge is a website

24:52

about how technology makes people feel. We've

24:54

kind of narrowed it down. We've had headier

24:56

ones. We have ones that were designed for

24:58

advertisers. We've had ones that are

25:00

like, we're about the future. Over time, it's like,

25:03

oh no, we're just about how this makes you feel.

25:06

It is a very emotional website about cell

25:08

phones. That means we

25:10

can be expansive. It means we can

25:12

validate the fact that people are having emotional

25:14

experiences with their technology. One of the things

25:16

I say all the time is I

25:19

can go up to anyone in the world and ask them

25:21

about their phone and they will tell me a story because

25:24

they have an emotional relationship with

25:26

this piece of technology that mediates almost

25:28

all of their other relationships. There's something

25:30

they love. There's something they're frustrated about.

25:32

There's something they wish was better. If

25:35

you can ask the right questions, everyone has a story

25:37

to tell you about their phone. That

25:39

is a pretty massive set of

25:41

things to think about. I think of our

25:43

audience as people who

25:46

want to feel those feelings. They want

25:48

to love things. They want to dislike

25:50

things. They want to be passionate about

25:52

these objects, these screens that literally mediate

25:54

almost everything else that happens in our

25:57

lives. I think we poke at that

25:59

pretty much every day. hard all the

26:01

time and we're never punished

26:04

for thinking too hard about things. That

26:07

to me is the surest sign that we've at

26:09

least found a group of people that are stable

26:11

that over time can grow because it's kind of fun

26:14

to be smart. I think

26:16

people, they latch onto that

26:18

and they evangelize how they feel to their

26:20

friends and then the audience grows again and

26:22

again. I feel like telling Hank Green

26:24

it's fun to be smart is one of the funniest things

26:27

I could possibly do. We do not have to convince you

26:29

of that. It turns out

26:31

I do agree with this and it's

26:33

a great principle from which to build

26:35

an audience because of course you get

26:37

the audience that you build for. Lots

26:41

of ways to have lots of different audiences but it's

26:43

always better if you're building an audience that you're actually

26:45

hanging out with. Your Apple Vision

26:47

Pro coverage, I'm a guy who doesn't

26:49

care at all about the

26:52

Apple Vision Pro, maybe I should, but

26:54

I did care about how much you

26:56

all cared about it and just this

26:58

sort of college dorm room. I can't

27:00

believe we've just spent this much time

27:03

thinking about the difference between a six and a

27:05

seven kind of coverage of the Apple

27:07

Vision Pro. I was like, I don't care about this piece

27:09

of tech at all but I care about these doofs. They're

27:12

great. I think that you're

27:14

doing that in a really good way.

27:18

Once you have that audience and you have this website,

27:20

how do you turn at the verge

27:22

that into money? We

27:24

are very precious about how we turn things into

27:27

money and I think this has

27:29

helped us. It has almost entirely helped

27:31

us. It has hurt us in one particular way

27:34

which is we don't make as much

27:36

money as influencers do. I

27:38

can talk about why that is. I know it's

27:40

such an expensive brand deal. I was so mad.

27:43

My assistant was like, it's okay, Hank.

27:45

I'm like, it's not okay. I

27:48

can't believe I'm doing this. We

27:51

say no to all of them. This

27:53

is the real hard thing. The main way we

27:55

make money is we sell advertising. Senator, we sell

27:57

ads. So

28:00

display ads in our website banners and boxes. We have

28:02

some ideas on how to make those experiences better We

28:05

sell ads on the podcast. I don't read them

28:09

I know not as weird as I

28:11

did read them. Yeah. Yeah, we saw ads, you

28:13

know, we have YouTube pre-roll with their sponsored content

28:15

On the website. It's a you know, it's big

28:17

disclosures, but there's like

28:19

advertiser content on our website So all

28:21

the ways that media companies make money

28:23

except the way That

28:26

individual creators make a lot of money

28:29

which is directly making the brand

28:31

deals for our talent So

28:33

I already the podcast ads Most

28:35

podcasters just read the ads we will

28:37

not stop a YouTube video in the middle and let any

28:39

of our journalists Do the brand read

28:41

or whatever? We have somebody else who does

28:43

that which is Andrew Melzack. He's great He's he's

28:46

part of our advertising team. He doesn't he's very good at

28:48

them That's great but someone else

28:50

doesn't and so that we just maintain and

28:52

enforce this distance between our work as journalists

28:54

and What advertisers would like us

28:56

to say and I think that is Again,

29:00

many youtubers are very very successful. They make a

29:02

lot of money. I don't be

29:04

grudge anybody their businesses go be successful

29:06

I am proud of you all we

29:08

won't do it because we are so protective

29:10

of the journalism that we make and

29:13

I I worry Honestly that the

29:15

audience doesn't care anymore Yeah,

29:18

we're just like whatever like the audience is it just assumes

29:20

that we're bought and paid for left and right and like

29:23

we know I think They do I think they do and

29:25

I think they know like the thing I just said no

29:27

to it was because they wanted me to It was a

29:29

food product and they wanted me to be like a person

29:31

who knows about the world being like this is good for

29:33

you And I was like, that's not my job. That's not

29:35

who I am I don't know anything about whether this

29:37

is good for you or not and like also

29:39

it's not like it's not this Food

29:42

is food. I like that's not the

29:44

business that we need to be in convincing people that like

29:46

One snack food is better than another Just

29:49

eat the Doritos everybody. It's snacks What's

29:53

it's really interesting like that to me like what are

29:55

those friends want they want? People

29:57

to advocate for them and they can

29:59

buy it it's scale on

30:01

a lot of platforms for wild

30:03

amounts of money and they can't buy it from

30:05

us. And the fact that we are not for

30:07

sale, I think is... I'm

30:10

pretty sure this is a bad thing. The fact that

30:12

we are not for sale is increasingly in an acronym.

30:15

I think it's our competitive advantage, right? Because I

30:17

get to yell loudly, we're not for sale, but

30:19

it is increasingly in an acronym. Do

30:21

you get affiliate fees for like reviews? Yeah.

30:24

So we have a commerce operation that's sort of

30:27

over there. And so

30:29

we review things that is all editorially independent

30:31

of what happens on the commerce side of

30:33

things. And then that team

30:35

adds affiliate links to buying guides and

30:37

things like that. And that

30:39

provides us some revenue, but that is walled

30:41

off in a meaningful way

30:44

from like what our reviewers do all

30:46

day. So if some thing

30:48

makes us more money in affiliate sales,

30:51

our reviewers are not incentivized by that. They

30:53

barely know it. One place where it gets a little muddy,

30:56

and I hope people understand why this

30:58

is muddy, is deals coverage. Our audience

31:00

wants to know, is this a good deal? Here

31:02

are some deals that are happening. Are they good

31:04

deals? And then we have to

31:07

evaluate that. And so the

31:09

person you want to evaluate in that is closer to

31:11

editorial than not. You want an objective judgment

31:13

of like, is this a good deal? But then you

31:15

get affiliate fees on that. That's where I

31:17

think it gets the muddiest. But overall,

31:19

we try to stay as precious and

31:22

unscathed by the commercial aspect

31:24

of our business as we can.

31:26

Yeah. Untainted. Does The

31:28

Verge make money? The Verge makes

31:30

money. We've been around for over a decade. We're on the

31:32

last website on Earth. Do

31:34

you think about that a lot? Do you have conversations

31:36

a lot about like the P&L

31:39

and et cetera? We do. I

31:42

think in my roles that are in chief, it is

31:44

incumbent on me to make sure that one, we

31:47

have an audience. The audience is happy

31:49

with us. We're invested in

31:51

places where we think audience is growing or

31:53

there's impact in that we are

31:55

growing responsibly. So I have a publisher. Her

31:58

name is Helen Havelack. Helen

32:00

used to be our engagement editor, and

32:02

then she was our editorial

32:04

director. She was my number one deputy,

32:07

and I would go off into the company and have meetings,

32:09

and then I would come back and ask Helen what to

32:11

do, and then I would just go to the meeting and

32:13

do whatever Helen said. Eventually, I was

32:15

like, this is stupid. You should just be my boss. Helen

32:17

is our publisher. Above her

32:19

is our group publisher, Chris Grant, who's the founder of Polygon.

32:21

He and I have worked together for years upon years. The

32:24

three of us spend a lot of time just

32:26

thinking about our business and where we're investing and

32:28

how it works, but the split is that I'm

32:30

in charge of editorial and creative, and Helen is

32:32

in charge of our business. It's

32:34

a website that makes money. It's

32:37

amazing. Yeah,

32:40

look, I think fundamentally, the

32:42

idea that we have a website that makes money is weird.

32:46

It is weird. But

32:48

also, I will say, we operate inside of

32:50

a company called Vox Media that

32:52

also makes money and is also in

32:55

the turmoil of the digital media business,

32:57

but overall, compared to its peers,

33:00

has managed to weather the storm. A huge

33:03

part of that is the company is founded

33:05

on community and is founded on product,

33:08

like building web products, and

33:10

that is resilient. You

33:13

are a busy guy. What

33:16

do you do? You host several podcasts.

33:18

You just launched a new second decoder.

33:23

Yeah. Yeah. So

33:25

you've got that going on. You've got a lot of people to manage. You're

33:27

a dad. You've got many, many

33:29

things. I have a classic decoder

33:32

question, but in two parts for you. How

33:34

do you make decisions at The

33:36

Verge, but also how do you make decisions at Neil

33:39

I. Patel? I

33:41

really workshopped this answer,

33:43

and the answer is panic. Pure

33:46

panic. I use that too. That's one of my

33:48

favorite ways. I

33:50

am optimizer on speed. Fundamentally,

33:54

the crisper you are in making a decision,

33:56

the faster that decision can be proven to

33:59

be wrong. And then you

34:01

know a lot, so you get to remake the

34:03

decision. There's one thing that makes

34:05

that different for me than I think other people in other

34:07

kinds of jobs. There's

34:09

a bunch of decisions we make as an organization

34:11

every single day, minute to minute, that don't get

34:13

to be unmade. We

34:15

publish a news story and it's wrong. We don't get to unmake

34:17

that decision. We have to issue a correction and put it at

34:19

the bottom of the story. We

34:21

write a headline. It's

34:23

really not great for us to write and rewrite

34:26

headlines. There's a whole

34:28

bunch of instinct and taste and hard

34:30

fought experience just about making the

34:32

product we make every day that we

34:34

still have to do it really fast. The core

34:36

value of a newsroom, especially news on my cars,

34:38

is speed. We still

34:40

have to win every day, all the time, but we have to be fast.

34:43

Next to that, and I just want

34:46

to bracket that sort of editorial decision

34:48

making because that is a group product.

34:51

A lot of us make those decisions altogether all the time and

34:53

we are very aware of the stakes of getting some of that

34:55

stuff wrong. But then there's

34:57

everything else. Should

35:00

we spend money on going on this thing? We

35:02

should just go. Let's see what happens. Get a story out of

35:05

it. How many podcasts am I

35:07

going to do today? There's

35:10

only so many I can do. You've got to be in

35:12

a lot of meetings, but you also have to be in a

35:14

lot of podcasts, which are like meetings, but

35:16

hopefully more fun. I wish more of my

35:18

meetings were podcasts. Everyone desperately trying to be

35:20

a little bit more entertaining than they usually

35:22

are. That would be great. I

35:26

actually am really bad at context switching. A

35:29

big part of my decision making process is to

35:32

stack up modes

35:34

of operation. I'll be in

35:36

meeting mode for four hours. I need an

35:38

hour basically to turn that off and

35:41

go into individual contributor podcast host

35:43

mode. I really try

35:45

to make, for lack of

35:47

a better word, talent moments where I have to

35:49

be on and performing for an audience and

35:52

then manager moments where I

35:54

have to navigate meeting world

35:56

and make a bunch of decisions and

35:58

evaluate tradeoffs. as a different

36:00

part of my brain, and I try to not

36:02

switch between those modes very often.

36:05

I try to stay really focused. But

36:07

fundamentally, when you ask me how I make decisions, it's

36:10

usually I know the stakes of any

36:12

decision that we're making, because we've been running the verge

36:14

for a very long time, and the people around me

36:16

know the stakes of most of our decisions. And

36:19

then it's, can we make the decision quickly? And

36:21

importantly, can that decision stay made? Because

36:25

we can make a decision, and then it has

36:27

to bounce somewhere else, and someone else has to

36:29

think about it, and that's when the decision gets

36:31

unmade, and that's when the chaos sets in. Oh,

36:35

yeah, absolutely. But

36:38

when you're figuring out how to prioritize your

36:40

own time, when somebody says it'd be better

36:42

for the verge if Decoder

36:44

had a second episode a week, how

36:47

do you say, yeah, that one,

36:51

yes, is worth more of my time being

36:53

spent on this, but not some

36:56

other, of the many other cool things you could

36:58

be doing that would generate revenue and also be

37:00

exciting for you? Yeah.

37:03

The second episode of Decoder, it's

37:06

weird when you do a podcast. Podcasts are forever projects.

37:08

They don't end, unless you are telling a tidy

37:10

story, right? Just make one a

37:12

week for the rest of your life. Like you do

37:15

one. Yeah. Yeah, it's like

37:17

they're just forever projects. So I have always,

37:19

with Decoder in the back of my head,

37:21

had one end state,

37:23

which is we should do enough of these and ask the

37:25

same questions enough times so that we can do a book.

37:28

Right? And then we can put together a book

37:31

that's helpful, that's full of advice about how

37:33

companies work and how decisions are made. It's

37:36

print again. And then that would

37:38

be a useful artifact of the time we

37:40

all spent making the show. We kind

37:42

of got to a place where we're starting to talk about that. I don't

37:44

know if we're going to do anything with it, but we were able to

37:46

at least talk about it, which is fascinating. And

37:49

then we're like, oh, there's more decoder we can

37:51

make now that we've achieved the goal

37:53

of like, the show exists. It

37:55

has a format. There are some questions we

37:57

ask people. People want to be on

37:59

the show. When you start a new podcast, you have

38:01

to basically beg people to be on it. Now

38:04

we have a lot of incoming, which is really useful and

38:06

good, and I hope that continues, although there's still people we

38:08

want to go get, so we still go ask, but the

38:10

first version of decoder is sort of running itself. And

38:13

then it's like, oh, but there's other stuff we want

38:15

to talk about that does not lend itself to an

38:18

hour-long interview with a CEO. There's

38:20

lots of stuff that is happening in this world that we can

38:22

talk about and explain that it's

38:24

actually hard to find a not self-interested

38:27

CEO to talk about. AI

38:29

and copyright law, I can go talk to a lot

38:32

of CEOs. They are all self-interested. We actually want to

38:34

take a step back. You know, people understand that. Talk

38:36

to Robert Kinsell about it. I'm sure he'll have a

38:38

really diverse new one. Exactly.

38:41

Yeah. I'm sure Sam Altman has

38:43

a strong point of view on whether AI

38:45

and copyright law are compatible. We just like,

38:48

the stories we want to do are a little more expansive than

38:50

this box. We can do a shorter one. We

38:53

can figure out how to make that efficient, and

38:55

that will actually let us put more Verge reporters on the show. It

38:57

will let us put more friends on the show. It

38:59

will let us, when we do our audience surveys, the

39:01

audience is like, we like it when I explain things,

39:04

like actual feedback we get. So it will let us

39:06

deliver some more with the audience. And

39:08

that is, to me, a good use of my time

39:10

because it serves my team. It lets

39:12

my team come address the audience on the show, and

39:14

it serves the audience. The most

39:17

useful advice I've ever been given about time

39:19

management was from Sachin

39:21

Delosie of Microsoft. I was in

39:23

the back of a car with him one time. We were

39:25

going from one thing to another, and he was telling me

39:27

about all the things he'd done that day. He'd gone for

39:29

a run. He went to an investor meeting. We were doing

39:31

this interview. He was going to open a story. I was

39:33

like, how do you do all these things? And he looked

39:35

at me very seriously,

39:37

and he said, it's your

39:39

time. You have to be selfish about it. And

39:42

I was like, oh, shit. The master of the universe told

39:45

me that better time

39:47

management. And I hold on to that

39:50

very dearly. You

39:52

can only do the things you really want to do. And

39:57

all the other stuff is kind of noisy. It'll

40:00

come back around. We've

40:03

got to take a quick break. We'll be

40:05

back to discuss the big shifts Neelai is

40:07

seeing on the web, the Verge's AI policy,

40:09

and what he thinks is exciting about the

40:11

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41:47

We're back talking with the Verge Editor and Chief

41:49

Neil Ippotel about the state of the web and

41:51

whether I should go all in on the Cetiverse.

41:55

It definitely feels like this is a time when

41:57

everything is a big mess. So we've got... sudden

42:00

layoffs at all kinds of newspapers. Google

42:02

seems to be worse than it used

42:05

to be. AI

42:07

is maybe going to take over from search someday.

42:09

YouTube isn't a hegemon anymore. Twitter,

42:11

twittered. The fetaverse might happen.

42:13

I think it's exciting. Do

42:16

you think that all of this space is

42:18

going to create new sunlight reaching ground and

42:20

new things will happen? And

42:22

what do you think those new things might be? I

42:26

do. What I worry about is that

42:28

there's not a ton of

42:30

random money sitting around. Like

42:33

there were at certain times? There have been at

42:35

other times on the internet. But let me make

42:37

the case for the green shoots. We

42:40

were founded in a particular moment where two

42:43

things, there was a confluence of two things.

42:46

One, you might remember

42:48

the millennial media moment was big.

42:51

Millennials killed things left and right. They

42:53

showed up, they entered the workforce. I'm like on

42:55

the tail end of Gen X. So I myself

42:57

think of myself as Gen X, but yeah,

43:00

one year younger than me. I'm a millennial. Sorry,

43:02

everybody. I think we're exactly the same age. Yeah.

43:05

Yeah. But you remember that. Millennials are killing everything.

43:07

Like all the gardens burned to the ground across

43:09

America. Nothing was safe. Because

43:13

their habits were different. It was huge

43:15

generational shift. People were entering the

43:17

workforce. They were young. They were going to do something different

43:19

than their parents were going to do. And

43:21

you could see, okay, a bunch of money is moving

43:23

because these people have different tastes. At

43:26

the same time, that was when the mobile phone

43:28

had arrived, the smartphone had arrived. You're in the

43:30

first flush of like the LTE

43:33

era of the internet basically. And so

43:35

you have a new audience with

43:37

new habits in a new distribution

43:40

format. Right. And that

43:42

distribution format really looked like social networks. And

43:44

you just saw a bunch of media companies spring up

43:46

to meet that moment. And a bunch of other companies

43:48

spring up to meet that moment. And

43:51

so the idea that you have an audience shift and a technology

43:53

shift is very powerful. I think we

43:55

see that again right now. But very

43:57

clearly, I see that right now. You have a Gen Z

43:59

audience. audience, you have a millennial audience that is

44:02

in a Gen X audience and a boomer audience that's

44:05

pretty sick of the internet as it is today. They're

44:08

over it. These platforms, to borrow the

44:10

phrase from Cory D'Otoro, is being enshittified.

44:12

Left and right, people are looking for

44:14

something else. And then you have

44:16

Gen Z, which is actually another new generation, has habits

44:18

yet to form. And

44:21

then I think you do see some of these technology

44:24

shifts elsewhere. I do think you

44:26

see some of the action around the Fetaverse

44:28

and decentralized social networks and the collapse of

44:30

Twitter. And there's just opportunity

44:32

to build new kinds of products for

44:34

audiences that are looking for something new

44:36

or haven't yet formed their habits. And

44:39

that is just a very powerful moment that reminds me of

44:41

the moment that we were founded in. Now,

44:44

is there a bunch of VC money floating around

44:46

to make that bet again? Yeah, maybe there's sunlight,

44:48

but there's no fertilizer. Yeah, and

44:50

to be fair, the VC money that

44:53

started the bug tubes and the other... It's

44:55

not like they had great returns. It's not like it was a

44:58

great bet. We didn't create

45:00

a bunch of lasting millennial media institutions.

45:03

We might have created but one or two, and I

45:05

might accidentally run one of them. And that's weird. I

45:07

don't think that should be the case. That's

45:11

not right. I think

45:13

you're better at strategy than you think you are or than

45:15

you're willing to take credit for. We are

45:17

just stubborn about being about one thing. That

45:20

is our only secret. We care a lot.

45:23

We work really hard. Those are basics. We

45:25

have been very stubborn that the Verge has

45:27

an identity and we're not going to get moved off the

45:30

ball too much. It's the same for every

45:32

YouTuber who's great. The algorithm comes and goes

45:34

and buffets people in different directions, but the ones

45:36

who have had lasting success on any platform are

45:38

the ones who are pretty true to themselves. And

45:41

that, I think, is just a universal media lesson. Does

45:44

the Verge have an AI policy? I'm

45:46

the only person I know

45:49

who has published AI written copy

45:51

on the website. Oh. It

45:54

refuses to be outraged about it. This thing should go viral because

45:56

the editor in Chief of the Verge published a post half

45:59

written by AI. And if I could just

46:01

get the outrage viral traffic, we'd

46:03

be doing the next episode of this on a boat, Hank. Get

46:05

mad. Yeah, I won't get mad. I

46:08

wrote an article that said everyone should just buy

46:10

a Brother Wazer printer. And then to

46:12

try to game Google, I let Chat GPT fill out

46:14

the back half of the thing with filler text. Google

46:16

was not very happy about it. We did sell a

46:18

lot of printers. That's a true interesting.

46:20

The commerce team told me we moved a bunch of

46:22

printers that day. Wow. I briefly ranked very highly in

46:25

Google. They were equally not

46:27

happy about that. But yeah, we don't have that. This

46:30

is a mess, man. The

46:33

web is in trouble. It's real bad. But you've got

46:35

to have fun. You've got to have fun while it

46:37

burns down. So that was my fun. It

46:40

was an art project of a printer post. If

46:43

it costs $0.50 to fill the entire web

46:45

up with crap, the entire

46:47

web will be filled with crap. I

46:50

am glad I'm not Google right now. They

46:53

seem troubled. But yeah, so that's the only

46:55

AI copy that's been on our site so far. I

46:57

think our policy, straightforwardly, is we

46:59

don't lie to people. I'm

47:02

not saying we're never. We actually, because

47:04

of the phones you reviewed and the things you've done,

47:06

we certainly now published photos that have been edited by

47:08

AI just to show people. Look at this photo edited

47:10

by AI. I'm

47:12

sure over time there will be more elements

47:15

of that stuff. But our policy, very succinctly,

47:17

is do not lie to people. So.

47:19

Yeah, if you're doing something, tell the people that you're doing

47:21

it. And I think our audience wants us to push the

47:24

boundary and just showing what the tools can do. But

47:27

we are very precious. We're

47:30

going to disclose everything. And largely, what

47:32

we sell here is people. This

47:35

is where the people are. And we're going to stay pretty focused on that.

47:38

So the Fetaverse excites me

47:40

because I don't understand

47:42

it. I understand the technology

47:45

idea that my posts

47:47

can be seen on different platforms because they're

47:49

all part of a standard protocol. And that

47:51

my follower graph can follow me. My

47:54

bio can populate on other places. But

47:57

I don't know what it means. I don't know what. gets

48:00

created in that space. I don't think anybody does. I think

48:03

if you change social media

48:05

in this way, what happens? A

48:08

lot of people seem to be like, if you change it in

48:10

this way, things will get better. But

48:12

I also remember feeling that way

48:14

about everything so far that like,

48:17

I remember back when Twitter

48:19

was going to save the world and

48:21

social media was going to bring us all together. Can

48:24

you convince me that the better verse will

48:26

be better if it

48:28

actually happens? I can

48:30

try. I don't know that I can make

48:33

the case that it will be 100% better. I

48:35

can make... Well, no. 1% better. I can make a 1% better case. Not

48:41

worthy. I got that one. Okay. I got 1%. The

48:44

real answer is between 1 and 100, but I can do 1.

48:48

So, you know, there's this phrase that people

48:51

in media who think about media like say all

48:53

the time, content is king, right? Everyone like... Yeah. People

48:55

pop out of dark corners to say this to you.

48:58

If you ever hint that content isn't king, someone's like, no,

49:00

content is king. And it's just this mantra.

49:03

People just say it. The audience will

49:05

go wherever the content is, no matter

49:07

what. And you kind of

49:10

take one step back and you're like, well, distribution

49:12

is really important. And in fact, the

49:14

lesson of the internet is that the

49:16

distribution has an outsized impact

49:19

on what content gets made. Yeah. And

49:21

discovery. Like I don't really know the

49:23

difference between discovery and distribution, but I

49:25

think like they may now be the

49:28

same thing. Oh, yeah. I

49:30

completely agree. So the YouTube algorithm wants something

49:32

and YouTubers deliver that to the

49:35

algorithm. I'll give you another

49:37

example that I think about all the

49:39

time. I love the band New Order.

49:41

The 12-inch single, when they made it possible

49:43

to make vinyl records that were 12 inches with

49:45

one song on them, New Order was

49:47

like, here's Blue Monday. We made it for you.

49:50

It's very long. Because the

49:52

distribution medium, like

49:54

the format literally allowed them to make that song.

49:57

YouTube is like that. All these platforms are like

49:59

that. that in some way. YouTube,

50:02

depending on how you think about it, to get

50:05

a second pre-roll slot on a YouTube video, it

50:07

has to be so long. And

50:09

YouTube will be like, no, that's not how it works, but like every YouTuber

50:11

is like, yeah, it has to be so long. And

50:13

there's a push and pull between what the platform

50:15

says about itself and what the people who create

50:17

for the platform. Suddenly, all my videos are going

50:19

to be eight minutes long. Right. And

50:21

YouTube will probably listen to this and tell one of

50:23

us that that's not right. But it's like, YouTuber is

50:26

like, yeah, it's eight minutes long. There's a number, and

50:29

it gets what it wants. And that

50:31

recommendation algorithm is the distribution for people

50:33

for a lot. And they push things

50:36

into boxes. And that means I think

50:38

the content isn't king on the internet.

50:41

Like the distribution actually

50:43

just creates the work or creates the pressures

50:45

that forces all the work to be the

50:47

same. And I think over time, that's what

50:50

drives the audiences away. Hmm. Right. So that

50:52

there's a real change in

50:54

how these platforms work, where

50:57

over time, they just become more and more the

50:59

same thing, and the creators become more and more

51:01

the same. And that's a little exhausting. In every

51:03

place where you see open distribution,

51:07

you see a huge variety of

51:09

creators and content podcasts have basically

51:11

open distribution, like RSS feeds, podcast

51:14

or distributor RSS feeds. That means

51:16

people kind of own their distribution. There's

51:18

a vast array of podcast creators, there's

51:20

a vast array of podcast formats. They

51:23

don't all found like the beginning of YouTube videos or

51:25

whatever. I hate to speak on YouTube, but

51:27

just you can pick any algorithmic platform and

51:29

it's the same. Like TikTokers are more

51:32

the same than different, right? Podcasters

51:34

are more different than the same. The

51:37

web is distributed largely by through

51:39

websites and through RSS. There's a huge variety

51:42

of websites and the way websites look.

51:44

But then you see the algorithmic search

51:46

pressure push web design kind of all

51:48

into the same box. Newsletters distributed

51:50

by email, open distribution. The entire

51:54

economy is full of a huge variety of creators doing a

51:56

huge variety of things. They're more different than the same. All

52:00

I see with the Fetaverse is, oh, this is

52:02

going to open social distribution up a little bit.

52:04

It's going to allow us to control our

52:07

distribution networks. It's going to say, I'm not

52:09

on Twitter, but people on Twitter can follow

52:11

my website, and I can go promote that

52:13

follow anywhere I want in different ways and

52:16

build an audience outside

52:18

of the pressures of the algorithm. To

52:20

me, just that, that ability to try

52:23

is 1% better. That's

52:25

exciting, actually. Should I be a Fetaverse person?

52:27

Should I be on the Fetaverse somehow? What

52:31

should I do there? I think just

52:33

poke at it. I think

52:35

you should start at, I don't know, an account, and you

52:37

can follow a Pixel Feta account on it. That's

52:41

weird. I followed this account from a service

52:43

that looks like Instagram. It's like a driverless car. It's like

52:45

a car that's driving it, so without a person in the

52:47

thing. Weird. It's strange. Yeah, and

52:49

they're like, well, how would I reshape society around this? You're

52:53

like, I don't know. Many

52:56

questions have been answered along the way,

52:58

but just that first action, I am

53:00

on a website that looks

53:02

like Instagram, and I can follow

53:04

a creator that posts something that looks like

53:06

tweets on this thing, and I can open

53:08

yet another app and log into both of

53:10

them, and it will just show me everything.

53:13

It is mind-expanding in one particular kind

53:15

of way, because the commercial internet has

53:17

never allowed you to do these things.

53:20

Blue Sky, which is a different decentralized service, they

53:22

just opened up. Anybody can go sign up for

53:25

it now. They have their own decentralization protocol called

53:27

the AT protocol. Their idea

53:29

is that there should be a marketplace

53:31

for algorithms that you can show

53:33

up, you can look at the firehose of content, you

53:35

can say, I'm going to buy an algorithm that shows

53:37

me only posts about Santa Claus, and it's

53:39

going to go do the work for you. That's

53:43

a huge idea that is completely unproven,

53:45

but it's more exciting than, okay, here's

53:48

another billionaire who's going to prattle on

53:50

about free speech and then eventually betray

53:52

you. For me, and you

53:54

run a big website, and you are thinking, how

53:57

can I redistribute this website? How can

53:59

I reach people more direct? my

54:01

brain is like lit up. Like you

54:03

should be able to follow me at theverge.com and see

54:05

all my quick posts in your Threads account when Threads

54:08

federates. That's a big deal, like a really

54:10

big deal. Especially if we can find ways to monetize that

54:12

in a way that feels good. That's

54:14

a really big deal. How would you monetize

54:16

it? We gotta invent some

54:19

stuff. I have a very enlightened CEO, Jim Bagoff, and

54:21

he's allowing me to poke at some ideas about

54:23

those things, like what does new distribution

54:26

look like in the Fediverse? And

54:28

then our company has a giant sports property,

54:30

and you know what hasn't left yet is

54:32

sports Twitter. So I'm gonna poke at

54:34

it with the verge, and we're lightly exploring it.

54:37

But I think there's opportunity there to

54:39

build new kinds of media products that

54:41

is really exciting. And you

54:44

just have to do the first thing, which is you have to be

54:46

on one server and follow someone on

54:48

another server, and be like, oh, that worked. And

54:51

then your brain starts exploding. I

54:53

don't, yeah, but my brain hasn't exploded with a

54:55

monetization idea yet. I'm very curious about that. So

54:58

I'll just watch you do what I get. Well,

55:01

and the thing is, so the dollars are leaving Twitter,

55:03

right? So there's

55:06

just a pool of money that used to be getting

55:08

spent on Twitter that who knows where it's gonna go.

55:11

And if you can just make it kind of

55:13

easier and safer and

55:16

less Nazi-filled to send money

55:18

on our website. Like

55:21

maybe there's something there. We have to actually build it. We

55:24

did one test of, we have a quick post.

55:26

We did one test where we sold

55:28

a quick post as an ad. It was very

55:30

manual. They sold this to Apple, which

55:33

is really cool and neat.

55:37

And Apple did an experiment. They bought a new kind of

55:39

ad with us. Great, that's not my side of the house,

55:41

but it was a test and everybody

55:43

liked it. Our

55:46

audience was like, oh, this is a better ad.

55:48

And then everyone clapped. Yeah, it's like, oh, we

55:50

invented a new ad thing that feels good in

55:52

this place. And you're like, oh,

55:55

you can just put some pieces together. And you're like, oh,

55:57

this makes sense to me. And I'd rather

55:59

be in the. sort of like market competition side

56:01

of things than like the spin the wheel

56:03

of what billionaire do you trust today? In

56:06

my history of making stuff on the internet,

56:08

it has seemed like every

56:10

time a company has said,

56:13

hello, we'd like you to

56:16

make fewer decisions and

56:18

we will make the decisions for you, the people

56:20

say, yes, give me that. And

56:23

I don't like this. But

56:27

I wonder if we will look back and

56:29

think like, ah, that was a

56:31

weird moment in history. Or

56:33

if this is like a path that we are on

56:35

and we will just keep on heading down it until

56:38

no one ever makes any content decisions

56:40

at all, except for whether, I

56:42

mean, TikTok is almost already all the way like

56:44

this, except for whether to keep watching. And

56:48

all that's the only data that the platform

56:50

needs to continue to serve you

56:52

things that will keep you infinitely

56:55

satiated. One

56:57

very trite saying that I repeat a lot is

57:00

that data can only tell you about the past.

57:03

Okay. It is a perfect window into the

57:05

past. It is an absolutely useless

57:07

view into the future. Maybe

57:09

it will help you make a smarter bet, but

57:12

it will not tell you what is going to happen in the

57:14

future, especially when it comes to people on the internet. It

57:17

just won't. And especially when it comes to art

57:20

and creativity. It absolutely is

57:23

useless in that case. Like the

57:25

famous William Goldman saying is that the secret truth of

57:27

Hollywood is like nobody knows what they are doing. It's

57:30

true. There is a reason it's a saying. There is a

57:32

reason it's a cliché. I am not sure if that

57:34

is 100% the saying, but it is close enough. No

57:38

one knows what they are doing. See, I don't

57:40

even know what I am doing. I think the

57:42

idea that you can like algorithmically perfect a

57:44

feed by just looking at

57:47

all the data will actually drive people to an intense

57:49

amount of boredom and we will just go try something

57:51

else. I also think

57:53

young people, reflexively and to

57:56

their great credit, just reject everything their

57:58

parents did. They just

58:00

throw it out the window and then they do

58:02

it again ten years later and pretend they invented it,

58:04

which is great and I think a very important cycle

58:06

of creativity. But I think

58:09

that danger is overblown because

58:11

it requires a level of mathematical

58:13

certainty that is not reflected anywhere

58:15

in reality. Okay.

58:18

With that in mind, I want to read you

58:20

something that you said on threads. Oh, no. Which

58:22

is amazing. It's no, it's good. You

58:25

are confirming yourself. Another reason

58:28

we're mourning these magazines, this is about Sports

58:30

Illustrated being shut down, is because the media

58:32

that has replaced them is cloud chasing algorithmic

58:35

garbage. Not anything that

58:37

has aspirations of being bigger than whatever

58:39

metrics a platform gives them. Of

58:41

course, there is a new Sports Illustrated. It's

58:43

Barstool Sports. It is weightless and empty and

58:46

the best case scenario for a media company

58:48

built to succeed on platforms. Firstly,

58:51

goddamn boy. Wow.

58:55

Wow. Call the burn unit. Second,

58:59

though, this is

59:01

going to make me feel like it comes out of

59:03

the left field. You're talking about moving, like, let's have

59:05

websites. Let's have distributed. Let's

59:08

not have platforms. This feels a

59:10

little bit like one step away

59:12

from saying maybe print

59:14

has a future and maybe

59:20

it could be something new again. Do

59:22

you think print could be something new again? Maybe.

59:27

We're at a company that runs a legendary print

59:29

magazine, a New York magazine. We've published a Verge

59:31

Stories in collaboration with New York and had them

59:33

on the cover of that magazine. And

59:36

boy, does that make everybody excited. Boy,

59:38

is that just the coolest feeling in the world. It

59:42

is not a normal media company where

59:45

the Weirdo tech

59:47

website gets to go talk to

59:50

the legendary print magazine and say, hey, do you

59:52

want to work together on a big story? And

59:54

by the way, we'd love to put it on

59:56

the cover. And the legendary print magazine is like

59:59

dope. Let's run and so all

1:00:01

of my credit to David Assel and the people

1:00:03

at New York who are like open to this

1:00:05

idea Like that is not that is an impossibility

1:00:07

almost everywhere else Even for two print

1:00:09

magazines to collaborate like that for us to do is amazing

1:00:11

and like I love the company I work at But

1:00:13

it's really cool when it happens They

1:00:15

just it's the coolest when it happens. And

1:00:18

so I do think there's some amount of People

1:00:21

would like to buy atoms not just bits, you know,

1:00:23

and the atoms are really meaningful to them So

1:00:26

there's I don't know what kind of future that is.

1:00:28

I don't know that we're gonna do a print magazine

1:00:30

anytime soon, but like What

1:00:33

does that represent it represents? Well somebody cared

1:00:35

enough To print this

1:00:37

picture and like mail a piece of

1:00:39

paper to everybody around and the

1:00:41

care is really validating for people get to Be on the covers or

1:00:43

whatever and that validation is really important That's

1:00:45

not really what I was getting at in that in that

1:00:47

thread post though. What I was getting no I know it

1:00:49

just made me think about it. Yeah, it made me think

1:00:52

about it. But yeah, hit me what I was getting there

1:00:54

is Sports

1:00:56

Illustrated his aspiration was to be

1:00:58

a chronicle of culture Right

1:01:00

was to was what what

1:01:02

not anymore but was right like

1:01:05

the great magazines the great print magazines

1:01:07

a great media brands They

1:01:09

had aspirations that were bigger than

1:01:11

their revenue that were bigger than their view

1:01:14

counts It was did we make an

1:01:16

impact did we move the culture? Is

1:01:18

this the thing everybody's talking about? Is this the

1:01:20

magazine cover that maybe it

1:01:22

sold the most on you stands, but it was the most

1:01:24

striking and evocative I get you know,

1:01:26

I judge the Asking words

1:01:29

the national magazine awards and

1:01:31

you know the people in those rooms. They still

1:01:33

talk about impact They still talk about what makes

1:01:35

a great magazine and that that's like an art

1:01:37

form that is discussed I think that's inspiring right

1:01:39

like people really care about like packaging and design

1:01:41

all this stuff Barstool

1:01:43

sports, whatever you want to think about Barstool

1:01:46

sports is it has an

1:01:48

editorial point of view? It absolutely does it has

1:01:50

a main character every single day absolutely

1:01:52

does but it is defined

1:01:54

by its metrics Its

1:01:57

aspiration is to have the most

1:01:59

views Its aspiration as an

1:02:01

organization is to get the most traffic. They

1:02:04

think that way. You can see it

1:02:06

comes through in the work they make

1:02:08

because nothing is designed to be so

1:02:10

big that it overcomes the

1:02:13

view count. I think that's

1:02:15

empty. I think that's why people are sad

1:02:17

that something that Sports Illustrated that used to stand for

1:02:19

all that stuff is in decline and

1:02:22

it feels like there's no replacement. There should be

1:02:24

a replacement. Media brands should die

1:02:26

over time. There should be new ones.

1:02:28

I think that's a healthy cycle. All

1:02:30

the new ones are

1:02:32

either individual creators who are getting burned out

1:02:34

by the dozen or they

1:02:37

are media brands that are designed mostly to be

1:02:39

optimized for platform distribution and never stand for anything

1:02:41

much bigger. That effort and

1:02:43

that care is actually what ends

1:02:46

up differentiating you in any sort

1:02:48

of non-commoditized market and the platform's

1:02:50

commoditization. Maybe

1:02:52

that is more so the tension than individuals

1:02:54

versus brands. When you have

1:02:56

a brand, you try to differentiate. Our

1:02:59

company, at least since history, has tried to differentiate on

1:03:01

quality which is more expensive. We're

1:03:04

going to be fine. We're

1:03:06

going to save the media with blog posts.

1:03:09

It's going to be great. You're going to save the media with

1:03:11

blog posts with the last website on it and

1:03:13

keep saying weird

1:03:15

things and putting them on stickers that I could

1:03:17

put on things. Those

1:03:22

stickers have ended up on some very powerful laptops which

1:03:24

is very funny to me. I'm

1:03:30

very impressed by what you all

1:03:32

are doing at The Verge and I'm honored,

1:03:35

frankly, that you gave me the opportunity to

1:03:37

be a one-time host so

1:03:40

that you could be interviewed. I'm

1:03:42

very worried about that. I'm one of the fired, by the way. I want

1:03:44

to be very clear. The chances of me being fired are very high and

1:03:46

this might be the last thing I ever do. All

1:03:49

right. In that case, it'll go down in history.

1:03:51

You want to raise your stakes right at the end of the

1:03:53

party. Yeah.

1:03:56

My life at tell. Thank you for being on

1:03:58

Decoder. agreeing to this

1:04:00

ridiculous study. I like

1:04:08

to thank Neelai for taking the time to

1:04:10

speak with me and for letting me take

1:04:12

the reigns of decoder for a moment and

1:04:14

thank you for tuning in. I hope you

1:04:16

enjoyed it and it wasn't too weird. It

1:04:18

was a lot of fun for me. If

1:04:20

you're looking for more of what I'm up

1:04:22

to, you can find me by searching Hank

1:04:24

Green on the internet. I'm on threads fairly

1:04:26

actively at Hank Green. Also, apparently all of

1:04:28

the Verge people are there now and a

1:04:30

bunch of tech reporters and that's mostly why

1:04:32

I'm there. So if Meta wants to thank

1:04:34

anyone, they're the ones making it

1:04:36

happen over there as far as I'm concerned. My YouTube

1:04:38

channel that I had with my brother is

1:04:40

at Vlogbrothers on YouTube. We have a podcast

1:04:42

called Dear Hank and John. And if you

1:04:44

want to hear my Science Trivia Game Show

1:04:46

podcast, that's called SciShow Tangent. You can listen

1:04:48

to that wherever there are podcasts. If you

1:04:50

have big ideas on what the decoder team

1:04:52

should cover or who they should have on

1:04:54

the show, they would love your feedback. You

1:04:56

can email them at decoder at theverge.com. They

1:04:58

really do read every email or you can

1:05:00

hit up Neil I on threads. He's at

1:05:02

Reckless 1280. They also have a

1:05:05

TikTok. You can check it out at Decoder Pod.

1:05:07

If you like decoder, please share this with your

1:05:09

friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And

1:05:12

if you really love the show, you can give

1:05:14

that five star review. I give it a five

1:05:16

star review. Maybe I didn't yet. Let's

1:05:18

do it right now. You and me. Let's pop open

1:05:20

that app and give it a five star review. Are

1:05:22

you doing it? I'm doing it right now. Here I

1:05:24

go. It's open and click on those three little dots

1:05:26

on the screen.