Tomorrow - Dark Zuckerberg and the Mystery of Musk's Schedule

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

It's 2025 and fact checking is a thing of the past. Without the confines of reality, anyone can claim to be the one true source of free speech, or like really, really good at a video game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, and welcome to tomorrow. I'm your host, Josh, what's bolsky. And I'm your other host Ronnie Mueller. We are back in a brand new year. 2025. Yeah, which am I? Am I crazy to think 2025 sounds much more futuristic than other years? Like 2025 sounds more futuristic than 2024. Yeah, five's got like a hard edge on it. Like it feels like it's like made out of Chrome. Exactly, exactly.

And I believe this will be the year that is made out of Chrome for all of humanity. But we had a little bit of a break and now we're back in the saddle, as they say, and there's a lot going on. In a few short weeks, the world has changed dramatically. We now, America now owns Greenland and the Panama Canal. We have changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we have elected Elon Musk as our first foreign born president, which I think is incredible. Everything's up and to the right.

It's all up and to the right. Things are just looking great all across the board. A lot of exciting things happening ahead of Trump's inauguration. Of course, we just passed the international celebration of the insurrection day, January 6th, which is big, big and exciting. And markets have been crazy. They've been up, they've been down. It's literally like the most marketing time the markets have ever experienced, I feel. It's like, things are doing really well and things are doing really

badly. Then things are doing really well. It's like very like- There's probably an index for that. Choose your own adventure kind of situation going on. Tech stocks have been crushing it and then tech stocks have been getting crushed. It's always a lot of fun. But it's a new year. It's a time for resetting, reorienting ourselves,

rethinking how we approach things. And I for one am excited. thinking, how we approach things. And I, for one, am excited. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic that, I mean, I don't know, this year could be a nightmare, but then also I'm sort of like, you know, it's always darkest before the dawn, as they say. And it's pretty dark, I guess. I had to turn on the flashlight on my phone.

You know, that's how dark it is. Right. And speaking of dark, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, the head of... Dark Zuckerberg. Dark Zuckerberg. Is it Dark Brandon, Dark Zuckerberg? Dark Zuckerberg. Have I coined that? I'd like to think that that's my... We should use that for something immediately. Yeah, that's a good eyebrow for sure would dark But yeah, Mark Zuckerberg a big announcement do you want to see anything describe the announcement that he just was it January

He dropped it on January 7th, right? Yeah, so Mark Zuckerberg announced that You know, they've had these long-standing relationships with news organizations and fact-checking companies over helping them fact-check claims and content on Facebook. And now Zuckerberg is rolling that all back. He's like, we're not going to do fact-checking anymore. We're getting rid of all of this because we want free speech on our platform. We want unencumbered free speech.

Yeah. He said, it's time to get back to our roots around free expression. Weren't there roots around like judging how women looked at college? I mean, the very root of it. And then he also said, it's time to get... Sorry, he said that there are fact-check instances that reach a point where it's made it's made too many mistakes and has done too much censorship and and You know, it's funny because and I'm not trying to I don't want to praise this exactly But one thing I see all the time and I follow a lot of people on Instagram

Who are you know? Shedposting about like kind of hard left stuff a lot of the time. Needless to say, I don't follow Joe Rogan or whatever. But they get all the time are talking about being like shadow banned and their posts got taken down. I do think it's funny, but I will say, not in defense, but just to point out that their efforts to moderate speech have actually been really poor.

Right. They weren't good. They weren't good. And there is something to be said for lessening these automatic systems that just like, you know, it's like people ending up with like, you know, they have like a song playing and then their like post gets taken down or they say something. It's like people are like, I mean, there's a whole language that has been formed on Instagram and now it's kind of also on TikTok around like safe speech. Like you can't say killed or like you can't say the word rape or you can't say like dead.

Like your post will be like like will be downranked. We're not like context matters. Yeah, of course. Of course. And like like, you know, and so and they've really it is really an abysmal system that they've created because what it it's just like all of this like brand safety stuff, which I think we've talked about before, where advertisers are like, I don't wanna be around any bad news. And so then they're like,

don't put me around war content. And then you write a post about the new Star Wars movie and their ads don't show up. And they're like, why aren't my ads showing up? And it's like, because you said you don't want the word war to appear anywhere near your ads or whatever. And it is in a way like they've done that.

And I see people every day, I see people that I follow. Sometimes by the way, not like radical posters just people who are like Oh, I wrote a thing about some policy I disagree with or I wrote about you know some war somewhere and it got like taken down for like, you know harm You know user could cause user harm or whatever and I think like So on the one hand he's correct That his system that they've designed for moderating content has done a bad job. And

it actually is limiting speech in all sorts of directions. The real problem with it is they have one is like, you've got a group of people who are just putting it's not about like questionable speech. Now there's stuff like the way there are new rules treat like the way you can speak about you know, gay people or transgender people are like really crazy, right? Now you can say like, you can just make all kinds of really nasty references to people. Right.

What do you say about like, he was like, you know, saying things about immigration and gender and like, basically, that's going to be a lot more hands off now. Right. Which is like, on the one hand I'm like fine, fine. Let it be hands off because people are going to be people, right? They're going to say and think the things that they think. It's really hard to do a blanket policy. It's hard because language is hard, right?

Not just here but all over the place, not just in America but all over the world. Language works really differently. If you say again, the Star Wars thing is actually a great example. Like context is really important, right? Obviously, some things are abuse, some things are, sometimes people are talking about abuse, and that gets flagged, right? They're saying like these things happened and that's wrong, but in doing it. But I think the issue is like, a lot lot of this heavy handedness is because they're algorithmically doing this. They're being like, okay, if you have the word war or if you have something that's related

to this, we're knocking it out. But what he's proposing is getting rid of human fact checkers, of getting rid of, in some cases, really trained individuals who understand context, who understand what's going on and are able to say this is actually categorically false. Right, well that's right. The misinformation piece is actually is the one that actually is really like... one thing about abuse, it's another thing about like letting misinformation spread and and now they're gonna use like a community node style system right? Right, they're being exactly like X in like a number of ways which I can go through. So, but here's

the thing that I actually take the biggest issue with, which is like, I'm willing to say, like I agree that like their speech, like, their censorship is the wrong word, but their ability, their attempts to create a safe environment for people to converse in or to communicate in has been sort of a failure like on a bunch of different levels. The problem is they created a platform that amplifies, like it's meant to amplify and their amplification, this to me is actually the biggest, and maybe it's been written about more recently, maybe

I don't know if I've seen it, but what is annoying about Metta is that they are like, well, what can we do? We've overdone it on the censorship. We've overdone it on the fact checking, like we need to let people say what they're gonna say and like, okay, fine, then be totally neutral in what happens when people say it. But like-

They still put their thumb on the scale, yeah. But they're not, they're not totally neutral. They've created a system that lifts up the most controversial, the most clicky, the most shitty and puts it in front of people because that's, it keeps them there. And so the flaw in this argument is not, and it's the same thing for X by the way, which actually goes out of its way to lift up some of the worst content.

But the system is designed to create stickiness, not to create a great experience for people. Stickiness does not equal great. Time spent does not mean it was good time spent, right? Well spent time. So what's bunk about his argument is that he wants there to be free speech would mean actually on these platforms, I mean, you do not have an algorithm. Right, they're not proposing that.

The algorithm manipulates speech into something else. It makes it actually less free. It has the ability to push up voices and push up bits of speech that are unnaturally positioned for people. And so I think, and you can make an argument like, well, it's marketing or it's some form, you've got to control it somehow, or whatever.

But the truth is, that's actually not the case. When these services were originally around, Facebook was like a fast moving, essentially like a chronological feed of things that people were saying. And they didn't post in, it didn't show you what was popular in your network. It didn't have the for you page. It was like, it was just like.

It didn't have the reach or damage it could have now. Right. They engineered it to have maximum stickiness and reach for posts that were getting traction. And what we know, and there have been studies on this and people who had worked at Facebook have talked about it, is that the system favors by design, it favors controversial, hateful, attention grabbing content over over normal content. They know. Facebook has talked about this, and there are people who've worked for them have talked

about it. They know that the stuff that makes people upset also keeps them there longer. I think this is a foregone... We're kind of beyond the point of even saying it. But it is like, if you truly want a free speech platform, one is you don't get to say what you think is the good stuff and what you think is the bad stuff, like just wholesale. It's like Musk is like, it's free speech, except if somebody says something I don't like.

Or if you say something mean about him. Right. If you say mean about him, right? She's a mean about him or whatever. Like suddenly suddenly it's not a platform But also you can't play favorites on What you think people should see because now you're the in charge of the speech of the platform, right? So they're like we want to be hands-off. They're like we want to back off, right? We don't want to be so Mark Zuckerberg is like I don't want to be telling people what they can and can't say, right? So they're like, we want to be hands off. They're like, we want to back off, right? We don't want to be, so Mark Zuckerberg is like, I don't want to be telling people what they can and can't say, right? And yet every day his system and his service

suggests what they think people should be paying attention to, which in and of itself is a form of speech. And I think actually what should be looked at with every one of these social networks is how much they have become the arbiter of speech. Like this is the question. It has nothing to do with what you will and won't allow on the network. It has to do with how your algorithms promote, right? And like how much they're actually responsible for what is decided on to be appropriate or important speech. But none of this actually has to do with free expression. It's about ingratiating himself

with the Trump administration. It's not about the thing he's saying it's about. To be clear, Mark Zuckerberg is full of crap. He doesn't care at all one way or the other. He cares about how do the revenue numbers look? Are people, what's the time spent? How many ads are people interacting with? Like that's his business. This business is not information. His business is selling ads, people paying for advertisements

around other people's content. Like that is Facebook's business model. That is how they make their money. They're not a subscription service. They're not an app that does something. They're not like a content creation app. Not really. They're an attention app so advertisers can put their stuff in front of other people.

And they're really, really good at it. They're really good at it. Almost the best in the world, I might argue, they've done it better than anybody has ever done online advertising. There's a funny note in this, the Wall Street Journal wrote this piece that was like, Zuck demanded that like, the algorithm be reviewed, like this sort of like,

thing that was, I guess, pulling up things to fact check in the first place, after he thought like, not enough people liked his post about getting knee surgery. He was like, this should have blown up and nothing happened. This is all- Am I being censored? This is always, this is always, it always comes down to was like, this should have blown up and nothing happened. Like, am I being censored? This is always, this is always, it always comes down to these like little,

these little guys who just feel like something unfair has been done to them. I mean, it's incredible. Like the, the, the, the, the, the, and look, I, I mean, I, I understand. Like we're all human, you know, we all have the same kind of petty desires. Those, those, those, those, those, those, those,

those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, those, kind of petty desires. That was a killer post. Everyone should have loved it. Yeah, you wanna go viral. You wanna go mega-vi. I understand. And if you're Zuckerberg, you're like, I don't understand. People love my like wakeboarding post and how come they don't like my knee surgery post, you know?

And he's really been- It was a health post and that's where a lot of misinformation was. I think that's what like the line is there, but still. And he's really been posting. Like to his credit, like, Zuckerberg, like clearly he's like posting through it in a way. And to his, honestly, to his credit, Zuckerberg, clearly, he's posting through it in a way.

And to his, honestly, to his benefit, whoever is running his team, whoever's responsible for the Mark Zuckerberg makeover. Oh, the glow up, yeah. The glow up, it's physical. The chain, the hair, the muscles. It's the chain, it's the hair, it's the shirts. But it's also just his style of posting.

Somebody somewhere engineered this like version of Mark Zuckerberg or maybe he had some kind of like therapy breakthrough. It's not just didn't just come out of anywhere. It wasn't just like Mark slowly over time became more like a normal human being. It was like this was a carefully constructed PR experiment that has gone unbelievably well. Marketing experiments got unbelievably well. But so he's been posting a lot and like, you know, good for him, I say. But yeah, anyway, I just think it's like, look, the only thing, it's funny, a writer that I used to work with, a guy named Jeff Ahaza, who writes for Rolling Stone now, posted something,

I probably saw it on Instagram, ironically. But he was like, the best thing that we can hope for is that future generations think social media is remarkably uncool and don't want to use it. And he's like, so far we're doing a great job. And I... Make it unusable. I just like, it's like lame. Like, I think the best thing can happen.

And honestly, I do feel it a little bit. Like, you know, I don't know. I mean, we're all still like in a generation, like I've got a 10 year old, you know, and she's definitely like very curious about social media. And it's like her, obviously her parents and a lot of people around her are paying attention to social media.

And so I think there's still like a fascination. It's a little bit like cable TV. Back in my day, when I was a child. Or cigarettes. Maybe. But in terms of content. Actually, we just watched this great documentary. It's a great A&E biography about the birth of MTV.

And incredible cultural moment, unbelievably influential, completely change culture. But it also one of the things they talk about in the early part of it is that MTV was like you couldn't get it in a lot of places. And once young people started hearing about this idea, there was like a channel that just played music videos that they were like desperate for it. Right. It's like. So I think there's a little bit of like you want it. Right. It's like, so I think there's a little bit of like, you want it. I'm just thinking of like this next generation. Like, will it seem in 10 years, will it seem cool to be on social media? Like, I don't know.

Like, is that just the way are we just trending towards this inevitable situation where that is really a huge part of our lives? Or are we going through this transition period? I mean, for me and maybe other people feel this way, I don't know, I've talked about it before. I feel less and less compelled. Same. Like I'll look at TikTok at night before I go to sleep.

It's mostly just like flipping through channels on the television. Like I rarely am getting like big takeaways, you know? It's like just kind of pleasant for the most part. Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, so Zuckerberg is like, Look, I don't know, you know, his audience is increasingly older and right wing. I mean, that's definitely true. That's been that's been well documented. Instagram, I know Instagram

users are have been dropping, I don't think threads really has heat. Like, it's got a user base because it's converting people from Instagram, but it doesn't really have like, you know, if they'd done some more things, right, I feel like they could have actually taken Twitter, like they could have taken Twitter. They made it like, newsy or useful. I mean, early on, I mean, early, early on, like when they first launched, I was like, they're this is what

can do it, because they've got like because they've got the audience, they've got the technology. They just failed to get why people were interested in Twitter and who was interested in it, and I think they've missed that beat. I don't think Blue Sky is going to play catch up. I think it's fun to use, more fun to use than Twitter, but I don't think it's... Twitter's dying. Twitter's dying.

There's just no other way to describe it. It's not healthy. And Facebook is annoying. Instagram is less and less interesting. TikTok may or may not be banned or may be bought by Mr. Wonderful. And also all of these meta sites are going to soon be, you know, going to lack any sort of, I guess, censorship or free speech or, you know, moderation. If they become more like X, I think if that's an example of like, we don't want to moderate,

like let the Nazis back on and let them say whatever they want about the Holocaust. It's going to be an unpleasant place to be. Like, I don't think that will encourage use. It will encourage use amongst a certain segment of the audience. But I don't think it's the segment of the audience that is actually driving the success of these platforms. I mean, yeah, they just continually don't think it's the segment of the audience that is actually like driving the success of these platforms. Right.

I mean, yeah, they just continually like don't get it. One fun note to the fact checking thing was he was he was like, and we're going to like our remaining safety and moderation people, you know, we're going to solve them for like, you know, horrible crimes, but we're going to move them from California to Texas, right? They're like not biased by overly censoring content. I was like, I don't know if you know how people work. That's all theater for Trump. I mean, he's scared, so scared of Trump being president and taking some kind of legislative

action against him or antitrust action. I mean, there's already antitrust in process. He wants to get those thrown out. So much of this is about, and Trump praised him for it, so much of this is about currying political favor with the incoming administration, which is fine. This is what you do, especially in a kind of a fascistic oligarchy. You want to be buddies with the people who will do favors for you, with the politicians who going to help support your causes and your businesses and everything else. And that's kind of where we're at right now. If it's like that in four years, we'll see. But this is all, all of the tech guys are kind of going like, oh yeah, we can have an oligarchy here the way they

do in Russia. We just have to do the things that put you in line with the leader. Right. But back to your other point though, will this ultimately make these platforms something that people want to use? And clearly that's something Facebook's been struggling with. I want to talk about their AI characters. They started this a while ago. They started creating like AI profiles of people, fake people posting fake things. And then recently they told the, Metta told the Financial Times that they would like these AI characters

to sort of help boost engagement. People are not engaging with social media as much as they used to because it sucks. And now they're like, the thing that's gonna solve it is talking to these fake people. This shit's crazy. I mean, this stuff is truly, truly, truly like, the thing that's gonna solve it is talking to these fake people. This shit's crazy. This stuff is truly, truly, truly down the rabbit hole.

I don't know who believed this was a cool idea. I mean, the one that, we wrote a story about it and it's like, the profile we cite, it's HiMamaliv, I believe is the name of the- And she's a proud black queer mama of two and truth teller. Yeah, and then heart and this is a fake fake person your realest source for life's ups and downs. Let's chat. Um, And she's an ai creation and

Uh, I don't know who this is for I assume boomers maybe to some extent like like maybe like liberal boomers who are like I assume boomers maybe to some extent, like maybe liberal boomers who are like, I want to interact with like, I don't have any black friends, so I want to hear black woman, but I don't actually know any. And now Facebook has provided me with one. That is literally so cringe on every level. So this is like pure dystopia.

Like it is so. So let's just say on the face value of these accounts, this idea, I don't know what the right, I don't think there's a right kind of AI person to put on social media, but clearly they're trying to create this, here's what all the diversity of social media, but it's like, it really is almost, I would say, not almost, I'd say is offensive to people who are black and queer to create these like caricatures of them, right?

Yes. These like fake versions of a real type of person, like, and to have it be like this, like, oh, look, we made one, this like, we made one for you. It's like, it's disturbing. Like, it's disturbing, it's upsetting, it's weird. It is, it's like an unattractive idea, I think to most people.

Yes. I would venture to guess that most people don't want to have like, I think like bringing like reality identity into an AI character is a really weird thing to do to like be like I'm a real person, but I'm fake. Like I think if they're making something useful that's going to answer questions that you need something like it's like a more like you know I need this. Tell me this bubble. I think I think what works about like a Siri or like a Gemini or whatever Or you chat chat GBT is like it's this kind of disembodied like vague. It's like person II They have a personality like a human, right?

But you're not like you don't need to confront their individual humanity Like they're not there to be like in an individual human to you I understand there are these apps where it's like, oh, you can have a girlfriend or whatever, and that's a different thing. But like generally speaking, I don't think people are like, I wish my AI had like strong political points of view. Like I really, maybe they want that.

I don't think that's actually what people need from it. So then they've got, so then there's just some of the basic like idea that you're like doing, right? This like fake person and this all this weirdness about it. And you're gonna talk to it, it's gonna encourage engagement because more people will like talking to this fake person. I mean, here's a caption on a photo from Liv's profile.

This year's hashtag Winter Wonderland Dance was a success, three exclamation marks, snowflake emoji. Our PTA team has been planning for months and spent the last week prepping decorations, making snacks and drinks and picking out songs for the playlist. Y'all might've even spotted mama Liv and Rachel on the dance floor once or twice.

Eye emoji, crying laughing emoji, hashtag imagine with AI. It's like, dude, there are real people doing things like this. I don't need you to imagine it with AI I just lost like 10 seconds of my life It's also like just gross like I don't understand like it's an AI image, too It's like it's an AI image of kids dancing. Yeah, and it's like other faces that went yeah without their faces sure whatever I

Just think so. Okay, then so now like just saying okay, so it's just gross and weird and upsetting and not necessary. It's still that same old, like, garbage thing that's already there being, like, re-promoted by, like, a fake person. But then, then the deeper thing is, like, so this is the idea to create engagement on your platforms, like, this is, like, forget about the execution for a second, like, the person that you've, these, all these weird all these weird people you're creating these fake people. This is the idea is that you're going to spur engagement with actual people by putting these fake people in their feeds. Like who truly is this for? It has to be boomers. It has to be boomers.

They're the only people interacting with AI. This feels like they were like somebody at Meta was like, hey, the AI Jesus, the Jesus Shrimp stuff is like the shrimp Jesus is actually getting a lot of engagement. Like, is there a version? I fucking guarantee you this is what happened. Somebody was like, is there a version we could do of stuff like this?

It's not so weird because people seem to like engaging with this like AI content. And this is how the project began. Like I swear to God because like I can't understand another rationale, like another way to even get into it. Like where did this idea come from? Right. And you're saying like the whole point of this, right, is to create engagement on the with the real people. And then like the next example that John Keegan gave of this was like, it was this AI character

Liv talking about her imaginary good deeds about like doing like a coat drive for poor people like during the winter and like putting an AI image of the coats she didn't give to the big poor people she didn't give them to. Kicking off the New Year in service of our community, handshake emoji, leading the season with Code Drive was an honor, especially because it provided my little ones

with a tangible example for helping others. Okay, she doesn't have little ones. There are no people she's helping. There are real people who need help, and the amount of energy that Facebook used to process to build this AI post probably could have like that money could have been spent on like actually helping people. Like also, by the way, the comments on this are incredible. They're incredible. Right. The engagement they created is infuriated. All of the engagement is like, did you give those AI codes to the AI poor people? Is the published date of your post as big a lie as the content of it?

This post is an abomination, a cynical lie for which the only reason can be to degrade humanity. These are the comments. Please stop this. Wow, this sucks. This sucks. Everyone's hating, but codes won't even be necessary once the it 50 trillion metric ton of co2 that AI generates tips us in ecological collapse

Live this is really evil. These are the cops It's like guys You're you're on the wrong track Like it must be clear Connor Hayes met as VP for of products for generative AI Should not have should not have his job. That's my opinion. This is an abysmal, abysmal idea.

He should be so destitute that he has to get one of those virtual coats, one of those AI coats. I'm kidding, I'm sure Connor Hayes is a nice guy. And but he had a bad idea. I think if this is his idea or his team's idea, or that even like letting people it's one thing that they're testing these things out, but then they're like, this is going to increase engagement. It's like, no, this is the same thing

it's always going to do. And it's going to create like, more bad engagement, more people are going to be furious at like this fake AI with the fake coats and the fake poor people. I mean, here, here's his quote. He's speaking to the FT, Financial Times. We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do.

They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform. That's where we see all of this going. It's like, I don't know, man. Seems like a stupid idea. They're not real people, these people. Like, the people creating this,

like, don't they get that this is weird? Yeah, right. Like, do you use your platforms? I think this is one of the things I always think when I see stuff like this. Like, all the time, like, when people, when Apple does stuff on the iPhone that I think is awesome, like,

do the people making the features use the product? No, they just, they're like, push it. It really feels like they don't. It really feels like sometimes, it's like making the features use the product? No, they just push it. It really feels like they don't. It really feels like sometimes it's like the photos app. Right. Right. Oh, yeah. They ruined it. The photo is crazy bad. Like if you use it a lot, like, you know, for sure, it feels really weird now.

And it's confusing and bad and poorly laid out and doesn't make any sense. And it's like, did you find the things I want? Did the UX person who was behind this Ever use the original, you know, it's they're like, oh we got rid of the old We got rid of the old Photos app guy now. I got to do something to put my stamp on it's like oh And it's all just like AI slideshows like this is like I sliced this is Connor Hayes. It's like, hey, this is a cool idea.

People will like it. It's like, well, why don't you go on Instagram for a few hours and tell me if you think you'd like it? You know what I would hate to see in my feed? I follow a bunch of different car accounts, like some Range Rover, vintage Range Rover accounts. And I just started following this guy who like reviews weird cars. You know what would suck to see

is a fake guy reviewing a car that doesn't exist. Like, that would be not good content for me and I wouldn't enjoy it. And I would hate that it was shown to me and that I wasted my time having to even spend one second deciphering it. And it's just like, if you use the app like a normal person. I don't know. Right.

And these AI bots aren't even good at doing the useful stuff. I saw this tweet today. It was this woman who's got an Airbnb, or was going to have an Airbnb, but she's in the way of the Palisades fire. There's horrible wildfires going on, and she talks to what presumably is a bot or a customer service representative taking cues from a bot or a customer service representative

taking cues from a bot or notes from like, yeah, just some automated notes, but she's like, hey, I can't go to this Airbnb because there's a giant fire here, et cetera. And they're like, sorry, this doesn't count as a disruptive event. And it's so clearly, if a person were there saying, obviously, contextually, this is a big deal, you can't go there, baby, it's basically on fire. It is a big deal. And then funnily enough, underneath it,

Grok AI on Twitter, do you know Grok is free now? Sorry, what? Grok, the AI chatbot on Twitter is now free that kind of happened around the holidays Oh, I didn't I didn't know that I also worth every penny. I don't care. I guess because What was even how are you even paying for grok was it like include was probably with your subscription? Okay well Is you know I they gave me back my blue check because they realized they'd made a huge mistake

So I might have had access to it But I've only used it to make weird pictures of Elon Musk. Like, so I think the only time I used Grok was like, I was sending you some kind of picture of Elon Musk doing something, crying maybe, I want to say. And now you lost your privileges, but I, I don't have a- I did? Wait, I lost my privileges?

I don't think I did. I think I still have full access to Grok. Let me use it now too. And it was so funny because I'm reading this funny interaction of a person with a bot on Airbnb and underneath it on Grok on X, it says like, has a question that you could ask the AI. It's like, how does Airbnb's policy affect users during emergencies? Or like, I don't know what to say. It was like, anyway, you have grok then explaining like, why this is bad. So you have bots talking

about bots trying to tell them how to be human. And it's just like, I don't know, it was a situation that was just blowing my mind earlier today. Okay, I gotta say, um, I made it I asked just now for it to make an image of Elon Musk kissing Donald Trump's ass. Hold on. And I got, and I got, hold on, I'm going to drop this. I think we have the episode image for this episode.

We've got it. But this is, they didn't even, let me see, I'm saying I use butt. Maybe this is like, he's supposed to be buddying up to him. Hold on. But literally, let me see if I say that. Elon Musk kissing Donald Trump's butt, literally. Sorry about that, something didn't go as planned. Please try again.

What if I just, I guess it's inferring that what I wanna see is an image of Elon Musk cozyed up to Donald Trump, which honestly is not so. So is it not showing you that or it is showing you that? It's showing me, here's a picture of them kissing on the lips. Okay. It's getting a little bit more creative.

It mainly is just showing pictures of Elon Musk, which basically look pretty photo realistic. Like I'll give it, I'll hand it to Grok. These images look good enough to look fake, to convince people on Facebook that it's actually happening. Elon Musk crying. Like a boil some oceans and. Nude, Elon Musk nude and crying.

Oh, it's doing it. Nah, it's not good to, is it doing it? It's doing it. What could this possibly generate? These are all close-ups is BS man Grock is too smart for me Is there anything good I can do with grock like what's the point? No offense, but like is that it you can now have it explain to you

Why something like what why something on Twitter is interesting even though like like a regular human can explain it to you. It's doing like little roundups or something, little like. Well, it was just the question it suggested I asked on that. Like explain what the deal was. It was like, oh, Airbnb is not acting very personably. Like in an emergency. Well, it's just like they have this news thing that's been on the side forever, which is absolutely awful.

Oh, that's terrible. I don't even look there. Really bad. It's like, it's like, it's like, you know, Biden resigns as president. And then it's like you go to look at it and it's like somebody on Twitter who said he should resign. And I'm like, OK, I don't think that's actually anyway, whatever. I'm look, I am great.

You know, as you know, I'm the world's number one AI proponent. And I believe it's the future of all technology, just like the blockchain is also. And anyway, I'm just like, for me, I'm just like, I understand it's fun for a while to do the grok stuff, the image generation, whatever it is We're supposed to be doing with it. I'm also current like still just doing pictures of Elon Musk like this can't be the future I mean, I think I don't know. I mean think for them for him. I mean the only like You know, obviously this is data gathering opportunity right he said as much right and I think that like the reality of it is,

you know, like there's a lot of data to be had here. A lot of data. What are they getting from me in these searches? Like nothing. Well, I don't know. They're getting, they're like, you're like a number one shitpost or they're like, you're, this person shouldn't be taken seriously. They're like, this is how you do humor. That's what they're learning from me. While we're talking about Elon Musk, we could talk about Tesla missing their annual deliveries for the first time since they've been a public company. So like more than in a decade. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting what's going on with the car business. Like, seems like it's, you know, I don't know, not going to great.

Yeah, I talked to a couple of analysts like Tesla analysts. I was like, okay, so like, I know that the stock always trades on like these future ideas of Elon Musk, you know, trades on the robots or on the self driving cars or on, you know, the stock always trades on these future ideas of Elon Musk. It trades on the robots or on the self-driving cars or the robotaxes or AI or whatever he's selling everybody. But if we were to just forget about the forward-looking stuff and just look back at this last year purely fundamentals-wise, was it a good year? And it was actually kind of a shitty, terrible, or at best, OK, someone told me year. But like, if you're... The price of Tesla is insane, right?

So they're priced to have this exponential growth, assuming they're going to... Like comparatively to any... To anything, which more than Nvidia. Yeah. So that means they're supposed to grow so much. And like, last year, they're 24 over 2023, their sales of their cars, their biggest source of revenue went down.

They have X growth when they're supposed to be having exponential growth. And like, their margins have been poor, like they've been going down, their average sale price of their car's been going down, and not because they've made a cheaper car, just because they're like foisting these discounts on everybody to try to move them.

And it's still not working. And it's just like, it's so crazy to kind of look at it without the without all the magic forward looking stuff. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think the thing about it is like on a long enough timeline, Tesla as a as an automaker is not a successful business, right? Right. They have to make a lot more cars.

They have to sell a lot more cars. They have to make more price points. If you look at the competition, their innovation is... I have no question about their innovation. Absolutely always hand it to Musk and to the people who obviously created the car for figuring out how to get the electric car into the bloodstream of the popular culture and to make it work as a successful product and a concept. But on a long enough timeline, with the way technology is accelerating and the way the adoption of electric cars

is accelerating, no pun intended by the way, it just feels inevitable that some that that people are going to figure out better, cheaper, faster, cooler, more interesting, more, you know, better built, whatever, like car makers, they're already doing it, right? automakers who are playing catch up now, I've not only caught up, but they're, you know, they're like, Everyone else is selling more electric cars this year than they did the year before, or like in 2024 than they did in 2023, pretty much across the board. Like, and they're, yeah, BYD's got cheaper ones. Like, they're not innovating there. Well, forget about China for a second.

You know, like, I'm talking about here. Like, I'm talking about like US sales, right? Like, I think they fell below 50 percent, I think, about here. Like I'm talking about like US sales, right? Like they're there. I think they fell below 50% I Think last quarter in the EV market. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah in the EV market You've got like really Hyundai and Kia obviously these are not US companies, but they're selling in the US There are no Chinese car makers right now selling in the US. We just look at the US market Which is I think a bellwether to some extent. It certainly was for Tesla.

You've got innovation happening now. You've got like every major automaker has an electric vehicle. Some of them are very, very good. You've got like upstarts like Rivian that are making. I'm not saying that they're. They're doing the high end version, yeah. Well, I mean, they're doing something

that Tesla's not really doing at all. I mean, they kind of like got beat them to the truck. And they're doing like trucks that people actually really doing at all. I mean, they kind of like got beat them to the truck and they're doing like trucks that people actually want and make sense. No offense, I mean, the Cybertruck is an- The Cybertruck is not like a truck, yeah. It's not like, people who want like, I like, I mean- My four year old wants a Cybertruck.

Admittedly, I will say something about the Cybertruck. When the Cybertruck was first announced, I did write an essay, I mean, I've talked about this before about how cool I thought the Cybertruck was, because I do, what I will say about it is that it is ambitious and exciting for someone to just try something totally different. Sure.

And totally weird. And that really doesn't happen enough. And like, and in fact, like a lot of cars, you see the concept cars are never the car, right? Right, they totally don't. It's always like some watered down BS version of it. But that said, it's truly not a practical vehicle Right? Right. They turned it down. It's always like some watered down BS version of it. But that said, it's truly not a practical vehicle and not an attractive vehicle to most

people. Whereas like a car that looks like a cool Range Rover or whatever is practical and attractive to people. Anyhow, I'm just saying across the board, you've got a ton of competition from very, very experienced automakers that have frankly more, just bigger operations. More car making experience. More car making experience, yeah. And just I think they're ultimately going to be able to say, we can segment up the market

the way that the auto industry has done. It's like Tesla has three or four models or whatever. They can do 10 models. They can do 10 models. They can do 15 models. They can do an EV version of every car they make with a combustion engine as well. But I think it's inevitable that Tesla, they do not, they have not exhibited innovation enough to me

to suggest that they have some secret sauce that will cement their continued victory in the EV space. If autopilot was meant to be the magic bullet that keeps them relevant, it has not been shown to be such a thing. And in fact, if anything, it's had a detrimental impact on the perception of the company. Right.

And there's some analyst estimates out about the US sales specifically, because that is the bellwether. And it shows that Tesla sales were actually down like 5% in the US like more that is more so than the top line 1% overall because it was you know balanced out by a slight increase in China but like yeah doing really poorly here and this is also the year that the Cybertruck came out where they were supposed to have had like a million Reservations and like they sold like 30 or maybe 40,000 of them. I would also say like It's not there's no way that it hasn't been a factor that Elon Musk's political Oh, absolutely his entrance into the political arena in a very specific way runs counter. I believe to many of his ideal customers political leanings Like like I think if you talk to people who were buying Tesla's early on and even at this stage to many of his ideal customers' political leanings. Like, I think if you talk to people who were buying Teslas early on, and even at this stage,

there are a lot of people who are like, they are not like, you know, they're people who like are, I think, probably going, yeah, the like, climate change is real, we need to do something about the environment. Oil is bad. Electric cars make sense. Right. I think they're probably, they probably, a lot of Tesla owners have, or at least historically, have had fairly progressive politics. I could be wrong.

Absolutely. There's a cottage industry around making bumper stickers that disavow Elon Musk to put on your Tesla. That's like, sorry, I bought this. I did it before he was an asshole. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know how I feel. I mean, I, I, I, well, I, I leased the Tesla before he was a complete asshole. Um, and it got progressively- Before everyone knew it. No, I mean, like there was a period, I mean, I, whatever, we don't want to go too far down

rabbit hole in Elon Musk because God, we've been there. But just had never seen such a stark fall from cultural coolness, such a stark drop from being a fairly interesting, cool, innovative dude to being somebody who every time I see him on the screen now, I'm like, God, what is this going to be? Oh, God, what is he saying now? What is he doing now? And I don't just mean that in the way of like, cause I have like, my politics are left or whatever.

It's just like, as a human, as a human. He's exhausting. Speaking of him being exhausted as a human being actually, there's a story, The Wall Street Journal has this big story, I think it's today. Yeah, it's in the, about him being like in the top Diablo four rankings or whatever. So this is a big video game, very in-depth video game, right?

Yeah. It's like a strategy. I mean, I haven't played the new one. I played the original Diablo, which is dating myself. Are you saying you're not in the top 10%? I'm not in the top billion percent because I haven't even ever touched the game. But it's like a strategy. It's an online game. For the multiplayer. It's a role playing online only action role playing dungeon crawling game.

Dungeon Crawling. Dungeon Crawler is a thing. Dungeon Crawler is like where you work your way through different dungeons. That's awesome. No, it is awesome. It's got actually its roots in like some classic I mean, it's a classic category of RPG but anyhow By the way, there's a Wikipedia page for it. If you're interested as the dungeon crawl. I will not be reading that page

anyhow By the way, it's a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinth environment a dungeon battling various monsters Avoiding traps solving puzzles and looting any treasure they may find. Sounds like a nightmare. Like it's fun. It's fun. Anyhow, he has become like one of the top, supposedly his account.

He's bragged about this, right? I don't know. Has he? There's a big article about how he's like in the rankings as like a top Diablo four player. And everybody's basically Joe Rogan podcast in November must claim to be one of the top 20 Diablo four players in the world. Yeah. So so and then this article is like gamers are say

that would have required playing all day every day. And I think we know I think we probably know what's happened. Is he at all? I think we know I think we we probably know what's happening. Is he at all? I think we know, I think we know he's paying somebody. What is he a gamer? No, no, is he busy? Like, otherwise, does he have? Yeah, I don't know. He definitely talked about playing Elden Ring. And everybody was like, your build is so stupid. Like, he described his build and all like the hardcore players were like, that's the worst mix of

attributes that you could possibly come up with. It was like, he was like, playing like a magic, like a magician, they're not called magicians, like a sorcerer, but like put all of his attributes into like, forget this, this is up down a rabbit hole, but it was like, he was supposed to be doing magic, but he all, he put all of his like attributes into like wielding a sword. And it's like, that doesn't make any sense. So he's not good at the game. So I don't know, it sounded like he wasn't. Okay, so there's like two things here. It could either be he is having someone

play the video game for him and bragging about it. That's what I believe. Very publicly bragging about having someone play the video game for him, or he's like not publicly just saying that he's like not doing his other like six jobs. Well, the- Cause he would have to be doing the video game all the time.

Good at it. The the either he's just lying. Right. That's probably the easiest solution. Yes. Is there is there a there's no leaderboards apparently. So then how does he know he's in the top 20? He's on it. No, there's like an unofficial, there's no official like Blizzard leaderboard, which is the company that puts it out. I don't know, man. This is all so stupid. It's like, this is definitely like a guy.

This is definitely like a situation where it's like, it's like a Canadian girlfriend type of scenario. Yeah. Everything with him feels like a Canadian girlfriend. He actually had a Canadian girlfriend, which is interesting. Grimes, who's Canadian. But not like while he was in college or like when he was in high school.

No, I mean, I guess he had an actual Canadian girlfriend. I don't know exactly what that was all about. But I don't know. It just feels like this is just like, dude, it's just like when he's like, I'm gonna fix the trapped, the kids who are trapped, he's like, he always has to jump in. One of Elon Musk's favorite things to do

is to jump in where no one asked for his opinion, and no one cares about what he thinks or has to say, and he'll be like, I can fix this, or I'm the best at that, or whatever. Like this is classic Musk, which feels like extreme overcompensation. Like you're wondering, like he's sitting around wondering if people think he's good at video games.

So he wants to tell them that he is, or he's just a fabulous. And so he plays it occasionally. But like when he talked about it, then Joe Rogan, I didn't help alive. I have not read this article, by the way. So it might reveal whether or not he actually is the great Diablo player, I should know going in. I have so many insane tabs open right now, including the Connor Hayes LinkedIn page. Anyway, the point is, I think we have to wrap up. And Elon Musk is, unfortunately, has become a major, once again, a major, is a major part of the proceedings.

Yeah, we used to rank his tweets, but then he became president, so we stopped. That's right. We're no longer ranking his tweets. And frankly, we never did the bracket showdown. I don't have the energy for this, OK? I'm sorry. All right.

Do you want to do feature or bug? Fact checking, feature or bug? Fact checking feature or bug? I mean, honestly, you know, as it stood, it was kind of a bug. Who checks the fact checkers? I'll put up a T. After that came out, all the fact checkers, like there's all these headlines where the fact checkers were like, actually, he's incorrect about. No, don't figure it. They're like, keeping them honest. Elon

Musk is incorrect. Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, fact checking is, to me, to me, fact checking is problematic. Here's why. Because it's after the fact. It's fact like journalism, fact checking. Fact checking currently is, uh, you've got to wait till the information comes out. This is the problem with like community notes. In my opinion, you wait till the community is so they're sorry, till the notes are out there and, um, and then, and then the content's out there. And then you go, wait, that's actually incorrect.

Nobody cares about fact checking. Keeping them honest, that's not in today's society, that's not enough. They need to be honest before they start. Because once it's out there, once it's out there, it's too late. The way information travels on the internet now, once it is out there, it's too late. So my point to you is fact checking is actually a bug. I'm going to fight back and say feature because I have like, just, you know, some love in my heart for fact checking and the idea that people are going after it. And obviously like it sounds

like it's in vain and especially if it's after the fact, but like, at least like we had like some semblance of caring before. I get it. I think fact checking in an environment like journalism, obviously, is very important. Before you put out a story, you check certain facts. You go, did I get that number right? Did I get that quote right? Did that actually happen when they said it happened? I'm talking about fact checking in a domain like Facebook.

The fact checking there is, when does it happen? Beforehand? In secret it happen? Beforehand? You know, in secret? Afterwards? In public? It's not a good- Scraped because of certain keywords? Yeah.

I don't want to get into it, but our only solution for the problem that fact checking hopes to solve is education. I've said this before, and it's like, that's a bigger problem to solve. That's a bigger problem to solve than anybody has time for, and frankly, anybody can accomplish.

So I think fact checking weirdly, weirdly on the internet, especially on social networks, is actually weirdly a bug. Elon Musk being the top Diablo player, is that a feature or a bug? Does that mean that he's just so good at multitasking? He's actually good to his credit, you know? I feel like to a point that works, that's like when they were trying to have that Jack Dorsey conversation, can he be CEO of two companies? But Musk has got six companies.

He's already spread way, way, way, way, way too thin. This doesn't show, this isn't his mental prowess. This isn't a testament to his mental prowess. It's more like he's obviously just fucking off. Yeah, but you know, Izzy, I mean, I kind of don't buy, I mean, I actually not sure what he's doing, to be honest with you, but like, is he spending his time playing Diablo four? I mean, God knows if I were the world's richest man, he wants you to think it. Yeah.

I would be doing a, if I were the world's richest man, if I had already established and all I needed to do was like probably like very little to keep a lot of that money, you know, kind of in my pocket, I would, cause it doesn't seem like he's like, it's so hard for him. I would spend a lot of time playing video games, to be honest.

And I would, I spent way less, I would spend all the time that he seems to spend on Twitter playing video games. Now maybe he's playing Diablo four, he's pausing to get a, you know, to get a Mountain Dew, I assume. Um, he'll be drinking a Mountain Dew of some type and, uh, maybe the red Mountain Dew, which I think is gross. Um, and like a Elon Musk drink.

Yeah. And, um, diet, red Mountain Dew. Right. And, um, anyway, but you know, and that's, and he's like tweeting in between like dungeons. I'm not really sure again, because I haven't played Diablo four. So you know, anyhow, the point is, I think it's a feature if he's the top Diablo player, is what I want to say in a, in a, in an unseen. I want to make, I've had this like made up idea of like just charting out his day.

There'd be no way to know, but just like what percentage of it he spends tweeting, what percentage he's like as CEO or running whichever company and then like what percentage playing video games or breathing or whatever else. But I think that'd be kind of funny. Sketch one, make one up right now. Why don't you even put that together? I'm gonna do it, it's just gonna be made up.

I love that, no fact checkers required, in my opinion. I love that. All right, we gotta wrap up. There's a lot more that we gotta talk about. There's a lot going on in the world. Unfortunately, we only have a short period of time to discuss it all. Any parting thoughts, Ronnie, on any of this?

Nope. Okay, great. No thoughts at all. No thoughts, same, on any of this? Nope. Okay, great. No thoughts at all. No thoughts. Same. I'm drained completely of all original thought. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow.

And as always, I wish you and your family the very, very, very best in this wonderful new year, which definitely will not be problematic in any way, shape or form.