Recode Decode, Hosted By Kara Swisher

Today, I’m talking to Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky Social, which is a decentralized competitor to Meta’s Threads, Mastodon, and X. Bluesky actually started inside of what was then known as Twitter — it was a project from then-CEO Jack Dorsey, who spent his days wandering the earth and saying things like Twitter should be a protocol and not a company. Bluesky was supposed to be that protocol, but Jack spun it out of Twitter in 2021, just before Elon Musk bought the company and renamed it X. Bluesky is now an independent company with a few dozen employees, and it finds itself in the middle of one of the most chaotic moments in the history of social media. There are a lot of companies and ideas competing for space on the post-Twitter internet, and Jay makes a convincing argument that decentralization — the idea that you should be able to take your username and following to different servers as you wish — is the future. Links:  Twitter is funding research into a decentralized version of its platform — The Ve

Both the EU and US have spent the past decade looking at Big Tech and saying, "someone should do something!" In the US, lawmakers are still basically shouting that. But in the EU, regulators did something. The Digital Markets Act was proposed in 2020, signed into law in 2022, and went into effect this month. It's already having an effect on some of the biggest companies in tech, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In theory it's a landmark law that will change the way these companies compete, and how their products operate, for years to come. How did we get here, what does the law actually say, and will it work half as well in practice as it does on paper? Verge reporter Jon Porter comes on Decoder to help me break it down.  Links:  The EU's new competition rules are going live — here's how tech giants are responding | The Verge Apple hit with a nearly $2 billion fine following Spotify complaint | The Verge Experts fear the Digital Markets Act won’t address tech monopolies | The Verge Dirty tricks o

We’ve got a fun one today — I talked to Figma CEO Dylan Field in front of a live audience at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And we got into it – we talked about everything from design, to software distribution, to the future of the web, and, of course, AI.  Figma is an fascinating company – the Figma design tool is used by designers at basically every company you can think of. And importantly, it runs on the web. It became such a big deal that Adobe tried to buy it out in 2022 for $20 billion dollars, a deal that only just recently fell through because of regulatory concerns.  So Dylan and I talked a lot about where Figma is now as an independent company, how Figma is structured, where it’s going, and how Dylan’s decisionmaking has changed since the last time he was on the show in 2022. Links: Why Figma is selling to Adobe for $20 billion, with CEO Dylan Field — Decoder Adobe abandons $20 billion acquisition of Figma — The Verge Adobe’s Dana Rao on AI, copyright, and the failed Figma deal — Decod

If you’ve been listening to Decoder or the Vergecast for a while, you know that I am obsessed with Google Search, the web, and how both of those things might change in the age of AI. But to really understand how something might change, you have to step back and understand what it is right now.  So today I’m talking with Verge platforms reporter Mia Sato about Google Search, the industries it’s created, and more importantly, how relentless search engine optimization, or SEO, has utterly changed the web in its image. Mia and I really dug into this to explain why search results are so terrible now, what Google is trying to do about it, and why this is such an important issue for the future of the internet. Links:  How Google is killing independent sites like ours — HouseFresh How Google perfected the web — The Verge The people who ruined the internet — The Verge A storefront for robots — The Verge The end of the Googleverse — The Verge The unsettling scourge of obituary spam — The Verge What happe

Today, I’m talking to Kyle Chayka, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a regular contributor to The Verge, and author of the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. Kyle has been writing for years now about how the culture of big social media platforms bleeds into real life, first affecting how things look, and now shaping how and what culture is created and the mechanisms by which that culture spreads all around the world.  If you’ve been listening to Decoder, this is all going to sound very familiar. The core thesis of Kyle’s book — that algorithmic recommendations make everything feel the same — hits at an idea that we’ve talked about countless times on the show: that how content is distributed shapes what content is made. So I was really excited to sit down with Kyle and dig into Filterworld and his thoughts on how this happened and what we might be able to do about it. Links:  Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture — Kyle Chayka Welcome to AirSpace — The Verge The Stanley wat

Our Thursday episodes are all about big topics in the news, and this week we’re wrapping up our short series on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. In our last couple episodes, we talked a lot about some of the biggest, most complicated legal and policy questions surrounding the modern AI industry, including copyright lawsuits and deepfake legislation. But we wanted to end on a more personal note: How is this technology making people feel, and in particular how is it affecting how people communicate and connect? Verge reporter Miya David has covered AI chatbots — specifically AI romance bots — quite a bit, so we invited her onto the show to talk about how generative AI is finding its way into dating. We not only discussed how this technology is affecting dating apps and human relationships, but also how the boom in AI chatbot sophistication is laying the groundwork for a generation of people who might form meaningful relationships with so-called AI companions. Links:  Speak, Memory — The Verge

On this special episode of Decoder, science educator and YouTuber Hank Green is guest hosting. And the guest? It’s Nilay Patel, who sat down with Hank to discuss building The Verge, the state of media, and the future of the web. Also: whether the fediverse is worth investing in, and how social platforms’ control of distribution has shaped the internet. In the words of Hank: “Nilay has got some weird ideas about the internet. For example, that he’s going to revolutionize the media through blog posts. He keeps saying it, but what the hell does he mean? While I was busy building my business on other people’s platforms, Nilay has built something very rare in the year 2024: a website that publishes content and isn’t behind a paywall yet still makes money. How does he do it? How does he make decisions? How is The Verge structured? The tables have turned.” Links: Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok — Decoder Platformer’s Casey Newton on surviving the great media collapse and what comes next — Decoder

Our new Thursday episodes of Decoder are all about deep dives into big topics in the news, and this week we’re continuing our mini-series on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. Last week, we took a look at the wave of copyright lawsuits that might eventually grind this whole industry to a halt. Those are basically a coin flip — and the outcomes are off in the distance, as those cases wind their way through the legal system.  A bigger problem right now is that AI systems are really good at making just believable enough fake images and audio — and with tools like OpenAI’s new Sora, maybe video soon, too. And of course, it’s once again a presidential election year here in the US. So today, Verge policy editor Adi Robertson joins the show to discuss how AI might supercharge disinformation and lies in an election that’s already as contentious as any in our lifetimes — and what might be done about it. Links:  How the Mueller report indicts social networks Twitter permanently bans Trump Meta allo

Today, I’m talking with Rahul Purini, the president of Crunchyroll, a streaming service focused entirely on anime — and really, the biggest anime service still going. Rahul has a long history with anime: he spent more than seven years at Funimation, a company that started in the 90s to distribute Dragon Ball Z to US audiences, before getting the top job at Crunchyroll. Anime might seem like niche content, but it’s not nearly as niche as you might think – our colleagues over at Polygon just ran a huge survey of anime viewers and found that 42% of Gen Z and 25% of millennials watch anime regularly. And Crunchyroll is growing with that audience — like most entertainment providers, the service absolutely exploded during the pandemic, going from 5 million paying subscribers in 2021 to more than 13 million as of last month.  But interestingly Rahul says Crunchyroll’s growth isn’t being driven by more and more people watching anime, but more and more anime fans — especially those watching pirated content — choosin

The Decoder team is off this week. We’ll be back next week with both the interview and the new explainer episodes; we’re really excited about what’s on the schedule here.  In the meantime, I thought you all might enjoy a conversation I had with Kara Swisher, the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman about the Apple Vision Pro. All of us have been covering Apple for a very long time, and we had a lot of fun swapping impressions, talking strategy, and sharing what we liked, and didn’t like, about Apple’s $3,500 headset.  Links:  Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not — The Verge The shine comes off the Vision Pro — The Verge Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro — The Verge Why some of Apple’s biggest fans are returning their Vision Pros — Bloomberg Apple’s Vision Pro Is an iPad killer, but not anytime soon — Bloomberg I worked, cooked and even skied with the new Apple Vision Pro — WSJ Vision Pro review: 24 hours in Apple’s mixed-reality headset — WSJ Learn more

Our new Thursday episodes are all about deep dives into big topics in the news, and for the next few weeks we’re going to stay focused on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. There’s a lot going on in the world of generative AI, but maybe the biggest is the increasing number of copyright lawsuits being filed against AI companies like OpenAI and StabilityAI. So for this episode, we’re going to talk about those cases, and the main defense the AI companies are relying on: an idea called fair use. To help explain this mess, I talked with Sarah Jeong. Sarah is a former lawyer and a features editor here at The Verge, and she is also one of my very favorite people to talk to about copyright. I promise you we didn’t get totally off the rails nerding out about it, but we went a little off the rails. The first thing we had to figure out was: How big a deal are these AI copyright suits? Links:  The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement --- The Verge The scary truth about AI

Today, I’m talking with Jonathan Kanter, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. Alongside FTC chair Lina Khan, Jonathan is one of the most prominent figures in the big shift happening in competition and antitrust in the United States. This is a fun episode: we taped this conversation live on stage at the Digital Content Next conference in Charleston, South Carolina a few days ago, so you’ll hear the audience, which was a group of fancy media company executives.  You’ll also hear me joke about Google a few times; fancy media execs are very interested in the cases the DOJ has brought against Google for monopolizing search and advertising tech — and Jonathan was very good at not commenting about pending litigation. But he did have a lot to say about the state of tech regulation, he and Khan’s track record so far, and why he thinks the concepts they’re pushing forward are more accessible than they’ve ever been. Links:  The top Biden lawyer with his sights

We’re very excited for today’s episode, because from now on we’ll be delivering you two Decoders every week. On Monday’s we’ll have our classic interviews with CEOs and other high-profile guests. But our new shorter Thursday episode – like today’s – will explain big topics in the news with Verge reporters, experts, and other friends of the show.  The big idea we’re going to jump into today does in fact have a lot of problems: electric vehicle adoption in the US. We invited Verge Transportation Editor Andy Hawkins, who’s been covering the EV transition for years, to walk us through what’s happening.  Late last year, Andy wrote a fantastic article called, “The EV Transition trips over its own cord.” It was all about the kind of paradox of the EV market right now: The momentum for electric cars in America feels like it’s started to hit serious snags, even though more people than ever before are going fully electric. The stakes are high, and there’s a lot going on. Let’s get into it.  Links:  The EV transition

Today, I’m talking with Casey Newton, the founder and editor of the Platformer newsletter and co-host of the Hard Fork podcast. Casey is also a former editor here at The Verge and was my co-host at the Code Conference last year. Most importantly, Casey and I are also very close friends, so this episode is a little looser than usual.  I wanted to talk to Casey for a few reasons. One, the media industry overall is falling apart, with huge layoffs at almost every media organization you can think of happening weekly, but small newsletters seem to be a bright spot. So I wanted to talk about how Platformer started, how Casey got it to where it is, and how much farther he thinks it can go. And then, I wanted to talk about Substack. It’s the newsletter platform Paltformer used to call its home, but content moderation problems — including its decision to allow Nazis to monetize on the platform — have pushed away a number of its customers, including Platformer.  This episode goes deep, but it’s fun — Casey is just one

Today, I’m talking with Senator Brian Schatz, of Hawaii. We joke that Decoder is ultimately a show about org charts, but there’s a lot of truth to it. We talked about the separate offices he has to balance against each other, and the concessions he has to make to work within the Senate structure. We also talked a lot about two of the biggest issues in tech regulation today. One is Europe, which is doing a lot of regulation while the US does almost none. How does a senator think about the U.S. all but abdicating that space? The other is one of the few places the US is trying to take action right now: children’s online safety. Schatz is involved with two pieces of child safety legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act and the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, that could fundamentally reshape online life for teens and children across the country. But the big stumbling block for passing any laws about content moderation is, of course, the First Amendment. Links:  Strict Scrutiny — LII / Legal Information Instit

Today, I’m talking with Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California. He’s been in Congress for eight years now, representing California’s 17th District, which is arguably the highest-tech district in the entire country. You’ll hear him say a couple of times that there’s $10 trillion of tech market value in his district, and that’s not an exaggeration: Apple, Intel, and Nvidia are all headquartered in his district, along with important new AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI.  I wanted to know how Khanna thinks about representing those companies but also the regular people in his district; the last time I spoke to him, in 2018, he reminded me that he’s got plenty of teachers and firefighters to represent as well. But the politics of tech have changed a lot in these past few years — and things are only going to get both more complicated and more tense as Trump and Biden head into what will obviously be a contentious and bitter presidential election. Links:  Democrats must not repeat the mistakes of g

Today, I'm talking to Dana Rao, who is General Counsel and Chief Trust Officer at Adobe. Now, if you're a longtime Decoder listener, you know that I have always been fascinated with Adobe, which I think the tech press largely undercovers. If you're interested in how creativity happens, you're kind of necessarily interested in what Adobe's up to. And it is fascinating to consider how Dana's job as Adobe's top lawyer is really at the center of the company's future.  The copyright issues with generative AI are so unknown and unfolding so fast that they will necessarily shape what kind of products Adobe can even make in the future, and what people can make with those products. The company also just tried and failed to buy the popular upstart design company Figma, a potentially $20 billion deal that was shut down over antitrust concerns in the European Union. So Dana and I had a lot to talk about. Links:  Adobe abandons $20 billion acquisition of Figma Adobe explains why it abandoned the Figma deal Why Figma i

2023 will go down as the year that Elon Musk killed Twitter. First he did it in a big way, by buying the company, firing most of the employees, and destabilizing the platform; then he did it in a small, but important, symbolic way, by renaming the company X and trying to make a full break with what came before. So now that the story of the company named Twitter is officially over, it felt important to stop and ask: What was Twitter, anyway, and why were so many powerful people obsessed with it for so long? In this special episode, I sat down with Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Zoe Schiffer, managing editor of Platform and author of Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter. We discussed how two of Twitter’s most dedicated power users – Donald Trump and Elon Musk — were addicted to the platform, defined it, changed it, broke it, and then put it to rest. Links:  The year Twitter died: a special series from The Verge Extremely softcore Inside Elon Musk's “extremely hardcor

Ryan Petersen is the founder and CEO of Flexport, which makes software to optimize shipping everything from huge containers to ecommerce deliveries. It’s a fascinating company; we had Ryan on to explain it last year. Right around the first time we spoke, Ryan handed off the CEO role to 20-year Amazon veteran Dave Clark. Then, barely a year later, Dave got fired, and Ryan returned after CEO. I always joke that Decoder is a show about org charts… so why did Ryan make and then unmake the biggest org chart decision there is?  Links:  Can software simplify the supply chain? Ryan Petersen thinks so - The Verge Amazon consumer chief Dave Clark to join Flexport as its new CEO Flexport CEO Dave Clark resigns from logistics startup after one year in the role Flexport founder publicly slams his handpicked successor for hiring spree, rescinds offers Ousted Flexport CEO Dave Clark strikes back The real story behind a tech founder's 'tweetstorm that saves Christmas' Panama Canal has gotten so dry and backed up after bruta

The US Digital Service has a fascinating structure: it comprises nearly 250 people, all of whom serve two-year stints developing apps, improving websites, and streamlining government services. You could call USDS the product and design consultancy for the rest of the government. The Obama administration launched the USDS in 2014, after the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov and the tech sprint that saved it. USDS administrator Mina Hsiang explains to Decoder how it all works, and what she hopes it can do next. Links:  Here’s Why Healthcare.gov Broke Down (2013) Obamacare's 'tech surge' adds manpower to an already-bloated project (2013) Decoder: Barack Obama on AI, free speech, and the future of the internet Jeff Bezos Confirmed the "Question Mark Method" A comprehensive list of 2023 tech layoffs Tech to Gov U.S. Digital Corps Presidential Innovation Fellows AI.gov United States Digital Service Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23761681 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the