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In-depth discussions and explorations into the whole new world of web3 and the metaverse with leading thinkers and industry experts. Presented by the NYU Metaverse Collaborative.
The Whole Metaverse Podcast - Episode #13: Is the Metaverse Dead? | with Ed Zitron & Marc Beckman
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Pierre Gervois: Hello, welcome to the, NYU podcast, the whole Metaverse NYU School of Professional Study podcast about the Metaverse and blockchain Dr., Elizabeth, Haas, and myself, Pierre or, co-host. And today we're having a very special episode. about a week ago we read an article in Business Insider.
Travo called r i p Metaverse, and a lot of people were talking about this article. It was written by, EDRO, an author, writer, an entrepreneur, and he had pretty. Extreme for some people views about the metaverse. And as we're here it's the right place here to, have con open conversation about the metaverse and blockchain.
So Dr. Has and I decided to extend an invitation to Ed Zitron to come on our podcast and to talk. And figure out if the metaverse is alive or dead. That's a big question. And we invited our fellow colleague mark Beckman, who is a senior fellow at NYU, s p s doing research on the Metaverse.
He's an entrepreneur, author, and true expert of the Metaverse. And we asked to mark Beckman and FD Toronto to have this conversation and. All opinions are welcome and really want you to watch this, very interesting conversation and have your own opinion. And one of big points of this debate is it forces us to re-sync and to think hard about the very definition of the metaverse.
What is the metaverse? Is it exclusively Mark Zuckerberg's definition? Is it something smaller? Larger. I think it, it's going to be very important for everybody to think about their own definition, of the metaverse. what do you think Liz?
Dr. Elizabeth Haas: I absolutely agree. I actually, I think it's, really important to just listen to the conversation and really understand the underlying tensions here. and begin to think through, know, how we can sort through it and move forward, capitalizing on the opportunities.
Pierre Gervois: Okay, so I wish everybody a good watching of the upcoming conversation. See you next episode.
Pierre Gervois: so thank you very much, ed, to be on the whole Metaverse podcast with us. So, Dr. Elizabeth, Haas and myself are the co-host of this podcast. We have the pleasure today to be joined by, our colleague Mark Beckman, a senior fellow at NYU School of Professional Studies. Mark is an, entrepreneur, author, and a true metaverse expert really knows a lot about metaverse and blockchain.
And what we would love to do is to organize a dialogue. Between you and Mark Beckman. So Ed, you are an award-winning author, writer, founder of EZPR public relations agency, and you are the author of this article, r i p, metaverse, published in Business Insider that got a lot of people talking about, and we're here to engage the debate and start the conversation.
So, mark. Ed you. You are very welcome to start together. The conversation is The Metaverse Dead and you have the floor.
Ed Zitron: Should I start?
Because the answer is it either never, existed, was already here, or it's dead as they discussed it because The whole thing with what Zuckerberg did was he never functionally described it. The metaverse, as was considered starting 2021, was both alive and dead at the same time.
the thing is, if you actually looked back, and I think you saw a lot of metaverse experts pop up, mark, I don't mean you, metaverse experts who popped up around that time saying, yeah, the metaverse will be this, that, and the other. None of these people have much of a consideration of what virtual worlds were at that time or previously.
been writing about MMORPGs since 2004 I think it was. I was very early on virtual worlds, and even then there were things before I started playing EverQuest in 1999 if that is the Metaverse. The Metaverse isn't dead, but the Metaverse, as Mark Zuckerberg defined it poorly, was both dead and never existed in the first place.
I think that The tech industry should be ashamed for what they did with the metaverse and the amount of money and time they burned on it.
Marc Beckman: So Ed, It's really nice to meet you. I'm a fan of your work. I appreciate what you've been doing and follow you on Twitter and other social channels. So I pulled a paragraph from the story that Pierre referenced and I'm just curious, so you wrote Zuckerberg Misled, everyone burned tens of billions of dollars.
Convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession and then killed it. The second that another idea started to interest Wall Street, you continue. There is no reason that a man who has overseen the layoffs of tens of thousands of people should run a major company.
There is no future for meta. With Mark Zuckerberg at the helm, it will stagnate and then it will die. And follow the metaverse into the proverbial grave. So those are really strong words, and to me that's the news. It's not so much about what the Metaverse is because I think in a minute we could get into this.
I think you and I will probably align with regards to our definition of the metaverse in including these gaming, platforms for sure. But I'm really interested in your opinion about Zuckerberg. for example, when you talk about him burning tens of billions of dollars, Convincing an industry of followers to follow him along with this obsession.
And then to shift gears, it's almost as if he, committed some sort of, fraudulent behavior or, you know, maybe should even be held responsible. Like did he breach his fiduciary duty to the shareholders of meta?
I wanna expand on this concept because I think this is the news,
Ed Zitron: but that's the beauty of how Mark, mark Zuckerberg runs Facebook Meta. He is the major, he has full control. He can do what he wants. They may be a public company, but he can do what he wants and. I mean, breaching fdu, I'm not a financial expert, but I don't know if it's breaching his fiduciary duty, but I do believe that he ethically bankrupt on some level.
I don't think he had a cogent plan. He, I don't know if you remember Magic Leap and what Magic Leap did when they had the entirely faked YouTube.
Marc Beckman: I was fascinated by it.
Ed Zitron: He basically did the same thing but without a demo, and he used his massive platform to basically push through a giant lie. Now, I don't know if he breached duty.
That is not my place to sit.
Marc Beckman: so my background just Pierre touched on it a little bit, but my background is law. I was admitted to the bar in New York, New Jersey, and Washington DC and there's, a chief executive officer of a publicly traded company does have a legal fiduciary duty to create value. in the stock for their, for the shareholders. And it's an interesting thing because if you look at 2022 when meta collapsed, so did a lot of the tech industry as did cryptocurrency, but since then in 23, the stock price has gone on this meteoric rise, I think it's increased almost 75%. People don't like to talk about it.
so there is a fiduciary duty there. And I'm curious in your opinion, like, Do you think Zuckerberg breached that fiduciary duty to his shareholders?
Ed Zitron: I think he found exactly the way to sell it as if he wasn't in that. He claimed this was the second mobile internet and thus this r and d was in the interest of the company. He found a way to gloss it up. The people that really failed every single company that became Meta Universal, I think breached out.
Again, fiduciary is not my expertise, but.
Marc Beckman: And I don't mean
to throw that, like I'm not interested. It's not.
Ed Zitron: satin, Adela Scumbag, complete scumbag. He made a whole Metaverse team that he dissolved. The second things changed. He said he couldn't overstate the breakthrough that the Metaverse was less than a year later he dissolved, well, two years I think, dissolved the whole thing and, fired over 10,000 people.
A hundred people off the Metaverse team claimed we needed a referendum on capitalism in 2020. But where was that Referend from there, I mean, I think Zuckerberg revealed that the tech industry are a bunch of followers, that they will jump on whatever idea would excite Wall Street, and I think it's because everyone's obsessed with eternal growth.
I think that Zuckerberg himself has found the justifications he needed to make that investment. And if he was on a functional company, I think in 2019, he even said that if he had a company where he didn't have full control, he would've been fired. And I completely agree with him. I think he would've been and should have been fired.
The reason Wall Street was very happy with him though, is cause they did a massive stock buy back, of about 42 billion. And on top of that, he fired a bunch of people. He made the numbers work. That's why they didn't get mad at him for burning capital. They got mad at him because the numbers didn't grow at the rate they like.
It's the ultimate problem of tech and Wall Street that these companies have the wrong kind of incentives and the metaverse was just part of that.
He wanted to distract from the problems they already had.
Marc Beckman: I mean I'm sure you would agree, it was this issue of layoffs and poor earnings over the 2022 cycle was certainly prevalent throughout the tech sector.
Ed Zitron: Yes, but for the same reason.
Marc Beckman: so let's fo let's focus on that a little bit because I haven't really heard anybody talk about this concept of group think. In the tech space and I think it's super compelling. So you brought Microsoft into that conversation as well. tell me like, has the group, think in the tech sector been something that's, been in existence for a long time?
Ed Zitron: Yeah.
I mean, there was the Uber for everything, the Warby Parker for everything. I even think there was a brief time when there was an Instagram for everything. There were like four different people trying to do the Instagram and video. I mean, this has been it forever, and it's because the tech industry is so inherently tied to venture capital.
It's so tied to this VC community that's always looking for multipliers. No one's trying to make the next big thing. They're trying to make the next big sale. And thus this group think isn't quite as illogical as you think. It's just, let's follow the wave. Let's follow where we think the profit might be, or the multiples might be.
Marc Beckman: I actually had a colleague of mine, out of San Francisco in the VC space, they invest in a lot of different tech companies. Recently mentioned to me that they're gonna go cold for about a year now because of The banking industry issues as it relates to interest rate hikes and inflation. so there seems to be like a lot of forces at play here.
do you think that we're gonna see a cooling across of all of the vc firms that are and PE firms that are in the tech space right now?
Ed Zitron: No. Yes, kind of. So the problem is that the venture capital companies are claiming, okay, venture the VC firms, they're claiming all things are bad. There's not enough money. They have plenty of money, they're sitting on their capital. This isn't a cash crunch. There is no cash crunch. They have the money, they're just not deploying it, and they're acting as if.
Hey, things are really bad right now. We're so small and weak. Ugh. They're fine. They're totally fine. They're giving back money because they know they can't get the multiples right now that would please their LPs. the whole interest free money thing is just That is a really convenient narrative.
That vc, I mean, it's true. there's a lot of it going around. There was a lot of dumb investment, but that wasn't because of the free money. It was because of the fact that. Everything like things were selling at that point.
Marc Beckman: it seems like this concept of group think then is like, to me, you know what pops into my head, people's $69 million. Christie's piece of artwork, then they see the silver object, the shiny silver object, and the entire tech sector follows. So in your mind, you're saying that was the concept of the metaverse, and perhaps that's the concept today to a certain extent of artificial intelligence.
Right.
Ed Zitron: Yes. I think AI has more fundamental use cases and actually does stuff, but I think they're also getting way ahead on the philosophical level with ai. there are a lot of tech fatalists who are saying, oh yeah, well this will be the end of everything. This will destroy jobs.
it's kind of a sales pitch, kind of just panic, kind of just tech trying to seem important again, because we are going on about 10 years of tech not producing anything that makes a customer's life better. Very incremental changes. And I mean, that's a natural, obviously a natural thing with innovation.
But tech has not changed people's lives fundamentally in quite some time. And I think that plus the various flame outs like Theranos and ftx, I think consumers are against tech now. If tech can't make their lives better, ai, I think tech really wants to be the thing that does that. But they need to fundamentally prove some use cases.
And Google kind of did an io, but we're still at a point I think, where. AI is yet to prove itself to the average person and ChatGPT is not it.
Marc Beckman: So Ed, just before we, we leave this topic, like there's a lot that we could, there's, you're throwing so much out there. It's so interesting. do you think that if Zuckerberg and Microsoft and the other publicly traded tech companies were not beholden to the street. They would have more time to develop their concept of the metaverse.
And I understand you're saying that Zuckerberg really never defined it, but do you think if it was a privately held company, we would be having the same conversation?
Ed Zitron: I think it comes down to yes, but which is if venture capital didn't have such a fundamental hold on these companies, that also wouldn't happen. But you need to, they would need to have sustainable revenue to make this happen. And that's what's really despicable about the Metaverse side because he really doesn't need to be beholden to the street like he can do what he wants. And he did that for like six months and then went, I don't know. I don't like how mad they are. And that's really, it's a lack of grit on Zuckerberg's farm.
Marc Beckman: cowardly almost.
Ed Zitron: Yes.
Marc Beckman: Interesting. So what's your definition then of the metaverse? Like I, I realize you've been in the tech sector for a long time and it seems from the research I was able to do, I saw like you're, it seems like you were, a gamer at some point too and all. so how do you, like, let's try to align with regards to like the definition of metaverse.
Ed Zitron: I really don't want like, I mean, Metaverse is a vague concept from a book from quite a while ago. So is it a virtual world? We got those already. Is it a persistent virtual world where people interact? We also still have those. It's a persistent virtual space, which you live in. I mean, live is then the problem there, and that's really where it falls down because metaverse kind of means nothing in snow crash.
It was a place you plugged into and kind of lived in a virtual world you live in, I guess might be the way of putting it.
Marc Beckman: I'll often include, AR and VR
Ed Zitron: Why I mean, I mean that with respect, why ar and why ar specifically lives in our world. It's just augmenting reality at that point. It isn't a metaverse at all.
Marc Beckman: so for you is the concept it, I'm going back to like your article then. Is your concept specifically saying that Facebook's version of the Metaverse is dead?
Ed Zitron: And the tech industry's version, specifically the tech industry, took the concept to the metaverse to find it as such and then killed it. There are metaverses that can still exist, but also it is still an unproven, non-existent concept, or it is something we've had for 24 years or more, probably more like 30 if you include the original Muds Avalon and really in 59 wasn't really a mud, but the realm, things like that.
You already had this.
that's the frustration I'm having because
everyone keeps talking about the metaverse without really being definitive about what it means. And until people actually nail that down, you are going to be in this situation where companies take advantage of that white space where they say, oh, it's, this is Metaverse now.
And they tried it. They tried to claim Microsoft Teams was metaverse at one point. Just kind of ridiculous. I think the term itself is just corrupt. Now, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg,
Marc Beckman: So do you think that, it's fair to Judge Zuckerberg? Well, I guess that's one thing. If you're saying Zuckerberg followed the sh the shiny silver object and did
Ed Zitron: well, he created it. He, to be clear, what I'm suggesting is he came to this term and said, I'm going to do this and people are going to follow and he probably knew they would. He was right.
Marc Beckman: do you think that if he, if we wait longer to watch that multi-billion dollar investment grow, we'll think differently about that?
Ed Zitron: How long are you willing to wait and how long is he gonna invest in him,
Marc Beckman: Well, we're definitely a culture of, we want immediate gratification for
sure, but he only invested, he only, let's be clear though. He only invested this, he made this cha, the name change and invested. Publicly into the metaverse, you know what, 24, 36 months ago.
Ed Zitron: Okay. I mean, the things he was talking about in that video, 20 years or more, 20 years, if we're lucky. He was showing he was basically himself in a world that he could persistently see around him. So we're talking spatial awareness within whatever platform he's in. We're talking an interface that would be comfortable enough that would be able to render one's body, even if that was just a sim, him just simulating what he would feel like If it's not sensory, then you're not really in and sensory is 30, 40, 50 years away. That's the thing. How long do we have to wait? What he should have done was not announce it at all, but he needed some way to give himself air cover.
Marc Beckman: I think that we're starting to see developments with regards to that experience from other companies too. Like for example, I think what Unreal Engine is doing, from a product perspective and then integrating into Fortnite can have some like legitimate cultural slash media shifts. As well.
Like I actually think that the Fortnite has an opportunity because of Unreal Engine to create a new media class.
Ed Zitron: They've been trying to sell us that dream a while. Fortnite, we've seen the Travis Barker thing with Sydney and the ground day thing. We saw the Star Wars thing with Fortnite.
Marc Beckman: Travis Scott, but on the Travis Scott thing, ed, they didn't do that with Unreal Engine and it did attract almost 13 million. participants and it did generate over 20 million in revenue for Travis Scott, which a amounted to almost half of his total tour revenue for the year.
Ed Zitron: How much did it cost to develop that experience?
that's the thing. How many man hours? And sir, because that's the thing. If he made 20 million, awesome. Great. If it cost 18 million to do, I'm just saying spinning those up, I get what you are saying. But they've been, what they've been, what I'm saying is you are not wrong.
There is opportunity here, is with that kind of stuff. I dunno if that's metaverse, but I agree. And I think that these specific events, that is where the metaverse or whatever the metaverse is right now is going, that is what you're going to see more of. And that stuff is cool. It's just expensive, takes a while to develop and is nowhere near what Zuckerberg was talking about, which was the original thing that led us here.
Marc Beckman: if we're able to take that type of hyper-realistic technology into a Fortnite, into a Facebook, into a meta setting, do you think that can move Zuckerberg's proposition of a metaverse forward in a more effective way, or are you just totally down on it no matter
Ed Zitron: It's not that I am totally down on it. I would love it to happen. It's just that think technologically here. The Travis Barker thing was however many thousands of instances it was developed, it took actual, real muscle to do and also took the might of a multi-billion dollar company just to make that one event happen.
On top of that, what Zuckerberg's talking about is a constantly present multimillion instance thing. Even though there's like 10,000 people actually used. There can be access to any time that looks good. That feels good. There's so many little parts that people aren't considering about this entire thing, like virtual worlds are hard to do.
They're expensive.
Marc Beckman: I agree. In my mind, ed, I go back to like two real issues as it relates to mass user adoption for the Metaverse, I think in terms of access distribution, and then I think what you're talking about, ed, is in the background, like server capacity. Like can these companies actually produce and keep these persistent worlds moving in this hyper-realistic way?
Ed Zitron: It's insanely expensive on top of the fact that it is not possible how Zuckerberg showed it. Watch his video. That stuff is 20, 30, 40 years away like vr. Is a few decades in maybe, and they still haven't solved the very basic comfortability factor. Even the best headset is still a pain in the ass. And that's not something they seem to have worked out yet.
And even when they do graphically, they are not even within the same realm. The only thing that I don't know is what Apple is doing. Cause I've heard enough people with the Apple headset saying This is really cool. If anyone can do it. I actually have faith in Apple because Apple does not give a crap
when it comes to r and d.
They just don't care because they are generally, they generally, hi. They hire better than Facebook.
Marc Beckman: so let's talk about Apple because that extends, I think, beyond the scope of your definition of Metaverse as it relates to the Zuckerberg
thing. But it's interesting because we do have this, announcement coming out, I think it's on June 5th with regards to their reality pro, you know, Mr. Headset,
Ed Zitron: Which again, wouldn't be metaverse, but as far as like
Marc Beckman: But you raised it Apple and I think it's part of the metaverse, but let's talk about it for a minute. Do you think that because of Apple's ecosystem and you know, beyond the headset, they're also, it's from what I'm reading, they're also introducing a new operating system called Reality Os.
And, it's going to include not just eye gestural control, but also, in air keyboards. So it really could change the way that people are interacting within their, physical world. what are your thoughts about it?
Ed Zitron: I think that it's hard to tell with Apple, and I realize I'm punting on this slightly. It is not obvious what they are going to do. And in the event it is something where it's MRX, what have you. That will be a vastly different thing because like I said, I don't believe augmented reality is metaverse, but genuinely, as stupid as this sounds, if they make a comfortable headset, that is a bigger deal than people realize.
If you can actually find a form factor that makes VR pleasant, that will help.
if If vr, is the interface for the Metaverse, we are so far off, we're beyond far off. they, we are not even in the infancy yet. It was irresponsible for Mark Zuckerberg to bring this up.
Marc Beckman: Although we've seen hardware sales on Meta's side of the equation, we've seen hardware sales growing exponentially. I
think in 2021 they sold 11 million, and in the county year 23, they're already. Beyond 20 million. So it is tr the trajectory is heading in the right direction.
Ed Zitron: In sales. I mean, but also he said a billion people in the metaverse spending hundreds of dollars, like a couple, like 10 million is just. And it still sucks. Like it's bad. It sucks. I'm sorry. It like it doesn't, horizon worlds is not good. It's a bad product,
Marc Beckman: What do you think could make it better?
Ed Zitron: completely different kind of headset. Like we are a completely different kind of headset, but also significantly better graphics. But also there, there's just so many things that need to happen to make this even. Possible is something you could exist in for more than a couple of hours. Oh God. I wouldn't even spend a couple of hours in there.
I
could, I think I can
Marc Beckman: we had a, NASA, scientist who's been working with VR for 30 years. Ed bring my class into, from New York City into Cape Canaveral, and we sat in the, metaverse, in the VR world with him for about two hours. We watched a film, and experienced different types of learning, relating obviously to space travel and the moon and all.
it was pretty interesting. I was pretty surprised actually, that the entire class was able to participate for such an extended period of time. They were
comfortable with it.
Ed Zitron: and that's great. That's a class of people who were interested in doing this and had the regular people are the actual bellwethers of any trend. We cannot. Judge the success of a product based on technologists. This is the problem that the tech industry keeps making again and again. They keep basing, I'm not insulting you or your students.
This is genuinely, if the average person a babysitter,
The street. I
Ed Zitron: like regular, like, like my babysitter for example, which is my Kip, I'm at work like. She has an Apple watch, she uses an iPad. Those are the signs of a successful tech product. You want me using Not so much. And I think that is the ultimate thing here.
The average person is not going to be excited about this unless it's plug and play it quick and easy. They cannot, and they cannot be expected to. Dick around trying to fix minor things or adjusting headsets. It's an awful experience.
Marc Beckman: Ed, could you see Mark Zuckerberg's version of the Metaverse having any type of zombie-like experience where it comes back to life in your mind and. Resurrects. And is there anything viable or good about it?
Ed Zitron: What do you mean? not sure I understand the question.
Marc Beckman: Well, you're saying according to Mark Zuckerberg's, version of the Metaverse, it's dead. Right? Your definition, the way mark Zuckerberg's metaverse, you're saying that thing is dead. It was dead upon arrival. So my question to you is, do you see it resurrecting at all? Is there any hope? I mean, there's still allocating dollars and research, there are still teams behind it.
So do you think there's a way for this thing to come to life? Is there anything good about what Zuckerberg has done on that front?
Ed Zitron: It's hard to weigh any good against the damage he did. His investment in the metaverse led to 10,000 or more people losing their jobs. It led to over 50 billion, a hundred billion maybe of wasted investment. It led to genuine like decay in the tech industry for a product that is 30 or 50 years away. vision of the metaverse could happen through sheer inertia.
It could happen one day, but probably not by his hand.
He will be old or dead by then, and I think that we are so fundamentally far behind on technology on the technological side that his vision will not be his to finish and he will not have contributed much. I truly do not believe he actually meaningfully contributed to any metaverse.
I think he contributed to his bottom line to distract from a company that has a decaying business model.
Marc Beckman: Your earlier point as it relates to this tribal type of mentality across the leaders of these big tech companies is really interesting. Are there any other trends that you'd wanna highlight for us today where you see this kind of, you know, PAC mentality where, you know, the publicly traded companies are following and the money are following as it relates to any tech trends?
Ed Zitron: I think AI to an extent. I think you're seeing a lot of people say that, but the difference is AI is actually building functional products that do stuff. It's just the excitement is slightly, actually not slightly very much higher than it needs to be on the subject.
Marc Beckman: I gotta ask you because I, like I said, I follow you and I've been looking at some of your comments on the recent Elon Musk, CNBC interview.
I got a kick out of that one as well. just gimme your rundown. You think the new c e o appointment over at Twitter is, a good appointment. Do you think it's viable?
Do you think it can have any type of positive impact on his bottom line given the fact that they're so far in debt right now? Do you think advertisers might look at it a little differently?
Ed Zitron: I think the. The biggest problem that they have is that Elon Musk is able to access his Twitter account if they could get him to not use Twitter. It's actually the best thing for that website. He is racist, anti-Semitic. He is a scumbag, sexist, anti-trans. He he's an idiot. On top of that, he is not running a functional business.
Linda Serino, I think it is. She can do all these things with advertisers and hand wave and say, oh yeah, we'll be okay. We'll be great. I like, we are gonna make the ads good. But Elon fired most of the trust and safety team without content moderation. The fundamental product of Twitter, which is the posts which are sold with advertising, sorry, advertising is sold next to them.
If those posts involve, and this is a literal example, a cat in a blender. Or racism, bigotry of any kind. Advertisers don't want it, and Twitter already has less than 1% of the digital ad spend compared to, I think Facebook's, I think Facebook, me, meta, Amazon, and Google holds 60%. So just to be clear, people can drop their Twitter budgets quite quickly. But it doesn't matter because unless she can get Elon out the way and rehire and stabilize moderation on Twitter, she is in a losing position.
Marc Beckman: So now obviously Twitter isn't a publicly traded company and his big investors are, you know, one could argue it's an interesting cast of characters to say the least. But Tesla is publicly traded. And we've been seeing that stock impacted adversely since he's been so vocal on Twitter. do you think that there could be some kind of a movement to have him removed from his position in Tesla?
Ed Zitron: There's actually already a movement been happening. It's not been super successful, but one of the larger stockholders, I forget what their name was, actually trying this already because. First of all, Elon Musk can, he's not running these companies. He's barely running Twitter. He is running it into the ground, but is not doing great and he's barely focused on Tesla.
And you can really see with Tesla how his dark influence is working because they've changed the, so it's a stalk now instead of a, you can play the Witcher on your Tesla. Nothing about the goddamn cars. SpaceX. The chairman, I believe, said, she said like, yeah, Elon is not running this company. His companies are puttering along without him other than Twitter.
Tesla's stock is getting continually crushed because. Putting aside the Twitter thing, they are now entering the most challenging season they are ever going to face. You have cheaper electric autos now you have Mustang, you have Volvo, you've got Polestar, which a little bit more expensive, but there's no longer the sales pitch of we are the only really functional electric car.
There are tons of others and they're pretty good. So we are at a point where Elon is facing. Quite a harsh audience on all of his companies, but most notably Tesla and Twitter. He's in a bad situation. He is. He could keep puttering along for another year or two, but if things get less stable with Twitter, he has a billion dollars, I think, of interest payments a year.
He's also mentally only engaged with Twitter. This website is driving him completely insane.
Marc Beckman: I agree. I agree. Ed. You know, it's interesting. I, all of my notes that I took to talk with you today, I've, I'm not even referencing them anywhere because we've gone on such a far tangent, but,
No, I'm excited. It's very nice actually. But you had mentioned, Chachi PT earlier and I think this week Sam Altman's been testifying in front of Congress and he basically reached out to Congress and said, regulate me.
I wanna work with you. Come in and regulate me. Do you believe Sam Altman? I know that there's also tension between Altman and Musk is trying to do something in the AI space as well, but do you think that he's being genuine when he's asking Congress to come in and regulate? I think he was saying, you can even take my license away, or you could take the license away from people that are using my technology.
Do you think he's credible?
Ed Zitron: I think he's as credible as any Silicon Valley guy. He's not the first tech CEO to say, please regulate me. Zuckerberg basically said the
same thing. Crypto crypto has been trying to do that same thing. What they're saying there is, that's more of a threat.
It's regulate me or I'll do what I want. That's what it actually means. And so, yes, of course Sam. I reckon Sam Altman might want regulation just so that people leave him alone. Cause I don't think he likes the spot. He's not like Elon Musk. He doesn't like the spotlight. He seems very. Upset, kind of like Zuckerberg, but with a little more emotion, cuz Zuckerberg's always been very strange.
He's a peculiar fella.
Marc Beckman: do you think there's like too much power? Like who, like are the tech oligarchs too powerful in your mind?
Ed Zitron: Yes.
And they are empowered by a venture capital community that chooses its kings. And notice I said kings and not queens because there is Abso, there is a huge de d e I issue in Silicon Valley, which I think we're all aware of, but they choose the Andreessen Horowitzs of the world, choose who can stick around.
I mean, and Horowitz was a big part of getting this Twitter deal done. For example, These tech people have too much power, and a lot of it comes down to venture capital. Venture capital is empowering them, and venture capital is not incentivized to make good companies. They're incentivized to make not even good stories, just good multiples, and it gives these people outsize power.
Marc Beckman: I think that, because technology is so ubiquitous in the way that people function in their lives, that the tech oligarchs actually have more power today than politicians. I'm curious if you feel the same.
Ed Zitron: I don't know if I agree on that. I think that they might have a lot of influence, but look at Elon Musk. Like, look at Elon. He. Can't eat 700,000 Twitter blue subscribers. I think that might prove how little actual power these people have. Like they have power, don't get me wrong. They must be controlled, but at the same time, the power that they have is over the products they have.
It is not themselves. It's not the people themselves. Facebook was able to manipulate people through Cambridge Analytica. Absolutely. But the EU is going to lower its ass on top of meta. the GDPR is genuinely going to do, I think long term will destroy Facebook and Instagram.
They will not have a bot business model.
Marc Beckman: How
so?
how so
Ed Zitron: If they succeed in doing the thing that they've been trying to do, which is trying to stop behavioral targeting and tracking in general. The ads industry will not see as much value in Facebook or Twitter or Google. But meta specifically relies so heavily on that kind of tracking.
Marc Beckman: like, I always felt if you look. Through, what Zuckerberg was trying to do. isn't he really trying to revolutionize the idea of ad revenue by creating these metaverse types of experiences?
Ed Zitron: I think he was just trying to create a, another business model. I don't think he even thought it through. I don't know why he did other than possible desperation. I don't think he really fully baked it, but yeah, the idea would be to own the second internet.
That's what he wanted.
He said he wanted to create the future of the mobile internet. He wanted something that he could control and advertise within. I don't know if you saw recently, there was an article come out through the information that Facebook had stopped, meadow had stopped entirely pitching the Metaverse two advertisers.
I think he wanted to create the next internet and just decided to fire that bullet 10 years early. And I don't know, I think it may have been that he got caught up in the hype of crazy of 2021 when there was so much froth in the tech industry, the kind of post lockdown tech industry where money was everywhere.
I think he may have even got caught up with that hype and thought, I can push this crap idea through and no one will be mad.
Marc Beckman: So you think easy money and low interest rates had a lot to do with,
Ed Zitron: easy money
Marc Beckman: across the tech sector.
Ed Zitron: The interest rate thing, I'm always there. I don't like attributing to that. What happened in 2021 was a post pandemic surge of funding and surge of consumer spending. As a result, consumer spending made companies like Shopify, for example, massively over invest and more people were clicking ads. More people were doing stuff on the internet.
More people doing. More things making more money for everyone. As a result, a lot of the tech industry and a lot of different companies actually over-invested in initiatives based on what they believed was the new. This was not the new 2021 was an aberration. it was a glitch almost, and thus including meta.
They probably thought, holy crap, our ads business is going insane. People are spending so much money. Now is the time to push this through. Now and they had a client tech press, Alex Heath from The Verge. I love Alex. He's a great guy. He tripped up on this one. He gave Zuckerberg, Casey Newton did too. And he's a great journalist as well.
Platform is wonderful. But at the same time, in both cases, they gave Zuckerberg oxygen on an idea that was a 10th babe, not even half baked, because everything seemed so hopeful and there was so much money and people were spending so much money.
Marc Beckman: We were printing it. We were printing it
Ed Zitron: Well, I mean the crypto industry quite literally even, and even Zuckerberg, that's how you knew he was full of it as well.
He went on Gary Vaynerchuk's podcast, I think it was, or was it Tim Ferriss? I forget what it was, but he was talking about web three and NFTs and such, and what the flip are you talking about? Mark? You don't know. And that's how you should have known he was full of it because Facebook, the only other time they'd messed with blockchain, other than a vague NFT thing on Instagram, I believe.
Was their completely failed Libra project, but people are like, yes, it's 2021. Who gives a damn? I'm sure Mark will be fine. Complete nonsense.
Marc Beckman: Ed, who do you like in tech right now? Are there any particular leaders that you would point out as, doing interesting work? Visionaries. Who is the next? Mark Zuckerberg, who is the next, breakout brand
in the tech space?
Ed Zitron: That's the thing. The next is the problem. Cause I don't know who that is. So much money in tech has gone to so many stupid places. You've got companies like Bolton Fast, which made couple hundred thousand dollars of revenue while also burning like a hundred million of venture funding.
It's hard to look at these things and say this is the next star. Weirdly enough, the only tech company right now I'm actually kind of hopeful for is Apple, and that's cuz they keep making good stuff that works. The latest MacBooks, the, M two max, the M one, M two thing has been the largest jumping in computing I've seen for the regular person in a long time.
Otherwise, what if we got Elon Musk? Elon. Oh my God. That's our guy. I mean, I'm just, it's hard to be excited at the moment with tech because everyone's funneled down this vacuous AI thing. Without really talking about how this is gonna improve people's lives, I'm just very, I'm not saying I'm depressed, but the reason I like Apple right now is they keep building things that people actually will use.
Marc Beckman: So maybe we'll see some mass user adoption coming through this new AR hardware
Ed Zitron: if it's cool, I'm game. That's the thing. If Zuckerberg came out with something tomorrow that brought the metaverse, he promised I'd be pro Zuckerberg, I'd be like, okay, I was wrong. Cause I'm not hating cause I don't want it to happen. I'm hating cuz I think he's lying.
Marc Beckman: So let me ask a question. Moving out of the digital realm, forget who wrote it. There was an article that really caught my attention, pre pandemic, and the writer, I, for some reason, I think it might have been Andreessen, but I could be mistaken, but the writer was saying, we've lost our way as a country because we're not creating physical product anymore.
Ed Zitron: Is that
Andreessen? Was that Andreessen?
Marc Beckman: I don't remember. It could have been I really don't remember, but it was before the pandemic. but the premise of the article was we need to get back into building, into manufacturing, creating, you know, better, homes and living environments, better office spaces, better physical objects.
And it seems like, to your point you were knocking Tesla before because you were saying like, it's not that it's a better automotive. It's not a better automobile, they're just talking about the gimmicks that are in it. So from your perspective, do you think we could be doing better as a country by creating more physical, better physical objects?
Ed Zitron: I think as a country.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. Like, you know, right
Ed Zitron: We need str. We need stronger labor. We need stronger labor movements. We need stronger infrastructure. We need to invest in more housing, in more places to lower the cost of living. We need to find a way for the average person to live a better fuller life. And the tech industry should focus on the average person.
They should focus on solving those problems, but they won't because they're not funded to do that.
Marc Beckman: I really enjoy speaking with you. It's really nice to meet you.
Ed Zitron: Oh goodness. No, it's my pleasure.
Marc Beckman: we'd love to get together and have a coffee at some point. It
really is a pleasure meeting you. I got
Ed Zitron: I'd love to when I'm next in New York.
Marc Beckman: these topics for hours and hours.
Honestly,
Ed Zitron: Well, thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure.