← Offline with Jon Favreau
Offline with Jon Favreau
Biden’s Weather Machine, Leaked TikTok Docs, Elon’s MAGA Ground Game, and Big Porn to the Rescue?
01:02:51
Why are FEMA workers being threatened for trying to help clean up after Hurricane Helene? Jon and Max break down the misinformation spreading on social media, including the now infamous girl-with-puppy AI image. Then, they discuss the leaked documents that show TikTok knows exactly how harmful their app is, and check in on Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO is going all out to help Trump’s campaign, but fortunately the porn industry is lending a hand to beat it back.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Jon Favreau
One unnamed TikTok executive put it in stark terms, saying the reason kids watch TikTok is because the power of the app's algorithm keeps them from, quote, sleep and eating and moving around the room and looking at someone in the eyes. Yes. Yes.
- [00:48]
Max Fisher
How do you, as a TikTok executive, write that sentence down?
- [00:51]
Jon Favreau
I know.
- [00:52]
Max Fisher
And say, I'm doing a great job at work. I'm really benefiting humanity.
- [00:56]
Jon Favreau
Documents also showed that they went so far as to tweak the algorithm to reduce the visibility of people it deemed not very attractive, and, quote, took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm, even though it could negatively impact their young users. Wow, I didn't even know you could do that with an algorithm.
- [01:12]
Max Fisher
Sure, they can do whatever they want.
- [01:20]
Jon Favreau
I'm Jon Favreau.
- [01:21]
Max Fisher
I'm Max Fisher.
- [01:22]
Jon Favreau
Max, important question for you. Would you drink at a bar where all the bartenders are robots?
- [01:27]
Max Fisher
It depends whose robots they are.
- [01:29]
Jon Favreau
What about Elon Musk's robots?
- [01:30]
Max Fisher
So is this like a SpaceX robot bartender bar where the bartender explodes mid martini, or do we think this is like a Tesla robot bar where the robot.
- [01:41]
Jon Favreau
Where the robot just catches on fire?
- [01:43]
Max Fisher
Yeah, it runs over your table and then there's no liability, probably.
- [01:46]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, we're going to talk about that. We got a lot of news, most of it more serious than that to cover this week, so we're going to skip the guest and get straight into the headlines. This week, new documents out of TikTok show the app's makers know exactly how harmful it can be.
- [02:00]
Max Fisher
Wild stuff.
- [02:01]
Jon Favreau
Elon Musk goes all in to help Trump's campaign while the porn industry lends a hand to beat it. Did you like that?
- [02:08]
Max Fisher
Okay, all right.
- [02:09]
Jon Favreau
Did you like that? I got a lot more where that came from.
- [02:11]
Max Fisher
You gotta save those for when we actually get to the porn. You can't. You can't. What's the expression? Blow. Blow your. You know what? That's it. Let's just go, man. Let's just move on.
- [02:21]
Jon Favreau
All right, First, a story. I couldn't think of an appropriate segue for after that. Hurricane Helene Recovery efforts in parts of western North Carolina were suspended this week after federal emergency response workers were told to evacuate the area over concerns that an armed militia was threatening workers. The Rutherford county sheriff later arrested a 44 year old man from the region who'd made remarks about threatening FEMA workers to a gas station attendant while armed with an assault rifle and a handgun. The incident is one of the latest examples of growing concerns about the safety and security of recovery workers after misinformation surrounding hurricane Helene has completely taken over social media. Max, I wanted to talk about this for a while now because it hasn't just had an effect on people's political views or perception of what's happening. That's what we might see like on a national level as we're sort of reading all these stories. It has also genuinely made recovery efforts more difficult and hurt the people who've been affected by the storm. I'd like to hear what you think and what conspiracies you've seen. Here's one I can't stop thinking about. Conservative Republican congressman from North Carolina, Chuck Edwards. He actually had to put out the following statement, quote, while it is true the federal emergency Management agency's response to hurricane Helene has had its shortfalls, I'm here to dispel the outrageous rumors that have circulated online. And then he has. Number one, hurricane Helene was not geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock. Bullet two, nobody can control the weather.
- [04:02]
Max Fisher
Having to say that. It's really.
- [04:04]
Jon Favreau
I like how each word gets crazier. It does.
- [04:07]
Max Fisher
It's like, yes.
- [04:08]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Hurricanes are not geoengineered to steal what? Lithium deposits.
- [04:12]
Max Fisher
I know. Why would you need to steal. Why would the federal government need to steal lithium? It's already in America. It's already here.
- [04:18]
Jon Favreau
What are we building?
- [04:19]
Max Fisher
Chips?
- [04:19]
Jon Favreau
Phones with lithium? I don't know. I don't want to get into it. What else have you seen?
- [04:25]
Max Fisher
Let me tick through a few. One is that there were a lot of viral claims that North Carolina residents were being told that they no longer own their land and have to vacate. Not true. All of these are not true. Another big one is there was a secret meeting among federal and local officials about seizing and bulldozing the town of Chimney Rock.
- [04:42]
Jon Favreau
This is actually where the lithium is.
- [04:43]
Max Fisher
Where the lithium is. Nobody noticed this. This is in fact the plot of Mel Brooks 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles. No, but it's Rock Ridge. But it's literally the plot of Blazing Saddles. I know it's. The storm suspiciously swerved to hit dams near quartz and lithium mines so that FEMA could seize those mines. Not clear how that even connects.
- [05:02]
Jon Favreau
We are desperate for lithium here.
- [05:04]
Max Fisher
We got to get our lithium. FEMA aid limited to $750 a person for losing your home. That's also not true. Here's one. Our pal, North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Newt Africa Robinson said that Biden was speaking of porn. Speaking. It's a porny show. For some reason. Said that Biden was withholding aid. Elon Musk said that FEMA was actively blocking supplies from reaching Trump. Said that aid was not going to Republican leaning areas, which is in fact a thing that he himself tried to do multiple times while he was president, but was held back by his advisors. And Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that the storm was tracking Republican areas, implying weather control. Which, boy, if we could control the weather.
- [05:42]
Jon Favreau
Oh, she didn't just imply weather control. There was also a post that said, of course they can control the weather. Like, duh. Trump was also, of course saying that the FEMA money went to undocumented immigrants. The $750 thing. Trump and J.D. vance were, you know, saying that Kamala Harris said that, like, you only get $750. That's not true. That was just like an immediate emergency payment. And then they. You could obviously get a lot more money. There's. There was another rumor that the $750 is actually a loan. And if you don't pay it back, the government, the government will seize your property. And so they're saying, don't take the 750. Don't take the seven. Yeah, that was another one.
- [06:21]
Max Fisher
Is this exact same rumor that popped up during the COVID stimulus checks was that it's a loan that you have to pay? It's the same rumors over and over again because that's what the algorithm likes.
- [06:30]
Jon Favreau
And then the Elon Musk thing. So Elon tweeted that they were, you know, FEMA was actively blocking shipments, seasoned goods, all this kind of shit. He had like a video, which didn't really prove anything.
- [06:42]
Max Fisher
Sure.
- [06:43]
Jon Favreau
And then Pete Buttigieg, Department of, you know, Secretary of Transportation, responds to him and says, give me a call. Elon calls him. We don't know exactly what was said in that call, but clearly Pete was like, hey, you're fucking nuts. Because then what was going on? And then Elon responds on Twitter like, thanks for clearing that up. But like the. Thanks for clearing that up. Of course. Just like I know 1/10 of the views and the millions and millions and millions of views that Elon's post, which is misinformation, which is still up right now, received.
- [07:14]
Max Fisher
Right.
- [07:14]
Jon Favreau
And then again, it's just there's also like a ton of anti Semitic conspiracies about Jewish officials.
- [07:21]
Max Fisher
Yeah.
- [07:21]
Jon Favreau
Seizing people's property. I believe the, the public affairs person at FEMA is Jewish. I believe the mayor of one of these towns is also Jewish.
- [07:31]
Max Fisher
We're really playing the hits here.
- [07:33]
Jon Favreau
It's just wild. How big of a deal do you think all this is?
- [07:37]
Max Fisher
So, I mean, I think North Carolina will be okay. I mean this is scary and it is very bad that what should have been a straightforward storm cleanup became, it sounds like for a brief moment a like Mad Max style scenario with guys in truck technicals driving around like the Taliban. But, but I think that this is important because it's demonstrative for the threat from social media and what it is doing to our society. Because what is a natural disaster recovery if not a moment where it is so important for people to be able to come together and cooperate, for people to be able to coordinate, work with the state, work with institutions. And I think what we are seeing is the way that social media is, the structure of social media undermines that and undermines that ability for people to come together and cooperate. Which what is democracy if not that on a larger scale it's these attention seekers algorithms that definitionally, because they emphasize fear, outrage, tribalism, maximize conspiracies that encourage people to distrust your neighbor, distrust society, go out for your own fight the institutions and the threat. Isn't vigilantism the threat, and you hear quotes from people in FEMA saying the threat is that people who won't seek aid, people who will not go out of, will not get or won't accept aid because they're afraid and not, you know, they're not the guys who are gonna get into the trucks, but the people who say, I don't know, I saw these things on social media. I'm not sure what to believe. So I'm just gonna hun. And I think because it shows how much of a market there is for this that you have. It's just built in, it's part of our political system now that Republicans like Trump and Vance are going to deliberately fan these flames because they understand that hate, fear and division are good for them in the short term, which is nihilistic and disturbing, but something they would not be able to do if social media were not structured the way that it is.
- [09:19]
Jon Favreau
And because politics has now crept into every aspect of American life, that even a recovery effort, even a rescue effort could be tainted by politics. Because Trump and J.D. vance and some crazies online decided that this would be an opportunity for them to gain some political advantage of this. Also fucking Elon and Twitter. Do you see that? Linda Yaccarino, during this whole thing tweeted, be careful, stay safe, check X. Oh my God. Which was just like, so. And it's also like, it's infuriating. It's like, fuck you. And also like really sad. Because, you know, for all the criticisms of Twitter, pre Elon.
- [10:01]
Max Fisher
Right.
- [10:01]
Jon Favreau
It was a tool. There is a place where you could go to be like, okay, yeah, maybe political content, you want to check twice. But like, just useful emergency information, good to have now. Can't really do that. We don't really have that.
- [10:16]
Max Fisher
I mean, I think it's also instructive of the ways that social media as constitutes, structurally favors not just the right generally, but specifically the far right, because of the way that it encourages social distrust and leads to this us versus them tribalism, this distrust of institutions and then a desire for someone, a strongman to come in and impose order that leads people to the Far East. So when people talk about, are the algorithms politically biased? It's not that, with the exception maybe of Twitter, which we'll talk about, it's not that they are pulling the big right wing propaganda lever at Meta Headquarters, but we know, and the companies know that the way their algorithms are structured pull people towards these politics in a way that I think we've seen time and again. It creates a feeling of societal collapse. This is also part of the damage. You see all these people who are in North Carolina who could be getting help, but are not because they're being told that society is collapsing around you. FEMA is out to get you. And that feeds into a sense of doomerism, which I think is also part of why this is like a really useful kind of microcosm or Schenectady for what social media does to our society.
- [11:21]
Jon Favreau
And by the way, people who are assisting with the recovery effort, everyone from Joe Biden, President, United States, to Pete Buttigieg to workers on the ground, are spending time knocking down these rumors and debunking these conspiracies and that they're not. And when they, when they are in a situation where like every minute counts and all, like, they had to. FEMA had to put up for the first time ever, like a here's the rumors, you're hearing website and debunking them and the White House has had to do all this stuff and it's just, it is so ridiculous.
- [11:56]
Max Fisher
There's a state lawmaker who said that they were, their phones were so besieged by phone calls from panic constituents saying please do something to stop FEMA from taking my home that it was harder for them to hear from constituents who actually needed help. I think there is also like there's a left right dynamic to this where it's like the misinformation and disinformation is much more pronounced and much more harmful on the right. But there is also a little bit of a left wing element to this too. Something that I saw a lot of on my feed in the front first days after this hit were a version of similar misinformation on the left saying this administration is not helping, they're not doing anything. And it was a kind of like general. Did you not see this? No, I don't. It was not.
- [12:37]
Jon Favreau
Was it more like, oh, they'll send bombs to BB and Ukraine. Exactly.
- [12:43]
Max Fisher
They're sending our money abroad instead of helping out our communities. And then there was another version of it that I think was very prevalent on TikTok that I think you might not think of as misinformation, but is an example of the kind of misinformation that you're saturated with saying that okay, sure, sure, it's true that Biden and Harris might be helping out these communities in the short term, but we all know that they're doing nothing to fix the real problem, which is climate change and which is not true. But that is a version. I want to be careful not to draw false equivalency. This is not a both sides thing. But I think it is demonstrative of the way that same conspiracy thinking and doomerism can infect even people who are better intentioned on the left and just.
- [13:21]
Jon Favreau
Complete distrust and cynicism of institutions which we've talked about. Speaking of climate change, this whole incident also made me think that, and I thought about this during the pandemic as well where like you know, no one, like no matter what scientific evidence, research was out there, people just decided to believe their own shit.
- [13:40]
Max Fisher
Sure.
- [13:41]
Jon Favreau
And for how long now we've been trying to make sure that everyone believes in climate change, that it's man made, that you know what's happening with emissions, all this kind of shit. And you're like, well now that the effects of climate change are here, surely some people will start believing, right? It's going to Maybe be too late. But surely some of these people around this would rather believe that the government controls the weather than to believe that climate change has caused storms to be more severe like this. I know, like that's where we are. And so when we, as we continue to experience the effects of climate change and there are climate disasters that just sort of multiply all over the world, the idea that that's somehow going to spur us into collective action, I don't know. I don't have a lot of hope on that.
- [14:29]
Max Fisher
Well, and it's an idea that outside of those social media bubbles here, between you and me, that sounds ridiculous, right? And it sounds like who could possibly believe that? But if you were ensconced within these algorithmic social platform bubbles where you are only seeing the same things over and over again and countervailing information is never getting through, things that seem ridiculous from the outside start to feel more and more true.
- [14:53]
Jon Favreau
Yes, yes. There's also grifting that was going on. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue did a study on this. First of all, they found that the 3033 posts containing debunked info generated more than 160 million views just on. Just on X, on TikTok. So it's not just X, of course. One video boasting over a million views attempts to sell a manual via the TikTok shop with a section on ingenious ways to outfox FEMA in the next crisis. The advice includes, when talking to neighbors or FEMA employees, complain about how hungry and thirsty you are. And when outside, act like you have no energy and are suffering. If you look like a victim, FEMA will treat you like a victim and be unlikely to raid your home looking for supplies. This is a manual you can buy on TikTok, according to Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Unbelievable, man.
- [15:42]
Max Fisher
Poor female. Just the subject of every conspiracy theory. But like the X Files really ruined them, I feel they do good work.
- [15:53]
Jon Favreau
So, to your point about social media, you know, friend of the pod, Charlie Warzell, had a good piece on all of this in the Atlantic, aptly titled I'm Running out of Ways to Explain How Bad this Is.
- [16:03]
Max Fisher
Great title.
- [16:03]
Jon Favreau
Where he writes to watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts. First, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality. And second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes, but willing participants. What did you think about that?
- [16:24]
Max Fisher
I think that's a really important point. I think he chose a good moment to raise it. It's a tough one to raise because the interaction between people being fooled by what's on social media and then pursuing and indulging their own desires to believe misinformation is really complicated and it's very complex. The way that you trick yourself into belie that you would otherwise know are not true. There was a great quote on the piece from Michael Caulfield at the University of Washington, quote, the primary use of misinformation is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And I think that's really true. I think a lot of it adds some of it. In some ways it does dupe people and fool people, but is also a permission structure for you to construct a reality that is more emotionally validating to yourself.
- [17:14]
Jon Favreau
And when so many people are polarized around their political beliefs, that's how it feeds into your pre existing views of the world politically when something like this happens. And on that note, the most damning example that Charlie cited in the piece was one that has gone viral. It's an AI created image of a crying young girl trapped in the hurricane holding a puppy. Like obviously AI actually it doesn't even seem, it doesn't even really. It's not that good, you know. Parker Malloy, independent journalist, collected multiple screenshots of Twitter users acknowledging that the AI was fake, but still insisting it was real on some deeper level. One screenshot that Parker collected says quote, CNN says this is AI in this case, I don't care. We should look out for our own before the rest of the world. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little girl fitting the description that wasn't lucky enough to make it to a photographer for such an image. Just fucking post, post truth society. It is where we are.
- [18:16]
Max Fisher
It is hard to watch people reason that out loud, but it's literally it's.
- [18:20]
Jon Favreau
So close to just saying I know it's a lie, but it feels true to me.
- [18:24]
Max Fisher
That is what she said.
- [18:27]
Jon Favreau
Worrying about AI is going to get better. Does it need to get better? It doesn't need to get better.
- [18:31]
Max Fisher
I think this is so important that there is the social media disinformation misinformation that we worried about was this kind of post truth hall of mirrors, Nancy Pelosi deepfake where nobody would be able to differentiate what was real and not real.
- [18:47]
Jon Favreau
But what does Nancy Pelosi have to do with anything?
- [18:49]
Max Fisher
You don't remember the Nancy Pelosi deepfake from, like, two years ago where there was. I can't remember who. It was someone Trump aligned who tweeted out a deep fake video of her slurring her words in theory on the floor of Congress.
- [19:02]
Jon Favreau
Oh, that's right.
- [19:02]
Max Fisher
And that was the moment when everybody was like, this is the future. But what we assumed was that people would start by wanting to differentiate truth from false and that what would get past us with things that tricked us as we were trying to identify the truth. But what I think Charlie has put his finger on, what has been true for a while or evident for a while, is that a lot of it is driven by people just wanting to get information and to circulate information that feels validating to them over wanting factual accuracy for itself. And I do find myself more and more frustrated with people who indulge in this because it's everybody. And I, you know, systemically, I blame the social media companies because they know their algorithms are encouraging this. Their own documents show that they know they're doing it. But individually, I do more and more blame individual people for playing a role in this because we have the information to know better. And it's not just people. Like, you know, a lot of the people who are sharing these AI Slop videos, like you kind of picture, it conjures up a certain image of someone, and it's easy to think of that person, think, well, they don't. Maybe they don't know better. But there are a lot of people who know better. Something we were talking about earlier that I am still kind of talked about, even though it's not that big of a deal. But my feed has been dominated for the last week by people absolutely adamant that Kamala Harris is down in the polls, which she isn't. Is down in the polls because she stopped calling Republicans weird and held an event with Liz Cheney. None of which is true, adamantly believe it. People who should know better. And this is a softer version of the same thing where you're conjuring up a reality out of nowhere because it feels true. Because what you wonder something about.
- [20:39]
Jon Favreau
Well, and your feed, right, is algorithmically designed so that other people who think that are there. And so you're like, well, a bunch of people are saying that.
- [20:48]
Max Fisher
Everybody's saying it must be true.
- [20:49]
Jon Favreau
And then it's very easy to conjure up a poll somewhere where you're like, okay, well, this poll shows a little bit of dip. And this was Right after this. And it just happened to be right when she did the Liz Cheney thing. Everything that happened after that, it's like that no one cares. They just. They just. It's like your own preconceived view of the world is just constantly reinforced.
- [21:11]
Max Fisher
And I think that North Carolina shows why this can be dangerous. Because, look, if people are. People on the left are yelling at the Kamala Harris campaign because it's not doing enough to validate their hatred. Republicans. She's going to be fine.
- [21:24]
Jon Favreau
And you know what?
- [21:25]
Max Fisher
She's going to be annoyed.
- [21:25]
Jon Favreau
But everyone, God forbid, if she loses the fights about why she lost.
- [21:29]
Max Fisher
Right. Who's just the precrimination?
- [21:31]
Jon Favreau
Oh, my gosh. The content will just go for fucking years. Everyone can just have the fights while they're in the Gulag.
- [21:38]
Max Fisher
Well, no, that's right.
- [21:40]
Jon Favreau
With Emperor Trump, you know, everyone can spend their time in the cell yelling at the lefties or the centrists or whoever they think did it.
- [21:48]
Max Fisher
Yes. No, we're gonna divide up the camps based on which podcast.
- [21:50]
Jon Favreau
Plenty of time for that. Yeah, but when the hurricane hits, right?
- [21:54]
Max Fisher
Well, I think this shows. And there was a Rolling Stone article that quoted a bunch of meteorologists who are kind of like, there's always another.
- [22:02]
Jon Favreau
Group who were also getting death threats. Some people were like, we must kill the meteorologists.
- [22:04]
Max Fisher
Right. And there's always some group who. It's like, you know, like, doctors have been getting this for years. Poll workers have been getting this for years. And now meteorologists, the next group. And these quotes from these people. This one guy said, people are just so. It's a meteorologist based in D.C. people are just so far gone. It's honestly making me lose all faith in humanity. There's so much bad information floating around out there that the good information has been obscured. Buddy, welcome to the party. We all as. Listen, as a reporter, I've been here for years.
- [22:31]
Jon Favreau
Well, look, I mean, this is a tough problem to solve. You mentioned the social media companies. This is not a problem that we can, like, content, moderate our way out of. Correct. All I can think of is Kamala Harris has to win. I know, because it's bad enough that the Biden administration is trying their best to debunk this and do the recovery efforts, all that stuff. Now, imagine people like this in power, right, with Donald Trump. And it's even. Not even the last Trump administration, where the crazy was at the top. And then in some of the. In the bowels of a lot of these agencies, they were just nonpartisan bureaucrats trying to do their jobs. No, no, no. Not going to be like that next time. And so then when a disaster hits, natural disaster hits, like, then what are you going to believe and who's going to get taken care of?
- [23:16]
Max Fisher
Yeah.
- [23:17]
Jon Favreau
So, yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do some quick housekeeping, Cricket's Friend of the Pod subscription is offering a massive 25% off new annual subscriptions through election day. Oh, that is $30 in savings. When you subscribe today, you get ad free episodes of Pod Save America and access to shows like Dan Pfeiffer's Polar Coaster Terminally Online, which is our most unhinged, hilarious show where we make fun of Internet shit that's even crazier than the stuff we talk about here.
- [23:45]
Max Fisher
We're relatively hinged, right?
- [23:47]
Jon Favreau
We're relatively hinged. And inside 2024, where we talk about what it's like to be on a campaign, you also get lots of other fun behind the scenes, crooked content. And you're supporting the growth of a progressive media conglomerate that's trying to give Fox News and the Daily Wire a run for their money.
- [24:01]
Max Fisher
I love it.
- [24:01]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, do it. Monthly subscribers can easily upgrade to an annual plan, and new subscribers can join in less than a minute. Subscribe now@cricket.com friends or through the Pod Save America feed on Apple Podcasts. Also, check out our new series, Empire City, the untold origin story of the nypd. The series has dived into the militarization of the force, the policing of abortion in the early days of New York, and the very first investigation into police corruption. But as NYPD news continues to break, there's a lot more to uncover. The series finale of Empire City drops tomorrow, so make sure to follow Empire City wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes now and enjoy ad free listening by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [24:42]
Max Fisher
I have a question.
- [24:42]
Jon Favreau
Sure.
- [24:43]
Max Fisher
Are we a conglomerate? You said.
- [24:44]
Jon Favreau
I just. I just. I just threw that. I just threw that in there.
- [24:46]
Max Fisher
What is a conglomerate?
- [24:47]
Jon Favreau
I don't know. What is a conglomerate?
- [24:48]
Max Fisher
I don't know.
- [24:49]
Jon Favreau
I was gonna say empire, but I thought that was a little much, you know?
- [24:52]
Max Fisher
Are we congloming? I'm fine.
- [24:55]
Jon Favreau
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- [27:22]
Jon Favreau
And we're back. So earlier this week, Donald Trump heard of him.
- [27:27]
Max Fisher
He rings a bell.
- [27:28]
Jon Favreau
He sat down with Bloomberg for a lengthy interview in Front of the economic club of Chicago.
- [27:32]
Max Fisher
Oh my God.
- [27:33]
Jon Favreau
I know exactly. You know what exactly, exactly how you think. He got two offline questions, not about us, but offline type questions.
- [27:41]
Max Fisher
In a sense they were about us.
- [27:42]
Jon Favreau
Yes. One was about the DOJ's Google antitrust suit and one was about the future of TikTok. I think we have a clip from that interview. Let's play it.
- [27:53]
Max Fisher
The U.S. justice Department is thinking about breaking up Alphabet, as Google likes to be known now.
- [27:59]
Jon Favreau
Glad he said that.
- [27:59]
Max Fisher
Should Google be broken up, he would.
- [28:01]
Jon Favreau
Not have known Alphabet.
- [28:02]
D
I just haven't gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes and the Justice Department sued them that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven't, I haven't gotten, I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that. They can't even believe it.
- [28:30]
Max Fisher
The question is a great answer.
- [28:32]
D
Yeah, look, Google's got a lot of power. They're very bad to me. Very, very bad to me. I mean, I can speak from that standpoint.
- [28:40]
Max Fisher
You just talked about Chinese technology, tick tock and the threat people see to many can American children and things like that. Yeah, but why do you no longer see.
- [28:51]
D
I think it is a threat, frankly. I think everything's a threat. There's nothing that's not a threat.
- [28:57]
Jon Favreau
There's nothing that's not a threat.
- [28:59]
Max Fisher
Healthy, healthy outlook.
- [29:01]
Jon Favreau
That was wild.
- [29:02]
Max Fisher
So can I. In the rest of his Google answer, he elaborates and he explains that Google has been unfair to him in the sense that when he loads up Google News personally, he does not like the headlines that he sees.
- [29:12]
Jon Favreau
That's exactly it.
- [29:13]
Max Fisher
Which is so wild because it made me think these tech companies could be saving billions of dollars on legal fees and lobbyists if they would just send, just send a kid from Home Depot over to Trump's house and show him how to set up his Google newsfeed. It's easy to do. I set min, you see different headlines, then you like the headlines and then Google will live to fight another day.
- [29:35]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, just like you type in Donald Trump in his feed and it's just like, Donald Trump is great, some nice stuff.
- [29:40]
Max Fisher
He's a builder, a big thumbs up emoji. That's it, you're done.
- [29:46]
Jon Favreau
Threat. Nothing's. Everything's a threat. Honestly.
- [29:48]
Max Fisher
Honestly, Alphabet, call me, I could save you billions.
- [29:51]
Jon Favreau
I wish the guy hadn't said that. Alphabet is what the parent company Google now, he would not have known at all.
- [29:58]
Max Fisher
He tries to break up the wrong piece.
- [30:00]
Jon Favreau
He's an Alphabet. And he was probably, probably like, oh shit, what is Alphabet? You can see the brain going. Anyway, he didn't have any good answers to that. So it will be cool if he's president again. But want to spend a moment today checking back in on TikTok, which as a reminder is still facing a ban in January of 2025. It's coming up unless it finds a US buyer. A US based buyer. Last week, a bipartisan group of more than a dozen state attorneys general sued TikTok over claims that the app maker violated consumer protection laws by designing an intentionally addictive video sharing app and by knowingly lying to the public about the app's harms. The lawsuits contain all kinds of internal communications documents and research data that were redacted from public view due to confidentiality agreements these authorities entered with TikTok. But while filing the suit, the office of the Kentucky Attorney General committed an error accidentally revealing the documents that were supposed to be kept secret.
- [30:53]
Max Fisher
I love, love that I fucking as a reporter you nothing you love more.
- [30:57]
Jon Favreau
Good job, Kentucky Attorney General's office. What in the leaked docs did you find the most compelling? I have quite a list, but you start. This is wild by the way.
- [31:06]
Max Fisher
Do we want to do like a tier ranking? Do we want to do like a draft style? Your favorite details of the TikTok.
- [31:11]
Jon Favreau
Let's start going.
- [31:12]
Max Fisher
Okay, I have three. The big one, the big headline is TikTok's own internal research found that, quote, compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational data, step empathy and increased anxiety. Just go ahead, just keep clocking into work every day, TikTok employees. Just knowing that you're creating something that is deliberately or is knowingly harming people. I think the other big two for the lawsuit and talking about regulation, TikTok's research finds that it fails to remove the platform, fails to remove 1/3 of content normalizing pedophilia, 30% of content leading minors off platform. So the implication there is potentially to be contacted. 50% of glorified justification of minor sexual assault and 100% of content fetishizing minors. And TikTok's internal guidance actively discourages removing children under 13 from the platform if parents or teachers flag the account as long as the account does not proactively identify itself as under 13, which is.
- [32:20]
Jon Favreau
Nuts and they Learned that kids as young as 15 were stripping for coins on live feeds and other rewards now. Unbelievable. So, a couple other things. TikTok noted they have a feature that lets parents set time limits on the app. And one document, this is according to an NPR story about. This shows a TikTok project manager speaking candidly about the time limits features. Real goal. And they said, quote, improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage. The TikTok employee said, Our goal is not to reduce the time spent, it's just to improve public trust via media coverage.
- [33:05]
Max Fisher
That is nuts.
- [33:06]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [33:06]
Max Fisher
Wow. Really saying it out loud.
- [33:08]
Jon Favreau
One unnamed TikTok executive put it in stark terms, saying the reason kids watch TikTok is because the power of the app's algorithm keeps them from, quote, sleep and eating and moving around the room and looking at someone in the eyes. Yes. Yes.
- [33:25]
Max Fisher
How do you, as a TikTok executive, write that sentence down?
- [33:28]
Jon Favreau
I know.
- [33:29]
Max Fisher
And say, I'm doing, doing a great job at work. I'm really, I'm really benefiting humanity.
- [33:33]
Jon Favreau
Documents also showing the eye. Documents also show that they went so far as to tweak the algorithm to reduce the visibility of people it deemed not very attractive and quote, took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm, even though it could negatively impact their young users. Wow, I didn't even know you could do that with an algorithm.
- [33:51]
Max Fisher
Sure, they can do whatever they want.
- [33:53]
Jon Favreau
They also, they also quantified the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit. I saw that 260 videos, which can be seen in underwater. 35 minutes.
- [34:02]
Max Fisher
35 minutes.
- [34:03]
Jon Favreau
35 minutes to get.
- [34:04]
Max Fisher
I have to tell you, I think that is correct.
- [34:06]
Jon Favreau
This like radicalized me even more against TikTok.
- [34:09]
Max Fisher
How so?
- [34:10]
Jon Favreau
Just thinking about my kids.
- [34:11]
Max Fisher
Yeah.
- [34:12]
Jon Favreau
And I'm just like, I don't, I don't want them to have the phone and to have this on the phone and like you're just going to lose them.
- [34:20]
Max Fisher
Is it more knowing the danger from the platform or is it knowing that TikTok knows that it's dangerous for them?
- [34:26]
Jon Favreau
It's that. Well, that just makes me mad. The idea of it makes me scared. The idea of them having it makes me scared. This makes me mad. Yeah.
- [34:36]
Max Fisher
It's unconscionable.
- [34:37]
Jon Favreau
What do you think about the lawsuits in their chance of succeeding, sort of as a strategy? Interestingly, the AGs are all saying that they would have done this even if TikTok was an American owned company. So this is not about CCP. Chinese Communist Party control over the algorithm or over ByteDance, all that kind of stuff. National security, this is just like pure addiction stuff.
- [34:59]
Max Fisher
So my understanding is that in this lawsuit specifically and generally that the kind of legal kill shot is being able to prove that TikTok was intentionally collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent, which is illegal under federal privacy laws, and that that is kind of the place where they are able to get them and that proving that TikTok is harming users mental wellbeing or that Tik. TikTok lied to consumers, it's one thing to prove that, but section 230 makes it difficult to bring any sort of legal charges over that. It's worth trying for sure. And they can definitely like rhetorically and morally make a case that TikTok is harming us and harming our children. And there's probably a pretty good case that that is a big intent of the suit is to bring people's attention to like we know what TikTok is doing.
- [35:49]
Jon Favreau
I was going to say, I feel like some of the stuff we just read about those, like what we learned from the leaked internal documents is probably the most the real value of this lawsuit because otherwise it feels like the legal standard is quite high for this.
- [36:05]
Max Fisher
Right.
- [36:06]
Jon Favreau
But when it comes to the ban, which is also working its way through its courses through the court system, what do you think actually happens there?
- [36:14]
Max Fisher
So it seems like nobody really knows. I mean, there was a Washington Post headline on this that said, yes, TikTok could still be banned. There was a hearing last month in front of some federal judges. TikTok is trying to get the suit dismissed on free speech. Both sides in the trial asked for, or in the hearing rather asked for a ruling by December because they want to get through the appeal before that January 19 deadline, which of course is one day before the inauguration. Interestingly, Pew's. A Pew poll found that people no longer believe TikTok will be banned or a majority of people no longer believe it. And support for a ban has slipped. It was 50%, I think it was a year ago. Now it's at 32%, 22 to 28% oppose. So it's still slightly more people support banning it than oppose it.
- [37:01]
Jon Favreau
It feels like the support has dropped more than the opposition has risen, which makes me feel like a part of that at least is it faded from the headline.
- [37:08]
Max Fisher
I think it's.
- [37:09]
Jon Favreau
And so there's a lot more people who are just like, I don't know.
- [37:11]
Max Fisher
Right. And it does, you know, when you're removed from it, you start to lose sense with the immediate real world stakes from it. And it starts to feel like it's just a platform. And it's so easy to have an individual experience with TikTok that is fine or there's maybe like a little harmful for you, but you kind of think, oh, it's not that bad. I think, should we really ban the platform? But it is tough in our society specifically to think about banning a social media platform because we have had such a norm for so long that the state does not get involved in regulating our media. That it just that that is a big bright red line with the like one exception of obscenity on public airwaves. We regulate food, we'll regulate the safety of, you know, the water, of chemicals in the air. But we have this idea that you don't, the state should not get involved in what media you consume and don't consume. So what's been happening over the last 50, as our media has been getting more and more dangerous for us and more and more harmful. And we all know that no one disputes that our media, from network news to cable news to the Internet to social platforms to TikTok has been getting worse and worse for us and for society. But it feels hard to finally take them, take a stand and say this is the moment we're drawing the line and saying that TikTok has gone too far in being harmful for the public. Well being.
- [38:25]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. And I just, it's interesting at. I don't think Kamala Harris has been asked about the ban, which is interesting.
- [38:32]
Max Fisher
I've definitely not seen her talking about it, which is probably.
- [38:34]
Jon Favreau
I'm sure she doesn't want to. Of course.
- [38:36]
Max Fisher
Yeah.
- [38:37]
Jon Favreau
But I wonder how that would change if. Because obviously Biden, I mean she. The legislation has been signed.
- [38:43]
Max Fisher
Right.
- [38:44]
Jon Favreau
But I'm sure that there's like way.
- [38:45]
Max Fisher
You know, there's, there's punting and I'm sure she has. Where are you on whether it should be been?
- [38:51]
Jon Favreau
It's still tough because I, I do think that we've said this before. I do think the government owes it. I mean it's too late, the legislation's already passed. But I do think the government owes it to people to let the public know just from a building public trust standpoint, why it is dangerous and clearly why the government believes it's dangerous is not just what the lawsuit that these AGs are bringing. In fact, their case is what the Chinese government can do. And it's data privacy. Yeah, right. And it's also sort of manipulation algorithm propaganda I think they're a little shakier on that from a national security perspective. And they probably got to lean more on the, it's, you know, either they're from the extreme, you know, case of they're looking at your keystrokes, which some member of Congress said after leaving one of these briefings. Right. Even though no one was specific to just like just vacuuming up a ton of data. But it's a foreign government doing.
- [39:50]
Max Fisher
Yeah, it's tricky because I think that the, the, I'm not saying I think that federal regulators have ulterior motives, but I think that the best case for banning TikTok is different than the legal case that the Biden administration is advancing.
- [40:02]
Jon Favreau
Yes, I agree.
- [40:03]
Max Fisher
And that there's a little bit of overlap, but they're most quite separate.
- [40:06]
Jon Favreau
All right, we're going to take another break. When we get back, Elon Musk.
- [40:09]
Max Fisher
Oh boy.
- [40:10]
Jon Favreau
He's not here. We're just going to talk about him.
- [40:14]
Max Fisher
He'll come on one of these days.
- [40:15]
Jon Favreau
I'm sure.
- [40:22]
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Jon Favreau
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- [42:44]
Jon Favreau
And we're back. Unfortunately, it's time for us to check in on Elon Musk, since clearly none of his friends and family are the world's richest man turned MAGA shitposter has temporarily relocated to Pittsburgh for the final weeks of the election so he can knock doors for Donald Trump. Trump, the man he has unironically told people he, quote, loves and has shown that affection by so far spending a half a billion dollars to help him win. Wow. This is according to a New York Times piece that says Elon has been, quote, manic about the stakes of the election.
- [43:15]
Max Fisher
Fun word choice, I know.
- [43:17]
Jon Favreau
And let's not forget Elon's greatest gift of all buying and using one of the most influential social media platforms in the world to amplify pro maga propaganda to hundreds of millions of users. Elon does have more followers than anyone else on the platform. 200 million. So that's another gift to Trump. We also learned from the Times that Musk has worked with the Trump campaign directly to censor anti Trump content. In this case, Elon suspended journalist Ken Klippenstein and blocked links to his article about The Trump campaign's J.D. vance research dossier after the campaign asked the platform to prevent circulation of Klippenstein's piece because it was from an Iranian hack.
- [43:59]
Max Fisher
Right?
- [44:00]
Jon Favreau
What do you make of all this? And there's a lot to go through here. The Pennsylvania move, the half a billion, the censorship, Elon jumping up and down at a Trump rally. We haven't even got to talk about that.
- [44:10]
Max Fisher
The big jump. It is wild to me that this story is just Every right wing conspiracy about politics, except it's about the right. And it's true. The major social platform being manipulated by the.
- [44:22]
Jon Favreau
It's all projection.
- [44:24]
Max Fisher
Right, by the big billionaire partisan owner who wants to put microchips in our brain and is backed financially by the Saudis. That's true. That's the thing that's happening.
- [44:32]
Jon Favreau
It's like a. You wouldn't believe it if it was a.
- [44:35]
Max Fisher
Do we think Elon is hanging out at Comet ping pong a lot these days? He's just running back Pizzagate. Look, I mean I think that this is not like a newspaper endorsing a candidate or it's not even like Fox News putting it all on the line for Trump. Because social media algorithms shape your reality indirectly in a way that is very hard for you to see when you are looking at your feed individually. And we know that Elon is already doing this because we know just you mentioned this. His account alone is pushing a huge amount of pro Trump far right straight up disinformation lies. And we know from a ton of reporting that his account is being artificially amplified by the algorithm. So even if that is the only thing that is happening in terms of him using Twitter to deliberately manipulate political sentiment, that in and of itself is huge. Now, is it quote, unquote, election interference? I'm not sure I would go that far. There's a lot of people making that claim, but it's definitely fucking bad.
- [45:36]
Jon Favreau
Oh yeah, it's bad. And it's like, I think the Times P said this too. Like there's no analogous situation in history of someone that rich, controlling, with that much, that much power in terms of amplification, you know, able to like sort of pump out propaganda.
- [45:52]
Max Fisher
Right.
- [45:52]
Jon Favreau
Than this.
- [45:53]
Max Fisher
And willing to do it.
- [45:54]
Jon Favreau
And willing to do it. And again, it is even. It's weird to say this, but it is a step worse than Fox News.
- [46:02]
Max Fisher
Yes, right.
- [46:03]
Jon Favreau
Because like they. Fox News now is even worse. But like back in the day it was like conservative propaganda. Loosely fact checked sometimes, right?
- [46:13]
Max Fisher
Yeah, right.
- [46:14]
Jon Favreau
Like there were some standards. They weren't great. There was some shame, not much. And news before 5pm but like Elon, I finally muted him.
- [46:24]
Max Fisher
Oh, I did.
- [46:25]
Jon Favreau
Because it was years ago. It was. Well, I was like, let's check in on what the crazy guy's saying. But it was like it was too much and it's like getting too dark and too crazy and just like it's disturbing. It's disturbing and I'm not learning anything new. Like I want to know what the Other side is thinking and I want to know what the conspiracies are. But like, it's like, I get it, man. It's like replacement theory all the way down. End of the world if Trump doesn't win. Like he. The New York Times piece also it was interesting in that it shows how Elon went from, I don't want Joe Biden to win again, but I don't know about Trump to like, okay, I wanna secretly help Trump, even though I don't. It's like lesser of two evils to like, I actually love Trump and I'm gonna jump up and down like, this is a man who has been radicalized and there he. Nothing in the world has changed. Elon's brain has changed.
- [47:15]
Max Fisher
Yes. And we've from using this product, he's kind of like your classic Obama Trump voter, where it's like, clearly there was just like too much social change, too much social progress, and something in his brain broke. I think something that is easy to miss about part of the harm that Elon is bringing because it's so out in the open and so in our phase is that if you think back to 2016, there was so much far right rhetoric, so many far right ideas and misinformation that was associated with the campaign, but it was kind of filtered through these like, small to medium influencers like Milo Yiannopoulos. And there would be this kind of disconnect where it's like, the Trump campaign wouldn't say it or they would go only so far. And then there's a loose collective of like far right Reddit trolls on Twitter would amplify it. But now we have the most, the most followed voice who is pushing this every single day, day in and day out. And I think that does a ton to. I know this is the most overused word in the fucking world. To normalize it and to move the Overton window by just saying it's like, well, it's in my. It's in my. The equivalent of the CNN Kai Ron on Twitter every single day. And part of this that really disturbs me is Musk's price for helping Trump. You read about the government Efficiency Commission that he wants to run, which is just going to be Trump's special commission for firing all the regulators. And Musk has said that the two regulatory agencies he really wants to target for purging, the regulators are. Here we go. The epa, of course, and the faa.
- [48:46]
Jon Favreau
Well, why?
- [48:47]
Max Fisher
Because he gets a lot of fines at SpaceX because he's launching exploding rockets into the sky.
- [48:53]
Jon Favreau
He's not getting on planes anymore. That's it.
- [48:57]
Max Fisher
I'm open about it. So, okay, maybe, whatever. How you feel about climate change? Do you want the planes to fly? Don't vote for Donald Trump.
- [49:06]
Jon Favreau
It's so bad. The whole. So I do think that on the propaganda side, on the, like, using his platform to help Trump, like, that is all. It's not only nefarious, but I think it's effective. Yeah. I will say the Elon moving to Pennsylvania personally going door knocking and sort of basically, the Trump campaign has outsourced much of their GOTV operation to get out the vote operation. The field operation to Elon's super pac. And Elon super PAC is also, like, gobbling up other super PACs too, on the right. And they're trying to like. And what I have heard, not just from Democratic strategists, but people who have talked to people on the Trump campaign, like Trump strategists, is that the weakest part of their entire campaign, the operation is this Elon pack field operation? Yeah. It's like a fucking mess.
- [49:58]
Max Fisher
Well, that's good news.
- [49:59]
Jon Favreau
I know. That is good. This is like a small silver lining. And they were like, someone. Actually, I heard someone say, like, if we lose, it'll be this. Like, they feel very confident about a lot of things, but they worry about the. And the Washington Post saying that they're getting wrong. The Washington Post, a great story about this that just popped before we started recording. But it's like, you know, you don't. You can't build a field operation with like, a month to go. Like, these are things that, like, people. People take years. Right. And Elon's like, you know, they're hiring people last minute to go out there. The app keeps breaking down. Elon's management style is, like, turning people off. They're knocking on doors of, like, people who the apps tell them to go to. Like, Harris supporter doors. And it's hard to recruit people. Like, the whole thing is just a big mess.
- [50:42]
Max Fisher
I did see there was some story about hundreds of door knockers got stranded somewhere because Musk personally intervened and was just like, no, you're out. Which is. It's like, these are not Twitter engineers who you can just fire on a whim. You need these people. Although it is gonna be an interesting test on whether door knocking actually works, which I know is a live debate.
- [51:01]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, no, I know, I know. But I think this is probably not gonna work, which is not to say like, like Trump still a coin flip election. Trump can win. Right. But if he wins, I don't think it's happy. It's not going to be the door operation.
- [51:15]
Max Fisher
It's true.
- [51:15]
Jon Favreau
And I think, in fact, it shows. How has Elon been at Tesla? How has he been at Twitter? Now he's running. Now he thinks he's. He, like, gets involved, gets manic, gets super, screams at a bunch of people, doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Thinks he's a genius at everything isn't right.
- [51:32]
Max Fisher
He's a showman.
- [51:33]
Jon Favreau
But I will say there's another super PAC associated with him that's running ads. And this stuff is also nefarious, much like the Twitter stuff, which is they are running one ad in Michigan that says, talks about how Kamala is a steadfast supporter of Israel, and they're running it in Dearborn and Arab America and Muslim precincts, and then in Pennsylvania in Jewish areas. Kamala is pandering to the Palestinians and she's secretly campaigning for Palestine. Yeah, same place. So cynical.
- [52:02]
Max Fisher
So cynical. I am worried about the Jill Stein vote in Michigan. I really.
- [52:06]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, yeah. No, I. It's. Everyone's. I. I was there when we went canvassing, and I heard from someone who's, like, very well connected on the ground and doing some stuff, saying that they're worried that they have heard both from Arab Americans, Muslim Americans who are like, I can't vote, and Jewish Americans who said, I can't because she. Because Biden and Harris are. Yeah, I know, I know.
- [52:32]
Max Fisher
Welcome to the Israel Palestine conflict.
- [52:34]
Jon Favreau
I know. I know it's tough. What do you think about the greatest free speech censorship scandal since the Hunter Biden laptop affair?
- [52:43]
Max Fisher
So this is okay to explain what's going on here? It's not just the thing that you mentioned earlier about independent subsac journalist Ken Klippenstein getting his account banned because he tweeted out this link to the Trump docs that were hacked by the Iranians. It is, like you said, it's a Hunter Biden thing. It is retaliation for the platforms choosing to. I think it was suppress. Was it suppress or just de. Emphasize on the feed? I can't remember.
- [53:08]
Jon Favreau
Oh, it was. It was. This was the Hunter Biden thing.
- [53:12]
Max Fisher
Yeah, it was the story.
- [53:14]
Jon Favreau
I think they. I think they just. I think they de. Emphasized.
- [53:17]
Max Fisher
I think that's okay. But it was links to, I think, specifically a New York poster.
- [53:22]
Jon Favreau
It was a New York Post story. Yeah.
- [53:23]
Max Fisher
About Hunter Biden's laptop got found and someone took the files off of it. And New York Post Wrote it up, which was itself a reaction correction, maybe an over correction election from 2016 when media outlets published a bunch of stories based on Russian hacks of John Podesta's emails, remember the Hillary Clinton emails. And those were everywhere. And then after 2020, everybody was like, let's not do that again. So let's not make too big of a deal out of the Hunter Biden laptop stuff just because we have it. And people on the right have been using that as evidence that the media is biased against them and is suppressing news that is solved to Republicans. I think this is not going to shock you. I think this is worse than the Hunter Biden thing. Not just on the merits, because I actually don't know how important these documents really are. They don't seem like they're that big of a deal. But because a social platform being deliberately partisan in its moderation is worse than what happened in 2020, which is social platforms trying to do the right thing and arguably may have been unintentionally partisan.
- [54:24]
Jon Favreau
Right. And also the Trump people get this wrong. But like the Hunter Biden thing was when Donald Trump was president. That's true, that was his administration. So it wasn't. And then what the Biden administration tried to do was about COVID misinformation, which again was not supposed to be partisan.
- [54:40]
Max Fisher
And they didn't. And they weren't ordering platforms to suppress it. They were just telling them, hey, we.
- [54:44]
Jon Favreau
Saw this post and again there is a whole debate to be had about if there's hacked material, should the hacked material be allowed on social media platforms?
- [54:53]
Max Fisher
Tough question, right?
- [54:54]
Jon Favreau
And you can decide, no, we're gonna take it down and it's not allowed. But then you have to do that. You have to, it has to be a standard across the board. Right? And like let's see if there, if Kamala Harris campaign was hacked tomorrow and they reached out to Elon at X, do you think they would take that down? Yeah, I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see.
- [55:13]
Max Fisher
Well, we might not, I hope we don't.
- [55:15]
Jon Favreau
We should know before we move on that Elon is still keeping his date job. This week at an event up the road in Burbank, Musk unveiled his long awaited Cyber Cab, which is just a self driving car that looks a bit like a mini cybertruck. At the event, Musk also unveiled a prototype of Optimus, a humanoid robot that Tesla claims will eventually use AI to complete daily tasks and were used at the event to serve drinks at the bar with the Assistance of a human control person.
- [55:42]
Max Fisher
Yeah, they didn't tell people that in the time. They said it's a robot. They said it's a robot with AI and it turned out there was a human control. It was all smoke and mirrors.
- [55:52]
Jon Favreau
What do you make of the Cyber cab and the robot and the whole event?
- [55:56]
Max Fisher
So the Cyber cab is just a Waymo car. Except later and not as good. That's exactly what I was gonna say.
- [56:03]
Jon Favreau
I didn't realize. Yeah, I didn't have it. So Waymo is only in four cities. For people who don't know. Yes, we have it in la. It is a self driving car.
- [56:10]
Max Fisher
Sure.
- [56:10]
Jon Favreau
It is a little surprising when you see one. I kind of felt like no one told me that we're here yet and doing self driving cars.
- [56:18]
Max Fisher
I know.
- [56:18]
Jon Favreau
And I'm just driving my kid to and suddenly he's like dad, there's no one in that car and it's moving. And I'm like, what the fuck?
- [56:24]
Max Fisher
What?
- [56:25]
Jon Favreau
No one told me about the Waymo.
- [56:26]
Max Fisher
There was a video that was circulating a couple days ago of a Waymo randomly parked just like in the middle of traffic and there was some poor traffic cop went up to the car and kept trying to wave it forward. I know you really feel for him cause it's like what else are you gonna do? But also it's a car, it doesn't understand waving.
- [56:45]
Jon Favreau
And so Waymo is from Google or Alphabet. Yes, have to. And they have, they have been around for a little while and they have like all of these safety data points that are like pretty. It basically someone said this, I can't remember who, that it drives like a, like a kid who's getting like, like you know, in driving school and it's like student driver kind of thing. That's sort of how they go because.
- [57:12]
Max Fisher
It'S all gas and brakes.
- [57:13]
Jon Favreau
It's overly cautious, which is probably what you'd want. So you're a driver? Yeah, I think so. Now Elon. Elon Musk, for years, for about like six years has been saying the Tesla self driving car is right around the corner. It's happening next year and it's going to lead the industry. And it just kept, just kept getting punted and punched. And still there's some of the stories about this event were like, it was, it was like bumping into shit. It got stuck in a tunnel. The guy, he really is like Trump and that. Like it is, it is smoke, mirrors, a big show. He knows how to put the show on. He's jumping around, he's he's doing this stuff and it's like also, you know, like a bunch of senior executives at Tesla have been like leaving over the.
- [57:53]
Max Fisher
Last leaving in tropes. Yes, it's been. So an important thing to understand here is the reason that Elon Musk is as rich as he is. It's not because Tesla sells a lot of electric cars. It's not because of SpaceX, it's definitely not because of Twitter. The reason that he is so rich is because of this promise that he is one day going to launch a self driving car that is so amazing that it completely dominates the future self driving car and self driving tech industry. The reason that that is the thing that makes him rich is that Tesla's stock price is where all of his wealth is. And Tesla's stock price is not pegged to Tesla's sales of electric cars, which are declining as a share of the overall market. It's pegged to this promise that one day we are going to create and dominate this market. Investors are, they're split on Tesla, but a lot of them are starting to wise up to the fact that this is never coming and that therefore Tesla is wildly overvalued based on its actual profits and costs. And its stock price dropped I think a little over 10% right after this big demo that was supposed to be his big lifesaver. Because Tesla has been, I'm not going to say has not been doing well, still makes a ton of money, still incredibly rich, but it is not living up to the promise that as you said, he has been hinging the company on for years. The more clear that becomes, the more the stock price is going to drop and the less rich he's going to be. And I think this is why he's doing all the Trump stuff, because he knows he's going to need help.
- [59:17]
Jon Favreau
Well, also his approval rating among Democrats has fallen to 6% in the last NBC News poll. 6%.
- [59:25]
Max Fisher
So Mark Zuckerberg, that is what he has done.
- [59:28]
Jon Favreau
And like, who do you think is buying a lot of the Teslas? Maybe most of the Teslas I would bet, or used to be, probably Democrats.
- [59:36]
Max Fisher
As someone who used to spend a lot of time at public LA charging stations, it is a lot of rich Republicans who own Teslas because I could see that they start talking to you whether you, you want them to or not. And the number one thing they tell you is that they're gonna move out of California because the gun control is too strict here, which is clearly not true.
- [59:53]
Jon Favreau
See you later. Bye. Anyway, so Elon's just crushing it. We'll not be getting into self driving Tesla anytime soon.
- [60:02]
Max Fisher
Or a personal robot because they don't work. They fake the personal robot. That's a crazy thing to do in front of investors. And they knew it was fake too. John, what would you have your personal robot?
- [60:15]
Jon Favreau
My personal. Ooh.
- [60:17]
Max Fisher
Let me tell you what Elon Musk said. He would have his do, babysit his kids and be his friend. Jesus Christ.
- [60:23]
Jon Favreau
It's so on brand.
- [60:26]
Max Fisher
I mean, just the insight to the mind.
- [60:29]
Jon Favreau
Anything human that I need to do my human tasks, my emotions, can it carry my emotions.
- [60:35]
Max Fisher
It's really the window into his soul that the thing that he needs to invent a robot for his parents.
- [60:40]
Jon Favreau
Not like mundane tasks so you can spend more time with your family and friends. No, no, instead it's the opposite. It's be my family and friends, take care of my family and friends so I can spend more time alienated.
- [60:51]
Max Fisher
All of them.
- [60:51]
Jon Favreau
Posting.
- [60:52]
Max Fisher
Yes, that's right.
- [60:53]
Jon Favreau
All right, one last thing for all you porn enthusiasts. If you're perusing your favorite adult content and you suddenly see Donald Trump's face on your screen, don't be alarmed or do be alarmed, but know that it's actually a good thing. And no, we haven't found the pee tape. We are talking about an anti.
- [61:14]
Max Fisher
I really went for it with this one.
- [61:16]
Jon Favreau
You know, some of these are mine. Austin had a few in here too. He had the P tape one really good handed to him for that. Anyway, we're talking about an anti Trump super PAC that's planning to run 10 second ads on select porn sites in swing states for the final two weeks of the campaign. The ads, which will play before videos and a moose bouche, if you will feature a photo of Donald Trump alongside the words Trump's Project 2025 will ban this video. Enjoy it while you can. And then the ad encourages users to Google Trump porn ban, something I'm sure everyone watching that video will definitely immediately want to do.
- [61:54]
Max Fisher
Don't Google anything with the video.
- [61:57]
Jon Favreau
You're getting to the good part. Then you start. It's just.
- [62:00]
Max Fisher
What do you think?
- [62:00]
Jon Favreau
The autocomplete seems like some tough multitasking.
- [62:02]
Max Fisher
When you type in Trump and porn, what do you think is the third word that. You know what? Let's try that.
- [62:06]
Jon Favreau
We're gonna do it.
- [62:07]
Max Fisher
Let's try it right now. Trump porn. Oh, you know what? It doesn't show you the autocomplete because it's because of big tech censorship.
- [62:14]
Jon Favreau
Fuck. See, it's everywhere. Anyway, Wally Nowinski, one of the founders of the Pack, told Newsweek, quote, half of the Trump coalition is really into things like Project 2025's abortion ban, porn ban, and the conservative agenda. But the other half is like barstool sports bros who just want to be left alone. We've been saying that. Tommy has been saying this forever. Really? Oh, yeah. That, like, the Project 2025 porn ban is a real way. Like this whole discourse about Democrats problems with younger men and them slipping away. Like the Project 2025, Mike Johnson, weird, creepy, right wing Christian shit.
- [62:54]
Max Fisher
Christian nationalist.
- [62:55]
Jon Favreau
Christian nationalist shit is not appealing to a big segment of young men who are not like, you know, just traditionally conservative.
- [63:05]
Max Fisher
It makes me think a lot about an interview that you did did a couple months ago with two political scientists. I can't remember who it was. And they were talking about trying to poll on Project 2025.
- [63:15]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [63:15]
Max Fisher
And they said that it was really hard to get poll responses to it because they would ask people, like, what do you think about this element from Project 2025? Or this element? And they would always say, you're making that up. Yeah, that's not real. Because it is so hard to believe. So anything that can kind of pierce through people's disbelief that there's no way they're real gonna ban porn. I even find that hard to believe. And I know they would do it. I mean, I do believe it, but I have to really think, like, would they really do it? Yeah, I guess they would.
- [63:43]
Jon Favreau
I've told this story on Pod Save America. So forgive me if you've heard it before, but.
- [63:47]
Max Fisher
So is that your. That's the spinoff pod.
- [63:48]
Jon Favreau
That's the spin off Pod. Yeah. A friend of mine. I'm gonna get it right because he was annoyed how I described it last time. A friend of mine who does not talk about politics a ton with me.
- [63:58]
Max Fisher
Okay.
- [63:59]
Jon Favreau
And you know, is Broey. Okay, I will say.
- [64:02]
Max Fisher
All right.
- [64:03]
Jon Favreau
Texted me out of the blue and was like, Project 2025 page, whatever. I cannot fucking believe this. This is crazy. We gotta do something. And it was like the first thing he talked to me about this election. And before I even knew what the page was, I was like, let me guess, that's the page with the porn ban. And he said yes.
- [64:22]
Max Fisher
So did he. Did he find it because of one of the porn ads? Did you ask him?
- [64:25]
Jon Favreau
No, this was a while ago. So this is before the porn ads. But I think this is a. I think it's not a bad look. It's not going to hurt. And it's, it's cheap. Apparently it's about 1000% cheaper than running comparable ads on YouTube and certainly cheaper than putting these ads on television.
- [64:42]
Max Fisher
Should we promote the pod on porn?
- [64:44]
Jon Favreau
We should. So the big, the challenge here is pornhub.
- [64:48]
Max Fisher
Yeah.
- [64:49]
Jon Favreau
The big porn site does not allow political ads or even ads. Yeah. So they have had. But there's a lot of other porn sites that still get, like they said in this piece, like tens of millions of views. I'm sure that they can put these ads on. So it's a little tricky thing to do. But they're doing it especially because it also works because in some, some states have now have age verification to just go on any point. So if you go to like Texas, they'll like, you can't log on. There'll be this whole thing. So they were going to just do it for those states and then Project 2025 happens and they're like, oh, this is a gift.
- [65:22]
Max Fisher
It's perfect.
- [65:22]
Jon Favreau
Now we can do it everywhere now. We don't have to go like specific red states that are doing right.
- [65:26]
Max Fisher
It gives people something to talk about at least or to think about in terms of, in terms of the stakes of this election that are maybe not the normal stakes that we are hearing the news that are I think very important, but maybe not registering for everyone.
- [65:40]
Jon Favreau
It's also a signal too. It's not like, yes, I guess you could be a single issue voter and that issue could be porn. But it's a signal to people that like, oh, if they're going to ban.
- [65:51]
Max Fisher
Porn, what could be next?
- [65:52]
Jon Favreau
That's. I've heard about abortion being banned. I've heard about the IVF stuff, the birth control. Now porn. Like this is fucking weird.
- [65:59]
Max Fisher
Yeah.
- [66:00]
Jon Favreau
You know.
- [66:00]
Max Fisher
So have you encountered the ad on a lot of the porn that you're viewing? Do you see it very much?
- [66:04]
Jon Favreau
Well, this what I'm looking at right now as I do the show, which is I always watch a little porn while we talk. I have not seen it, but we'll see.
- [66:11]
Max Fisher
That's what's up on the screen. That makes sense. Yeah, that tracks. Yeah.
- [66:15]
Jon Favreau
Anyway, that's our show for today. Wow, what a place to end. What a place to end. If you're listening on YouTube, if you're listening on YouTube or watching people listen.
- [66:24]
Max Fisher
On YouTube, I think they do both.
- [66:26]
Jon Favreau
Okay. If you're listening or watching on YouTube, whatever you do on YouTube, please remember to like and subscribe. We got a new YouTube channel that's very exciting. Like and Tell your friends to like and subscribe. We're trying to build subscribers on the YouTube channel.
- [66:39]
Max Fisher
Yes.
- [66:39]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Great new art for Offline too.
- [66:41]
Max Fisher
Beautiful.
- [66:42]
Jon Favreau
The design team here has done a.
- [66:43]
Max Fisher
Fantastic job, so if you haven't seen it, it's worth going online just to check out the art.
- [66:47]
Jon Favreau
There you go. And then you can go back to your porn. All right, we will. We'll see you back here next week. Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Il Frank. Jordan Canter is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Churlin and Adrian Hill for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Delon Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos.
- [67:50]
E
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