There Are Now Two Internets

Summary

Soapbox Sessions Podcast Summary

Episode Title: There Are Now Two Internets
Date: March 26, 2026
Hosts: Derek Ross & Heather Larson

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Episode Overview

In this milestone 30th episode of Soapbox Sessions, hosts Derek Ross and Heather Larson dive into the rapid evolution of the Internet, outlining the emerging divide between “two internets”: a centralized, controlled, and censored KYC-light web versus the open, decentralized, people-powered web blossoming on Nostr. Against the backdrop of landmark US court rulings holding Meta and YouTube liable for designing addictive platforms, the hosts advocate for the necessity—and practicality—of rebuilding the Internet to be censorship-resistant, user-focused, and free from the profit motives warping Big Tech. Along the way, they highlight the advantages of Nostr, the perils of ad-driven platforms, and the changing ethos of social media and AI.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Landmark Lawsuits Against Big Tech

• Recent verdicts:
  • Meta and YouTube held liable for negligent, addictive platform design causing mental health harm—jury awarded $3M to a victim, Kaylee.
  • More than 1,600 lawsuits are pending; these cases set a legal precedent with billions potentially at stake.
  • Another verdict (New Mexico) awarded $375M in civil penalties.
  • Snap and TikTok settled early, avoiding trial (13:41; 15:18; 16:48).
• Key quote:
  • “We're not even talking about content here, we're talking about the platform design is designed to be addictive, it's designed to keep you there... the algorithm, it's a substantial factor in the mental health harm suffered by the plaintiff.”
    —Heather Larson [00:00 & 15:18]
• Big Tech response: Companies like Meta respond that they “disagree with the verdict,” but the hosts mock their legalese and lack of accountability (17:13, 17:54).

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2. The Power and Perils of Centralized Platforms

• Single point of failure:
  • Companies can rapidly alter or delete archives due to policy changes, government pressure, or leadership whims.
  • Example: YouTube deleting hundreds of videos at the government’s request, burning parts of the “digital collective archive.” (3:16; 5:54)
• Algorithmic control:
  • Platforms force-feed users content, often based on shallow demographic data or click-bait trends, resulting in the loss of authentic control over online experiences and notification fatigue (2:55; 8:41).
• Self-censorship:
  • Creators and users frequently self-censor to avoid penalties or bans (10:03; 10:17).
  • “You literally demonstrated the exact problem: censorship culture. You had to self censor and talk about something else. So we don't get docked in points.”
    —Derek Ross [10:04]

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3. Rise of the Alternative: Decentralized Nostr

• Censorship resistance:
  • Unlike centralized services, Nostr is decentralized—content is cryptographically signed, propagated globally, and cannot be deleted en masse due to lack of a central authority or shareholders (5:54; 18:19).
  • “Nostr is not a company... Nostr doesn't have to answer to VCs... You can build without having to have a dopamine slot machine to generate engagement at the cost of the user."
    —Derek Ross [18:24]
• User ownership:
  • On Nostr, users retain absolute control over their data, can build for any need, and aren’t beholden to ad-driven incentives (4:23; 13:18).
• Incentives & business models:
  • Nostr’s protocol doesn’t need ads or engagement farming; building there allows software for social good, not just shareholder value (13:18–19:29).

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4. The “Two Internets”: KYC vs. Open

• Emergent dichotomy:
  • Hosts frame the split as “open/private web” versus the “censored/controlled web."
  • The so-called “light web” (current mainstream, KYC, controlled) is becoming the “dark web” in spirit, while the open, uncensored ecosystem is the true new “light” web (7:41; 23:57).
  • "It's the KYC Internet. The light web is becoming the dark web, and the dark web is becoming the light web."
    —Derek Ross [23:57]
• Age verification & overreach:
  • Platforms ramp up ID requirements and biometric scans under the guise of safety, but really as self-insurance and compliance tools (24:09–28:17).

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5. Algorithmic Manipulation & User Experience

• Content spoon-feeding:
  • Mainstream platforms push unwanted content for ads and engagement—often emotionally inflammatory or irrelevant, especially driven by user demographics (10:56; 11:24).
  • "What are we doing to spoon feed you content?... you had to be spoon fed content from the top."
    —Derek Ross [11:24]
• Nostr’s difference:
  • No ads = no incentive for outrage/dopamine content; feeds can be fully user-curated (13:18).

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6. Parenting, Societal Impact, and Responsibility

• Mental health and children:
  • Lawsuits force public reckoning with the cost to children, but Big Tech’s response is more likely to trend toward more stringent age verification, not reforming engagement-driven models (22:30; 23:15).
• Responsibility debate:
  • Hosts emphasize parenting responsibilities and available technical tools over letting platforms or governments “parent” for you (21:52; 22:00).

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7. The Future of AI, Identity & Social Media

• Bot culture:
  • Hosts admit to using bots—Derek’s persona often managed by bots on Twitter—playfully sparring about identity and automation (28:32–31:03).
• Barriers to automation:
  • Mainstream social platforms place ever-increasing barriers (API keys, KYC, etc.) on users and developers, stifling innovation and experimentation.
• AI and creativity:
  • Discussion includes concerns from creatives about AI replacing humans, as well as questioning the trustworthiness and accuracy of AI-generated content (37:16–42:14).
• Critical thinking:
  • Even amid technological evolutions, critical thinking remains essential for users, especially regarding AI outputs and online interaction (42:11).

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8. Re-Imagining the Social Web: From “Social Graphs” to “Interest Graphs”

• Gary Vee’s ‘Interest Media’ concept:
  • The era of personal connections gives way to algorithmically determined “interest” feeds; users follow content types over people (45:12–47:29).
• Nostr’s advantage:
  • Feeds on Nostr and apps like Ditto are fully customizable based on interests, hashtags, or people—unlike Meta, Twitter, etc. (46:34; 48:36).
• Freedom and experimentation:
  • New features (e.g., a customizable “Top 8” MySpace-inspired friends list) show playful possibilities lost in mainstream networks (49:43–53:16).

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9. Censorship, Shadow Banning & Social Hierarchy

• Blue check bias:
  • Twitter verification and paywalled features visually and algorithmically reinforce social hierarchies, with follower/influence games required for monetization (54:12).
• Shadow ban fears and self-censorship:
  • Social dynamics now hinder user expression due to unpredictable consequences, reinforcing why open protocols matter (53:59).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The protocol doesn't have a business model where it has to make these decisions...”
  —Derek Ross [19:29]

• “The government can influence big tech, and then big tech can influence the government, and that's how shit works in this country. And that's not okay, Derek. That's why we have Nostr.”
  —Heather Larson [5:54]

• “They know that they're bad and they're doing bad things and they... Yet they continue to do it because it makes them money.”
  —Derek Ross [14:37]

• “We are fixing the Internet because the Internet's being deleted. Social media is making kids sick, and companies are growing closer and closer together with government, and they're all in cahoots together.”
  —Derek Ross [57:20]

• “We're anti doom scrolling. Like the point of Nostril [Nostr]: It's fun, it's sociable. You will post something and people will actually interact with it.” —Heather Larson [53:28]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Big Tech lawsuits and platform liability: 00:00–01:42; 13:41–16:48
• Platform control & censorship-resistant Nostr: 03:16–06:54
• Algorithmic manipulation and notification fatigue: 02:55–12:49
• KYC web vs. open web analogy: 07:41–08:41; 23:57–24:59
• Verification requirements—TikTok & Twitter: 24:09–28:32
• Bot and automation discussion: 28:32–31:58
• AI/creativity, trust, critical thinking: 37:16–42:14
• Interest graphs vs. social graphs: 45:12–49:06
• Customization and reclaiming the social web: 49:06–53:16
• Censorship, shadow banning, blue checks: 53:28–56:12
• Closing reflections: two Internets, the quest for a better digital future: 57:20–end

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Takeaways

• The Internet is undergoing a fundamental split: between the regulated, identity-driven, surveilled/controlled KYC web, and a new open Internet anchored by decentralized protocols like Nostr.
• Big Tech’s ad-driven, engagement-hungry models foster addictive design, ethical conflicts, and “doomscrolling”—with mounting public and legal backlash.
• The open, decentralized web empowers users to own their experience, control their content, and sidestep the extractive games of legacy platforms.
• Social media’s evolution—from personal connection to algorithmic “interest” curation—makes the need for customizable, user-empowered feeds more urgent.
• Staying critical, creative, and community-driven is the way forward—“building our own thing” rather than waiting for Big Tech to reform.

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If you want to engage with the next generation social web, join the Nostr community and experiment for yourself!

Transcript

[Heather Larson]

So today the jury in LA found both Meta and YouTube liable for negligent design of the platforms. We're not even talking about content here, we're talking about the platform design. Because the platform design is designed to be addictive, it's designed to keep you there. And so the company's products, meta and YouTube. Yeah, the algorithm, it's a substantial factor in the mental health harm suffered by the plaintiff, a 20 year old woman identified in court as Kaylee. Kaylee gets $3 million in compensation, most of that from Meta. And both companies did act. Yes, it's now now solidified in the court system. They acted with malice or highly egregious context. So this goes up. This is insane. Again, there's like 1600 more of these, right? This is only the beginning, but this was the bellwether. This was the one that's going to set the legal precedent for all the rest to follow.

[Narrator]

Welcome to the Soapbox sessions. Imagine this, an open and free Internet where voices are never silenced, where causes aren't shadow banned, and where no can be deplatformed. It's real, it's here. And it's happening on nostr. So what exactly is nostr? It's a worldwide community of everyday people working to decentralize the Internet. On Nostr, you can build websites, communities, social networks, apps and more. Onelogin works everywhere. You own it and no one can take it away. No more juggling dozens of platforms, chasing audiences, or managing a giant password list. And the cherry on top Nostr allows for built in digital payments that can come from anywhere in the world. On nostr, value flows as freely as ideas. We're hooked on decentralizing the web and we think you will be too. So now let's hear from your hosts, Derek Ross and Heather Larson, who are working to grow Nostr one vibe at a time.

[Heather Larson]

All right, Derek Ross, we're back again. Soapbox sessions. Did you know this is our 30th episode, by the way? 30 times 30.

[Derek Ross]

We've been doing this for a while. Many, many months.

[Heather Larson]

When did we start this? We have important things to talk about. Today.

[Derek Ross]

September 1st. Ish.

[Heather Larson]

Something there. I don't remember.

[Derek Ross]

I don't know when we started it. 30 weeks ago.

[Narrator]

There you go.

[Derek Ross]

Someone do the math. Hey Claude, how many days ago was 30 days ago? What day of the week was that?

[Heather Larson]

I think we, we did it weekly, but somehow finagled some off time around Christmas. I don't remember what we did. Completely like a goldfish.

[Derek Ross]

We had a recap. No, we we recorded like three episodes one week so we, so we could have a Christmas break.

[Heather Larson]

I feel like everything's going by so fast and the world changes about a year in a month, like just cause the world is kind of crazy. Needed to be said.

[Derek Ross]

I'm telling you, we are hyper connected. We are constantly having new information streamed to us every day or force fed is the way a mile a minute force fed streamed and force fed into our eyeballs by the algorithms.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, and I've been at war with my notifications, right? This will come up later with some of the things that we're talking about the podcast in a bit. But I have been at war with notifications and being force fed information. And Twitter force feeds me information it thinks I like based on my gender or some demographic information it has on me. And I think life is better without all these notifications. I just don't feel like I have control, you know, over, over my, my online life anymore. And Derek, I came across this interesting podcast from Taylor Lorenz about how the collective digital archive of the Internet she says is being burned down. And here's how this pertains to Nostr here because. Are you following me? The big tech companies that we rail against, they have the power, like to have content taken down, right? If the government says, hey, you need to take this down. YouTube. YouTube just steps into line, right? And just says, okay, cool, we're gonna delete it. And it's not like they're deleting three videos. Like she's talking about them delivering hundreds or delet deleting hundreds of videos from YouTube. And it's insane. Like if you really get into her, her latest podcast from User Mag, like, here's the problem. First of all, remember this is how divine was born, right? The divine videos were in the Internet archive. And you will remember the amount more than I will because rabble went and found like how many? Was it tens of thousands? Was it a hundred thousand? How many vine videos from like a decade ago?

[Derek Ross]

300,000.

[Heather Larson]

It was a lot.

[Derek Ross]

300,000 I believe.

[Heather Larson]

And look at just for no other reason, okay? Not about democracy or facts or anything like divine videos being able to be taken out of the archive. Is how divine the new app coming? This is how divine was born, right? And it just brings people joy, right? It's not even like it's not like we're trying to take archives of historical books out of the Internet Archive. But Nostra kind of fixes this whole thing. Like the government, the U.S. government or any government can't Ask for archives to be deleted. You know, they can, but it's probably not going to work on Nostr given the decentralized, you know, guts of Nostr that it's built on. And by the way, if we've never said this before, NOSTR is not going to be responsible to shareholders ever, right? So this company, the shareholders can't just be like, hey, you got to go delete, you know, the government that's too big to fail. You can't just go in and delete everything, right? You know, like, we just don't answer to a company because Nostr is not a company. So, by the way, this is why I actually like weight this, because Taylor Lorenz is one of the journalists, if you didn't know, Elon banned her off of Twitter and then she had to delete a slew of posts to get reinstated on there. And it was because she had posted things that were critical of Elon in the early days of Elon owning Twitter. So, like, this is how much control big tech has over the Internet. And the government can influence big tech, and then big tech can influence the government government, and that's how shit works in this country. And that's not okay, Derek. That's why we have Nostr.

[Derek Ross]

Well, sure. So. So these centralized platforms are single points of failure, right? So you have one subpoena, one policy change, one regime change. CEO doesn't like something, and boom, the record can be altered or disappear. But as you said, you know, Nostr can fix this, right? Because we have events that are cryptographically signed. So that sounds nerdy, but all that means is they can't be forged. So you can' Information secure. What somebody says, right? You. You can't change it. And it's essentially hard to erase because the data is replicated all around the world to thousands of different relays, and it makes it virtually impossible to get rid of content that is replicated all around the world. So Nostr really does fix the centralized platform issue where the Internet is being altered or the Internet is being deleted systemically. Like, we can actually fix that problem, solve this.

[Heather Larson]

There's a. There's a little bit of safety there. And like, you know, it was funny the other day, our. Our coworkers, you know, and I, we sat down and kind of, like, filmed a conversation. It was me and MK and Morgan. And, like, the more we were talking about censorship online, the more I started to remember things that happened to me over the years. And it's like more than just Instagram memorializing me, right? Way back. And it's like I can think back to things that happened to me like 20 or more years ago where maybe the government didn't like something I said, which is a who. Another rabbit hole we don't need to go down. But like controlling speech online dates way back now. And it's at some point, I feel like we just started to take it, for lack of a better term, like we just started to sit and take this. Like we just. It just became part of life. Giving your ID to get online is something people just now do.

[Derek Ross]

So what if we have a shift here in thought process? We talk about the dark web in a evil and mysterious mindset, right? You hear dark web and you're like, oh, it's bad, right? That's how the media portrays it. And then. So that means the light web is the good web. That means what we use now, what you're listening to us on right now is the good web and the bad web is the dark web. Well, I think that framing is wrong. It eventually turns into the open and private web versus the censored and controlled web. And guess which one is which. The bad web is the actual open and uncensored web. And the light and the good web. Well, it's actually the bad web. It's the KYC web, it's the controlled web, it's the censored web. I think that we will deviate in these two. Two different platforms, these two different directions. Like the Internet is like segregating itself

[Heather Larson]

right now pretty much. But it seems upside down, but it's not. It's very much like I feel bad using Twitter. Twitter's an amazing tool, right? It's. It helps me connect to people, oddly enough, in our industry, which is why I'm still there. I don't want to be there. But it has a network effect. And Nostr does not yet have. But Twitter lately has been force feeding me notifications that I do not want about things that I'm not interested in. And the only thing I can guess is that it's just choosing to do this because of the demographic information it has on me. By the way, I've I verified on Twitter because there's so little you can do on Twitter to be effective without paying Elon three or eight bucks a month. Whatever it is I pay, I think it's like bucks or something. It's stupid, right? There's a tiered pricing structure to use Twitter and be seen, right? That's the first problem with it. And then the second problem is the Value I get from it is limited because most of the time it's sending me push notifications about. Let's see, the other day I got a dead corn star notification. I don't need to know about those type of people when they die. I'm not interested in that. I just used a word in a different way. So we don't get censored on YouTube, by the way. So I know why you look confused. But yeah, a dead corn star rhymes with corn. Okay, there you go.

[Derek Ross]

There you go, there you go. You really confused me for a second and I'm. I'm thinking children of the corn Corn farm. Like, I'm thinking, what the hell is she talking about?

[Heather Larson]

I just rhymed.

[Derek Ross]

So, Heather, this is. You literally demonstrated the exact problem censorship culture. You had to self censor and talk about something else. So we don't get docked in points.

[Heather Larson]

I don't want to get a strike on YouTube.

[Derek Ross]

Absolutely wild.

[Heather Larson]

I am the person who handles our freaking YouTube. I don't want that problem. Right. So that's. We start to self censor and we actually put a video of MK talking about this on our soapbox technology Twitter. If you want to go look at it, it's there. And so that was one notification that I got that was really stupid that like, I don't care about those type of people. This is a no name person. I am too old and sober for this crap. I don't care. The other thing is it force fed me because I'm a woman, Derek. I'm a woman. So all I care about is reality tv. Right, right. The female demographic, of course, just frustrates.

[Derek Ross]

That's all you care about is reality tv. That's news to me.

[Heather Larson]

Right, so. Well, some women do, but not this woman. I do not watch reality tv. I am aware that the Bachelorette exists, but I don't care about it. But I was force fed by Twitter multiple notifications about the Bachelorette controversy the other day. And it was like, like it's trying to pull me in. It's trying to play me. Like, oh, you're a woman. You must care about Bachelorette drama. No, I don't. I actually care about and the fact that gas here is 479. That's the kind of stuff I care about.

[Derek Ross]

What are we doing to spoon feed you content? Right, because you weren't able to choose your own algorithm. You weren't able to be your own algorithm. You had to be spoon fed content from the top.

[Heather Larson]

I'm insulted that it thinks that I care about that crap. I care about the real world, which is kind of why I work here. Because I can make a difference in the real world by making technology that fixes all of these problems. Right. What we're doing can fix the fact that the archive's being deleted, that people are being force fed content that they don't care about. And worse, people are getting fed content that is just incendiary and inflammatory. Right. That's how Twitter wants to suck you in. Because this particular Bachelorette controversy was about a woman who is being violent with her family. And that's why it's such a controversy. I'm supposed to care about that? No. I was a social worker. I saw this stuff in real life. I don't care. I do not want to see society fall to this extent. You know, like. Like I'm a true bitcoiner.

[Derek Ross]

Right?

[Heather Larson]

Family values, okay? Like, let's. Let's amplify what's good in society. There are a lot of things that are good in society, and I know that, like, people probably log into Noster and see a bunch of nerds being nerdy. But the point of this is that people are building on Noster and people are giving you back the power to own your online experience, be creative, make friends, and actually be social again, rather than getting online to be force fed things that are essentially a doom scroll. Like, oh, look at this woman throwing a chair at her husband and kid or whatever.

[Derek Ross]

And it's like, we know why they do that, though. Heather, we've talked about this before.

[Heather Larson]

It works in some sick way.

[Derek Ross]

You are. If you are enraged and you are engaged. Right, Right. It keeps you coming back to the application. And they do. We have used Noster entirely for advertisers, entirely to keep you coming back and viewing ads and clicking on ads and making them money. It's literally sickening. Yet everybody knows that this happens and they continue to do it.

[Heather Larson]

They do it anyway, you know, but you can get on Noster where there's no ads, and where there's no ads, there's no need to get eyeballs to see the ads. It's just. We're just on Noster, not getting pushed notifications about people throwing chairs at their family. Like, what a different life it is, you know, that it's. It's better. And so, like, I think that brings us to our next subject, Eric, which is talk about insane and inflammatory. The meta lawsuit.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, my God, if only there was a company I could sue for.

[Heather Larson]

Well, you can't get in line behind the other 1600 people. So I found this story and it, it is just. It's snowballing. Derek, I put this in our, our notes yesterday, but there's an update today, but yesterday's story. We'll just start with that. A New Mexico jury found Meta liable for endangering children on its platforms. Okay. So we're talking about $375 million there and civil penalties. This is how tired the public is of this crap. The jury deliberated for less than a day. It's the first social media case, this is as of Tuesday, March 25th, to reach a verdict and then 1600 more lawsuits to come. So, yeah, the Meta and YouTube designing addictive platforms. Okay, that one just came down today. Today being Wednesday, March 25th. So let me pull this one up on my phone because this like just.

[Derek Ross]

We know they do that. We know they make their applications, their platforms, addictive. They do it absolutely on purpose to keep us coming back. They know that it is not healthy. We invented the term called doom scrolling to describe what we're doing when we use their applications. Yeah. They have the data that shows that it is bad for like all of us. Ten years ago, we invented another term called Facebook syndrome or something along those lines, where it was a mental health diagnosis where kids were getting diagnosed with having Facebook syndrome. They literally know that they're bad and they're doing bad things and they. Yet they continue to do it because it makes them money.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, because it's based on ads. Right. So today the jury in LA found both Meta and YouTube liable for negligent design of the platform. So we're not even talking about content here, we're talking about the platform design is a. Platform design is designed to be addictive. It's designed to keep you there. And so the company's products get better in YouTube. Yeah, the algorithm, it's a substantial factor in the mental health harm suffered by the plaintiff. A 20 year old woman identified in court as Kaylee. Kaylee gets $3 million in compensation, most of that from Meta. And both companies did act. Yes. It's now now solidified in the court system. They acted with malice or highly egregious context.

[Derek Ross]

So this goes up.

[Heather Larson]

This is insane. Again, there's like 1600 more of these. Right. This is only the beginning, but this was the bellwether. This is the one that's going to set the legal precedent for all the rest to follow. So 40 hours of deliberation across nine days, that's a little bit more than the previous case I just mentioned. So this is the first time a jury has found social media companies liable for designing addictive platforms that harmed a child's mental health. This is coming from Jacob Ward, who has a pretty stellar sub stack called the Rip Current. This is also the second social media verdict in 24 hours. As I mentioned, the one in New Mexico yesterday, that one about consumer protection laws. So let's total up the money right now. $75 million yesterday, $3 million today. 3 million is not the end of it if you really want to get into this.

[Derek Ross]

So, oh yeah, if there's 1600 lawsuits and they just set a precedent for this, they're going to be paying upwards of a billion dollars. I mean, that's nothing to them, to be honest with you. They have $81 billion sitting in cash. Boom, boom. They lost a billion dollars. That's not that big of a deal to them, unfortunately. It's not going to be candy. They'll just pay the, they'll just pay the bill.

[Heather Larson]

They can afford it. They're too big to fail. 350 family cases, 250 school district actions. So this, this is actually TikTok and snap settled with the plaintiff before the trial began. So they're not even a part of this. They settled, right. So this, this 20 year old girl, she gets the $3 million, but she doesn't get her mental health back, she doesn't get her childhood back. What is the real cost here? Of course, Meta's like, we, we disagree with the verdict. We're going to evaluate our legal options. Dude, just shut up. You just got found guilty of harming a child's mental like, Shut up. Know when to sit down. You're doing too much. Just shut up. Back off. So, like, this is they.

[Derek Ross]

I don't think they care, Heather. They literally know. They know they're doing this. It's like, it's like that gif of like Woody Harrelson crying, rubbing money on his face, wiping his tears with money that's. They don't care.

[Heather Larson]

They're not going to change. They still answer as a company to shareholders. They have to create value for shareholders. And they've done this by selling ads. And this is, this is where we branch out.

[Derek Ross]

Shareholders are bad.

[Heather Larson]

Shareholder bad.

[Derek Ross]

This is something that the Jack Dorsey has said numerous times over the years when I've listened to him and watched him speak, that that was kind of a pivotal moment for Twitter and almost like, you know, if he had to do it all over again, he might have done it differently because once they started taking VC money and had shareholders and had to answer to shareholders. The company direction really changed. So he then became an advocate for open protocols for communication and Nostr, saying that Nostr doesn't have to answer to VCs, Nostr doesn't have to answer to shareholders. Now, that doesn't mean that there could be a application, a platform that's built on Nostra that does have shareholders, that does have VC money. They do have to answer to them 100%. The whole protocol itself, you don't have to answer to these people. It's neutral. You can build without having to have a dopamine slot machine to generate engagement at the cost of the user. You don't have to be adversarial towards your users. The protocol doesn't have a business model. Well, the protocol doesn't have a business model where it has to make these decisions.

[Heather Larson]

It's not a company.

[Derek Ross]

The protocol doesn't do that. Yeah, like, it literally can't do that.

[Heather Larson]

Like, here's, here's the reason we stay independent, obviously. And like, here's. I don't care who you are, here's the reason to not take VC money. Aside from the aforementioned things, I can make it really simple for you. VC money is the most expensive money you will ever take because you don't just repay it back like it's a loan with a percentage. You're paying it back because you're going to create at least three times the value. Right? You have to create multiple times the value of the money you take. So then that's where it goes, oh, well, do we choose the mental health of an entire generation or do we want to make the shareholders happy? And that is the choice that Facebook and YouTube in this case made. We don't care about the kids and their mental health. We want them hooked to this app, like Crack, so that we can have products sold to them. Do you, do you remember, like, when this started happening? If we go back in time, I remember parents I knew who would be like, why are there so many charges on my Amazon account? Because the kids were seeing shit on Facebook and buying shit. Because the kids could access Amazon and parents would be like, oh, my God, my kid ran up $600 today. Grounded. But that's, that's the power of the social media and the, and the marketing and the advertisements. And also parents are kind of asleep at the wheel, right? This was after the financial crisis and people were paying attention. We were trying to live again in that era. And so this was happening. And so now, like, your kids are Cut off hopefully from you know, credit cards, Amazon online shopping, et cetera. You know, they hopefully can't access that stuff. But this, this is like all of it though, so unethical. You know, like we have to be involved in our kids and their, their lives online. And I think most, most people I know who have kids who are on social media who are underage, which still

[Derek Ross]

obviously happening, I think it gets back to the parents. Right. Like, like I've had, I had this conversation at imagine if back in the end of September when we were up on stage. Oh yeah, and this was a qu, this was a question that came up essentially, are you going to let platforms parent for you and governments parent for you or are you going to be a parent yourself? Like if, if social media, it's here to stay, obviously it is a part of our children's lives. Well that doesn't mean you just give them full unfettered access to, to it.

[Heather Larson]

Go ahead.

[Derek Ross]

Like you need to be a parent. Like you need to be a parent.

[Heather Larson]

Not like my.

[Derek Ross]

And we have, we have the tools for this today, like we do. We have tools that you can install on your phone to monitor usage. You can have applications installed at home on your router and monitor usage. We literally have these tools today and they're not overly hard to do. And if, if you're a parent and you have children, you should want to help your children out and care about their mental health and well being and you should try to limit access to social media in a healthy manner and get them off of these platforms.

[Heather Larson]

We know what all these lawsuits mean is that it now actually pays to support children's mental health online. So like for us that changes nothing. Right? Because we're not building things that are super sticky that we don't want your kids infinitely scrolling on ditto. We don't want your kids charging up a ton of your money on Shakespeare. Like we're not building for that purpose. Like we're building, you know, free and open software. We're working honestly and openly, can evaluate the code, you can, you know, whatever, but it's, it's not going to pay if you're big tech. It's not going to pay to not have mental health for children. So I don't know what this is going to look like for big tech. It might look like they start implementing age verification more in the US because these are us.

[Derek Ross]

Exactly. What's going to happen?

[Heather Larson]

Do our brains go the same place at the same time?

[Derek Ross]

Yes. What this means is oh, to save money. So we don't have to pay lawsuits. We're just going to implement age verification

[Heather Larson]

even though they can afford the lawsuits.

[Derek Ross]

That's. And that's how they're gonna. That's how they're gonna bill it. It is literally cheaper for us to build this tool with age verification built in than having to pay lawsuits. And then they can win because they can say, hey, look, we are now caring about children's health because we have age verification built in. So now we're the good guys. Except now everybody's kyc.

[Heather Larson]

I bet that's the first thing that comes.

[Derek Ross]

You know, LinkedIn's been doing it 100%.

[Heather Larson]

It's coming like a steamroller. LinkedIn's been doing it.

[Derek Ross]

It's the KYC Internet. The light web is becoming the dark web, and the dark web is becoming the light web. We're all going to gravitate towards the light. Like they're literally pushing us towards it, towards the light.

[Heather Larson]

You know, this happened to me the other day because, you know, Morgan's. Morgan said I had to be on TikTok. So I'm over there on TikTok. I'm killing it with my cat content, right? But I don't understand the rules of TikTok, because I have no desire to really use it as a marketer, right? I've not bothered with it for years, honestly. And so I'm back on there. And I thought the rule was because traditional social media, the legacy platforms, they make you jump through these hoops. YouTube does it too. In order to monetize, you have to have xxx, like, you have to hit two or three milestones or whatever it is. It's the same thing with TikTok. To put a link in your bio, you gotta have a thousand follow. For me to go live on my stupid little TikTok, and it has like 70 followers, right? But for me to go live, I gotta make it up to a thousand people, right? That's what I thought it was. But it has decided. The TikTok gods have bestowed upon me the ability to go live already. But you know what? I still had to jump through.

[Derek Ross]

Wow, you mean they gave you permission to go live? That was very nice of them.

[Heather Larson]

No, not quite. Not quite. No. There's more hoops to jump through. Derek. I had to do some kind of verification, okay? I had to do verification. So to choose the least invasive form of verification, I have to show that I'm an adult, right? So I can take a selfie and have it decide how that I'm Old enough, right? I'm like, oh, hell yeah, let's do this. I got this. I am aged. I am not in my 20s anymore, shall we say? I'm like, I'm. I'm gonna do that. I just woken up in the morning. I'm like, eating my breakfast, looking at my notifications on my phone. I'm like, oh, yeah, here's a no makeup selfie I met for TikTok. You know, I'm old enough. Okay. So. So that. So I did that. So now I'm. I'm waiting for it to be reviewed. So now that's the next hoop to jump through. Is. Is that I have to be. Wait, wait for my age to be reviewed on TikTok so I can go live, like. And also the goal post moves, right? Because if you Google this, it's going to tell you you have to have a thousand followers to go live, which I don't. I have like 70. Okay. Just because I post cat pictures, you know, And I know where my bread and butter is on the Internet. Cat Derek. If I want followers, we're putting my cats on the Tick Tock. Right?

[Derek Ross]

Okay.

[Heather Larson]

And I mean, maybe I'll talk about some dark romance and some golf, but, like, if I really want followers on Tick Tock. Cat pics, right? Cat pics and cat videos. So now. Yeah, so these are.

[Derek Ross]

The Internet has always been in love with cats. So I think that that is one algorithm that won't change based on if it's an algorithm that you control or it's an algorithm that a corporation controls. I think the cat algorithm is always going to be superior.

[Heather Larson]

It's never going to be. I could put a picture. I can make the worst YouTube video ever. It could be a still shot of

[Derek Ross]

how there's a cat in it.

[Heather Larson]

Like, it could be you and me talking for three hours. If it's a. If it's just my cat snoozing on a loop with you and me talk. I bet it would kill. I bet it would absolutely be the best soapbox video ever. But, like, but so many hoops to jump through to just do things that we can just do on Nostr. Do I want to live stream? Let me go get on Zap Stream. Zap stream. Going to ask for my face to prove that I'm over 18, which I'm well over 18. I'm like twice 18. Okay. Only twice. I think I'm about 100 at this point.

[Derek Ross]

No, I think Kieran will, you know, will never ask you to scan your face to stream On Zap Stream. That is against his people.

[Heather Larson]

People don't even realize that we have built an alternate Internet where you don't have to upload an id, have your freaking face scanned for age.

[Derek Ross]

Okay, no face scanning, no anal scanning. You just get to use the platform.

[Heather Larson]

God, that'll be the next thing.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, I said that because.

[Heather Larson]

Bent over and crack a smile.

[Derek Ross]

No, I said that because Will Castron, from a few months back, he was. He was like, how he. He hates to fly anywhere because it's

[Heather Larson]

like, you know, do they scan that where he comes from? He's Canadian.

[Derek Ross]

He's like,

[Heather Larson]

please have your face nail

[Derek Ross]

scan ready when you get off the road, you know, plane to be able to get into the country. And then we were talking about, man, like, legacy social media is going to start requiring that. And we were joking. We're saying, noster, we won't require anal scans.

[Heather Larson]

Hands to use. We will not require a God at this point, they're gonna want blood. I mean, it's like just. Just to get seen on Twitter, you have to pay money. LinkedIn, which is way too expensive to begin with. They want. Every time I'm on LinkedIn, it pushes. Aren't you verified yet? Aren't you verified yet?

[Derek Ross]

My God, if I. Yeah, my bot is. They want. They want to verify my bots. Like, my bots are getting pressed to verify. And I'm just like, no, you're not worried. You know what I should do? I should tell my open claw bots. If you want to get verified on these platforms, you need to go out there and earn the money yourself. And then if you earn the money, there you go. I'll let you verify yourself. Because the bot economy, that would just be hilarious. The bot economy. We were fueling the bot economy.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah. Maybe the bots can pay for themselves. And maybe there's a little warning label that says that the Derek Ross on LinkedIn is fueled by a bot. Derek's not exactly using content that comes from your brain.

[Derek Ross]

It's good to be mysterious. Yeah. Yeah, right? So. So the bot reads my nostr content and then looks at it and says, hey, I should repost this on Twitter. Or modifies it. It modifies it a little bit for each platform based on whatever it thinks it should do. I don't know. I just let the. I just let the Derek bots run free. Right. Like, I don't. I don't really check on them too much. Every once in a while, I'll check out the bot dashboard to see if it's Doing its thing. But I just say that I'm a bot.

[Heather Larson]

Twitter bot is.

[Derek Ross]

I love it.

[Heather Larson]

Followers.

[Derek Ross]

I love it.

[Heather Larson]

I love was funny because you. You.

[Derek Ross]

He's doing his thing.

[Heather Larson]

You and Alex were on Walker's podcast. So I reposted that from the soapbox handle and I tagged Walker and I was like, I also tagged you, which is really not you, it's your bot. And Walker was like, wait a minute.

[Derek Ross]

I mean, it's me.

[Heather Larson]

It's my life on Twitter. I was like, no, it's his bot. Like, ignore it. But I'm tagging him just because I can. And it's funny. And I just wanted to see what Walker would say. And he was like, what? Derek. Derek Ross on Twitter? Derek doesn't log onto Twitter. They know better. I probably had him going for 10 seconds. I think I probably had Walker questioning everything for maybe 10 seconds. Like, he was probably like, what?

[Derek Ross]

What happened? I could see him doing that. And like, wait a second. I remember when he left. But then you said that it was Derek's bot. And then I could also see him saying, you know what? I could see that. I could see him doing that.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Oh, yeah.

[Heather Larson]

Anybody that knows you is like, oh, yeah, he's got his bot doing the thing. Because how do we know if things work if we don't experiment with them? How do we know how the bots work or don't work if we don't?

[Derek Ross]

I was experimenting with a TikTok bot, actually, that requires too much work to be a TikTok to. Well, actually, no, that's the easy part. Like, that's easy.

[Heather Larson]

Really.

[Derek Ross]

The hard part is all of the API keys in applications. Then you have to get approved. You can't just, like submit a thing and hit go. You. You essentially have to kyc and give all sorts of crazy information and like, you know, an anal scan and all this other stuff and.

[Heather Larson]

Anal scans. Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Then they. Then they let you post on TikTok. But I already built out. So what it was doing is it was making a video file with just text and it was using a random. What is it called? A no copyright sounds. MP3 is the background audio. It was awesome. I should show you one of the videos. It made it look really good.

[Heather Larson]

If you give it another year, maybe you could automate the TikToking.

[Derek Ross]

But it was too much of a pain in the ass. So I. I said, no.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, that's that.

[Derek Ross]

So we almost had AI.

[Heather Larson]

We all go tick tock.

[Derek Ross]

But it just. It was too much of a pain. In the ass.

[Heather Larson]

Well, I would wager to say a lot of people are on TikTok consuming content. So if you can figure out a way to get your bot to just consume the content, to just like leave comments and likes and repost and like, that would be interesting if you could get a bot to do that. You may not get followers, but you may have the.

[Derek Ross]

It wasn't like the posting of the video, it was the like to. So you have to make a custom application and then you have to answer a million questions and fill out forms and say what your application is going to do. Which was not hard, it's just tedious. And after fucking with it for about an hour, I decided I needed. Need to stop. There's more important things like this is. This is real work. Like this was supposed to be a fun experiment. I'm not doing this.

[Heather Larson]

And then after an hour it was not fun or worth your time. Yeah, exactly.

[Derek Ross]

It wasn't fun anymore. I was like, I gotta actual real work to do. Let me go back to my real work. And I did.

[Heather Larson]

There have been times when I'm like this would be a great idea. And then I have, you know, AI do it. And I'm like, you know what? It wasn't after all a good idea. It was. It was not good at all. Or, or what the AI came up with was bad. You just can't replace a human. At some point, at some point it's to fail you because it is not a human with human reasoning and you do have to babysit it. But yeah, that's. Someday we'll be able to. When that day comes, when we can automate tiktoking and whatnot for the purposes of a person or a business or whatever. When, when that day comes.

[Derek Ross]

God.

[Heather Larson]

I mean, well, Suno came along. Suno was kind of that idea.

[Derek Ross]

Suno is gone.

[Heather Larson]

Suno too. Did it go away already?

[Derek Ross]

Just Yesterday or maybe two days ago, OpenAI announced that that's going away.

[Heather Larson]

Really? For any reason?

[Derek Ross]

I don't know. They got the data they wanted out of it. Maybe, I don't know. They decided they're shutting it down so soon.

[Heather Larson]

Maybe it was more. I would. I would guess it would cost more than it was worth. That's interesting.

[Derek Ross]

Maybe, I mean I thought it was a good data point for them.

[Heather Larson]

It's a very experimental space. Still. All of this seems very experimental. Still. It just seems like we. We haven't quite harnessed.

[Derek Ross]

It's called Sora. I'm sorry, something else.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, that was the. That's the AI music thing, isn't it?

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, I got those. I got those confused. I'm sorry.

[Heather Larson]

There's so many.

[Derek Ross]

No. Is not shutting down. UNO is not shutting down.

[Heather Larson]

Sora.

[Derek Ross]

Sora open AIs Sora. I'm. I apologize.

[Heather Larson]

Have we.

[Derek Ross]

They're shutting it down.

[Heather Larson]

Reached the point where we can't even keep the things straight anymore because they're all kind of similarly named. How do I suno straight my brain soon over.

[Derek Ross]

Well, the most interesting thing about this. So Disney had plans to like drop a billion dollars into Sora to be able to do like AI video content. Like, they. They had plans and Disney was in the in talks to do this. But since SORA shut down, Disney's like dropping out. I mean, they don't want to invest money into Open AI right now.

[Heather Larson]

So they lose a billion dollars. That company lost a billion to Disney. That doesn't seem like a smart bet on Disney's part at all, though. Like what? What are you gonna do?

[Derek Ross]

Well, like, so Disney was gonna license characters.

[Heather Larson]

Okay.

[Derek Ross]

Whenever Sora 2 first launched, you could literally make anything and everything. You could use existing characters, cartoons, everybody was making everything. And then eventually OpenAI was told, hey, maybe you shouldn't do licensed creative work. And they made a deal with Disney where, yeah, Disney was gonna say, oh, well, you wanna make Disney characters? Okay, that's cool. Come up with a licensing plan. And it was gonna be a billion dollar pledge for licensing access. And I don't know, they decided that that wasn't the way they wanted to go. I. I don't know. I don't know why they probably couldn't

[Heather Larson]

make money off of it. I mean, that's what it comes down to. It's like, okay, well, if I lie,

[Derek Ross]

maybe the infrastructure cost was too high.

[Heather Larson]

That. That's what I would think, is that that cost is too high. And also if I'm Disney and I have licensed out all of my characters, which I don't even know how many there are at this point. There's so many. How do you make money off of that? How do you make money off that? Licensing is worth so much. No matter if it's music, film, the licensing that publish, that's. That is worth so much money. So you've got to get.

[Derek Ross]

There was an AI company. I don't remember the name. It was something. I'm not gonna try to remember the name because I'm probably incorrect, but they were in mobile. Yeah. So, yeah, I can't even remember the big names. And you're supposed To I'm supposed to remember a startup this could this company, their whole entire goal was to create AI likeness of actors and actresses to where then an actor and actress would then come in and say hey, I want to license my creative work induced. They would record their voice, they would record some videos and AI would then have their, their likeness, have their model and then that would be then taken to a studio and say hey, use this person likeness for this movie, this commercial, this ad, whatever. And then the actor wouldn't have to do anything. They would just collect royalties from the licensing fees for using this AI model. It was a really interesting concept and the videos that I saw were really, really good. The actors, it was on board. It was like.

[Heather Larson]

Did they consult them?

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, well, yes. They had a couple that they had worked with that they were on board with it.

[Heather Larson]

I think there were a couple that didn't want to be in AI whatsoever. The voice actors.

[Derek Ross]

Sure, sure, there, there are some that didn't want that, but the ones that did, their plan was to sell it to movie studios and essentially get bought by like a movie studio with this technology and replace the actors. Yeah, we were pitching them ways to use Bitcoin and Noster to make us, to make it irrefutable and have it be cryptographically signed and so forth. That that was going to be a neat goal. They are on board with using Bitcoin and Noster for this, for the whole smart contract esque stuff, for the whole infrastructure. Because then the plan was if they got bought then you would have Hollywood essentially buying a tech stack that included Noster and Bitcoin. So that'd be great. It was like a way in to origin purple pill then.

[Heather Larson]

But oh my God, are we gonna like ruin, ruin movies? Are we gonna like with the AI?

[Derek Ross]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Heather Larson]

I can see where that could be useful. Like if you're making a movie where like the stunts are dangerous and expensive to do and like maybe we don't want to make Leonardo DiCaprio like roll through a fireball, you know what I mean?

[Derek Ross]

Like then the stunt doubles lose work. Yeah, Think about the stunt doubles and the stunt actors like come on, take their jobs.

[Heather Larson]

I have a friend who's a voice actor. My voice actor friend has very much been anti AI. Any anybody who is creative, like an artist. My artist friends, visual artists, musicians, voice actors, they hate AI. They are anti AI. They don't want it, you know, being trained on them. They don't want people stealing their ability to make A living. Which totally valid, you know, if you're making illustrations, if your bread and butter is reading the ad copy for ex clothing brand. I can't think of one of the ones that she did. She did some, some really big clothing brands that she worked with. And you know, are these people getting replaced now? You know, they're not reading ad copy anymore? Because you could have maybe. I've played with some of these apps. There was one called hey Gen. Where I can make an AI person read my ad copy on camera for me. And it's clearly AI. It's totally fake.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah.

[Heather Larson]

Jen had a moment in marketing and marketers went absolutely nuts over it. And I was like, this is cool, but it's still. To me, it's not. It to me, it's not all that. I think a lot of marketers with low budget saw it and went, this is great. This scratches the itch. I don't have the money to pay humans to do this. So great. But I don't know if that kind of thing is going to have backlash and the consumer, you know, public going, oh, buy from this. There's such a backlash. Backlash against AI I think still there.

[Derek Ross]

There is so many people, as soon as they hear AI, they, they hate it. But, but, but I, I think that we're, we're evolving. We're becoming, it's becoming the norm. It's becoming more mainstream. We saw it happen in the Super Bowl. We remember a year ago at the super bowl, we had Coca Cola literally say at the bottom, not made with AI. And then this year we had like half a dozen AI commercials. So becoming more mainstream, ubiquitous.

[Heather Larson]

I don't know if there's mainstream acceptance, but I think it is more.

[Derek Ross]

Well, there'll be some things where you don't want AI, right? Like in creative works, like maybe movies, TV shows, artwork, musical pieces like performing arts. You don't want AI in. In those things.

[Heather Larson]

But everywhere, humans are still the most valuable. Somebody sent me a marketing plan this morning. Hey, I had Claude do this and I'm like, cool, you know, like, let me. You know, I feel like a teacher. I gotta go correct the marketing plan now. And that's okay, actually, because, like, sometimes it is helpful and sometimes it's not helpful. Like I had to come come up with like a list of podcasts that I could pitch to yesterday. And the list was hilarious because I was like, where are you getting this information from? I actually know some of these people. People. And they are not doing this podcast anymore. Are you aware, you know, it's just like, like the thing is, either on, on hiatus or retired, they moved on to other things. And it's just, it's just funny because it's like it will give you information, it will do what you ask it to do. But that doesn't mean it's correct. But it's. I think it's still helpful. I think there's a lot of things. Marketers became obsessed rather quickly with AI in the last couple years for a reason. It does save us time. It is helpful. Right. But it's also, it's not everything. And I, I think that's a key difference that I'm seeing right now is like, y thing can help me. It really can. And also it could lay me out flat on my face and make me look like a dumbass too, if I actually believe it. You know, that's, that's the thing too. And just, just having that skill of discernment, I think with AI right now is important. Will this last? Will this turn into something like it's

[Derek Ross]

back to critical thinking?

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, you might need less discernment.

[Derek Ross]

That's one of the, One of the three Cs is you're going to need critical thinking. I think this you do. I'm going to sell that. Like, I'm going to write a book about this. I'm going to have my agent write a book about Derek's three C's.

[Heather Larson]

You know, I, I worked in the TV industry, so I'm used to people saying my agent this or that. And so some still goes in my head as like an agent, like an agent who represents you. But you're just talking about your freaking cloud bot.

[Derek Ross]

Love. I love my Claude bot.

[Heather Larson]

I know.

[Derek Ross]

I use all the time. Centauri is my buddy. He's there when I need to put him to work. He is. You know, I asked him to schedule events for me earlier because I didn't feel like opening up my Google calendar and putting the events on it. So literally I copied and pasted text from an email and a signal message and pasted it and said, make this calendar event for me. Just because I didn't want to, I didn't want to do it myself.

[Heather Larson]

That's what it's for. I mean, at some point every day, do we not ask the bot to do menial labor for us?

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, yeah.

[Heather Larson]

You know, or help me do.

[Derek Ross]

I didn't want to have to type all this stuff out and search for the date and search for the location when I could literally have a bot do this for me.

[Heather Larson]

Can I do it faster than the bot or not?

[Derek Ross]

Yeah.

[Heather Larson]

No. Like, when it comes to calendar events, can I copy and paste faster than it can? If you're using Claude, cowork, probably the human's going to be faster than cowork. But, you know, there are things that cloud code does that are great that I do not want to do, like spreadsheets. I make the ugliest spreadsheets when left to my own devices. But I'm also really bad at math. And so I also know that when I have it, make a mathematical spreadsheet with formulas in it, I gotta actually check out it. I can't trust it. Like, it'll make it look pretty, but will it make it work? Will the formulas be correct? Like, you gotta test it. Like, don't just. Just hand it off. Like, it's work that's done. Like, actually. Actually test it out. And that's coming for me. Somebody who's admittedly bad at math. I know everybody says that I really am bad at math. I really can't help it. I really can't help the dyscalculia. But the day Claude can fix my dyscalculia problems for me. Oh, my God, it's on and popping. Derek, I'm gonna do so much.

[Derek Ross]

It is.

[Heather Larson]

I do like the voice edition to Claude code, by the way. That's pretty nice.

[Derek Ross]

I haven't used. I haven't used that yet. I saw I had access to it, but I. But I don't really use Claude code, though. I use open code, so I haven't tried it.

[Heather Larson]

You have to hold down the space bar. Can I just click the button? I don't want to hold the space bar down the whole time. Like, just let me click on it.

[Derek Ross]

I essentially use it because I voice dictate to my openclawbot all the time. So that's essentially the same thing.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, same principle where it's like. Like sometimes it's just easier. It's less strain for me to, you know, verbally vomit my ideas than to type them out. Like, so then that's like one of those things that makes the day, the workday go by faster or feel better is the fact that I don't have to type shit. You know, I'm like, God, that's great. That's like total freedom. Like, the bot can listen to me, transcribe me, understand me, and do the thing I'm asking it to do. What a time to be alive. Still can't do math.

[Derek Ross]

So let's get back to Our third, we, we went on, we went on a tangent, as we always do. We always do get it in the weeds. You know, I've, I have my weed whacker now. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm going, I'm clearing out the weeds. Let's bring us back here. So I want to talk about this last segment here. Like, you know, what is social media actually for? Right? So we wanted to, we wanted to talk about this recently. Pick up on what, you know, Gary Vee, you recently said talking about interest media, not social media. And Gary Vee's point about how the algorithmic era has already killed that. It's, it's, it is, it's, it's ruined the social aspect. We have these interest graphs now and we follow topics and vibes and we don't really follow people as much as we used to. We follow the content that is, that is spoon fed to us.

[Heather Larson]

We hear it from new users who get on Noster and go, there's no content that I like because it's you nerds talking about Bitcoin or you nerds talking about development. Like, I just want to see pictures of flowers and geese or whatever, you know, like, it's just, I just want life stuff. I just want lifestyle content. And it's like they want interest over social. Like they don't want to socialize with people, they just want to see what they want to see. Hey, you know, they just, but on

[Derek Ross]

Noster, that is your, it's your interest, right? It's your interest graph. It's your social graph. Meta doesn't own it. X doesn't own it. Yeah, you can use it yourself, you can control it yourself.

[Heather Larson]

You can sign on to Noster today and spend a, spend a minute, you know, curating a feed. So that's, that's all you see. And you can do that, you can't do that with Facebook, meta, Instagram, you know, you can't. Takes a little effort for me to make what I want to see come up in my TikTok feed. I have to follow people that I, that make content I like. And then there's a friends feed when it comes to that fy, you know, P feed or you know, your page, whatever for you feed I think is what it's called. Like it just feeds me a whole bunch of, yeah, random, you know, content. And if, if I interact with it, it feeds me more and if I don't interact with it, it feeds me less.

[Derek Ross]

And if you accidentally interact with something that you generally don't care about. Well, fuck you. You care about it now you. That is all you're gonna get.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, that's. It's now your personality, you know, whatever. It feeds me and it feeds me ads. It feeds ads pretty, pretty steadily.

[Derek Ross]

Yes. It feeds you ads and it feeds your content. And maybe I don't want to be spoon fed. Maybe I want to follow people, you know, and I can follow interests on Noster. I do. I have my interest feeds for hashtag feeds and I have, you know, relay community feeds, I use them. But I also like to follow people too and all interact with human. Those individual people put out. Right, right. Like just because I know Heather, that, that you like yoga and you like bitcoin and you like other things, cats, you know, whatever. I want to follow you because I like you. I don't want to just follow your cat photos or it's all my post. Your bitching about the weather. You post. Yeah. And bitching about the hot weather in Arizona, you know, humans having human experiences. My interest, you know, is all of the things I don't want to, to just be spoon fed individual content from you. So I follow you, the human. That is me, my algorithm saying I want to follow humans, I want to interact with humans.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah.

[Derek Ross]

And we have that choice.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Whereas you just, you are a human.

[Heather Larson]

You are a human having a human experience on the Internet. Once again, when you're on an app like Ditto, which makes it even easier to tailor your experience rather than any other app out there. To be clear, we're still building Ditto. So this is like, this is fresh information that I can get on Ditto, curate my own feed and make it be. If I want it to just be apps that show up in posts, I can just have that be my feed. I can just tailor it however I want.

[Derek Ross]

You know, like if you're a, if you're a Noster developer and all you care about is all of the commits and apps and all the nerdy stuff and you don't really care about anything else. You just want to see what everybody's building. You can literally get a feed for that in Ditto if you wanted to. Or, or if maybe you just like vine videos. You love a 6.3 second video and that's your jam and that's all you care about.

[Heather Larson]

Maybe you just want hashtag flowers, you know, and you just want hashtag flowers.

[Derek Ross]

You can follow hashtags and be an interest and have that interest be your feed. You can have essentially it becomes your feeds and infinite content types.

[Heather Larson]

It's actually, you know, we've, I think we've compared it to MySpace a lot, but it's actually more customizable than MySpace Space. Like it's the idea that you can create a theme, but you couldn't customize your MySpace as much as you could customize Ditto.

[Derek Ross]

No, you can absolutely customize Ditto. Way more than that.

[Heather Larson]

Way more than MySpace.

[Derek Ross]

It almost is borderline too many customizations because there's so many things you can do.

[Heather Larson]

You have too much control. And then we'll let you remix Shakespeare.

[Derek Ross]

Too medium, right? Like you have so much control over every single part of the feed, the app, how it looks, feels that like you're like you spend all day. What should I, what should I customize next? There's like, that's kind of like too much to do. But that's cool though.

[Heather Larson]

I haven't put a song on my profile because I couldn't decide which song I wanted to put on my profile.

[Derek Ross]

Too much freedom.

[Heather Larson]

We're giving you too much, too much choice. So I gotta pick a song. I pick one song, it'll probably be Joe Martin, but Joe Martin on my profile. Be my profile song. And then I'll be like totally full circle back to the MySpace days. I made my cat theme. I got my cat shaped avatar.

[Derek Ross]

We don't have the top eight yet though. We need to, we need to work on that.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, we need that. Is that, is there a PR for that? Is that, is that in the works and GitLab or should I.

[Derek Ross]

Whenever I was down at Soapbox HQ a couple weeks ago, we were talking about MK and I had a nice talk trying to figure out how we could do that. But then we kind of.

[Heather Larson]

No, you know what we mean.

[Derek Ross]

How we could do it completely different. Like very top 21.

[Heather Larson]

Top 20. Well, it could be.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, sure, top 21 feelings will get hurt. But the, well, the interesting take we had is, what if it isn't actually your chosen top eight? What if you can't choose it the people individually, but it's based off of your top eight interactions.

[Heather Larson]

Oh yeah.

[Derek Ross]

Maybe make it a top people. The top eight people that you interact with.

[Heather Larson]

So I was like that because I argue with people and I don't want to see them.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah.

[Heather Larson]

Argue with them.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah, that was, that's exactly what we said. Because we, we could say he. Hey, what if we're arguing, you and I together? Well, we, we don't, we don't hate each other. Look, we. You're my number One fan. And I'm your number one fan according to our profiles. That's because we fight all day. You know, like, maybe that. That's kind of funny, right? Like, maybe that's. That's a unique take. I don't know if we're gonna go that direction, but we could.

[Heather Larson]

What if they're on my mute list and they're just harassing me? Because that's happened too, where it's like, but if you annoy me, I don't want to see you mute block. Stop existing.

[Derek Ross]

That was annoying. That was something that we. Well, well, that would be the other way around it. So there's that way we could do it to where that's people who interact with you. But we figured that spammers and trolls and whatnot could make that a bad time. So what if we turn it around and make it who you interact with?

[Heather Larson]

So who I choose to interact with,

[Derek Ross]

it's who you choose to interact with.

[Heather Larson]

So if I'm harassing Derek.

[Derek Ross]

So if you're harassing me all day long, then I'm going to be your number one top. You know, your top.

[Heather Larson]

That's it. You're going to be my top one.

[Derek Ross]

And MK was. MK was like, you know what, what it'll do is it'll make all, like, all the spouses be like, yo, how come I'm not in your top? You know, you need to talk with me more. You need to interact with me more. And I was like, oh, I like that. Mk That's a neat take. I could. I could see that being fun.

[Heather Larson]

Your wife would have to be on there every day. She's. She's rarely on there, but she is on there.

[Derek Ross]

It's just on to. I would just be like, interacting with like the same, like, posts. She doesn't post very often. Like once a week or something like that. So I just have to, like, every day. Message, message, the same post. Hi, I love you. Just to keep her in the.

[Heather Larson]

Yeah, you do. You gotta keep up with the husbandly duties, man. You gotta. I think the top eight is a fun. We need to bring back everything that's

[Derek Ross]

fun and we can figure it out. We should do it. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

[Heather Larson]

We're anti doom scrolling. Like the. The point of nostril.

[Derek Ross]

No doom scrolling.

[Heather Larson]

It's fun, it's sociable. You will post something and people will actually interact with it. Whereas Twitter. I could post something every day for a whole week and nobody may interact with it. People look at it, but they don't interact because every Action has become like fear based. Now it's like, oh, if I interact with this person who doesn't have that many followers, you know, like, is that going to ruin my algorithm? Is that going to get me shadow banned? If I, if I interact with this controversial person. You're always taking, guessing your actions on there.

[Derek Ross]

It could know. It literally could. You could like interact with like somebody that's, you know, very controversial or something. Now, boom, you are too. You're associated.

[Heather Larson]

Clearly, I don't care. But like, at some point, is it last month or I, I stopped paying for this stupid premium thing on Twitter and then I needed it again one day so I could live stream or something. I was, I was a blue check. And then I said, screw the blue check. And then one day I needed it. So I went to get the blue check back back instantly. Instantly. After paying for the blue check again. I'm a blue check again. As of like a week or two, I have gained followers because I've, I've paid for them. I. It has fed me to people and made people follow me. Okay? For.

[Derek Ross]

There is, there is a blue check bias. So part of the reason I play before I deleted my Twitter, like, I was a blue check, but I never paid for it. I was given a blue check back in. Yeah, yeah, like 2012 because I was a, Because I was a journalist, I was a blogger. They. Everybody got them back in the day. So I was given a blue check in like 2012. And I had one for a very long time. And people, People literally followed me just because I had the blue check, because they saw it like, oh, it's a legit, It's a legit person, you know,

[Heather Larson]

so it's a visual way of creating a social order is what it is. Is. That's, that's dumb too, you know. And then there was a while where we were all doing like Twitter threads with these hooks and there was very formulaic and that's how people would gain followers. There was always some new way to gain followers on a social platform because the algorithms change and people hack, hack it. They figure out how to hack the new algorithm so they can gain followers influence and stuff. And it's. That's like. But what's the point? What do you do with it if you have this huge influence on Twitter and like, if it's not paying your rent or who gives a shit, honestly? You know, like, what is the point of having that amount of following and what can you do with it? You know, I'm like, Twitter has this Thing where if you get X amount of followers, I don't remember the number, then you can monetize. So you have to really work hard for that platform in order to monetize. Like you. You're working for it, no matter which way you slice it. If I want to be seen on Twitter now, I know I have to pay for the blue check. How dumb is.

[Derek Ross]

Or if I want a live free, not freedom of reach, but freedom of speech.

[Heather Larson]

Freedom. No, we don't have. We don't have freedom of speech. Elon will shut you down.

[Derek Ross]

Right, but that's what they say. Like I said, that's. That's what they say, you know that it's not true.

[Heather Larson]

We know she had. She had to hop too, to get reinstated on Twitter.

[Derek Ross]

She has, like, had to jump through hoops and ring, right?

[Heather Larson]

She had to delete post. She said she had to delete a slew post to get reinstated on Twitter because she had said things that Elon didn't like. They may have even been true. You know, she's a journalist. She has to state facts. And he didn't like those. He wanted alternative facts. And in order to exist on his platform, you gotta delete what he doesn't like. The late stage, you know, civilization that we live in in the United States. Happy 250th, America. Happy 250th. This is what you got. It's absolute bananas. All right, Derek, have we fixed the Internet today? Have we succeeded to explain to the people how we are fixing the Internet? It's a. It's a deep subject.

[Derek Ross]

We are fixing the Internet because the Internet's being deleted. Social media is making kids sick, and companies are growing closer and closer together with government, and they're all in cahoots together. So we're fixing the Internet it By building the alternative. And we're trying to build a better future because the stakes are too high to not do it.

[Heather Larson]

I can't take over and kick meta out of the world. You know, I can't overtake them. I can't overtake Spotify, I can't beat them. But I can make my own thing and invite people to it. And you can too. Anyone can do what we're doing. We've just been doing it. And you can come join us. Anyone can do here in our parallel universe where things are open and free and you can't delete the archive and you're not going to ruin children's mental health, you know, like, on purpose to make money.

[Derek Ross]

Like, that's.

[Heather Larson]

That's the difference? That's where we're at, Derek. We sleep well at night. I know I do. As long as there's a fan pointed on me.

[Derek Ross]

Fan and a body pillow and a dog and a cat and a spouse. It's like, I sleep like this.

[Heather Larson]

Like, dude, sleeping did not used to be this complicated. Like, you remember when you just needed, like, a sheet and a pillow, and now you need, like.

[Derek Ross]

Yeah.

[Heather Larson]

Oh, my God. I need, like, a sleepy time tea and some melatonin and a cpap. And the fan has to be on me. Pointed at the right angle.

[Derek Ross]

I think. I think that means we're getting old, Heather.

[Heather Larson]

We're getting old.

[Derek Ross]

We are. Okay, well, this old guy is ready to peace out here. It's like, it's 4pm I'm ready for my afternoon nap.

[Heather Larson]

I guess I gotta edit the show and leave the house. I gotta go, bro. All right. You have a good rest of your day. Sleep well.

[Derek Ross]

Thanks for tuning in. If you're listening to us on Legacy podcasts, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Podcasts, Spotify, you should join the Value Verse. Dive into the Purple Verse. Use apps like Fountain Fountain and give us a boost. Find us on podcasting 2.0 apps. There's many of them. There's dozens of them. Dozens we'll see in the Purple Verse.