August 17, 2023 • 49 mins
Josh gets a rare chance to sit down with the former Editor-in-Chief of Meta's Threads app, Katie Notopoulos. As an internet denizen known to be controversial and divisive, Katie wasted no time stirring the pot on the Instagram-adjacent social app. On today's episode, the two discuss what went wrong — and right — in the early days of Zuckerberg's would-be Twitter killer, and Katie sets the record straight on what the Facebook founder really thinks about moderation on his platforms. This is a whirlwind of an episode you won't want to miss. Discussed: The Nazi lifestyle, drinking at the park, the joy of posting.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Tapolski,
and I guess say we have a real treat today.
I'm excited we managed to get a guest on that
frankly was a pretty you know, pretty hard booking to
lock in and not surprising due to all the all
the excitement swirling around this person. But you know, I
(00:41):
do have a little bit of an inn and so
you know, I'm excited to say that today on the
show we have the former editor in chief of Threads,
Katie Natopoulos, who also is a former senior reporter at
BuzzFeed and a general like internet personality, I think, a
well known and well loved and also probably hated internet personality.
(01:03):
I'm excited to talk to her. I should also say that,
you know, she is my sister in law, but that's
just an icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned,
because Katie, long before she was my sister in law,
was an iconic figure online and so I'm excited to
get her back on the show and talk about her
latest adventure, which involves a wild ride with the one
(01:26):
and only Mark Zuckerberg. So let's just not waste any
more time let's just get into this thing. What is
(01:48):
that coffee over there, Katie? You drinking a coffee late
in the day.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
That's actually it's a beer.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Is it beer? You hiding it? You're concealing your beer?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well? Does that keep it cold?
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yeah, because otherwise it was like gonna get like warm
in the can because it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Reads, Yeah, it reads this concealment. But I do understand.
I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
For Father's Day, we got like Thermoses to drink beer
in the park, which sounds also now sad, but to
conceal it well, so there's like every Sunday there's like
a concert in the park here, and like everyone brings
like beer and wine, but like this way it can
(02:29):
be like it has like a lid so it doesn't spill.
So it's mye So now I found it very convenient,
keeps things frosty.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
That's great, Katie.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
I'm glad that I could get you back about to
keep back on the show. Even though we are you know, related,
and you know, in a family together, it's hard to connect.
You were just saying, you're just saying before we started
that you guys hadn't been to a swim we have
a pool, and you hadn't been over to swim, and
that is that is true, not all summer long, and
we're in We're in mid August right now.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
I've been I've been waiting for an invite, but my
million box is strangely empty.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Ow.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well, you know, it's a standing invite, you know, basically.
But I guess you're right. We could be more proactive
about it. So on that issue, I guess I am
fully to blame. But but you've had a busy you
have personally had a very busy summer, and I wanted
to talk about it. I don't remember the date exactly,
but this was the summer of Threads. I think, as
everybody's been referring to it, it's the uh I.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Think we've all been talking about Meta introduced.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
It's Twitter competitor threads and you know, too much fanfare.
It's built a huge following a huge amount of followers
quickly on threads. Hundreds of millions of people have joined,
at least one hundred million.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And you were, you know, early on, you were really
setting the tone on threads as Meta's Threads editor in chief.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, first off, could you talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
The experience of what that was like building, you know,
working with the team with Adam and Zuck to build
the product, and just talk a little bit about the
creation of Threads.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
So, Josh, first of all, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
I'm your sister in law and I've been a tech
reporter for a long time, previously at BuzzFeed News, which
unfortunately shut down at the end.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Of April, and I was so lucky to get.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
A wonderful opportunity to become the editor in chief of
the new Threads app which launched in the beginning of July.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
And you know.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
I was just so excited to really get to work
with the phenomenal team over at Meta.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And just seeing them work was like wow, you know,
it was like it was like watching the Miracle on
ice hockey team.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Oh okay, wait, hold on, wait, who is who is
the miracle?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Ey?
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Is that like a show where like people are doing
like they're like dancing or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
What is miracle? What is the miracle on eyes?
Speaker 4 (04:59):
If you could just sure, I believe it was the
nineteen eighty USA hockey team in the Olympics that, against
all odds.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Beat Russia. Okay, oh, okay, in.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Eighty four, but I think it was eighty.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So not like a Harlem globe trotter situation, like that's
in my head that's what I went to immediately, but
it's actual thing that happened in history. Okay, that sounds
like Vega.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
There's actually I believe there's even a move, a fairly
recent movie about it called Miracle, But it was I
think the idea was that they were sort of like
the underdogs and the people, which is strange. It's like,
why would people think that the US was not good
at hockey? I men, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't know the history. I a lot of ice rush,
fairly famous sports thing.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And also someone's going to like respond to this podcast
and be like two Olympics, idiot.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So listen.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So you were there at the beginning, you were working
with the team, and then of course the app launches.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Everybody's freaking out about it.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
You know, Elon Musk is going crazy threatening lawsuits, and
Azuka is cracking hilarious. Joe suddenly, Mark Zuckerberg, you're at
the time your boss, your by at least your boss's
boss is suddenly.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
That's what I call him.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, he's suddenly become a little bit of a folk hero.
The he's the David that's laid Goliath. He's actually like Goliath.
He's like actually like the Goliath that slaid David or whatever.
I guess anyhow, you know, he's like, it's like the
bad guy won in a way, but also yeah, they're
both bad guys. So like, you know, again, as I
as I put on Threads in the early days, I
(06:29):
posted the Alien versus Predator poster from the when the
film came out, and it's of course has the famous
tagline whoever wins, we lose, And I said, this is
the only way to think about the thread situation.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Right, It's like, ultimately you're you're rooting for a guy
who should be tried at the Hague.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
They say they say the enemy of my enemy is
my friend or something like that. I think that's like,
I don't know, all these guys are shitheads who suck.
But okay, so getting back to it, I mean very
successful and accomplished shitheads who suck. So you're the Threads
editor in chief. A couple of questions, One is, can
you tell me a little bit about what the job entailed?
In that role, give me a little like flavor of
(07:09):
what was going on right around launch as you were,
you know, sort of really putting the pieces together.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Sure, so I think that, you know, really a big
important thing was I would consider my role there. It's
like a vibe some some milia, you know, a vibe curator. Really,
you know, it was it was a lot of like
welcoming celebs on. It was like, hey, guys, we've got
(07:35):
Eva Longoria.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, that's amazing. We've got George t Que. He's just
threatened it up.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You're almost like a You're almost like a you wanted
to bring the the quality posters to the forefront.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
You were sort of a facilitator in a way exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And so when someone like Gary Vee shows up on Threads.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And there, I'll never forget that day, you know, when
he was finally on and I'm like, finally culture has
arrived on Threads and yeah, it was it was amazing.
But then listen, it was all going great. The early
days were fantastic, mm hmm, but then there was a
little bump in the road. Can you talk about the
situation that that went down and which ultimately led to
(08:15):
your spoiler alert but your dismissal as editor in chief,
can you talk a little bit about what happened?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yeah, unfortunately, this this all unfolded in my first day
officially on the job.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
But you know, that's I was.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
I was just posting, because you don't say tweet on threads.
Its posting lots of threads about how I'm the new
editor in chief and this is my new job and
I'm so happy and excited and a lot of like,
you know, s full of thread you know, emoji totally
r you know, muscle.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Arm emoji, rocket ship emoji.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I thought your energy was amazing because it was really
like the kindest, most welcoming, like most pro threads energy
that anybody could put out there.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, and and then two things sort of went wrong
for me, so, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And of course I was, you know, just doing my job.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
But a journalist from the Intercept, Ken Clippenstein, I think, so.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
That sounds right. He's got a great, great newsletter, got
a great newsletter.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
He he posted a picture of Mark Zuckerberg shaking hands
with NBS. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia committed horrible uh.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Acts, And so I said something like, you know, every time.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
We should just continually keep posting this picture every like
in response to Mark, you know, Zuckerberg every time he posts.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Ken's trying to keep mind it right.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
And I think a little bit you know, pointing out hey,
because for a moment, you know, one sort of uncanny
thing about the threads is that all these Facebook executives
who like never tweeted or like posting it up, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Trapping Itch in particular, is was incredibly active on threads.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Oh yeah, remains incredibly active.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
So you know, I think that I think that a
little bit people were like excited by that. It was
sort of funny, you know, he was doing a little
like you know, riffing on Elon and uh, you know,
seeming like a cool guy. And you know, I think
Ken wanted to remind people that you know, he's complicit
and some very bad things. I responded to you know,
of course, you know, as editor in chief, I responded
to him, you know, waving hands emogie. Hey, Ken, I
(10:25):
know that you know you didn't know this, but actually
bullying is not allowed on this platform, and so bullying
you ever post this picture again, We're going to have
to deactivate your account.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, Threads is a product that's kind of build out
of Instagram, and you have to remember that Instagram has
a very strict moderation policy, and so I think you
have to remind people like Threads, it's not the same
it's not the same situation as Twitter.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Not It's not just like any kind of bullying is.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Going to be I can't just bully billionaires. We don't
toperate that here on Threads. Bullying is bullying, that's right.
You can't not bully Mark Zuckerberg. And so I think
a lot of people, you know, were they're a little
surprised by that as official Threads policy.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And then someone else had responded to me, asking are
you going to ban the Nazis from Threads? And you know,
I took a page from my boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who
you know, in the past has said that he would
be happy to allow Holocaust deniers because it's simply a
different viewpoint.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's right, that's right, Fame.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I think we should remember famously, Mark Zuckerberg, who is
a Jew, famously told I think Kara Swisher, I want
to say on a podcast that he was like, yeah, like,
if there's Holocaust and ires on the platform, Like that's
okay because they just are sharing.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
They don't have to view.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Them, right.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I think they're wrong, but I'm not going to ban them.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I mean it was fair.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You know, you got to see it, got to see
from every side. Like there's the side it's like, hey,
this thing happened. It like a horrible genocidal atrocity happened.
You know, that's the like the fact base, science based side,
you know. But then on the other hand, there's like
an opinion like it didn't happen, which I think is
also like a valid argument.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Right right.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And I think at the time his reasoning here was
I think it was in the discussion was sort of
about misinformation, and he was he was His argument was
that people who are Holocaust deniers aren't intentionally trying to
misinform other people when they say the Holocaust int happened.
They genuinely believe this edroneously, but they they're just they
(12:30):
just happened to be mistaken. They you know, kind of
like how I thought the Miracle on Ice happened in
nineteen eighty but it was really nineteen.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Eighty two, that's right.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I mean, I mean, who amongst us hasn't hasn't believed
it something that was incorrect and then shared it widely
on a social network, Right.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
So, I mean I do believe that the stance on
Holocaust deniers has changed.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah, they reversed a sand.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Since that interview.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It turns out if you say something totally stupid, embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
It's off you for like months about it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
It's obviously wrong, you will reverse your stance on it.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I think, yeah, I do think that their their policies
on that have have evolved since that interview.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
But anyhow, but.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Getting back to the point, you were taking a cue
from mar.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
So, someone said, will you will you ban the Nazis?
And I said, here on Threads, you know, we welcome
diversity of viewpoint and we welcome everyone. This is an
inclusive space, and that includes being welcoming and inclusive of
people who choose to live a Nazi lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And a lot of people got upset from that.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Well, I think, as I think in a situation where
you're representing you know, the Threads app really, when you
think about it, like as the editor in chief, in
some ways you're the most vocal representative of the of
that space. I mean, I get it, you know, I
think saying like you know, we we we the Nazis
here is a little controversial, I guess. I mean Mark,
(14:03):
it doesn't sound like it would have been that big
of a deal to Mark.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
But but then what happened, uh so, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Mean, well, a couple of interesting things happened, so that
particular post sort of it went like viral. But I
can't really tell because Threads doesn't show you like retweet count.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Or like, it doesn't really allow you to see, and you.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Can't search, so it's really actually hard to see how
far something is traveling. Like I could see that a
lot of people were commenting on it. I could tell
that a significantly above average number of people were commenting on.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
And this was at this point. At this point, had
the app hit one hundred million users at this point,
I think.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
No, I think that's a good day or two later.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
But I could also see that people back on Twitter
were sharing screenshots of it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I could see the people.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
We're talking about, sorry, just to be clear, so people
off platform or screenshot and and they were sharing on
other platforms, Like the editor in chief of Threads just
said this, right, So that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
God, Katie, it was a lot of.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Like, you know, hey, I'm I was considering checking out
Threads because this was you know, it was like the
first day or something.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
A lot of people were like should I try it?
Should I go for it?
Speaker 4 (15:17):
And then people would be like sharing the screenshop being like,
no way, I'm not going to join this app because
look what the editor in chief says, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I feel like at.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
This point, Josh, I feel like I have to spoil
the bit, and for anyone who's listened this long time, really,
really I need to make it clear that.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Like I was joking, I was not the editor in
chief of Threads.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay, fine, all right, fine, let's let's spoil the bit.
Katie was pretending to be the role that doesn't exist,
the editor in chief of Threads. And then I mean,
I actually, I mean I was hoping we continue the
bit through to the point where you were called into
I believe you said you were called into Mark's office,
but maybe it was Adam.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
I mean, I you know, I think that I just
I feel bad for any listener who's like tuning in,
being like, why is just talking to this Like.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Well, I don't think I think my audience is savvy
enough to see through the veil of humor that we've
dropped on them.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
But so yeah, to be clear, you were doing a bit.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
So it was a bit like it was basically like
the first day I like sign up for an account
and I was like, you know what am I gonna
do here? And I was like, immediately my brain went
to like I've got a fuck around, like I've got
a troll lightly.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
On you, because I think people have to understand that
you are a professional poster and like I think a
lot of people don't realize like what that means, and
what it means is when you get on a platform,
you're gonna you're gonna post, and uh, you went right
to the to the heart of the matter. You went
(16:57):
right to the heart of posting, which was pretending to
be an employee, pretending to be an employee of threads.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And and because you have like a you know, you
have a following, and people like started to following you immediately.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It was like, I mean, everybody.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Who was following you, who knows you and your thing,
was like this is the greatest bit of all time.
Like everyone was like playing along with the bit and
uh and so yeah, I mean it quickly spiraled out
of control.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
From what I can tell.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, you know, I feel a little bad because I
I think I probably overestimated the quote.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Everyone who knows me like knew it was a bit,
because I think that like people who know.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Me well knew it was a bit people who maybe
were like vague acquaintances. And it keep in mind, Threads
hooks into your Instagram friend graph, so it was like,
you know, my friends on there were like people who
you know, like like real normies, like not people who
were maybe familiar with my work or.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Your Twitter graph and your Instagram graph are a bit different.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Right, And also like there's just plenty of people who
like maybe they followed me on Twitter or something, but
they don't like know me. And you know, like if
I'm saying something that sounds like a conceivable truth and
then I'm like, haha, you suckers. I was lying, Like
I don't know, It's not their fault for not knowing that, right, Like,
I think what was funny about it to me, at least,
was that the idea of an editor in chief of
(18:21):
Threads was both ridiculous but plausible.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Plausible and I think widely accepted by many people.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
To be honest, there was this sort of I mean,
like there is not an editor in chief of Threads,
but there was a time, you know, in like twenty
fifteen or something where it seems like every app had
like an editor in chief, you know, or like there
was always some sort of like former journalist person, and
that was for a while a very lucrative thing to do,
(18:49):
to like be a journalist and then go be the
editor of like Snapchat or something.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Right, Yeah, and so that moment is sort of over.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, By the way, I went back while you were
telling the story and just went to look at some
of the posts you're doing. What strikes me is particularly,
like I think resonant about them is that you are
basically doing like what Linda Yakarino's been doing on Twitter.
Like it's like a person who is so on the
(19:22):
fucking payroll, like so obviously embarrassingly on the payroll for
like kind of a shithead, but has to be like
everything's going great, right, It's like if this is fine
type of tweeting or posting or whatever. If you're like,
you know, just got out of a big meeting with
Zuck and the Meta team. We're absolutely loving all the
great posts you're all doing here. Keep up the great
(19:43):
work everyone, artie this and make sure you follow me.
And then you're like, you know, Keith Edwards, Threads hit
thirty million users in ten hours, My god, and you
are like quote quote posting this and you're.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Like, amazing, great work everyone on my threads. Teap.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Then you've got like the arm, the bodybuilding arm in
the rocket red z emoji. It's like it's just very
it's just very like you know in a way, it's
like you know, blink twice if you know you need
help or whatever, like yuh.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
I feel like my one of my favorite ones is
I think I said something like I just want to
like say, how many amazing posts are especially from brands.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, I know, actually I just went past that. One
thing I'm loving is how funny brands are on here.
You guys are killing it. That's a post that you
did on threads. I like this one too. This one
is amazing. It's a repost of mister Beast, who's like
to celebrate threads launching. I'm gonna give this tesla to
a random follower. And you're like woo hoo. The Threads
team and I worked hard with Tesla and mister Beast
(20:39):
to make this awesome contest happen. Thank you to Elon
for donating the car and your support of the silly
little app.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Then it's the Threads emoji, a thread emoji, the.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Rocket ship emoji, the strong arm emoji, and the car emoji.
It's just so fucking perfectly bland cheerleading of like the
product that it is. I would say, like largely all that,
like Linda Yakarino has done on Twitter. It's like, I'm
not sure that she has any power, but she definitely
goes on Twitter and is like, We're so excited about
(21:09):
what we're building here, and it's like, are you She's
just cashy the check anyhow. But yeah, so so, but
then you went through a whole thing where you got fired,
Like you went through a whole bit.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
So the Nazi thing, in particular, I could tell was
like getting a little out of hand.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And I say out of hand.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
It was like all my friends and people who sort
of like knew me knew this was very clearly a joke,
and that the joke is about how Facebook and platforms
have kind of actually.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yes, viewed that.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yes, you know, the joke is the joke is this
is the answer that they actually fucking give a lot
of the time when you're like are you going to
moderate rights Nazis or are you going to moderate like
hate speech? Are you going to moderate lies? And they're like, well,
we welcome all viewpoints, and it's like.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Yeah, And I could tell it had traveled outside of
that bubble of people who know me and knew it
was a joke, and it was onto something bigger where
people were just generally aghast by it, which you know, again,
I think is a good thing because I think people
should repeatedly feel agast by like the poor content moderation
(22:16):
decisions that are happening on platforms.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
But wait, hold on, hold on a second, Hold on
a second. Is this real?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
There's a fucking oh, there's like some Economic Times dot
India Times dot com. Who's Katanatopolas know about? Editor in
chief of Threads now fired over a controversial post. It's
just like I think an actual article from some like
oh it is okay. Taking to Twitter on Friday, July
said seventh, Katie atopol has announced on Twitter that she
has now fired as editor in chief of Threads met
as new social media app there recently wanted, okay, whatever
(22:41):
this is like one like if you search for Nazi lifestyle,
hold on, oh this is okay, these are your Nazi
lifestyle Threads app. That's like the second there's multiple articles.
There's actually multiple articles written about I.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Think what happened was that it basically like you know
how you know the a famous tweet about how like.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Everyone's goal on Twitter is to not be the person of.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
The day, right, yes, yes, I was the Threads person
of the day for like a moment, and like, I
think it got to the point where it's probably somehow
hit some Google metric of trending, like and so these
seo like sites that kind of you know, like what's
the one like breaker or like.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I don't know, they're all anything.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
That basically is just like sensing whenever there's a blip
in the like.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The site Dexero, do you know the same Dexerto?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I feel like, no, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
There's a Katie in the topless one now because of
this too.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And who is who is Kaane? The topless troll. Threads
editor goes viral with controversial posts. I mean they did
like a full on BuzzFeed style like fucking slide show
ship on this, Like it's so really.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Funny because it feels very AI generated too.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, I'm not sure that these aren't, to be honest,
Like it.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Just attracted enough Google information. I think that the post
on Threads had traveled enough that people enough people were
googling who is Katie to topless because they were trying
to figure out if it was legit, right, I think, right,
I think a lot of people were like unclear.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, Also, the fact that you had been for a
long period of time a reporter at BuzzFeed made the
plausibility of you becoming the editor in chief of Threads
just absolutely perfect.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I mean it was like completely acceptable to believe that.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Oh yeah, like yeah right, like BuzzFeed News shut down
like she got a new job, is like editor in
chief of Threads like completely By the way, I'm sorry,
I'm reading a sports keyted dot com some fun. There's
some these crazy spam, random fucking gout. The internet is
full of such guardas.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Oh definitely.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Well, one thing is a couple of them said that
incorrectly they thought my account was taken down.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
What ended up happening.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yes, they did say that.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
That's right, the Nazi post was taken down, that one
single post that was the post.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Were you pretending to be, as a joke, the editor
in chief of Threads, a role that does not exist.
Were you were telling a person a thing that you
had zero actual power to do or implement, which is
letting people who leave a Nazi lifestyle post on Threads.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
They took that post down just to be clear.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
That that is krreshed.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
So and what was the rationale? Was it impersonation? What
was the no.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
When you get a post taken down, it doesn't tell you,
like exactly why, And you know, there's a very clear
reason for that, because a lot of the time Facebook
doesn't want you to know exactly its rules, right, Like
they keep it fuzzy for a reason because as soon
as people know the exact rules, they're going to gain
the system.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
So it just said like this was in violation of
our policies or whatever. My guess would be that it
would fall under like you're not allowed to like encourage
or show support of hate groups. To can't say I
like you can't say I'm not a Nazi, but I support.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Them, right, sure, yeah, okay, fair.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
So I have a feeling it probably fell under that.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
I mean, I wouldn't be totally surprised if the fact
that I was also impersonating Threads employee played some context.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I think there's sort of two versions. One is that
like people.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Probably reported it, you know, like people report things race.
It flagged to some outsource moderator who had to make
a decision in point five.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Second, guy in a sweatshop who has to look at.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
The possible this you can't like you're not allowed to
praise Nazis or show support of them, Like does that
count as praising Nazis? I don't know, maybe like sure,
take it down whatever, like but you know, frankly, you
know what better safe than sorry? Fine, I'm happy with that,
you know. Or it's possible, I think much less likely that,
like there was a higher level discussion about whether or
(27:00):
not to allow that very misleading, an inflammatory post about
meta itself to continue.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, I think I think in a way it would.
It exposed.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
First off, was a very funny bit, and everybody who
does know you thought it was very enjoyable to watch
it play out. But I think what it exposed is
like you touched on it already. Is the real and
sort of absurd reaction that these companies have to things
that twe a person, a normal person seem obviously like addressable.
(27:33):
And I think you brought up the thing where Zuckerberg said,
you know, well it's a different opinion or whatever about
like holocaust and ires, and I think like there was
also as a part of that, and it may have
been that interview, or it may have been a separate
post that he did on Facebook or something where he
was like, I don't believe I should be you know,
(27:53):
the person who decides what speech like should be allowed
and shouldn't be allowed on this platform or whatever. It's
like rationale is like, well, it's such a big platform
and there's so many people on it, Like I can't
be the one, you know, the guy who decides. And
it's like, well, you know what the thing is. It's
a publicly owned company that is a for profit business,
and like ultimately you actually get to say as the
(28:15):
CEO what you won't, will and won't allow on the platform.
And they do it all the time, right, Like there's
a ton of shit, there's a ton of shit you
cannot put on Facebook, Like a million different horrible things
you cannot post on Facebook, and it's like you could
decide and just have you just have to deal with
the fact that people will go like, you're not letting
all the viewpoints on here, but like so fucking what right,
(28:36):
But they don't want to do that. They want to
play this like weird middle ground, like for what reason.
I don't really know. I understand like the concept, but
it's not hard.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
To be really I think the reason is clear, right
Like that. Ultimately, Mark Zirgerber doesn't really care about the moderation.
He cares about getting hauled in in front of Congress
and having Republicans yolotan because he moderated too much, right, right,
So this gives him the whole excuse of like we
created this out outside the Facebook Oversight Committee and basically
just punt all those hards. He does not do anything
(29:06):
to not have to be the one to make the
decision about banning or not banning Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I would love I would love to be in front
of Congress and have someone be like, you know, question
the why or why you ban a Nazis thing, you know,
and just be like, look, dude, you know if somebody's
clearly posting Nazi shit, like I don't know, seems.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Pretty straightforward, like if you think otherwise, like I'm all yours.
I just don't understand the argument.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You know, it's it's never okay, so it's never going
to be the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
No, but you can use the Nazis. You can use
the Nazis.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
To be fair, Facebook has banned Nazis for a long time, okay,
and so his Instagram and like, frankly, the question about
like are you're gonna be Nazis on threads, it's like, yeah,
you know what they've had, Like you're.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Not allowed to like already ban a Nazi for a
long time, right, Like the.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Only place where Nazis aren't banned is Twitter.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
That's the right, or you know, honestly, technically they probably are.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
No, I don't think they are. I don't think they are.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I don't I have a feeling if you are, like
literally I'm a Nazi like that stuff, it's probably a no.
But I think where you get into trouble is all
these edge cases things like like libs of TikTok is
the perfect example of something that's this like really frustrating
edge case for these things where it's like she's constantly
(30:22):
towing the line of like, oops, I'm going a little
bit over what you said the rules were, Oops I'm
not you know, back and forth. And if it wasn't
someone who had like millions of followers and all of
a sudden, like a lot of eyes on her, they
would have banned her a long time ago. But now
it's like now she's this like nightmare person who's so
popular that if she gets.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Banned, and like Josh Hawley's gonna yell and like.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
It's not necessarily just like the Nazis, because I just
like the reason everyone sort of uses that as an example.
It's like, of course you bann the Nazis. The question
is like do you ban the transphobes? Like do you
ban there's a lot of stuff that doesn't fall under
h beats that is very objectionable, right or.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That like they wiggle there.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
They're really right up against that of the line of
you know, hey, maybe some of the posts get flagged.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Some of their posts, don't you know.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Yeah, so that's where they run into problems, you know,
that's where people are like annoyed by them for not
being a little bit stricter on that stuff, right, I mean, like,
you know, content moderation and trusted safety and policy is
not easy, right, Like I think that like it sort
of does a disservice.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I think to make it also seem like it.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Would just be so easy just bend lots of people,
Like that's not purely the answer, but clearly Facebook has
done a very like there's a there's a lot to
point to about how they fail, right, Yeah, they've They've.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Done a lot of unforced errors, sure.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
At any rate, So you know, it was a good run.
You'd a great run.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It was a good run.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
But I started getting like a little bit like once
I started seeing the like SEO stuff pop up. Yeah,
a couple people were really like aggressively. There was one
guy who I was like, buddy, what's what's what's going
on here? Like he was just messaging me on every
possible platform to be like, Nazi jokes not funny, You're disgusting.
And I think at first he didn't know it was
(32:34):
a joke, so he was just like he didn't think.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It was a joke.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
He was like, you're disgusting, you support Nazis. Yeah, and
then eventually.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
He realized that it was a joke, and he was like,
Nazi jokes.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
So not funny, but he was, you know, he was
sending me LinkedIn messages, he was emailing me. I was like, buddy, like,
I agree, I don't like the Nazis either, Like, but
please stop bothering me. Right, he was getting like a
little I could tell I was in a my head
and so I was like, I gotta fire realself.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I can't keep this joke up much longer.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Interesting, Okay, I didn't realize I sort of missed the whole.
I mean I maybe saw somebody share the Nazi thing,
like laughing about it or saw you do it, and
I was like, well, clearly, you know she's making this joke.
I guess I didn't realize that the reason you stopped
was sort of because of this outside sort of weird
shit that was going on, Like well.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Some of amazing.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I mean, I wasn't gonna keep up the gag forever.
It was also like funny for one day and then
like it wasn't you know, it wasn't gonna be that
much funny right anymore anyways, But but it is weird
that like because threads doesn't show you the you know,
likes and reposts numbers. It's hard for an outsider to
tell if something is actually going viral or not. So like,
(33:46):
there's no reason you would have known that this was
actually like blowing up right. The only reason I could
know is because I was seeing some of the notifications
of like the responses and the thing, and I was
seeing the chatter on other platforms, like I had people
like texting me weird stuff. Like honestly, it tricked a lot,
like it tricked Walt Mosburg.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Like yeah, like, oh really did about it?
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Like I don't think this threads thing is gonna be
very good because of look at this, like there was
a screenshot that was sort of like a distant bodies
and like balth Mosberg doesn't know who I am. He
doesn't know that I'm kidding, Like right, Waltmarpha, of course,
is a very famous uh techtern.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
But you know what's funny is that Walt Mosburg and
I love Walt, but one of his big projects he
works on now is news literacy. Like he has this
whole thing that he's doing around news literacy, And I
just want to say, pretty amazing that he saw that
didn't fact check who the person was, didn't know who
the person was, and then like.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
Just I mean I have to say, like justice for
Walt here, because like, how is he going to fact
check Katie de toopolss is a little piece of shit? Right?
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Like no, I mean you could just google Katie to
topless and they'd.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Be like wow Alden seeing oh she is a former
reporter at BuzzFeed, she probably works like that makes me
chicks out.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
She's gone on the dark side. I guess, Okay, maybe
he did. You're right, Okay, no reason.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
For him to know that, Like I'm a gremlin who
likes fucking around, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, yeah, did you feel you were in danger at
any point? Did you feel like it had gotten so?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I think it was a mix of Like part of
what I felt bad about is like I was dunking,
like the dunk. I mean it wasn't even a dunk, right,
Like it was upsetting people whose viewpoints I agree with, right,
Like people who are like I don't want Nazis on
my platform, and this upsets me.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I'm like, yeah, I agree, like and.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
So well, that's the point. That's the joke.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Sometimes there are people who are being like a little
too like gullible and earnest about it, but also like.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
No, I get it, I get it, But like the
problem is the reason why it penetrated and the reason
why people were upset is because it sounds exactly like
something that some fucking editor in chief of Threads hired
by Mark Zuckerberg and Adamasiri might actually say.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
And like that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
It struck a nerve both internally, I'm sure ed Metta,
and also with the audience because it rang true and
and and by the way, I'm not saying you shouldn't
have killed the joke. That makes a lot of sense,
but I think what is more telling is it rang
so true and so many people reacted in earnest to it,
and that's not an accident. And I actually think like
(36:15):
at the heart of your joke, which obviously was you
ultimately and I know for a fact you had no
ulterior motive of doing anything smart or.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
You know interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I know that I know I know you well enough
to know that you were just fucking around and being
funny and thought it was like a good gag.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
But like the at the heart of it, what it
really exposes.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Is like the actual underlying bullshit of these platforms and
and like in a way like was it's the most
effective possible critique of their shit. I mean, you know,
people are always like comedians are the modern day philosophers.
But you know, I think like you're your like parody
or whatever worked because people think it's completely reasonable that
(36:56):
that's what a representative of Threads would say, and that's
actually like a Mark Zuckerberg problem that like they have
yet to really effectively solve.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
So yeah, you know, and to be perfectly fair, also,
I mean, like I you know, I did think I
was being like a little bit smart.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And cheeky, but I will also say that I feel
like I was old.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Look kay, I mean I'm not saying it wasn't clever,
but I'm just saying, like, I don't think you were
like trying to make a major point about like society
or anything.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
I think I saw that like my eight friends would
think it was pretty funny, and they did, and they
did anyway, So yeah, So then I think the next
day my plan to get out of it was I said,
you know, oh boy, I have an unscheduled meeting in
my calendar to meet with Mark this morning, so.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Excited to go and see what the big boss.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
Says, and then you know, thirty minutes later, I said,
oh my god, I can't believe this, but I've been fired.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
You played out who the whole narrative.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, it was a lot of fun for me.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I'll tell you something.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Your thing that you were doing was one of the
few things in the early days of Threads that really
made me feel like this could work. I was like, oh, like,
Katie's doing her thing and everybody's kind of like reacting
to it, and we're all, like, you know, where most
of us are in on the joke, some of us
are not, But like, it just felt like weird, you know,
it felt like weird Twitter. It felt like like, you know,
the kind of shit that goes on where it's it's loose,
(38:15):
you know, and like it's posting. But honestly, like, you know,
I don't see a lot of that on Threads. I
don't see a lot of anything of like sparks, any
kind of real like delight.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
At this point.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, I mean, Threads has definitely.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
I mean, all the indicators showed that, you know, it's
been dropping and users. Although it's hard, I don't know,
I still check it multiple times a day.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I'm looking at threads like on a more regular
basis than I'm looking at Twitter.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, it's I think
it's still like hard to say what will happen. Like
it's not a surprise that people who came for the
first day to like be like, oh my favorite Hollywood
celebrities and Instagram influencers are on here, and then of
course those people sort of dropped off off like and
are active. I think the question is how many people
(39:05):
will stick around who were like I've never been on Twitter,
or like maybe I joined Twitter once and smith like
I left, but hey, goods, thing is kind of fun.
And how many people are like I'm on Twitter and
I hate it, So what is this a good place
for me to go instead? You know, Like yeah, I
think between those two things, like there's it's kind of
it's you know, I think it's still got a chance.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about it is,
you know, not that we can really know what the
future holds, but just seems like the the value of
it and the utility of it is just going down
and down. The question is like can I mean, to me,
it's like can the threads app figure out some of
the basic things that people want who are migrating or
who want to use something else, which is like I
(39:49):
need to find all the people that like I want
to follow, and they need to be able to find me,
like the real people that I follow. Not like no
diss to my Instagram folks, but like that graph is
not reflective of like who I.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Want for like information and jokes.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
It's more like things I like to look at or
family members who I want to see, like pictures of
like they're like what they're doing on vacation or their.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Kids or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
It's not like, Yeah, it's definitely a different use case,
and like I think they need to have some solution
to that, and they need to have some solution to
making it feel like there's an active, real time conversation
going on. One other thing I think actually kind of sucks.
It's like Twitter tells you when there's new posts, like
it's like there's new posts and you're like, oh shit,
I gotta check those out.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, Threads doesn't seem to do that.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
When I can tell like if you sit on threads
and just like check out what's going on, it doesn't
like prompt you to.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
I mean that actually feels like something that might be intentional,
Like I feel like that's sort of like we want
to make this a healthy place. It doesn't make you
feel like you're like addicted and have to refresh constant.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Well, then it won't work. You need to be addicted.
That's the whole point of this type of service.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I believe that they are working on more product features
that will address a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Complaints that people have right now.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
I think the thing is like they clearly launched is
such a bare boe owned version that it may have
actually been a turn off to a fair amount of people,
because you know, when you launched it as a like
you couldn't even see like just a following feed.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
It was like it was only the sort of four
year yeah right.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I Mean the funny thing is like had they waited
a few more weeks finished out those extra features they
were working on, Elon would have done something justice.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
There's no shortage, Yes, there's no shortage of stupid shit
that guy's going to come up with.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
I mean I think that, like, I think the idea
that they had to jump on that timing of like oh,
shit like Twitter's down, like let's get our replacement thing
out right away.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
It is like people still would have.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Liked it because Twitter is still just as fucked up
and you know, even worse.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, I mean it's all bad.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I do think, you know, not to not to be
a downer or whatever, but I do feel like we're
just at the period of like the social media thing
has just become so such a chore and so like
un fun. I find more than anything, like what is
just bums me out is there was a period, a
pretty long period where at least for my purpose, which
is like funny jokes and like you know news stuff
(42:04):
or like you know story stuff that people are like
posting or talking about, it wasn't the way it is now,
Like it didn't feel that way.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
It wasn't always combat.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yes, there would be like the character of the day
or whatever, but that was like one person, not everybody
was like in the site, you know, it really wasn't
even that fucking popular, like by comparison to an Instagram
or a Facebook or like I think they're like fucking
TikTok or snapchat.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
They're all way bigger, oh way bigger. But it served a.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Purpose and it was like pretty fun most of the time.
It could occasionally be horrible, but it was like fairly
fun like most of the time. And then like you know,
I would say, coinciding with like the Trump campaign for sure,
that definitely upped the temperature on the service. And through
those years I just became like really degraded in like
the kind of discourse. It was just people who were made.
(42:54):
And Elon took that in, like he took all of
the anger and the vitriol and the like brokenness and
the context collapse and everything and just magnified it in
a way that makes it feel really shitty and like
a bombery, you.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Know what it's like.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
You know Ghostbusters too, I'm familiar with the film.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
So you know the premise there is like there's this
haunted painting of the Vigo.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
It's it's a it's a painting of a guy named Vigo.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, I think his name is like Vigo the Destroyer
or Vigo the Annihilator or something.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
And he's a sort of you know I've in the
terrible type historical persona or whatever, and and he is,
you know, a haunted ghost and he his power. He
grows more and more powerful by feeding off hate and anger.
And you know, it just so happens his painting has
(43:48):
come to the met in New York City and there's
this sort of great scene where it's like the subways
are just flowing with this pink slime and it's like, oh,
it's because everyone, you know, New York City is so angry,
like all the time, cabs honking or whatever. Yeah, I
feel like that's you know, that's kind of a metaphor
for Elon Musk and Twitter is like feeding off this.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
And by the way, the guy's name is Vigo the Carpathian.
That's the name of the of the painting. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Anyhow, but I'll tell.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
You what, Josh, I feel both similar and different to you.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
And here's how.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
Okay, I too mourn the loss of Twitter. I loved Twitter,
like it was so much.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Twitter was your home. Twitter was your playground.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Well, I think a.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Lot of people enjoyed it when it was good, right,
I agree, a lot of really when you think when
you remember all the fun times we had on there, right,
Like it was a great place to be for like
jokes and like it was a really useful place for news,
Like if there was like a breaking I remember, like
it was really useful in Hurricane Sandy.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Like yeah, no, I mean there was real there were
real time moments on Twitter that were really quite valuable.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, and like there was a lot, like there were
a lot of like really fun things, and I like
I really enjoyed having wonderful, positive connections with other people
and like that was great, and I like, I, like
you am sad that it is like kind of going.
I don't know if it's not gonna shut down tomorrow,
(45:18):
but like it's not that anymore. It's not the fun,
delightful place. A lot of the people that I enjoyed
communicating with have already left. It's you know, it's not
as much fun. Like fifty percent of the tweets on
there are about Twitter or X. However, I think, unlike you,
I feel like I have some optimism because I feel
(45:39):
like the demise of Twitter and like sort of as
you described, like the end of a sort of social
media moment where it's like Facebook has stunk for a
long time, and like I think a lot of people
have Instagram fatigued too, and like I watch a ton
of TikTok, but it's nothing that like my friends were.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Using right now talk is it for me?
Speaker 2 (46:02):
It's a it's a solitary.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yes, it's a private You're not sharing, you're not fucking reposting,
you're not responding, You're just experiencing the TikTok.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
It's pure consumption. I enjoy it, but I feel like
there's no there's not much social going on there for
me at least. Yes, but I do think that like
this has left an opening for something new, and I
do think that, like, I think there's reasons to be
optimistic about.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
What new is next.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
You know, Wow, the idea of replacements for Twitter that
are you know, conceivably smaller, like blue Sky massed on
even Threads.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, I mean this is spoken like spoken like the
future editor in chief of some social network.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
I have to say this is the mark I'm available
for hire.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
I mean, look, I'll I'll say this, and then we
got Unfortunately, we do have to wrap up.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
As much as I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
The biggest mistake they made was not hiring you immediately
to actually be the editor in chief of Threads. In
my opinion, the greatest move in the world would have
been for them to immediately be like let's do it.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Let's hire Katie. And also, by the.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
Way, I think I for a moment I was like,
what if they have to say face and I'm right, no,
But like, I don't think that's a job I would want.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
I do think you would bring a lot of great
insight and ideas into a place like that. And frankly,
like I think a service like and not by the way,
I'm not like making a pitch for you, but like
a service like Threads would be better for having a
person like you there who actually like knows why things
like threads the way it could be, like why it's
good because I don't think a lot I think there's
a lot of people there who don't didn't ever really
(47:39):
get or care about Twitter, who are like, we build
a thing that's kind of like it. It's like yeah,
but like you maybe don't actually understand some of the
key things that make it useful and interesting anyhow. But Katie,
as always, I have just tremendously enjoyed our conversation. Unquestionably,
you're one of my favorite people to talk to. And
I'm not just saying that because you are the mother
(48:00):
of my of my niece and nephew. It's also because
you're a genius, a great genius. But it is a
nice perk that you're the mother of my niece and nephew.
I think they're pretty cool, and I think it's a
pretty cool situation all things considered.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
All things considered, it is, Josh. You are also one
of my favorite people. Thank you to You are one
of the only people in my family who actually appreciated
my threads prank.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Oh well, anybody who anybody, including Eric who didn't fully appreciate.
I could see Eric being like, you, guys, stop guy,
knock that off, like you probably getting very upset about it.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
But I like rolling his eyes a little bit.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Right, I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to
be dealing with you on a twenty four to seven
basis when it comes to your like present.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
The problem is it's exactly what you would imagine, which
is incredibly annoying for Eric, my husband, which is that
like it's it's me on my phone giggling to myself
and it's just like.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
And then like I assume at some point you're like, oh,
like I'm getting death threats or whatever, because like right,
because that definitely has happened on more than one to you.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
There was only one point where he was like, do
we still lock the doors?
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Like you up?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
I lock it up. I lock it up.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
You should get some home alone style traps around your
house just in case. You never know when these guys
are going to try to go bust in there, you
have to hit them with some paint cans or whatever.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
Yeah, exactly all right, Katie.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Anyhow, thank you for joining me, and I expect that
you'll be back soon to tell us of your new
adventures online.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
No response to that, thanks Joss you around.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Well, that is our show for this week, and I
think what more can be said? I think Katie has
said it all, and then I said a little bit
extra to so I guess there could be more said.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
But you know, I think we're good now. I think
we've said it all.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
We'll be back next week with more what future, and
as always, I wish you and your family the very
best
Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Tapolski,
and I guess say we have a real treat today.
I'm excited we managed to get a guest on that
frankly was a pretty you know, pretty hard booking to
lock in and not surprising due to all the all
the excitement swirling around this person. But you know, I
(00:41):
do have a little bit of an inn and so
you know, I'm excited to say that today on the
show we have the former editor in chief of Threads,
Katie Natopoulos, who also is a former senior reporter at
BuzzFeed and a general like internet personality, I think, a
well known and well loved and also probably hated internet personality.
(01:03):
I'm excited to talk to her. I should also say that,
you know, she is my sister in law, but that's
just an icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned,
because Katie, long before she was my sister in law,
was an iconic figure online and so I'm excited to
get her back on the show and talk about her
latest adventure, which involves a wild ride with the one
(01:26):
and only Mark Zuckerberg. So let's just not waste any
more time let's just get into this thing. What is
(01:48):
that coffee over there, Katie? You drinking a coffee late
in the day.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
That's actually it's a beer.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Is it beer? You hiding it? You're concealing your beer?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well? Does that keep it cold?
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yeah, because otherwise it was like gonna get like warm
in the can because it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Reads, Yeah, it reads this concealment. But I do understand.
I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
For Father's Day, we got like Thermoses to drink beer
in the park, which sounds also now sad, but to
conceal it well, so there's like every Sunday there's like
a concert in the park here, and like everyone brings
like beer and wine, but like this way it can
(02:29):
be like it has like a lid so it doesn't spill.
So it's mye So now I found it very convenient,
keeps things frosty.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
That's great, Katie.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
I'm glad that I could get you back about to
keep back on the show. Even though we are you know, related,
and you know, in a family together, it's hard to connect.
You were just saying, you're just saying before we started
that you guys hadn't been to a swim we have
a pool, and you hadn't been over to swim, and
that is that is true, not all summer long, and
we're in We're in mid August right now.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
I've been I've been waiting for an invite, but my
million box is strangely empty.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Ow.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well, you know, it's a standing invite, you know, basically.
But I guess you're right. We could be more proactive
about it. So on that issue, I guess I am
fully to blame. But but you've had a busy you
have personally had a very busy summer, and I wanted
to talk about it. I don't remember the date exactly,
but this was the summer of Threads. I think, as
everybody's been referring to it, it's the uh I.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Think we've all been talking about Meta introduced.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
It's Twitter competitor threads and you know, too much fanfare.
It's built a huge following a huge amount of followers
quickly on threads. Hundreds of millions of people have joined,
at least one hundred million.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
And you were, you know, early on, you were really
setting the tone on threads as Meta's Threads editor in chief.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, first off, could you talk about.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
The experience of what that was like building, you know,
working with the team with Adam and Zuck to build
the product, and just talk a little bit about the
creation of Threads.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
So, Josh, first of all, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
I'm your sister in law and I've been a tech
reporter for a long time, previously at BuzzFeed News, which
unfortunately shut down at the end.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Of April, and I was so lucky to get.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
A wonderful opportunity to become the editor in chief of
the new Threads app which launched in the beginning of July.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
And you know.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
I was just so excited to really get to work
with the phenomenal team over at Meta.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And just seeing them work was like wow, you know,
it was like it was like watching the Miracle on
ice hockey team.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Oh okay, wait, hold on, wait, who is who is
the miracle?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Ey?
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Is that like a show where like people are doing
like they're like dancing or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
What is miracle? What is the miracle on eyes?
Speaker 4 (04:59):
If you could just sure, I believe it was the
nineteen eighty USA hockey team in the Olympics that, against
all odds.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Beat Russia. Okay, oh, okay, in.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Eighty four, but I think it was eighty.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So not like a Harlem globe trotter situation, like that's
in my head that's what I went to immediately, but
it's actual thing that happened in history. Okay, that sounds
like Vega.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
There's actually I believe there's even a move, a fairly
recent movie about it called Miracle, But it was I
think the idea was that they were sort of like
the underdogs and the people, which is strange. It's like,
why would people think that the US was not good
at hockey? I men, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I don't know the history. I a lot of ice rush,
fairly famous sports thing.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And also someone's going to like respond to this podcast
and be like two Olympics, idiot.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So listen.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So you were there at the beginning, you were working
with the team, and then of course the app launches.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Everybody's freaking out about it.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
You know, Elon Musk is going crazy threatening lawsuits, and
Azuka is cracking hilarious. Joe suddenly, Mark Zuckerberg, you're at
the time your boss, your by at least your boss's
boss is suddenly.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
That's what I call him.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, he's suddenly become a little bit of a folk hero.
The he's the David that's laid Goliath. He's actually like Goliath.
He's like actually like the Goliath that slaid David or whatever.
I guess anyhow, you know, he's like, it's like the
bad guy won in a way, but also yeah, they're
both bad guys. So like, you know, again, as I
as I put on Threads in the early days, I
(06:29):
posted the Alien versus Predator poster from the when the
film came out, and it's of course has the famous
tagline whoever wins, we lose, And I said, this is
the only way to think about the thread situation.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Right, It's like, ultimately you're you're rooting for a guy
who should be tried at the Hague.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
They say they say the enemy of my enemy is
my friend or something like that. I think that's like,
I don't know, all these guys are shitheads who suck.
But okay, so getting back to it, I mean very
successful and accomplished shitheads who suck. So you're the Threads
editor in chief. A couple of questions, One is, can
you tell me a little bit about what the job entailed?
In that role, give me a little like flavor of
(07:09):
what was going on right around launch as you were,
you know, sort of really putting the pieces together.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Sure, so I think that, you know, really a big
important thing was I would consider my role there. It's
like a vibe some some milia, you know, a vibe curator. Really,
you know, it was it was a lot of like
welcoming celebs on. It was like, hey, guys, we've got
(07:35):
Eva Longoria.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, that's amazing. We've got George t Que. He's just
threatened it up.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You're almost like a You're almost like a you wanted
to bring the the quality posters to the forefront.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
You were sort of a facilitator in a way exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And so when someone like Gary Vee shows up on Threads.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And there, I'll never forget that day, you know, when
he was finally on and I'm like, finally culture has
arrived on Threads and yeah, it was it was amazing.
But then listen, it was all going great. The early
days were fantastic, mm hmm, but then there was a
little bump in the road. Can you talk about the
situation that that went down and which ultimately led to
(08:15):
your spoiler alert but your dismissal as editor in chief,
can you talk a little bit about what happened?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Yeah, unfortunately, this this all unfolded in my first day
officially on the job.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
But you know, that's I was.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
I was just posting, because you don't say tweet on threads.
Its posting lots of threads about how I'm the new
editor in chief and this is my new job and
I'm so happy and excited and a lot of like,
you know, s full of thread you know, emoji totally
r you know, muscle.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Arm emoji, rocket ship emoji.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I thought your energy was amazing because it was really
like the kindest, most welcoming, like most pro threads energy
that anybody could put out there.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, and and then two things sort of went wrong
for me, so, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And of course I was, you know, just doing my job.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
But a journalist from the Intercept, Ken Clippenstein, I think, so.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
That sounds right. He's got a great, great newsletter, got
a great newsletter.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
He he posted a picture of Mark Zuckerberg shaking hands
with NBS. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia committed horrible uh.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Acts, And so I said something like, you know, every time.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
We should just continually keep posting this picture every like
in response to Mark, you know, Zuckerberg every time he posts.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Ken's trying to keep mind it right.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
And I think a little bit you know, pointing out hey,
because for a moment, you know, one sort of uncanny
thing about the threads is that all these Facebook executives
who like never tweeted or like posting it up, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Trapping Itch in particular, is was incredibly active on threads.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Oh yeah, remains incredibly active.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
So you know, I think that I think that a
little bit people were like excited by that. It was
sort of funny, you know, he was doing a little
like you know, riffing on Elon and uh, you know,
seeming like a cool guy. And you know, I think
Ken wanted to remind people that you know, he's complicit
and some very bad things. I responded to you know,
of course, you know, as editor in chief, I responded
to him, you know, waving hands emogie. Hey, Ken, I
(10:25):
know that you know you didn't know this, but actually
bullying is not allowed on this platform, and so bullying
you ever post this picture again, We're going to have
to deactivate your account.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, Threads is a product that's kind of build out
of Instagram, and you have to remember that Instagram has
a very strict moderation policy, and so I think you
have to remind people like Threads, it's not the same
it's not the same situation as Twitter.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Not It's not just like any kind of bullying is.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Going to be I can't just bully billionaires. We don't
toperate that here on Threads. Bullying is bullying, that's right.
You can't not bully Mark Zuckerberg. And so I think
a lot of people, you know, were they're a little
surprised by that as official Threads policy.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And then someone else had responded to me, asking are
you going to ban the Nazis from Threads? And you know,
I took a page from my boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who
you know, in the past has said that he would
be happy to allow Holocaust deniers because it's simply a
different viewpoint.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's right, that's right, Fame.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I think we should remember famously, Mark Zuckerberg, who is
a Jew, famously told I think Kara Swisher, I want
to say on a podcast that he was like, yeah, like,
if there's Holocaust and ires on the platform, Like that's
okay because they just are sharing.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
They don't have to view.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Them, right.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I think they're wrong, but I'm not going to ban them.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I mean it was fair.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You know, you got to see it, got to see
from every side. Like there's the side it's like, hey,
this thing happened. It like a horrible genocidal atrocity happened.
You know, that's the like the fact base, science based side,
you know. But then on the other hand, there's like
an opinion like it didn't happen, which I think is
also like a valid argument.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Right right.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And I think at the time his reasoning here was
I think it was in the discussion was sort of
about misinformation, and he was he was His argument was
that people who are Holocaust deniers aren't intentionally trying to
misinform other people when they say the Holocaust int happened.
They genuinely believe this edroneously, but they they're just they
(12:30):
just happened to be mistaken. They you know, kind of
like how I thought the Miracle on Ice happened in
nineteen eighty but it was really nineteen.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Eighty two, that's right.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I mean, I mean, who amongst us hasn't hasn't believed
it something that was incorrect and then shared it widely
on a social network, Right.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
So, I mean I do believe that the stance on
Holocaust deniers has changed.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah, they reversed a sand.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Since that interview.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
It turns out if you say something totally stupid, embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
It's off you for like months about it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
It's obviously wrong, you will reverse your stance on it.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I think, yeah, I do think that their their policies
on that have have evolved since that interview.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
But anyhow, but.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Getting back to the point, you were taking a cue
from mar.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
So, someone said, will you will you ban the Nazis?
And I said, here on Threads, you know, we welcome
diversity of viewpoint and we welcome everyone. This is an
inclusive space, and that includes being welcoming and inclusive of
people who choose to live a Nazi lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And a lot of people got upset from that.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Well, I think, as I think in a situation where
you're representing you know, the Threads app really, when you
think about it, like as the editor in chief, in
some ways you're the most vocal representative of the of
that space. I mean, I get it, you know, I
think saying like you know, we we we the Nazis
here is a little controversial, I guess. I mean Mark,
(14:03):
it doesn't sound like it would have been that big
of a deal to Mark.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
But but then what happened, uh so, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Mean, well, a couple of interesting things happened, so that
particular post sort of it went like viral. But I
can't really tell because Threads doesn't show you like retweet count.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Or like, it doesn't really allow you to see, and you.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Can't search, so it's really actually hard to see how
far something is traveling. Like I could see that a
lot of people were commenting on it. I could tell
that a significantly above average number of people were commenting on.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
And this was at this point. At this point, had
the app hit one hundred million users at this point,
I think.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
No, I think that's a good day or two later.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
But I could also see that people back on Twitter
were sharing screenshots of it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I could see the people.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
We're talking about, sorry, just to be clear, so people
off platform or screenshot and and they were sharing on
other platforms, Like the editor in chief of Threads just
said this, right, So that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
God, Katie, it was a lot of.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Like, you know, hey, I'm I was considering checking out
Threads because this was you know, it was like the
first day or something.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
A lot of people were like should I try it?
Should I go for it?
Speaker 4 (15:17):
And then people would be like sharing the screenshop being like,
no way, I'm not going to join this app because
look what the editor in chief says, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I feel like at.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
This point, Josh, I feel like I have to spoil
the bit, and for anyone who's listened this long time, really,
really I need to make it clear that.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Like I was joking, I was not the editor in
chief of Threads.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay, fine, all right, fine, let's let's spoil the bit.
Katie was pretending to be the role that doesn't exist,
the editor in chief of Threads. And then I mean,
I actually, I mean I was hoping we continue the
bit through to the point where you were called into
I believe you said you were called into Mark's office,
but maybe it was Adam.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
I mean, I you know, I think that I just
I feel bad for any listener who's like tuning in,
being like, why is just talking to this Like.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Well, I don't think I think my audience is savvy
enough to see through the veil of humor that we've
dropped on them.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
But so yeah, to be clear, you were doing a bit.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
So it was a bit like it was basically like
the first day I like sign up for an account
and I was like, you know what am I gonna
do here? And I was like, immediately my brain went
to like I've got a fuck around, like I've got
a troll lightly.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
On you, because I think people have to understand that
you are a professional poster and like I think a
lot of people don't realize like what that means, and
what it means is when you get on a platform,
you're gonna you're gonna post, and uh, you went right
to the to the heart of the matter. You went
(16:57):
right to the heart of posting, which was pretending to
be an employee, pretending to be an employee of threads.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And and because you have like a you know, you
have a following, and people like started to following you immediately.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It was like, I mean, everybody.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Who was following you, who knows you and your thing,
was like this is the greatest bit of all time.
Like everyone was like playing along with the bit and
uh and so yeah, I mean it quickly spiraled out
of control.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
From what I can tell.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, you know, I feel a little bad because I
I think I probably overestimated the quote.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Everyone who knows me like knew it was a bit,
because I think that like people who know.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Me well knew it was a bit people who maybe
were like vague acquaintances. And it keep in mind, Threads
hooks into your Instagram friend graph, so it was like,
you know, my friends on there were like people who
you know, like like real normies, like not people who
were maybe familiar with my work or.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Your Twitter graph and your Instagram graph are a bit different.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Right, And also like there's just plenty of people who
like maybe they followed me on Twitter or something, but
they don't like know me. And you know, like if
I'm saying something that sounds like a conceivable truth and
then I'm like, haha, you suckers. I was lying, Like
I don't know, It's not their fault for not knowing that, right, Like,
I think what was funny about it to me, at least,
was that the idea of an editor in chief of
(18:21):
Threads was both ridiculous but plausible.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Plausible and I think widely accepted by many people.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
To be honest, there was this sort of I mean,
like there is not an editor in chief of Threads,
but there was a time, you know, in like twenty
fifteen or something where it seems like every app had
like an editor in chief, you know, or like there
was always some sort of like former journalist person, and
that was for a while a very lucrative thing to do,
(18:49):
to like be a journalist and then go be the
editor of like Snapchat or something.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Right, Yeah, and so that moment is sort of over.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, By the way, I went back while you were
telling the story and just went to look at some
of the posts you're doing. What strikes me is particularly,
like I think resonant about them is that you are
basically doing like what Linda Yakarino's been doing on Twitter.
Like it's like a person who is so on the
(19:22):
fucking payroll, like so obviously embarrassingly on the payroll for
like kind of a shithead, but has to be like
everything's going great, right, It's like if this is fine
type of tweeting or posting or whatever. If you're like,
you know, just got out of a big meeting with
Zuck and the Meta team. We're absolutely loving all the
great posts you're all doing here. Keep up the great
(19:43):
work everyone, artie this and make sure you follow me.
And then you're like, you know, Keith Edwards, Threads hit
thirty million users in ten hours, My god, and you
are like quote quote posting this and you're.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Like, amazing, great work everyone on my threads. Teap.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Then you've got like the arm, the bodybuilding arm in
the rocket red z emoji. It's like it's just very
it's just very like you know in a way, it's
like you know, blink twice if you know you need
help or whatever, like yuh.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
I feel like my one of my favorite ones is
I think I said something like I just want to
like say, how many amazing posts are especially from brands.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, I know, actually I just went past that. One
thing I'm loving is how funny brands are on here.
You guys are killing it. That's a post that you
did on threads. I like this one too. This one
is amazing. It's a repost of mister Beast, who's like
to celebrate threads launching. I'm gonna give this tesla to
a random follower. And you're like woo hoo. The Threads
team and I worked hard with Tesla and mister Beast
(20:39):
to make this awesome contest happen. Thank you to Elon
for donating the car and your support of the silly
little app.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Then it's the Threads emoji, a thread emoji, the.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Rocket ship emoji, the strong arm emoji, and the car emoji.
It's just so fucking perfectly bland cheerleading of like the
product that it is. I would say, like largely all that,
like Linda Yakarino has done on Twitter. It's like, I'm
not sure that she has any power, but she definitely
goes on Twitter and is like, We're so excited about
(21:09):
what we're building here, and it's like, are you She's
just cashy the check anyhow. But yeah, so so, but
then you went through a whole thing where you got fired,
Like you went through a whole bit.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
So the Nazi thing, in particular, I could tell was
like getting a little out of hand.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And I say out of hand.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
It was like all my friends and people who sort
of like knew me knew this was very clearly a joke,
and that the joke is about how Facebook and platforms
have kind of actually.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yes, viewed that.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yes, you know, the joke is the joke is this
is the answer that they actually fucking give a lot
of the time when you're like are you going to
moderate rights Nazis or are you going to moderate like
hate speech? Are you going to moderate lies? And they're like, well,
we welcome all viewpoints, and it's like.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Yeah, And I could tell it had traveled outside of
that bubble of people who know me and knew it
was a joke, and it was onto something bigger where
people were just generally aghast by it, which you know, again,
I think is a good thing because I think people
should repeatedly feel agast by like the poor content moderation
(22:16):
decisions that are happening on platforms.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
But wait, hold on, hold on a second, Hold on
a second. Is this real?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
There's a fucking oh, there's like some Economic Times dot
India Times dot com. Who's Katanatopolas know about? Editor in
chief of Threads now fired over a controversial post. It's
just like I think an actual article from some like
oh it is okay. Taking to Twitter on Friday, July
said seventh, Katie atopol has announced on Twitter that she
has now fired as editor in chief of Threads met
as new social media app there recently wanted, okay, whatever
(22:41):
this is like one like if you search for Nazi lifestyle,
hold on, oh this is okay, these are your Nazi
lifestyle Threads app. That's like the second there's multiple articles.
There's actually multiple articles written about I.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Think what happened was that it basically like you know
how you know the a famous tweet about how like.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Everyone's goal on Twitter is to not be the person of.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
The day, right, yes, yes, I was the Threads person
of the day for like a moment, and like, I
think it got to the point where it's probably somehow
hit some Google metric of trending, like and so these
seo like sites that kind of you know, like what's
the one like breaker or like.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I don't know, they're all anything.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
That basically is just like sensing whenever there's a blip
in the like.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The site Dexero, do you know the same Dexerto?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I feel like, no, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
There's a Katie in the topless one now because of
this too.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And who is who is Kaane? The topless troll. Threads
editor goes viral with controversial posts. I mean they did
like a full on BuzzFeed style like fucking slide show
ship on this, Like it's so really.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Funny because it feels very AI generated too.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, I'm not sure that these aren't, to be honest,
Like it.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
Just attracted enough Google information. I think that the post
on Threads had traveled enough that people enough people were
googling who is Katie to topless because they were trying
to figure out if it was legit, right, I think, right,
I think a lot of people were like unclear.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, Also, the fact that you had been for a
long period of time a reporter at BuzzFeed made the
plausibility of you becoming the editor in chief of Threads
just absolutely perfect.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I mean it was like completely acceptable to believe that.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Oh yeah, like yeah right, like BuzzFeed News shut down
like she got a new job, is like editor in
chief of Threads like completely By the way, I'm sorry,
I'm reading a sports keyted dot com some fun. There's
some these crazy spam, random fucking gout. The internet is
full of such guardas.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Oh definitely.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Well, one thing is a couple of them said that
incorrectly they thought my account was taken down.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
What ended up happening.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yes, they did say that.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
That's right, the Nazi post was taken down, that one
single post that was the post.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Were you pretending to be, as a joke, the editor
in chief of Threads, a role that does not exist.
Were you were telling a person a thing that you
had zero actual power to do or implement, which is
letting people who leave a Nazi lifestyle post on Threads.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
They took that post down just to be clear.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
That that is krreshed.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
So and what was the rationale? Was it impersonation? What
was the no.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
When you get a post taken down, it doesn't tell you,
like exactly why, And you know, there's a very clear
reason for that, because a lot of the time Facebook
doesn't want you to know exactly its rules, right, Like
they keep it fuzzy for a reason because as soon
as people know the exact rules, they're going to gain
the system.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
So it just said like this was in violation of
our policies or whatever. My guess would be that it
would fall under like you're not allowed to like encourage
or show support of hate groups. To can't say I
like you can't say I'm not a Nazi, but I support.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Them, right, sure, yeah, okay, fair.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
So I have a feeling it probably fell under that.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
I mean, I wouldn't be totally surprised if the fact
that I was also impersonating Threads employee played some context.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
I think there's sort of two versions. One is that
like people.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Probably reported it, you know, like people report things race.
It flagged to some outsource moderator who had to make
a decision in point five.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Second, guy in a sweatshop who has to look at.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
The possible this you can't like you're not allowed to
praise Nazis or show support of them, Like does that
count as praising Nazis? I don't know, maybe like sure,
take it down whatever, like but you know, frankly, you
know what better safe than sorry? Fine, I'm happy with that,
you know. Or it's possible, I think much less likely that,
like there was a higher level discussion about whether or
(27:00):
not to allow that very misleading, an inflammatory post about
meta itself to continue.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Well, I think I think in a way it would.
It exposed.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
First off, was a very funny bit, and everybody who
does know you thought it was very enjoyable to watch
it play out. But I think what it exposed is
like you touched on it already. Is the real and
sort of absurd reaction that these companies have to things
that twe a person, a normal person seem obviously like addressable.
(27:33):
And I think you brought up the thing where Zuckerberg said,
you know, well it's a different opinion or whatever about
like holocaust and ires, and I think like there was
also as a part of that, and it may have
been that interview, or it may have been a separate
post that he did on Facebook or something where he
was like, I don't believe I should be you know,
(27:53):
the person who decides what speech like should be allowed
and shouldn't be allowed on this platform or whatever. It's
like rationale is like, well, it's such a big platform
and there's so many people on it, Like I can't
be the one, you know, the guy who decides. And
it's like, well, you know what the thing is. It's
a publicly owned company that is a for profit business,
and like ultimately you actually get to say as the
(28:15):
CEO what you won't, will and won't allow on the platform.
And they do it all the time, right, Like there's
a ton of shit, there's a ton of shit you
cannot put on Facebook, Like a million different horrible things
you cannot post on Facebook, and it's like you could
decide and just have you just have to deal with
the fact that people will go like, you're not letting
all the viewpoints on here, but like so fucking what right,
(28:36):
But they don't want to do that. They want to
play this like weird middle ground, like for what reason.
I don't really know. I understand like the concept, but
it's not hard.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
To be really I think the reason is clear, right
Like that. Ultimately, Mark Zirgerber doesn't really care about the moderation.
He cares about getting hauled in in front of Congress
and having Republicans yolotan because he moderated too much, right, right,
So this gives him the whole excuse of like we
created this out outside the Facebook Oversight Committee and basically
just punt all those hards. He does not do anything
(29:06):
to not have to be the one to make the
decision about banning or not banning Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I would love I would love to be in front
of Congress and have someone be like, you know, question
the why or why you ban a Nazis thing, you know,
and just be like, look, dude, you know if somebody's
clearly posting Nazi shit, like I don't know, seems.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Pretty straightforward, like if you think otherwise, like I'm all yours.
I just don't understand the argument.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You know, it's it's never okay, so it's never going
to be the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
No, but you can use the Nazis. You can use
the Nazis.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
To be fair, Facebook has banned Nazis for a long time, okay,
and so his Instagram and like, frankly, the question about
like are you're gonna be Nazis on threads, it's like, yeah,
you know what they've had, Like you're.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Not allowed to like already ban a Nazi for a
long time, right, Like the.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Only place where Nazis aren't banned is Twitter.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
That's the right, or you know, honestly, technically they probably are.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
No, I don't think they are. I don't think they are.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I don't I have a feeling if you are, like
literally I'm a Nazi like that stuff, it's probably a no.
But I think where you get into trouble is all
these edge cases things like like libs of TikTok is
the perfect example of something that's this like really frustrating
edge case for these things where it's like she's constantly
(30:22):
towing the line of like, oops, I'm going a little
bit over what you said the rules were, Oops I'm
not you know, back and forth. And if it wasn't
someone who had like millions of followers and all of
a sudden, like a lot of eyes on her, they
would have banned her a long time ago. But now
it's like now she's this like nightmare person who's so
popular that if she gets.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Banned, and like Josh Hawley's gonna yell and like.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
It's not necessarily just like the Nazis, because I just
like the reason everyone sort of uses that as an example.
It's like, of course you bann the Nazis. The question
is like do you ban the transphobes? Like do you
ban there's a lot of stuff that doesn't fall under
h beats that is very objectionable, right or.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That like they wiggle there.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
They're really right up against that of the line of
you know, hey, maybe some of the posts get flagged.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Some of their posts, don't you know.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Yeah, so that's where they run into problems, you know,
that's where people are like annoyed by them for not
being a little bit stricter on that stuff, right, I mean, like,
you know, content moderation and trusted safety and policy is
not easy, right, Like I think that like it sort
of does a disservice.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I think to make it also seem like it.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Would just be so easy just bend lots of people,
Like that's not purely the answer, but clearly Facebook has
done a very like there's a there's a lot to
point to about how they fail, right, Yeah, they've They've.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Done a lot of unforced errors, sure.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
At any rate, So you know, it was a good run.
You'd a great run.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It was a good run.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
But I started getting like a little bit like once
I started seeing the like SEO stuff pop up. Yeah,
a couple people were really like aggressively. There was one
guy who I was like, buddy, what's what's what's going
on here? Like he was just messaging me on every
possible platform to be like, Nazi jokes not funny, You're disgusting.
And I think at first he didn't know it was
(32:34):
a joke, so he was just like he didn't think.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It was a joke.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
He was like, you're disgusting, you support Nazis. Yeah, and
then eventually.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
He realized that it was a joke, and he was like,
Nazi jokes.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
So not funny, but he was, you know, he was
sending me LinkedIn messages, he was emailing me. I was like, buddy, like,
I agree, I don't like the Nazis either, Like, but
please stop bothering me. Right, he was getting like a
little I could tell I was in a my head
and so I was like, I gotta fire realself.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I can't keep this joke up much longer.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Interesting, Okay, I didn't realize I sort of missed the whole.
I mean I maybe saw somebody share the Nazi thing,
like laughing about it or saw you do it, and
I was like, well, clearly, you know she's making this joke.
I guess I didn't realize that the reason you stopped
was sort of because of this outside sort of weird
shit that was going on, Like well.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Some of amazing.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I mean, I wasn't gonna keep up the gag forever.
It was also like funny for one day and then
like it wasn't you know, it wasn't gonna be that
much funny right anymore anyways, But but it is weird
that like because threads doesn't show you the you know,
likes and reposts numbers. It's hard for an outsider to
tell if something is actually going viral or not. So like,
(33:46):
there's no reason you would have known that this was
actually like blowing up right. The only reason I could
know is because I was seeing some of the notifications
of like the responses and the thing, and I was
seeing the chatter on other platforms, like I had people
like texting me weird stuff. Like honestly, it tricked a lot,
like it tricked Walt Mosburg.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Like yeah, like, oh really did about it?
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Like I don't think this threads thing is gonna be
very good because of look at this, like there was
a screenshot that was sort of like a distant bodies
and like balth Mosberg doesn't know who I am. He
doesn't know that I'm kidding, Like right, Waltmarpha, of course,
is a very famous uh techtern.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
But you know what's funny is that Walt Mosburg and
I love Walt, but one of his big projects he
works on now is news literacy. Like he has this
whole thing that he's doing around news literacy, And I
just want to say, pretty amazing that he saw that
didn't fact check who the person was, didn't know who
the person was, and then like.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
Just I mean I have to say, like justice for
Walt here, because like, how is he going to fact
check Katie de toopolss is a little piece of shit? Right?
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Like no, I mean you could just google Katie to
topless and they'd.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Be like wow Alden seeing oh she is a former
reporter at BuzzFeed, she probably works like that makes me
chicks out.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
She's gone on the dark side. I guess, Okay, maybe
he did. You're right, Okay, no reason.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
For him to know that, Like I'm a gremlin who
likes fucking around, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, yeah, did you feel you were in danger at
any point? Did you feel like it had gotten so?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I think it was a mix of Like part of
what I felt bad about is like I was dunking,
like the dunk. I mean it wasn't even a dunk, right,
Like it was upsetting people whose viewpoints I agree with, right,
Like people who are like I don't want Nazis on
my platform, and this upsets me.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I'm like, yeah, I agree, like and.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
So well, that's the point. That's the joke.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Sometimes there are people who are being like a little
too like gullible and earnest about it, but also like.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
No, I get it, I get it, But like the
problem is the reason why it penetrated and the reason
why people were upset is because it sounds exactly like
something that some fucking editor in chief of Threads hired
by Mark Zuckerberg and Adamasiri might actually say.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
And like that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
It struck a nerve both internally, I'm sure ed Metta,
and also with the audience because it rang true and
and and by the way, I'm not saying you shouldn't
have killed the joke. That makes a lot of sense,
but I think what is more telling is it rang
so true and so many people reacted in earnest to it,
and that's not an accident. And I actually think like
(36:15):
at the heart of your joke, which obviously was you
ultimately and I know for a fact you had no
ulterior motive of doing anything smart or.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
You know interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I know that I know I know you well enough
to know that you were just fucking around and being
funny and thought it was like a good gag.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
But like the at the heart of it, what it
really exposes.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Is like the actual underlying bullshit of these platforms and
and like in a way like was it's the most
effective possible critique of their shit. I mean, you know,
people are always like comedians are the modern day philosophers.
But you know, I think like you're your like parody
or whatever worked because people think it's completely reasonable that
(36:56):
that's what a representative of Threads would say, and that's
actually like a Mark Zuckerberg problem that like they have
yet to really effectively solve.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
So yeah, you know, and to be perfectly fair, also,
I mean, like I you know, I did think I
was being like a little bit smart.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And cheeky, but I will also say that I feel
like I was old.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Look kay, I mean I'm not saying it wasn't clever,
but I'm just saying, like, I don't think you were
like trying to make a major point about like society
or anything.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
I think I saw that like my eight friends would
think it was pretty funny, and they did, and they
did anyway, So yeah, So then I think the next
day my plan to get out of it was I said,
you know, oh boy, I have an unscheduled meeting in
my calendar to meet with Mark this morning, so.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Excited to go and see what the big boss.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
Says, and then you know, thirty minutes later, I said,
oh my god, I can't believe this, but I've been fired.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
You played out who the whole narrative.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, it was a lot of fun for me.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I'll tell you something.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Your thing that you were doing was one of the
few things in the early days of Threads that really
made me feel like this could work. I was like, oh, like,
Katie's doing her thing and everybody's kind of like reacting
to it, and we're all, like, you know, where most
of us are in on the joke, some of us
are not, But like, it just felt like weird, you know,
it felt like weird Twitter. It felt like like, you know,
the kind of shit that goes on where it's it's loose,
(38:15):
you know, and like it's posting. But honestly, like, you know,
I don't see a lot of that on Threads. I
don't see a lot of anything of like sparks, any
kind of real like delight.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
At this point.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, I mean, Threads has definitely.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
I mean, all the indicators showed that, you know, it's
been dropping and users. Although it's hard, I don't know,
I still check it multiple times a day.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I'm looking at threads like on a more regular
basis than I'm looking at Twitter.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, it's I think
it's still like hard to say what will happen. Like
it's not a surprise that people who came for the
first day to like be like, oh my favorite Hollywood
celebrities and Instagram influencers are on here, and then of
course those people sort of dropped off off like and
are active. I think the question is how many people
(39:05):
will stick around who were like I've never been on Twitter,
or like maybe I joined Twitter once and smith like
I left, but hey, goods, thing is kind of fun.
And how many people are like I'm on Twitter and
I hate it, So what is this a good place
for me to go instead? You know, Like yeah, I
think between those two things, like there's it's kind of
it's you know, I think it's still got a chance.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about it is,
you know, not that we can really know what the
future holds, but just seems like the the value of
it and the utility of it is just going down
and down. The question is like can I mean, to me,
it's like can the threads app figure out some of
the basic things that people want who are migrating or
who want to use something else, which is like I
(39:49):
need to find all the people that like I want
to follow, and they need to be able to find me,
like the real people that I follow. Not like no
diss to my Instagram folks, but like that graph is
not reflective of like who I.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Want for like information and jokes.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
It's more like things I like to look at or
family members who I want to see, like pictures of
like they're like what they're doing on vacation or their.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Kids or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
It's not like, Yeah, it's definitely a different use case,
and like I think they need to have some solution
to that, and they need to have some solution to
making it feel like there's an active, real time conversation
going on. One other thing I think actually kind of sucks.
It's like Twitter tells you when there's new posts, like
it's like there's new posts and you're like, oh shit,
I gotta check those out.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, Threads doesn't seem to do that.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
When I can tell like if you sit on threads
and just like check out what's going on, it doesn't
like prompt you to.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
I mean that actually feels like something that might be intentional,
Like I feel like that's sort of like we want
to make this a healthy place. It doesn't make you
feel like you're like addicted and have to refresh constant.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Well, then it won't work. You need to be addicted.
That's the whole point of this type of service.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I believe that they are working on more product features
that will address a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Complaints that people have right now.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
I think the thing is like they clearly launched is
such a bare boe owned version that it may have
actually been a turn off to a fair amount of people,
because you know, when you launched it as a like
you couldn't even see like just a following feed.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
It was like it was only the sort of four
year yeah right.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I Mean the funny thing is like had they waited
a few more weeks finished out those extra features they
were working on, Elon would have done something justice.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
There's no shortage, Yes, there's no shortage of stupid shit
that guy's going to come up with.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
I mean I think that, like, I think the idea
that they had to jump on that timing of like oh,
shit like Twitter's down, like let's get our replacement thing
out right away.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
It is like people still would have.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Liked it because Twitter is still just as fucked up
and you know, even worse.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, I mean it's all bad.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I do think, you know, not to not to be
a downer or whatever, but I do feel like we're
just at the period of like the social media thing
has just become so such a chore and so like
un fun. I find more than anything, like what is
just bums me out is there was a period, a
pretty long period where at least for my purpose, which
is like funny jokes and like you know news stuff
(42:04):
or like you know story stuff that people are like
posting or talking about, it wasn't the way it is now,
Like it didn't feel that way.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
It wasn't always combat.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yes, there would be like the character of the day
or whatever, but that was like one person, not everybody
was like in the site, you know, it really wasn't
even that fucking popular, like by comparison to an Instagram
or a Facebook or like I think they're like fucking
TikTok or snapchat.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
They're all way bigger, oh way bigger. But it served a.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Purpose and it was like pretty fun most of the time.
It could occasionally be horrible, but it was like fairly
fun like most of the time. And then like you know,
I would say, coinciding with like the Trump campaign for sure,
that definitely upped the temperature on the service. And through
those years I just became like really degraded in like
the kind of discourse. It was just people who were made.
(42:54):
And Elon took that in, like he took all of
the anger and the vitriol and the like brokenness and
the context collapse and everything and just magnified it in
a way that makes it feel really shitty and like
a bombery, you.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Know what it's like.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
You know Ghostbusters too, I'm familiar with the film.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
So you know the premise there is like there's this
haunted painting of the Vigo.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
It's it's a it's a painting of a guy named Vigo.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, I think his name is like Vigo the Destroyer
or Vigo the Annihilator or something.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
And he's a sort of you know I've in the
terrible type historical persona or whatever, and and he is,
you know, a haunted ghost and he his power. He
grows more and more powerful by feeding off hate and anger.
And you know, it just so happens his painting has
(43:48):
come to the met in New York City and there's
this sort of great scene where it's like the subways
are just flowing with this pink slime and it's like, oh,
it's because everyone, you know, New York City is so angry,
like all the time, cabs honking or whatever. Yeah, I
feel like that's you know, that's kind of a metaphor
for Elon Musk and Twitter is like feeding off this.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
And by the way, the guy's name is Vigo the Carpathian.
That's the name of the of the painting. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Anyhow, but I'll tell.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
You what, Josh, I feel both similar and different to you.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
And here's how.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
Okay, I too mourn the loss of Twitter. I loved Twitter,
like it was so much.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Twitter was your home. Twitter was your playground.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Well, I think a.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
Lot of people enjoyed it when it was good, right,
I agree, a lot of really when you think when
you remember all the fun times we had on there, right,
Like it was a great place to be for like
jokes and like it was a really useful place for news,
Like if there was like a breaking I remember, like
it was really useful in Hurricane Sandy.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Like yeah, no, I mean there was real there were
real time moments on Twitter that were really quite valuable.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, and like there was a lot, like there were
a lot of like really fun things, and I like
I really enjoyed having wonderful, positive connections with other people
and like that was great, and I like, I, like
you am sad that it is like kind of going.
I don't know if it's not gonna shut down tomorrow,
(45:18):
but like it's not that anymore. It's not the fun,
delightful place. A lot of the people that I enjoyed
communicating with have already left. It's you know, it's not
as much fun. Like fifty percent of the tweets on
there are about Twitter or X. However, I think, unlike you,
I feel like I have some optimism because I feel
(45:39):
like the demise of Twitter and like sort of as
you described, like the end of a sort of social
media moment where it's like Facebook has stunk for a
long time, and like I think a lot of people
have Instagram fatigued too, and like I watch a ton
of TikTok, but it's nothing that like my friends were.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Using right now talk is it for me?
Speaker 2 (46:02):
It's a it's a solitary.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yes, it's a private You're not sharing, you're not fucking reposting,
you're not responding, You're just experiencing the TikTok.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
It's pure consumption. I enjoy it, but I feel like
there's no there's not much social going on there for
me at least. Yes, but I do think that like
this has left an opening for something new, and I
do think that, like, I think there's reasons to be
optimistic about.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
What new is next.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
You know, Wow, the idea of replacements for Twitter that
are you know, conceivably smaller, like blue Sky massed on
even Threads.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, I mean this is spoken like spoken like the
future editor in chief of some social network.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
I have to say this is the mark I'm available
for hire.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
I mean, look, I'll I'll say this, and then we
got Unfortunately, we do have to wrap up.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
As much as I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
The biggest mistake they made was not hiring you immediately
to actually be the editor in chief of Threads. In
my opinion, the greatest move in the world would have
been for them to immediately be like let's do it.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Let's hire Katie. And also, by the.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
Way, I think I for a moment I was like,
what if they have to say face and I'm right, no,
But like, I don't think that's a job I would want.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
I do think you would bring a lot of great
insight and ideas into a place like that. And frankly,
like I think a service like and not by the way,
I'm not like making a pitch for you, but like
a service like Threads would be better for having a
person like you there who actually like knows why things
like threads the way it could be, like why it's
good because I don't think a lot I think there's
a lot of people there who don't didn't ever really
(47:39):
get or care about Twitter, who are like, we build
a thing that's kind of like it. It's like yeah,
but like you maybe don't actually understand some of the
key things that make it useful and interesting anyhow. But Katie,
as always, I have just tremendously enjoyed our conversation. Unquestionably,
you're one of my favorite people to talk to. And
I'm not just saying that because you are the mother
(48:00):
of my of my niece and nephew. It's also because
you're a genius, a great genius. But it is a
nice perk that you're the mother of my niece and nephew.
I think they're pretty cool, and I think it's a
pretty cool situation all things considered.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
All things considered, it is, Josh. You are also one
of my favorite people. Thank you to You are one
of the only people in my family who actually appreciated
my threads prank.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Oh well, anybody who anybody, including Eric who didn't fully appreciate.
I could see Eric being like, you, guys, stop guy,
knock that off, like you probably getting very upset about it.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
But I like rolling his eyes a little bit.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Right, I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to
be dealing with you on a twenty four to seven
basis when it comes to your like present.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
The problem is it's exactly what you would imagine, which
is incredibly annoying for Eric, my husband, which is that
like it's it's me on my phone giggling to myself
and it's just like.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
And then like I assume at some point you're like, oh,
like I'm getting death threats or whatever, because like right,
because that definitely has happened on more than one to you.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
There was only one point where he was like, do
we still lock the doors?
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Like you up?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
I lock it up. I lock it up.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
You should get some home alone style traps around your
house just in case. You never know when these guys
are going to try to go bust in there, you
have to hit them with some paint cans or whatever.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
Yeah, exactly all right, Katie.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Anyhow, thank you for joining me, and I expect that
you'll be back soon to tell us of your new
adventures online.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
No response to that, thanks Joss you around.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Well, that is our show for this week, and I
think what more can be said? I think Katie has
said it all, and then I said a little bit
extra to so I guess there could be more said.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
But you know, I think we're good now. I think
we've said it all.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
We'll be back next week with more what future, and
as always, I wish you and your family the very
best
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