Episode 152

BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti on where social media went wrong

BuzzFeed has always been a company that plays with the boundaries of media, technology, and internet culture. From its early days mastering viral content to its ill-fated attempt to build a sustainable news division, the company has been in a constant state of reinvention. Now, CEO Jonah Peretti is making perhaps his boldest move yet: transforming BuzzFeed into something more than just a publisher—into a social network.

In Jonah's telling, this move springs from a frustration with the direction of social media, as platforms have turned to adversarial algorithms that addict users and prey on human weaknesses. It's a different social media than the heady days of 2012-2015, when BuzzFeed mastered the art and science of creating shareable content. Jonah and I discuss the media landscape and why it's not too late to come up with an alternative social network built around joy.

Transcript
Brian:

Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

Brian:

I am Brian Morrissey.

Brian:

this week I was joined by BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, for a wide ranging discussion, about, the anti snarf manifesto that he just dropped.

Brian:

and also BuzzFeed's plans to build out its own social network, and also just how we got to this, point.

Brian:

but before we get to that, I want to tell you a little bit about an upcoming online forum that we are holding.

Brian:

This is our version of a webinar, but it's just way better.

Brian:

it's an hour long, interactive, deep dive into a particular challenge that, publishers are facing.

Brian:

And on, February 26th at 1 PM, I will be joined by Valnett's director of marketing for gaming, James Koser, and Chris Hart, CEO of TruAnthem, a social media automation platform.

Brian:

That is our partners for this online forum.

Brian:

The online forum is about how to win at social in 2025 and basically the cheap traffic era is over, but social platforms are more dominant than ever that's just the reality, and the more with less era.

Brian:

Publishers just need to be more strategic in how they deploy scarce resources to these platforms and the goals that they have for being on there.

Brian:

James is going to go into a lot of detail, in this session, focused on how Valnet's brands, which are across entertainment, gaming, and tech use Facebook, Tik Tok, X, and even dark social.

Brian:

so please do, come to that.

Brian:

you can find out more information.

Brian:

I'll leave it in the show notes.

Brian:

And it's also, in the rebooting newsletter, which I hope you all Gad and Reed, please do.

Brian:

so as I said, this week I was joined by Jonah and, last week he issued a 3, 000 word manifesto, that decried how broken social media is and BuzzFeed's plans to

Brian:

build its own social network, that will be optimized for joy, rather than, the, Addictive, where's that Jonah calls snarf?

Brian:

It's an acronym, and we get into what it means.

Brian:

And, but basically think about how the algorithms have weaponized themselves to get our attention.

Brian:

so I wanted to talk to Jonah, Actually less about this hazy plan for BuzzFeed Island, BF Island, excuse me.

Brian:

cause it isn't even a product yet and, and it doesn't even have a demo video.

Brian:

we talk a little bit about it but, it's in broad strokes to be honest with you.

Brian:

but I wanted to talk more about this evolution of social media and how it has, Pretty much overwhelmed the information space and a lot of just regular people.

Brian:

there's a lot of books out right now.

Brian:

I noticed about how we're losing our attention.

Brian:

and Jonah has built his career basically at the collision of media and social technology.

Brian:

all the way back in 2001, he had his first experiment in virality, by writing sweatshop on a customizable pair of Nikes, or at least he tried to.

Brian:

because he got rejected by Nike, and then the back and forth with the company went, went viral.

Brian:

Remember when we used to say that?

Brian:

he went on to start BuzzFeed as a company, after Huffington Post, and would basically ride the rising tides of social media, as Facebook was really just getting going and becoming dominant.

Brian:

of course, Tides go out.

Brian:

so BuzzFeed's had a rough go of it.

Brian:

we get into a little bit about the plans, for turning the company around.

Brian:

but I think I, I see this as, you know, really pivoting hard into tech.

Brian:

And, you know, I asked Jonah about this, about like, whether, you know, this is just sort of, you know, Having, operating the publishing

Brian:

business while trying to, to build a new business because, publishing is, is a rough business and, you know, just BuzzFeed stock has been down.

Brian:

It's been decimated.

Brian:

It's down like 94 percent since, since they went public.

Brian:

So, you know, the stock market doesn't necessarily love digital media companies at this moment.

Brian:

but I can remember meeting, with Jonah during BuzzFeed's early days.

Brian:

and it's somewhat hard to remember now, but social media was really exciting.

Brian:

Back then, and many people and even me at times really saw it as the future.

Brian:

I mean, Barack Obama used it.

Brian:

and, it was given a lot of credit for his what we thought was a historic election in 2008 that would change America forever.

Brian:

You know, as Facebook grew, it, it took on an expansive vision, vision and mission to connect the world.

Brian:

And Twitter was even credited with helping the Arab spring get going.

Brian:

And, and Buzzfeed really became a pioneering company of, of that time.

Brian:

Okay, and publishers would copy BuzzFeed endlessly, and it's rapid fire approach to mastering, what it took to get people to share content.

Brian:

I mean, it was basically hacking social media, in a very handcrafted way, combing through the data and, and basically

Brian:

capital, capitalizing on how people are, You know, frankly, suckers for content that says something about them.

Brian:

that's what they like to share it.

Brian:

so, you know, those were as Jonah calls it, the beer and wine days.

Brian:

And, and those have been replaced by, in his view, the fentanyl of AI driven algorithms.

Brian:

and this really started when, when Tiktok burst on the scene and all the social platforms have basically followed Tiktok's lead.

Brian:

And, You know, that along the way, these platforms also, by the way, ditch the publishers at once would,

Brian:

I mean, it would much rather have millions of creators than, deal with a bunch of ornery publishers.

Brian:

And you know the rest of the story.

Brian:

So anyway, Joan and I talk about how it all went wrong.

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And whether, now might just be the time for an alternative.

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and we also, get into my favorite, topic, which is whether we're going to have websites in the future.

Brian:

This was a fun conversation.

Brian:

as always, I would love to know what you, what you think of this and the show.

Brian:

can email me at bmorrissey@therebooting.Com.

Brian:

And if you do like, the show, please give it a rating or review.

Brian:

I, I always like to see this.

Brian:

So here's my conversation with Jonah.

Brian:

Jonah, welcome to the podcast.

Brian:

I think this is our fourth or fifth.

Brian:

We do these every few years.

Jonah:

Good to be here.

Brian:

so you just came out with the, with one of your manifestos, snarf, anti snarf, you're not pro snarf, anti snarf manifesto.

Brian:

And I always enjoy your, your, Manifestos.

Brian:

but, I wanted to like sort of just before we get into the manifesto, because I wanted to get your perspective about how we got here, right?

Brian:

Like, I mean, and not go, because I think you're scratching an itch.

Brian:

A lot of people have, and that is being articulated quite a bit.

Brian:

I'm going through the Chris Hayes book.

Brian:

You know, about attention and the sirens call is the name of it.

Brian:

It's a good book.

Brian:

and this has been talked about a lot and I think AI is making it just more, prominent in, in the discourse, if you will.

Brian:

but you've been, you know, at this, at, you know, the forefront of it, right?

Brian:

When I, when I think we've probably first talked, you know, is really when Buzzfeed was starting.

Brian:

And, you know, I always thought about.

Brian:

You know, you, before that at, at, at HuffPost, Huffington Post, then I was at the time, but you really like understood the sort of viral mechanics of the time, right?

Brian:

And and it was like fun back then, like, and I think you get at that.

Brian:

And I think a lot of, I always try not to be nostalgic, right?

Brian:

But like, yeah.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Things, it is, it is undeniable, like, things seemed a little bit lighter, and like, on the internet back then.

Brian:

so very simple question, if you were to look at like, what went wrong, what were like the three or four things that went wrong?

Jonah:

I think the biggest thing is, when you move along a gradient of, of optimization, or virality, it might

Jonah:

be that when you have a quantitative difference at a certain point, it becomes a qualitative difference, right?

Jonah:

So you might have fun, viral content that, that is persuasive to people to share and, and you're kind of playing that game.

Jonah:

And we certainly did a lot of the early

Brian:

You did a lot of that Jonah, a lot of it, the thirty seven things only the middle child understands.

Jonah:

Yes.

Jonah:

And, and then when it gets to a certain point, it, it flips from being, you know, a little bit of persuasion here or cleverness there to being something

Jonah:

that is like deeply manipulative and, and pushes people to, to, do things that are against their own interests or their own happiness.

Jonah:

And so I think, You know, there's lots of, there's lots of examples of this.

Jonah:

You know, if you're a basketball fan, the Euro step is pretty cool innovation, but if you can

Jonah:

take four or five steps, you know, then all of a sudden you're like, wait, there's no traveling rules anymore,

Jonah:

you know, so there's a, there's a fine line between something that is a advancement in say viral engineering

Jonah:

or viral contagious content that helps people spread something that they feel happy about to something where.

Jonah:

you're you're just, being completely manipulated by AI that is smart enough to, to manipulate you better than, you know, maybe any, any entity has been able to manipulate people before.

Jonah:

And so I think that's the, the, the sort of difference.

Jonah:

Like I kind of describe it as the, there was the beer and wine era of, of, of the internet.

Jonah:

And then there's the fentanyl and crack cocaine era of the internet.

Jonah:

And And, you know, there's problems with beer and wine people keep, there's alcoholism, there's people drink too much people, you know, but, but there's

Jonah:

also, you know, more clear, benefits where people relax and socialize and, you know, fall in love and have fun.

Jonah:

And, and, you know, you can take that kind of.

Jonah:

That kind of metaphor of like, you know, being a little buzz might be a positive thing, but being, being to the point where you're, you're, you're not able to control

Jonah:

yourself and you're in an addictive loop where you can't, you know, control your own behavior is something that

Jonah:

I think is, is is a problem.

Jonah:

And, you know, the other thing, which I think is kind of under appreciated is that these algorithms, Okay.

Jonah:

You know, once they became these deep learning algorithms, they become black boxes where the people working in the companies aren't even sure why the content recommendation is happening.

Jonah:

So, you know, when I would go visit Facebook in the early days, they would say, Hey, could you help us with feature selection that we could put into our algorithm?

Jonah:

Meaning, you know, what are the features of content that, that, that, that we think are important to optimize for.

Jonah:

And then once it became this deep learning model, it was like, we don't even know what's going on, but it's doing an amazing job.

Jonah:

And it, and.

Jonah:

And so I think the challenge with that is maybe it's doing an amazing job because it's figured out how people with ADHD's brains work and is essentially manipulating that, or how people

Jonah:

with autism's brains work and they're manipulating that or how people who are, you know, have trouble with impulse control, or maybe, You know, have a level of like, of, of impulse control around

Jonah:

sexuality, where they're the, the, the deep learning algorithms, like, Oh, we found that this person is going to click on anything that has this kind of content.

Jonah:

And so you end up with, whatever someone's weaknesses in their brain is being exploited by algorithms that the

Jonah:

people who work at these companies don't even understand to create, addictive patterns and compulsive patterns.

Jonah:

Because if you're running a business, you want predictability and the most predictive, predictable thing is, uh, Addictive behavior.

Jonah:

If you look at human behavior, there's all kinds of, of, of behavior that's unpredictable, that has a lot of human agency and

Jonah:

creativity in it.

Jonah:

And then there's addictive behavior where, you know, exactly what that person is going to do.

Jonah:

And if you can monetize that, it's a much more predictable thing.

Jonah:

And so if you just tell a, a kind of black box algorithm, like make the user time, you know, the user, time spent go up and make the conversions on ads go up.

Jonah:

You're going to have a lot of weird emergent effects that the people who work at these companies don't even fully

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, I always say it's like kind of, we're likely going to optimize ourselves into oblivion, like, I mean, we started optimization and it was like, oh, this is cool.

Brian:

We can like, it's like, this is improvement.

Brian:

We're improving things.

Brian:

And then all of a sudden, like we gave it, we gave it over to machines and ultimately, you know, whatever, it's the paperclip thing that we're going to be optimized, in, into not existing anymore.

Brian:

But I mean, you were, I mean, I always thought about BuzzFeed as, I mean, almost like a social science, like back because you were trying to crack open what got, what got things to go viral, right?

Brian:

They're like, and it was, you know, Algorithms, were as prominent, right?

Brian:

Like it was done by.

Brian:

Personal sharing, you know, forwarded emails and stuff, links to get passed around, and then it was like things that are going to be posted on, on Facebook or on Twitter, then what

Brian:

are you having for lunch or whatnot, but you would also share links and people get traffic and it was, it was also, I think what you guys recognized was that the content was a form.

Brian:

Sharing was a form of social expression, right?

Brian:

The, the 37 things only a middle child can understand, it says something about you, and so you want to share

Brian:

something about you to someone because that, you know, I guess, builds some kind of connection with other people.

Brian:

Fair?

Jonah:

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Jonah:

I mean, we've spent a lot of time and, you know, thinking about what's the difference between content and the informational value and content

Jonah:

and social content.

Jonah:

And, you know, when you share something.

Jonah:

You might be sharing it because you're trying to tell the world about yourself.

Jonah:

You might be sharing it because you're thinking of the other person.

Jonah:

It might be sharing it because, you know, you're, you're trying to, show that you're someone who has a kind heart.

Jonah:

So you care about cute animals or you care about a touching story.

Jonah:

And then that lets other people in your life know that, that, that they can connect with you emotionally.

Jonah:

You know, there's, there's a whole, Host of things that, that drive sharing.

Jonah:

I think one of the things that we didn't fully anticipate in those early days is that some of the most predictable sharing comes from anger and fear and outrage.

Jonah:

And so, if you're

Brian:

But to be fair, the platforms didn't necessarily, it didn't seem like, I mean, at least when Facebook of that era, when Mark Zuckerberg was talking

Brian:

about it, I remember asking him, the only question I ever asked him was like, why don't you have a dislike button?

Brian:

Like, that's how people like, you know, go through life.

Brian:

And he's like, that's not part of the product.

Brian:

Not the question.

Brian:

But, You know, they were thinking we're going to connect the world, everyone's going to be together, digital Times Square, and all this kind of, Times

Brian:

Square, digital, it has become like the old school Times Square, but digital square, and people are gonna be connected to rear square, etc. and

Brian:

I miss that era of optimism in some ways, but you get a lot of people together and, I kind of think this is like a little bit inevitable, right?

Brian:

I mean there were people who were warning that This kind of utopian view of what social media was going to do

Brian:

would end up getting controlled by Autocrats and used to control and to manipulate people rather than connect them

Jonah:

I mean, I definitely think that, a lot of the things we assume are just human nature are a moment in time, you know?

Jonah:

And so.

Jonah:

And are about the architecture of the systems that people are using.

Jonah:

So, you know, back in those sort of Obama era days of social media, you had Facebook thinking, Oh, we're connecting the world and that is going to be this.

Jonah:

you know, positivity and people connecting and mutual understanding.

Jonah:

Buzzfeed making content that was similar to, you know, to that kind of worldview where it's like, you know, you want to understand people who are different than

Jonah:

you, but the purpose of understanding them is to connect with them and realize we're all in this together.

Jonah:

So there was that period where that was the kind of content that went viral.

Jonah:

It's just, it wasn't like do gooder stuff that, that, that we may, that we made.

Jonah:

That didn't go viral.

Jonah:

This was some of the most viral content on the internet And it was super positive and kind of brought people together and I think that had a lot to do with the

Jonah:

early days of the social platforms that they were more open and it was easier to make things kind of go viral during those days because they were trying to

Jonah:

You know incentivize people to upload content It was kind of culturally the Obama era, which was, you know, defined by multiculturalism and people, you know,

Jonah:

connecting with each other and new groups of people who know weren't part of the conversation, joining the conversation and being part of part of something bigger.

Jonah:

and you had, you know, researchers like Jonah Berger writing a book called contagious that, that, you know, analyze what goes viral.

Jonah:

And it was like positive things go viral and, you know, and, and occasionally there's an exception of

Jonah:

negative

Brian:

things, things that didn't age well.

Brian:

com.

Jonah:

But then, you know, he had one exception, which was negative things where there's outrage and you, so you share it because of the outrage.

Jonah:

but, but then, you know, time passes.

Jonah:

And if you just did all the same research and all the same studies about like what goes viral, like today, it would be totally different types of things.

Jonah:

And so,

Brian:

When, let me ask you this.

Brian:

When did you start, when did you, because again, you, you've been like studying this for, for forever.

Brian:

Like, when did you start to, to either see that shift in the data?

Brian:

Because like, I get the sense that, You're a little conflicted, right?

Brian:

Because like Buzzfeed to me was always about like, it was really good at, at.

Brian:

When the content that was being shared was, was the puppies and the cats and the, the dress and the, you know, the, the middle child stuff, you know, that was like sort of what you wanted.

Brian:

You want it to be, it was the bored at work network, you know, and it was like a thing to, it was, it was a good thing.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And, and now if you're just, if you're just chasing, if you're just following the signals, right.

Brian:

It's like pretty clear what the signals are saying.

Jonah:

right.

Jonah:

And

Brian:

It's like, get into the fighting pits.

Jonah:

yeah.

Jonah:

And we have, you know, A company that has a mission and values.

Jonah:

And so we weren't just making anything to make it go viral.

Jonah:

You know, we

Jonah:

were, we were spreading truth and joy and, and we, you know, continue on that mission even when it's, it's, it's kind of suboptimal now cause the fighting content is what's, you know, Goes viral.

Jonah:

And it's partly why we're building our own platform.

Jonah:

And it's partly why we are really working on optimizing for the platforms in a way that allows us to fight against,

Jonah:

you know, what, what I call snarf, which is, you know, the kind of content that seems to be proliferating right now.

Jonah:

which is, you know, it's, it's kind of defined by, fear and anger and, You know, a, magnification of stakes.

Jonah:

So everything is existential and, kind of fabrication of novelty.

Jonah:

So everything is super novel.

Jonah:

And so there's this type of content and.

Jonah:

I think understanding the viral dynamics and how that content works will help us, you know, kind of fight against that content and make some content that still has a chance at breaking

Jonah:

through that is, is more positive and, and helps connect people together instead of just like an endless war of every tribe against every other tribe.

Brian:

Yeah, and if anyone wants to see Snarf in action, just open up X, like, literally, anytime, and you will see it, because it's a very different, to me, it's like, it's a very different place,

Brian:

obviously, than it, it used to be, and it's not about political persuasion, it's just like, you're like, whoa, this is a very, very different product, and it's, it's very intense, I, I, I compare

Brian:

it to menthol cigarettes, but, I mean, that's, maybe I'm being too kind, not saying things, you know, cause it's like, Anyone who's ever smoked a menthol cigarette never got up the next day.

Brian:

I was like, wow, I should have had more menthol cigarettes.

Jonah:

mean, it raises these questions about our capitalist system when a higher and higher percentage of.

Jonah:

GDP is things that are taking advantage of addictive cycles as opposed to

Jonah:

things that are giving utility.

Jonah:

And, you know, what does that mean if you have an economy where, you know, there's a huge portion of it that's, you know, driven by people who are in compulsive cycles,

Jonah:

you know, like the majority of alcohol sales are from people who are alcoholics

Brian:

at the gambling.

Brian:

I mean, most of the on, I mean, to me, like legal, this is a total aside, but like legalizing, like sports betting, like

Brian:

is going to be looked at as like kind of a disaster, maybe it was inevitable in our system, but, it's preying on people.

Brian:

I mean, my God, thank God they didn't have that back when I was in college.

Brian:

Like, so there would have been a lot of degenerate gambling gamblers, in McDermott hall.

Brian:

you know, but you had to go to a bookie, like some sketchy guy down, like, just in like Now, and sometimes you need friction, for things because these things are, are very, addictive.

Brian:

Let me ask you this, like, before we get into the snarf stuff.

Brian:

how is, how much of this is just, Don't take this wrongly, but I think of like of BuzzFeed as like part of the millennial internet And this is like now a different internet.

Brian:

Maybe it's the Gen Z internet I think you know Facebook was the network of choice then now it's tick tock and because tick tocks Algorithm is all the

Brian:

things that you're describing because to me like if you were to look at the main Sort of things that changed the introduction of the newsfeed, you know,

Brian:

then when you combine that with the most sophisticated algorithm, around of Tik TOK and everyone seems to me, everyone reverse engineered the Tik the best.

Brian:

And they just said, ah, forget it, forget about followers or any of that stuff.

Brian:

but this, this works best for.

Brian:

You know, grabbing attention.

Brian:

It's it's really good.

Brian:

but like, how much of it is just like a cultural change of the of the different internets?

Brian:

I

Jonah:

Well, I mean, where did where do all the millennials go If

Brian:

don't know.

Brian:

Where did

Jonah:

now the internet that they like doesn't exist

Brian:

Pinterest?

Brian:

I don't know.

Jonah:

so I, I mean, I think it's more than just a cultural change.

Jonah:

Otherwise you, you know, like in the past, you'd have a generation grows up reading a magazine and they just

Jonah:

age up with that magazine and they're still reading it, you know, when it's no longer the kids magazine.

Jonah:

Now it's a grownups magazine.

Jonah:

I think this is a little bit different where all the platforms are changing.

Jonah:

And to me, it feels like part of this larger problem of, of AI taking away people's agency.

Jonah:

I, I like AI, but I like it as something that extends our agency where you're using AI tools to make things you

Jonah:

couldn't have made otherwise to, you know, extend your, your will and your ideas and your creativity in the

Brian:

Assistive AI, basically.

Jonah:

Yeah, it can do a lot for you.

Jonah:

It can be super powerful, but you're directing it.

Jonah:

And I think when you look at the AI, you know, like your example of, of, well, it used to, it used to be about followers and things like that.

Jonah:

Well, you know, there's problems with the follower following model of social media, but at least you're picking who you want to follow.

Jonah:

You're like, Oh, this person's has some pretty good tweets.

Jonah:

I'm going to follow this person, or this person's Instagram is interesting.

Jonah:

I'm going to follow this person.

Jonah:

And then I'm going to get some content from them.

Jonah:

There's some agency there.

Jonah:

You're choosing who to follow and then that's influencing what, what kinds of content you get.

Jonah:

the TikTok model, because AI is matching content to people based on, you know, These Deep learning recommendation that is is sort of figuring out how to make the most addictive content possible

Jonah:

appear in your for you page You end up losing a lot of agency both because you're not picking who you're following and you're not picking which types of content reach you and Because the

Jonah:

algorithm is so good at commanding your attention that you just spend hours and hours on this feed And at the end of it you often, you know, like the the study

Jonah:

that I I, linked in my memo where people were, you know, a large percentage of people were saying they would pay money to have TikTok and Instagram not exist.

Jonah:

You know, so they were like, I use this product all the time, but I would pay to not have this product in the world.

Jonah:

It shows it's not giving positive utility, but it's giving.

Jonah:

It's taking away their agency.

Jonah:

It's why people don't like it.

Jonah:

It's because the A. I. Is taking their agency away.

Jonah:

And so that's what we're fearing in the future is as going to take our

Jonah:

agency.

Jonah:

The robots are going to control us, but it's already controlling a big portion of our people's days.

Jonah:

and they don't like it.

Jonah:

And so the

Brian:

Do you do?

Brian:

Well, let me ask you this.

Brian:

Do you include YouTube in this?

Jonah:

I think that,

Brian:

So the last good platform?

Jonah:

I think that YouTube, you know, is kind of like, right there on the line.

Jonah:

I think that that YouTube shorts have made it a little more TikTok like, which

Jonah:

creates some of these kind of problems, but YouTube also with a longer form video, you know, you're, You're there's fewer points at which an algorithm is

Jonah:

determining what you're seeing and more points where you're watching something longer and spending time, time with it.

Jonah:

So I do think YouTube has, you know, mitigated some of these things.

Jonah:

and also it has such a deep archive of things from the past that it also, that also I think has, has helped YouTube.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, there's junk food on YouTube, but there's a lot of nutrient dense, food on offer there.

Brian:

And, and I think that's the challenge of a lot of this stuff is like, I, I'm totally with you where I'm just like, Oh my God, and maybe it's getting older where I'm like, I can't.

Brian:

This, this stuff is breaking my brain.

Brian:

It's got to be breaking other people's brains.

Brian:

I don't feel good after I, I feel like I went to the movie.

Brian:

If you go to a movie and you're like, Oh yeah, I'll take the, they try to upsell you on like the large popcorn and never feel good afterwards.

Brian:

Kind of feel that a little bit with social media these days.

Brian:

but at the same time,

Jonah:

the large popcorn is a good example because it's essentially.

Jonah:

When behavioral economics is, is, is becoming more important than economics,

Jonah:

right?

Jonah:

Where it's like, where it's like, it's, it's a lot harder to create a product that creates lots of utility

Jonah:

for a consumer than it is to figure out a way to manipulate people into extracting more value from them.

Jonah:

And so that's the problem is too much of the economy becomes Oh, we're going to have the right different sizes of

Jonah:

popcorn and we're going to only charge a little bit more for the bigger one but then we're sucking more money

Jonah:

from out of them and then they're eating more than they really want to eat and it's like nobody wins except the the The seller of the product is is

Jonah:

essentially extracting more money from people but without giving them additional utility It it's it's you know, that's that's essentially the the problem

Jonah:

and I think social media is one example But it's popped up in lots of other places in our

Brian:

Yeah, it's funny because that's that's the sort of line because like I think an easy sort of ejection to you doing the anti snarf, you know, memos that will wait a second.

Brian:

You guys were manipulating people back when it was like, Not very sophisticated, not as sophisticated as it is now, and now, you know, machines, as it

Brian:

turns out, are way better at doing manipulation of people, but the degree of manipulation is completely different.

Brian:

I can see that sort of, you know, I think it's, it's a nuanced thing, at least how I see it.

Jonah:

Yeah, for sure.

Jonah:

I mean, look, I, I feel like BuzzFeed and myself personally, you know, we, we were pioneers of thinking about content and how it spreads on the internet and how to make, make viral content.

Jonah:

And, you know, you asked earlier, when did we hit the point where we, where we saw it was tipping over to this other place.

Jonah:

And I think it was when Facebook launched what they called meaningful social interactions, this new thing that was supposed to improve

Jonah:

their algorithm.

Jonah:

Yeah, it sounds great.

Jonah:

And looking back on it, that was a real tipping point for the Internet because they looked at comments more than they looked at other signals.

Jonah:

to me, I always thought sharing people sharing with someone in their

Jonah:

life.

Jonah:

Was more meaningful like you're, you know, you you're, you're not going to share a piece of content with You know someone you love or a friend or a family member If you think the content is terrible junk food,

Jonah:

you're going to share it.

Jonah:

If, if it helps you connect to that person.

Jonah:

And so that was earlier, Facebook was more about sharing.

Jonah:

And then when this meaningful social interaction thing, it was more about comments and, and so listening to comment, the fear and outrage thing really drove a lot of comments.

Jonah:

And so if you put something that was controversial or even a piece of content that was broken, like there was a factual error in it.

Jonah:

You get all these comments of people saying that's not true and I hate that and this is wrong and, you know, and there's all this fighting,

Jonah:

especially if it's like a two sided issue.

Jonah:

And then that would drive adoption in the newsfeed.

Jonah:

And then Facebook just slowly became a place for people to fight because the algorithm that they, they sort of switched to what you know, was, was, Favoring things that elicited comments, and that

Jonah:

was because Facebook was worried that that that less people were contributing data to Facebook and more people were becoming passive and just consuming media.

Jonah:

But that meaningful social interactions change, I think, was the first step of kind of ruining, ruining the Internet.

Jonah:

And, you know, we had a post that someone wrote called olives are terrible.

Jonah:

And it was all about how olives are just these nasty salt bombs that don't taste terrible.

Jonah:

Right.

Jonah:

And of course, a lot of people in the comments, you know, we're

Brian:

And they break teeth.

Brian:

Yeah, there's a danger.

Brian:

There's a safety issue.

Jonah:

so it led to this huge fight and then that went viral and then really good content we created didn't go viral.

Jonah:

And so I like sent that off to Facebook, Facebook's head of newsfeed.

Jonah:

And I was like, why is this terrible article about all is being terrible, getting all this distribution.

Jonah:

And it's just because it's a fight.

Jonah:

And, you know, we, we were not in a position to make the, the, the content about the things that people.

Jonah:

Fight even more about like things like abortion and and race and

Jonah:

you know Politics that like we were we didn't want to make that kind of kind of toxic content so we're we became at a disadvantage because you know,

Jonah:

the bright parts of the world could could create their like, you know, immigrant watch content and lead which led to these massive fights online

Jonah:

that got lots of distribution and And so, you know, I mostly was like trying to lobby the platforms of like, Hey, you're really made a huge mistake here.

Jonah:

This is going to lead to lots of techs, toxicity and fights and polarization.

Jonah:

but you know, it turned out that, that, that was kind of okay for their business.

Brian:

Okay, so what is the, what, what is the AI role in this?

Brian:

Obviously, I mean, AI, it's thrown around a lot.

Brian:

And obviously these, these algorithms have gotten incredibly sophisticated.

Brian:

They're using AI within them and whatnot.

Brian:

But now AI is also moving to like the creation sphere and like, you know, you, I think you have a somewhat nuanced take on like.

Brian:

AI's role, particularly in creation, because I mean, a year ago you talked about using more AI, AI for quizzes, and I've seen, I assume that it will be true.

Brian:

I've seen studies, you know, 98 percent of the Internet's content will be AI, generated, if it isn't already.

Brian:

I mean, there's a lot of AI stuff out there.

Brian:

Facebook, and from what I'm told, I've not been on Facebook in like seven years, is like filled with AI slop.

Brian:

just the fact that there is the term AI slop out there tells you that it's, it's pretty prevalent.

Brian:

yeah.

Brian:

But what is your view on how AI can be like a force for good?

Brian:

Because I think it's got an interesting role in that it's on both sides of this.

Brian:

Like it's the only way is to like, you can't, I'd love to sort of do the sort of Brunello Cuccinelli, like Solomeo

Brian:

kind of thing, but like, I think the only way out is to, is that it's going to be AI battling AI in some ways.

Jonah:

Yeah, I'm definitely not anti AI, but I think if you have a really powerful deep learning model and you say to it, Maximize the amount of time people spend on this, you know, On this app, or just

Jonah:

maximize the amount of sales you, it leads to a fairly dystopian thing, you know, type of situation where you're, the AI is at odds with human agency.

Jonah:

You know, you're basically saying that control these people and get the behavior out of them that we want.

Jonah:

that's different than saying, here's a bunch of different creative AI tools.

Jonah:

Use those tools.

Jonah:

So, you know, Buzzfeed created a emoji generator where if you had an idea for emoji that didn't exist, you could, you could have the RAI create that for you.

Jonah:

you know, and then like a couple of months later, Apple came out with the emoji generator that was not nearly as cool as ours.

Jonah:

but, but that kind of, flip where this isn't just, You know, the AI is trying to get you to spend all your time, you know, whatever, buying products or consuming, starved content.

Jonah:

The, your, the AI is at your service and you can use it to, to do fun things or creative things, And, you know, play games.

Jonah:

we, we created a Nepo baby simulator where you could, try to raise your Nepo baby.

Jonah:

we, you know, we've, we've built a lot of things that, that give the audience, the, the agency to use the AI to, to make things, create things, play, connect with other people.

Brian:

Is there, is there a market for it?

Brian:

Like, I mean, honestly, I'm, I'm just like, these platforms are incredibly popular for a reason.

Brian:

And it goes beyond like, you know, yes, they have addictive qualities, but like, to me, a lot of these, like you

Brian:

mentioned, like fentanyl, unfortunately we're still in, in the midst of it, but it is, it is, I think, declining.

Brian:

Like the crack epidemic, you know, went mostly away.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And I think a big.

Brian:

I think studies have shown it, like one of the big reasons is it was totally uncool to do crack.

Brian:

Like it was just like, you do not want to grow up and be like, you know, crackhead was not a, a, a term of, you know, a compliment at all.

Brian:

And so a generation grows up and sees, you know, crack, you know, addicts around.

Brian:

They're like, I don't want to do that.

Brian:

Like that's, that's,

Jonah:

And I, I don't want to over strain the analogy, but you are starting to see kids who feel that way about being on Instagram all the time, you know, where they, it's not cool.

Jonah:

You know, it's like, Oh, you're one of those people who doesn't do anything.

Jonah:

And, you know, we're going to go camping or we're going to, you know, put our

Brian:

I mean, look at all the run clubs in New York.

Brian:

Why else would that be?

Brian:

I mean, people are revolting against like dating apps.

Brian:

So, but let's, let's talk about BF Island.

Brian:

Cause like I, I read through it.

Brian:

It's, it's hard to, I don't know.

Brian:

I, until I see the product, I don't, I don't really know.

Brian:

But what, what is the, The idea is to create a, a different place where people can use a lot of AI tools to express themselves.

Brian:

But it's not like, it's not a place for content.

Brian:

Well, content is, is, is a different term, but like, this is not like a place to bring together, you know, the tasty content, the HuffPo content, like all of that content.

Jonah:

it's not a place for professional editorial content,

Jonah:

you know, so our, our, our approach will be tasty.

Jonah:

Buzzfeed HuffPost should be the best possible.

Jonah:

Editorial businesses, publishing businesses that they can be.

Jonah:

We should run them lean.

Jonah:

We should make great content that is trusted.

Jonah:

We should hire great writers

Jonah:

and,

Brian:

building the new business.

Jonah:

and maybe, maybe, there's ways AI could help make the team more efficient, but they're not going to write the content.

Jonah:

You

Jonah:

know, they're, you know, and so, so that's, that's our core business and we want to keep innovating and evolving that core business, but this is something new, which is user generated content.

Jonah:

But imagining a social media platform that is AI native.

Jonah:

So all the big social media platforms were built a decade plus ago, 20 years ago, something like that.

Jonah:

And they were all built with, the idea that users submit content and then the content is somehow organized and spit back to, to, you know, in some ranked way.

Jonah:

And, and you try to make, you know, an addictive consumption behavior and have enough people, you know, contributing content that there's enough supply of content for everyone consuming it.

Jonah:

And AI was really not part of it.

Jonah:

and one of the things that you saw happen over time is that all of these platforms ended up with a small creator class making all the content and then everyone else, very passive.

Jonah:

And this is something that Facebook fought for years.

Jonah:

because they, you know, the very early days of Facebook, when it was really just about building your network and connecting with your group of friends, every,

Jonah:

like 80 percent of people contributed data to the service, like they would post things and do updates and, and that, you know, they were naive back

Jonah:

then they thought that was normal, but that was like this ridiculous level of participation in a social platform that was You know, it was pretty unprecedented.

Jonah:

Almost every other platform, you know, it, it trends towards having, you know, 10 percent of people submit content, maybe 1 percent submit the majority of the content, and then the 99 percent of

Jonah:

people are consuming content that that small group of people makes, You know, and so Reddit, it might be super active posters or, or mods and, you know, on Twitter, it's the big accounts that are

Jonah:

constantly tweeting and, and the average person doesn't tweet at all or the average Facebook, you know, and, and, and so what happened with Facebook is over time, the average person stopped posting.

Jonah:

And so people were just going and then, and then they, you know, they consume Buzzfeed content or creator, and then after that creator content or, things

Jonah:

like that, and you, you ended up with, with something that wasn't really a creative social network where everyone's participating and you ended up with a

Jonah:

new kind of media where people are just consuming media made by other people and the other people are creators or the other people are media companies.

Jonah:

But.

Jonah:

it doesn't really matter.

Jonah:

It's it becomes like a small number of people posting content and a large number of people consuming it.

Jonah:

And despite what Zuckerberg and others tried to do, they ended up with the media platforms, not really social media platforms.

Jonah:

And so what I think AI can unlock is the ability for more people to create content because it's a lot easier and the barrier to entry is, is much lower.

Jonah:

And so if it's, you know, like the emoji generator example, and you can just think of a funny idea for an emoji and then the AI makes it, that's a lot lower.

Jonah:

Bar, you know, for participation, then if you have to like design a new emoji and make something that's visually

Jonah:

cool.

Jonah:

And so I think there's a lot of examples like that where people can take quizzes or, use little toys or generators can

Jonah:

play games, can do things where a little bit of action leads to a lot of output because the AI is helping you do it.

Brian:

But like, is, is the social graph, I haven't heard that in a while, is that still like important?

Brian:

Is it like mapping people to each other?

Brian:

Cause like when I first, I was like, Oh my God, wait, isn't this like 10 years too late?

Brian:

Like, I mean, this sounds like, I mean, maybe this should have been like an alternative to, to Facebook.

Brian:

I mean, look, there was Path.

Brian:

There was, there was some other like alternatives that were taking slightly different approaches.

Brian:

They, they, none of them was able to compete with, with Facebook.

Brian:

And, you know, this, these, these platforms have shown

Jonah:

Maybe they, maybe they were 10 years too early.

Brian:

That could be, but these platforms have shown once, once they get going and once they have distribution power and the internet has again and again taught us this lesson that the commanding heights

Brian:

are being able to control distribution because you can do whatever you want, you can do whatever you want, like you can make every error in the book and you're still going to win, there's a reason

Brian:

that Google never has given guidance because they don't have to, they just don't, they'll just put another ad on a methyl azima like, results and, so

Brian:

is, is that, is, is it's to be like a destination and an alternative to, you know, these platforms that depending on point of view are fairly toxic.

Jonah:

Yeah, it will be.

Jonah:

I guess I would just say that new things, new apps usually break out when new technology enables things that weren't possible before.

Jonah:

And so I think part of the issue is, you know, When Facebook was new, building something like Facebook was hard.

Jonah:

I don't know.

Jonah:

I mean, we're, we're old enough to remember when Twitter would go down all the time

Brian:

Oh yeah.

Jonah:

were blog, yeah, And there were blog posts that, yeah, exactly.

Jonah:

The fail.

Jonah:

Well, there were blog posts that people would write technical people that would say it may not be possible to build an architecture with real time, simultaneous connections like

Jonah:

Twitter, because no database architecture would be able to you handle it.

Jonah:

And I mean, I never thought those.

Jonah:

That, that line of thinking made, made sense, but

Brian:

now we got Three Mile Island re opening,

Jonah:

yes, but it was, it was, it was hard to build these social platforms when they emerged because, and new technologies enabled them to exist, but they were, it was still hard.

Jonah:

Now it's trivial to build all these kinds of things, but the big platforms already have all the audience and all the distribution, but there's new technology, which is this gen AI technology.

Jonah:

And you know if we can build something that is really playful and social where there's a higher number of people participating and not just this like creator class that's Making all the

Jonah:

content and competing to make the most snarfy content for everyone else to consume If we can if we can succeed at that It's hard for these big platforms to copy what we're doing because If they

Jonah:

did they would make so much less money because it's so profitable to have people spend Three hours a day staring at a feed of snarf that has a bunch of ads that are super targeted And and so we

Jonah:

don't need to build something that is as valuable um as as you know, facebook's feed or Instagram's feed, we, we can build something that is more playful,

Jonah:

more consumer centric, more fun with a higher level of participation for all the people using the, using the app, that uses new technology that didn't exist before.

Jonah:

And that's why now is a good time to build it.

Jonah:

I, I, you know, I never.

Jonah:

Wanted to build a social platform, you know, 10 years ago because there were so many of them and there wasn't Social content to spread across these platforms.

Jonah:

And so that's why we focused on on the

Jonah:

content layer Now there's less places for social content to go And the apps have basically become content

Jonah:

companies where there's a small number of creators and a large number of consumers who passively consume snarf.

Jonah:

And so building a social platform that actually is truly social and creative and playful feels like a big opportunity because technology exists now in the form of gen AI that makes

Jonah:

the, makes it easier for everyone to participate without the heavy lift of, you know, being like a Instagram influencer or something like that.

Brian:

Yeah, and you're sort of going back to when, like, BuzzFeed was like, I mean, you used to have tools for people to create their own.

Brian:

Like, I mean, I guess you still do, but I mean, it was, there was more, there was a platform part of it that,

Brian:

you know, wasn't just professional, the, the professional creators, I guess, that are part of BuzzFeed.

Jonah:

Yeah, most BuzzFeed quizzes now are made by the community.

Brian:

okay.

Brian:

is this like an off ramp from publishing?

Brian:

I mean, I don't blame you.

Brian:

But, let's be clear.

Jonah:

I

Brian:

Well, I guess it's different.

Brian:

This is like, I mean, you're talking about being basically a tech company.

Brian:

Like Buzzfeed was always like a tech enabled media company.

Brian:

I mean, I don't know why you told investors, but like, I always think, you know, it, it, you built technology, right.

Brian:

But like, you know, you, you were heavily, and you still are obviously heavily into the professional, freshly created content game.

Brian:

I mean, I think user generated content won the internet, like it won.

Brian:

It wasn't very close.

Brian:

And, that's just, that's, that's reality

Jonah:

yeah, I think you can build a good publishing business, but I think there's, there's upside in this, BuzzFeed Island,

Brian:

to find good, small and good.

Brian:

Yeah, you can.

Jonah:

I guess, like, definitely the ambition has been knocked down a bit on the publishing digital media side, where it's not like we're going to put a bunch

Jonah:

of R and D into continually evolving to make a better digital media property will will will do some innovation will run things lean and efficiently will

Jonah:

try to be smart about how we distribute our content, and I think you can build a good, profitable business, but I think that, you know, But I think what BuzzFeed

Jonah:

Islands represents is a asymmetric bet inside of of a horror, You know, steady state business where it has a potential to really blow up and become something big.

Jonah:

And it also is high risk and maybe it won't, maybe it won't work.

Jonah:

but it has the scalability that you can really only get with a tech powered type of business where it could continue to scale as new users join.

Jonah:

And those new users use these AI tools for content creation.

Jonah:

You can, you know, scale up and grow to in a way that, digital media companies.

Jonah:

Can't, can't because of the limitations of,

Jonah:

of the model.

Brian:

So is announcing it ahead of time, like a way to get like momentum to get like the, the resources to be able to, or, I mean, obviously the costs of a lot of things have come down with, with AI

Brian:

and coding, but, I'm wondering what, you know, cause I, I always like to see things like, and I'm like, I don't, I mean, it sounds good, but I don't, I don't know because I haven't seen it or used it.

Brian:

I'm sure a lot of people feel that way.

Jonah:

Yeah, totally.

Jonah:

I mean, I, I think, I think it's easier to work on things when you can talk about them, you know, internally and externally, if we're going to talk about something internally,

Brian:

No code name?

Brian:

Yeah.

Jonah:

you know, so, so just, just, you know, talking about our ideas and then also we've had a lot of people reach out You know with interesting ideas who

Jonah:

want to help and participate because they've been looking for something like this So that also it's it's a talent recruitment approach as well

Brian:

So, a couple quick questions on, on the business itself.

Brian:

is, The, the SPAC, right?

Brian:

Could that have worked?

Brian:

I mean, like, because I, I got it, like, at the time, like, of saying, okay, there should be, like, a, and a lot of people,

Brian:

not a lot of people, but there were not a lot of people, but others were talking about this absolutely at the time, right?

Brian:

About, you know, combining a lot of these digitally native media companies to have, you know, scale, right?

Brian:

and obviously when you guys did the SPAC, it was a, it was a different year and it was at the end, I guess, of the SPAC.

Brian:

Chamath had already gotten out.

Brian:

So like, but like, could that strategy have worked?

Brian:

Because you know, you always go back and sometimes it's just, it's timing, sometimes it's execution, you know, sometimes it's just like, this could never have worked anyway.

Brian:

Like, you know, you, you make decisions based on, you know, a lot of information that you have at the time.

Brian:

And that's why like going back in time, sometimes it's so artificial, but like, could that have worked?

Jonah:

I mean the timing was really terrible And even with the bad timing we ended up, you know Selling complex and first week fees for around the amount of cash consideration that we

Jonah:

paid so despite terrible timing, we, we, we, we were able to unwind it, but I think if we had, you know, I mean, timing is always easy to play with.

Jonah:

If you, you know, if you had perfect timing, obviously you'd be the best investor in the world.

Jonah:

If we had gone out in the SPAC market six months earlier when the SPAC market was hot and we just did it ourselves without the complex acquisition, we would have raised a whole bunch of cash.

Jonah:

We would have had a bunch of cash on our balance sheet.

Jonah:

And then when the market kind of crashed and digital media values dropped, we could have bought things for really cheap

Jonah:

and we'd have cash on our balance sheet and a bunch of assets that we could have gotten for very cheap.

Jonah:

So if, if, if we had perfect timing, you know, we would have done this back

Jonah:

sooner,

Brian:

that's the

Jonah:

would have raised a lot of money and then we would have bought things for, for much cheaper.

Jonah:

Right.

Brian:

but the market still could have like hated like the idea of like a digital media, like, roll up basically of a lot of these assets.

Brian:

I guess it depends on the assets, I'm not sure, but nobody pulled it off.

Brian:

Like there isn't, I mean, I guess dot dash Meredith, but they, they, they bought, different assets.

Brian:

I mean, from what people were talking about.

Brian:

because I just like, I guess it's just, it's, you know, it's like, and I think you're talking about this model not being like, it's completely ad driven.

Brian:

It's like, I mean, if you could get out of the ad business, like being a publisher and relying on the ad business has turned out to be like not a great business,

Brian:

you know, for many people, unless you're in specialty areas, you're doing some influence ads for lobbyists or whatever.

Jonah:

yeah, but part of it, it's hard to unwind the, the, the timing from whether it's a good business or not, because.

Jonah:

You know, a lot of the consolidation happened at the top of the market and then the market dropped.

Jonah:

And, and if you're using debt to do the consolidation or, you know, you, you start to have overhang that makes these things challenging, I think value and price matters a lot.

Jonah:

And so, the digital media market was inflated and was, Companies were, were overvalued, you know, Buzzfeed included where, where the market, you know, was,

Jonah:

was giving very, giving a premium and now it's undervalued where people just are staying away from digital, digital media.

Jonah:

And I think there is something in the middle where, you could, you know, like someone could, could, could

Jonah:

do some consolidation now and, and come out ahead because, the values are, things are undervalued now.

Jonah:

And I think when the market corrects a little bit, you're going to see, Some appreciation.

Jonah:

so some of it is, is, are these larger timing issues?

Jonah:

but I think overall, you know, the, the decision that the big platforms made to not differentiate between different types of content and to favor

Jonah:

creator content or a publisher content, because it's easier to negotiate, you know, you don't have to negotiate with creators and you don't have,

Brian:

Oh, they love creators.

Brian:

There's no unions.

Brian:

There's nothing.

Brian:

I mean, there's, they're not going to write bad stories about them.

Brian:

Like

Jonah:

Yeah.

Jonah:

So that made it harder for digital publishing, but I think it also was short sighted by the platforms because, you know, Meta could have had

Jonah:

a whole bunch of great news and a whole bunch of creator content and a whole bunch of professional entertainment.

Jonah:

And then the ultimate bundle of interesting, different types of content and paid different rates, depending on the economics of those different industries.

Jonah:

And instead we ended up with just creator snarf and that's it and I think that's that's In the long term going to be the undoing of the big platforms.

Brian:

Yeah, so you you you own a news asset huffpost.

Brian:

and you had buzzfeed news, but you closed that down.

Brian:

Is there like, I mean, you've been in, I remember actually, actually, I think it was our last podcast.

Brian:

I asked you why, why, why even have BuzzFeed news?

Brian:

and you said it was, you know, it, it, it gives, it gives heft to the brand and like, there's a lot of things beyond

Brian:

the sort of direct, okay, we're going to monetize it directly, but it gives, you know, it, it ties things together.

Brian:

It gives you prominence.

Brian:

And I think that's, that's fair.

Brian:

but you do have

Jonah:

I I I took your advice and shut it

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Well,

Jonah:

So it's here.

Jonah:

It's all

Jonah:

your it's really all your

Brian:

News, I did not, I did, that's not what I meant, what one bit whatsoever, but look, news is, is, I mean, look, as a business, it is.

Brian:

It's not like the CFO's dream of a business, I don't think.

Brian:

and a lot of that comes from, you know, the ad market and advertisers not wanting to be in your news.

Brian:

And can it work as, cause, can it work as an ad funded business?

Brian:

Like, I, I know you're, you're getting, you're getting like, you get it lean and you got to get it like super lean, but then like, how lean can you get before you can't have much impact?

Brian:

And that's, that's always the, the struggle and yes, you can make the information work and various other, you know, really niche areas, but.

Brian:

You know, I think we had talked about this.

Brian:

It's like everyone going behind paywalls is not necessarily great for Democracy and our society particularly at a time when there's tons of snarf and misinformation out there but I also struggle with

Brian:

like I don't really see necessarily a pathway where you can have a really ambitious news organization that is funded solely by or mostly by advertising.

Jonah:

Yeah, I think huffpost, you know when we looked at huffpost compared to buzzfeed news You You

Jonah:

know, BuzzFeed News was getting most of its audience from Facebook and social, which was slowly going away.

Jonah:

And HuffPost had a, a lot of front page audience where people are coming every day to the front page to see what was going on.

Jonah:

And so when we were trying, back then, we're trying to make a decision about how to move forward with news.

Jonah:

It was clear that in, in the world where the platforms were pulling away from news, that HuffPost was a much stronger model.

Jonah:

and HuffPost continues to be a strong.

Jonah:

Model.

Jonah:

I mean, it's not, you know, without its challenges, but the front page of HuffPost creates a, an opportunity to control our distribution.

Jonah:

The programmatic advertising has been very strong there.

Jonah:

the affiliate commerce is another area where the scale that we have can drive, you know, transactions.

Jonah:

And so.

Jonah:

I think you can build a strong news brand, but it is, it is, you know, as you point out, not a cakewalk.

Jonah:

I

Brian:

Yeah, I mean, I just wonder when it comes to the advertising, because I get it with commerce, but then it's like, okay, well, Google decides

Brian:

that like, you know, the way you're doing, you know, commerce is, is not the way they want you to do commerce.

Brian:

And they basically shut your business down.

Brian:

I mean, they, they didn't like people running coupons.

Brian:

And then all of a sudden, Hey, maybe Google's working on a coupons product, weird coincidence.

Brian:

and you know, when I, when it gets to the advertising side, I just want, I like, You know, there's a lot of groups out there, you know, trying to browbeat advertisers into, you know, supporting news.

Brian:

And I'm like, I don't know.

Brian:

I mean, I like the, I like the idea of it.

Brian:

And that sounds, you know, right.

Brian:

But I just don't think that that's like a really great, message in, in the book.

Brian:

Hypercapitalistic system that we have it's like, I think it's better.

Brian:

It's like a, you know, you got to advertise here because like you're going to sell more stuff, or you're going to reach people you can't reach through platforms.

Brian:

And we're going to give you something unique.

Brian:

I just don't know if

Jonah:

just so long as we have Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk

Jonah:

and the biggest, the biggest companies and corporations in the world, all supporting news will be fine.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, maybe.

Brian:

but yeah, I just, I wonder whether the, the, the ad model can, can truly, can truly work.

Brian:

I mean, you have to just bolt on a lot of different, a lot of different, you know, ancillary businesses.

Brian:

I mean, the best news businesses are fronts for different businesses, I think at the end of the day.

Brian:

okay.

Brian:

So that was great.

Brian:

one final thing, like, I want to, oh, I wanted to ask you about, websites.

Brian:

Is there a future for websites?

Jonah:

I mean, if you look at, another open protocol, based product, which is email.

Jonah:

People have been trying to kill email

Jonah:

for a million years and email persists and part of the reason it persists is that it's possible to actually own your email address And it's not like, you know,

Jonah:

maybe you spend a lot of time on slack But then you move to another company and you know, people can't slack you anymore.

Jonah:

You know, they need your your email and and so I think I think open protocols are very resilient and, and often they talk, there's conversations about how it's going to die.

Jonah:

It's the end of email or it's the end of websites or, and, and they're surprisingly resilient because they're, it's possible

Jonah:

for individual people to own them and they're outside of sort of co corporate or government ownership in the same way.

Jonah:

and so I think websites, you know, we, we're seeing, you know, a lot of, like I was mentioning before people coming to the front page of HuffPost to get their.

Jonah:

To get their news and, you know, people who are sick of snarf and sick of the social, platforms can go to a website and have a, a kind of beer and wine

Jonah:

era of the internet, enjoyment

Brian:

they could become vinyl.

Brian:

I don't know, but they could become, and vinyl came back.

Brian:

But like, you know, I mean, when you look at a gentic AI, it seems like a lot of stuff is like, you

Brian:

know, obviously like websites are basically just a UI, like on the top of a database, like, and the whole.

Brian:

Reason of reopening Three Mile Island is to be able to have some machine go out and do a lot of this work for us because friction must be eliminated.

Jonah:

listen, nothing is better than pulling a vinyl record, putting it on, pouring yourself a glass of

Jonah:

wine, and then surfing the web on your, go on, on your laptop, going to the best websites out there.

Jonah:

That's the

Brian:

love it.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

So I got to ease into that.

Brian:

It's already, it's already five o'clock here.

Brian:

It's time for me to like surf the open, open a bottle of wine.

Jonah:

happy surfing.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

Thank you, Jonah.

Brian:

This is fun.

Brian:

Really

Jonah:

All right.

Jonah:

Thanks.

Jonah:

Thanks, Brian.

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