Episode 139 - Coinbase Goes Apolitical, Libra Languishes, and Deepfakes Rise
Disruptive technologies open up opportunities for society to live and work smarter. However, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. We need to consider the ethics of technology as more people use it to blur the truth and breach our rights.
In today’s episode, Aaron and Max update you on the relevant events in technology today. We will tackle Coinbase’s controversial new policy of going apolitical and the subsequent backlash from netizens and its employees. We also discuss Facebook Libra’s recent developments—or lack thereof—and the resignation of its co-founder. Finally, we assess the emergence of deepfake and misinformation on social media.
Tune in to the episode to learn more about current cryptocurrency happenings and shifts in online culture!
Sponsor: live@Manning Conferences Women in Tech
To all cloud navigators, serverless gurus, algorithm sorceresses, and community advocates, we proudly bring you the women creating the tech world we live in. This October 13, catch live@manning's “Women in Tech” Twitch conference!
Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:
Learn about the current events in the world of cryptocurrency.
Find out the surprising predictions on deepfakes and AI in the future.
Discover how the ethics of technology and modern politics overlap.
Resources
Coinbase’s updated mission
Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission on The Block Crypto
Coinbase Employees Have Begun to Take Severance Packages on Cryptocurrency Market Price
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Weighs in on Coinbase Controversy on Decrypt
One of the founders of Facebook’s libra digital currency has left the company on CNBC
What will be the daily volume of Facebook's Libra by October 1st 2020? on Metaculus
AI deepfake videos to make up '90% of online content' in just five years on Daily Star
Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse by Nina Schick
Related Episodes
Episode 130 on the politicization of science
Episode 72 on Facebook’s Libra
Episode Highlights
What Is Coinbase?
Coinbase is a cryptocurrency company providing an easy way for people to buy and store Bitcoin online.
The company noticed that people wanted to use the company for activism.
The statement of Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong discouraged partisan politics and division among their employees.
Coinbase, from now on, should only be concerned with policy issues that affect their business.
The core mission of Coinbase is “to create an open financial system for the world.”
Interpreting Coinbase’s Mission
The mission of Coinbase to bring economic freedom to people all over the world can be taken in two ways.
The general interpretation is about bringing equality and justice to everyone because this is what economic freedom means.
The narrow interpretation is about creating an infrastructure for the crypto economy.
Armstrong clarifies that they aren’t trying to solve all forms of inequality. Instead, they’re trying to bring the benefits of crypto to everyone.
Employees themselves were upset with the statement because they feel the need to take a stand.
Coinbase Offers Generous Severance Package
The company decided to offer relatively hefty severance packages to those who weren’t comfortable with the mission.
From a business standpoint, it may be a win–win to offer these packages as it reduces stress and conflict in the company.
This strategy may pay for itself over time due to the reduced amounts of lawsuits and other unforeseen fees.
Coinbase is a young company, and this move makes a lot of sense.
This company will be an example to other companies who are afraid of the potential backlash and outrage.
Evaluating the Twitter Backlash
People accuse Coinbase of being white supremacists and are comparing it to companies that supported Nazi Germany.
There is a false dichotomy between being an activist and being a racist.
People also noticed that Coinbase did not issue a statement about George Floyd, but is this really the company’s area of expertise?
Others also point out that most of Coinbase supporters are straight white males.
Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey mentioned that Coinbase is in the wrong, as cryptocurrency in itself is activism to the financial exclusion. Listen to the full episode as we read some tweets regarding this topic!
Tech Morality & the Modern Climate
We have to ask ourselves about the morality and ethics of technology and who is responsible for defining that.
Current events in Venezuela are prime examples of how politics and the ethics of technology overlap.
Comparing the tainted history of Volkswagen and the present issues of Coinbase could be unfair and too conclusive.
Issues Concerning Facebook Libra
Facebook Libra’s co-founder, Morgan Beller, is leaving.
There was a prediction that the launch would happen on October 1, 2020, but it didn’t happen.
Everyone was skeptical because the company would have to change the way the world works and thinks.
The Rise of Deepfakes
AI deepfake videos could make up 90% of our online content in just five years.
It may be an exaggeration, but we certainly won't be seeing fewer deepfake videos.
We all have personal experiences with unknowingly sharing fake information we read on the internet.
People can either share innocently, share fake posts online intentionally, or simply not care enough to verify.
Misinformation affects the average voter, but it has always been a problem ever since.
Differences Between Past & Present Debates
Political debates were more civil and platform-based before.
The present debates, where there is a lack of respect and conversation, are similar to what is happening on social media every day.
Social media can be beneficial in moderation but has a lot of negative consequences.
We can definitely be addicted to our smartphones.
We still have reason to be optimistic and hopeful despite all the crises today.
5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode
“In the modern context, where silence is violence, then that becomes a controversial stance in and of itself.”
“It caused a lot of disruption for people, and people are unhappy every single time you do it, even if it's flawlessly executed.”
“I think there could be legitimate issues to be taken with the stance. But when you go from zero to 60, in no time flat, it makes it difficult to have a conversation about it.”
“One thing that I noticed is that people share fake stuff, even if it's easily debunked. Some people do it purposefully to get people worked up.”
“The topics today are not all negative. I think we're really starting to get to the root of some of the issues that we're facing as a society and some of the issues that we're facing on the Internet and as companies. And so I'm feeling a little more optimistic that we're at least talking about this stuff and trying to actually get at the root of what the problem is.”
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To expanding perspectives,
Max
Transcript
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max Sklar: Welcome, everyone. You have reached another Local Maximum. Joining me again is Aaron. How are you doing, Aaron?
Aaron: I'm doing well.
Max: Last week, we did a September update, and this week we do an October update. So how do you like that?
Aaron: Time keeps marching along.
Max: Yeah, well, this one is—last week's was more—shoot, I don't even remember last week. This one's more tech news-oriented, which is what we usually do. Last week's was...
Aaron: Yeah, we talked about Venus and...
Max: Alright, last week’s...
Aaron: I can't remember what else.
Max: Viking.
Aaron: That's right, Vikings and Venus.
Max: Yes.
Aaron: I did realize we had an episode brought to you by the letter V.
Max: Yeah, that's a good point. Last week was more of a science update, which is kind of going out of our lane a little bit. But that's, you know, what we do here on Local Maximum. This week is more of a tech update, which is kind of broadly in our lane now.
Do you remember—it's Episode 139? Do you remember Episode 130? When we talked about that article from Lawrence Krauss about the kind of the creeping ideological activism in science, and we had that whole nice discussion about, can you truly do neutral science? And what if you're kind of pressured into being an activist while you're doing science? There's a whole host of issues that we covered. I think, kind of in a pretty balanced way, because we looked at it from a whole host angles, in 130, do you remember that?
Aaron: I do with a little gentle reminder there. And in fact, I've seen several news stories come across my desk in the last couple of weeks that touched on that as well.
Max: Right.
Aaron: So many areas that I think, we posit the case of—what was it like a string theorist or a wormhole scientist.
Max: Right.
Aaron: Someone who we thought would be kind of outside the realm of being affected by this. And I think it was just last week; I saw an article about the impact of diversity and a number of other similar features in the world of nuclear engineers. So that is an area that I would have initially thought maybe not so relevant, but I apparently was mistaken.
Max: Okay, well, all of these topics are going to reach everybody, you listener, because they were going to talk about the company, Coinbase, and what's going on there. But first, speaking of diversity, I want to talk about a live@Manning Conference that's coming up soon—live@Manning. Yeah, as you know, Manning Publishing has been a longtime sponsor of the Local Maximum; they have a Women in Tech conference happening on October 13th, 2020. It's going to be from noon to 5 pm, Eastern Time, live on Twitch. And actually, I looked at their contents; they've got a pretty strong range of topics of interest to the tech community. So I wanted to point that out, and we'll talk about a little more later in the program.
So what else is going on? This is one of those another one of those weeks where it's hard to ignore what's going on in the news. Sometimes I try to, sometimes I'm like, let me just talk about projective geometry and forget everything else, but not today. I thought the big news was going to be the presidential debate. And now the president has come down with COVID. And I watched the South Park pandemic special and while sometimes they were over the top gross and I wish they wouldn't do that, but it was pretty on point.
Aaron: South Park is— they haven't changed is what you're saying.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: They haven't lost their edge.
Max: I guess so. Pretty good. I can't—are they even going to do a Saturday Night Live version of the debate which I was kind of hoping they would do.
Aaron: Well, they announced that, it was a Jim Carrey is going to be their Biden for this season, but...
Max: I don't see that. Do you see that?
Aaron: ...Who knows what they're going to cover?
Max: Do you see that? Do you see Jim Carrey as Biden?
Aaron: I've seen some of the like preview stills and some videos they've released already, and they do a decent job, but he would not have been my first choice. And in fact, my wife was pretty upset that they didn't go with—who was it? Bill Hader, who's played it previously.
Max: Yeah, they switch up sometimes, and it's okay. Jim Carrey is a pretty versatile actor. So I think he'll be able to pull it off.
Aaron: Yeah, and I'm guessing they wanted someone who would be willing to commit to being there for the whole season, or at least for what's left of the campaign.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: Possibly a four-year term, not someone who was going to be a one or two episode cameo.
Max: Yeah, so all right. We're rambling a little bit. I think people want to hear the—not that rambling, we're going off-topic. I think people want to hear the actual, people want to hear what's going on with Coinbase. Because...
Aaron: Let's get to the point.
Max: ...no, these issues are going to affect you and your company, or your school or basically wherever you are. They're gonna come and get you wherever you are. And I want to kind of look at this from, again, from a lot of different angles there because this Coinbase. The headline I would get is like, “Coinbase gets apolitical” and that is very, very controversial.
So the Coinbase CEO is named Brian Armstrong, and I've met him. First of all, let me tell you a little bit about what Coinbase does. They are a cryptocurrency company, primarily a Bitcoin company. And they provide an easy way for people to buy and store cryptocurrency—Bitcoin, in particular online. And I think a lot of people in the crypto community, there are people who are a little more hardcore being like, “Okay, wait a minute. If you want to do this, right, you shouldn't trust this third party,” and there's all this argumentation. But I still think that Coinbase is probably the easiest way if you don't know what else to do.
Aaron: So have you used Coinbase, yourself?
Max: I have used it myself. Yes.
Aaron: Okay.
Max: Yes.
Aaron: Does it come with the Local Maximum stamp of approval? Perhaps going a step too far.
Max: It's going a step too far. I don't know if I will—well, look. I would say this, like, yes, I would recommend—if you want to dip your toe into the Bitcoin space and you want to buy some, that is definitely one good way of doing it.
Aaron: Yeah, good place to start.
Max: Yeah, it is a good place to start. Okay, so they've noticed that a lot of people are—want to use the company for their activism. And so they are doing kind of a—they put out kind of a statement of principles and values, which is a document, you see in a lot of places. I mean, Foursquare, we recently revamped our entire core value mission statement, all that. I was part of the committee that did it and I was actually pretty impressed by how well it came out. Although, in terms of this issue, like how much activism, I think that the ones that we came up with at Foursquare are still very open-ended, very open to interpretation on this point here, like how much activism is too much. And so...
Aaron: Not even on the topic of activism, but I've always gotten the impression that these kind of mission statements, and corporate philosophies and similar documents, they tend to be—they all sound good, but how much they drive or define actual day to day activities or operations is highly questionable, that it kind of gets abstracted away pretty quickly.
Max: It can, but they are important to kind of—it's almost in some cases, like a marketing document to the employees and potential employees, like this is what we think we are.
Aaron: Yeah, there's certainly high potential for value there.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: In being clear on where you stand and what you do and don't.
Max: Yeah, and you do have to oversimplify it in many ways. Okay, so I want to read Brian Armstrong's message. By the way, I did meet him in 2014. This is when Coinbase was very small. I had lunch there at the office of a very very small number of people, and I showed them some of the tech I was working on. Some of the data science things that I was interested in. And yeah, I guess I knew that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency were going to be huge. But I'm glad that Coinbase is still around. So I found that to be pretty impressive.
Aaron: So I think you mentioned somewhere else in our notes here that they're roughly a 1,200 person company now. So that's...
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: ...that's not a behemoth, but it is certainly not a small startup anymore.
Max: No, I could have started working there, get some stock off. But anyway, I got my Foursquare up in here and I think that the types of work I would do there would have been less suited to my particular skill set. But anyway, so now, maybe that means I should have invested, but I was not in a position to do so.
Okay, so he says, and he's talking about kind of activism from employees, that can be a number of things political activism, whatever. He says the reason is that, “While I think these efforts are well-intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value in most companies, both by being a distraction and by creating internal division. We've seen what internal strife companies like Google or Facebook can do to productivity, and there are many smaller companies who have had their own challenges here. I believe most employees don't want to work in these divisive environments. They want to work on a winning team that is united and making progress toward an important mission.”
Now, what is their mission that they said? And what's the outcome of this? They said, well, they'll only take positions on policy issues that like affect their business. So bills on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and encryption are—they’re probably all over that. They're only going to put 1% to nonprofit initiatives. So they have a little bit of wiggle room, but they're not going to kind of overdo it. They're not gonna engage in issues not related to their core mission. And no political positions at work with—I think they had some caveats there. So there is some, a little bit of wiggle room, but in general, no.
And so you might ask, okay, so they're focusing on their mission, what's the actual mission? And so I just want to read what he said his mission is, and try to square that with what people might want it to be. So before I get into that, any questions or what I said, so far, you're ready to go?
Aaron: So, the no political positions at work? I read that more as—and correct me if I'm wrong here. But my understanding was, the company is not going to take political positions.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: I did not read that so much as you're forbidden from discussing politics at work, but I read it as, “Don't expect us to endorse a candidate or legislation,” or anything that is not directly in that first bullet point you mentioned.
Max: Sure.
Aaron: Related to crypto and their specific business interests.
Max: Sure. I don't know. I don't like people putting all these political signs on their desks. I don't—there's a lot of different things that can be said about that. I don't want to get into that. So all right. Let's, let's talk about there. I mean, when I worked at wireless generation, a lot of people would do that. They put political posters and signs all over their desk. And you kind of have to, if you're going to allow one side, you're going to have, you're going to allow Hillary sign, you're going to allow Trump sign. And so that's going to be a problem.
Aaron: Right? It makes it very tempting to just say, "No signs, because we can't deal with it." But...
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: In the modern context, where silence is violence, then that becomes a controversial stance in and of itself.
Max: And that's what's happening here, right. We'll get to that in a minute. So let me just talk...
Aaron: I dropped the gun a little bit.
Max: Yeah, no, you're right in giving a little foreshadowing. So let's actually talk about what their mission is first because that gives you an idea. You're like, okay, they're focused on their mission. But what does he say that is, so I feel like I should read this too. “Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world.” This means you want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world. This is difficult, important work every employee Coinbase signed up because they're excited about this mission.
And then he writes, “I realized, at some point this year, that many employees were interpreting our mission in different ways. Some people interpreted the mission more broadly to include all forms of equality and justice. It makes sense if you believe that economic freedom is not possible without equality for all people. Others interpret the mission more narrowly, believing that we try to create infrastructure for the crypto economy, that yes, this would create more equality, equal equality of access for all people. But we weren't trying to solve all forms of inequality in the world. The narrower interpretation is how I intended the mission to be understood. I don't think companies can succeed trying to do everything; creating an open financial system for all is already a hugely ambitious mission. And we can easily spend the next decade or two trying to move the needle on global economic freedom. We will keep building the most trust and easy to use financial products to help people access the crypto economy. So everyone gets the benefits of this new technology, and we could bring more economic freedom to the world.”
So that was his main point, I really—one point that I really understand is not trying to do everything, and be everything to everyone. That is, I think he's right there. That is definitely a trap that a lot of people in a lot of companies tend to fall into, and they end up doing nothing. I mean...
Aaron: I'm hugely sympathetic to avoiding mission creep, or if you want to expand into another area, then make the business case for it. Don't simply say, "Well, this is kind of sort of related, and therefore we need to dedicate resources to it."
Max: It's a constant battle at the company I'm in now, at Foursquare. They're like, “We want to be—we shouldn't go into an area unless we can invest enough to be the best.” Now, do they always do that? I'm not going to answer that. But that's what they’re trying to do.
Aaron: I think it's a particularly tricky question in a business like Foursquare, where you've gone through a pivot.
Max: Right.
Aaron: That your mission now is not what it was four or five years ago.
Max: Yeah. There's some similarities. It's not...
Aaron: And it's tough to execute that pivot and keep laser focus.
Max: Right. Okay, so there was a backlash to this. They are—some employees were not happy with this, that Coinbase—I think they see Coinbase like we're living in unprecedented times and there are some huge moral issues facing the world, facing the country, “And this company that we're a part of is refusing to take a stand.” So people are—that's kind of how I see it, maybe some people look at it differently. But I think that's how people see it and so they're very upset with that.
So instead of trying to placate those people, what Coinbase did is essentially paying people to leave; they're offering exit packages for employees who are not comfortable with its new mission. So it's an interesting strategy. Here's what they're giving people: six months of severance—that means six months pay, six months health care, and also seven more years to exercise options. That's one thing that happened to me, when I left Foursquare. I had to either exercise all my options, lose them. I chose to exercise them, but now I've got a lot of money tied up in Foursquare. So that's, and it's four months instead of six months for newer employees, but for the older employees, it's six months.
So basically, technically, if you leave Coinbase on this, you can generate double income for half a year. So that's, that's pretty cool. We're gonna find out what happens and also, I want to point out, it's not unusual for people to be unhappy with a company and leave if it changes direction, and sometimes you have to do it. And again, I'll bring this back to Foursquare, like when we pivoted from consumer technology to enterprise technology. Some people weren't happy about that. They're like, “I was here to build one thing, and now, you're asking me to build another thing that I didn't want to build, you know, what is this?”
And so I actually think it would have been better if we—maybe it would have been better if we managed that transition by giving people nice severance packages to leave, we're comfortable with the new direction and bring people in, rather than have all these fights and stress and stuff. So, and that situation is less, it's more like a technical business decision and less of a hot button political topic, I guess. So it's maybe easier to talk about there.
Aaron: Yeah. I was just gonna say two things on that.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: One is that, I think at least one of the Twitter commentators was saying that this sounds an awful lot like they're trying to—well they couch it as extending the runway by basically cutting back on their staff size, taking an opportunity to do that. I'm a little skeptical that they would give as generous a severance package if that's what they were actually trying to do. But maybe they are looking for an opportune moment to not necessarily cut out some of the dead wood, but some of the more disruptive people who are not happy, give them an easy way out, everyone leaves on good terms, and they can move on more focused on their mission.
Max: Well, it's very tempting to kind of try to hang on to that job, even if you're not happy.
Aaron: Yeah, and from a business perspective, I guess, I don't know what position Foursquare was in when they made that pivot. I can imagine it being very hard to justify offering that kind of a—what, at least from my perspective, looks like a generous severance package to people, especially open-ended, because it sounds like there's no cap on "Yo, this is only available to the first 20 people who opt for it."
Max: Right.
Aaron: They pretty much fill in the doors open. If your company isn't already profitable, that could be a pretty hard thing to come up with.
Max: From what I hear, and I've just heard this, but sometimes these severance packages, even when they look very generous, they can actually be economically more efficient. It's better to have everybody happy, less people, less lawsuits, less fights, unless it sort of like pays for itself over time.
Aaron: Yeah. And probably a...
Max: You only need six months.
Aaron: ...tax-oriented company like this, a relatively young company. So what you said, you spoke to them in 2014.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: So I'm guessing they're less than a decade old?
Max: Oh, sure. I mean, Bitcoin is only a decade old.
Aaron: Yeah, they can execute something like this and be much more efficient about it. The perspective I'm coming from having worked for a number of defense contractors over the years, they frequently have—what do they refer to them as—VLO's, voluntary layoffs, which tend to target the folks who have the most experience who are close to or past retirement age. And basically say, "We'll give you this sweet package so that we can shift you from the active employment bucket of money over to the pension bucket of money. Because for certain financial reasons, that makes our job that makes things a lot cleaner for us."
The big downside there, though, is that if you have somebody that's been doing this work for 20 or 30 years, not only do they have a huge backlog of expertise, they may be the only person in their department who can do what they do. And sure, you could lay them, you could VLO them, and replace them with a new hire for, I don't know, 60k-50k, right out of college. But (a.) they're not going to be as capable and (b.) you might need to hire three or four of them to even approach that level of capability. So it makes a lot more sense in some sectors than others. And this seems like a place where they could fully leverage that to...
Max: I mean, yeah. I mean, well, the picture that people want to have are minor, like whiny millennials, who just got there, and aren't getting exactly what they want, are now invited to leave. But I don't know if that's true. I'm sure that there are some older employees there who are like, "Hey, this new direction is not for me." It happens all the time, though. Anyone who's been in business or run companies or observed companies for any period of time will say that changing directions happen. Sometimes it works out; sometimes, it doesn't work out. But it's yeah, it causes a lot of disruption for people, and people are unhappy every single time you do it, even if it's a flawlessly executed...
Aaron: People fear change. That is absolutely true.
Max: Yeah, and not necessarily bad, like people thought they were signing up for one thing and are part of something else, you know that? You're not going to be happy with that.
Aaron: He called out that there may have been some misunderstanding of what their mission was, and I'm wondering, is this something that—I mean, maybe it's something that sits front and center on their website. But was this something that—I've never come to work for a company, and during the interview process been presented with this is our mission statement and kind of our core values. They tend not to emphasize that, in the recruitment process, maybe because they expect you to do your homework on it but...
Max: I think in the current activist environment though, certain activists will come into the company or people who want to be activists will come into the company, and then kind of purposefully interpret the company's mission as fitting their pet issues.
Aaron: Yeah. Well, then that was another thing that in his, at least the open letter, the one that he...
Max: Which is he said in a much nicer way.
Aaron: Well, yeah, he said that, “I'm sure that people will misinterpret what I'm saying here. Some innocently and some intentionally.”
Max: Yeah, that's true. So look at this is gonna be an outrage, led to an outrage on Twitter. And it's weird because it's—this is an outrage if even one company takes this position to kind of go easy on the politics, go easy on activism—because now, we're going to find out because companies before have been really afraid to do this, I think up and down the line. And now if there's one company that does this, and they don't fall apart because of it. Or if there's no mass exodus, or if there's some kind of exodus—but it's fine, then that kind of opens up the door for other companies to do the same. So I don't think people want to see even one company take this position.
Aaron: Yeah, well, and I guess it would be one thing if they did this, it's another to... It's one thing to not actively get involved in the politics. But they've not just done that. They've come out and publicly stated that, “We're not gonna play this game,” and so that paints a target on them.
Max: We're gonna get into some of this specific outrage later, so hang on.
Aaron: Oh, excellent.
Max: Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's excellent. So one of the other articles in cryptocurrencymarket.us. I just want to say this is another one where the headline did not fit the article because the headlines said, “Coinbase employees taking the severance,” like everybody's leaving, like, "This is BS. I'm gone." And then you read the article, it's like, “So far, three people have taken the severance in a company of like.”
Aaron: It's such technically accurate.
Max: Yes.
Aaron: But perhaps it paints a more dramatic picture than reality is showing. Also, I guess the public letter came out. Was it Tuesday of this past week, the last week of September? Was it like the 27th? But it sounded like this message was broadcast internally to the company, maybe a week or two before. So it's not like, in three days, only three employees have left, they've had some time to digest this. That again, leaving a company is—I mean, depending on how you do it. I would imagine if you're executing your severance, you're not going to be doing it overnight. You're going to be talking with HR and kind of negotiating your exit.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: So it may be several weeks, you know, a month before we really see what the impact there is in terms of number of employees.
Max: Right, okay. So now, I have a bunch of things I see on Twitter, and I don't even know if I want to read some of this stuff. But this is I, what should I even start with? Well, there's one guy. Who is this? Okay, one woman Nandini Jammi—let me get the position—co-founder of Check My Ads says, “Coinbase announces new commitment to a white supremacist workplace.” So that's what we get here.
Again, okay, I've seen people who say, “Well, this is like a company in Nazi Germany, and there's people in the company who want to speak up against the Nazis. And then they're saying, “Oh, no, you can't do that.” But I just thought that I just think that if this were happening in Nazi Germany, the people who were forcing everyone to their point of view would be the Nazis. I mean, but I just think like, you've got to admit, at some point, there's got to be allowance for difference of opinion, and not everybody who disagrees and everything is white supremacists. Maybe there's a line somewhere. But like, there's definitely, so okay. So, fine there's a line somewhere where you cross the line, but like, at some point, you could have a difference of opinion within that, both within the line of—I don't know if that line makes sense.
There should be some Overton window where people are like, “Okay, we have people who have many different points of view here, on this particular issue, I don't really care.” Like, let me give you example, I don't care what my coworkers positions are on abortion—very hot button issue, people are very passionate about it. I'm working with someone, I don't care what their position is on that. And I feel that in a lot of ways, but maybe some people have a different position on that.
Aaron: Yeah, this is a fraught topic to wade into.
Max: It is.
Aaron: But I think part of it is like what we teased before the silence is violence, it's that everything is in the context of race, and failure to recognize—that isn't just, failure to recognize it, but it's actively taking the side of the nefarious forces in play here. So it's not that you're doing anything overtly racist; it's that your lack of anti-racism isn't itself racist. And, I don't buy into that stance. But I also don't want to get into a long rant about critical race theory and postmodernism because that’s way outside our...
Max: We're going to be criticized for taking these positions as white males, to begin with. No, but look, if we want to, like change the world, and make sure everyone acts properly, we have to talk things out, even if you're a white male; how else are we going to solve these problems if we can't talk these things out and try to come to some understanding with each other.
Here's another one, Erica Joy, Director of Engineering at GitHub, said, “Hey, I noticed Coinbase did not release a statement on the killing of George Floyd." And so and now we know a lot of people, a lot of companies didn’t release a statement because I'm pretty sure a lot of those companies don't really care about George Floyd. Let's just—look I know how companies work. Okay. Well, look, I mean, they're worried about being criticized on Twitter, which maybe they shouldn't be worried about.
But look, I don't know. How could anyone say that you know how to solve the issues around race and policing, and violence in this country? I can't say I know how to solve these issues. Can anyone really say that? And so is it okay for Coinbase to say, "Hey, we think we know how to solve this one issue in terms of access to this new economy, and we can solve it really well." And if you want to work on other issues, you could do it on your own time. But why does everyone have to know how to solve every issue of the world? It seems like, it just seems difficult to me.
Aaron: Yeah, and I'm strongly inclined to agree with you here that this is definitely out of Coinbase’s area of expertise. What do they have to add to the discussion, and it's certainly not on mission for them, but this is—it's tough to argue against the stance that the opposition is taking here. Because we're kind of operating from different first principles.
Max: Yeah, and I have another one here from Isa Watson, who is—and I'm picking these people out specifically because they're clearly not bots or trolls. They're like successful people in tech, but she wrote, what exactly did she write? "It's not lost on me that it's mostly straight white men speaking out so strongly in support of Coinbase, and Brian's position must be nice to live in a society where your livelihood and humanity isn't under fire every day." I feel like I need someone to just explain that to me because I don't—I can't just accept when—what does that mean? Their livelihood and humanity has an attack every day, I mean, this is someone who's very successful. She's a founder, 30 under 30 entrepreneur And it says, you know, classical pianist sounds like she's doing a lot better than me. So, I just want to know, is it just people who are making false assumptions about you? Is it being profiled in bad ways?
Aaron: I want to grant that they do indeed feel that their livelihood and humanity is under attack every day, I think they actually perceive this. And it's hard to tell somebody that, “Your perception of reality is flawed, and therefore you are wrong.” That's a difficult position to take. But my explanation is also that there are indeed people overreacting to some of this stuff.
Max: Rather than saying, “Your perception is flawed, our perception is flawed,” how do we even talk to each other to say, whose perception—like to try to figure out whose perception is right or wrong and try to come to a conclusion and that's kind of the problem. We can't even talk to each other at this point.
Aaron: Agreed. Yeah, maybe this isn't your starting point. But when we've entered the conversation, it is already the starting point.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: And it makes it difficult to get to any common ground with this baseline.
Max: All right. And so one more. Now we've got from—let’s go to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. There's another Twitter founder that weighed in on this, who's getting all the attention. But Jack Dorsey we've talked about before. Sometimes it comes out with some good statements, but he writes that, “Coinbase is a political move, fly in the face of Bitcoin idealism.” And I'm just going to read this from decrypt.co in brief, the three bullet points, “Coinbase outlaws political debate at the workplace.” I don't know if they really—I don't know if this is accurate. Anyway.
Aaron: That's not my interpretation.
Max: No, it's not.
Aaron: It's in the publicly released memo. But again, willful and or innocent misinterpretation of his stance is to be expected.
Max: Yeah. So, “Bitcoin is direct activism against an unverifiable and exclusionary financial system, which negatively affects so much in our society,” this is from Jack Dorsey. “Important to at least acknowledge and connect the related societal issues your customers face daily.” But I feel like they did that. Like I feel like, in the first one, they said, “We are not going to take political stances that is not related to the company mission,” and that's exactly their company mission. So where is the like, it sounds like they agree, but you kind of just want to pile on, to show everyone else on Twitter.
Aaron: Armstrong has certainly drawn a smaller, concentric circle around what our area of impact area of interest is. And he openly said that part of the reason for this clarification is that many people have interpreted their mission as being much broader than he sees it.
Max: Yeah. Okay, I think you wrote this last one here.
Aaron: Oh, yeah. So actually, before we get to that, I just wanted to comment, I'm surprised that as a fellow CEO, Dorsey has chimed in the way he has. I would expect almost more of a pope like policy, and you at least used to see it among presidents. I will not criticize what a previous Pope or a previous US president has done, because I would not want my successor to openly criticize me.
Max: Well, they're different. I mean, but it's a different company.
Aaron: Yeah. It's not a direct successor, but it's certainly inviting criticism for his role as a CEO. And, I mean, he has certainly been—not been without flaws in how he has handled controversy, political or otherwise in his role as CEO...
Max: Yes. No crap.
Aaron: ...over at Twitter.
Max: No crap.
Aaron: So if I were in this position, and maybe—I was gonna say I would be very hesitant to start slinging mud at somebody else. But maybe he feels that he's been through the fire on this and he has a better understanding, and so he deserves the ability to shed some light on the situation. But yeah, so my kind of overall thought on this was...
Max: Hold on. Now I have an idea. Because I feel like he just invented a horrible way to communicate with people, and he's using it. It's just that's what—I wouldn't have said that two years ago on the program about Twitter and tweets, but that's where I'm at now.
Aaron: Well, and interestingly, we didn't read Dorsey's statement here on Twitter. We read it on—what is it, decrypt.co.
Max: That's true. All right. Sorry, go on.
Aaron: Yeah. So the way I kind of tried to sum this up in my mind, is it all comes back to a question we've talked about before in a different context: what is the morality or the ethics of a technology? And who is responsible for defining that? So, how your technology is used, are you responsible for that? And thinking specifically, in the context of crypto and Bitcoin here, we've talked about Venezuela, and some of their economic and socio-political drama that's been going on there in the last year or two, and how there's been perhaps a spike in the use of crypto as a result of that.
So if the Venezuelan people are using Coinbase to bypass restrictions put on them by the socialist government there, is Coinbase obligated to come out with a public statement on the policies of the Maduro government? I would state that they are not obligated to do that. But...
Max: Yeah, it's interesting.
Aaron: ...that would not be an unfair analog, and this, in fact, would be specifically in their silo of interest. So it would make a lot of—you could easily make an argument that they could, but I don't think they are obligated to.
Max: I wouldn't want to. I mean, look, I know Maduro is a repressive, totalitarian dictator. But I don't really know a whole lot about what's going on in Venezuela, and I wouldn't want my company—if I were running a company, I wouldn't want to weigh in on everything that's going on in Venezuela or the people there.
Aaron: And drawing attention to the situation would probably be countered to their business interest and the interests of their users who are the people that are trying to help here.
Max: Then you're going to criticize Maduro, then you'd have to criticize China, and then you'd have to get into everything.
Aaron: Yeah.
Max: And, yeah, as bad as they are. So yeah, interesting times, and you just have to deal with this these days. It's not okay to just, you can't just be like, yeah, values in the workplace is a very hot button issue, and it's something that I think everybody has gonna have to deal with. And I don't know how this shakes out. I don't know how this looks in five years. But hopefully, we'll do in the podcast.
Aaron: What I think is a somewhat unfair analogy was made in at least one tweet I saw and not just unfair because it is a straight-up good win to the argument. But they cited Volkswagen as a company that they just focused on doing what they were good at and building cars. And so well, actually, they were a central part to the Nazi war effort. And you know, that company is still around, and they've been somewhat tainted by that reputation.
But comparing Coinbase to Nazis right off the bat, I feel like they're, they're jumping the shark there. And it makes it difficult to take people seriously, when they so quickly jumped the shark, much like that statement about welcome to the white supremacist workplace. I think there could be legitimate issues to be taken with the stance, but when you go from 0 to 60, in no time flat, it makes it difficult to have a conversation about.
Max: It's like what government is Coinbase supporting that is akin to the Nazi war effort. It makes no sense.
Aaron: Yeah, you can make a much much easier argument about some of the stuff that tech companies like Google and their compatriots have been doing with facial recognition, and telecommunications monitoring, and I know that is being used by intelligence communities, and some of them in repressive government.
Max: Not to mention yet anything they do with China.
Aaron: But that doesn't sound like that's anywhere near what's being done here. And in fact, this is kind of the antithesis to that. They're working for a decentralized non-governmental approach.
Max: Right. Okay, so I want to just talk about the conference that Manning is putting up. Learn, be inspired, and connect with others, working to advance inclusion in the technology industry. live@Manning conferences, Women in Tech is your chance to hear from some of the amazing women in Manning's network of experts. Listen as women across different roles, discuss topics such as data science, chatbot products, work environments, and more. And this is going to happen on October 13th, 2020, between 12 and 5 pm. Live on Twitch. So go check that out live@Manning conference, Women in Tech.
Aaron: Do you know if that is explicitly targeted towards female attendees, or is that something that other gendered persons could avail themselves as well.
Max: All genders are welcome to attend. These days, I hate to be cliche, but we are facing unprecedented times. People who are going to be presenting—it's actually going to be at a tech conference, and people are going to be presenting, doing talks, and presenting ideas and all of these things. So data science chatbot products, why don't I want to pull this up for a minute here? Let's see. Manning, Women in Tech conferences, I'll just pull it up. And I’ll look at some of the specific ones because I've seen this. So, for example, oh, there's one on careers, yeah, everybody could talk about careers. Algorithmic engineering, with large data sets, that's something that I might be interested in, checking out. Building a chatbot in 20 minutes.So yeah, now this will feed every once in a while you kind of working in software, you want to upgrade your, what do I want to say like, you just want to upgrade your skills, you want to upgrade your knowledge, you want to upgrade your ideas, this is a good way to do it.
And I certainly support the idea of women's conferences, because there's tons of conferences with all guys, all dudes, so that's fine with me. And the topics look particularly interesting. So let's jump to a similar cryptocurrency topic. Let's jump to Facebook's Libra.
Aaron: I was gonna say a less controversial topic, but maybe not.
Max: Facebook Libra, I feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi, that is a name that I have not heard in a long time, all the way back to Episode 72 with Local Maximum when we were talking about this. It's Facebook wants to make their own cryptocurrency. Well, apparently, there's some article now where the Facebook Libra co-founder, Morgan Beller, is leaving. Now, this is pretty impressive to me, like she's a co-founder of their cryptocurrency. People in CNBC feels the need to write an article when she left like the big deal. She is 27 years old. So I don't know good for her. But anyway.
Aaron: You're making me feel old, man.
Max: Yeah, but it sounds to me, and she's going to a VC firm. It sounds to me like man; this thing is lagging because they really want this thing out by 2020. And I think in Metaculus one of the predictions was will Facebook's Libra initiative launch by October 1, 2020. Well, that just came and gone. And so the answer is no. And we had our own take on this in Episode 72. With Maryam on the show, that day, Maryam Aly and we were both very skeptical that they can get this together in time. And we were particularly skeptical because of the difficulty in lining that many companies and difficulty in educating consumers. The shifting priorities, the companies. So for example, Facebook dating didn't work out, because that's not the priority of Facebook. Even though people are like, “Facebook is gonna crush everybody else,” it didn't happen.
And also kind of like, a lot of these companies like Visa are work—on one theory of how the world works. And if that the way they think the world works has been working for them for decades, it's very hard to get them to change. So today we get to say, “We told you so.” They're sort of saying that well, especially in this CNBC article, they're saying that both technologies—they’re talking about the currency, the cryptocurrency and the wallet they wanted to have, which is kind—and the consumer would be on—”have both been stonewalled by concerned regulators and lawmakers around the globe, and neither has launched.”
Now look, Facebook probably has enough lawyers to get around all this. But yeah, so that's really not the point. It's all just like it's a lot of chaos and disagreements on what to do. I don't think—I think the fact that Bitcoin is an open system where you don't have to ask permission to work on it gives it the edge. And it's amazing how many people fell for this. They're like, “Oh, the Facebook currency that's gonna be the real one.” Nope, nope. All wrong. But that's what the media told us for a couple of weeks in 2019.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, I’d almost completely forgotten about it. Until I think you mentioned something about it, maybe a week ago. And then I saw the related Metaculus question, which apparently I put a prediction in.
Max: Yes. So did I.
Aaron: Back in October of 2019, which—oh god, that seems so long ago. That paid out with some points this week.
Max: Just think where will we be in October 2021.
Aaron: Yeah, I hope, and I will note that it was not enough points to counterbalance the points I lost when they announced that Trump had COVID.
Max: Oh, you bet on that, too. I don't think I've bet on that.
Aaron: That completely wiped out my Libra winnings. Not that it's cash money. I won't say meaningless points. But yeah, the only meaningful in the context of Metaculus.
Max: I kind of, yeah, kind of prefer that to predict it in some ways. Alright, so finally, I want to get to this one last article because it's also related stuff we talked about. It's from the Daily Star, “AI deep fake videos.” That means fake videos of things, “depicting things happening that never happened, are to make up 90% of online content in just five years.” This is from a new book from Nina Schick. The new book is Deepfakes, the coming info, in folk lips, I don't know, predicts the rise of sophisticated artificial intelligence-driven fake news, which will completely derail democracy. So maybe I can try to get her on the show because that sounds like an interesting topic. But let's talk a little bit about this. First of all, I know this is Daily Star, and I was like, “What is the Daily Star as a source?” And I think it looks like a little tabloid.
Aaron: According to Wikipedia, it is indeed a tabloid.
Max: Okay, but it looks like a real book.
Aaron: That does not mean they can't do legit investigative reporting, but it casts some doubt on their bonafide.
Max: So you think 90% is way too high? I do too. But I still think it's gonna be a lot.
Aaron: Yeah, I guess it depends on what they define as a deepfake and what they're defining is all online content.
Max: Right.
Aaron: Yeah, it's got some open-ended criteria, but I certainly don't think we're gonna be seeing less of it than we do now.
Max: Right. Sure. So, one thing that I noticed is that people share fake stuff, even if it's easily debunked. Some people do it purposefully to get people worked up. Some people, Michael Malice, is good at that. He'd be like, “Thank God, we took down the Berlin wall that Hitler put up,” he'll say things like that, and people will get all mad.
Aaron: I feel like he's riffing on that line in Animal House.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: About when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor—no, don't stop him. He's on a roll.
Max: Yeah, exactly. And so people will share fake stuff. And some people will share fake stuff just because it fits their team winning.
Aaron: I'm always curious how much of that is kind of malicious trolling or knowingly sharing it, versus I was fooled, versus “I thought maybe it might be fake, but I like what it says. So I'm just not going to look deep enough to know so that I have plausible deniability.” Because I think all of those things happen, but I have no idea what the distribution there is.
Max: Have you ever shared something on social media where you're like, “Oh, wait, that turned out to be wrong?”
Aaron: I don't share much on social media, but I definitely passed something around where I did not realize until after I'd shared it, that it was either fake or like I feel like what's happened more often...
Max: I have too. It's so embarrassing.
Aaron: Something that’s been then, like discredited or I have on at least one occasion shared something that I didn't realize was a spoof until after the fact, and you feel foolish.
Max: You do. But some people don't.
Aaron: But it did happen. We can't all be on all the time.
Max: I feel like half the population doesn't care. They don't feel foolish at all. They'll just keep doing it. So that's also a problem. But yes, even if you feel a little foolish doing it, still, everyone falls into it from time to time. Could a politician who says something bad write it off as a deepfake? I don't think that's possible. Right now, I think there's too many opportunities. There's too many ways to like verify something. Could this change in the future? I don't know. Maybe.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, this has certainly been the professionals in the space, that has been their real concern since day one. It's not so much a concern over a video of a deepfake of Obama throwing around the N-word, as it is of something like the equivalent of the Trump access Hollywood tapes coming out. And him saying, "Oh, it's not real, it's a deepfake." And that being believable, and this isn't that, that far of a stretch because we've poisoned the well, so to speak. We know that those deepfakes are out there. It's just like, we know that there's actual fake news out there.
Max: I think there's somewhat detectable.
Aaron: ...reporting. So it makes it really easy for someone like Trump to, anything he disagrees with or doesn't like to say, "Oh, it's just fake news." And that gets a nonzero, possibly double-digit percentage of people to say, "Yeah, he's probably right" and dismiss it out of hand and not look any further.
Max: Yeah. So, I do wanna—I would question more about this whole, like, is this is democracy doomed by this? I want to know that that has to be fleshed out a little bit like, what do they even mean, by democracy? They just mean like, “Okay, voters aren't gonna have good information.”
Aaron: That strikes me as a little bit too Chicken Little right off the bat. And maybe it's just because I've heard so many things in the last 18 months talking about how our democracy is in peril and, and it's all coming crumbling down around us. But I think a statement like democracy is doomed for this particular reason. It presumes that the average voter used to be well informed. And I dispute that. I think—and not based on any solid evidence here, but I would stipulate that voters today are no more poorly informed than voters 20 or 30 years ago, that the biggest difference is that we were all misinformed with the same misinformation 30 years ago. And now, it is possible that we can have many different flavors of misinformation. So instead of all being wrong together, we are all wrong separately.
Max: I feel like people—I have to believe, just because I'm an optimist that a backlash against social media is coming. And people will start—I don't know, not trying to ingest more information than is healthy, that is actually giving them more knowledge or wisdom. But I don't know, maybe that's too optimistic towards humanity.
Aaron: I feel like the only way that would happen is with a resurgent Luddite movement. And I don't see that taking grass. I think we'll certainly see—I mean, we have seen, and we will continue to see backlash against certain technology platforms, social media platforms, and companies. But I think that's only going to serve to move them out of the top spot and have new players enter into that space who are going to necessarily be even worse.
Max: You know what I saw on TV today? On TV today, I turned it on and, and they were replaying the 1960 presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon.
Aaron: Somebody shared that recently and said, "This is what a debate looks like. He's being civil, and they're finishing their sentences, and you get a clear understanding of what they stand for, even though they probably hated each other and didn't agree on much of anything.”
Max: They didn't really show that they hated each other, at least not in the way they do now.
Aaron: Because that's not professionally relevant. But we are so far from that today.
Max: Yeah, I got it, and I started to think, “What if they could come around today? And see that last debate between Trump and Biden, what would they think?” And then I realized that Nixon would say, "Oh, hey, it's Joe Biden. I remember when he was in the senate when I was president."
Aaron: Low blow.
Max: It's true, though. I guess they would have changed with the times.
Aaron: To bring that back to what we were talking about here. The same exact—everybody was looking at that debate and saying, "Oh, it's, you know, it's a travesty. It's a shame. How could they do that?" But that is exactly what we are doing on social media every day, that it's the same evolution we've seen there. The same lack of civility, the inability to complete a thought, it's practically a one to one ratio there between what we're seeing in the presidential debates and what we've seen happen in civil discourse in this country. So we don't deserve to be surprised.
Max: Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the vice presidential debate this week. I'm wondering if they could pull it back just a little bit.
Aaron: Yeah, I don't know if they have any different rules, or maybe people will just follow the rules this time.
Max: I mean, at some point...
Aaron: I don’t recall Pence’s debate prowess, so I can't visualize what it's going to be like.
Max: I mean, he's more likely to follow the rules than Trump.
Aaron: I would expect that.
Max: Yeah. But people that used to follow the rule, like even when I was growing up, people say, "Oh, time is up, time is up." That's it and let the other person talk. You know, back in the old, that journey makes me feel old. And this year, the vice presidential debate, I mean, I hate to say it is, in some ways, almost like the presidential debate, either of them could end up as president.
Aaron: Say, you mentioned watching TV, most television talk shows they have—what is it? You know, the octagon, they've got 4, 5, 6, 12 people in their little boxes on the screen, and they're all shouting at each other at the same time trying to get a word in edgewise. We just had a two-person version of that, well, three if you count the moderator at the last debate.
Max: Yeah. So I just, well—I am increasingly coming around to the hypothesis that social media is or can be, or often is, or probably usually is very harmful to people. And it would be like telling people, “You could eat all the cake and ice cream you want and there'll be no negative consequences.” So imagine, like the first people who discovered ice cream, they're just like, “Oh, this is great. I'll just eat, eat, eat,” and bad things will happen. And then eventually, people realize that those bad things are happening to them. They're like, “Alright, maybe we have to talk about this. Maybe we have to cut back or like, you know, gambling maybe or something.”
So I think that might end up being the case, and that might be where the backlash comes from. I don't know if we need a new Luddite movement. But I don't know, I think your fears about TV and video games have been overstated in the past, so I'm not entirely sure. But that's sort of, that's sort of what I'm coming around to or at least that's something that's an idea that I'm going to look more into.
Aaron: Yeah, well, what is the cure? I mean, I haven't gotten onto Twitter. So I've maybe dodged that bullet, and I quit Facebook a number of years back. But I spent too much time doom scrolling on my phone, even without those. So it's not the...
Max: I know. Have you ever—it's amazing, you quit one thing, and then you fall into something else so quickly that's almost irreplaceable.
Aaron: That's how to beat an addiction is to replace it with a different addiction. And that's something we've known from smokers and alcoholics and gamblers for a long time.
Max: That's got to be it. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's better, but there's also got to be a better way sometimes. Alright, so I think this—the topics today are not all negative. I think we're really starting to get to the root of some of the issues that we're facing as a society and some of the issues that we're facing on the internet and as companies. And so I'm feeling a little more optimistic that we're at least talking about this stuff, and trying to actually get at the root of what the problem is.
Aaron: And what? Somebody can spot the silver lining here because it is hard sometimes.
Max: I know. But I'm optimistic about—I think that Coinbase, even though it's very, people are very mad, I think people are actually—some ideas are being, are seeping through back and forth. I don't think it's just people shouting at each other. I think people are looking at these deepfakes and saying, “Well, wait a minute. What are we—where are we going with this? How could this be helpful?” and maybe looking at, “Okay, how can we use this technology in a positive way rather than a negative way?”
So I think, yes, I think there is some reason to be hopeful. I hate to be—isn't there a name for someone who's always too cheerful even as the world is ending? Is there like a name for that? I know there is.
Aaron: I'm thinking of being a Pollyanna. Is that what you were thinking?
Max: I think so. Yeah.
Aaron: Okay. Yeah.
Max: Exactly. Anyway, you know I'm not a Pollyanna.
Aaron: There are times when being an eternal optimist sounds nice.
Max: Yeah, that's a good idea. All right. Cool. I think, well, sometimes we get exactly an hour in, I think we got that today. Any last thoughts on all this?
Aaron: Stay healthy out there, folks. We're in this for the long haul. But at least when we're recording this, it's only a month until the election, and then we can maybe move on.
Max: But yeah, I know the 140s will have a lot of election type stuff, and then we'll move on. So that'll be great. All right. Have a great week, everyone.
That's the show. Remember to check out the website at localmaxradio.com. If you want to contact me, the host, or ask a question that I can answer on the show, send an email to localmaxradio@gmail.com. The show is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and more. If you want to keep up, remember to subscribe to the local maximum on one of these platforms and to follow my Twitter account @maxsklar. Have a great week.
