Politically High-Tech
A podcast with facts and opinions on different topics like politics, policy, technology especially AI, spirituality and development! For this podcast, development simply means tip, product and/or etc. can benefit humanity. This show aims to show political viewpoints and sometimes praises/criticizes them. He is a wildcard sometimes. For Technology episodes, this show focuses on products (mostly AI) with pros, cons and sometimes give a hint of future update. For Development episodes, the podcast focuses on tips to improve as a human spiritually, socially, emotionally and more. All political, AI lovers and haters, and all religions are welcome! This is an adult show. Minors should not be listening to this podcast! This podcast proudly discriminates bad characters and nothing else.
Politically High-Tech
284- What They Don't Want You to Know About Your Feed with Tim O'Hearn
Social media platforms operate through deceptive practices and hidden mechanics that most users never see or understand. Tim O'Hearn, a former software engineer who once ran a business selling automated Instagram followers, shares insider knowledge about the dark side of our digital landscape.
• In 2018, approximately 30% of Instagram activity was computer-generated, with bots talking to other bots
• Shadow banning allows platforms to restrict user reach without notification, keeping users engaged while effectively silencing them
• Blue checkmark verification systems evolved from impersonation protection to status symbols, creating a black market where people paid $5,000-$15,000 for verification
• Advertisers wield enormous influence over content policies, forcing platforms to implement features like hidden dislike counts on YouTube
• Bot activity continues despite platform crackdowns because the financial incentives for automated engagement remain strong
• Social media companies prioritize advertiser relationships over user experience, making decisions that serve financial interests rather than community needs
• AI-generated content further complicates the landscape, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish authentic from artificial engagement
Check out Tim O'Hearn's book "Frame: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media" to learn more about the hidden mechanics of social platforms and how to navigate them more effectively.
Check episode 254
Check episode 146
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2308824/episodes/14752522-146-interview-with-the-wise-dr-ravi-y-iyer
Follow Tim O'Hearn at
His Collection of links
https://www.tjohearn.com/links/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tohearn/
Beehiiv
https://timohearn.beehiiv.com/
Follow your host at
YouTube and Rumble for video content
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxk1oJBVw-IAZTqChH70ag
https://rumble.com/c/c-4236474
Facebook to receive updates
https://www.facebook.com/EliasEllusion/
Twitter (yes, I refuse to call it X)
https://x.com/politicallyht
hello everyone. Welcome to politically high tech with your host, elias. I have another newcomer here. Yeah, I'm getting plenty of newcomers. I needed it. I feel like it was getting stale at one point, like certain amount of reoccurring guests. I ain't against them, they have a lot of value, but I'm sure you want some change, especially some of you who don't like certain guests.
Speaker 1:I break back, but sometimes it's my executive decision. Deal with it. I think they have. I'm gonna override the majority, though, and you know that's even allowed in government. Yeah, until I get, you know, overthrown or something like that. Or you know, when you abuse your luck, it gets the populace, of course. But well, that's why they got security and all that. Oh, did I say too much about our government? Maybe I'm feeling a little villainy. We'll see. Let's see how it goes from here.
Speaker 1:Well, before I go on my little monologue you know I could go my monologue. They sound random, but they have a little bit of relevance, especially if you piece it together. You might have to listen to this a second time just to get it. You know I I'm a bit weird, I'm a bit complicated. You're gonna have to deal with it. I refuse. I refuse to dumb myself down sometimes. I'm sometimes on hard mode, jammed. You try to change the difficulty. It's going to stay on hard mode, it's going to override your command, because that's how I am. Sometimes I'm difficult because when I know what I want, I'm headstrong.
Speaker 1:So I have a guest here. We're going to talk about social media, social literacy, especially for somebody who thinks you know everything. If you know everything, you're just telling me you're an idiot, without realizing it. You're just telling me that, okay, I don't know about all of this. Okay, well, let's see. Especially, we test you in these definitions. I'm not going to spoon for you some answers. Maybe I will if you fast forward, if you're smart enough. You know, don't embarrass yourself. If you're not ready to take the heat, just hide that if you're smart. But if you love to express your anger, you know there's a comment section for you there. You just expose it to me that the Reddit post you know you're a Reddit user and it just, you know, got off your box. Stick to Reddit, please. Reddit is all you angry people are at.
Speaker 1:We try to do something a little better here. Okay, I have someone who's gonna give us a bit of a villainy perspective not my words, but it's the guest's words. I'm gonna have him introduce himself, okay, and then we we're gonna see an introduction, we're gonna see where this conversation goes. But I think we need to be educated in this. We think we know you'd be surprised when we dig deeper. So, uh-huh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:Good, that means you're willing to learn and remember, if you're ignorant, at least hide it. Or if you want to be brave, tell me. I won't insult you. I promise I will not, unless you insult me. But I might even ignore you, because my spiritual level is higher than that now. Before I would have just stooped down to your level. Before I would have just Stooped down to your level, but I refuse to do that.
Speaker 1:Feel free to express your anger, though. If you're entitled to that, that's your 1A. But YouTube might censor you, by the way, not me. I believe this would be free speech. Youtube might not. And there's Rumble We'll eventually be released in Rumble when you could go crazy in your anger. Crazy, okay, just crazy. Alright, let me shut up. Let me bring this guest here. We got Tim O'Hearn here who is going to educate us. You know our Texas citizens and all this stuff. I think we need to know this. We need to be refreshed because I just think we get dumber. Digital detox, I think, is a good thing and we're going to see about all this stuff. I'm curious about all these things. Let's welcome Tim O'Hearn. If I pronounce that incorrectly, feel free to correct me there.
Speaker 2:Hey Elias, you are correct, it is Tim O'Hearn and I'm happy to be on your show here. This is one of the last podcast appearances that I'll be doing, so it's special to be here with you. A little bit about me as a brief intro. I'm a software engineer. I worked in quantitative trading for most of my 20s and the reason I think I'm here today is that I wrote a book about my side hustle, which was getting people more followers on Instagram via automated means. In my quest in breaking the rules, I learned a lot, not just about what platforms want and what users want, but also the dark side of regulation, of consumer psychology and a lot more of the technology, of the persuasive tech that people take for granted. So I appreciated your intro. I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Now I'm beginning to understand the villainy part, the dark side, breaking the rules. Well, I think sometimes it needs to be broken, sometimes, no, sometimes Don't quote me, don't clip this, actually clip it. I don't care. Sometimes, no, sometimes Don't quote me, don't clip this, actually clip it. I don't care, you're going to do it anyways.
Speaker 2:I can't stop you. But before we get into it, tell us a little bit about that book collection as well as a memoir. And the memoir is not self-aggrandizing, or hopefully not so self-aggrandizing. The point is that I was born in the 90s. I grew up with the internet. I loved playing video games and using early web 2.0 features, and that led to me pursuing a career as a software engineer. At some point I went over to the dark side and made a lot of money from breaking the rules on social media sites and learning some of these other parts. So it's equal parts villainy as well as a very innocent dabble through social media inequity and kind of this balancing act of what does it mean to break the rules?
Speaker 1:sense, right and sure. Yeah, I remember all listeners and viewers. I'm going to lecture you again. One of my few rules is I'm not giving you any spoilers. I'm not going to tell if I bought the book or not. Yeah, I want to keep you that much in the loop. I'm an a-hole, I don't care. You know, sometimes I wear the hero hat, sometimes I wear the villainy hat, and sometimes I wear the I don't know what the hell. I'm going to be okay, so you're gonna have to deal with that, all right? Um, so let's just get to some of the more, I think, definitions that people really need to understand, especially those who think they know everything and those who are let me just use this term I'm not I'm not gonna coin it, I'm sure someone have said this before me tech phobic. There you go. Tech phobic, how much are we watching the?
Speaker 2:internet is fake. Let's get to the cynical stuff activities. In 2018, up to 30% of all activity on Instagram could have been fabricated and conducted by computers talking to computers. Today it's much lower, but the concern is that it's still possible, and we are even less aware of what is fake or even what is personal. What is this aspect where somebody is impersonated?
Speaker 1:And I'm sure AI has something to contribute to that, especially when we let that cat out of the bag, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sure does For your cynics.
Speaker 1:Sure, look, the most I can say about me. I'm an informed consumer. That's the most I'm going to say about me, not that super tech bro, even though I'm trying to study AI. Ai is very fascinating to me. I think it's a good tool, but also can be devastating.
Speaker 1:We used to miss AI that had granular errors three arms, 17 fingers those kind of errors. Now they're getting better and better, but I don't want to go off the AI tangent too much. Ai. You're becoming a side character. You had the last season become the main character for the tech sector. That was your last season. We're not doing that. You're the side character now and you know I don't mind talking about AI, but that's not my main focus.
Speaker 1:I just think we need to re-educate ourselves, increase our digital media literacy. You know, especially with all this evolving Look, whatever we learned in 2010 is come on, it's obsolete. Forget it, even 2020. You know this is so evolving. Remember the times used to be a little easy to detect the deep fake. It's those times, look, I'm sure people you know and it's just getting harder and harder to detect. I'll say I'm pretty good at detecting it, but there's one I felt for that had to be identified a few days later. It was a deep phase. Oh, if that could bypass a lot of the the I'll say scrutiny of the masses. That's scary, even you know, especially some of the people who are tech experts or savvy. Now they bypass them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that could be um scary, but we could turn this into a lesson. What do we miss? Was it perfected or was there subtle clues we missed? But I'm not gonna get into that. Just we gotta, we gotta be more, I would say critical and question things before we even assume it's real or not. I mean that we are, we're up to that point. I mean you could tell some views are real. It's very obvious. You know, especially, I think, what quality is low. I think that's one indicator. But I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna so aggrandize myself. You know I would love to. Sometimes, I don't know, I'm leaning towards the villain side today. So that's good. At least summer engagement is real. So for those who think everything is fake, well, if you want to still think that, go ahead. You know there's a comment section. Just feel free to express your anger and stupidity. And I have a following following question Is the internet debt theory real? I don't think it is, but that's popped up several times. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I'm with you here. So the debt internet theory is this conspiracy theory? Maybe that started a few years ago before generative AI really took off, and it's saying a few things. One is that there's this state level, like government conspiracy, to keep people distracted and then manipulate their emotions and thoughts by these advanced you know, networked approaches to information retrieval and then socialization. But then also that much of what we're seeing on the internet is also like fake. So to your last question I'm thinking about it more from the angle of what I did, which was like fake engagements.
Speaker 2:And then the modern interpretation is well, is that picture real? Is that video real? And then, especially, is that text real or AI augmented? So, with these two things together, it imagines the internet as a total departure of what it once was, where there's no originality, very little human touch, and that someone at a very high conspiratorial part of the hierarchy is benefiting while all of us lose. I don't think it's true, but we're definitely getting closer to that as there might be more and more incentives and, as people who would claim to be against the theory heavily use AI because they suck at writing or they suck at content production, people who don't see themselves as that nefarious, might actually be contributing to it by making heavier use of AI tools and not crediting AI.
Speaker 1:Oh, I could take that quite personally. I've made AI videos, but I let you know users, I let you know. All right, I'm transparent with it. So you want to say I contribute to that internet theory? No, sometimes I don't care, because there's days and I'm going to be honest, I'm too lazy to write, I'm too lazy to content produce. I just have a general idea. Ai, you take care of the details for me. I want to talk about policing and AI. Boom Ended up being one of my most popular episodes, and I use AI.
Speaker 1:I put an attack, I use AI and they can tell. I make it as obvious as possible. It's very clean, it's super HD. The only thing that's kind of real in there is my voice, but the in-video AI is such an amazing technology. I just gave a sample of it. Oh, man does such a good job. It's scary. I didn't even say any of those words, but since it called sample my voice, it's fill in the blanks for me. I said, wow, I will say it was 90% accurate. There's a few things that are a bit off. You figure that out, you, you. You know some of my listeners. I'm going to say something. I'm going to be a little nice. Now I'm going to be a little heroic. You're smart, you know how I speak, you know my mannerisms. You could detect what's BS, what's AI augmented and whatever is extra AI augmented meaning? You know I will not sound like that.
Speaker 1:Go back to episode. What is it? Oh, and it's one of my most popular ones. I can't be forgetting it. I'm just going to go there real quick to see what it was, because rewatch that one, episode 254. Exploring AI and law enforcement.
Speaker 1:I got some criticism. I'll say good criticism. I'm for constructive feedback. I know I will not attack. Some of them were very valid and about the idea, but I try to get both sides of it and that's why I gave me both sides of the pro and the cons of it. Because I'm talking about it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to link that up. So it's a short one and that's how you know it's AI generated because it's short. It's not my 40 minute kind of episodes where I don't use AI as much. It's more like 15 to 20 minutes. You check that out?
Speaker 1:My own shameless plugin. I encourage shameless plugins. What can I say? I'll put a link in the description. Check it out, give your analysis, use the comment section for something more productive. So, just, you know emotional rage and all that craziness, all right, and so I think we're a little more hopeful for now. I would say Hopeful for now. Question mark Lipsies and lipsies and lipsies, I will say, will say so I'm not gonna worry too much about. I got enough crap to deal with now.
Speaker 1:Let me just ask um this, because I heard this term before, even before it got, I'm not gonna say popular, but used more regularly shadow ban. I know someone who got shadow ban in 2010s because, I think, well, the user supposedly violated some rules. I saw the responses. It wasn't hateful, it pissed people off, it aggravated people, but you're just challenging the norm. I thought 1A was protected here. It's like a right-winger, I'm more in the center. I thought 1A was protected here, obviously not for the companies. They set that rule and that's the nuance. You have to understand people and unless it becomes a public good, then maybe, maybe it's a big maybe because government has done censorship. They don't have a good track record, freedom of speech either. So it's a maybe, if it becomes a public good, that it will help. I'm not too sure now, but anyways, what is your definition of a shadow ban and has it happened to you or anyone that you know.
Speaker 2:I see a shadow ban as a private company restricting the reach or exposure of a user account or user content without informing the user that this action has been taken against them. So the idea that kind of percolates here is that if you were banned from YouTube tomorrow, you would be really upset, and I would be upset too, because your YouTube channel is cool. But the point is like I would be upset. It's a visceral like you're hurt. You're like wow, I'm banned. Who do I contact? How do I get my account back?
Speaker 2:And what these companies realized is that banning people is such a high touch exercise.
Speaker 2:There's all these complaints, you have to go through all this, like all this extra paperwork, and ultimately you just want them off.
Speaker 2:What they introduced with shadow banning is they can restrict you effectively, muting you, but as far as you're concerned, your YouTube videos still exist and people can still find them. But what you actually might find if you log into another account is that nobody can actually search and find your videos. This isn't really common on YouTube, but we saw this, I think, most prominently on Twitter, where people were saying, hey, Twitter is silencing voices on one side of the political spectrum by way of not banning them, but making it so their posts have much less reach. So that's the basis of shadow banning. As you said, it's evolved a lot from web forums in the early 20s and that's something I explore even in the urban dictionary definition and how that has progressed from its first definition to today. So yes, shadow bans are real. They're implemented differently by every platform and this is one of the most deceptive tactics that major platforms use to kind of manipulate discussion and also have these enforcement actions against users who actually don't know that they're happening.
Speaker 1:Do you think that listener, reviewer, I'm going gonna tease you a little bit? I highly doubt you knew the answer to this. I highly doubt. But no, I'm gonna spoon feed anyways, because I don't want to embarrass you. You're gonna get hurt a lot more than me. I could just say that much shadow man, there you go.
Speaker 1:And well, the one I knew personally it wasn't me, it was someone that I know, one of my friends. That happened to him on facebook. Yeah, I think facebook. Well, yeah, it was around 2010, that, and you know what. It's funny I want to say this person is actually happy. He actually feels free.
Speaker 1:Ironically, not a normal case, by the way, what tim has explained is actually a normal case. You're gonna be pissed, you're gonna feel hurt. That's more likely to happen and he was just more surprised. Like what? I can just be shadow, I can just be banned without even knowing what is this. Then, after like a few days, he just moved on like nothing happened. I said, well, maybe I can't talk to the babies anymore. He thinks you know, so reported him or something. But it's, it was very interesting. It was the first time I ever heard of it. So what the heck's the shadow man you ban without knowing it. That's the first guess. It came to me. Uh, yeah, it disappears. That, oh, we will. You're kind of right, but it's a little more than that. So, okay, that's a bit shady and I will say wrong, yeah, I mean, yeah, go ahead, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:it's manipulation from the platform level, but the conspiracy is that anyone who thinks they should have more reach than they have can always lean on it and say I must be shadow banned because I'm so controversial, because I'm so in this lane, and it kind of gives people this excuse for, you know, trying to explain why nobody wants to read their tweets, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of this interesting thing that it's almost become mythical in that a lot of people are using the term shadow band, not having any idea how reach works. And it's because reach is very, very complicated on like Facebook, for a lot of people wouldn't know. On a site like Facebook, If you include a link in your post, the way that your exposure and reach expands or doesn't expand is fundamentally different than if you don't include a link in your post. So there's all these types of things some you could call safety features. We could say maybe a shadow ban is a safety feature, because if we ban the person they might just create a new account tomorrow. Otherwise, you know, maybe we let them just talk to themselves for a week or two. So it is manipulative and it is dishonest, but it's probably saved amounts of money that we can't even fathom and support costs.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's the bright side, right, there's always. You know, there's always a bright side to shadow ban. Ironically. Yep, I'm going to use bright side. You don't shadow bright, you get it. I'm not going to explain it to you. You're smart, or at least I want to be on Copium and hope that you're smart, okay, no, but I you. But there's a reason why these things happen. You know. You don't want to.
Speaker 1:I would say I would support it. If someone's saying death to blank, blank blank or even ban the person because that's promoting violence, I would support that by just expressing opinions or things like that, not hate, you know, like death to a certain group of people. That's fundamentally wrong and it shouldn't even and it shouldn't be protected under first amendment for sure. I don't care what context it is, unless it's a comic skit or something like that. But you gotta, you gotta be careful with that because that's it's risky territory. I'm not a absolutist. Um, just be clear. You know certain things I would agree with. If you, if you're promoting like, if you put like hateful, violent stuff, then yeah, you, you put yourself in danger. You know, and you know, and you know and you know.
Speaker 1:I think the ones that complain more is more the right. It happened to some on the left too. Let me just be clear there's some of the left that got shadow banned as well, but the ones that tend to complain more about it is the right. Especially during the twitter times, I think people will lean to the right, complain a heck of a lot more than those on the left, and it has happened to the left as well. Just to be clear, this is coming from a centrist, so I said no, the ban has happened to people on the left too. The ones on the right, some exaggerated it and some did post some nasty stuff. I mean, I can see why you could post it, but I just believe the person should be ridiculed.
Speaker 1:That's my personal belief. Leave it there, let the person be real cool. I'd rather people see who they really are, make their judgment and do that. That's just my opinion, but I don't own a social media platform, so I can't promote that kind of belief they do. They have their own set of rules. They're going to go by whatever is hateful, whatever is violent. Then yeah, you're going to get it. You're going to get it. And me, I have a warning strike just because I was talking about an opinion on COVID and I did say go speak to your doctor. And I got first strike regardless. So I had a little bit of that and all I did was just yeah, all I did, I just took off that part. But I put the uncensored version on Rumble. That episode I promoted Rumble, more rumble. That episode promoted rumble more. So you want the uncensored version? You go to rumble, simple as that. I just pivot. That's why I've run before rumble's a backup. I I thought it was in terms of service, but they didn't think so yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because, you know, in my book, chapter nine is called punishing crime and I actually talk about the origin story of the company gap and gab. Is this like you'd not say whatever, an ultra right-wing social media platform? But really it was a response to what was very selective, biased enforcement of the Twitter in terms of use during the last or two election cycles ago. And so people look at Gap and say, okay, this is bad. And now people look at X today and say, okay, this is bad. But then people also look at blue sky and say this is an echo chamber as well.
Speaker 2:I guess the irony in all of it is that the argument can be made that any of this enforcement is selective, meaning the nanosecond that something offensive is posted.
Speaker 2:Of course, it isn't always moderated, sometimes a human has to come, but if it takes a human five minutes to take down one thing and it takes 15 minutes to take down another thing, even then you could make the argument that there was selective, biased enforcement. So it all revolves around this and the point is that we don't have transparency in how it actually works, like when we think about people being deplatformed, which is the whole nature of GAP and we think about these types of terms of service violations. If you didn't come out and say I received a strike because I mentioned something medical which apparently is against the rules somewhere, nobody would know. There's not a public scoreboard letting people know how much infringement there is, and that's the problem. A lot of people who are you know face it. You and I are smaller creators. We suffer in silence If we have something to say that is considered to go over the line. So, taking the First Amendment and then applying this new framework of inciting hate violence, whatever, whatever Some people feel that it can be selectively enforced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see, that's a good point. You brought up Smaller creators. Yeah, we suffer even more and you're right, it is a silence. I'm not going to even debate that. But me, instead of just, you know I could be in my emotions, I could do the BMW. I mean, if you know Larry Elder, you know what that stands for and you know I could just complain, just feel sorry for myself. I just did a little pivot, I was like, okay, whatever, I just okay. Now I just know not to post anything that's medical misinformation. Okay, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:But and this happened last year when things were starting to ease up Cause, oh, the 2020s and 2021. Oh, they were on overdrive. Let's just be. I didn't deal with the peak of that. I wasn't. I wasn't being a producer on YouTube. I started using more 2023. That's OK, I'll try YouTube, fine, but I won't be surprised. I'm going to get restricted or strike. I wasn't surprised. That's why I have rumbles to back up. You see, I think of these things before I jump in. I have a safety net or plan b and c, just in case a falls apart, and I already dealt with a taste of it.
Speaker 1:Uh, straight, as I said, well, people just go to your doctor and you know what's true in that video. I didn't say it fast enough to their defense at that way, because I let him talk for 30 minutes straight. He had a lot to say, so maybe that's the only thing I can say it's okay. That's why I didn't argue that much. It's okay, this is just a Okay. That's why I didn't argue that much. Okay, this is just a learning experience. I mean, you could take it that way, or you can just do the BMW. You know, you just complain. Okay, I'm going to spell out for you, for those who don't get it B, and I'm going to space itch, put that together. You know what that is B, space itch, put it together, moan and walk. I could do that, but I I chose not to. Okay, whatever, it was shocking, I'm not gonna lie, but I just corrected then, that's it. And well, the strike is gone. So, but it was just something that I had. I just, you know, I'll just say, well, I don't know that, I have to be careful. The only thing I could do is just say, well, go consult with your doctor. Just say this is no, you know, just go to your doctor for medical information, things like that. That's it, simple fix. Do I like it? No, but what are you going to do? Maybe I'll become a big creator at some point. Then I'll voice out more and try to channel for the smaller creators and all that, but I'm not there yet. I got to deal with reality. I can't be the oh you know. So I, I'm a practice. At the end of the day, I'll just do let's do what I need to do. And you know, and we are using their, you know their service. So you know, unless I have my own website, my own video creation company, yeah, do whatever, but you're using someone else's and that's where you gotta kind of look at it. You gotta follow their rules, whether you like it or not. And ground bull got their rules abby.
Speaker 1:I found out it wasn't as free speech. What I'm not surprised it was. It was like, I think, like a fad chasing thing that you want to get all these censored or martyred social media personalities to go in there. I know it's gonna flop. I said that's ridiculous. That thing's gonna fall apart.
Speaker 1:They don't know what it means to run a social media company now. They're not as smart as twitter. I don't agree with twitter politically on some of on some issues. But they're not smart. You know, a lot of the brains are in twitter, youtube and all that. Yeah, they're just reacting. This is more just a knee-jerk reaction and it fell apart. Someone with uh who who paid such a situation could, could easily see that, without being right wing, left minds, let's go fall apart. If you just got a bunch of business people, I don't know what the hell they're doing. It's gonna fall apart. It takes a lot to run a social media company, especially the size of twitter. I refuse to call it x youtube and all that. So I said, nah, they're gonna fall apart. I think should be more competition. But you know what?
Speaker 2:are you gonna do? What are you gonna?
Speaker 1:do? Uh, what are you gonna do? People just know what you sign for and learn how to read that long, uh, you know that long list of terms of service. Maybe you'll catch it somewhere as an aha, section b, section 3b, whatever I violated. But a lot of people just click and you know you accept it without realizing what you truly agreed upon. You know what you agreed to. You just click it because you just want to use this like you don't got time to read a biblical page, agreement. I mean, both 99 percent of us are not going to read that darn thing. So, and you know, and I was, I'm one of those 99, believe me, I didn't have time to read all that. I tried to, I tried to scam read it but even means ah, this is what, this is what you know, and this is where this is where we catch on.
Speaker 1:This is why you know we do this is why you know the bands and all that are kind of are somewhat and I do say somewhat, because it's very vague the way, the way they were that I kind of point out what you said it's very vague, very vague. So even when you read, in terms of service, thoroughly, the 1%, actually forget the 1%, the .00001% that reads the full thing, you still might be caught by surprise. So even that's not even guaranteed because, I have to agree, the vague wording is what? Yeah, it catches you off guard. Oh, this is what you actually meant about misinformation, because misinformation is such a big
Speaker 1:buzzword. Information is such a big buzzword, you know, and a lot of people think they're helping with the, you know, with common fault, deceptive information or bad information and all that. But a lot of people contribute to it. I have contributed to it and I have to correct once I realize. I correct it as soon as possible because I care about the facts, not about my ego. So let me have you speak a bit. Um, let's see here what question I got. Oh, the history of the blue checkmark verification thing. What else is the history behind?
Speaker 2:that. Why do we need it? This one comes back to Twitter and we can call it Twitter. That's totally fine.
Speaker 2:What I saw later in the times was that the blue checkmark became this mark of importance on many different social media platforms and what people might not remember or people are new to the internet since the 2020s, there were massive sums of money being exchanged behind the scenes to get Instagram accounts blue checkmark. So there was a very, very detailed process in which somebody internal at Meta would have to determine that your account was important enough to be at risk of impersonation. So the blue check mark was essentially saying this is the real one, it's platform verified and they've submitted identification. But it was also a measure of notability, similar to if you were to have your own Wikipedia article. So what I was privy to in the late 2010s was that there's a black market for getting blue checks in which people were paying $5,000, $10,000, or even $15,000 to get them, and that included fake Spotify plays, if you were a musician. It included fake followers. It included fake-ish news articles being placed on fake-ish websites. It was a whole network of fakery.
Speaker 2:Blue Checks had diverged quite a bit from the original purpose, which did start with Twitter, where some team manager of a baseball team was being impersonated and the parody account that was impersonating him said some unkind things and he threatened to sue Twitter.
Speaker 2:So Bids Stone, who was the Twitter co-founder, came and said okay, you know what? This is a frivolous lawsuit, but we are going to try to set a new standard with this blue check mark. So in 2009, it started rolling out for some very important individuals, but then, once everybody realized that followers could be bought and there were tons of ways to appear more popular than you actually were on social media sites in 2017 and 2018, the search interest in getting blue check marks by any means possible was extremely elevated. What you and I know today is that anyone now can just pay the platforms a monthly fee for the blue checkmark. So we went through this whole transformation where, in 2023, things changed and now anyone can have one. In the meantime, it served a real purpose, but it also was co-opted by these big players in the underworld.
Speaker 1:Yep, I mean, let's go to. I refuse to call it the letter X. I think of many things, not a social media site, bad branding. Elon Musk, I will continue to call you out on that Twitter.
Speaker 1:Okay, the blue check mark is now level one in the payment wall. There's even a black one, but if you do the dark mode it's grayish, so it can pop up a bit. And then there's a gold one. I mean it's evolved. I would say it's more monetized, heavy, more than doing.
Speaker 1:Its purpose is make sure Elias is Elias. Elias is not Pablo Escobar. He just personated me, cursing out my followers and destroying my reputation. Right, that was the purpose of the blue check mark and I like that, even though it was a frivolous lawsuit because some company could have said puzzle off, I'm not going to change. But I think it was smart on their part because, like I said, I am for freedom of speech, I'm not for deception, I'm not for violence. Yeah, you deserve to be held to account and even arrested. And freedom comes with responsibility. Both political parties have forgotten that Freedom comes with responsibility because once you start doing stupid stuff, irresponsible stuff, illegal stuff, this gives government the rationale to try to put more laws to diminish our rights. We need to get back to that people. We need to get back to that. And yeah, I'm actually being serious here, I'm being a grown up here. I'm not being the villainous child or a naive child. No, we have to. We need to get back to that America because we have, we are lost our way.
Speaker 1:I don't care if you lean left, right, center, I really don't care. That's not important to me. I don't care about partisan loyalty, because been never been about that. Even when I was a moderate democrat, swiss, or moderate republican, I never really cared. You gotta call. We need to find a common ground. A middle ground could benefit the most people. That's. That should be more important than just saying, oh, the republicans, oh, you know, freaking outwitted the democrats or vice versa. Nah, nah, this partisan nonsense, and especially with the check marks in particular, that's more for Elon Musk. I think Remodification. Correct me if I'm wrong there.
Speaker 1:Also, even with the censorship, because one side cheered all the opposition being censored, I said, no, that could happen to you too. It's a slippery slope. Yeah, I think big. Yeah, I think big. Not just what's good for my team and screw everybody else. It's gonna happen to you, and when left started getting some of it, they hated it. I said, of course you know, but, like I said, some people on the left was getting it too. Um, I don't want to make it seem as just right is always right, bad, bad pun intended, but the one that seemed to be publicized was the right getting censored. That was more publicized, I agree, because if I did a more deep study, there was left accounts that were getting censored as well.
Speaker 1:I'm trying not to make this a partisan issue. I'm sure we have good intent for these check marks and all that, but you know, now you just gotta pay for it. Okay, as long as I got enough money to throw in there, it is a monthly fee. Like you said in twitter. Um, especially won't pay for higher tiers, for higher what's it? Visibility, even features, all that stuff, and sometimes you even get paid interesting, I guess I could get some of that money back, whatever.
Speaker 1:But you know, I just think, like I just think, um, the, the internet. It's hard to balance that out, because you do want some freedom, but but at the same time, you want to not make sure the criminals get free reign. It's very difficult. I mean parody accounts. I'm for it. But now they got gotta put parody because elon musk hasn't been banned. Those people, yeah, elon musk is not for free speech. He's not fully for free speech. Nobody is not even me. But I try to be as rational and as nuanced I can be about that, because I'm not gonna support the one says death to all one race. I'm not. Well, no, are you crazy? America is a very diverse country. No, you're stupid. You're stupid if you think I'm supposed to pretend Whatever. I think I'm talking way too much. Anything else? You want to add that you think our listeners should know?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say, yeah, you touched on an interesting topic here, which is simply the balancing act, which is a balance not just between two sides of an equation, but also between users and advertising partners and manipulators. So, people who ran the business, like I ran, the truth is that, even if I'm running a business that facilitates hundreds of millions of computer augmented actions meaning fake engagements on the platform, the truth is that the platforms themselves benefit from that in some way, because they get to highlight those metrics as active users, when in actuality they might know that they're fake. But then, on the other side of it, if there's too much of that, the users want to go somewhere else. They don't want to be on a platform that feels like it's just bots. So, whether it's moderating certain conversations, which we've talked a lot about, or enforcing the rules as they relate to disruptive automated behavior, yeah, there's a lot of different forces at play, and we haven't even talked at all about how advertisers can kind of shift the balance in either direction.
Speaker 1:Well, we got some time, let's dive into it. That's an advertisement, because that's the thing that. Look, we get annoyed of it. Most of us do OK, especially the free version. You could pay for it. That's one solution, but some people, you know they can't afford basic necessities. So I get it. So that's about the advertisers, how they influence all that, these metrics.
Speaker 2:I think the interesting part that anyone any listener of this show could relate to is that when you log on to Wikipedia during their annual appeal, you're met with that very annoying, obtrusive message where they say Wikipedia is not for sale. If you've been on the internet for long enough, you've seen this message like dozens of times. And what's really unique is that Wikipedia doesn't take advertising dollars. They don't run ads. Invented in this message is this association with taking advertising money and having biases. And what we don't realize for many social media platforms, which their entire model of business is based around running ads, is that the more and more money an advertiser spends on the platform, the more influence they might actually have on the topics discussed on the platform or even the direction of the platform itself. So it goes from just like low level nefariousness, which is to say, okay, if I'm a small town business owner and I'm running an ad and I get pissed off about something, I'm going to demand a greater level of support because I've run an ad and I get pissed off about something, I'm going to demand a greater level of support because I've run an ad on Facebook, right. So you might say, okay, maybe it was a technical blip. Maybe I don't understand something. Maybe nobody clicked on my ad. I expect there to be a human on the other side of the screen. Generally there might be, depending on how much you spend.
Speaker 2:But if we scale that up and say, okay, I'm not like a small town business owner spend. But if we scale that up and say, okay, I'm not like a small town business owner, maybe I have a pet, you know whatever pet supplies place, what if I'm Purina? Right, what if I'm like the largest like dog, you know, dog, cat, pet food place in America or one of them? I'm spending so much money, maybe in ads that I can start to say, hey, I don't want to see content that involves I don't know something related to animal rights. Like, say, I don't want to see content that involves I don't know something related to animal rights. Like, say, I don't want my content to appear at the end of a hunting video. You and I would say that's probably fair, but who draws the line? This is the difference between Wikipedia, which is as independent as possible, and these platforms, which is like, okay, purina, we'll give them a pass.
Speaker 2:But what if we start seeing manufacturers of firearms or purveyors of adult content or all these different things. You start getting these balances where the reason we don't see adult content or more soft core adult content, explicit content on these platforms is pretty much because all the advertisers colluded and said no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to have that anymore. The reason that we see the dislikes count disappear on YouTube is because the advertisers colluded and said no, we don't want to be shown on any video that has more than a 20% dislike rate. So what does YouTube do to preserve the? To preserve the funding, they just make it so that nobody can see the dislikes. So the point is that we have some pretty likely scenarios over time where we can actually see where very, very influential high budget advertisers have influenced both the conversation, the selective enforcement and actual feature deployment on platforms like YouTube. So that's where it gets crazy and I wish I had more space in my book to talk about.
Speaker 1:Yep, you hear that and I look. I started paying attention to this and since I was more of a YouTube consumer, adpocalypse. That's when I realized these advertisers, they're using their leverage to change the direction of social media. That's when it clicked to me and, I'm being honest, I was starting to see it a little before, but I couldn't pinpoint it until the ad apocalypse happened. So, oh yeah and I am not going to even debate that, I am not an expert at this, but it makes sense they all gathered together and said we are not going to stand for this, we're not going to advertise because they need the money. It's a business, they're not charity, so they hold the leverage's a business, they're not charity, so they hold the leverage. They say we're not going to give you more dollars.
Speaker 1:Especially and I'm going to give you more crazy example and this is when youtube used to be more free compared to. This is pre-ad apocalypse when you used to have people spew hate and actual racism used to pop up and advertisers realized that this is when eventually developed this adpocalypse thing. I said, oh no, I am not gonna. You know, like coca-cola, for example, I'm sure they wanted them. I said I am not gonna have my advertisers on someone saying hateful things about one race or just spread extreme ideology. It was happening, okay, I'm like it was, absolutely. You know it was. It was happening, and advertisers got upset. They got upset, and a lot of them they caved I think the only one that I would say it's playing a bit of a middle ground, in a sense.
Speaker 1:I think they're using they're definitely using a lesson of this on twitter, because they have more of a subscription model as opposed to youtube, youtube has a bit of both. Yeah, you could pay for the, you know, for the paid version if you want to skip the advertisements. If, though, that that's another thing. This is not a secret. This is something you could do. You just hover the mouse or whatever, and especially when you know you get tired of ads, it might.
Speaker 1:They don't push that, I think, and there's even youtube tv that might charge you even more money, but to replace the old, outdated cable, you know especially us millennials and gen z and the future generations tossing that darn obsolete thing out the window. For the most part, all the generations are keeping that the boomers and, I would say, the X to a lesser degree, you know, and this is just something that will ever change? I'm sure it is, but how will we like it? Probably not, because their business, at the end of the day, and they need the money. This is why they do what they do. It's not about consumers having the most power when it comes to these things. Correct me if I'm wrong here. It's more like the advertisers.
Speaker 2:And to some extent the owners?
Speaker 1:It's not. If it was the consumers, we could have gathered together and pushed back against adpocalypse and it would have been a success. But that's not what happened. Youtube creators, major ones, did the BMW, but no budge actually happened. If anything, they doubled down further the advertisers and then forcing the owners or the CEOs to pivot, and that's what happened.
Speaker 1:I mean the basic version. He'll give you the more in-depth version. He's an expert, not me. I'm just saying I'm an informed consumer. I could kind of see what some of the experts are talking about, but don't expect me to come up with a high IQ solution for it. You're not going to get it from me. I'm happy to burst your bubble. If you're delusional, I'm happy to get it from me. I'm happy to burst your bubble. If you're delusional, I'm happy to burst it. But uh, yeah, and I want to talk about bots, because that's another thing. Some people complain about bots. You know these fake, um, you, you allude to it. I think sure, definitely, with the fake interactions and all that, and I think it was actually a little differently since we touched on it. Is it more beneficial than harm? Is it vice versa? Is or is mixed?
Speaker 2:It has to be a mix, because our definition of bot now is so broad, and the truth is that some platforms, namely Twitter and Reddit, in their early days encouraged the development of bots and they made their API available to bot developers, and today there's a negative connotation around what it means for, you know, an automated program to be controlling a social media account. But I think on Twitter and Reddit, we saw a lot of really useful or useful enough bots that were performing moderation tasks or performing like time-based tasks, or even, you know, in Reddit you could summon a calculator or you can summon something to say, hey, remind me in a couple days. There were a lot of these small projects that were, you know, essentially built in this loose collaboration with independent developers and hobbyists and the platforms. Anyone who made an API available meaning like a programming interface available to developers eventually had to deal with the problem of that API being used for the fake engagements, meaning like let's farm for some karma on Reddit, let's get some more followers on Instagram. Instagram used to have an open API, just like Reddit's, and nobody remembers it because as soon as Instagram realized what it was being used for, they completely shut it down. They actually accelerated its shutdown during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which was where there was this like survey page that was collecting user details, and I say the irony was that there was so much body activity at that time, yet they were more worried about the fallout from Cambridge Analytica. So they just said you know, let's close this thing off.
Speaker 2:I talk a lot about API openness and really the collaboration with developers. The point is that once you close off APIs, they still exist. So when you tap something on your phone, like you have Instagram and you're saying like follow, scroll, whatever, those events are still registered and they're still sent to an internal server at Instagram and they're still sent in ways that are explainable in plain English. But the problem is that it's locked down or it's caught behind. You know there's different types of encryption and different types of login gates.
Speaker 2:It's much harder to run a bot today, but the rewards are still pretty rich. So if you have a bot that does the right things, maybe it scrapes data and then aggregates it and sells it, Maybe it takes trading actions based on some type of trigger, Maybe it does get people more followers, Maybe your prospects leads, Maybe it sends auto DMs on LinkedIn. These are all things that exist today and if you know where to look, you can buy them. So, generally, I am negative net negative today on bots, because I've seen how harmful they could be and we've also seen so many of these features be built into the platforms anyway that the bot isn't really necessary. But yeah, I think, putting it all together, we see that bots are still very spammy and harmful when they're there, but they only exist because there is so much, so so much opportunity still to be exploited and to be grabbed by developers.
Speaker 1:Do you feel educated yet, especially those of you who think you know everything, you feel enlightened. We need to know this stuff. Okay, and I, to be honest shame to me, because I should have to be honest I should have had this episode done earlier. I would say, at least, if I'm going to be a little to me, because, yes, I'm being a hypocrite, my ego was hurt probably two years ago. I'm going to be very harsh. This should be one of the first tech episodes ever done, because we need to, I would say, know about these things. We should have known about this. But hey, I work with what I have. I'm a pragmatist. I don't believe in you know, I would like the world would be more ideal. I do, but I work with what I have. I'm a, I'm a pragmatist. So if I have a, if you know, like, for example, if I talk to someone with covid, I would like a medical expert, I feel more comfortable talking about asking questions. Again, I'm gonna plug in some dumb check, dr ravi. I forget what episode number it is. It's definitely earlier than 254. He was, he's brilliant. He talked about COVID. I think, in the most nuanced way, that we need to be educated about it without the fear mongering okay for both the left and the right which I was discussing with both parties on that issue. He gave a very medical and a very nuanced perspective as well.
Speaker 1:So why am I saying this? I'm saying this because this is how early I should have done this instead of just you know, maybe, maybe the whole COVID thing I'm sure YouTubers could probably know where to reach you because I keep mentioning COVID. I don't care, I'm not spreading medical information. I'm not going to say trust me on medical information. Certainly do not. You'll be a fool to do that. You can check Dr Ravi Iyer for medical information there. You go Right there, right there, check Dr Ravi Iyer. A little shout out, a little shout out. I know another guest is not here, but he has done some great stuff and I will definitely interview him again because he's in my medical understanding about what the heck is going on. And you know, and I should have met this guy earlier this is something that this should have been one of the first tech episodes I've done. If I had a clearer vision, you know. But yet you know, I put the old stuff, the embarrassing stuff, in the paywall. Now you got to pay for that $3 a month. You're not going to access it that easily. $3 a month that's my embarrassing days where I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I just wanted to get to podcasting because I had a lot of free time. I actually enjoyed doing it. That's the thing I learned.
Speaker 1:I am not as introvert as I thought I was. If you're going to be honest, I think I'm barely I'm barely qualified as an introvert. I'm more than I love to be sociable. There are some things I hate people. Oh, I think it sounds a little too harsh. Sometimes I enjoy my isolation. Sometimes I like people. I'm like that. So you know that's what I'm going to say. All right, you're not. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Elias, I appreciate it. I will give you credit, though. For one thing, the book has only been out for a few months and for another thing, from when we first spoke, I think you responded to my initial message in less than an hour, so it's not exactly like you sat on, checked it again. It was like five seconds read to it.
Speaker 1:Then I said, no, what am I doing? This is super important. This is basic tech, one-on-one for I don't know, internet 2.5. I think we're still in 2.5. I say I age you a little bit because I remember the end days of 1.0 with the AOL and all that You've got mail thing. I was at the very end transitioning to 2.0 with the whole Facebook and all the simpler times. But you're not going to get any more nostalgia than that, people. So anything else you want to add before I wrap this?
Speaker 2:up. I appreciate it. Just thinking about the podcasting space in general and the way you pitch it. When I speak to hosts, I hope that they can see that this is not just another fake tech influencer trying to sell you something. I was so deep and we could probably talk for the rest of the night about some of these topics that have not been covered. The same thing that you say also exists in other realms where people should know better, such as journalists. I've had journalists respond or not respond in ways that suggest they actually don't know what I'm talking about, and that's the scary part, especially when I'm referencing articles that that journalist themselves wrote seven or eight years ago. That's the scary part is how quickly people forget and, I think, how poor the grasp of the lay person might be of some of these topics. So, whatever we could cover today, I'm really thankful for it and I appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think it's. You know. I know you're not just a tech influence. I would have known right off the bat, because I will get annoyed easily Cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it. I would be happy speak again and even even debate some of the things that I've written, be more debative on, unless you know someone's like hate.
Speaker 1:You know hate certain groups, yeah. Yeah, like rosie o'donnell's crazy nazi post of I forget this lady's name, valerie, which I'll say yeah, you did that to yourself. I might give you the 1a pass. Here you really post something that's very, very racist and doesn't matter how you spend the context, and you blame it on drugs. So I think she's a great comedian, but she had to be held to her account. I don't care. I don't care if you're a freaking celebrity. No, she had to be held to an account and that's why she's only on rumble. She's definitely not on youtube.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that to insult her, but you read what you saw and me, I try to be a little more careful. I end, if I end up being bad, for whatever reason, so be it. I I got rumbled by. I'm trying not to get to that point, unless it's unavoidable and inevitable, that that's all I can do. So yeah, all righty, all right. Yeah, we could. We could definitely talk for another hour or two easily, but this is not a joe rogan marathon, it just after a while my brain's in front of me, I'm gonna forget your name and everything's. Why did we talk about? Who the hell?
Speaker 1:are you, but no, I'm not gonna do that. So now let's do the. Let's plug in tim. You know, get that book, just get the darn book. I'm gonna put the link in the description. I think it's called. Let me see, I'm gonna probably butcher the title. Yes, I'm cheating. I'm looking at my screen, sue me.
Speaker 1:Frame a villain's perspective on social media that does include bio info and then lacy blurb. Well, if you don't have unofficial adhd, like me, the reason I say that's because it's not medically diagnosed check it out. Okay, there's even a kindle version as well, if you wanted to be read to you. All right, there's a paperback version. I prefer the paperback. Yes, I'm a millennial. Deal with it because it's just owning a book. I just there's. There's something about it. I think it registers in my brain more. If I would have did a, if I would have had it read to me, I would have picked up some things. But hey, it's up to you, you gotta have it be read to.
Speaker 1:You know, and maybe he's an anti-hero, but that that's just my. I think he would debate that for sure. And but you know, and look, he did his part. You know of algorithm, all that good stuff, so he's good to talk to. I don't care if he's a villain. Sometimes you got to talk to villains. I'm a pragmatist, you know, and you know what I'm going to give a Jesus example. He talked to people who are not society. You know they were not great, you know, like the tax collector, who they were hated, or even the prostitute.
Speaker 1:So if you want to be a little boy like Jesus. You got to talk to people who are unconventional or even done dark things in the past. Can't just discriminate them. They get goody two shoes. You got your own blench. Ok, that's the spirituality part coming in. Okay, that's random. Okay, enough of that. Just get the book. I'm sure he could just look at that. I think if the book was turned into a podcast, this would be easy. Probably four hours, five hours For sure, especially my debate part. Probably another hour, right, and anything else. Let me see what he got before.
Speaker 1:I want to make sure he's well promoted here. Check him on LinkedIn. And what was the symbol? Again, beehive, that's. You know, you subscribe for news and all of that good stuff. I mean, he has his own page for that. First time. I'm promoting that. By the way, first time I promote Reddit.
Speaker 1:I didn't think I was gonna promote reddit because one guest uses it. I think it's a bad tool. I think it's super toxic. But hey, you do. You? You like to argue with people. You love to out troll the trolls. Red is a great place for you. Hopefully you don't get banned, but that's your problem from there. I warned you, I warned you. Okay, that's trollville. Okay, I'm just putting it nicely, it's trollville. So he has his website and all that. That's going to be in the link in the description, because, look, this is not charity work. Support him. This is valuable stuff here.
Speaker 1:And a journalist. Shame on you for being stupid. Shame on you. No, I'm happy to bash some journalists. Shame on you. I won't be surprised if someone like a Taylor Lorenz I I don't respect. There's a journalist and this makes sound right way, and is this right? When you're journalists, I don't respect either, because they they promote problems too. You partisan journalists, I don't respect you. I will rather I rap to a boring span or ap than y'all too, because y'all, even y'all more personality, yeah, or more controversy, a little more cynical, but, yeah, promote problems. You promote your own misinformation, you promote your own biases. Okay, that's what I'm going to say. Shame on you, journalists, that, if you don't, at least remember, pull it up, hello, pull it up journalists. The fact that they don't know that, yeah, especially tech journalists, oh no.
Speaker 2:Unforgivable. I can't forgive that. If you're a social tech journalist unforgivable, can't forgive that. Yeah, I mean, look, we live in a world where everyone is selling something, so when you get cold outreach from an indie author whose name you've never heard before, of course it feels like a sales pitch. If I had to tally how many free copies like free paperback copies of this book I've sent out, I don't even want to put a number next to it Because for me, even though we say it's not a work of charity, that's true I basically sell everything at cost and the opportunity cost of creating this book was immense and probably immeasurable compared to some of the consulting stuff that I shut down or even running the dishonest business that I once ran.
Speaker 2:The point is that there are really important people out there, from academics to policymakers, to journalists and even to people like you you know podcast hosts and I just find it interesting to hear kind of that raw, candid take of what was your first impression and what do you think now. So I hope the message listeners can take away is they think something totally different about social media and especially about the path of people who grew up with it through the 90s and beyond. So thanks for having me on and hope that the listeners can take something away from this.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I thank you for coming Lately. I got to call out you punk wannabe tech guests. I'm not going to change who I am. I'm very unapologetic and I it on my profile. If you're, if you're indecisive, don't come to me, because I am. I will get on you. So you're gonna do this or not and just get out of my face. Hey, that's the new york attitude. You waste my time. He didn't.
Speaker 1:He gave me the, I'll say, the most interesting tech pitch I've ever heard. The super villain social media. Interesting, pretty shameless, pretty creative. Definitely not boring, creative pitches. I'll respond to a lot faster. They ask. I respond to you pretty quickly because now it may take like two or three days to respond. So there you go pitch well, guests, pitch well. And don't be afraid of my unconventional style or be afraid of it. Be afraid of it, just don't bother. Give me the first email because I will pressure you on it. Really I will. I don't care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one more thing to brag this is a New York-esque episode. More of that's happening more often. Great, great, great. I'm not against it. I don't mind promoting New York, even though it's not the best state right now Economically, you know. But there's radical plans are happening. I've followed some urban designers and let's just say a lot of moving is going to need to happen and people are going to be pissed off, but I just think it's the only way it could be done at this point, because the damage and the repairs are so huge and so massive. There's no other viable way. Uh, unless you. I don't know if you want to move out of state or something. That's all you could do. Or move to upstate, new York, long Island, move deep upstate, I don't know. Be near the Canadian border. I don't know If you want to stay in the city. We're going to tough it out for the next two decades. That's how I feel that's. That might be a tease for another episode or that just might be random. You'll find out. So, all right, let me shut up and do my own plug-in.
Speaker 1:So if you enjoy this audio or visual journey, give a donation, if you can $3. You have access to my old, embarrassing, binge-worthy content. If you want to bash me and roast me, go right ahead. You pay $3. I get your money, you roast me. I right ahead, you pay $3. I get your money, you roast me.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to do it for free. Okay, I'm not that charitable. I was charitable for a limited time, but no, they stand behind the paywall. I don't care and I'm going to put exclusive content. I think stuff that's super interesting that I think should be behind the paywall. Look, we all got to make money here, okay, and I'm shameless about it.
Speaker 1:But I will provide free stuff if the guest wants me to do that as well, because I have a lot of guests that provided free stuff. I just go by what the guest does. I'm not going to tell them to change it or make it free. That's up to them. I don't know what their business situation is. I'm not going to ask that either you know, unless you know I know them really really well or build a good rapport. I could do that. If they got a sale, I'll promote it. I'll promote it.
Speaker 1:It's just I got to get this episode done much faster. A little annoying for my ex on a one-man show, but I get it done. There'll be more sleepless nights for me. If you want to feel sorry for me, give me the tears and all that on the mug. Feel sorry for me a little bit. No, you don't want to feel sorry. Whatever, I'm going to get the work done. Anyways, I'll tough it out and for the YouTube and Rumble, it'll eventually come to Rumble.
Speaker 1:Give a like, share, subscribe, give this to someone who could benefit and give a review on Apple Podcasts. That's the only site I pay attention to. I don't care about Spotify. Spotify is only my personal playlist. I will never respond to you there. If so, if you could leave it there, I don't care about you. Just do an Apple If I honest review. I love a constructive review more than just say I'm great, why suck, that don't mean anything. I'm great because of ABC. I am bad because of ABC. That I will value more. Okay, you know, if it's a four-star, great. If it's a five-star, even better. That's all I can say from here. So that's it for me. Now for the final wrap-up. Once you complete this journey, you have a blessed day, afternoon or night. Bye.
