Decoder with Nilay Patel The Verge

What motivates Mark Zuckerberg these days? It's a question Decoder guest host Alex Heath posed at the end of his interview last week, after he and Zuckerberg had spent an hour talking about Threads, Zuckerberg's vision for how generative AI will reshape Meta's apps, the Quest 3, and other news from the company's Connect conference, which kicked off today. 

After spending the past five years as a wartime CEO, Zuckerberg is getting back to basics, and he clearly feels good about it. "I think we've done a lot of good things," he said. "But for the next wave of my life and for the company — but also outside of the company with what I'm doing at CZI [Chan Zuckerberg Initiative] and some of my personal projects — I define my life at this point more in terms of getting to work on awesome things with great people who I like working with." For Zuckerberg, "awesome things" means figuring out how to combine his company's AR, VR, and AI ambitions into new products. 
 
This rare interview with the Meta CEO also includes details on his ongoing feud with Elon Musk and the quest to beat X/Twitter using Threads, his perspective on open source, and his vision for decentralized social media. Okay, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Here we go.

Links:

Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match

The three reasons Twitter didn’t sell to Facebook

Threads app usage plummets despite initial promise as refuge from Twitter

Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss

You can now verify your Threads profile on Mastodon

In show of force, Silicon Valley titans pledge ‘getting this right’ With AI

Meta is putting AI chatbots everywhere

A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled

Custom AI chatbots are quietly becoming the next big thing in fandom

Meta’s Smart Glasses can take calls, play music, and livestream from your face

Meta’s $499.99 Quest 3 headset is all about mixed reality and video games

The Meta Quest 3 is sharper, more powerful, and still trying to make mixed reality happen

Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about Apple’s Vision Pro


Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is one of the most important trade publications in the world of tech and startups, and its annual Disrupt conference is where dozens of major companies have launched… and some have failed.
Matt has been the editor-in-chief of TechCrunch for essentially a decade now, and he and I have been both friends and competitors the entire time. We’ve competed for scoops, traded criticisms, and asked each other for advice in running our publications and managing our teams.
So when Matt announced last month that he’s stepping down from his role at TechCrunch it felt important to have him come on for what you might call an exit interview — a look back at the past decade running a media outlet at the center of the tech ecosystem, with all of the chaos that’s entailed.

Links: 
Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here | TechCrunch (2010)
TechCrunch founder leaves AOL in a cloud of acrimony | CNN Money (2011)
SB Nation Sacks AOL in Raid of Former Engadget Team for Competing New Tech Site, As AOL Zeroes in on New EiC | All Things D (2011)
Why Every Company Needs A 'No Bozos' Policy | Forbes (2012)
Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman | TechCrunch
Just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine | The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Nick Statt and Kate Cox. It was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts, from longtime space reporter and Verge alum Loren Grush, is out today.
It’s been 40 years since Sally Ride became the first American woman in space — but she was far from the last. In the early 1980s six women — Sally Ride, Judy Resnick, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Rhea Seddon, and Shannon Lucid — would get a chance to fly a mission on one of the space shuttles… including, unfortunately, the ill-fated 1986 Challenger launch.
The story of the six may be history, but it’s far from ancient, and there’s a lot going on here that ties directly to today. And of course, what’s an astronaut story without some high-flying hijinks in it? Listen to the end for Loren’s favorite.


Links:
Nichelle Nichols - NASA Recruitment Film (1977)
Top Black Woman Is Ousted By NASA | The New York Times (1973)
The Space Truck | The Washington Post (1981)
NASA Artemis
Five former SpaceX employees speak out about harassment at the company | The Verge
Why did Blue Origin leave so many female space reporters out of its big reveal? | The Verge
‘We better watch out’: NASA boss sounds alarm on Chinese moon ambitions | Politico
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule | The New Yorker
US Takes First Step Toward Regulating Commercial Human Spaceflight | Bloomberg
Apply to attend the Code Conference

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okta is a big company, a Wall Street SaaS darling. For most of us, it's the thing we have to log into 50 times a week just to get any work done. But from Okta's point of view, Jameeka Green Aaron told us, it's an identity company.

I spoke with Jameeka about what "identity" really means — in the digital space, in your real life, and at work — in 2023, and how an identity-based approach might be more or less secure than other approaches. I’m also gearing up to host Code in September (apply to attend here), and I’m thinking a lot about AI — very much a challenge for the future of security, even in a biometric-based era.

Links:
Apple IDs now support passkeys — if you’re on the iOS 17 or macOS Sonoma betas
How to use a passkey to sign in to your Google account
Windows 11 tests letting you sign in to websites with a fingerprint or face
Apple, Google, and Microsoft will soon implement passwordless sign-in on all major platforms
Microsoft called out for ‘blatantly negligent’ cybersecurity practices
Okta Faces Long Road Back
At Okta, CTO and CISO collaborate by design
Apply to attend the Code Conference

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Perkins Miller is the CEO of Fandom, which both hosts thousands of wikis for everything from Disney to Grand Theft Auto and also runs several publications. Millions of people contribute millions of pieces of content to the platform, and Fandom surrounds all that content with ads and uses all that data to generate insights about how fans think about their favorite games, TV shows, and movies.

While you might enjoy the content, a lot of people have complaints — especially about the sheer number of ads. We talked about what it means to host user-generated content in 2023; content moderation; and the general state of media, especially games media, which is pretty rocky right now. I’m also gearing up to host the Code Conference in September (apply to attend here), and I’ve been thinking a lot about AI, search, and the web — all very much big challenges on the horizon for Fandom.

Links:

Layoffs Hit GameSpot, Giant Bomb Just Months After Fandom Buys Them - Kotaku
How Fandom's first-party data, FanDNA, is expanding to improve recommendations for advertisers and audiences - Digiday
The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of 'model collapse' as AI trains on AI-generated content - VentureBeat
How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history - The Verge
‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I. - The New York Times
Someone keeps accusing fanfiction authors of writing their fic with AI, and nobody knows why - The Verge
Massive Zelda Wiki Reclaims Independence Six Months Before Tears of the Kingdom - Kotaku
Official Minecraft wiki editors so furious at Fandom's 'degraded' functionality and popups they're overwhelmingly voting to leave the site - PC Gamer
Trials and Tribble-ations (episode) - Memory Alpha
Apply to attend the Code Conference

Transcript:

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have a little surprise in the feed today: An episode of "Land of the Giants," which is all about Tesla this season. Former Verge transportation reporter Tamara Warren and former Jalopnik EIC Patrick George, who are both deeply sourced in the world of cars, host, and every episode has reporting and insight about Tesla that really hasn’t been shared before. It was ahead of the EV competition in basically every way for a long time. But the question Tamara and Patrick want to answer is: Is Tesla still winning by default? And where is the competition pulling ahead now that every carmaker is doing EVs? I joined them in this episode to discuss how modern cars, especially EVs, are being totally rethought as rolling computers.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices