0:00

ABC Listen, podcasts,

0:02

radio, news, music

0:04

and more. Breaking

0:11

news. Elon Musk is arguing with somebody on

0:13

the internet. But this time

0:15

he's arguing with the Australian

0:17

government. Yes, this week on Download This

0:19

Show, the Australian Federal Court has

0:21

ordered Elon Musk's ex, formerly

0:23

Twitter, to hide posts containing videos of a

0:26

stabbing in a Sydney church last week. But

0:29

it's not necessarily playing out the way either side

0:31

expected it to. Also on the show

0:33

this week, what if your social media account could talk to

0:35

you? Imagine talking Twitter. All of that and much more coming

0:37

up. This is your guide

0:39

to the week in media, technology and culture.

0:42

My name is Mark Fennell. Welcome to Download

0:44

This Show. Yes,

0:54

indeed, it is a brand new episode of Download This Show. Very

0:57

big welcome to our guest this week, Tech Reporter with Capitol

0:59

Brief, Daniel Van Boom. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having

1:01

me move back. Oh, you know, we do it under suffering. Don't

1:03

get it. It's lovely to have you

1:05

back on the show. And ABC National Tech Reporter and good friend

1:08

of the pod. Just a phrase I've wanted to say. It's not

1:10

even one I proclaim. Angela Vauquier,

1:12

welcome back. Thank you so much. It does feel good

1:14

to say. It feels good to hear. Excellent. All

1:17

right. Not 100% sure whether we're all aware

1:19

of this, but it turns out Australia's at war with Elon Musk and

1:21

how did that happen? It's pretty hard

1:23

to miss. And boy, has it

1:25

escalated. Look, Elon Musk has

1:27

been at war with Australia in various

1:29

ways at varying volumes, quietly, loudly, for

1:31

quite some time. But

1:35

most recently, this is because

1:37

X would not

1:39

take down the videos from

1:41

the Wakely stabbing. The eSafety

1:44

Commissioner has the power to tell

1:47

platforms to take down content. They

1:49

told a whole bunch of platforms to take down that video because it

1:51

really was everywhere. The

1:54

thing is, almost everyone complied. Meta was

1:56

a little bit slow. They had to sort

1:58

of push Meta a little bit. harder,

2:00

but meta-ultimately cooperated to hear

2:02

eSafety Commissioner tell the story.

2:05

Whereas X has made

2:08

a really big point

2:10

of not complying in the

2:12

process, making an enemy of

2:15

somehow everyone in

2:17

Australian politics galvanising

2:19

support for all kinds of measures

2:22

to rein in big tech as

2:24

that's the rhetoric coming out of Canberra at the moment.

2:27

I guess further annoying, I don't know

2:29

if eSafety Commissioners get annoyed, but whatever

2:31

feelings an eSafety Commissioner has, they're having

2:33

them at the moment and have since

2:36

taken further legal action to try

2:38

and get X to comply with

2:40

this takedown order. At

2:42

the time of recording, there is a bit of

2:44

a legal action underway, so we're going to talk

2:46

a little bit top line about this. Out of

2:49

curiosity, Elon Musk has dubbed what's going on here

2:51

as censorship. Is he

2:53

right, Daniel? I'm not sure, because there's

2:55

not really an agreement about

2:57

what is actually being spoken about. The

2:59

eSafety Commissioner has said that they have

3:01

requested that X take down the actual

3:05

stabbing video, and Elon Musk and Twitter

3:07

are claiming that they were asked to

3:09

not only take down the stabbing video,

3:11

but all commentary around the stabbing video.

3:14

Whether or not it's censorship, I think

3:17

relies a lot upon which

3:19

of those people are lying. I have my suspicions about

3:21

which one of those are telling the truth, but yes,

3:23

it very much depends, which is one of the things

3:25

we will find out in the coming days. I think

3:27

there's also some subtlety around, for example, if there was

3:29

a post with the video

3:35

in it and commentary attached to

3:38

that, and then the takedown order applies

3:40

to the post, and then if

3:42

you were so minded, you may

3:45

characterize that as they're telling us to take

3:47

the post down as well. Sure, that's part

3:49

of the deal, but I wonder how

3:51

much it

3:53

might be rounded up or rounded down based

3:55

on those kinds of finer points. achievement

4:00

to achieve bipartisan support in H.J.

4:02

DeVille on Musk. Why

4:05

do tech companies care about what the safety

4:07

commissioner in a country all the way on

4:09

the other side of the world says? Like

4:11

why do they care? They can find you

4:13

quite a bit of money. Well, this is

4:15

another thing we're going to find out. The

4:17

eSafety Commissioner, this is probably the biggest test.

4:19

It's a relatively new commission. It's been around

4:22

since 2017. In the past, tech companies, like

4:24

MostlyMetta and Twitter before I was ex, have

4:26

actually been pretty good about like complying, at

4:28

least on the surface with their like request

4:30

to take down like child sex abuse material

4:32

or hateful content, things along those lines. This

4:34

was the first time one of the big

4:36

tech companies has really like taken a stand

4:38

against them. And we don't actually know really

4:41

what their powers are. One of the things they

4:43

say they can do though is find ex slash

4:46

Twitter, you know, up to I think it's about

4:48

$700,000 daily while the content is still up. So

4:50

whether or not that will stand, we will find

4:52

out. But eventually, even for Elon Musk, that kind

4:54

of racks up. I think this

4:57

was very quiet. This didn't get

4:59

anywhere near the same amount of

5:01

coverage as the current spat is

5:03

getting. But Elon Musk was actually

5:05

already suing the eSafety or in

5:07

a legal fight with the eSafety

5:09

Commissioner over a takedown notice that

5:11

they didn't want to, that the

5:13

company didn't want to obey. It

5:15

was to do with some, you

5:18

know, alleged hateful content about a

5:20

transgender Australian man who had been

5:22

targeted, you know, misgendered and I

5:24

guess, yeah, awful things said about

5:26

them on that platform that eSafety

5:28

Commissioner issued a takedown notice, Musk

5:31

and ex wouldn't go with it. And so

5:33

there was already, they were already kind of

5:35

suing or they'd filed the action and it

5:37

had been received that, you know, it hasn't

5:39

been heard or anything yet. But, you

5:41

know, these fights do exist. Elon

5:44

Musk is also making a real virtue at the

5:46

moment of a fight that he's

5:48

having in Brazil around free speech. If

5:50

you look at his, if you look

5:53

at his feed, it was very tickled

5:55

to see him effectively fundraising earlier this

5:57

week saying, hey, if you want or

6:00

Free Speech, turns out these fights are really

6:02

expensive. Why don't you buy a premium membership

6:04

in order to support this? So I think

6:07

for Elon Musk, in answer to your

6:09

question, why do they care? I think he

6:11

cares because I mean, he's characterized

6:13

himself as a free speech

6:15

absolutist. This is kind of, which is,

6:17

you know, he's absolutely been more than

6:19

happy to kick certain journalists off X

6:21

at various points. So you could certainly argue

6:24

that he is not that, but- He's

6:26

absolutely interested in his own free speech. That much is

6:28

clear. Yeah, he is interested in Elon Musk.

6:30

Elon Musk is interested in Elon Musk's free speech.

6:32

It's sort of about positioning and ideology for him,

6:34

I have to think, but why

6:36

they care more generally, I think

6:39

is to do with whether or not

6:41

Australia can be influential in, you know, what

6:43

happens in Australia does matter globally because

6:47

tech regulation is a very moveable space at the

6:49

moment. There are all kinds of changes happening in

6:51

key markets. And so to that extent, it matters

6:53

as well. We could delve into the psyche of

6:55

Elon Musk for a bit, which I feel like

6:57

has not been done enough It's more or less

6:59

a good 30% of the show these days. Yeah,

7:01

yeah. Over the weekend, it was announced that he

7:03

canceled a trip to India, a Tesla related trip

7:05

to India, I believe, because, you know, Tesla is

7:07

kind of on fire at the moment. Like

7:09

he doesn't really have time to be meeting- Figuratively,

7:11

not pitifully. Figuratively, you know, they've caught a bunch

7:13

of staff and they're not meeting their numbers, which

7:16

is kind of standard. You know, he's over

7:18

there going hardcore mode or whatever he's saying is,

7:20

and not- he doesn't have

7:22

time to meet the Indian Prime Minister. But here he

7:24

is picking fights with, like, the Australian

7:26

East Safety Commissioner over, like, quote unquote, free

7:28

speech, which the Brazil thing is

7:30

pretty much a very similar

7:33

thing. Like, that all happened because Brazil's

7:35

justice on the Supreme Court was essentially

7:37

saying that the court was getting death threats

7:40

and misinformation and that X needed

7:42

to ban some posts. And Elon Musk decided

7:44

to, like, have a row about

7:46

that. And so he's got, I guess,

7:48

the ultimate case of the Twitter brain, because,

7:50

yeah, instead of, like, doing his job, which

7:53

is his jobs, which are, you know, pretty

7:55

important, feels like he's just arguing with people

7:57

on the Internet. For fun. There is

7:59

one king. in this story that's probably worth

8:01

pointing out, which is over the weekend when they

8:03

did ask for the takedown of the content, they

8:05

kind of did take it down, just not for

8:08

people outside of Australia. And that is one of

8:10

the points of contention here, isn't it, Ange? Right.

8:12

So this is geo-blocking. And so

8:15

there was a measure of cooperation,

8:17

we should say, but the

8:20

e-safety commissioner in, you

8:22

know, filing for an injunction this week

8:24

has been arguing that is not good

8:26

enough, that there should be an actual,

8:28

there should be, needs to be an

8:30

actual takedown. So just to play devil's

8:32

advocate for a second here, why should

8:35

the e-safety commissioner of Australia's jurisdiction extend

8:37

beyond Australia? What's her

8:39

argument there? Well, I mean, it's

8:41

a really interesting point, right? Because I

8:43

think, I think

8:45

the rhetoric you're hearing out of Canberra,

8:48

you know, Peter Dutton over the weekend

8:50

saying they can run their own

8:52

race overseas, but the Australian law

8:54

applies in Australia. So it is

8:57

a good question. The argument

8:59

you could advance is whether

9:01

geo-blocking is sufficient in

9:03

that there are ways around that. You

9:06

know, a lot of people use VPNs.

9:08

I'm wondering if the people that they're

9:10

especially worried about seeing extremist content online

9:13

are exactly the people who are going

9:15

to be getting around geo-blocking.

9:18

You also have to distinguish the legal argument from

9:20

like the moral argument. And I guess like legally,

9:22

we are going to find out and I think

9:24

it is a perfectly fair devil's advocate. Like do

9:27

they have the authority to ask for that? But

9:29

then like on the moral side, like would you

9:31

ever, you know, in the Christchurch livestream,

9:33

would you ever say just

9:36

geo-block that from New Zealand and it's okay to

9:38

be seen everywhere else? No, it's an interesting point.

9:40

I just don't know the answer. I'm not, I'm

9:42

as curious about it as anybody. And I do think there

9:45

are interesting nuances to it. At time

9:47

of recording this season in front of the court. So it'd be

9:49

very interesting to see where this goes and try on it. Yeah.

9:51

And I think it could have much

9:54

grander consequences than Elon Musk

9:56

ever intended, or

9:59

perhaps even. imagined, the

10:01

norm for the longest time

10:03

has been that tech companies

10:05

have co-designed the rules, certainly

10:08

in Australia and in other jurisdictions as

10:10

well. They co-designed the rules. At

10:14

the moment, most of their commitments

10:16

for what happens online

10:19

and the safety around

10:21

that, they're voluntary. This

10:24

is potentially a real turning

10:26

point in that we might,

10:28

and Peter Dutton and the coalition has

10:30

expressed support for moving towards a

10:33

mandatory model. We're seeing that change

10:35

happen in the EU. We're seeing

10:37

the beginnings of it in the

10:40

US. I wonder if maybe

10:42

this is Australia's moment

10:44

as well, which goes far beyond

10:46

X. This isn't a fight that

10:48

Elon Musk has picked, but will

10:51

have consequences potentially for every platform.

10:53

Download this show is what you're listening to.

10:55

It is your guide to the week in

10:58

media, technology and culture. I guess this week,

11:00

Angela Voipier, ABC national tech reporter and Daniel

11:02

Van Boom from Capitol brief. Now, if you

11:04

scroll through the internet and you see Dr.

11:06

Carl's face and he's flogging you vitamin

11:09

gummies or miracle pills, Dr. Carl, amongst

11:11

a whole host of other celebrities have

11:14

a message for you and that is,

11:16

it's not me, it's a scam, Dan.

11:18

Tell me a little bit about what's

11:20

happening here. Yeah, so Dr. Carl is

11:23

one of many celebrities, Australian and otherwise,

11:25

which are being used to spook various

11:27

products along the lines of miscellaneous health

11:29

bills, investing advice into various cryptocurrencies and

11:32

Cauchy's death for some reason. Have you

11:34

seen all those ads about Cauchy being,

11:37

Richard Wilkins being arrested, Grant

11:39

Denner being arrested, Cauchy in financial ruin. They're everywhere.

11:41

They're horrific. Some of them are like, we're trying

11:43

to scam you for money and some of them

11:45

are just, we want to watch the world burn,

11:48

I feel. Yeah. So Why are there so

11:50

many of these at the moment? Yeah, I think,

11:52

I mean, that makes a great point in that

11:54

I Think you do need to like separate out

11:56

the different categories because now have this like magic

11:58

machine called AI that can. Make whatever

12:00

you want if you are willing to put the will

12:02

that of time and effort into it. and you don't

12:04

necessarily need that much skill. but there are all kinds

12:06

of services that says there is. Content.

12:09

Farm so it's really just looking for

12:11

clicks, selling cheap ads and that can just

12:13

be builds there. Is a surgical to

12:15

a very true that? A look at

12:17

Ups and then there's the we're trying

12:20

to sell using that as Vitamin Dummies

12:22

Crypto? whatever. Slightly different. Goals: still

12:24

commercial Dice. And then of

12:26

course you've got the misinformation.

12:28

the kind of more ideological

12:30

flavored variety of ice generated.

12:33

Fakery. And sixteen or a online. you

12:35

know this one very much falls into

12:37

that seconds had agreed to. It is.

12:39

the reason it's everywhere is because it's

12:41

very, very easy. As assurance of Mark,

12:43

there was a really interesting space last

12:45

week. There's some researchers in the Us.

12:47

they called. News God and one

12:49

of either way armor with i.

12:51

Assume we've on the every mountain spoken

12:54

on the floor and but I could

12:56

possibly be to them in Arma and

12:58

one of their race resources Jack barista

13:00

when about setting up a propaganda side

13:02

like of survivor machine a propaganda forever

13:04

machine just like online and at Cern

13:06

it out at cost him one hundred

13:08

and five. Dollars. To. Do

13:10

so that it's and seeks a catering. Yeah, and

13:12

it's and it's endless. like that will just keep

13:14

going. And so what he'd done is he'd he

13:16

didn't do it himself. He found someone I think

13:18

on five on which is it a platform where

13:20

you can find people to do these kind of

13:23

thing? Fathers and sort of abby digits or to be

13:25

so my design and phrases that yes was a redesign.

13:27

Your luggage you at. Precisely you can see

13:29

an email containing some s that is. So

13:31

he paid a hundred and five dollars and

13:33

got this set up and the way that

13:36

it worked is it. Would you know? it's

13:38

great. News sites and you

13:40

just sort of instructs what kind of

13:42

ideological slave you want to have. Any

13:45

it's then, churning. Out posts and

13:47

content. In. Whatever safety

13:49

one become a sandwich or potentially dumb

13:51

question. But. These. scams the

13:53

man is certainly not unique to australia have a

13:56

it's they have a number of the world and

13:58

i usually you know the bottom of websites,

14:00

they're badly photoshopped or done using

14:02

AI. Do they work?

14:04

Yeah, they sure do. Um, so the, the

14:06

throwback to this though, is that, um, this

14:09

is not technically a new thing, I think

14:11

it's a new way to scam like the

14:13

same group of people, unfortunately,

14:15

but like people who are not digitally native,

14:17

for instance, have been falling for like a

14:20

surprising amount of people still fall for the

14:22

Nigerian King uncle, like email tree. He

14:24

promised me he'd send me money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

14:26

I'm going to use that to buy the top. That's

14:28

why I gave him my PayPal. Yeah. Yeah. The things

14:31

that, you know, digitally native people would instinctively

14:33

and immediately be able to identify as a scam.

14:35

Like even the Dr. Carl videos, if you see

14:37

them, if you, if you're like, I hate to,

14:39

I hate to make generalizations about age, but if

14:42

you're a millennial, you're probably going to spot it

14:44

like immediately. Um, but the same

14:46

group of kind of older people who have

14:48

been falling for the same kind of scams,

14:50

uh, it's a kind of a new way

14:53

to get them, which is sad. Yeah. I think,

14:55

I don't know, I would make a distinction

14:57

there as well, because I used to sort

14:59

of feel the same way, like we've always

15:01

had content farms. We've always had like, like,

15:03

well, not always, but, but far too long.

15:05

We have had, you know, people trying to

15:07

flog us weird crypto or NFTs online and

15:09

you know, also misinformation and foreign interference of

15:11

that nature. We've always had it. So what

15:13

is the big deal? I

15:15

think that $105 price tag really, it

15:18

tells you something, right? This is a scale

15:20

that we have not previously encountered and

15:22

it's a price point that we have

15:25

not previously encountered. And the sheer volume

15:27

makes it a different proposition.

15:29

I also think that sure we

15:31

can spot it now, but

15:34

we are also on a trajectory in terms of

15:36

the sophistication, you know, six months ago, a year

15:38

ago, you couldn't have had that Dr. Carl video

15:42

now you do, and that

15:44

is only going to increase

15:46

certainly faster than the laws to

15:48

rein it in or the measures

15:50

can keep up. I would like make a

15:52

distinction between like misinformation farms and like active

15:55

scams, which are being advertised on Facebook and

15:57

like various other sites or a subsequent point.

16:00

to add to that is that these

16:02

scams have always existed and surprisingly always

16:04

worked, but they shouldn't be

16:06

allowed to be advertised on Facebook. You

16:08

don't actually need new laws about AI

16:10

deepfakes to restrict these ads because I'm

16:12

pretty sure they definitely

16:14

run afoul of existing consumer law. Beyond

16:17

increasing media literacy, which I think is

16:20

just an understandable first response to this

16:22

kind of content, are there

16:24

strategies that have been put in place anywhere in

16:26

the world to actually tackle these things, something that

16:28

works at the scale at which they're being pumped

16:30

out? So something really interesting that

16:33

Google has been doing, and this was in

16:35

their March update, is they've started de-indexing AI

16:38

generated sites. It

16:41

was hundreds, I think, so

16:43

it's not at all at the level,

16:46

but what it was was a bit of a

16:48

shift in policy. And for certain people, particularly people

16:50

in Mark, I had the misfortune of stumbling

16:52

into a marketing corner

16:54

of LinkedIn, and that was where

16:56

I discovered people actually really angry about

16:58

this being like, oh, it's punishing legitimate

17:01

content sort of thing. But yeah, Google

17:03

was de-indexing all these sites. And you

17:05

can imagine that if they're willing to

17:08

do it on some level, that list

17:10

of sites that are de-indexed may grow.

17:12

You also see, for example, NewsGuard, those

17:14

researchers that I mentioned earlier, they have

17:17

a Chrome extension and they rate various

17:19

sites. So tens of thousands, I think,

17:21

many, many, many news sites or

17:23

air quotes news sites around

17:25

the world. And

17:29

so it's like the

17:31

labeling thing versus getting rid of it altogether.

17:33

And I think that's kind of where we're

17:35

going to land on this. I'm not

17:37

sure if I'm aware of any country that's

17:39

had a successful digital literacy drive to curb

17:42

the success of these kind of scams. But

17:44

I would say, to piggyback on

17:46

your point, I do think this is

17:48

legitimately an area where the social media

17:50

companies are responsible. Like obviously some of

17:53

these scams are being pushed out on

17:55

like miscellaneous source websites. But they're also

17:57

on Facebook. And Facebook says that they've...

18:00

remove like 650,000 of them. But

18:02

I feel like if AI is sophisticated

18:04

enough to replicate Dr. Karl, then you

18:06

can get AI sophisticated enough to identify

18:08

those replications. The thing that kills

18:10

me is they're not even replicating him. They're

18:12

just taking existing photos and doing what

18:15

would appear to be some very mediocre

18:17

Photoshop work. Exactly. Well, they did

18:19

make a video as well. And that was surprisingly,

18:21

I don't know. Oh, wow. In that case, I

18:23

figured it out. Yeah, so there's a video and there's his voice

18:26

and he sounds like Dr. Karl

18:30

and the ABC sort of tried to get

18:32

them to take it down. And it's, yeah,

18:34

I mean, it is

18:36

at a level, it wouldn't have been possible technologically before.

18:38

So we are moving a rate of knots here. The

18:41

other thing I would add is that, as

18:43

you mentioned before, this is certainly gonna get worse. OpenAI,

18:46

the company that makes chat GBT, they've

18:49

said that they actually have already created or are

18:51

very well on the way to creating a AI

18:53

model specifically for speech replication. But for obvious reasons,

18:55

they have not really sat to the public yet.

18:57

They were gonna hold off until after the US

19:00

election. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's much harder to create

19:02

a realistic but visual representation of someone talking. If

19:04

you take out that factor and just rely on

19:06

the audio, I feel like you'll be able to

19:08

do much more damage. On your point before,

19:11

there is something instinctive. There's an instinctive

19:13

logic that if we can create it,

19:15

we can detect it. But the point

19:17

I would make is that that is

19:19

absolutely not been proven to be the

19:21

case with AI. We are

19:23

so much better at making the

19:25

tools that create this content than

19:27

we are at detecting it. We

19:29

still don't really have good detection.

19:31

Watermarking, yeah, it's in the works,

19:33

but in the works is the operative

19:35

part of that sense, it's the important part. We

19:38

don't know how to catch this stuff properly yet in

19:40

a clean way. Yeah, I know Adobe's been working on

19:42

some processes as well. I do love

19:44

that chat GBT have decided to hold off for the

19:47

US election, but just in time for somebody else's election

19:49

somewhere else. Also the most easily

19:51

faked voices on the planet, the US

19:53

president and Donald Trump. All

19:55

right, download the show, it is what you're listening to. It

19:57

is your guide to the week in media technology and. and

20:00

over the weekend a brand new social media

20:02

platform and they just keep making them, it

20:05

launched, it is called AirChat. It has

20:07

been pitched to something like a combination

20:09

between Twitter, yes I'm persisting with calling

20:11

it Twitter not X, and Clubhouse, Dan

20:15

you've tried it. Just for somebody that's never experienced

20:17

it before, just describe the experience. Well here's

20:19

my pitch for those people. You know how social

20:21

media is great and you definitely need more? Well

20:24

have I got the new one for you.

20:26

So basically it works like Twitter except to post

20:28

a tweet or AirChat, you have

20:30

to record yourself a voice memo and then

20:32

it transcribes that and posts it both as

20:34

a text and when you scroll down it,

20:36

it reads your voice aloud. So I actually

20:38

tried it this morning, other than the fact

20:40

that there's only like 12 people on it.

20:42

It was actually- The perfect number if you

20:44

ask me. Yeah, it was actually not as

20:47

horrible as it sounded. It's actually sounded

20:49

by the founder of Tinder and

20:51

a very famous Silicon Valley investor. So the pedigree is

20:53

there I guess. It was a lot better than I

20:55

thought it would be but I still just keep going

20:58

back to the thing of like who needs

21:00

more social media? Okay, so the reason I

21:02

wanna talk about this is because I've

21:04

often wondered if people

21:07

had to verbalize the things

21:09

that they tweet angrily, would

21:11

they still write half the things they tweet?

21:13

That's why I thought it was worth talking

21:16

about. I was interested in about how it

21:18

changes or has the potential or maybe not

21:20

at all to change us as. You're

21:22

bang on, right? Maybe that's why people won't

21:25

use it. Do you know what I mean?

21:27

There's something there. There's this extra user barrier.

21:29

Like kind of the experience of being online

21:31

and it's a sort of like seamless slipping

21:33

between locations and not having

21:36

to use your voice. It's

21:38

like, it's entirely cerebral. And so this gets

21:40

in the way of that. That cuts across

21:42

the appeal. The other thing that cuts across

21:44

the appeal. You've gotta wanna go to the party.

21:46

There've gotta be people that you wanna see at

21:48

the party in order for you to show up.

21:51

And at the moment, as far as

21:53

I can tell, there's a lot of

21:55

like tech types on the side, which

21:57

checks out, they're the early adopters. But

22:00

they're kind of the people like, look, the

22:02

quiet part of the sentence whenever someone launches

22:04

a new social media platform at the moment

22:06

and some, you know, sometimes we do just

22:09

go ahead and say it out loud is

22:11

like, Oh, maybe this will be what Twitter

22:13

once was. Like maybe this will

22:15

be the nicer version of Twitter, but the

22:18

eternal hunt for the nicer version of Twitter. Right,

22:20

right. But it sounds like the

22:23

people that you would be wanting to avoid on

22:26

Twitter are the first people who

22:28

have started at air chat. Me

22:30

you mean? Yeah. Yeah.

22:33

Well, in fairness, we made you do it. On that, like the

22:35

eternal hunt for a good Twitter, like I was saying before, in

22:37

regards to like, who wants more social media. So like we've been

22:39

through a few rounds of that, like blue sky. What was the

22:42

other one? The other nice Twitter. Uh,

22:44

reds and another like blue sky and

22:46

one more, but all of them mastered

22:49

on, mastered on all these things that

22:51

are definitely part of the popular conversation

22:53

that everyone knows about. Yeah, exactly.

22:55

Totally. And if you've done those things before, don't

22:57

worry, you will never need to hear it. Yeah. The

23:00

basic premise was that they were like Twitter, but

23:02

not bad. Um, and everyone was just about it

23:04

for a week and then just gave up. Um,

23:06

I think the path to success for air chat

23:08

would be like teenager adoption. Maybe just people who

23:10

have not been completely disenfranchised by, uh, Twitter

23:14

and meta and such. That's

23:16

an interesting point, right? Because obviously there are online

23:18

services that are built on voice, right? I mean,

23:20

Twitch, for example, and you know, not exclusively

23:23

voice, but it's not like we don't do

23:25

voice online. It does happen to discord exactly.

23:28

But at the same time, I'm, I'm, there's a staff that always come

23:30

back to it. A couple of years ago, I worked for beyond blue,

23:32

the mental health organization. One of the things they said is that one

23:35

of the most taken up of their services was

23:37

chat. A lot of young people,

23:40

and I don't have a number to put in them. A

23:42

lot of young people referred to have a conversation with a

23:44

mental health professional via chat

23:46

rather than verbalizing. And

23:49

so I'm not saying that that necessarily carries over

23:51

into all online behavior, but I do think there's

23:53

a lot of online activities now that we are

23:55

so used to doing non-verbally.

23:58

Right? And I do. I question

24:00

whether there is that much of a desire to

24:02

do talking Twitter, which is, by the way, what

24:04

I'm going to call this thing from now. It's

24:08

honestly a better name and probably more than a

24:10

shit. Maybe in a weird way that you actually

24:12

have to use your voice as like a novel

24:14

selling point by remember using

24:16

your voice. You can do it again. I don't

24:18

know. And you do hear

24:20

employers, I guess, complain a lot

24:22

about, I mean, just sort of

24:24

conversation that Gen

24:27

Z are scared

24:29

to pick up the phone in the workplace.

24:31

Like they are just that much shy. And

24:33

yeah, because that's a generation and millennials have

24:36

this to a lesser extent, but it's still

24:38

present. We've just been socialized in a completely

24:40

different way. I just love it. We're less likely

24:42

to be taken in, according to Dan, by the

24:44

way, this whole like generational warfare thing, hundreds of

24:46

them putting on you, we're less likely to be

24:49

taken in by the Dr Carl Scamm, but we're

24:51

terrified of picking up the phone and calling people.

24:53

Hey, man. You can't have it all.

24:55

You can't have it all. Have you

24:57

guys got any friends? Like I now have friends who

24:59

exclusively send me voice memos, like they don't text me.

25:02

Like I feel like a few of my friends have

25:04

done the like, I'm sick of this like texting business

25:06

like I'm just going to send you a voice. The

25:08

younger they are, the more likely they are to do it. And

25:12

I was resistant and now I kind

25:14

of love it. I'm saying there's

25:16

something there. I've got one friend that does it

25:18

and I think she mostly does it because she

25:21

can't be bothered. Also,

25:24

she tends to send me all the,

25:26

I guess there's two reasons to do it. One, which

25:28

is you realize that Siri is just not that good

25:30

at transcribing you. And secondly

25:32

is maybe only does it

25:34

look slightly drunk. All right, so let's

25:36

look ahead as has been established. We have a

25:38

whole bunch of different apps that are now vying

25:41

to be the next Twitter. You mentioned Vasodon, Blue

25:43

Sky, threads, which being backed by

25:45

Meta, the company behind Instagram and Facebook, you

25:47

would have to assume is the natural successor.

25:50

But it hasn't really taken off, I don't think. And

25:52

the fact that that hasn't really taken off, or has

25:54

it? Everyone's looking around. I disagree. I

25:56

think it's probably, I mean, it's probably the front runner right

25:58

now. It is like the alternative. of someone

26:01

characterised me the other day as

26:04

gay Twitter, which I quite enjoyed.

26:07

I think it's just like that's where all the queers have gone.

26:09

I guess I've got a lot of queer

26:11

networks and so it's kind of

26:14

like, well, let's hate speech. Well, I said that's

26:16

interesting, right? Because that kind of says something,

26:18

right? Because if you've already found your tribes,

26:21

right, that kind of suggests it's working better,

26:23

right? I mean, one of the issues, I

26:25

think, with Twitter is that it was so

26:27

exposed, right, that you would often encounter people

26:29

that you often vehemently disagree with. And to

26:31

some extent, that's good for civil society, but

26:33

then to another extent, it's toxic trash fire.

26:36

Yeah, I think there's like a Goldilocks zone,

26:38

right? Because one of the other challenges

26:40

for new platforms is that when you

26:42

are starting from scratch, you don't have

26:44

all that infrastructure, like people you've been

26:46

following for years, people who have online,

26:48

you don't want like that binfire on

26:50

Twitter anymore and X. But the good

26:52

thing about coming across to thread, I

26:54

think what made it attractive is that

26:56

it suggested people who you were following

26:58

on Instagram. So you had a little

27:00

bit of scaffolding there to create, you

27:03

weren't starting from zero, but nor did

27:05

you have every weird bot

27:07

that's followed you or every person you regret

27:09

following in the last 10 years on Twitter. The

27:11

difficulty for things like air chat is that you

27:14

don't have that existing network to port over. But

27:16

the good thing is, because it's not just like

27:18

a different version of Twitter, I can imagine in

27:20

like two or three years, there being all

27:22

these novel and kind of goofy ways the

27:24

platform is being used that we wouldn't predict

27:26

now. But I could also say

27:29

it becoming like Clubhouse, i.e. dead

27:31

in two weeks. I suppose the telling

27:33

thing will be whether someone's thread account

27:35

starts to get bigger than their Instagram

27:37

account, because at that point, threads will

27:39

become its own. You will have

27:41

your own identity on threads that is unique to just

27:43

the people you inherit on Instagram. And I think that

27:45

will be an interesting turning point for lots of users.

27:48

And we will wait and find out next time. Huge

27:51

thank you to our guest this week, Angela Vaupergier,

27:53

ABC National Tech reporter, pleasure as always. Thanks for

27:55

having me. And Daniel Van Boom from Capital Brief.

27:57

And me as a podcast. Certainly

28:00

enemy and baby boobers. My

28:03

name is Mark Fennell. Thank you for listening to

28:05

another episode of Download This Show. Don't forget you

28:07

can listen to all your favourite ABC podcasts on

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ABC. Listen and I'll catch you. Bye

28:12

bye. You've

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