I do have another tagline for Facebook.
Okay. Meta. Ignore the smell coming from the basement.
Hi everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
You've been doxed? What? Tell me.
So I don't know if you've heard, but Mayor Mamdani has decided to release a list of the 950,000 residences with addresses and names that might be eligible for his pied-à-terre tax.
Yeah. And this is from the Wall Street Journal. This is a story. Explain it.
Do you want me to explain it? Let me read from the Wall Street Journal. Mamdani's administration fired a warning shot last week when it published an online list of property owners that might be subject to a surcharge on luxury second homes. The list includes owners' names, addresses, and market value of properties. The release of the list threatens to stir up existing tensions between the mayor and the city's elite. The city has also been sending out notifications to homeowners they might be subject to the new tax. If you have a second home in New York worth more than $5 million, check your mailbox when you're back in the five boroughs because you've got mail, the mayor said in a post on social media. I assume I am not — I have an apartment here, but I'm well below that number. What do you — I don't love this. I can't say I love this. It feels a little bit like doxing. Just tax them and get on with it is my feeling. That's how I feel.
Here's the definition of doxing.
Okay. Doxing is publishing private identifying information to expose someone to public pressure or harm without their consent, tied to status, the publisher's disapproval. Swap elite for any other disavowed group. And nobody's calling this a tax roll. This is — I'm a fan of this tax.
Yep. Rich absenteeism should subsidize a nurse in the Bronx who is paying 40% of her income on rent. I came out in favor of this tax. This is the definition. He's taken a legitimate source of tax revenue and he's turning it into a wanted poster. And the question I would have is, other than trying to identify and imply these people have done something wrong, and then 18 months after a healthcare CEO was executed in the street, and then publishing the list — what is the upside here? Why is he doing this?
There's two things. I think he's been largely successful, but there's two things that I think are real misses, and they're both — well, they're not related. They are related in some way. One is this luxury tax. They should not have focused on Ken Griffin. I understand what — if they got it passed, Hochul agreed to do it. Just tax people. That's it. That should be it. It got passed. People are going to be mad about it. Some are, some aren't, like you. And then just tax them. This was a big mistake to try to put targets on these people. I find it really disturbing. The second thing was, even though I agree with problems with Benjamin Netanyahu, to say you're going to arrest and want to arrest him seems ridiculous because it's not your job, right? I get why you might say I don't like him and I wish I could arrest him, but it was sort of weird. I thought it was another weird flex about which is not his job. And so in this case, I think he's going to piss off the elite anyway, or many of them, not all of them, over this tax. I don't know why he would. These records are public, I think, I believe, but why call attention to them, correct? I can look up any home if you know the address essentially, but maybe not who's here as a second home. I don't know. And that I don't know.
Well, I'll just touch on him saying he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. His legit — basically the justification was that he's been convicted in the International Criminal Court, right? There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people who have been convicted in the International Criminal Court, but he's decided to announce he's arresting the Jew.
Well, I'm not sure. Okay. Who else has he announced he's arresting?
He hasn't. He shouldn't have done this. I said he shouldn't have done it. I just think it's — so you and I are in violent agreement on this. And when he's decided he's not only playing into the worst fears about him, but he's making it harder for all progressives. I believe in a progressive tax structure. I believe we should raise tax rates. And the Republicans, in order to create deficits and continue to transfer money from the poor to the rich, they argue that progressive tax structures are persecution. And this plays exactly into that entire narrative.
And let me — of course I never miss an excuse to talk about myself. I left San Francisco in 2000 because I thought I was going to be rich. Red Envelope was going public and I thought, what do I want to do with my life? And I thought, I want to teach and I want to live in New York. New York is the greatest collision of proximity, humanity, culture, creativity, weirdness. And I'm like, I want that.
Yes. You've said that. Yeah. You love the city.
And I moved there in 2000. I ended up — I was not rich and I worked my ass off in New York and I decided, you know what, I can't afford to live here. And I moved to Florida. But I decided I'm going to start a business intelligence firm called L2. And I started it in New York because a) it's an amazing place to start a business and b) I always wanted to have a foot in New York. I started L2 in 2010. I sold it in 2017. And I've spent a bunch of time this morning trying to figure out what are the taxes — not the federal taxes, but the state franchise tax, real estate taxes, payroll taxes paid by L2 from 2010 to present to New York City and state — and it's about $51 million. The average. In other words, L2 is paying for what — one of the largest firehouses in downtown — the budget for one of the largest firehouses in downtown Manhattan is $26 million a year. And quite frankly, what he's saying is — okay, and when I sold my company in 2017, I was living in faculty housing. My dean called me and said, 'Congratulations, I just saw you sold it for this. You need to move out of faculty housing.' Which was fair, right? And I bought an apartment. And now when he starts putting — quite frankly, when he starts putting a target implying — he's implying we've done something wrong. He's implying that we're guilty of something.
Yeah. He should just take the tax. I would agree with — there's no — they have the tax rolls. They don't need this for tax reasons. As a matter of fact, if Amazon released a list of a million names and said these people actually owe taxes or they've done something wrong or implied something bad about them, and it had a 95% error rate, the same attorney general under Mamdani would be issuing subpoenas right now.
Right. Yeah. I don't — this is — this plays into — this is just plain — like we've — he's implying we've done something wrong because we're successful, right?
New York is the last place you want to demonize success. The reason people move to New York is they think, 'I want to be successful on Broadway. I want to be successful in business. I want to be successful in the arts. And no one's going to get in my way if I'm really talented and work hard. We're going to celebrate it. We're not going to put a big R on your door and say you've done something wrong because you're successful.'
Yeah. I don't know quite why he did it since he got the — the tax was going through. I don't — he's seeing some polling where it's not. I don't — he's already won and I'm not sure why he's doubling down with a losing move. It's bizarre. I find that bizarre. And I don't — you know, in a time when people's public information, even if it's public, to call attention to it when you're so prominent is a real problem. I mean, we all complain about Facebook and others using our information, and justifiably so. To do this is very similar. It feels very creepy. It feels very surveillance. It feels very — even if you don't like Ken Griffin or even if you don't like all these rich people lording it over New York, they should pay their taxes and that's that. It should be that's that. And it seems really unusually pugnacious toward — I don't — I was sort of shocked by the story and I'm going to wait for more reporting on this, but it seems ridiculous to call attention to it when it's people you want to also stay here and you want to get their taxes. Anyway, I would agree with you, Scott. I just don't like it. I don't like it. And people can call us friends of rich people, but it seems unfair on every aspect — not the tax.
95% of the people on the list aren't going to be subject to the tax. Like what — other than implying these people have done something wrong and publishing their address without their permission, without their consent, what possible upside is there from publishing this list?
I would like to know what the idea is. It's not a good one. I mean, it's not good. It's not good. I know it's been a tough morning. By the way, I've gotten yelled at by Facebook and Rahm Emanuel called and yelled at me too because I didn't like his column. So that was my morning. Yeah, they didn't like your Jeffrey Dahmer joke. Didn't like it. But let's get to — let's get to the — Meta called you about something I said, you know, on the — well, because it's on social media. All the jokes we made on the last show about you did remarketing. I was like, you know what, we didn't like the Michelle Obama is a man joke and you didn't object to it enough, you know, or whatever. I just feel like — anyway, let me say I feel like there's not going to — that they were not happy with our jokes about Mark, but he's still on his AI optimism tour. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg asked whether AI will be centralized and restricted to a few institutions or a tool that empowers everyone. His own proposal, he says, is a philosophy based on individual empowerment as a source of prosperity and a balance of power as a foundation of safety. In the piece, which was rather long and in desperate need of editing, Zuckerberg expresses concern that others creating AI talk about it in a way that is filled with doom. He continues this idea in the New York Times interview, which he also — he's on a chatting tour, saying developing AI in a tightly controlled manner is akin to abandoning values and stifling innovation. He was taking aim at OpenAI and Anthropic, who are way ahead of him actually. I suspect he wouldn't be making this speech if Meta was ahead. It was interesting that they're really doubling down on this 'we love humanity' thing and AI optimism, and rightly so, because they went too far in the other direction and saying how bad it would be for everybody except themselves, and so they're sort of doubling down. What do you make of this? And no Jeffrey Dahmer jokes today if you don't mind.
No, no, it's not like he's buying bottle service after being dumped and trying to pretend everything's okay. Look, CEOs consistently try to focus on the reputation, right? And a CEO trying to convince us that AI will empower everyone — it's not marketing, it's preemptive regulation. And I thought it was just so hilarious that he's claimed to be worried about the concentration of power of AI. What he's worried about is it's not concentrating around Meta.
I would agree with that. Yeah. Well, when one company controls — I think it's 63% of all or 68% of all social media, he's worried about the concentration of power. Yeah. So that comes across as cynical. The companies with the largest distribution will likely be the most successful and Meta has three billion users. That's an unfair advantage if you want to talk about concentration of power. History highlights that we consistently overestimate the short-term impact of technology and underestimate the long-term impact. Yes. So AI will likely disappoint this year, but will likely permanently reshape certain parts of our society and economy over the next decade. Essentially, it feels like every AI ad right now is an attempt at a reputation management campaign. It's not even talking about the products. It's saying — I mean — they're — it's really interesting. They're running their ads saying it'll connect everyone, and then someone who founded one of these companies will say it's a human extinction event on PBS. You know, it's just sort of — well, which is it, guys? Is it going to connect us or is it going to destroy us?
Well, I think they're coordinating their talks now. They're like, maybe we should slow down on the doom saying, right? Or maybe we should say open is good because Dario Amodei also noted that there should be open systems. I think what it is is they've got microphones in front of their faces and they've said too much and now they're trying to pull it back. And so Mark is sort of walking into this breach by saying I believe it's for everybody — except he's not handing — he did this in the beginning of the — I remember very vividly a late night phone conversation when he did this long essay, another long essay in desperate need of editing, where he talked about how it was about how social media was about community and he wanted to lean into people and that we're all in this together. And I recall asking him, if we're all in it together, why do you control everything? Like why are you the monarch of Facebook? And he never had a good answer for that. Like you know, he was like, well — I said, if we're all in it for community, why don't we all share your money? Why don't we all share — if our privacy is being used, why aren't we being paid?
We're in this together, Mark.
We're in this together. Like together, I would like some of the money you're using my privacy to sell. Like I — and it was — I had the same argument with Steve Case many years, many many years before that. They all are like, we're here for you, but except when it comes to divvying up the goodies and or control. And so I was — it's the same if you go back to that essay he wrote about social media, none of which came true. It became a very negative force in society, although there are some definite positive aspects. No question. I literally can't — it's weird that he's trying this out again because I think he actually believes he's helping people. What you were right, I have to say, away from all your jokes, which they did not like, and I feel like ads are not forthcoming in the future, is that they should just stick to 'we're making capitalism and there's going to be a lot of jobs from the things we make.' I think that's — or here's vocational training or here's — like I think they should lean into the stuff that they actually deserve credit for. I suppose.
This is not only wasteful advertising, which everyone's worried about — this hurts. This brings up — this will just inspire a lot of conversations like this one showing just how cynical this is, and reminding people that this is a firm that when social went on mobile, we saw the greatest increase in young adult depression that we've registered since we began tracking it. I mean, it just stirs up a lot of things that are not going to be good for them. So I don't — I think this was a real own goal. But in just going to the story of, you know, if you will, open AI versus closed AI — open systems usually win. Linux won the cloud. Android won mobile. The internet beat AOL. You were talking about Steve Case. Closed models try to ring fence and maximize profits. Open models optimize for adoption. Right. And you're probably — and this is how this war is playing out with China. You don't win or beat China by restricting knowledge. You beat China by commercializing it faster. Now, Nvidia's incentives are obvious. They sell the picks and shovels. The more AI models that exist, the more GPUs they sell. But, you know, trying to stop open-source AI is like trying to ban calculus. It's just not going to work. And but for Zuckerberg to talk about it, it's because he failed trying to ring fence his own AI.
Yeah, I would agree. All right, let me do an exercise. Instead of calling him Jeffrey Dahmer, what if he was standing in front of you? You obviously aren't going to insult him. Possibly, maybe you would. What would you say to him? How should he be messaging this? How should he be marketing this?
How should he be messaging around AI or Meta?
Yeah. Yeah, but at some point your actions reveal more than your words or an ad campaign from someone hot you want to hang out with who wears black. I fell into that when Red Envelope went public. I hired all these ad agencies so I could hang around cool people and see ads on bus shelters and have lunch with David Kiley at the Condé cafeteria in New York. His actions are his branding now. I mean, anything Meta does is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in print advertising because it gets reported on and crawled on by a ton of people, including us. The best branding that Mark Zuckerberg could do right now would be for him to age gate his platform. Yeah. I think just to say, look, I think Mark Zuckerberg never intended to hurt children. I don't think that's who he is. Their evil and their maliciousness is not a function of their malice. It's a function of their indifference and their obfuscation and their — they're guilty not of errors of commission but omission. And then they constantly push back and say ridiculous things like, well, we're worried about 14-year-olds' First Amendment rights, as opposed to saying, look, we make a lot of money from teenagers and until it's a law we're going to continue to serve them ads even if it's extreme dieting.
I would agree. I did push back. I said, 'It's really interesting that you would cut all ability to stop really heinous speech about trans and gay people. That's what you did recently.' And then you're worried about Scott making a Jeffrey Dahmer joke. Or I didn't — I noticed there wasn't a real pushback on Michelle Obama as a man. I noticed there wasn't a real pushback by anyone in the GOP on the heinous things that Trump said about this time any day of the week, but Kaitlan Collins. I was like, 'No one said anything.' So he sort of — in the vein of what you were talking about with — speaking of Ari Emanuel, he did an essay saying this deal should go through. I wrote him back saying you might point out that it makes us a banana republic essentially.
He's got money all over this deal.
Exactly. I agree with that. But aside from that, it was — I think he does actually believe that there needs to be four strong studios to have a healthy Hollywood system. He was saying it's a ban. I completely agree with him. But he was — I was like, the reason why the state's attorney generals, all of whom are trying to push back, is because the very first approval, which was the Justice Department, was so tainted with political things. So if you're going to do politics, they're going to do politics. And he was like, but that's not the point, that there should be four. I said, 'Yes, but they've wrecked it from day one by being so egregiously political in so many ways that this was the natural — this — Democrats are — there's a song by the Chicks, which is 'Not Ready to Make Nice,' and the Democrats are not ready to make nice now and they better get used to this. That's my — and Trump started it all by insulting people and having the GOP stay silent, like doing these egregiously cruel things.' And the same thing with Zuckerberg. He's created a platform where ugliness is far too powerful and then he's like, why are things so ugly? And you're like, I don't know, maybe you could have done — like you said, the actions. I think I agree with you. Can I go on about the open source? Nvidia, SpaceX, Microsoft and other tech companies have launched an AI safety initiative to develop open-source tools for AI safety and cybersecurity. The initiative follows a recent cyber attack involving an OpenAI agent that breached Hugging Face during internal testing, raising new concerns about AI security. Notably absent from the alliance are OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, highlighting the growing divide between supporters of open models and companies building closed systems. This follows Anthropic and OpenAI lobbying Washington for some restrictions on the latest open source models coming out of China. However, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, as I noted, emphasized in a letter this week that the company has never advocated for a ban on open-weight models. Like you said, it's going to be — open will win, correct? No matter what they do.
The honest answer is — or what I think is going to happen, and I said this on our last one — I think the market for AI is bifurcating into a series of frontier models that aren't open-source that are better, and people will pay a premium for them, and I think they'll still be the largest businesses by a dollar volume level. And then the Toyotas and Hondas of the world will be the open source coming out of the — Corolla is a great way to think about it. Toyota Corolla. And there'll be a market for both, but I think the more relevant one are the open-weight models. They tend to — in technology they tend to be the ones that kind of win long term. Now iOS is, I guess, technically a closed system and Android's open. Android has more users. iOS creates more shareholder value, right? Yeah, that's a fair point. But there's huge — I mean, you could argue that Android creates more shareholder value because it informs what is the greatest toll booth in history. You could argue it both ways. I think there's a market for both. I mean, it's so funny. Business and technology usually comes down to iOS versus Android. Yeah, it does. It — that's what's happening here. It's the frontier models versus the open-weight Chinese models.
It's weird they're having this weird beef. It sort of happens all the time, doesn't it? Well, there was so much pushback when Linux and the others came around and it's always the same. It's always the same.
Mark Zuckerberg right now is using basically this, you know, corporate Vaseline as Axe body spray. He thinks if he sprays enough on himself, he'll no longer stink. Mark, you're weak. You have terrible BO. I just got you another call. I just got you another call, Kara.
I tried. I tried. I tried.
I smell the Axe, but there's something else I smell here. Oh, it's teen depression and self-cutting.
All right. And we're out. Okay. I tried.
It's polarization of our elections. I think — it's discourse. I think they have a lot to answer for. Don't say he has BO.
Anyway, while we're on the BO — there was a lot of BO on the subway this morning. By the way, while we're on the topic of AI, we've been hearing feedback from some of you who have been impacted by data centers in your communities. So, we wanted to bring an expert voice. Let's listen to a clip from Evan Halper, a business reporter at the Washington Post, who's been covering data center buildouts and their impacts, about how tangible these issues are.
This is not propaganda. This is not media misinformation. The backlash is driven by very real concerns in these communities, many of which I've been to. They get all kinds of promises made to them by tech companies that things are going to be run on clean energy. They're going to bring all kinds of jobs into the community. They're not going to have impact on the water, etc., etc. But what we're seeing on the ground is the impacts are very real. Suddenly, a community that wasn't expecting it, that was rural, has seen the large amount of land rezoned, big power plants getting built. The power plant is big enough to serve a medium-sized American city, all to serve just one data center. It's run on gas. Gas creates public health problems. It creates climate problems. There's backup diesel generators on top of the data center. Those backup diesel generators are major polluters that are supposed to run very infrequently. But now because there's not enough power on the grid because the data centers need so much, these emergencies get declared and the backup diesel generators get to function even more often on the lowest air quality days, creating an even bigger air quality problem. So these problems are real. This is not just an imagined thing. This is not political opportunism. These communities are suffering real impacts from these data centers.
Yeah. I think, you know, as you said, some of them should be fine if they're done correctly, but they aren't being done. They're running over these areas and real people are very concerned. They really are. And this is a message that I have been trying to get through to these tech companies. They really do think it's fake. They think it's the media being negative. I've heard this over and over again. By the way, Willie Nelson just spoke out about data centers saying an AI data center is the last thing his Texas hometown needs. So again, one of the things is it's the same theme that we're talking about. They have painted themselves into villains and then they wonder why we think they're villains and we don't trust them. And you know, you can talk all you want about trust the media. I agree. People have never trusted the media, but they really don't trust tech companies at this point. And it's a real problem. And doing these ads about humanity is not — you're right, actions speak louder than words and these data centers. We are going to suffer as a country if we don't stay ahead in this area. But the way they're introducing data centers is so overwhelmingly — feels corrupt, feels bad to the citizens of this country. And I like that they speak up. I do. Even if some of them are necessary. Your thoughts?
Look, I think his comments are powerful. And our nation has a terrible legacy of outsourcing the externalities of progress, whether it's the factory, the coal plant, a chicken processing plant, or a plant that contaminates the water table. We have a habit of putting these in the most vulnerable communities who have the least resources to push back on it. That is nothing new. So I think it is up to local civic officials, and I think it's great that when the populace speaks up and asks their fiduciaries, elected representatives, to make sure that the upsides — and I do think there's an upside around tax revenue and growth to a data center that's well planned and well regulated. I do think there's an upside. It's up to the local civic official to say, is the upside greater than the downside here, or is this a function of me getting money from Meta for my next campaign, or just making a stupid decision. I do think it has become — I think a lot of people talking about this are having a knee-jerk reaction around what has become an empty vessel being filled around rage around income inequality, and because these individuals have not acquitted themselves. And I think what could fix this is essentially a Facebook ad that says, 'Facebook, where your parents go to get catfished by AI Jesus.' I think that would solve everything.
Seriously, Meta putting out ads right now is like trying to put lipstick on a landfill.
Should I stop? At what point should I stop?
It's just funny. It's just funny. I'm going to get another call. In any case, it is a real issue here and I think Evan is speaking exactly. Willie Nelson is speaking to it. You better listen to these people. All you tech companies, you really better. And it'll become an issue in the next electoral cycle.
100%. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, SpaceX's trillion-dollar wipeout.
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Scott, we're back. The SpaceX roller coaster continues. The stock plunged more than 20% below its IPO price this week, wiping out more than $1.2 trillion in market value, roughly the market cap of Tesla. Tesla's also suffering. The stock has bounced back somewhat as of this recording. It's down, but it's down 3%. Next week could be another wild ride with SpaceX reporting earnings on Tuesday and the first insider lockup expiring two days later. How low can these shares go? They look like they're headed to — they look like they're headed to 100. I feel like they're going down, but I don't know. I'm not — again, I'm not a stock picker. And again, Elon has enormous power, but it seems like — especially after that interview, he seems insane. Like it seems people are not memeing him as much.
Well, price is what you pay. Value is what you own. And the price that people paid after what was arguably, I think, one of the greatest engineering feats in history between Goldman, JP Morgan, and Elon Musk, and the Nasdaq 100, and President Trump, and the head of the SEC to get this thing out at 120 times revenues. There's a — my son told me this and it just fascinated me. No basketball player has ever been able to be in the air longer than a second. It's really weird. For some reason, the unit of measurement of a second — no one can stay in the air for a second. Gravity eventually pulls them down. Valuation is gravity eventually. I don't care if it's GameStop. No one has been able to defy —
gravity. No one gets closer to that one-second limit than Elon Musk. Hey, look over here. Oh, we're autonomous. Oh, we're robots. Don't value me like a car company. Let's talk about being an interplanetary species. Let's not talk about the fact that it's, you know, it's an interesting company and one great company and then a bunch of money-losing companies. The lockup expiration here matters more than earnings. And that is supply. I think any reasonable math shows that supply is going to overwhelm the fundamentals in the short run. And retail investors — and this is what happened at the IPO — retail investors consistently confuse a great company with a great stock.
And at some point, the best company in the world is overvalued. And at some point the worst company in the world, unless it's going to zero, is undervalued. But where's — I mean, rather than making a recommendation, I tell people what I'm doing. I'm not getting near this thing because Elon's not afraid to come out and say, 'I have funding secured at $450' on Twitter and not get punished and run up a stock. He's also — his stocks tend to be meme stocks that totally disassociate from value, from actual values. So stay the [__] away from this thing. But if you're looking for a bottoms-up valuation in terms of comparing this to its competitors and saying it's the best in that space, that bottoms-up valuation would put it at like 20 to 30 bucks a share, which by the way would still make it one of the most valuable companies in tech.
Yeah, [snorts] it's down for — it's down 30%. It was at 2011 when it — when it debuted. Its highest has been 2011, uh, or 202 really, and now it's at 113. Um, if it crosses that $100 barrier, I would worry, you know what I mean? I think I would worry of where it was going 100%. And I would — and same thing with Tesla. They seem like they're — that right to this today, it's on a real decline. Um, but over the past six months it's dropped. If you look at anything in the past month, it's dropped like a — like a — like it's credibly — it's down to 302. It probably will pass the $300 barrier. Um, and those are — those are mental things for people, you know. I think they're mental things for people. And — and again, valuation maybe making a — making a very strong return here. And Elon's various, you know, jazz hands is not seeming to work here. I — I don't know what he can do to — well, he could have results, right?
