YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Surman

lines on the record: 84
first: 2020-02-07
most recent: 2020-02-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Exhaust us. You know what I mean? Like, it's really interesting. It works really well in that regard, and it's noisy and it's confusing and it's entertaining, which is, I think, the difficulty of it. I love that ended.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I would be focused on how do people take control of their own tech, their own data. And it goes back to the DIY punk rock spirit, but at a level where this stuff really does structure our lives and power in the economy. So something that gives us more control, whether we are ripping control from the hands of people who don't want to give it to us or designing cool new things that root around and create new.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I'm Canadian, right? So the example, my answer about government is going to be there's a big role for government, right? I still believe in public health care. I still believe the government should step in and fix climate change on tech. I think government should say, here's how tech should serve our society and here's the boundaries or the taxes. And I actually think one of the things we have lost and maybe for good is the tradition of public media that we had in a lot of Western countries for 100 years. Like where is the role of the CBC or the BBC in this era? And I actually think some public options may be worth considering.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, lastly, what is the government's role then? Is there like, again, the space programs in the hands of private billionaires, public education system now is being like, they're deciding what they're going to give money to and our government's not innovating in it. The climate change stuff needs massive government”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty safely. But they've built expertise on those things, and so we also need to invest in that in government. And you take the antitrust stuff, you could say, okay, let's take a vector of breakup Facebook on breakup Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, right? Or, you know, Facebook, the overall platform kind of makes sense. Maybe it would work. Maybe they would share data less between them. But really, it's actually not going to change the game. So that's one kind of path. Then if you take stuff like this piece in the Access Act around intermediaries where we say, we're going to break up holding data and using data, maybe break up advertising or break up marketplace.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With a lot of them, right? Nor should they, but they also don't understand Wall Street and there's regulations about Wall Street. They don't understand Congress. So we got to figure that out. Regulations on cars. Not all of them are perfect planes.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, where are the chinks we can put in the armor, which goes to your regulation piece. I would say we're cautious about regulation because you also don't have people in Washington and Brussels. I mean, God bless that there are some amazing people. There are some people in US.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I'm going to build something today, it's like I'm going to build it with data and AI. It's the programming tools. It's not just some big, it's not primarily some big scary thing. How do we make sure that's open enough, which means that the data is shared enough and also private”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Monopoly or the competition question is you get the most innovation at these sort of tectonic shifts or these paradigm shifts in how anything works, but how computing works, right? So it's not shocking that as Ajax and the kind of cross-platform browser piece emerges with Firefox and then Chrome, that that's when you see the Facebooks and the Gmails and the whatever. Because now I can actually do stuff on the web. And so new entrants come. So, you know, where do we look for those tectonic shifts? Maybe it'd be as we move out of the browser and the phone into kind of ambient reality. Maybe it is still enough space in the voice piece, which is kind of part of it. I think if we can do this cleaving the data out of the hands of the making them share it actually, because the thing about AI now is... Like the web 20 years ago. It really is just”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've got a bunch of answers to this, and one of the tried answers you get innovation if you have competition. Right. And so part of the problem is the reason we're talking about antitrust, right? It's like so much power is in so few hands. There's no incentives in the open market for people to innovate or no space, right? There's no oxygen for people to innovate. And so that's one piece of it. The other is, which I think is actually tied to the”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can block, but they have a hard time innovating. Every now and then, like, look, air pods are cool, like, I love them, like, they're innovative. I haven't seen anything like it. And it was their idea, and I see it fresh. You see some very innovative ideas from Snapchat or like in the social media space, you don't see anything in search practically. And so why would you? Why would you invest in doing that? So how do you get to innovation when you have these big companies is the only way regulation is that the only, and what would give me what you would think? And then how do you get to innovation in a where is how do you, without it being like a China top-down thing, like how do you, and you want government involved, this was an argument I had with Paul Ryan. I'm like, you need government involved in certain amounts of these things in a significant way. Like the space race is now being run by two billionaires.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right on that, which I think is a good idea. I agree. Which is a good idea. So, last thing I want to talk about, because we only have a few more minutes, is the concept of then you're thinking about all these cool ideas, and it's a pleasure to talk to you about it because one of the things that I'm really thinking about is where does innovation come from? And one of my arguments is when you have these giant companies, as much as this is what they do, they grow, you're not going to get innovation. They can't innovate. They can steal or they can buy or they can borrow.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if we had some set of trusty, some set of intermediaries on our side of the table, I mean, even to think about turning that to kind of becoming personal AIs, we have so many automated decisions coming at us, so many AIs coming at us, and we have to make these like manual human speed decisions about how that works. You know, that's another area to kind of very science fiction to look at. What's an AI on our side of the table?”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. But one of the things I always try when I give speeches, and it does resonate a lot, I'm like, you know, do you get your email? Do you get like your map? Wasn't that great? Don't you get dating? I said, you're a cheap date. Every single one of you is a cheap date. You get these shitty apps pretty much. Like they're fine and they get all your data and they are billionaires.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing I am really interested in is what you start to see showing up nerdily in some of these regulatory things like the Access Act as separating out the data storage from the data exploitation so that Facebook wouldn't have my data, Google wouldn't have my data, Mozilla would or i would or I would trust the consumers to have it data”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was advertising the face report. So, I think there's stuff there that we'll explore. I'll tell you it sounds like science fiction not because it's going to be science fiction to the public, but to nerds”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I was like, I must bury this. Put in a lead thing. I just was like, there's no way I'm turning this friggin' thing on. And then I saw Joe, Kim Card. I wrote Kim Card. I know her a little bit. I was like, do not put that on Kim Cardinal. She was advertising the face report. Yeah, they were. They were. I was like, all right, you two. I hope you were paid a lot.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have a new head of voice thing. I think voice because I really like my son has walked around our house and turned off the nest. He's turned off the, you know, he's trying to pull it off the wall. That one I haven't pulled off, but I'm going to not have it. I'm not going to have any internet-enabled thermostat device, even though it's very convenient to Do my from my phone. I use it a lot, which is interesting. I think any kind of listening, those listening, whether it's the echo, whether it's the, what's the Google one called, I don't know, home, what is it called? Facebook portal? Are you kidding me? Someone gave it to me as a joke, and I think I buried it because I was like, I know it'll turn on.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe, if I understood the one I trust most is Apple, is always, you know, and even then, you know, my son pointed out something, they were doing significant locations, they weren't doing it and it was encrypted. I still didn't like it. Like, I didn't agree to it. When I read it, I was like, okay, I see what they're doing, but gosh, thanks, it's creepy. It was creepy once I saw it. And I've never felt creepy about Apple.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're all lined up. So that is one of the areas we're working: voice assistance. We have this thing called deep speech and a thing called common voice and it's open source security. It's very difficult.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Google stuff. But the key piece is we have that standard innovator's dilemma, right? The browser is. A stable good source of revenue is how do you find the next thing? So, Mitchell's fire in her belly is find the next thing. It's early days. They're in the things that we're talking about. The list I kind of gave you, the things that are most concrete are mixed reality stuff. And so more privacy friendly. There is a Firefox reality browser.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And so, and day to day, we kind of operate as one. We're trying to make the same change in the world. And so the previous CEO who did a great job stabilizing Firefox stepped out at the end of the year. Chris Beer. No, right. And Mitchell has stepped in as the interim, and we're looking for a new CEO, but she is going to just do stuff. I mean, her energy as the founder who's like the internet and the things I've stood for need some real attention. She's just got a fire in her belly right now. And so it is about finding those other product categories. A big part of our resources in the next couple years.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is not us. Partly because the browser won't last forever. And we still think the most powerful way we can influence how the world works is through building products. So we need the activism piece as a part of that, but we need products that will change how things work. And so one of the things, so it could be in voice, it could be in AR, it could be an alternative kinds of advertising, could be an identity. One of the things that's been really exciting, people have been sort of”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finally worked and doing it. And consumer activism is something that there's a deep history of. The last 10, 15 years, we haven't used it. But where consumer activism is really useful is where regulation is either going to be too slow or doesn't work because of jurisdictions. Like how do you regulate all the labor laws of all the places that Nike has factories? Pain in the ass. Instead, you get consumers who Nike cares about to push on them. So where do we have a problem with tech? Where do you regulate it? How fast is a regulation going to come?”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no. I mean, if you think about something like Nike and the fair wages stuff, right? And one of the things that's similar in something like that, and South Africa and boycotts, and I mean, there are examples of this. We don't think about consumer activism enough anymore.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, part of the activism piece is getting citizens involved in that, right? Right now we've got journalists who are pushing on Facebook, but nobody is organizing people to take their frustration. How does that manifest?”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they did stuff. Twitter was making $12 from it. And they're like, screw this. And we got to deal with Trump as it is. We already deal with him non-paid speech and we're going to have to live with that the rest of our lives, you know, as our stain on our future generations. But it was interesting that Facebook decided to do that.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The political advertising. We need to tell them. You sort of went and did a little more sophisticated changes. The micro-targeting and no lying, but we're going to sell political ads. You didn't have to go.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, those relationships don't change unless we actually get into negotiation. So, another way it manifests itself is running campaigns with consumers on our side or consumers running campaigns with us on their side, literally asking for product changes so that they're less creepy. And so we did one around the... We did a bunch around Facebook and elections and political advertising where consumers are banging on the door of Facebook with us and saying open up the API so we can study this or pull the political advertising. We've done stuff with that.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And, but at the same time, what's interesting is that they don't have to be again, it's the same thing. It's the concept of like, who is trustworthy? And there's a real market in the idea of someone who is going to build the safe video service, the safe, I think safe is the word I'm trying to get to, like the safe one where you're safe in all kinds of ways and privacy is among those things. And so how does that manifest itself besides a magazine, whatever.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that's negotiation, right? I can be in any kind of deal. I can be, you know, with somebody who's a friend or in a business relationship or dating someone. And like somebody might cross a boundary somewhere or something's really human relationships are dynamic.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think people are increasing. It is palpable. And so one thing is giving people a channel to express that. The other is giving people a channel. And this is a thing that we really started to push, I think, is interesting, to talk to the tech companies to get them to change the products.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I didn't sign on to anything else on this phone, and I just used that there. But at the same time, I was like, I need to create a new email. Like, I was really starting to wonder about all the apps, like in what data they had and what access they had to my phone. And then I went and turned everything off, because Apple, you have that capability of doing easily, or it's not that hard. And it was fascinating when you start to go down that rabbit hole of what's on there. And I think I took almost everything off. And then I was like, oh, it's too late. And it was interesting. And I wondered what had tripped in me, the trust idea of not realizing, like having given someone so much access to you and then trying to pull it back, it's very hard.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different levels. The other day I was just thinking this, it was interesting. I was thinking of downloading something. I'm like, but who has this information on this app? You know, it was something, I can't remember what it was, but it was something minor. But I thought, I don't want them on my phone. I think it start off with something like TikTok, which I was like, when they came, I was like, I don't want them on my phone. I'm sure I don't want them on my phone. Although it was interesting. And I was like, I had a burner phone, so I put it on there and looked at it. Like, I don't care.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my job in the last few years has been to start figuring that out. So, you know, the kinds of things range from Getting into consumer reviews for tech stuff that actually look at some of the values based questions. So we put out this annual holiday buyers guide now that rates things on security standards, how strong is it on terms of basically not being able to hack be hacked? Like you had Bruce Steyer on a while ago, that whole thing that we are creating, this huge attack surface with all of our devices. Sure we are. This is about getting consumers engaged in that, helping them make better purchasing decisions on like not being a part of that. And so you have stuff comes in there that gets a good rating like the Nintendo Switch is strangely good at letting you delete your data and having strong encryption to the ring doorbell, which is like horrible where not only is Amazon got a crappy history with passwords and data storage, but they're actually willing to let the police participate in using your doorbell as urban surveillance. So we're giving consumers a way to like look at that stuff. That was a good idea.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, without something like that, to get past the manipulation piece, to get past the total kind of ownership of all of our data selves, There has to be some piece of activism. So my job in the last activism”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's like, we're about to have to be about community and analog and creating a different experience because AI changes the way people order. And then we have to be sustainable. And it was really interesting, and this guy was not someone like this. And I wasn't, I was trying to figure out if it was just, you know, PR speak, but it wasn't. He's right. But it was moved by the activism around straws and things like that.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's interesting because I was just with the head of Starbucks this morning. I know him from Microsoft. He used to be a, so I used to cover him all the time. And now all he was talking about was sustainability. And it was not PR. He was like, this is life or death for our business going forward.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not just the market, right? I mean, if we think about, I mean, frankly, if we think about any big social change, there's a social movement, whether it's civil rights or women's rights or the environment, even if then there becomes some market piece of it later. So if we think about the environmental movement, yes, there's a role for business in green energy, and thank God or hopefully that continues to grow in a way that we turn around. It is without people demanding it.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think there's two things going forward. One is what tech can we bring into the market that is going to set the agenda going forward? But the other is the market alone is not going to take us down the path we need to go. And it's also not going to be governed alone. We really need some sort of zeitgeist, some social movement that is going to push for a different way to work.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Market. Yeah, I think it's got longer legs than dialogue. Sure. Because it's just become the switching box through which so much stuff happens. So it matters. So the first thing would stabilize that and make it helpful to people. That's not the big long-term strategic plan.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no There's three things I would say what we do now at this juncture one, which is what Chris and Danelle really together as a team helped do, which was stabilize the browser, which was in decline. And T would have to be something that is better for you to the degree that that's a part, the center of your digital life. So a lot of the stuff we've added, like a password manager lockwise, or this thing monitor, which shows when your accounts have been breached, are about at least you have this relationship with the browser. We're there to kind of have your back. And so get the browser on stable footing, high performance, good at privacy and security. So I think we're well on track on that, and that's...”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So, all right, exactly. Oh, I agree. You know that. I just had this big argument with Paul Ryan today on stage, which was, you know, he was still back in the self-regulation. We'll fix it all era of the government with the tech industry. And some of it might, but not now. So you now explain what you then do. So here you are sort of the same place where the browser isn't the game and there's the mobile browser and people use either their own iPhones, they tend to use Safari, which is Apple's browser. If they're on Google, they're using the Chrome, Microsoft never won in the phone area, so they're out of that business where everything is happening. That's it. That's it. And Amazon never had a phone that was successful. I don't think they had a browser. Did they know? They never know.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there is a question of what limits to growth and where are the balances that we want to put in place as they grow, right? I mean, we could say that standard oil needed to grow indefinitely or that DuPont needed to grow. I'm talking about have to.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They have to get bigger What else do they do? Okay, now we're going to stop? No, of course not. They have to continue to go move in. And the areas they have to move in have to be adjacent and then adjacent and adjacent and adjacent. Well, there is a question”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I live in Toronto and the Cyborg. We'll talk about that in a minute. Lab thing is. But they have to grow, and therefore we have to stop growing because we need to create innovation. We'll get into that at the end. Because I don't fault them for doing what they're doing. They're just doing it because they were drawn that way. You know what I mean?”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they need to grow. That's what I keep saying. I'm thinking about doing home saying, look, this is what they have to do. They have to go into healthcare. They have to go into automed. They have to grow. They can't help. You think that's a good thing?”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In any case, kind of, yeah, here they come. I think it was later as they really have been a very aggressive competitor where you question how are they using their vertical integration or are they using the vertical integration in nasty ways? And it's pretty clear they are subtle. What?”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It happened just as I came. Like, you know, what a surprise. And, you know, the thing about it is lots of people compete on one vertical in the industry and cooperate on another. We do search with them because that was literally in the beginning. I've gone back and read the bugs. that that's the search people want.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a better browser. It was more vertically integrated with a bunch of other services, which becomes then a part of the privacy problem we have now. But they just replaced Microsoft as the dominant player. And we dipped a little bit, but roughly stayed about the same size.”
2020-02-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Mark Surman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT