YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Rivitz

lines on the record: 117
first: 2018-09-03
most recent: 2018-09-03
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

“An experience, and we're all expected to follow those things, and there are plenty of us that want to follow those every day and then want to use it in good faith. But they've been ignoring this for too long. And they've let, for the sake of who knows, for the sake of... Or for the sake of their ideals where they believe that a town square where everyone gets a voice. Have been ignoring it, and that's my biggest”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I mean, it comes back to the original state admission, right? They've left Breitbart on their ad network, despite the fact that a lot of those articles and the comments below those articles that they leave up and don't moderate break the terms of service of Google and Facebook. And so they're not only allowing it to happen, but they're monetizing this And so we all agree to those terms. When we sign on to it, whether we're going to run ads on our sites or we sign on to just post. Pictures of family and friends, we sign up for a set of rules.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The free speech argument is a bad faith argument. These are private and publicly traded businesses. It has nothing to do with them. We can get into it further, but they have terms of service that they should be following. They haven't been doing it. And so that's why we're in those attacks.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's so many places. Yeah, and it's a slippery slope, right? You don't want people to silence voices that are challenging the government or right.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That he was sexually harassing Right, yeah, yeah. To me, like, if they want to conflate those two things, yeah, you do want to conflate, then let them do that. It is really interesting. I said, I actually wrote a column in the New York Times and this one line came out when I said, the people who complain most about having their First Amendment rights violated never shut up, it seems to me, like, right? Yeah, I mean, there's so many places.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you can't escape how people are going to feel about it. To me, if there's a really super bigoted thing that a website that's on the left goes after, I'm really critical of not to say it's liberal or it's right or left, but I'm really critical of what CBS is doing with Les Moonz right now. That article came out, and it's very clear that he was sexually harassing. Why is it taking so long? What's the deal? And so to me, it's like All that stuff all comes back to the same place. I think that a lot of the Breitbarts of the world, they can claim that they're being silenced because they're on the right, but they're being thrown off a lot of these platforms because they're being super racist. Right, yeah, yeah. To me, like if they want to conflate those two things, yeah, they do want to conflate, then let them do that.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And put that on your website. See it all the way through. See it through in your investments. See it through in your advertising. See it through in everything.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tear that stuff down. And so, I mean, it was really surprising. It was three weeks later, he stepped down from his co-CEO position and he divested Breitbart to his daughter, but he divested himself from Breitbart. And that was a big thing because it's just responsibility. Right.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Environment, and so that seemed kind of right, but that wasn't really an official thing that was kind of helping out. And then Robert Mercer, the thing that no one has really talked about, which I'm actually most proud of this, is that, and who knows what the real world implications were, but Robert Mercer has funded some incredibly racist things. And it came out in an article that there were 12, I think, well-known institutions that were investing in Renaissance technologies where he's the co-CEO and chairman of the board. And so we got the public very public. We never published anyone's private stuff ever. But the public emails of the people on the board asked them why they were invested. If you're Columbia University or Michigan State and your stated goal is to be inclusive of all races and creeds and religions. Why are you supporting a man that is trying to?”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, all right, we can do that too. But in our estimation, she says really racist stuff. She does indeed. And going after a high school student is not something that we should maybe have in our media.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pointed. Yeah. And again, you want to be smart. You don't want to have to go after everything. Some things are really done in bad faith. They'll dig up something that someone said 3,000 years ago. And when they were maybe a different person. And really go after them and go after their job. And in some respects, I understand that if someone holds some views about things that don't seem right, that you want to express your opinion on that, and that's fine. But it does feel sometimes like things are incredibly coordinated that on the same minute that everyone goes after something, our things are real slow burn. We've only had three or four real like official actions.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It for sure is, and it also again, it's a negative feedback loop. You get more outrage and more clicks and more money, and then you can sell more expired vitamins if that's what you do, you're Alex Jones or something like that.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just again, it really came from the fact that in the beginning we're asking a company that doesn't know where they are advertising to stop advertising there. And we're just letting them know and hoping that they do that. And so it went from get your ads off Breitbart to. Wait, you don't know you're there. Here, we're here to inform you. We're here to inform me to let you know. Right. And so it really sprang from that. And also, you know, we're kind of polite people. Yeah. We're not that angry.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're asking people to do something. Let's not demand that they do something. Unless it's pretty egregious. We save the super outrage for the big companies like Facebook and Google when they do.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Deservedly decried for it, and people move in mobs. There's actually a really great article recently about good mobs and bad mobs. But in general, this obsession with worries about mobs is growing. So talk about that because people could see you as a mob.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, explain how you can do it badly. So there are good mobs and bad mobs, right? So the people complain, a lot of people who, a lot of pundits, they get attacked, and some of them, they're attacked terribly by these roving mobs, some of them violent, which nobody wants and is wrong. Other times people write and say stupid things and they get...”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first off, we've never called for any boycotts. I just think companies need to know how people feel, but it's a personal decision whether you decide to buy something or not. There are great efforts online. I think they can be really dangerous. I think unless you do it the right way and unless it's in good faith and you're asking someone to do the right thing, at least in my...”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you just want everyone to know what the line is. You know, for a lot of people, that seems beyond the pale. And just to keep someone on the air like that, just to, you know, while he limited the prospects of females that worked on the staff there.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, right. But it's like they need to know that people care about it too. I mean, you know, and I think they know that ultimately. Unless someone brings it up with them, they're just going to probably kick the can down the road a little bit.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we started, we made some facts about Bill Riley. We did some banners and sent them out to these brands and say, hey, here are the millions of dollars you settled for. These are the things that he said in the past about women. How do you feel about supporting this? The vast majority over time said they didn't. And they just needed the information. I mean, we really, really view this as like”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was an overwhelming like 94% of people that responded said this is bad news. And it's really bad for a network to support this stuff, especially when they're running ads for female-centered products and services. And so that just didn't make any sense. And again, I'm an advertising. I think maybe part of this thing is like penance for being an advertiser for so long. I just wanted them to support good things rather than people like that that are obviously causing havoc in their workplace and limiting the prospects for women in that network and others.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's hard to argue with that. And there are a lot of people in our community, and we're fairly big at that point, you know, maybe under 100,000, but still a lot of people that were clamoring. They said, hey, there's no greater example of bigotry than sexual harassment in the workplace. That's why this stuff exists. And so we put a poll out. Does everyone think this is on message and something that we should do, or should we just hang with what we've been doing?”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Bill O'Reilly, a New York Times article came out that he had settled sexual harassment suits and Fox News had settled sexual harassment suits for millions and millions and millions of dollars, and they kept him on the air.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we really follow the community and what people ask us to do, and we take it, we don't do everything. We're pretty picky and we don't want to just continue to feed the outrage. It's dangerous to do that. And we want to be smart about how we do it. But the Bill O'Reilly thing came up, and that was really clear. So explain it.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My day is bananas. I am so ADD that I just. Tweet, I'll post some stuff, I'll talk to some people on the phone. I got to do my job. I'm really determined not to take any money to do this other than from the people that support it unless they are very down the middle. I just don't. I don't want it to look like we're favoring one thing over another.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. And they did us a massive favor by then doing a counter boycott on Kellogg's, which of course doesn't last for more than a day. But they're advertising Breitbart as an advertising solution right over an ad saying boycott. So if you're an advertiser, you don't want to be anywhere near that. So they did us a big favor with that.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, from the right. Well, initially Breitfart Initially, when the big brands started coming down from Breitbart, that's when they didn't like when Kellogg's decided not to run ads with them. And they weren't probably making a whole lot of money off of it, but just the point of it, I think they didn't like.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Which you are, I think. Yeah. I mean, I voted Democratic before, but I've also not been really that politically active in the past at all. But again, I have a massive bone to pick with anyone that's going to espouse bigotry. Right, right. That's where this started.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and there are positive ways to do that and negative ways to do that. And I do, this thing now is as big as it is. It's got some power to it and unexpectedly. And so I think you need to use that in a good way rather than a bad way.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are only a handful. And there have been a couple big brands that didn't publicly tell anyone, but they kind of disappeared, and you can tell. I think initially there were a couple big brands that said, hey, we're not going to sort of fall victim to some internet mob. Right.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The biggest moment, I think, when we knew that we were on something much bigger was when Kellogg's decided to back out of Breitbart and they did it very publicly. And they said, we don't want to support this stuff.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're essentially doing what the We didn't really get a reaction for a long time, and I don't think they wanted anyone to really know about it. And I don't blame them. What really happened though is...”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and Facebook has run. It sort of follows, we follow each other and the same messages that are going on on Facebook. You're doing the same thing.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On Twitter, we're aiming for almost a $200,000. And on Facebook, I think we've got 70 or more. So you're doing the same. It's going on to Facebook.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More sort of ancillary jobs on it, and then there are people that are doing other projects on it. And that's a bit what's going to get on that in a little bit.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And these companies are helping monetize sites like that. And it encourages them to get more clicks and to get more outrage and to whip everyone into a frenzy so they get more clicks and more eyeballs and more dollars. And so that. That is not a good cycle to be”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they started coming off by the tens and then the hundreds, and then now the thousands. And Breitbart is really the test case, right? It's a much bigger problem than Breitbart.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and they would tell you very publicly because they don't want to be associated with it at all, or the majority of them, vast majority of them, other than maybe three of them.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Confirmed that a company. I know what you mean. Yeah. So I would say, okay, confirmed, SoFi has removed themselves from Reitbart.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and then all of a sudden, and I put real clear instructions, and you can still see it because I think I did it on like the notes app. So you can still see that under the Twitter handle where I asked to tag sleeping giants, it's SLPNG. And it has a little, you got to correct that. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not spelled correctly. So it's still there. Yeah.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The gasoline got poured on. I sort of realized if I've got all these people following, why aren't they doing something too? And so I just put a set of instructions on the pinned tweet. I didn't even know there was a pin tweet at the time. Someone had to explain it to me. And I put it up at the top of the page.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the following just kept growing. And then I was like, man, I'm tired of doing this by myself. This is like throwing pebbles into the ocean. Right.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's easy. Those are easy. They're like, oh no. Yeah. And then I found an article. There are people that were kind of hitting me up a little bit. And then I had sent it, you know, after like five or ten advertisers, I sent it to a couple people I knew that had a decent following. And then they sent people over and all of a sudden I had 100 people, 200 people. And then I read an article by this woman, Nandini Jami, who's she is also a writer. And she was talking about the same kind of things that I was. And so I reached out to her and I said, hey, do you want to join forces? Do you want to come and do this with me? And she said yes, which is really lucky. And so she's been helping for a long time. Right. And not even just helping, but really helping craft them. And with all the decisions and everything, she's been an integral part of this thing.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And right away, they hit the panic button. They were like, wow, we're going to blacklist that. We know how to do that. Okay. So a week goes by. If you're doing the low-hanging hips,”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that ad came down. And then another one popped up. And I think it was for Warby Parker, which also did make any sense at all.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you did something. To the election feeling like I had to do something and nothing ever happened, of course. So not to say that those are bad. It's just, I just, I'm a results-driven person.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, you traffic your ads. It's not like TV where you buy a time where you're TV spots going to run. And you just send it off, it's traffic through Google and Facebook and a couple other companies. And they run it wherever there's space and wherever their market is. And that made zero sense to me because I spent my life in research and crafting every single word of a TV spot to make sure that nothing got mistaken for something else. And I was really careful. And to me, I couldn't believe that they would take those executions that we'd worked on, those ads, and send it off to a place where they could run next to a terrible article like that. So that's how it started. And now we're sitting on over 4,000 advertisers.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who was on Twitter? I had no idea I was on there. So I couldn't believe that he didn't know he was on there. And I do not come from the world of tech at all. I've worked on tech brands occasionally, but I didn't understand it. So I called a couple of friends. I was like, how does he not know? And it was explained to me. It's programmatic advertising and that you just send your, you traffic.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now it's quite lovely. It just had a great designer doing it who's been incredible. But that's a story for another time. But they got back half an hour later and the CEO said, I had no idea we were even on there.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, hey, do you know that your ad is running on Breitbart News next to this article? And at the time, I had found some terrible stock art to put on there and something that kind of resembled a logo and it really bothered me because I like design. But I just was, it was there.”
2018-09-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sleeping Giants founder Matt Rivitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT