YouSaid · the spoken record

Noam Cohen

lines on the record: 93
first: 2017-12-18
most recent: 2017-12-18
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

“Over and over again, they do it. No, totally Right, aren't the like, I mean, the two kind of liabilities you're kind of focusing on are that, A, and you read this in his comments, Zuckerberg's particularly, that they just believe people want to be connected even if they don't. Yeah, and there's not one mention that Facebook might have caused the polarization. No, of course not. So it's like, you might not be assessing it correctly.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up the ante on social discussion. Like it was trying to just populate your feed with something interesting. And so they would say if you bought something, it would pop on your feet without your permission, essentially. And at the time, they found nothing wrong with this. And of course, privacy advocates went crazy and they started doing, it was all kinds of glitches. They would publish things people didn't want to know. And it was just such an massive overreach without any thought put into it. And then they initially said it wasn't a problem. And then it was sort of a problem. And it was okay, maybe it's more of a problem than we thought. And that was let's close it. Like it was fascinating. And you can watch that one after the next over and over again. They do it. No, totally. With a Facebook Live, oh, there'll be no murders. Oh, okay. There's a, oh, maybe we should have rules, mo tools. Same thing with Russia. Oh, we didn't know. No, there's no Russians here. Oh, wait. It looks like there's a Russian over there. Oh, there could be two. Oh, there's a lot of them. Maybe we should do something. Right, aren't the...”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are. I mean, it's interesting. I always think the DNA of a company starts at the beginning and it's what kills them at the end, really. It's the same exact thing. And it's always, it carries through it. And someone was talking about these Russia hearings recently. And I said, you know, it's the 10th anniversary of Beacon, which you may not remember, but I do because I wrote about it, which was a privacy. They would publish what you bought in order to...”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you read the text. I can't say I've listened to a lot of it. And like, you know, his perception of reality, I don't know. I think he might genuinely think he's doing good. It might be hard to shake him out of it because I think.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually, I guess I don't think they are because I think that when I read what I did for this book, I really read a lot of the comments of everybody. I read like this amazing site that keeps track of everything Mark Zuckerberg's ever said since he's been 18. It's called the Zuckerberg Files. You have to register for it. So read all that. I mean,”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they have to. I wonder, and then you wonder about advertising for children as well. Will that be another no-brainer? I mean, it doesn't hit politicians quite as directly as political advertising, but advertising whether children are being exposed to ads seems pretty, there's been some real stuff published online about that and about how potential for YouTube to really”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they're always kind of hedging, right? So it seems like if they think anything's going to happen, they're going to kind of agree beforehand. But I just think there might be a consensus on this miraculously. But no, I think they will kind of grudgingly agree to regulation. I guess that will make things a little better. I think political advertising is too important. I obviously politicians are very concerned about political advertising. I think it might be the one thing they really will act on. The other kind of questions about monopoly. Yeah, I'm not that optimistic. I think that might be the other thing we need to do are controlling your own data. I don't know if they're going to do that. Those are things that really require”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're like, well, you know, but I guess there's some paperwork that show they do. And he's like, is it wrong to give advertising focused on depressed people? Is it wrong to focus on overweight people and sell them candy? I mean, it was like really getting at these really important questions. So I thought, wow, it is bipartisan. It's not just Elizabeth Warrens of the world who are worried about it. So I'm a little hopeful.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I understand that, but I was really struck that John Kennedy, this Republican Louisiana, if you watched him, asked him what trenching questions possible. And I would like, maybe I'm kidding myself thinking he's speaking for Middle America, but obviously Middle America is also the ones who are being strip mined by these companies. It's a very good one. All the money is going to the board outside edges in New York and San Francisco and all the kind of local stores, local advertising is being hurt in the middle. And he asked questions like the Facebook that were really, like he said, do you keep track of who is depressed? Can you tell who's depressed?”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like I talk in the book about the politics of no politics. And I was telling a friend how Rush has a famous lyric that, you know, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. And a friend told me that's actually Pascal who came up with that before Rush. And I think it's a real fallacy to think. And I think it's often a way of disguising libertarian ideas. I think like Elon Musk had this tweet where he was sort of like, I take the best ideas from everybody. And it's like the best ideas from the left are, you know, gay marriage and legalizing drugs. And the best ideas from the right are like no regulation and low taxes. So that's just libertarianism. So I think they kind of want to present themselves as not political because obviously it's sort of the old story with like Michael Jordan Republicans still use Facebook and they don't want to be identified with one party. But I do think it's a fallacy. And we're learning that it has real costs, this idea of just stepping back or just neutral. It allows you to be easily manipulated by people.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about We die as well. Yeah. So the idea of where they are in the polygamy, they had these hearings and they You know, I probably know regulation will come given that Congress can't do anything. They can't do the big regulation. They're not going to get to the lesser regulation. But where does Silicon Valley find itself? Because at one point they want to get away from politics. They don't want to be part of it. They're always talking about not wanting to be part of Washington. On the other hand, they're spending enormous amounts of money on political influence and finding themselves in really hot water. I feel like I talk in the book.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which maybe Peter Thiel and others talk about is a real way of kind of devaluing family and the way we are kind of historically from the beginning of mankind, people kind, how we come about. We don't just use other people's blood or sort of just live forever through medicine. We're part of a community. And unfortunately, we die as well.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think other thing I was thinking about is in the book I talk about how libertarianism is also an ideology that some would argue really devalues women and it's not a coincidence that these are tech bros and not tech sisters that in essence to believe in libertarianism, believe in this like kind of ruthless You have to believe that you can't hear as an adult miraculously. There's no mother, no family. So I think that's a very dangerous pernicious kind of view, but it's very common. I think even the idea of living forever.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I thought there was a real, I mean, bringing up Al Franken here, Senator Franken really had a very telling interaction with the counsel, the lawyer for Facebook, where he said, can you just pledge not to accept rubles for political ads? And the lawyer said, it's a very good signal. We're really on it. Thank you for pointing it out. And he said, can you just say yes that you're not going to take ads? He was like, no, we hear you and we're going to work on that or something. I kept thinking, why would he not say yes? But it kind of spoke to that arrogance that we'll figure it out. We'll do our algorithm. You stay out of it. So I think that's one sign of just the lack of regulation. Other than the Koch brothers, I think Silicon Valley is the biggest proponent or critic of government regulation mocking communities.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, I think when you talk about libertarianism or the political power, it's the fight against regulation. That's what's very scary to me. I was watching the hearings about. The election, right? And whether and what recent hearings or Twitter and Facebook.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Explain that it was my editor's idea. I think it's great because it had kind of two connotations. I remember describing my daughter actually who was asking me what I know it all is five and a half. It's not just knowing everything, right? It's thinking you know everything and kind of wanting to assert that knowledge on other people. And also I thought I had a good double meaning because these companies want to know everything about us. They collect all that data So I thought I just worked in two ways that they want to know it all about me and they also think they know it all about the world. So I thought it was an awesome title”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so, yeah. Think the goal of the book thinking about explaining is that it's making libertarianism cool. And I was thinking, I saw John Markoff, an old colleague yesterday were talking about, like, he kind of approaches his history through the hippie and the flower power kind of story. And he was asking me even like, that's good, this individuality. And of course I agree with that, but it's just not caring about the social fabric that they're breaking. So I kind of, I was very hon for the flyer freak flag part of it, but it's just the...”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's a funny guy and he has a little card by the way. He's a person like he's a consumer. Yeah, you know, he has this little card thing, he's a guy that deals with customer service. And it's like, that's a very human thing. I felt like these things were getting really not human and that was bothering me.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what would the world be like if they sort of said, We're going to protect gnomes and everyone's male as if it were like some special package. We're not going to even look at it. We wouldn't even want to look at it. So I think that those things made me think something was going awry. And then the consolidation and seeing how Facebook, you hear just sort of stories. Nothing is new to tell you about, but even people being reminded of anniversaries and very ham-handed ways, the scalability, the idea, I guess I've always thought that what I liked about Wikipedia or Craigslist, it's so funny to meet Craig. I once did a story about him out here.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those are loaded terms. Yeah, and obviously I wrote it before I can't say the Russian meddling in our election why I wrote it. That was definitely not what I was thinking about. I would say part, I think about, I'm sure when I realized that Gmail. I know they would say right that it's only a bot. Maybe they don't even do it anymore, that only a bot was reading your mail, but thinking that how I wouldn't really type that my mom had cancer in it because I just didn't really want that. What would that lead to? And I guess I kind of always am trying to navigate that. And that was something that made me think this is really a weird deal going on because obviously I love Gmail. I'm not so strong that I don't use it. But I obviously think it's something really odd. Like, why would someone sign off on reading your mail?”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In any area, and that, like, you know, sure, how amazing is it to have all the books available to Sir? I certainly use that way, but then you start thinking, wow, what do authors think about their books being in there? But I was definitely... Open to those kind of”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was things like Wikipedia, things where people could collaborate together, where I guess it were very unstructured. And I think free software was really interesting to me. The idea that it could be a non commercial path. I think Craigslist was another one. I always had this idealistic kind of my background was always to be interested in utopia. So I was more than a big thing.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, yeah, it's kind of an analogy. I always think of it as like the British Navy kind of just wanted open seas. We happened to control the seas, but we just believe in open seas. Right.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was interesting. Someone was asking me about that recently, and I said, you know, Microsoft controlled by controlling everything, and Google controls by controlling nothing. It's a different way, but it's the same result.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The structure of it would lead to competition, and that Google wants openness, so that means there's going to be an open system. I didn't realize that that could mean that there would be only a handful of.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think, well, because I think obviously you were right. I mean, clearly I'm party to some of that, of the real enthusiasm of... Thing that the Arab Spring was caused by these social network tools, yeah, Twitter. And I think I also did a profile of Gaming Morazav. I remember doing Just thinking how he was so instinctively negative about everything. I thought I was sort of telling him as a wise old man, like, to be instinctively negative is it's just as predictable as being instinctively positive. But I think retrospect was definitely on to something. I remember. And so I do think that I was probably, yeah, more optimistic about things. I mean, things have taken a turn. So it wasn't like I just was blind, but I didn't quite see how it would become so consolidated. I kind of believe the hype that...”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, really very odd places. Alexandria, Egypt, and you get to see in Egypt how many women were there, like how they all were doctors, because no one really could be a computer person. It wasn't really a profession. So I learned that was kind of what I wanted to put like a human face behind what was going on.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See the people behind these faces. That's always what I wanted to do, actually. Ask what I was trying to accomplish was to say, here's this thing, the internet that's changing everything. Who are the people who are doing it? Who is the biggest Wikipedia contributor? What is he like? Why does he do it? So I would go to these conferences around the world being Argentina.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do think that maybe this Twitter piece was the first one. And it was called. Who was kind of tweeting about his suicide? And again, I wrote it in such an earnest way and ran the style section. And it really was not about the business potential. It was like, what an weird idea you could kind of have people watch you in real time. And through these tweets. And I guess I also wrote a very early piece about Wikipedia in 2006 going to one of their conferences, which I always thought was fascinating to go.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely. I remember, I mean, yeah, it's hard to know how many stories I can tell about the Times, but I remember one of the things it's not that fascinating, but one of the ideas I had, though, was to create an internal wiki at the time. I remember how hard it was to do that because I was sort of doing editing and I thought like in New York Times they had incredible rules about style, which have now just you look at now as an outsider and can't even believe the things I used to worry about about whether headlines could end with a preposition. I mean, just things are just insane. So I thought, wow, all these arcane rules, we should just put a wiki and we can have kind of updated and deal with changing times. And, you know, it was very hard to have that done, let's say. I think, you know, it might still exist now, but I was really pushing against the.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was not attacking. I remember thinking people say, why are you going to get rich in this? I was saying, well, if I'm going to become a millionaire, that means someone who's really doing this thing is going to be a billionaire. I don't think they're becoming a billionaire, so I'm not becoming a millionaire. Right.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, for sure. Yeah, I think they thought, right. They thought, yeah. And so I was sort of around that, it lasted very, you know, maybe a year and a half. I did that. But I was always, I was intrigued to do that because I thought the same way that the internet would be a better delivery system. So, seeing that and seeing that fail, and then going back to the times, and then I guess I always, that shows I always was curious about the potential to, but I wasn't thinking about it in such a way. I remember thinking about the”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, sure. Totally. I think they thought that variety, you know, obviously variety in, I guess Holly reported a lesser degree did migrate themselves. I thought like, hey, we could just, we have an almost like we have a chance to just create a whole new structure that will leapfrog kind of the way people, I guess, go right to mobile phones or something. We don't have to deal with landlines. They thought they could kind of jump right in and become this. And there were ideas of having premium subscriptions. So they were always playing around with lots of the same ideas today.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To try to make it work. What it was is a lot of old media people realized the internet. I was around for it. Sure, sure. Very vividly because I'd been covering it since the mid-ly 90s, essentially. And then all of a sudden everyone was like, uh-oh, this internet thing is a big deal. And then sort of they all try to figure out a way. And a lot of it was porting a lot of old media stuff onto the totally. I think they thought that”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a, yeah, it was a blog brand news article. It was only online only. Of course, the funny thing is, they eventually flipped and did do a print magazine for a little while too. It was like just they were grasping to try to make it work.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All star list. I was an editor. I was not one of the all stars, but I helped them. Yeah, and like in publishing, but also in film and in TV. And they thought they actually were very shrewd. It was Kurt Anderson and my friend Michael Hirschorn. And they had this idea that around the world there was a segment of the world, you could say that a senior vice president at Sony was the same in Japan, is the same as someone in New York and that they all kind of needed really quick, actionable news. And just obviously the timing was terrible.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, I guess I use some of these stuff. I was more of an idealist. I look back, I wrote a piece in like 2001 for dissent that was kind of, I worked at a company called Inside.com, right? That was an early car”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I was a history major in college, and I just wrote about, and I would write about, you know, history major. And I guess I really have no technical background, but I had this cousin who a late cousin who we would answer all my technical questions. He kind of gave me, he's exactly the same age as Bill Gates. I remember when I was young always hearing him talk about how Bill Gates, the program was terrible and when it was going on, he never thought that Microsoft would ever succeed. And he was always sort of, he was more of know-it-all than Bill Gates. And kind of laugh when it sort of took over the world. And that's always a funny thing about these people, that when I was doing the research, each one is saying how the other one is not really that smart.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“True, I guess. Yeah, and I guess I was really always interested in what is free software going to change the world or not? And, you know, I've seen, is Wikipedia going to change the world? And I've seen actually how both those movements have been subsumed by Google and, anyway, I guess you say Amazon too for helping these smart machines get answers. So Wikipedia, I thought like, wow, here's this other path, but actually it's become subsumed. And, you know, now Wikipedia is mainly used for Google results.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I never was doing that. You were just doing it with the societal impact. And this was right after one of the crashes was in there in the time. And so there was sort of a big boom. And then there was a bust. And then there was another big boom and then a slight bust. True. So we were sort of in the Facebook phase of the internet, essentially. True, I guess.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, no, the folks of the column was really about, no, it was about how internet was affecting society. So I would write about memes. I was sort of early to write about a lot of things. I think my wife was sort of joking that it was perfect. I have a two-year gap for this because when I'm writing, it's now on the news. I used to write a Bitcoin before Bitcoin was a big deal. I wrote about it as kind of an abstract idea or I would write about Twitter before Twitter was a big deal. I just was sort of interested and talked of people about what was going on, but I wasn't really interested in looking at the business side of it. So I never was doing that.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2008 through probably 2014 or so. And then I was becoming clear to me that these issues were very important to be a critic of Silicon Valley isn't to sort of talk about like, is our smartphone making us dumb? But is it threatening our democracy? So I kind of had felt I had to deal with where the internet had gone rather than kind of talking about my idealistic views of Wikipedia or Craigslist things that were not commercial wouldn't track you. I had to look at what was really going on. And I want to answer that question. I had seen that these big companies and these leaders were really presenting a libertarian view and making it cool in a way that was very scary to me that I kind of knew from my reporting I'd spent a lot of time with hacker and computer programmers types and I had a cousin like that and it was one thing to serve in the computer lab to have these kind of views that kind of hostile to outsiders and very arrogant. Another thing to have them running our society. And that's kind of what made me scared. I wanted to sort of say how did this happen? How did we get from”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, Sure. So I used to write a column called Link by Link for the Times, and in it ran the business section on Mondays, but I often did not write about businesses. I really like writing about Wikipedia, free software. I was really interested in how technology was affecting software.”
2017-12-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Noam Cohen, author, 'The Know-It-Alls' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT