Perkins Miller, CEO of Fandom, discusses user-generated content, content moderation, and the challenges of balancing ads and user experience. They explore the role of unofficial communities within fandoms and the 'Harry Potter Problem'. The podcast also covers big clients using FanDNA for insights, challenges of display ads and mobile browsing, the impact of AI on the web and search, and the future plans for Fandom.

We have a little surprise in the feed today: An episode of "Land of the Giants," which is all about Tesla this season. Former Verge transportation reporter Tamara Warren and former Jalopnik EIC Patrick George, who are both deeply sourced in the world of cars, host, and every episode has reporting and insight about Tesla that really hasn’t been shared before. It was ahead of the EV competition in basically every way for a long time. But the question Tamara and Patrick want to answer is: Is Tesla still winning by default? And where is the competition pulling ahead now that every carmaker is doing EVs? I joined them in this episode to discuss how modern cars, especially EVs, are being totally rethought as rolling computers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AWS is quite a story. It started as an experiment almost 20 years ago with Amazon trying to sell its excess server capacity. And people really doubted it. Why was the online bookstore trying to sell cloud services? But now, AWS is the largest cloud services provider in the world, and it’s the most profitable segment of Amazon, generating more than $22 billion in sales last quarter alone. By some estimates, AWS powers roughly one-third of the entire global internet. And on the rare occasion an AWS cluster goes down, an unfathomable number of platforms, websites, and services feel it, and so do hundreds of millions of users.Adam Selipsky was there almost from the start: he joined in 2005 and became CEO of AWS in 2019 when former AWS CEO Andy Jassy took over for Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. Even with big competitors such as Microsoft and Google gaining ground, he estimates that only 10 percent of his potential customers overall have made the jump to the cloud. That leaves lots of room to grow, and I wanted to know where he thinks that growth can come from — and importantly, what will keep AWS competitive as the word “cloud” starts to mean everything and nothing.AWS is going big on AI, but it has some challenges. Adam and I got into all of it and into the weeds of what it means to be an AI provider at scale. It’s uncharted territory.Links:Big Three Dominate the Global Cloud MarketAmazon’s server outage broke fast food apps like McDonald’s and Taco BellAmazon names former exec Adam Selipsky as the new head of AWSAWS is ready to power AI agents that can handle busywork instead of just chattingNvidia reveals H100 GPU for AI and teases ‘world’s fastest AI supercomputer’Amazon plans to rework Alexa in the age of ChatGPTSarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringementTranscript: https://www.theverge.com/23824200/ai-cloud-amazon-aws-adam-selipsky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ActivityPub is back in the news, thanks to Meta’s Threads launch and Elon’s continued immolation of Twitter — now X. That makes this the perfect time to dig into the Decoder archives to hear what Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko thinks about the future of social media. Mastodon got a head start as the most well-known of the rising decentralized social networks, but that’s changing fast. Bluesky, on a competing protocol, is picking up steam and Threads promises to decentralize in the future, using the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon. That’s a big deal, with big potential.Verge Editor-at-Large David Pierce has been covering all this very closely. Before we jump into the interview with Rochko, I spoke with David to help update everyone on what ActivityPub even is, and what it could mean for the future of social media.Links:More than two million users have flocked to Mastodon since Elon Musk took over Twitter - The Verge A beginner’s guide to Mastodon, the hot new open-source Twitter clone - The VergeElon Musk - The VergeBenevolent dictator for life - WikipediaMastodon SocialEugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)   Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? - The Verge   Twitter alternatives for the Musk-averse - The VergeWe tried to run a social media site and it was awful | Financial TimesDenial-of-service attack - Wikipedia  Can ActivityPub save the internet? - The Verge Five reasons Threads could still go the distance - The VergeWhat's next for Threads - The VergeTranscript:https://www.theverge.com/e/23422689 Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today I’m talking to Anthony Casalena, the founder and CEO of Squarespace, the ubiquitous web hosting and design company. If you’re a podcast listener, you’ve heard a Squarespace ad. I was excited to talk to Anthony because it really feels like we’re going through a reset moment on the internet, and I wanted to hear how he’s thinking about the web and what websites are even for in 2023.If you’re a Vergecast listener, you know I’ve been saying it feels a lot like 2011 out there. The big platforms like Facebook and TikTok are very focused on entertainment content. Twitter is going through… let’s call them changes. People are trying out new platforms like Instagram Threads and rethinking their relationships with old standbys like Reddit. And the introduction of AI means that search engines like Google, which was really the last great source of traffic for web pages, just doesn’t seem that reliable anymore as it begins to answer more questions directly. It’s uncertain, and exciting: a lot of things we took for granted just a couple years ago are up for grabs, and I think that might be a good thing.I love talking to people who’ve been building on the web for this long, and Anthony was no exception – we had fun with this one. Also I think this is the most we have ever talked about pressure washers on Decoder. Links:Google sunsets Domains business and shovels it off to Squarespace - The VergeHow Did Squarespace Know Podcasts Would Get This Big? - The New York TimesWatch Squarespace CEO on Leveraging AI Into Website Building - BloombergTranscript:https://www.theverge.com/e/23559195Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.Today’s episode was produced by Jackie McDermott and Raghu Manavalan, and it was edited by Callie Wright.The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, the newly created division of Google responsible for AI efforts across the company. Google DeepMind is the result of an internal merger: Google acquired Demis’ DeepMind startup in 2014 and ran it as a separate company inside its parent company, Alphabet, while Google itself had an AI team called Google Brain. Google has been showing off AI demos for years now, but with the explosion of ChatGPT and a renewed threat from Microsoft in search, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made the decision to bring DeepMind into Google itself earlier this year to create… Google DeepMind.What’s interesting is that Google Brain and DeepMind were not necessarily compatible or even focused on the same things: DeepMind was famous for applying AI to things like games and protein-folding simulations. The AI that beat world champions at Go, the ancient board game? That was DeepMind’s AlphaGo. Meanwhile, Google Brain was more focused on what’s come to be the familiar generative AI toolset: large language models for chatbots, and editing features in Google Photos. This was a culture clash and a big structure decision with the goal of being more competitive and faster to market with AI products.And the competition isn’t just OpenAI and Microsoft — you might have seen a memo from a Google engineer floating around the web recently claiming that Google has no competitive moat in AI because open-source models running on commodity hardware are rapidly evolving and catching up to the tools run by the giants. Demis confirmed that the memo was real but said it was part of Google’s debate culture, and he disagreed with it because he has other ideas about where Google’s competitive edge might come into play.We also talked about AI risk and artificial general intelligence. Demis is not shy that his goal is building an AGI, and we talked through what risks and regulations should be in place and on what timeline. Demis recently signed onto a 22-word statement about AI risk with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and others that simply reads, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” That’s pretty chill, but is that the real risk right now? Or is it just a distraction from other more tangible problems like AI replacing labor in various creative industries? We also talked about the new kinds of labor AI is creating — armies of low-paid taskers classifying data in countries like Kenya and India in order to train AI systems. I wanted to know if Demis thought these jobs were here to stay or just a temporary side effect of the AI boom.This one really hits all the Decoder high points: there’s the big idea of AI, a lot of problems that come with it, an infinite array of complicated decisions to be made, and of course, a gigantic org chart decision in the middle of it all. Demis and I got pretty in the weeds, and I still don’t think we covered it all, so we’ll have to have him back soon.Links:Inside the AI FactoryInside Google’s AI culture clash - The VergeA leaked Google memo raises the alarm about open-source A.I. | FortuneThe End of Search As You Know ItGoogle’s Sundar Pichai talks Search, AI, and dancing with Microsoft - The VergeDeepMind reportedly lost a yearslong bid to win more independence from Google - The VergeTranscript:https://www.theverge.com/e/23542786Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.Today’s episode was produced by Jackie McDermott and Raghu Manavalan, and it was edited by Callie Wright.The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roblox has 66 million daily users, and people spent 14 billion collective hours on Roblox in just Q1 of 2023. But its CEO David Baszucki still wants to see the company grow. One idea? Aging up the kinds of experiences that are allowed on its platform. Roblox recently introduced 17+ experiences. It wants to add new AI world-building capabilities. It’s even partnering with advertisers to roll out more immersive ad experiences.It’s been years since the number of adults gaming outnumbered kids – it seems like that’s driving a lot of growth for everyone, including Roblox. But these virtual world games seem like they all want to expand to be much more than just for kids, and much more than just for games.If you think about it, Roblox is already like a metaverse. Schools are using it for classes, companies are starting to advertise there, and people are just hanging out as avatars. It’s already big, but the hope is to get much, much bigger.Alex Heath, deputy editor at The Verge, got the chance to chat with David up at Roblox headquarters in San Mateo, California. Their conversation covered a lot: why now’s the time for Roblox to grow up, the classic Decoder questions about structure and decision-making, and sadly, why infinite Robux isn’t a thing. Apologies to all the eight year olds out there.Okay, Roblox CEO David Baszucki. Here we go.Links:Roblox will allow exclusive experiences for people 17 and overRoblox, explained - The VergeFortnite and Roblox are dueling for the future of user-built games - The VergeCredits:Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.It was produced by Raghu Manavalan and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’ve spent more than two minutes somewhere on social media, you have probably come across Gary Vaynerchuk. For years I have wondered, is this just a character? Or is there a real Gary Vaynerchuk somewhere behind “GaryVee,” the social media entrepreneur and internet brand?Gary got his start working at his family’s liquor store, which he turned into an online wine shop. That’s where he started in social media, hosting a long-running YouTube show called “Wine Library TV.” He parlayed that into the gigantic GaryVee brand, which at its core, is about entrepreneurship. Gary co-founded the restaurant reservation platform Resy, which he sold to American Express in 2019, and Empathy Wines which he sold in 2020. The Vaynerchuk empire remains vast, and it’s structured in complicated ways. There’s holding company VaynerX, which contains the ad agency VaynerMedia. There’s another company called Gallery Media which owns lifestyle websites. Gary even co-founded a sports agency – VaynerSports, with pro athletes like the NFL’s Kirk Cousins and Sauce Gardner on the roster, MLB shortstop Bo Bichette, and a variety of combat athletes.On top of all that, there’s a serious upheaval going on in digital media. The era of the social web is coming to a major moment of change, with new platforms like TikTok in the mix and old standbys like Twitter and Reddit going through complicated and controversial resets. New platforms bring new personalities and influencers, who are native to those platforms and maybe better at capturing the audience there.It’s one thing when you’re the first GaryVee. But staying GaryVee, in a time of change, and pitching brands and companies that his approach to social media will stay relevant, is an ongoing challenge.We got to chat with Gary at his Hudson Yards office in Manhattan and I will tell you, he did not hold back with his answers.Links:A trip to the GaryVee convention, where everyone is part of crypto’s 1 percent - The VergeHow Gary Vaynerchuk Became an NFT GuruGary Vaynerchuk expects NFTs to expand beyond digital collectibles long term | TechCrunchTranscript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23530741Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.It was produced by Jackie McDermott and Raghu Manavalan. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The idea behind private equity or PE is simple: a private equity firm gathers up a bunch of cash, raises some investor cash and takes on a lot of debt to buy various companies, often taking them off the public stock market. Then, they usually install new management and embark on aggressive cost cutting and turnaround programs – mostly because they have to pay down all that debt pretty fast. Then, the company can be sold or taken public again for a hefty profit. But don’t worry—if it doesn’t work out, the PE firms are extracting fees at every step of the process so they get paid no matter what happens.In another world, these PE deals are just boring financing strategies or maybe the backbone of the occasional juicy corporate takeover story. In Decoder world, PE is everywhere. Since the modern PE industry kicked off in the 1980’s, it’s grown virtually unchecked, and as author Brendan Ballou explains, that’s had seriously negative consequences for all kinds of markets and consumers. Private equity affects everything from the modern nursing home industry, to the Solarwinds hack, one of the biggest hacks in U.S. history.Brendan Ballou is the author of Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America. Brendan is also a federal prosecutor and he served as Special Counsel for Private Equity in the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, so he’s uniquely suited to writing a book like this. Although he will be the first to tell you, the book does not reflect the views of the DOJ.This is a wonky episode, but it’s essential.Links:Plunder by Brendan Ballou How Private Equity Buried Payless - The New York Times Barnes & Noble is going back to its indie roots to compete with Amazon - Decoder, The VergeHow arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus - Decoder, The VergeOpinion | Private Equity Is Gutting America — and Getting Away With It - The New York TimesTicketmaster, Taylor Swift, and antitrust – explained - The VergeWhat is chokepoint capitalism, with authors Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.Today’s episode was produced by Jackie McDermott and Raghu Manavalan, and it was edited by Callie Wright.The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jennifer Witz is the CEO of SiriusXM. You probably know the company as the satellite radio brand in virtually every new car, but it also owns Pandora, a huge podcast network that includes Team Coco and 99% Invisible, a content operation with huge stars like Howard Stern, and has broadcast deals with every major sports league.SiriusXM is effectively the dominant market leader for built-in premium audio in cars, in a time when competition is increasing. As the infotainment system in cars gets ever more complex and computer-like, the Sirius experience has to keep up. On top of that, the state of car software is a mess. GM announced it won’t support Apple CarPlay in new EVs. Other companies are using various versions of Android. Tesla has its own platform. And Sirius has to support all of it with applications that compete with Big Tech companies, all while continuing to integrate the satellite hardware into the cars themselves — on top of launching satellites on SpaceX rockets.Links:After layoffs, SiriusXM looks to star-studded podcastsWhat Is SiriusXM with 360L? A Breakdown of the New Audio Platform SiriusXM CEO Calls Audio Ad Sales Market “Tough”Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23514318Credits:Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.Today’s episode was produced by Jackie McDermott and Raghu Manavalan, and it was edited by Callie Wright.The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices