Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, which he co-founded, and Tumblr, the irrepressible social network it acquired from the wreckage of AOL, Yahoo, and Verizon. Matt’s point of view is that the world is better off when the web is open and fun, and Automattic builds and acquires products that help that goal along.

Links:
Exclusive: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on what’s next for Tumblr
Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress’ owner
Automattic, owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com, buys podcast app Pocket Casts
Gutenberg
Tumblr Shop
Why Apple’s new privacy feature is such a big deal
Taylor Swift's Tumblr
Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th
How Tumblr Became Popular for Being Obsolete
Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson and Rep. David Cicilline on Apple's monopolistic app store fees
Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google - and how it won
After the porn ban, Tumblr users have ditched the platform as promised
The Trauma Floor: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America
Vox Media adds The Coral Project

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22741898

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott. Research was done by Liz Lian. It was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How WordPress and Tumblr are keeping the internet weird, with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg

Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.

Technology

Tech News

Podcasting

Gadgets

Software How-To

Business

Investing

Careers

Management & Marketing

Business News

Shopping

At the absolute most basic, Dropbox is cloud storage for your stuff — but that puts it at the nexus of a huge number of today’s biggest challenges in tech. As the company that helps you organize your stuff in the cloud itself goes all remote, how do we even deal with the concept of “your stuff?”

Today I’m talking with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston about those big picture ideas — and why he thinks generative AI really will be transformative for everyone eventually, even if it isn’t yet now.

Links: 

Dropbox AI and Dash make it easier to find your files from all over the web | The Verge

Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM forever | The Verge

No, Dropbox's cafeteria didn't get a Michelin star | VentureBeat

It's official: San Francisco's office vacancy rate just set a record | San Francisco Examiner

Jeff Bezos: This is the 'smartest thing we ever did' at Amazon | CNBC

Dropbox is laying off 500 people and pivoting to AI | The Verge

Congress bans staff use of Microsoft's AI Copilot | Axios


Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23892647

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston wants you to embrace AI and remote work

Today we’re talking about Vice, the media company: Where it came from, what it did, and, ultimately, why it collapsed into a much smaller, sadder version of itself. 

This is a lousy time for digital media, and it’s hard to make a profit from putting words on the internet right now. So when Verge senior reporter Liz Lopatto went to go report on what happened, she and I both assumed Vice had been done in by the brutal economics of digital advertising on the web. But the Vice story is more than that — in the word of one executive that talked to Liz, it was a “fucking clown show.” 

Links:

How Vice became 'a fucking clown show' — The Verge


Vice is abandoning Vice.com and laying off hundreds — The Verge


Vice, decayed digital colossus, files for bankruptcy — NYT


Vice Is Basically Dead — New York Magazine


Shane Smith and the Final Collapse of Vice News — The Hollywood Reporter


At Vice, cutting-edge media and allegations of old-school sexual harassment — NYT


HBO cancels ‘Vice News Tonight,’ severing relationship with Vice Media — CNN


Shane Smith has a secret multimillion-dollar Vice deal — New York Magazine



Credits: 
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rise and fall of Vice Media

Cloudflare is an infrastructure provider basically protecting more than 20% of the entire web from bad actors. When everything is going well, you don't even have to know it exists. It's one of the only defenses — sometimes the only defense — standing between websites and the people who want to take them down.

Protecting free speech on the internet around the world, across war zones and hundreds of different kinds of government, is no easy feat. That puts the company, and CEO Matthew Prince, right at the heart of some of Decoder's biggest challenges and themes. 

Links: 

A Cloudflare outage broke large swathes of the internet | The Verge

Why security company Cloudflare is protecting U.S. election sites for free | Fast Company

The Daily Stormer just lost the most important company defending it | The Verge (2017)

Cloudflare to revoke 8chan’s service, opening the fringe website up for DDoS attacks | The Verge (2019)

Cloudflare blocks Kiwi Farms due to an ‘immediate threat to human life’ | The Verge

Why Cloudflare Let an Extremist Stronghold Burn | Wired

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince interview on Ukraine cybersecurity | Semafor

3 ways the ‘splinternet’ is damaging society | MIT Sloan


Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23885440

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is the internet’s unlikely defender

Hello, and welcome to Decoder. This is David Pierce, editor-at-large at The Verge and co-host of The Vergecast, subbing in for Nilay, who’s out on vacation. Regular Decoder programming returns next week. In the meantime, we have an exciting episode for you today all about video game emulation, which, as it turns out, is a whole lot more complicated than it seems. 

Gaming emulation made headlines recently because one of the most widely used programs for emulating the Nintendo Switch, a platform called Yuzu, was effectively sued out of existence. There’s a whole lot going on here, from the history of game emulation to the copyright precedents of emulators to how the threat of game piracy still looms large in the industry. To break down this topic, I brought Verge Senior Editor and resident emulation expert Sean Hollister on the show. Let’s get into it. 

Links:

Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu — The Verge


Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu will fold and pay $2.4M to settle its lawsuit — The Verge


Steve Jobs announcing a PlayStation emulator for the Mac — YouTube


Fans freak out as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaks two weeks early — Kotaku


Tears of the Kingdom Was Pirated 1 Million Times, Nintendo Claims — Kotaku


The solid legal theory behind Nintendo’s new emulator takedown effort — Ars Technica


How Nintendo’s destruction of Yuzu is rocking the emulator world — The Verge


How strong is Nintendo’s legal case against Switch-emulator Yuzu? — Ars Technica



Credits: 
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Nintendo sued a Switch emulator out of existence

Today, I’m talking to Intuit Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar, who took over as CEO in 2022 after a pretty rough patch in the company’s history. In 2021, Intuit acquired the company, and the very next year, co-founder Ben Chestnut stepped down after telling employees that he thought introducing themselves with pronouns in meetings did more harm than good. After that, Rania took over.
This is a pretty huge culture change, especially as Mailchimp became more integrated with Intuit. It was also a big challenge for a new leader who came in from the outside. You’ll hear us talk about that transition a lot. Rania and I also got into the weeds of making decisions, which is very Decoder. And, of course, we had to talk about generative AI, which is a big part of the Mailchimp road map. This was a really fun conversation with some honestly scary ideas in it — and it’s all about email.

Links:

Mailchimp employees have complained about inequality for years — The Verge


Mailchimp Employees Are Fuming Over $12 Billion Deal — Business Insider


Did this email cost Mailchimp's billionaire CEO his job? — Platformer


Mailchimp is shutting down TinyLetter — The Verge


TinyLetter, in memoriam — The Verge


Did Mailchimp censor J.D. Vance? — Mother Jones


Hackers breached Mailchimp to phish cryptocurrency wallets — The Verge


Boring, mundane businesses have an exhilarating, viral life on TikTok — The Verge



Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23879556

Credits: 
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How WordPress and Tumblr are keeping the internet weird, with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg

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