Pivot

Kara and Scott talk about former Twitter employees who were spying on user data for Saudi Arabia. They also talk about a big leak of internal Facebook emails that further shows Facebook's conniving use of data. A year out from the 2020 election, a new progressive PAC is trying to beat Donald Trump in the digital ad space. Kara and Scott agree it's a drop in the bucket. Scott bids a farewell to his presidential hopeful and "dreamy man crush" Beto. Kara's win is Airbnb's transparent handling of a few recent incidents. Meanwhile, in fails, SAT-takers names and data are being sold to elite universities ... so those schools can have a higher rejection rate.

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Kara and Scott celebrate Jack Dorsey announcing that Twitter will not be running political ads anymore. That puts Facebook on the spot. They talk about Kara's interview with Edward Snowden on her other podcast Recode Decode. In streaming wars news, HBOMax is joining and sweeping up all the content. How will net neutrality affect the streaming wars? In listener mail, we dig into a new bill introduced in Congress that would force big social media platforms to loosen their hold on user data.

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Kara and Scott take a victory lap as SoftBank buys out Adam Neumann, the founder of weWork for a cool $1.7 billion. They talk about what the future might hold, now that Google has unveiled its quantum computer. Tesla proved Scott wrong and came out with some really big earnings this week. We also hear from Senior Recode reporter, Peter Kafka about what to expect from the streaming wars as Apple debuts its own platform. Winners are the women of Congress, who absolutely skewered Mark Zuckerberg in a Congressional hearing.

Here is more information on Peter Kafka's Code Media Conference!

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Kara and Scott met up at Stanford University (where they were both rejected from) for a live Pivot! They talk about the decline of applicants to elite M.B.A. programs, free speech in China and how Zuckerberg says he thinks free speech functions at Facebook. They get into Amazon's foray into the healthcare sector. They take questions from the audience on the Canadian elections, weWork and more.

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Kara and Scott meet up at the Podcast Upfronts in NYC. And we make a special announcement...wait for it... WE'RE GOING TO 2 DAYS A WEEK! BOOM! They also talk about the likelihood that weWork has layoffs and declares bankruptcy. They talk about Bill Gates' ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Win: Elizabeth Warren intentionally submitted a Facebook political ad with false information on it to show the platform's failures. Fail: the crumbling of Facebook's cryptocurrency, Libra.

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Kara and Scott talk about feuds with VC's, billionaires paying fewer taxes than the working class and tech companies folding to Chinese state media pressure. They take a listener mail question about Sidewalk Labs and the right way to make smart cities. They're concerned with the Turkish president's use of Twitter to announce an invasion of Syria. A win is Andrew Yang's $10-million boost in Q3. And Kara comes with her own prediction this week, that Michael Bloomberg is going to jump into the presidential race. (Also a big warm welcome to the Pivot team's newest favorite member, Kara's baby, Clara Jo!!)

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Someone inside Facebook secretly recorded Mark Zuckerberg for two hours and sent the audio to The Verge’s Casey Newton; Kara interviews Casey about his scoop and gets Scott’s take on Zuckerberg’s apparent fear of President Elizabeth Warren. They also talk about why WeWork CEO Adam Neumann may have to go into the Unicorn Protection Program and why the company’s canceled IPO is a victory for the public markets. Plus: Kara dares Twitter to take responsibility for President Trump’s Tweets, and The Big Dog adopts a puppy.

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Kara and Scott are live at the Elevate in Toronto -- Pivot's first international appearance! They talk about the continued implosion at weWork and CEO Adam Neumann stepping down. They ask -- have we reached peak "founder"? Wins are whistleblowers and Phoebe Waller-Bridge who is helping Amazon outpace Netflix in streaming content. 

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Happy 1st anniversary to Pivot! Kara and Scott talk about weWork's halted IPO (we'll take partial credit). They talk about Amazon manipulating its algorithm to present more of its own products in search. Facebook is making its own "Supreme Court", is it just a band-aid? Should Kara Swisher be one of the Justices? (Yes). Fail: Trudeau -- and the (STILL) Governor of Virginia -- wearing black face.

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Scott joins Land of the Giants host, Jason Del Rey, live on stage at the Code Commerce conference in New York City. Scott tells Jason that Amazon needs to be broken up - and which parts of the company should be spun off first. They discuss Amazon’s ultimate impact on us as consumers, who are the companies left that can really compete with Amazon, and question the idea that we live in an era of innovation. 

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