Ben Thompson
@benthompson
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Author/Founder of @stratechery . Host of @ditheringfm @sharptechpod . @notechben for sports. @monkbent on other networks. Home on the Internet.
Taipei, Taiwan
Joined December 2006
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Elon Musk has already made ~$750 million on his Twitter trade, which is approximately double Twitter’s net income for the last 3 years.
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Being a liberal with forbidden black friends under a censorious apartheid regime that denied its atrocities is a powerful origin story for Musk’s focus on free speech. So powerful, in fact, that this takeaway shines through a ham-fisted narrative insinuating the opposite.
Elon Musk grew up in elite white communities in South Africa, detached from apartheid’s atrocities and surrounded by anti-Black propaganda.
He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation.
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Marques’ reach is a function of telling the truth. He didn’t always have 18 million subscribers, but he had his integrity from the beginning. Expecting him to abandon that is the only thing that is “distasteful, almost unethical”.
I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers.
Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness.
First, do no harm.
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1975: Microsoft founded
~22 years later~
1997: US v Microsoft filed
———————————-
1998: Google founded
~22 years later~
2020: US v Google filed
***************************
Apparently being sued for antitrust is like graduating from college for tech companies.
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The anti-nuclear movement is up there as one of the most destructive of all-time. The triumph of emotion over rationality, and we haven’t even started to truly pay the price.
From:
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Elon Musk is better at interviewing than at being interviewed, which actually makes quite a bit of sense when you think about it.
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Agree. It's 2016 and men in tech still mocking one of the most successful businesspeople in the industry. Hopeless
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6 year-old son: Where do cows watch movies?
Me: A MOOOOOO-vie theater.
Son: No.
Me: [Surprised] Then where?
Son: MOOOOOO-Tube
***
OMG I’m old 😵
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Imagine writing this four months after China forced a group of doctors to sign an apology for discussing a new coronavirus in a chat room.
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It’s pretty popular to write tweets mocking people starting podcasts. It reminds me of people mocking blogs. It’s all elitist gatekeeper BS. The fact the Internet gives opportunity to anyone anywhere is awesome.
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*who was in a control group and didn’t receive the vaccine
Pretty staggering how irresponsible this is.
Volunteer in Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial dies
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I have now heard from multiple developers, both big and small, that over the last few months Apple has been refusing to update their app unless their SaaS service adds in-app purchase. If this has happened to you please email me blog @ my site domain. 100% off the record.
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Actually, executives that criticize China’s governance have their companies taken away and disappear. Ask Jack Ma.
This is a First Amendment issue, as in private companies can do this because of the First Amendment.
Silencing people, not to mention the President of the US, is what happens in China not our country.
#Unbelievable
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I wonder at what point Apple decided to make sure the Stocks app could display a ‘T’ 🤔
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A creator sells a Ticketed Space for $5.
The creator, who people are willing to pay for, gets $2.80.
Twitter, who facilitated the connection and created the product, gets $0.70.
Apple/Google, who leverage OS API control into a tax on all activity, do nothing and get $1.50.
Twitter previews Ticketed Spaces, says it’ll take a 20 percent cut of sales
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Blogs = still the best representation of the Internet’s promise. Everyone should have a site that they own, not just a social media account (which are great for promoting blog posts).
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Literally killing people with red tape. Nothing, absolutely nothing, matters more than speed. By obsessing about prioritizing the vaccine we are prioritizing the extension of this pandemic.
The process for *senior citizens* to get the vaccine in New York City involves a 51 step online questionnaire that includes uploading multiple attachments.
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Probably not a great sign that none of the Western media is even covering the Chinese incursion into India, much less condemning it.
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Apple Vision Pro in an economy seat is life-changing. Movie experience is a total escape, and here the Mac screen-sharing makes a massive difference. Anyone flying long-haul regularly: it's worth it. Absolutely worth it.
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I have noticed that when I have calls with people who are used to working from home, we both default to no video. People new to it always have their video on 🤔
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Imagine people arguing in 1998 that Microsoft deserves 30% of all software sales with zero alternatives allowed lmao
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Ah yes, I remember visiting the farm as a child and milking an Echo and picking Dots.
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So just to make sure I understand this, the NYT finds moderating 77k folks too difficult, and also expects perfection from Facebook in moderating 2.7 billion?
The New York Times is so done with its 77,000-member Facebook cooking group. What happens now?
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My daughter deleted an entire report because, after only using Google Docs previously, she had to use Word. She was completely befuddled by the idea of "save", especially because she didn't have a pre-existing folder for her class in the dialog. Finally she just quit the app 😬
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Everyone knows that if you want to be a successful tech CEO you go to the school that starts with 'H'...
That's right, Hyderabad Public School:
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If you’re not watching the lawyer-as-cat video because you’re busy and surely it’s not *that* funny you are mistaken and should in fact watch it right now.
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None of these folks objected yesterday when I described the reality of structural racism. Today, though, when I defend Facebook’s policy decisions, I should “stay in my lane” 🤔
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It sounds absurd to tweet it, but the FTC really is suing an American company for eliminating competition while a Chinese company is eating their lunch.
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My wife just admitted she doesn’t know how to pronounce “Stratechery”.
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(And yes, you don’t make money until you sell, and yes, I’m already regretting the replies to this when I wake up…)
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If you’re a nobody, opportunity is defined by no one having an advantage. Long Substack, Shopify, Stripe, and every other platform on the Internet that is accessible to anyone. No permission necessary.
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0 likes
1 retweet (it was me)
2 terribly misguided ‘ē‘s
345 words
4 pageviews
5 years ago today 🎂
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Welcome
@basecamp
to the “Actually Apple’s App Store is by far the biggest antitrust problem in tech” coalition! It has been an at-times lonely 7 years, but all are welcome.
exec says Apple is acting like "gangsters," rejecting App Store updates and demanding cut of sales
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Apple's chip performance over the last 10 years is legitimately one of the most impressive things in tech history.
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Companies want innovative thinkers but only hire people who have followed the rules from elementary school on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Notable to see Apple confirming a point I’ve been trying to make: the company believes it is entitled to *all* commerce that happens on an iPhone.
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No matter what you think of Musk buying Twitter, I think we can all agree that innuendo-filled stories like this are gross.
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In all seriousness, I had no idea I’d be mentioned in Apple’s keynote, and missed it live. Credit goes to all of Stratechery’s subscribers that made it possible for a one-person site to get a big publication-style pull quote. The Internet can be pretty cool.
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Machine learning for removing old passes from the Wallet app
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Didn’t post, because was sure someone had, but haven’t seen it…
"After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment…”
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I didn’t write about this this week but it’s a holiday and I’ve had a few drinks.
I’ve long considered a Chinese version of Stratechery. I unequivocally rejected it this week because there is no way I ever want to be remotely compromised by my desire to serve the Chinese market
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I wrote about Jio today, and am sad that I didn’t see this really fantastic two-part write-up on the history of Reliance until I had already published. Highly recommended
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"It's not just another streaming service"
It is, in fact, another streaming service.
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Apple won in hardware by fully leveraging software
(Rewatching, and this keynote only gets more incredible with time)
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Here you go: my breakdown of the BBC-expert-interrupted-by-his-family video:
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I normally avoid explicitly political posts, but Congress recessing now (House last week, Senate today) is a shocking dereliction of duty. There has to be a massive bias towards action.
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If I could convince everyone in the world to read and understand one article about COVID it would be this one. FWIW it very closely tracks the understanding I’ve developed over many months now, and explains all of the twists and turns to date.
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It’s not that it was premature to ban nuclear: it’s that the failure to heavily invest in nuclear over the last several decades was by far the biggest failure in climate policy, and nothing else comes close.
This article on Germany's dependence on brown coal really makes me think it was premature to ban nuclear.
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The tech industry warned about the impact of the coronavirus in January, closed its offices in WA and CA in early March (to great effect), and has enabled millions to work from home with basically zero hiccups.
At this point, whenever I see a tech person tweeting a take on coronavirus, I instinctively assume the opposite of what they're saying is true
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I've been using Android for the last couple of weeks, and honestly, the core OS is pretty good!
The big problem is that Android apps are garbage relative to iOS apps. If developers actually care about pushing back against Apple they should give a damn. They don't.
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42% revenue growth an “utter disaster”
I might need to extend my vacation 🙄
📉 Facebook's financial results were an utter disaster and user growth is flatlining. What do you think is the cause?
A) People aren't using Facebook very much
B) There’s a ceiling to Facebook’s growth
C) Years of bad headlines about Facebook
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Generous of Apple to not claim responsibility for Basecamp’s 1999-2012 revenue.
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Skype is sending this notification once per day.
For a communications app to abuse notifications in this way is unconscionable. Of course I can’t turn them off. I just have to endure the abuse. Absolute shame on Skype and Microsoft.
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Hiring is probably the single largest arbitrage opportunity available.
Letting degrees/admissions committees make choices for you is dumb.
One of the best static analysis people I hired was delivering pizzas for domino's when I interviewed him. Don't limit your talent pool.
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Remembering every so-called competition expert who praised Apple’s ATT changes, while accusing people like me raising the red flag about how blatantly anticompetitive it was of being paid shills for Facebook. Fun times.
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It is ok to say that "Yes you should wear a mask but please save the real ones for health care workers because we are short and wear a cloth one" instead of lying about their efficacy for coronaviruses.
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“Trump is banning TikTok because of Tulsa” is a classic example of the right thing being done for the right reasons but perhaps the wrong motivations. Folks really need to get past the third point and realize that the second matters: ByteDance answers to the CCP.
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I think my favorite part is the three distinct capitalizations of “iOS”, none of which are correct 😂
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One thing that has become clear to me over the last week is how few people actually understand how podcasting works.
Lesson number 1: iTunes is not a gatekeeper. It’s a directory, a phonebook if you will, that tells you where to download podcasts.
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So, for the folks who told me last week I was grandstanding by saying Spotify was a threat to the open ecosystem of podcasting...
Joe Rogan's podcast, which he said had ~190M downloads/mo. in 2019, will become a Spotify exclusive this year; his YT channel will no longer have full episodes (
@ashleyrcarman
/ The Verge)
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It’s far better than I expected, and I had high expectations.
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Congratulations to Apple on framing a cost-saving maneuver as an environmental consideration.
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We have, over the last year, witnessed a modern version of denying Galileo. “Believe science” ought never be conflated with “believe experts”, who got SARS-CoV-2 transmission completely wrong. From
@zeynep
:
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Apple announcing the iOS 14 release date 24 hours ahead of time as a summer ending gift to developers 🤣
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Something like this could *never* happen on a podcast. That’s not a dis on podcasts, just a recognition that this is something fundamentally different.
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Note to self: don't share interesting anecdotes about kids encountering new computer paradigms for the first time if you don't want a bunch of tweets attempting to teach you how to use a computer 🙄
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Singapore is getting praised for its handling of COVID-19, but Taiwan deserves credit too, particularly as an example of a society that is open and free and handling the outbreak well because of it.
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The degree to which Marriott ownership has cheapened the experience of once (and, in terms of the building/location, still) legendary hotels is so disappointing.
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(technically Twitter’s last 3.25 years, but they had a charge in there, so included it)
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I have a hard time believing that people who read the worst into everything and try to be offended accomplish anything of value.
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This is why I can’t take sick days 🤦♂️
Alluded to this possibility last March:
Sources: Jony Ive and Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, and Masayoshi Son has been involved in some aspects of the conversation (The Information)
📫 Subscribe:
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I appreciate the many messages, but I — and nearly everyone else in Taiwan — am fine.
Taiwan was hit by a 7.3 earthquake in the center of the island in 1999. It was a massive tragedy. However, everything built since then — and everything that survived — is very safe. My…
A magnitude 7.2
#earthquake
that struck Taiwan Wednesday has left four people dead and 57 injured, according to the latest figures compiled by the Central Emergency Operation Center, as of 12:48 p.m..
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It's a shame, but not a surprise, that there are zero acknowledgements of the way in which Facebook ads level the playing field for all kinds of small-and-medium sized businesses and startups.
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Leaving aside that none of these actions are illegal, I am very bothered by the readiness of many to suggest that “poaching employees” is a moral wrong.
It implicitly states that people are property, and ought to be denied their value in the market.
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Twitter’s habit of creating new kinds of notifications and automatically opting you in, even though you have notifications turned off, remains one of the single most user-hostile engagement number juicers I’ve ever seen.
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My 6yo on smartphones in 2018:
***
Son: Can you get phones that have “Hey Google”?
Me: Yes, but not iPhones. They have “Hey Siri”
Son: But “Hey Google” is better
Me: So do you want “Hey Google” when you get a phone?
Son: But I want Apple too.
***
#NailedIt
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I have special disdain for subscription-based businesses that make it hard to cancel. They’re peeing in the pot for the rest of us.
NYT: dark patterns are the techniques that companies use online to get consumers to keep subscriptions they might otherwise cancel
Also NYT: if you want to cancel your NYT subscription, you have to call this phone number during our business hours & let us talk you out of it
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The continual carping for a Twitter edit button after years of complaining that tech companies don’t consider unintended consequences never ceases to blow my mind.
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The 2020 Stratechery Year in Review.
The most popular and most important posts on Stratechery in 2020.
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Have to respect Bill Gates still refusing to use an iPhone because of “its lack of flexibility” 🤣
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Rest In Peace Professor Christensen.
An intellectual hero and an inspiration.
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I don’t particularly like many of
@dhh
’s tweets either but you’re nuts if you think Basecamp is deliberately putting a multi-million investment at risk just so they can get free publicity. No one saw this block coming given what seemed to be settled law in the App Store.
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Spot on.
More broadly, it’s hard to think of a more disastrous policy in nearly every regard than willful deindustrialization. We decimated entire regions of the country for this?
I definitely regret having bought into that logic when I was young.
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I would really really really like to know if any company has actually run the numbers on whether the operational benefits from "Select traffic light" CAPTCHAs are worth the real customer pain they impose, particularly for paid services.
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