Decoder with Nilay Patel

My guest today is Mike Masnick, the founder and CEO of Techdirt, the excellent and long-running tech policy blog. Mike has been writing about government overreach, privacy in the digital age, and other related topics for decades now, and he’s an expert on how the internet and the surveillance state have grown in interconnected ways over the past two decades.

I wanted to have Mike on the show to discuss the messy, fast-moving situation at Anthropic, the maker of Claude that now finds itself in a very ugly legal battle with the Pentagon. Instead of covering the daily drama, I wanted to dig in specifically on Anthropic's surveillance red line, and the important history and context around digital privacy in the U.S. that shapes how we should think about this going forward. 

Links:

AI bros wanted Trump — now they learn what happens when you tell him no | Techdirt

OpenAI’s ‘red lines’ are written in the NSA’s dictionary | Techdirt

Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense | The Verge

Anthropic launches new think tank amid Pentagon fight | The Verge

How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance | The Verge

Inside the backlash to the AI war machine | Platformer

The Pentagon is violating Anthropic's First Amendment rights | FIRE

Why the Pentagon wants to destroy Anthropic | Ezra Klein / NYT

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Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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Hasbro might be a toy company, but CEO Chris Cocks has spent the last several years pushing it more and more into the digital media, gaming, and collectibles space. That makes sense, since adults have money and kids don't. All those IP and licensing deals are working out for Hasbro so far.

But Hasbro is also facing a lot of risk from instability: in trade and tariffs, in politics and culture, and in the video game market, which seems to be in a more or less permanent state of crisis. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

Chris Cocks on Decoder (2023) | The Verge

Hasbro just made a massive ‘Harry Potter’ Announcement | Parade

Businesses push for tariff refunds as Trump aides hint at fight | New York Times

We’re finally seeing more of Hasbro’s forgotten space game | PC Gamer

Xbox in is danger. Will Microsoft save it, or kill it? | Decoder

OpenAI’s billion-dollar deal puts Mickey Mouse in Sora | The Verge

A comprehensive timeline of JK Rowling’s descent into transphobia | Them

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today let’s talk about prediction markets, which continue to insert themselves into the news cycle and the news in increasingly weird, unsettling, and potentially illegal ways. 

My guest today is Liz Lopatto, a senior reporter at The Verge who owns what we cheerfully call the chaos beat. Liz has been writing a lot about prediction markets lately and especially why they all seem so intent on being perceived as sources of news — a position which directly incentivizes insider trading. That in turn creates a long list of very predictable problems.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

Prediction markets want to eat the news | The Verge

How anonymous bettors cashed In on the Iran strike | NYT

With Iran, Kalshi & Polymarket Bet on the Depravity Economy | 404 Media

Polymarket pulls bet on nuclear detonation in 2026 | 404 Media

Polymarket defends betting on war as ‘invaluable’ | The Verge

Someone made a ton of money betting on Maduro’s capture | The Verge

Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO bets no | Decoder

Prediction markets roll out war bets beyond Washington’s reach | Bloomberg

Polymarket partners with Substack for some reason  | The Verge

It’s MAGA v Broligarch in the battle over prediction markets | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman. Zillow is one of those apps that really exemplifies what you might call the smartphone era of software: the company built a great mobile app for looking at real estate listings, and it turned into not just entertainment for so many of us, but what has become a vertically-integrated platform for buying, selling, and renting real estate.

Jeremy’s argument is that the future of Zillow looks a lot like an end-to-end business platform for real estate agents, and we spent a lot of time talking about whether a business as local and as relationship driven as real estate can benefit from platform-level scale in the way he’s proposing.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

Zillow’s new AI staging feature is impressively unimpressive | The Verge

Zillow’s upgraded AI search will show you more homes you can’t afford | The Verge

Zillow adds DMs so you can chat about homes you’ll never buy | The Verge

FTC accuses Zillow of paying $100 million to ‘dismantle’ Redfin | The Verge

Housing is frozen. Wacksman knows you’re still scrolling | NYT

Wacksman on the US housing market | Bloomberg Talks

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re talking about the future of Xbox. Phil Spencer, a two-time Decoder guest who’s led Xbox for more than a decade, is stepping down. But in a shocking twist, his deputy long-assumed successor Sarah Bond is also out too, and the Xbox division is now in the hands of an Asha Sharma, one of Microsoft’s AI executives with no prior game industry experience.

There is no better person to talk to about all of this than Tom Warren, senior editor here at The Verge and author of the excellent Notepad newsletter. Tom is actually on parental leave right now, but Microsoft has a longstanding habit of disrupting his well-earned time off. So, Tom was gracious enough to come on the show after publishing a major scoop about what went down at Xbox this past week.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

Inside Microsoft’s big Xbox leadership shake-up | The Verge

Billions of dollars later and still nobody knows what an Xbox is | The Verge

Xbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft | The Verge

Read Xbox chief Phil Spencer’s memo about leaving Microsoft | The Verge

Here’s what Xbox is working on for 2026 | The Verge

AMD hints Microsoft could launch its next-gen Xbox in 2027 | The Verge

The next Xbox is going to be very different | The Verge

Xbox co-founder believes it’s being ‘sunsetted’ in favor of AI | VGC

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

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

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices