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.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

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Former UK Deputy PM, leader of the Liberal Democrats
- VP of Global Affairs at Facebok
- Author of multiple books on politics

ome of the latest features that Facebook is rolling out to give users more control of the content in their feeds.

How what we're seeing with social medias has already been a problem long before social media, and is so much more than just social media.

More details, data and rebuttal points on some of the public conversations around Facebook intentionally trying to surface outrage content

In a bonus episode of Decoder, Platformer editor and Verge contributing editor Casey Newton talks with Facebook's VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg about his lengthy Medium post addressing some of the criticisms that Facebook has endured, as well as unveiling some changes the company is making to give users more control over their experience.Host of Decoder Nilay Patel taks with Casey before the interview to discuss why this shift in Facebook's approach to the user experience is important, and what key issues listeners should pay attention to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a bonus episode of Decoder, <a href="https://www.platformer.news/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Platformer</a> editor and Verge contributing editor Casey Newton talks with Facebook's VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg about his lengthy Medium post addressing some of the criticisms that Facebook has endured, as well as unveiling some changes the company is making to give users more control over their experience.Host of Decoder Nilay Patel taks with Casey before the interview to discuss why this shift in Facebook's approach to the user experience is important, and what key issues listeners should pay attention to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a>

Facebook's VP of Global Affairs doesn’t think the platform is polarizing

The thing that's really tough, because it's the the subject of so many differing opinions, is what is the collective good. What constitutes the collective good, who should determine it and how should it be reflected on social media, because in many ways, it's become the public square discussion place for a lot of these things. Because there really isn't a general consensus on what constitutes good content, for one school of though is bad and unacceptable content, is for another school of thought the right to free expression.

Promoting individual agency over what they see in their feed is easy, he also thinks that identifying harmful content and keeping it off Facebook is challenging but doable.

For billions of people, messaging apps are their primary source of communication which is without algorithms, but it's still a source of unpleasant, polarizing content is spread. The reality is that algorithms play a huge role in much of the content we see, but there's also more than just the algorithms. Ultimately, pro-actively empowering people with the right information, is as important, if not more important, than that in which you remove or demote misinformation. Removing bad content isn't enough for good, you need to surface good content as well.

You're never going to create a healthy information eco-system on really difficult issues like public health and the pandemic, simply by playing whack-a-mole on misinformation.

There are obvious situations where Facebook can take a moral stance and choose to draw the line in certain places, and they're doing this deliberately as they can. They're working alongside academics and researchers, they publish their work and get community feedback. This gets difficult, when the very people and content you're passing judgement on are democratic leaders, such as Donald Trump and the president of Venezuela. At this point, Nick believes that it's reasonable for us to acknowledge that we're entering into pretty tricky territory, and placing all the responsibility on a private company like Facebook isn't what's going to help us move forward.

It shouldn't be private companies that determine what is fundamentally societal and political judgements about where the collective good lies.

Can you think of something where just removing bad isn't enough for good?

''People don't realise that facebook's incentives are to have people using them for the next 10 or 20 years, not an additional 10 or 20 more seconds now.''

Co-founder and vice-president of merchandising at Poshmark.
- Poshmark is one of largest peer-to-peer fashion resale platforms and has raised over $160m in funding.

How Poshmark is transforming e-commerce through communities

How Poshmark has dealt with the problem of the rich get richer on their platform in terms of sellers

What it's like going from founding Poshmark, all the way to running it after it's gone public

Tracy Sun

Nilay Patel talks with Tracy Sun, the co-founder and SVP of new markets at Poshmark, a fashion resale company that just went public earlier this year while riding the huge wave of e-commerce growth during the pandemic.Tracy has to manage regular e-commerce issues, like shipping logistics and customer service, as well as influencer economy problems, like burnout and the incessant need to grow follower counts — not to mention the universe of problems that comes with selling fashion, like dealing with fashion labels and brands. But if Poshmark can get it all right, Tracy thinks community is the future of retail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nilay Patel talks with Tracy Sun, the co-founder and SVP of new markets at Poshmark, a fashion resale company that just went public earlier this year while riding the huge wave of e-commerce growth during the pandemic.Tracy has to manage regular e-commerce issues, like shipping logistics and customer service, as well as influencer economy problems, like burnout and the incessant need to grow follower counts — not to mention the universe of problems that comes with selling fashion, like dealing with fashion labels and brands. But if Poshmark can get it all right, Tracy thinks community is the future of retail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a>

Poshmark’s Tracy Sun on stitching e-commerce with social media

You see this from the shift of farmers markets to shopping malls, and then now online e-commerce stores. You get more variety, more efficiency, but you lose a lot of the human connection. More recently, companies like Poshmark, but also industries such as independent journalism, is taking a step back from focusing only on efficiencies, and re-incoporating some of the human elements.

Over time, commerce and shopping have trended from a strong human connection with those who grew or made what you were purchasing, to more ease, selection & convenience.

Previously, you had to be an influencer with millions of followers to become a creator and build a sustainable living. Nowadays, the internet has allowed for world wide distribution and tools to focus on doing what you love; the creating part, and not worry about a lot of the administrative parts. This has resulted in a larger potential audience with the ability to much more easily find your audience, as well as it being significantly easier to create; resulting in new opportunities for people in certain niches that didn't previously exist.

With a lot of the rising content platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, etc we've entered into a time where content is easily created and accessible.

In the early days, there's only a handful of people, so you assume that everybody has the same amount context, and the only goal is to find product market fit or the business dies, so the north is incredibly clear, and there's energy and adrenaline to getting there as fast as possible as a team. Nowadays, because the company is much larger and there are much more stakeholders, there is a lot more deliberate thinking about who can help, based on the information or context they have, as well as what the urgency of certain problems are. Not all problems are urgent, and unlike the early days where the speed of your decision making was so important, certain decisions need to be done more slowly to ensure the best outcome.

As the business has shifted from a -up to a public company, Tracy initially thought that decision-making becomes more complex, but now believes that it's not that it's more complicated, but that the inputs for decision-making change.

Can you think of an industry or service where you preferred if there was more human connection in?

''Community is the future of retail, Poshmark combines the human connection of a physical shop experience with the scale, reach, ease &amp; selection benefits of E-commerce.''

Writes and speaks regularly on topics such as automation and A.I., social media, disinformation and cybersecurity, and digital wellness.
- Technology columnist for The New York Times, and author of three books: Futureproof, Young Money, and The Unlikely Disciple.

How companies is already using robot process automation in this day and age

How taking away some of the boring tasks isn't always a good thing for employees

What are the 9 rules to futureproof yourself so that you don't get automated.

Kevin Roose

Nilay Patel sits down with New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose to discuss the impact of automation on our future — specifically, robotic process automation, or RPA. Kevin's new book, Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, is out and features a lengthy discussion of RPA, who's using it, who it will affect, and how to think about it as you design your career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nilay Patel sits down with New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose to discuss the impact of automation on our future — specifically, robotic process automation, or RPA. Kevin's new book, Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, is out and features a lengthy discussion of RPA, who's using it, who it will affect, and how to think about it as you design your career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a>

The robots are coming for your office, with NYT’s Kevin Roose

It can happen to accountants, lawyers, journalists. Basically, if you have a job sitting in front of a computer using software in the same way everyday, automation for that role is possible. The automation won't be cool, innovative or even work that well, it'll just be cheaper, faster and less likely to complain. The key questions inside of automation is whether there will be new jobs created, and whether people who lose jobs because of automation have the ability to learn the required skills to change jobs.

Automation isn't only going to happen to factory workers & truck drivers.

When it comes to innovating and changing things, most of the times, we're doing it because it's a positive change for people in the long term. But we have to remember to listen to the people about how it impacts in the current moment. The industrial revolution actually sucked for a lot of people because of how much they were forced to work when it first came about. Telling them that in 30-40 years time, the GDP of the country is going to significantly increase, isn't helpful for them in their current moment.

There's no long term without the short term, and there's no future without thinking about the long term.

Businesses often get in trouble when they with the automation and then bring in humans. Often it's better to have humans first, then bring in automation where it makes sense, because then you better understand how things work and what's required.

Jobs that are about making a specific product in scale becomes less important, whilst jobs that are about making people feel things such as experiences will likely become more important.

Can you think of something you can work on that can't be automated by machines?

“Be more human, this is something machines can't automate.”

Co-founder and co‐CEO of Atlassian, Austalia's largest tech company &amp; a leading enterprise software company that powers other companies to build better software
- One of the founders of pledge 1% which is a global movement that's pledged hundreds of millions of dollars by commiting 1% of equity, product, profit, and/or employee time of companies to their communities.

Why understanding public policy is now key to running a tech company, and how global polarization has impacted Atlassian.

What's happening with Australian government versus Facebook/Google RE the Australian Media Bargaining Code

How can governments and tech companies work better together.

Scott Farquhar

Nilay Patel talks with Atlassian CEO Scott Farquhar about Australia's Media Bargaining Code, which requires social platforms and search engines to pay news publishers for linking to their work. They also discuss how to run a global company in an increasingly fractured world and why understanding public policy is now key to running a tech company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nilay Patel talks with Atlassian CEO Scott Farquhar about Australia's Media Bargaining Code, which requires social platforms and search engines to pay news publishers for linking to their work. They also discuss how to run a global company in an increasingly fractured world and why understanding public policy is now key to running a tech company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a>

Australia vs Facebook — and how regulation is splintering the internet, with Atlassian CEO Scott Farquhar

A lot of the things happening inside of Australia, are a bit of a testbed of how things might end up happening in other places in the world. Because of our regulatory regime, we're a parliamentary democracy, where we don't really have a third system of government, our legislature both runs the country and enact our laws, which means a lot of laws can be enacted faster than other juristictions, and because we're a relatively smaller as a country, we can move a bit faster. We're a bit of a testbed for a lot of legislation on a whole bunch of areas such as encryption &amp; privacy, anti-trust involving media &amp; big technology, skilled migration. A lot of things are being tested in Australia that can potentially have global implications.

Australia being a smaller country with only ~25million people

Additional regulation often benefits the larger incumbents, because the large existing companies can amortise all of the costs associated with having to meet the rules and regluations across all their products and revenues. Whilst, new entrants will have a much harder time doing this, and can often be discouraged because of how much friction there is to meet the rules and regulations.

More regulation isn't always good.

This is a lower economies of scales, which means lower efficiency because it's a duplication of resources which ultimately means that consumers are worse off.

The increasing polarisation of the world with geo politics is a net negative for the world because something that would've taken 2,000 engineers that can be sold to the entire world could now take 20,000 engineers because you need to make it 10 times for different countries.

Can you think of something where you should've thought more about which direction to go in before going as fast as you could in that direction?

"Moving fast is important, but moving in the right direction is more important."

Product lead at Twitter
- Previously co-founder &amp; CEO of Periscope, which was acquired by Twitter in 2015.

Deep dive discussion on the latest products of twitter: Spaces, topics, Super followers.

Birdwatch: How Twitter is handling content moderation.

What are some other things twitter is prioritizing: third party apps, tweet-deck and more.

Kayvon Beykpour

Nilay talks with Twitter’s Head of Consumer Product, Keyvon Beykpour about what it took to reset the team towards growth, how he decides what to prioritize, and what the timelines for success look like on different projects. They also talk about moderation, of course. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nilay talks with Twitter’s Head of Consumer Product, Keyvon Beykpour about what it took to reset the team towards growth, how he decides what to prioritize, and what the timelines for success look like on different projects. They also talk about moderation, of course. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a>

How Twitter is building its future, with Kayvon Beykpour

1. Health - how do we protect the health of the public conversation. 2. Conversations - how do we incentivize and create tools that inspire people to and participate in conversations. 3. Interests - How does Twitter connect people with the content they're interested in Those are the 3 key ways they're thinking about new product developments.

The high level categories of Twitter's product strategies are split into:

They try to really approach everything from first principles through customer understanding. If you're just copying things, you're going to be flying blind whenever new things come up. One of the key things that Jack brought to Twitter when he returned, was morphing the product development process to the Jobs to be Done framework. Which is a framework whereby, you're always trying to develop products from the standpoint of what are the customers trying to hire us for, what are they firing us for. People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!

They try to never approach anything from the standpoint of, here's a new capability, we want to copy it.

The harder part isn't coming up with ideas, it's building a framework to be able to reliably prioritize the different ideas. Whenever you're prioritizing, it's always calcuating the ROI: the return on investment. Investment is usually the easier part; it's time &amp;/or money. The harder part is return, particularly when the type of return you get is completely different; such as building a new feature versus removing malicious content for Twitter.

At Twitter, and most likely all other companies, there are far more ideas than there is time to build.

Can you think of something where, coming up with ideas isn't the hard problem, but prioritizing it is?

"One of the biggest changes from twitters customers is going from 'no, but...' to a 'yes, and', for new features, because it opens up the doors of possibility of what we can provide our customers."