More from The Code Conference 2023: all the news as it happens
Who’s better to ask questions of the co-founder of Instagram than the current head of Instagram?
The Verge’s Alex Heath asked the question, written in on Threads by Instagram leader Adam Mosseri, in response to Artifact co-founder Mike Krieger, one of the co-founders of Instagram.
He said there wasn’t enough time left to answer my question — but he also promised that Warner Bros. Discovery will some day. I’ll be waiting!
Code’s on pause while everyone grabs lunch. Things start up again at 5:50PM ET with Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, a panel on AI ethics, and more.
An audience member asked about how Lovett and Swisher handle strong parasocial relationships from listeners.
Swisher said the strong bond was why she got into podcasting into the first place, then recounted a recent interaction she had at a wedding.
“An older person came up to me and said ‘You’re my friend,’” Swisher said. “And then they said, ‘I’m not your friend, but you’re my friend.’” That experience, she said, was “freaky and fantastic.”
“It’s gonna be close,” Lovett says.
He thinks the media has better learned how to cover Trump, though. “I am a little bit more optimistic,” he told Axios’ Ina Fried in an audience question. “I think there has been a lot of lessons learned.”
To be fair to Bloys, I asked him about it at Code 2023 at the end of his allotted time on stage. “With one minute left in our conversation, I’m not even going to get into that because that is a much longer, longer conversation.”
I tried to push him — Bloys deferred a similar question when the major new show was announced in April — and asked when Warner Bros. Discovery might talk about this. “At some point, we will,” Bloys said. “But not with a minute for a very complicated, nuanced topic, and I’m not going to do it.”
The Pod Save America crew got in when podcasting was nascent and there was still a lot of free listening time.
Now, they both agree, there’s less opportunity. “Getting someone to add a new podcast to the mix is harder than it once was,” Lovett says.
It’s the podcast crossover event of the century... or at least the afternoon. As you can imagine, the audience is very energized.
Swisher also just teased a surprise guest she’s bringing in later: Yoel Roth. Should be fun counter-programming to X CEO Linda Yaccarino at the end of the day.
HBO CEO Casey Bloys says Max won’t constantly interrupt your Succession streaming with breaking news alerts from CNN, as some reports previously suggested. Bloys says the event would “have to be really big to interrupt programming.”
Bloys made fun of critics for complaining that the “HBO Max” name diluted the HBO brand... and then complaining that the “Max” rebrand cast HBO aside. Here’s his reason:
If HBO is in the title of the platform, it represents everything on the platform, and it was about to get a lot bigger ... I did not want the HBO brand to take on all that stuff because it wasn’t designed to. So now we get to go back to HBO being exactly what HBO is.
That isn’t a surprise given he works for David Zaslav, who has already started bundling his variety of streaming services and channels together into one super streaming app that replicates cable—right down to the monthly bill.
Casey Bloys, the chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content, is pretty bearish on AI-generated TV shows and movies right now.
Max’s Casey Bloys says the new writers contract isn’t going to raise costs so much that he won’t make a show that he thinks will be great.
“Is it gonna be more expensive?” he asked. “Yeah, but not that I’m gonna say I’m not gonna make this show now.”
He thinks the strike went on so long because “there’s a lot changing, a lot shifting” in the industry. “It has been upended,” he said.
It stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. It looks excellent — and I’ve embedded the trailer below.
True Detective: Night Country kicks off on January 14th.
He’s talking with Vox senior correspondent Peter Kafka. Are there any major developments in Hollywood they might want to talk about?
Adam Mosseri asked about Artifact supporting publishers in a post on Threads — so my colleague Alex Heath asked him in an audience question.
“We’ve tried to come at this from a publisher friendly perspective,” Mike Krieger said. Artifact thrives if the publisher ecosystem “is healthy and thriving,” so that approach is a long-term play.
“It’s about recognizing what needs to exist several years from now for you to have a viable product,” Krieger said
“I love the idea of portability,” he said at Code, but has some hesitations with what specific standards can do right now. We’ll see if Threads can pull federation off.
Mike Krieger says it’s “a very strange experience to see Instagram do these big things.”
He’s happy to see that some of the ethos he and co-founder Kevin Systrom built continue onward, though. “They really nailed photo galleries on Threads,” he said.
According to co-founder Mike Krieger at Code 2023, he’s a little more interested in things like long reads or product reviews. That makes some sense given the algorithmic focus of Artifact — it’s not quite as focused on up-to-the-second news.
That’s according to Mike Krieger, one of the co-founders of Artifact, who is onstage at Code 2023. I get it!
AKA, the co-founder of Instagram. He’s speaking with Platformer’s Casey Newton.
Artifact, his news app, has been doing some neat things with AI and just launched a fun new section called Links.
According to Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa, the problem right now is that farmers “cannot let somebody monkey with [their] emissions equipment that is not certified to do so.” He argues that if the industry moves to electric and zero emissions, then its not a question of emission equipment anymore.
The House just introduced the Agricultural Right to Repair Act. We’ll see how far it gets.