2021: Pivot's Year In Review

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: Today's a special day, Scott. We take a look at all the chaos and insanity of 2021. And there was a lot. From billionaires in space to hell on Earth, we're looking back at one of the wildest years in recent memory. And at the end, we'll pick the biggest pivot from the last 12 months. This is 2021, the year in review.

Kara Swisher: This year's first news event may also have been its biggest, it was its biggest, the insurrection of January 6th.

[Audio clip: "Treason! Treason! Treason! Treason!"]

Kara Swisher: In the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, a lot of Americans were angry. Scott was among them.

Scott Galloway: The physician for Congress, they have a physician, I guess, sent out a memo, an email saying that there's a chance, you should all get tested because there's a chance when you are all huddling on top of each other, hiding and barricading yourself that you might have contracted COVID because certain members of Congress refused to wear masks. I know, in the room. So we have people huddling our elected officials. And when you think about it, these people, they aren't elected officials. They're America. They call the U.S. House of Representatives for a reason.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: That we as a nation had to huddle on top of each other and barricade our doors with furniture because of these village idiots that showed up.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Not just village idiots. We're going to talk about that more. But by the way, the people, it doesn't get enough attention.

Scott Galloway: I'm going with village idiots. The people who, the representatives who refuse to wear masks, they can go fuck themselves. In this crisis situation, they've moved to ridiculous. Can you believe that? They're an embarrassment to the United States government.

Kara Swisher: Can you believe that? Not just an embarrassment. They should be voted out of office.

Scott Galloway: They will be. I don't know if they'll be voted out of office, but let me just say, fuck them.

Kara Swisher: After the interaction, Facebook and Twitter clamped down on QAnon content and accounts, but one platform stood firm, Parler. Kara interviewed then-CEO John Mates for The New York Times. He denied any responsibility. Soon after, Google and Apple pulled the app from their stores and Amazon stopped hosting Parler.

Scott Galloway: Let's be clear. Jack Dorsey did not kick Trump off the platform face. Mark Zuckerberg did not shut his account down. Stacey Abrams did.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: All of a sudden, these people have woken up. And okay, I want to be clear. Let's give credit where credit is due. Jack Dorsey decided to stop hate polarization and insurrections 1,449 days into a 1,460-day tenure. Way to go. Way to go, Jack.

Kara Swisher: And just to personally just-

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it was a little late. Yeah, we were talking about this this morning. If I come home after being on vacation for two weeks and I see my son vacuuming the living room, your first inclination should be, oh, that's great. He cares about the house and wants to be a good guy. No, he's not. No, he's not. He's thrown a rave and has been selling meth and molly for the last two weeks out of the house and is trying to cover his tracks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And that's what these guys are doing.

Kara Swisher: There was a lot of tweets about that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, flushing drugs around the toilet when a new- This is Lorraine Bracco trying to cover up the evidence. They deserve absolutely no credit.

Kara Swisher: So, okay, first off, first off, Stacey Abrams kicked Trump off these platforms. And not only that, Amazon-

Scott Galloway: By winning in Georgia, meaning the Democrats have control.

Kara Swisher: Sit back. You're going to love this because it's about you. Amazon, Jeff Bezos didn't kick Parler off AWS. Kara Swisher did because that interview with him that you did pointed out this guy is the newest addition to the menace economy. And people have realized that, wait, you know, Japan and Europe, they decided that Nazis are a bad thing and they can lead us down and hate speech can lead us down a bad road. So they don't have the same First Amendment, quote unquote, protections that we so dearly hold and have been totally perverted, which make absolutely no sense. And guess what? They still have a pretty free, open, progressive society where people get most of their viewpoints across and everyone realizes that is just total bullshit.

Kara Swisher: As we discussed free speech and social media, my son, Louis, brought up an important point, which is only more relevant today now that Trump's launching his own social network.

[Audio clip - Louis Swisher]: He's probably going to go over there to other sites. Should there be a fully free speech platform? I mean, doesn't like 8chan exist?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

[Audio clip - Louis Swisher]: 4chan. Yeah. Like, I think that there's already places for that. So I think, yes, I think people have the right to say what they want, but I don't think they have the right to be free of the consequences of what they say. There's always, if you threaten someone, there should be consequences. If you speak ill of someone, you may have to speak to that person or something. But I think Trump is, there's always going to be a slot on Fox News for Donald Trump. So I think he'll find places to go, whether it's Fox, OAN, Breitbart, other platforms who will hear what he has to say, regardless of if he's banned from Twitter. But I think being on mainstream platforms and holding a mainstream standing on a box in the public square, like a respected box, it gives him an elevated voice that I think he no longer deserves.

Kara Swisher: In the time since the insurrection, Trump has been removed from all social media platforms. Prosecutors have charged more than 650 people.

Scott Galloway: By the way, remember the Jamiro Koi guy? Ends up he lived with his mother. Good news, he's moving out into a fucking cell, you piece of shit.

Kara Swisher: And at least 105 people have pleaded guilty. A House committee continues to investigate as well. Also, Trump has announced that he will launch his own social network, Truth Social.

Scott Galloway: I'm calling it the Big Short.

Kara Swisher: Facebook is no more. Well, kind of. Facebook rebranded to Meta earlier this year as it hoped to escape its toxic reputation that's plagued it since well before 2021. But this year saw challenges unlike anything Facebook has ever faced. Facebook's first fumble of 2021 came immediately after the insurrection, when Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the Stop the Steal event was planned on other platforms. The claim was quickly shot down. Many people think she was inaccurate. Scott, care to rant?

Scott Galloway: Go for it.

Kara Swisher: Well, yeah, as Ms. Sandberg— I want to yell. I need you to yell at the person.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm not going to yell. As Ms. Sandberg pats herself on the back, saying that because of her transparency, it wasn't her platform. No sooner does she say that than they are taking ads from military vests and basically combat wear right above content around the insurrection. It's like, what you missing, planning to head back? Are you part of the mob? We'll buy this military vest. I mean, that is, for me, that sort of typified.

Kara Swisher: More than that, there was lots of proof that they organized on Facebook too. Of course there is.

Scott Galloway: But the thing I'm uncomfortable with, and there's a lot to unpack here, is that when we have insurrection, when we have a potential coup, the way we mete out justice in our society now is that kayak and caviar cancel as account. That's how we beg our innovators. We beg our overlats, the position we're in.

Kara Swisher: In April, a massive trove of Facebook user data landed on the dark web. That same month, a new iPhone feature lets users opt out of tracking by Facebook and other apps. We're going to talk about this in a minute, but Facebook is at an all-time high, right? That stock's at an all-time high. So it doesn't really matter what Tim Cook does or thinks about them because nobody seems to care. Until the government gets involved, even though they're going to do this, I think it's ATT, something transparency thing, nothing's going to happen to them. And so Cook is just going to push ahead with this thing where you get to click that you're being tracked, essentially, or not. And I don't know how much it's going to affect Facebook. And he said he's not thinking about them at all. He thinks it's a flimsy argument to argue that it's anything but a privacy matter. He doesn't understand why there's so much pushback from them and others. So I think they're just – and he also said they're not competitors. He doesn't consider them competitors. They are sort of, like what I said on CNBC this morning, weird roommates that don't like each other. They have to sort of coexist because Facebook's one of the most popular apps on the iPhone. And at the same time, so is Instagram and all the others. And then at the same time, they need Apple to be popular, right? So it's a weird, bad relationship between them. But they're moving forward on this effort to make people say they want to be tracked, essentially opt into it.

Scott Galloway: So let me just press pause there. My sense is that he's in a room saying, we're going to put that motherfucker out of business. And that that's what they're doing. And to de-cookie or whatever it is such that Facebook cannot track people across multiple platforms is basically saying, okay, we're going to go in and we're going to take out your liver. And you can function as a human for a little while without a liver. But effectively, I mean, they've gone in, if they accomplish this, they take the most valuable consumer base in the world, which is iOS users, and they make them dramatically less valuable to Facebook.

Kara Swisher: Yes, they do.

Kara Swisher: In July, as coronavirus numbers surge, Facebook was once again accused of spreading misinformation, but this time by the president of the United States.

[Audio clip - President Joe Biden]: They're killing people. I mean, it really, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people.

Kara Swisher: Facebook fired back on Saturday in a blog post saying the Biden administration was, quote, finger pointing, and that Facebook was not the reason Biden's goal of 70 percent vaccination was missed. On Monday, Biden reversed course and said Facebook isn't killing people, though the president walked back his most aggressive comment. He re-edited that he hopes Facebook does something about the misinformation. It was kind of fascinating. He did push it too far. It was interesting. Let me just start. I interviewed Ron Klain, who started to raise this idea a couple of weeks ago on a podcast I did with him and saying Facebook's always the person the company mentioned when people talk about misinformation when they're doing their polling. Then Jennifer Psaki said something and then the Surgeon General did. And then for some reason, Biden went out there and was doing the come on man thing. Like, come on, man, they're killing people. And so it may have been a little much. I wrote a column saying it was probably a little much.

Scott Galloway: You did. I read your column.

Kara Swisher: But nonetheless, what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Look, I've said this nine times, so I'll say a tenth time, and I've been wrong every time. I think this is Facebook jumping the shark. Facebook basically said, first off, they found this VP of integrity. They strapped a bomb. He's been there a long time. He bombed to his chest and said, hey, you're a hero. Go out there and say that the Biden administration – this is what they said about the Biden administration, that they were trying to find scapegoats because of their failed vaccine strategy. He said that. That is basically – that is telling the president of the United States and the U.S. government that on the most important issue they have and will face, they are failing six months into their presidency. I don't think they ever said anything that aggressive about Trump. I don't think they've accused President Xi of finding scapegoats. So the calculated decision here was they strapped a bomb to this kid's chest or put him in a kamikaze plane and said, go out there and clap back really hard at the administration. And for the life of me, Kara, I can't figure out how this was anything but a ridiculously stupid fucking move on the part of Facebook.

Kara Swisher: Biden eventually walked back those comments. In August, Facebook released a report showing its most viewed content instead of misinformation. Much of it was innocuous. But according to Casey Newton, things weren't quite what they seemed.

[Audio clip - Casey Newton]: Yeah, I mean, look, I don't want to dunk too hard. I appreciate when Facebook makes data available, but this is not the data that anyone was looking for.

Kara Swisher: Oh, thank you, sir. Can I have some more? But go ahead.

[Audio clip - Casey Newton]: Well, it's like what we want to know is what stories are popular on Facebook right now. You can measure popularity in a bunch of different ways. They bought a tool called CrowdTangle that lets you see the posts that are getting the most engagement. But they hate it because they say that the posts that are getting the most engagement are not the most popular. And that what you really want to know is, well, what posts were viewed the most. And so that was the point of yesterday's report. But whereas CrowdTangle is a real-time tool, this is going to be a once every four months report. How much can we really learn by knowing that the most shared domain on Facebook over the past four months was YouTube.com? They're not telling us individual YouTube videos. It's just sharing YouTube is popular on Facebook, which any of us could have guessed, right? You look at some of the other most popular links, they're basically spam. Like people who are sharing popular memes and then attaching a URL to, in one case, a speakers bureau of former Green Bay Packers players. This is not helping me understand what is on Facebook.

Kara Swisher: Well, I think it's done very clearly to show, look, we're not that, we just silly, we just cat videos. It's sort of the cat video move, essentially.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, and I mean this sort of goes hand in hand with the other big tech company move which is to only talk in terms of percentages, right? It like, you know, Facebook and YouTube loved it as well. Only 3% of views, you know, were of fascism. And you're like, okay, 3% of views is, you know, tens of millions of clicks. So again, you know, glad to see a little bit more data, but we need to keep pushing for the data that would actually be useful.

Kara Swisher: We later learned that Facebook shelved an earlier version of that report because it showed vaccine misinformation was popular on the network. And if all of that wasn't bad enough, it is bad enough. In October, Facebook became the subject of the year's biggest tech story. What do you know? Again, the Facebook files. In a slew of damning stories, the Wall Street Journal reported on Facebook's lax rules for celebrities, its permissive behavior towards drug cartels, its push to get children onto the platform, and more, including teen depression and generally just not giving a good goddamn about anything regarding our commonwealth. But I digress. But one story resonated above all. Facebook's own data reflected that Instagram was harming teen girls. But they have found internal Facebook research that showed that 32 percent of teen girls said that they felt bad about their bodies. Instagram made them feel worse. Facebook knows this. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly learned about it in 2020, although we've been talking about it for a long time. Adam Masseri, the head of Instagram, issued a statement saying the story focuses on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light. That's right, Adam. It does because it's negative. The comments from him are just appalling as far as I'm concerned. He made several. Well, he's taking a page out of Sheryl Sandberg. I'm proud of the progress. He tried to do this gymnastic move. It took us too long to understand this. Scott, I'm going to let you rant here. Please go.

Scott Galloway: Well, as society, Peter Drucker said that an economy exists to create a middle class. And that's the balance of an economy economically. But from an anthropological or from a spiritual or from an instinctual standpoint, the most rewarding things in our lives are our ability to provide a safe and loving environment for our children. And when that does not happen, when one in eight UK girls who are contemplating suicide highlight Instagram as the primary reason they have started contemplating suicide, Facebook hasn't failed. We have all failed. I mean, this is what could be what could be more serious than an uptick in teen depression, self-harm and suicide. They can be reverse engineered to a corporation. And we haven't done anything about it, that we've let this happen.

Kara Swisher: We haven't stopped Facebook is what you're saying. We haven't moved in.

Scott Galloway: I think at some point you got to start holding ourselves responsible and our elected leaders responsible.

Kara Swisher: Let's focus on Facebook for a minute. They knew this research. Look, this is research that's been out, and a lot of people are suggesting that everybody knows it. But here they are just doubling down on it. They're supposed to put Instagram for kids out. They aren't acknowledging what the problem is. Can you believe that?

Scott Galloway: Yes, I can. You've got to admire their gumption.

Kara Swisher: I can. They write everything down because they're proud of it. And 44 states have asked them not to, and that's where we are. States ask Facebook not to do something.

Scott Galloway: Right.

Kara Swisher: Right. So this obviously could apply to other people, not just teen girls, but teen girls are very vulnerable. Instagram already does warn users who view tags like anorexia and directs them to seek help. But I think one of the things you've talked about a lot is envy and depression are just built into this. It's not fixable. It's not the way it is. I asked my kids about this last night, actually, and they're like, I see people on there and it makes me feel bad about myself. Like, you know what I mean? Like, they're pretty confident as people, but it's.

Scott Galloway: A third of girls under the age of 22 and 40% of the users are under the age of 22 cite that it makes them feel worse about their bodies.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yes, that's what one of my kids was saying that. I just find it so – I agree with you that Mark Zuckerberg is ultimately responsible. But they have deployed Sheryl Sandberg around this notion around saying she has incredible gravitas and a lot of it is deserved around being presented and built by 900 people in their communications department as a real champion for women. And then she talks about personal loss. And the comment I thought that ran through my mind was – and I like the stuff she said about her kids and dealing with grief is they need a safe space to grieve. And I thought, where is our children's safe space from her and Mark Zuckerberg?

Kara Swisher: The documents behind the journal story soon made their way to other publishers, thanks to whistleblower Frances Haugen. Further reporting showed Facebook struggling to moderate content overseas, employee dissent and greater failures around January 6th. As the bad press mounted, Facebook pulled a Hail Mary. They rebranded to, what a coincidence, Meta. We're not going to play a clip from that episode because it's a cosmetic change. Giving it any more attention is exactly what they'd like. The issues remain unresolved, and we're still going to call it Facebook from time to time.

Scott Galloway: That'll show them.

Kara Swisher: That'll show them.

Kara Swisher: 2021 was a big year for billionaires. We'll talk about Elon Musk later, but in some ways, this was the year of Jeff Bezos. In February, he announced that he was stepping down as Amazon's CEO. Scott and I considered his legacy.

Scott Galloway: So before we even get to that, though, I do think it warrants a moment of recognition that Jeff Bezos, his career. Like, no one man in history has taken a company from zero to 1.7 trillion. No one person has established a recurring revenue relationship with 82% of households. No one person has had a company hire a half a million people in one year. No one person has revolutionized e-commerce, revolutionized cloud, revolutionized voice. This is, as he stands here today, and there is a dignity and discipline to leaving the stage while people are clapping. He goes out or leaves the CEO role as the bluest, you know, the bluest flame thinker in the history of business. And also, I have been very critical. I don't think they can acquit themselves well, gamifying the Commonwealth, some of the things you just read about. But the reality is, you know, I've owned stock in Amazon since 2007. They're the largest recruiter of young men and women out of my class. That's given them an enormous, wonderful start to building economic security. You know, you just got to recognize what he has done. It is just staggering what he has accomplished. Now, the most exciting thing, and there's an analogy here or a metaphor or a correlation, whatever it is, a reference to Bill Gates. Bill Gates, when he retired, was not that well liked. People saw him as someone who really threw around his elbows in business. Up until the point he retired, he was not very philanthropic. The last 25 years for Jeff Bezos have been meaningful for our society. But the next 25 years could be profound.

Kara Swisher: And because we're brilliant, we predicted Jeff Bezos in space months before he ever announced he would go. What's really fascinating is the two richest people in the world, in this world, in history of the world, want to get off the planet. Consider it important that we get off the planet in some fashion. And both are worried about these existential crises.

Scott Galloway: I don't think they're going. I don't think that's it. I think they want to be explorers.

Kara Swisher: No, I think Elon, that's how he's going to go. We'll never see him again. I think he's going to get on. I don't know about Bezos, but I think Elon's getting on.

Scott Galloway: They go where? To Mars.

Kara Swisher: How's that for a prediction?

Kara Swisher: We almost got it. Four months later, Jeff Bezos announced that he would fly to space via Blue Origin, his rocket company.

Scott Galloway: Could you be a stowaway?

Kara Swisher: Bill Gates, well, you can bid on it. That would be so good for this podcast if you stowaway. For $2.8 million.

Scott Galloway: We should do a GoFundMe, and I get to sit next to Bezos going into space.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Can we please?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that would be pretty good, right? Let's do it.

Kara Swisher: Because if you're going into space with Bezos, the two bald guys taking him.

Scott Galloway: So cute, Mom. I'm scared. I am so scared. Would you do it?

Kara Swisher: If I got on that seat next to him. I could do it. I could raise the money. I could do it. I would just, you know what I would do? I would just inappropriately flirt with him, like grab his hand, grab his hand a lot, and just stare at him and wink. Come on, that'd be good.

Kara Swisher: And then in July, Bezos actually flew.

[Audio clip - Jeff Bezos]: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this.

Kara Swisher: So Sunday morning or broadcast morning television shows spent more time covering the Blue Origins, Bezos, Dickens Space thing.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's irresistible for TV.

Kara Swisher: Well, hold on. But in one day, in one day, they spent more time, more hours covering the Bezos launch than they did covering climate change in all of 2020.

Scott Galloway: I know. I know. And at some point, the editors or whoever it is at these stations has to go, OK, are we a big part of the problem? And when they send all these reporters and journalists down there to act breathless, I mean, think about this launch. And by the way, I was on MSNBC yesterday and I felt intimidated not to be that cynical. And I just couldn't help it. They went 100 kilometers to the Karnamon.

Kara Swisher: Say what you said. Say what you said because I thought it was quite interesting.

Scott Galloway: Okay. It would have been cheaper if Jeff Bezos had crashed his canary yellow T-top Corvette into a hair plugs clinic. What is the achievement here? They went up 60 miles and floated back down. 50 years ago, we sent three brave people into orbit. We sent them 400 times as far. No, I'm sorry, 4,000 times as far. We sent them a quarter of a million miles, had them land on basically a big asteroid rotating at tens of thousands of miles an hour. We weren't even sure what was going to happen when we landed on the goddamn thing. And this was in an era.

Kara Swisher: Which is the anniversary. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: This was in an era when the majority of homes in the United States didn't have air conditioning. A third of homes in certain regions didn't have indoor plumbing. And then we brought these men back safely to Earth. And now we're pretending this is some sort of achievement.

Kara Swisher: Other notable space tourists this year, Richard Branson and William Shatner. Blue Origin has since announced plans for a space station. We'll see how that goes.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of sending things into space, in January, traders on Robinhood sent shares of GameStop and AMC Soaring. In the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, users framed the run-ups as revenge for the 2008 financial crisis.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, right.

Kara Swisher: Kara and I didn't think that framing fit. That someone will be left holding this bag. And in a lot of ways, it's the companies because right now GameStop, everyone's like, now they can buy things. I'm like, no one's taking their stock. No one's taking their stock. Not one person will be taking their stock or they could get bought. And I'm like, no one will be buying. No way. They can't. No way. They have frozen this company in a way that is-

Scott Galloway: It has nothing to do with the company. People are treating it like cryptocurrency right now.

Kara Swisher: It's right. Exactly. There's nothing to do. And so that's what I'm like, there's people working for this company, including AMC Theaters. AMC Theaters has got to revive as a business, not as a speculative game for people, whoever they are, whether they're hedge fund people hidden as these people or these people, which I think they're very dedicated. But it gets to that idea of democratization of stock market. And I think, you know, we have had issues with Robinhood and how they do that. But this idea of like, we're not stupid. It's so interesting when you hear, and I'm not comparing with the Capitol people, but a lot of people who are disgruntled and went to Trump is no one's hearing us. We will be heard. And it has the same sort of tone of we're tired of Wall Street screwing us. And I think this is part of what happened when the banks didn't get, nobody went to jail in the banking crisis. Nobody went to jail in the mortgage crisis. They're 100% right that this is a silly game. And they're showing, to me, what they're showing is what a silly frigging game this is.

Kara Swisher: As prices spiked, Robinhood restricted the trading of GameStop and other meme stocks, leading to a fierce backlash from its users. Their anger reverberated from Reddit all the way to Congress.

Scott Galloway: So there's a lot to unpack. And let me be clear. I think Robinhood is a menace that treats their consumers as the product and ultimately, I think, leads to dark places. I've made that clear. Dark places. But AOC and Senator Warren in this instance and the class actions who filed against Robinhood really missed the mark.

Kara Swisher: Okay, tell me why.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay, so Robinhood is guilty of not envisioning a scenario where 50% of their account holders would own one stock that ran to volatility of 50% or 50% down. Because the people who clear your trades and the people who provide financing for your margin are constantly looking at the likelihood that the market could have some sort of wild ride one day, and then the money that people borrowed on margin, the stock crashed more. Say you buy $100 worth of GameStop stock, and someone finances $100 in margin, so you buy $200 worth, and it crashes more than 50% in a given day. What they say is, okay, if GameStop is only 1% of the stock that a brokerage is doing, then we're not that worried. But when all of a sudden half your account holders own GameStop stock, the clearance guys and the people financing your margin just basically call you and say, you can no longer trade in this stock. So the notion that Citadel conspired with Robinhood to support another hedge fund just isn't true. This has happened before. They got caught in a capital squeeze. The more interesting thing here is who's bailing them out. And their existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, I think NEA, have all come in not for $1.5 billion. I heard about this piece of paper circulating Thursday night where they're raising another $3.5 billion. And it feeds to this bigger narrative around who is making money here.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: So who is going to make tens of billions of dollars here?

Scott Galloway: We all think, oh, they stuck it to the man because this hedge fund lost $3 billion. The people who are going to make tens of billions of dollars are the people, quite frankly, the investors in Reddit—I'm sorry, the investors in Robinhood. Robinhood signed up a million new accounts on Thursday.

Kara Swisher: They did more than that, yeah.

Scott Galloway: All of this craziness that, oh, they did something wrong. No, they do something wrong every day, but them having their clearance and their margin financiers pull stocks down for not letting them trade in certain stocks, that was poor scenario planning. But they didn't, I would argue, they really didn't do anything wrong. Who else is making money here? Who else is making money? Okay. What about the Winklevoss twins, billionaires from Harvard who say, let's go into silver. All right, that's your movement. The wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, and a guy who made all his money at Facebook. Those are our William Wallaces around this movement.

Kara Swisher: In September, court documents reflected that Citadel executives had been in touch with Robinhood management as the trade restrictions went into place. Traders claimed that this proved a conspiracy between the two firms. Both Robinhood and Citadel deny any wrongdoing, but the stock is off 80% since its 52-week high, mostly because they're mendacious fucks.

Scott Galloway: All right, name stock traders weren't the only people trying to overturn the finance apple cart in 2021. Cryptocurrency had a rip-roaring year buoyed by the rise of NFTs and U.S. inflation. Bitcoin hit a new high shortly after New Year's. Just a month later, Tesla announced that it would accept payment in Bitcoin and revealed it had $1.5 billion worth on the books. But in May, Tesla did an about-face and said that it would no longer accept Bitcoin. Elon Musk cited its environmental cost. So let's acknowledge there are environmental issues. And there's a really interesting discussion, a worthwhile discussion around the electricity consumption of mining for crypto. But they didn't seem to want to have that conversation in February. These issues were present in February when they purchased $1.5 billion and then put in his profile the term Bitcoin.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And then before the earnings, when they were going to miss earnings, decided to sell some of those gains that he had catalyzed by being a big promoter of Bitcoin, beat his earnings, and now all of a sudden after selling and showing $100 million plus profit, he's decided that he's uncomfortable with the environmental impact of Bitcoin. And what you have here, I think this is a big deal because this is an individual who 18 months ago put out a tweet that said, "I have funding secured to take the company private at $420 a share" and the stock shot up. It ended up there was no truth to that. That is probably the most textbook case of market manipulation I've ever seen. And the SEC decided it's important that we have innovators. He's creating a lot of value. He's doing important work. Let's slap him on the wrist with a $10 million fine and hope that it doesn't happen again. Well, guess what? He is now saying "to the moon" with Dogecoin and then on SNL saying it's a hustle and it loses a third of its value. And then saying, putting Bitcoin in his profile and Bitcoin shoots up and then saying "I'm uncomfortable" and then putting out thoughtful statements after he sells it. Saying "I'm worried about the environment." You are now talking about thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who are losing sleep at night wondering, what the fuck is this guy going to tweet in the morning?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the thing is, this is interesting. Dieter Bohm from Verge said, "Are crypto markets too prone to massive multi-billion dollar swings in value based on seemingly tiny pressures? Or is Elon Musk too influential on those markets?" Yes. I think that's right. 100%. Another one, someone wrote, "Good morning to everyone except Elon Musk," which I thought was funny. But there's all kinds of reaction. It's another person's Elon Musk comment about Bitcoin. It's like saying a Tesla uses way too much energy rather than just ride a donkey instead. People are losing their beloved minds, but they hung on his every word on the way up. You know what I mean? Which is, I think, sort of like two bad boys. You were thrilled when you were like going, "Go Elon." And then he does this. You shouldn't rely on him and it shouldn't have this much thing because it begins to look like sort of this pump and dump thing, which I think is what you're essentially saying.

Scott Galloway: In September, a remarkable first for Bitcoin in Latin America. The government of El Salvador purchased 400 Bitcoin one day after it became official currency in the nation. That's nearly $21 million at the time of purchase. So the president's all into the Bitcoin. What's going on? He wants to be the Bitcoin country. So is everyone moving to El Salvador?

Kara Swisher: Look, I think it's actually really big for Bitcoin. And there were a lot of stories about the hiccups in the rollout. But I would argue there were less hiccups in the rollout than the rollout of Obamacare or Windows 8, I think a Bloomberg article pointed out. But the remittance, it could reduce substantially commissions around remittance. The GDP of Italy is transferred from between the Americas from workers back to residents back into countries such as El Salvador, which is the poorest country in Central America. And it's just great for Bitcoin. It's an interesting gambit for them.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it is really interesting. But people like Bitcoin for different reasons. Investors like it for the volatility. Some people like it for the technology. And that's why people are worried. They're worried about the instability of it. But ATMs that convert to Bitcoin, Starbucks and McDonald's taking it, it crashed on Tuesday. But I actually would argue it's probably a buying opportunity. I think it's fantastic for Bitcoin to have a sovereign nation saying this is our new default currency. Who the big loser is existentially through all of this is that if the USD gets replaced as the default currency, we're going to lose one of the most powerful armies in the world. And that is our ability to attract foreign influence.

Kara Swisher: I mean, although the Bitcoin people say no, it's a long time.

Scott Galloway: Right now, the U.S. dollar is the currency of the world. Adopting it as a legal currency, I think it's a big deal.

Kara Swisher: And in October, another first: a Bitcoin futures ETF launched after years of failed attempts. At the time of recording, Bitcoin has more than doubled in price since January 1st. In 2022, anything could happen.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's a bold statement. Anything could happen.

Kara Swisher: Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll look at Elon Musk's year and pick the biggest pivot of 2021.

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Kara Swisher: We're back with our year in review. 2021 began with a muted hope for the end of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of raucous New Year's parties, many Americans rang in the year with small gatherings where they wondered how soon they could get a COVID vaccine. That turned out to be a while. The initial vaccine rollout was plagued with problems. Scott and I wondered how to fix it in January. I have been trying to get my mom a vaccine there. Your system is so screwed in Florida. Now she's going to have to fly to New York where she is on a list that is much more organized. The D.C. list is really organized. I feel like I can reach them. I can look at all the information. Florida, it took me like hours. They had shitty websites, shitty information. Awful, yeah. I was on the phone with them. Let me just say, Governor DeSantis, you suck in terms of—

Scott Galloway: Well, here's where we are and it speaks to a larger problem. I don't care if you don't have enough of them. Your systems suck. Even if you're telling me no, you're not explaining how I can get on a list. But this is part of a 40-year screed started by Reagan where government is incompetent, so let's defund them, which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy about ineffective government. And this whole notion that we're going to decentralize everything and leave it up to the hospitals is nothing but similar to Facebook abdicating responsibility. And Governor DeSantis is, you know, this big. "We're going to let the hospitals figure out the vaccination websites." You know what? We need scale. We need the federal government. The federal government is really good at some things. They are really good at defending our borders. They are really good at ensuring that you can't segregate schools. The federal government is outstanding at a lot of things. And guess what? It needs to be federalized. This needs to be federalized.

Kara Swisher: By June, there were signs that the vaccines were working. COVID rates around the country plunged. But as vaccine availability grew, so too did vaccine hesitancy. Case numbers rose steeply through July and patience for anti-vaxxers wore thin.

Scott Galloway: It just struck me that I think all of the nation is dealing with the pain and unnecessary sacrifice being levied on this nation because people have conflated an absence of oppression being an absence of responsibility. In the 60s, we asked young men to go to Southeast Asia and fight a war to protect against this theory called the domino theory of communism. And a lot of them rightfully said, "I don't want to go." And we either forced them to flee to Canada or we put them in jail. If you live in San Francisco or New York and you work your ass off and your partner works their ass off and you make really good money, the government shows up and takes more than half of it in the form of taxes. And if you say, "No, I want to opt out of this responsibility," we fine you. And if you still opt out, we put your ass in jail. The notion that we are asking people if and when they go into public places, if they go to the movies, if they go to schools, if they get on a plane, if they work for the government—I mean, for fuck's sake, Kara, have you heard that 40% of hospital employees are not vaccinated? 40% of hospital employees are not vaccinated. The nation has had enough. It is time for our leaders.

Kara Swisher: That's astonishing. That's astonishing, I think, don't you? Like 40%. I swallowed my tongue. I'm like, you're dealing with sick people and you're not vaccinated?

Scott Galloway: Even among those who embrace the vaccine, there were concerns about one possible side effect: Will I have to go back to the office?

Kara Swisher: I discussed that with guest host Casey Newton. Do you think one of the things that's interesting as these workplaces, people go back, everyone's been moved back. I know Vox has been moved back to October or something like that, unspecified, actually. But many of the tech workplaces have been moved back. What do you make of what's happened? They were bringing people back and I think wanting to bring people back.

Casey Newton: Yeah, I mean, it has been an absolute seesaw. I think employees are really frustrated and so are the employers. I think the employers are desperate to bring everyone back or at least make it available to the people who want it. But now the Delta variant is on the rise and nobody feels like they can safely do it. I saw a great tweet from a Facebook product manager today who said that they need to analyze the effects of the fact that for the past year and a half, everyone's work life has had to be things that they're comfortable with their families overhearing because it's all been on Zoom. But like, think about that. That is so strange.

Kara Swisher: It's true. It's absolutely true. So one of the things that's interesting is that tech companies have sort of leaned into no workplace kind of attitudes, especially Facebook, right? And others. What impact do you think that's going to have? And how do companies like that have benefited from this, like Zoom, and then there's lots of virtual meeting companies like Hopin and all those, there's a whole gang of them that have been funded. What happens to that? What happens to that idea of what a workplace is for at least tech companies or social media companies?

Casey Newton: I think it's hard to say from the middle of it. I mean, if you want to look at, are these companies suffering and are they falling apart? Like, no, their profits are all up. They're continuing to grow. I don't think we've seen a credible story about a big or even a medium sized tech company that has really, really struggled with the move, which isn't to say that it hasn't been super hard. It's just been that they've mostly been able to muddle through. I mean, I think the lasting lesson is that tech workers and people who have options for where they can work want more flexibility than they've been given. And this does kind of feel like a one-way door where after they've been told, you don't have to come in two days a week.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. They're never going to go in two days a week ever again.

[Discussion continues...]

Kara Swisher: Over the months that followed, more businesses and local governments added or extended their vaccine mandates. And in October, the Biden administration rolled out a pair of mandates that it said would cover 100 million Americans. Those are set to take effect in January 2022. One man's name was on everyone's lips this year. From tweets and Teslas to feuds and fuselages, it felt like there wasn't a week in 2021 that didn't involve Elon Musk or his companies. His new streak started in January when he became the world's richest man. Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world. That call continues to suck. He surpassed Jeff Bezos last week with a whopping $190 billion. When are we going to see the world's first? If he becomes the world's first trillionaire, I don't know what you should do, Scott Galloway, something.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't know. Return my Tesla.

Kara Swisher: In the spring, SpaceX won a NASA contract and almost instantly got into a legal argument with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Musk also got in a Twitter spat with Senator Bernie Sanders. It wouldn't be his last. In one corner, Bernie Sanders used Elon Musk's outsized wealth, along with Jeff Bezos and others, to highlight wealth inequality in the U.S., which is pretty easy to do for Senator Sanders. On the other hand, Elon Musk said he's using his fortune for good, that he's going to move us to other planets. That's what he's spending his money on. Honestly.

Scott Galloway: And the bros went, "Nice job." First, he's going to invest in edibles.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Anyways, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Kara. What do you think of this?

Scott Galloway: I think it's ridiculous. Bernie Sanders is making a very good point. And he is like, "No, my money will be used for good." He's like, what is he, Andrew Carnegie? And he's giving everybody a library. I don't know. Okay. I mean, okay, he's right. Capitalism is just not about having someone worth $170 billion and paying the lowest tax rate.

Kara Swisher: Somehow in between tweets, Musk found time to host Saturday Night Live in May. His appearance was expected to get a bump in Dogecoin, one of his favorite cryptocurrencies. That didn't go quite as expected. And the internet watched as Elon Musk hosted SNL and his beloved cryptocurrency Dogecoin took a tumble. Among the moments on the show, Elon called the cryptocurrency a hustle.

[SNL clip plays] Elon Musk: My question is, what is Dogecoin? Cast Member: I'm glad you asked. That's a good question. Well, it's the future of currency. It's an unstoppable financial vehicle that's going to take over the world. Elon Musk: I get that, but what is it, man? Cast Member: I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money. Elon Musk: Oh, so it's a hustle. Cast Member: Yeah, it's a hustle. Elon Musk: Why did you say that, man? [End clip]

Kara Swisher: That sent the steadily climbing stock tumbling, crashing by 30%, although the crypto token is still up more than 10,000% in price this year. Almost immediately after Elon Musk made his first appearance, Robinhood was forced to pause all crypto trading order updates. As a reminder, Robinhood had to make a similar pause back during the GameStop frenzy. But then the next morning, Elon tweeted that his space exploration company, SpaceX, which has contracts with NASA, is still launching a satellite called Doge-1 on a mission paid for with Dogecoin. By the way, this month, the House passed a bill, which is backed by crypto lobbyists, to create a working group to regulate digital assets, which they should be doing. I don't really care who backs it. So what do you think, Scott? He was somewhat funny, correct? You were expecting a disaster as we can go to our tape.

Scott Galloway: No, I wasn't expecting a disaster. Look, I think it's a huge win for him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, talk about why you think this, because you were critical of this appearance. You were.

Scott Galloway: Look, if you had Annie Leibovitz photograph your daughter's bat mitzvah, little Rachel is going to look gorgeous. It's going to be great for the family. And Annie Leibovitz's reputation goes down. So in this instance, Rachel is Elon Musk.

Kara Swisher: Elon might not have been laughing in June. That month, the SEC announced that two of his older tweets had violated a 2018 settlement. So after a year of lawsuits and rockets and the SEC, I sat down with Elon at Code in the fall. Here's what he had to say about Blue Origin's challenge to his NASA contract.

[Clip from Code Conference] Elon Musk: I think you should put more of his energy into getting to orbit than lawsuits. You cannot sue your way to the moon. You know how good your lawyers are. [End clip]

Kara Swisher: Elon didn't slow down after that. In the last quarter of the year, he sowed confusion over an alleged deal between Tesla and Hertz, asked his Twitter followers to vote on his selling Tesla shares, tweeted outrageous things at U.S. senators, including Bernie Sanders again, and he called Scott a numbskull.

Scott Galloway: That's not true. He called me an insufferable numbskull.

Kara Swisher: Let's drill down on that last part. And it's his stock. He's entitled to sell it. But instead of taking responsibility for saying, "I want to diversify, I need to pay some taxes," and he has said this, the stock is fully valued.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he said he's going to pay taxes. He says, "Twitter, you tell me what to do."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. Over the weekend, he put out a Twitter poll asking, "Should I sell 10% of my Tesla stock?" Scott, you tweeted he's using the Twitter results as a cloud cover to monetize Tesla prices that he knows aren't sustainable without outright telling the market he's lost faith in its valuation, although he has said that somewhat. He has said it. And then he has said, then he did you. This has happened before. I've seen it happen before, many times. So Lara pointed out, and let's just call out the elephant in the room. The sexual tension between the two of us is palpable.

Scott Galloway: It's palpable. And I gotta be honest, last night, I did have a sex dream about Elon. We were in a—I was running my hands through his chest hair. We were in a hermetically sealed container 30 feet below the Martian surface, recognizing that we were about to die a horrific death, either from asteroids or increased radiation or gravitational pull that was melting our bones and neurons. But you know what? We had each other, Kara.

Kara Swisher: And to cap it all off, in December, Time magazine named Elon its person of the year. It's a safe bet that in 2022, Elon will continue to be one of the most influential men in the world unless he leaves for Mars. We didn't mention Elon moving to Texas because that happened before this year, but the Lone Star State had its own share of news in 2021. First, in February, the state was hit by a deep freeze. As its power grid failed, millions of Texans fought the bitter cold with blankets and fires.

Scott Galloway: And someone said, they said the problem is if Ted Cruz went to Cancun in the middle of a Texas weather crisis, energy crisis and weather crisis, it's only the second worst thing he's done this year. Which is, of course, backing the insurrection, which was a nice move. They're refusing to certify the vote. Does he not want to get elected again? Beto O'Rourke is busy calling seniors and bringing seniors warm soup. Like, that's what he's been doing the whole time. I mean, Jose Andres is making food for everybody. Like, do they want to turn Texas blue? Is that what their goal is here? What is the deal? And Abbott, like, blaming wind energy? Like, he's frigging Donald Trump? What is going on?

Kara Swisher: Continuing on a theme of systemic failures, Texas Governor Greg Abbott positioned himself as one of the country's greatest combatants against pandemic measures. In May, he issued an executive order banning government mask mandates. By August, he lost. In October, he pulled the same move again, this time banning vaccine mandates via executive order. Big business was quick to fire back. Southwest and American Airlines said this week that they'll comply with the federal government's vaccine mandate for large companies. This puts them in conflict with the Texas governor who tried to ban vaccine mandates via executive order. Both airlines have said federal law supersedes state law, and they are correct.

Scott Galloway: So there'll be lots of lawsuits all over the place, but I think they're right. These are forward-facing companies with customers, and that's how they have to think about the public health. Greg Abbott is going to lose this one, correct? I mean, he's using it as a political thing.

Kara Swisher: I fucking love this. The cruise lines.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: These are not liberal. These are not bastions of progressive people. Both the cruise lines and the airlines are saying, "Hey, governor, while you're over there prostrating yourself to the far right, old white evangelicals in Iowa—"

Scott Galloway: A lot of stereotypes there, a lot of identity politics in that statement.

Kara Swisher: "We're going to focus on what's good for the economy. And our business. And our businesses. And stop playing politics with our businesses."

Scott Galloway: And after a year of arguing that governments and businesses can't tell people what to do with their bodies, Governor Abbott took his hypocrisy to new heights when he signed the most restrictive abortion law in the nation.

Kara Swisher: I was lucky to have guest host George Hahn with me to discuss it.

George Hahn: The Supreme Court, as I understand it, felt that Texas's laws regarding abortion violated a woman's constitutional right to privacy. This is about privacy. So what is it about this new situation that is also not a violation of privacy? Is it the state saying, "Well, we can't legally do it, but you citizens, we're going to empower you. Listen, do a little dirty work for us. Violate a woman's privacy for us. We'll give you $10K and we'll cover your legal expenses." Like, am I wrong?

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, I think it's just this constant chipping away of Roe versus Wade over the years. And it's been, for whatever you think about what they're doing, it's a rather clever way to sort of chip away and chip away and chip away Roe versus Wade without overturning it because that was not possible. And so they make it difficult for these places to operate. They make it difficult to get there. They make it difficult. They make them smaller and smaller. And so they keep continuing to sort of chip away at the ability to do this. And now this new law where anyone in the United States can sue these abortion providers or anyone who helps them, you don't know who to attack. Like before it was between government and these abortion clinics. Now anybody can sue them. So it creates a legal liability here that's really, you could start to do this on a lot of things. And from what I understand, it's really this way to violate this right established under Roe versus Wade. And then, if you're willing to do anything, and I think a lot of people said this, that the right has come to play and the left is sort of, or the liberal side is letting this happen over and over again and doesn't have a lot of good tools to stop it.

Kara Swisher: Governor Abbott will run for re-election next year if he defeats primary challengers who'll likely face off against Beto O'Rourke. A few other stories from 2021 we should mention. Netflix came under fire for airing a Dave Chappelle special that many viewers found misogynistic and transphobic. Netflix employees walked out in protest. The Closer remains on Netflix. 2021 was a good year for labor. 10,000 John Deere workers won better pay and conditions after going on strike. Workers in other industries from health care to transit went on strike as well. And wages for workers in industries including dining and entertainment were up as labor shortages continued. And speaking of shortages, supply chain interruptions rattled commerce. A chip shortage caused disruptions in auto manufacturing and consumer goods like the Nintendo Switch. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned after being accused of sexual harassment. His brother Chris Cuomo was fired from CNN later in the year when his role in the scandal came to light. Also, that big boat got stuck in the canal. Remember that?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I do.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for the year's biggest pivot.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, we're back. We asked our Twitter followers to vote for the biggest pivot of 2021. Here's what they said. In fourth place, Tesla drops Bitcoin. In May, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment. He cited environmental concerns. Only three months earlier, Tesla began accepting the cryptocurrency and revealed its Bitcoin future. Any thoughts, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Any thoughts? I don't even remember that episode. Do you remember it?

Kara Swisher: I don't remember what I had for breakfast, but I don't remember that episode.

Scott Galloway: I think you insulted the whole thing and said it wasn't about environmental concerns.

Kara Swisher: That's how I got it. There you go. At number three, Andrew Cuomo resigns. In August, the New York governor stepped down as he was facing an impeachment inquiry. He had become a pandemic hero among many Democrats, but it turned out he was just a creepy groper.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I was shocked that people—I don't know if it was, it could have been a lot of things—but people turn to us for political commentary. And then people then turn to our Twitter and tell us to stay in our lane. I'm so confused.

Kara Swisher: I'm so confused. We have all the lanes, Scott. Just keep that in mind.

Scott Galloway: There you go. Our lane is whatever the fuck we want to talk about.

Kara Swisher: What the fuck we want.

Scott Galloway: That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Kara Swisher: The second biggest pivot, Facebook changes its name to Meta. I thought this would be number one, but it wasn't.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, me too.

Kara Swisher: Zuckerberg rolled out the name change in October, but so far it seems to be the only change at the company. So there you have it.

Scott Galloway: I don't call it Meta. What's interesting is it barely beat out the episode where Mark and Cheryl have changed their names to Sackler.

Kara Swisher: That's good. That's good. And the biggest pivot of 2021 was, shockingly, OnlyFans banning sexually explicit content. In August, OnlyFans confused its creators when it announced that it was getting out of the adult content business. It reversed course less than a week later after getting assurances from its bankers that it can continue as is.

Scott Galloway: My OnlyFans has racked up 11 bucks, but people thought it's called the dog. People thought it was a site on bestiality and asked for a refund. But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful, Kara.

Kara Swisher: I didn't think we'd get bestiality, but here we are. Okay. All right, then. And some runner-ups: 11 Madison goes vegan, Facebook scraps Instagram for kids, and Jack Dorsey stepping down.

Scott Galloway: Well, what about the episode where we talk about me getting a Bezos action figure and sticking it up my ass where no man has gone before? How did that do?

Kara Swisher: How did that do?

Kara Swisher: From the Vox Media Podcast Network. Okay, Scott, that is the show. I want to thank all of our listeners for joining us for this crazy year. But here's hoping for a healthy, happy and productive 2022. Scott, another year around the sun with you and I, and I am so thrilled to be doing it with you.

Scott Galloway: Amen, sister. Right back at you. Read us out.

Kara Swisher: Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. 2021, adios amigo.

Scott Galloway: Bring it on. Bring on 2022. More science, more empathy, more connective tissue as Americans.