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good morning on Thursday January 19 from the scene at studios in New York it's time for episode 165 of the 359 podcast and today it's brought to you by Ben Fox ribbon and Alfred Inge and this is all Ben's fault so we apologize in advance I always blame Ben jamming when I say perfectly reasonable thing to do that's okay yeah well look the inauguration is tomorrow I know it's not you know a pure tech story but it's a very important thing to talk about what our next president is going to be doing related to tech and also related to Twitter apparently so that's the stuff that we're gonna be talking about today send in your questions and comments about all things Trump and tech and Trump and Twitter and we'll get to as many of them as we can at the end of the show and I think that's about it let's get let's get the ball rolling chew chew bear with us folks we apologize in advance let's get this podcast underway and here we go in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Inge Donald Trump becomes president tomorrow so ahead of the inauguration our Maggie Reardon took a look at where Trump stands on a number of tech issues let's take off a few of them net neutrality he's expected to roll back this regulation Alfred do you think this is a good idea I have been a big advocate for net neutrality as I think anyone that's not a millionaire sure to be you know the fact that there's the idea of internet fast lanes and me having to pay extra to get you know to a web site you know faster than any other web site if they're paying extra or anything like that it's just why it's ruins everything it makes it much more difficult for consumers Netflix actually talked about this related to their earnings yesterday where they said look it's not really gonna hurt us as much but it's probably gonna hurt some of the smaller guys do you agree with that yeah because Netflix makes a ton of money that's my point like if you're not a like a multi-million dollar company yes yeah absolutely next next point mega-mergers has talked you know he's taking a populist stance about this you may expect the AT&T deal for Time Warner not to go through is that also a possibility yeah he hit on that during the campaign saying that you know if he were president that he would not allow this to go through he has yet to explain why I mean obviously there's a lot of issues with monopolies uh you know AT&T is still saying that no it's not monopolies as much as they want to say that I mean I still need some more convincing but Trump has been you know very against that merger specifically so right yeah and it's a huge one I think it's an eighty five billion dollar merger so we will see if it ends up happening and lasts then we want to get through in just four minute podcast tax policy he wants to cut corporate taxes which could in a best-case scenario increased domestic investment including in the tech world do you think that's gonna happen though that's been a big part of his campaign just essentially saying we're gonna make American jobs great again we're gonna bring all these tech jobs into the u.s. he had this whole thing about you know Apple making a factory in America instead of its factories in China which would mean that your iPhones would cost about as much as nine hundred dollars that if that actually happened yeah or more mmm and he you know when he had his a little text summit when he met with Tim Cook was there and during the meeting he had talked about you know anything you guys need me to do to help I can which is kind of a weird relationship between a president and you know business for you know all these like tech Titans to have yeah yeah I don't know we'll see what happens obviously like the tech industry has been a little uncertain about him it seems that that relationship has thawed a little bit another point that we want to talk about is Trump's tweeting his stances on tech have been pretty unclear but he's been very clear about how he's gonna keep tweeting according to Trump he says Twitter is a better way to talk to the public than going through traditional news media like ourselves so what we are not traditional I guess that's true yeah so you expect to see him tweeting a lot more over the next four years well yeah he's not even planning on taking over the @potus account which to be fair is pretty recent so it's not really an honored tradition right but I mean for a guy who's gonna stick to his own Twitter he's basically used Twitter as his mechanism for you know responding to the press as it you know back then you had to throw your own press conference and then you know media would show up and they did be their filter but now it's him going directly to the people right and the media has been responding a lot through like what he's been tweeting I mean like that's been directing a lot of them yeah yeah so if anybody's gonna be controlling Twitter for the next four years it's gonna be the president yes yeah I mean he is the president so yeah expect to see more of that and NBC wsj that came out with a poll yesterday that said nearly 70 percent of those surveyed said Trump's use of Twitter was a bad idea but I don't think that's really gonna dissuade him anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Afra Dane thanks for listening and rebec gonna delve into the comments and I'm sure there's a lot of good ones the one thing is interesting is how I like in our article we kind of covered how FDR was the radio president my quote/unquote right and you know after we're in kind of a I don't want to call a post television era well we're getting there it's forgetting it's that's kind of a notion that's come to be somewhat accepted I wonder what will be next what would anyone predict cuz I mean nothing is forever twitter is not gonna last forever what will happen after Twitter are we gonna have VR a VR president that'd be interesting perhaps I mean like Trump has definitely done a good job we talked about this right after the election he's done a really good job of utilizing Twitter as his bully pulpit and it's actually been really amazing to see even after the election how much he's used it and also how much it's really directed well news either good or bad it definitely is gonna keep doing the difference is he's been using Twitter like a celebrity because that's what he was you know all this before everyone else is using Twitter as if they're you know because they're politicians they're you know carefully tailored they've got you know they're safe messages things like that people don't go into a frenzy over it whereas for him it's him sending these tweets and the same way that you see started oh Kim Kardashian just tweeted like that kind of stuff that's because it's like unfiltered and authentic and it's one of those things where people pay attention or that and he knew it you know from his celebrity poll right and it gives him the opportunity to continue to present himself as a non politician politician yeah in like having this whole unfiltered unvarnished thing going back to the poll from NBC wsj one of the things that people said was look it could have unintended consequences if you're just gonna do unvarnished we yes because if that raid war or worse or whatever which which i think is a reasonable point yeah that was in reference to the unintended consequences was in reference to you know his effect that he's had on you know just businesses in general any time he tweeted about forever carrier or Toyota you know they would react or you know the stock would would you know drop and then maybe rise if they responded to his tweets but also in the sense you know the things that he did he had been tweeting about China you know yeah in his first maybe like two weeks after winning the election I think that was a big concern where it's like oh cool we're gonna have a third world war starting off of Twitter I mean yes to find out I mean I know that the definitely a significant portion of how much tweet how much how many tweets actually come directly from the Donald as apparently all of them come on thumbs down so if you look at the metadata if it comes from an Android that's directly from him correct and if it comes from an iPhone that's like usually from the staff yeah and that's gonna happen I mean that's how anybody in that caliber of existence yeah it has to run that kind of thing I mean he'd I'll give him this he has embrace like the direct line to the public and I think that is an arguably good thing right and it's important to mention that that's not as I should shoot myself in the foot working for you know fake use yeah but still it's it's I think the thing is that that's not unprecedented I think a lot of presidents in the past have looked for ways to get around the news media filter because for one reason or another they don't like what's being written or said about them so Trump is using Twitter these days other presidents have used other modes in the past you know like whether it's the fireside chats or you know like a weekly address different things like that to try to talk directly to the public so it's it's been interesting to see what his posture has been on Twitter where he's definitely been you know picking fights with people to which I personally thought that he would kind of tamp down after the alerts on that news that time he is he told some expect that to continue he told CBS n a 60 Minutes interview where he's saying you know I'm I'm probably gonna be a little bit more restrained brand he wasn't it changed his mind yeah exactly so I I think that it's now been baked in at some point you expect that he's just gonna pick a bite at any given people expect that he told Fox News yesterday basically you know I don't like using Twitter but he's basically making the narrative now is I don't like using Twitter but everyone else is you know talking he feels like they forced his hand yeah being that he's improperly represented so he's taking it to the streets it's okay and you could accuse him of flip-flopping I mean like that's kind of getting taking both sides saying I don't like using it but I'm gonna keep using it a lot I think the thing is is that he's president tomorrow so going back to a lot of these tech policies like where does he stand on taxes where does he stand on H h-1b visas different things like that he's gonna have to be a lot clearer about what he actually he's gonna do about this stuff and he's been very unclear up until now because some of these policies are actually gonna have to get rolled out so we will end up seeing what what that's gonna look like it is a level of accountability that you've never really seen before and I mean really the the tweeting president started with Obama and now there's these long running track records that yeah you can delete tweets but people can screen shut those tweets and people can manipulate those tweets and now there's this long-running accountability where he's essentially quoted himself on quote-unquote paper where he can't say oh the media manipulated this edited this well yeah that that's or no that's been really helpful during the entire campaign season share so you know him not being a career politician like everyone else is they can't point to well look at how he voted on this or look at like this law that he supported you know all the time but his Twitter oh man exactly that is his tracker that's his yes yeah it actually kind of surprised me that he didn't delete certain tweets that made him look bad at certain points during the election I can say that I admire the fact that he's just embraced like no this is what I said I don't want him to like try to I don't want anyone in that situation to try to play it up like no waiting it would make it worse the second he made himself a presidential candidate one could argue that somebody somewhere downloaded all of his tweets or is not that hard to do and they would say like oh he deleted these are those so III think he was just smart enough to realize that he couldn't hide you know some of the some of the worse or just one made him look more hypocritical or didn't care yeah yeah I agree with that it'll be interesting to see where it goes but back to VR presidency right how would that work well why you have to be all so cheap that everyone has a VR set for one that will happen eventually we've seen enough of this right that like tech the tech community basically just wants us to sit on our couches all day it also happens as easy as pulling something out of your pocket and just looking at it it's not like with a VR set you know oh I want to see okay cool like it's not it's not that easy let's keep doing the podcast I just feel like Geordi from Star Trek yeah I don't know what that would look like but I think we may be headed in that direction or like a VR or an a our president like the other thing that's kind of funny and interesting about it is is that most of what we've talked about related to Twitter like throughout the podcast has been that Twitter is dying twitter is the cesspool the future president the president as of tomorrow is this is his mechanism of getting me well that's always hard on Twitter great again entirely true though because everything that he posts on Twitter he also posts on his Facebook page it's just there's not enough journalists you know that are like constantly mining his Facebook page well it's easier to mine of Twitter a linear time line into it and then yeah you can share like there's there's all the media attention is on Twitter that's why you know so if Twitter goes bankrupt for whatever reason not that I'm saying they are we could just go into the face yeah yeah okay that one where will trump go for his social interactions if and when Twitter should go away snapchat oh god no please don't second what is the next logical Avenue for this post Twitter whenever that may happen that's a great question beyond the Trump presidency it's a great question I really do wonder that especially after coming and coming out of CES where tech is going these days I really that that's definitely something that's gonna cook my noodle for the next couple of days because that's what it's been like recently every eight or so years I mean they'd like the Internet president I think Obama was described as like the internet president this is a social media president what's what's the next step so most likely be Instagram if Twitter went under and president got a gram it I mean yeah I mean if anything he would just type it type up like what he wanted to say on like notes so what you're saying is Bhushan it put in your resumes for White House photographer now right yeah sure I'm sure he loves photos yeah Nathan in the chat says if someone who's pretty heavily invested in tech I'm praying he doesn't ruin everything Nathan we're interested to hear your perspective on that and what are some of the fears you may have that could come from his positions on the tech industry right yeah what it give us some more details on what everything means you know because there are there are a lot of areas that he could potentially change going in he says being Pro Tech doesn't mean he won't put forth legislation that is harmful to tech trade and these are some of the things we saw a post summit what were some of the takeaways from that summit outside of some of the glorious memes I think I think there was at least an impression that I got that the tech world was was willing to work with him in a certain way I mean in a certain sense they have to yeah you know so but but that relationship which was very adversarial I would say during the election at least they were coming to the table at least they were talking about was at that meeting Jeff Bezos was very negative about Trump during the election so I think a lot of them wanted to yeah you know but why don't one that why one of the key issues that they brought up was his stance on immigration and the h1 h-1b visa yeah because essentially you know Trump had been talking about his immigration policies where he wants to make you know keep it American workers give provide more American jobs and the tech industry cut you know directly contradicts with that where a lot of people in the field are you know engineers they come in from overseas yes a lot of that has to do with the fact that you know they they complain that there aren't enough qualified individuals in the u.s. to fill those jobs so these these CEOs did bring it up at the summit saying like look you're not like you need to be able to embrace like the diversity and you know right we have these job opening otherwise filled them right now yeah so otherwise our products aren't gonna be as good as you know you keep thinking that they're gonna be all right basically yeah it could be a matter of training more US workers to be able to fill those jobs but that's not something that happens overnight so it's it's an interesting discussion to have but at the same time you're not gonna get rid of the h-1b program any time soon or or or significantly reduce it I might be wrong about that I mean like he might drastically change that program but the way the pipeline is at this point it's yeah you know he's also been offering like tax tax incentives for companies that build in the US and can provide more jobs in the US and you know it's a move that your Amazon created what like ten thousand new jobs they're planning on adding a hundred thousand new jobs most of those are in fulfillment centers some of that was PR yeah that's they were they already had playing Softbank IBM all these you know kind of reacting to Trump's uh you know tax incentives promise but he's also been threatening you know country saying look not countries companies saying if you build factories in another country we might hit you on taxes which is really not a great message to send where you can only build here and you can't build anywhere else you think I'll just blow in smoke though guy he could be yeah we're gonna find out tomorrow I went it's starting tomorrow I went I wanted to hit on one point that was a Maggie story also like talking about cutting taxes by the way this is not a given that US companies are gonna use this this money for an incentive so I'm quoting directly from Maggie's story now in 2004 the US American companies to bring in the profits they had earned overseas in the hopes they would hire more workers most of the money went to executives and shareholders instead so there's there's no you know silver bullet to solving some of this stuff okay here's a perspective from the chat Ignace BM says Trump is for free markets that alone gives the tech industry a good environment it's a good point it is a good point that's definitely a good point I I would I would say that it definitely gives some of the tech players you know an opportunity to work with him related to that um regardless of the fact of like we'd you know what they might disagree with him on social issues or what-have-you so what-what Mottola phone does Trump use again do we miss it I'm not sure I'm not some Android but oh gosh he also has an iPhone okay I get a mini has like a lot of money so he might be able to have all the phones the best phones I'll give him this it's better than a blackberry right yeah and on that note let's call today cool all right thanks everybody yeah thanks for the questions okay the 3:59 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner google play music and of course cnet.com seen it thanks for watching we'll be back next Monday coming on to my day guys then oh so you have a good weekend everybody you