MALE SPEAKER: Thanks, everybody, for joining us
at "Talks at Google."
Today's guest, I'm very proud to introduce.
Alexis, don't call him Alex, Ohanian, who has just
published this book, which you can all get here,
and you should all read.
I had the great opportunity to read it before it came out,
and I enjoyed it immensely.
I am surprised to see, however, that we don't believe
in putting the title on the cover anymore,
so it's on the back.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Who needs to go with convention?
MALE SPEAKER: Without their permission.
So thanks very much, Alexis, for joining us today.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Thank you for having me.
[APPLAUSE]
MALE SPEAKER: So not to give away too much of the book,
but I just wanted to start by asking you
a little bit about a story that happens early in the book
that I really enjoyed, which is apparently, when you were
a teenager, you started out in a CompUSA
pitching software demos to basically an empty store
for hours at a time.
So tell me a little bit about that,
and how you think it might have actually surprisingly prepared
you for what came after?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, I was a teenager
when a buddy of mine Jacob-- shout out, Jacob Winthrop,
was like, hey dude, one of my childhood friends,
you want a job demoing software at a CompUSA?
And I was like, sure.
I don't know what that entails, but it's
going to pay me like, $10 an hour.
And I'm like, hell, yes.
So I show up, and on my first day,
he puts me in this little booth.
Actually, you guys remember what a CompUSA is?
There are probably a lot of you who have no idea.
It was this amazing store where you could go and buy
all your computer-related needs.
And they put me in a little booth.
And it was this company called [? Sydea ?], which
was one of the many corpses from the first tech boom.
But at the time, they were paying us this absurd amount
of money, $10 an hour, to basically every 30 minutes,
do the same pitch, the same like, 10 minute pitch,
of whatever software or hardware we had at the time.
So it'd be like, look at this amazing mouse.
It is a great mouse.
I remember we played this one, there
was a Madelaine math-- I think it was a game.
It was one of those point and click adventure games for kids.
And I practically learned French at the end of those two months,
because we'd be playing the same thing over and over again.
But all that's to say for like, a chubby teenager
to get up in front of an audience every 30 minutes
and literally have the worst experience a public speaker
could have, which is everyone ignoring you--
MALE SPEAKER: Like, worse than being a stand-up comic.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Right.
You were basically annoying people
who were just trying to shop.
And they're always looking over like, god, really?
You just did this 30 minutes ago.
MALE SPEAKER: You were like, the pre-internet version of spam.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I was a spammer.
Yeah.
I mean, I was, I would say a step probably
below the dudes who are always handing out
flyers on New York street corners.
And I had my little megaphone and my headset,
and just demoed software.
But it was-- and you actually put this
very well as we were talking.
I guess it was like, my 10,000 hours
moment with public speaking.
And it was a great way-- I mean, it's all practice.
Look, anyone you see up there who's like,
an amazing public speaker, even a good public speaker,
they weren't born that way.
They just spend a lot of time doing it.
And it's shocking how terrified people are of it.
But you all need jobs at doomed companies
to just get over it for a couple years.
MALE SPEAKER: Now, now, now.
You're not making any predictions about Google there?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I don't think you
guys have to worry too much about Google.
You guys actually, you wouldn't show me the room,
but there is a room that literally prints money here.
I'm not allowed to see it.
MALE SPEAKER: Shh.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Not allowed to see it.
But I know that.
MALE SPEAKER: That's a Google X thing.
We don't talk about that.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I see.
All right.
MALE SPEAKER: So speaking of companies
that were not doomed, another big section of the book
is about Reddit, which of course, you
were one of the founders of.
And it's really striking to me in reading the book,
you tell the story.
And of course, you tell the story
about how your Y Combinator experience was
really pivotal to that.
But the Y Combinator connection comes back
in almost every chapter of the book that follows.
I'm sort of curious, one, what do
you think about that community and its value,
not just to your company, but to the startup scene in general?
And then maybe a harder question.
If that pitch at Y Combinator had not worked out,
what do you think would have happened?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Wow.
OK.
Well.
So first and foremost, Steve and I--
I got to give you the full thing.
Like, Steve and I were seniors at UVA.
And I had talked to him-- basically,
I had an epiphany at a Waffle House.
Realized that I didn't want to be a lawyer.
Sorry.
I just--
MALE SPEAKER: Thank you.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: And thankfully, I
realized I wanted to just live like a college student working
on fun projects.
And I had this friend of mine, Steve,
who was a talented engineer.
We had talked about stuff for long enough.
Anyway, I convinced him to work on a company
with me called My Mobile Menu, or MMM.
That was the name for it.
AUDIENCE: [LAUGHING].
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I can never tell if that's
a good response, like great idea,
or that was a stupid name.
But anyway, I convinced him to do
this instead of taking a job at a software company.
And during our senior year, his girlfriend
saw an article somewhere on the interwebs
about a guy named Paul Graham giving
a talk on how to start a startup.
And he was up in Boston.
And it was during our senior year spring break.
So of course, we went to Boston instead of going to a beach,
because laptops suck on beaches.
There's not a lot to do there.
A lot of screen glare.
It's just not fun.
MALE SPEAKER: Sand.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: And we heard him give this talk.
There's rarely WiFi.
It's not fun.
And we heard Paul give this talk.
And we lucked out.
Steve approached him afterward to get an autograph.
And I followed and said, it'd totally
be worth the cost of buying you a drink
to pitch you on our idea.
We came from Virginia.
Like, hear us out.
And he was shocked.
Shocked that, I guess, we came all the way from Virginia
to Boston, and said OK.
And one thing leads to another.
A few weeks later, he announces Y Combinator.
He had given us really good feedback on MMM.
And we applied and had a great interview,
and then got rejected.
And then got drunk.
And the next morning, he called back--
MALE SPEAKER: It's good that it went in that order.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Right.
We would have known the exact reason
why wed gotten rejected if we had just gotten drunk first.
It would have made the interview more fun, but it hurt.
It hurt.
And they called us back the next morning and said,
we don't like your idea.
It's too early.
2005, right, the smartest phone on the market
was a Treo with a stylus.
Remember those things?
And like, BlackBerry was still a company.
And I guess Palm was still a company too.
MALE SPEAKER: What, no love Newton?
Come on.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Anyway, it was too early.
Aw.
Another wonderful product.
But like, it was ahead of its time.
And we lucked out, because he calls up.
And I'm like, hello?
And Paul says, listen, we'll let you do Y Combinator.
Just come up with a new idea.
Do something on the web.
Mobile's too early.
So we come back up there.
We speak with Paul for an hour.
He asked what our problems are every morning.
And we say, a bunch of things, including
how to find out what's going on in the world.
And Steve have loved Slashdot for many years.
I was just reading a bunch of news sites in my browser
every morning.
And that became what would become Reddit.
And so, all that's to say Y Combinator changed our lives.
Even after the success we had with Reddit, for Steve and Adam
and me to some extent, it was a no
brainer to do Y Combinator with Hipmunk.
And look, that's not to say there's obviously-- everyone
knows about this sort of Y Combinator mafia
in that network.
We don't do anything illegal, but it's
that very strong network among founders.
If nothing else, I think it is great
because it has helped people really appreciate how-- they
were the first ones to really show, if you invest less
money than it costs to get a Ford Focus,
you can have a billion dollar company within a few years.
I mean look, no matter how you feel about Y Combinator,
I think part of reason it's been so special
is they genuinely care about founders doing right
by their founders.
And I think that more broadly helps the greater ecosystem,
because now investors can't get away
with being jerks in the way that they used to even 10 years ago.
That founder friendliness has a ripple effect.
And so, yes, it's influenced.
I'm very appreciative, because it's made me who I am.
And the reality is, if we hadn't gotten that call back,
we would have gone back to Virginia
and tried to prove Paul and Jessica wrong.
We would have showed them MMM is going to take over the world.
We probably would've stayed in Charlottesville, Virginia,
which is a great college town, but not the biggest market.
And we probably would have languished
for a few years trying to figure out what was going to happen.
Maybe we would have gotten lucky with the app
store finally coming online.
Who knows?
MALE SPEAKER: All I know is all the college kids at UVA,
they could have had a great mobile ordering service.
And you just--
ALEXIS OHANIAN: If only.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, it's very disappointing.
It's very disappointing.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: We abandoned them.
But what is so cool now is there are so
many companies that are doing this.
And someone's going to win the day,
and then we'll never have to wait in line for a frappuccino.
So there's that.
MALE SPEAKER: So!
One other thing that comes through to me
as I'm reading the book about, obviously, you start Reddit,
and then you guys go on and do Hipmunk,
and you've done a whole bunch of other great startup-related
ideas, and supported a lot of other startups,
you're not a technical person, sort of by your own admission
in the book.
You were not the coding chops behind Reddit.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Nope.
MALE SPEAKER: And you haven't been the coding chops behind
any of these other startups that you've-- so, I'm sort
of curious.
A lot of people in this room don't have that handicap.
God bless you.
But for those of us like myself, I
was a liberal arts major undergrad,
I'm sort of curious, what are your thoughts about,
is being a technical person more and more necessary?
Less and less necessary?
Is it orthogonal to the whole question of being in a startup?
I'm really curious about your prospective
in a world full of hardcore coders, not being one.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: You know, the running
joke in that first batch of Y Combinator--
and this is back when it was in Boston, all right,
but it was maybe a dozen or so companies-- was,
what does Alexis do?
And they'd always ask this about Steven.
At some point, it was clear they weren't joking.
They were genuinely concerned.
Because I think I was the only non-technical person in YC.
Maybe with one exception.
But also, YC's very biased.
This whole tech industry for startups
is so biased towards technical founders, which
is why it's so important to be able to write code.
Because if you have an idea, congratulations.
You are one of everyone.
Everyone has great ideas.
So it is more important than ever.
And if I could do it all over again, I don't want to brag,
but at Howard High School, I was the best in my Pascal class.
I loved programming.
MALE SPEAKER: And you knew how to pitch software
in 10 minutes.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I knew how to pitch.
I had that going for me.
And I was very proud of my mascot doodles as well.
But at the end of the day, if I could do it all over again,
I would've stuck with computer science when I got to college.
What happened was I met Steve freshman year.
He just lived across the hall from me.
And I was so excited, because here's another geek.
He was playing video games.
We were talking about gaming PCs we had built.
And at some point, he's like I'm in engineering school.
I do CS.
And I was like, oh, I think I'm going
to be pre-med or something.
That lasted a week.
I ended up being a history major.
And it was clear he was someone--
I feel guilty saying this.
But it was clear, he was the kind of person
who-- when a talented or fairly talented
high school athlete goes to college and meet someone who's
very clearly, you just know, she's
going to be in the Olympics one day.
And you think, well, I'm probably going to ride the pine
and have to figure out something else to do.
I felt that way when I met Steve.
Here was someone who was clearly just
a brilliant technical mind.
He was going to go off to do things.
And I was intimidated by it.
MALE SPEAKER: He ruined it for you.
You were like, I'm not going to do that.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: And the the first version of Reddit
was in LISP-2.
And he spent a sad 48 hours trying to work with me.
I was trying to learn LISP for about 48 hours.
I still have a photo of that journal entry
where I just said, this hurts, dot, dot, dot.
That was not fun.
I still can't look at a parenthesis
without like, shaking a little to this day.
MALE SPEAKER: I think you're selling yourself a little bit
short.
Because I think a lot of what you talk about in the book
is the importance of figuring out what users want,
and really paying attention, being there, listening
to their complaints, answering them.
And the truth of the matter is I'm guessing Scott probably
didn't have the time to do as much of that as you did.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yeah.
Steve was busy actually building the site.
MALE SPEAKER: Steve, rather.
Sorry.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yes.
So what I tell non-technical founders today?
One, learn how to code.
You can get started right there.
The tutorials that are available today
versus even eight years ago when we
started Reddit are orders of magnitude better.
But if you do manage to convince a technical co-founder
to work with you, be ego-less.
Be willing to do anything, whether it's
ordering the takeout, dealing with the lawyers,
negotiating the cell phone bill.
Like, do everything else.
Create and care so much especially early
on about those few users who are actually
willing to try your new service that no one has ever heard of,
that has a weird typo, and care so much about them.
Because those people are crazy.
Those people are amazing and wonderful.
And like, those are the ones who are
going to be those early adopters, those evangelists.
I mean, that's how we built the audience at Reddit.
That's how we did it at Hipmunk.
That's how I see non-technical founders doing it all time.
But really, I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here.
But developing and writing code is the most valuable skill
of the century.
And like I said, if I could do it all over again, I would.
MALE SPEAKER: So in the book after the acquisition
of Reddit, you did a whole bunch of really interesting things
that were not just about making the next million
dollars or whatnot.
So say a little bit about that.
It struck me that a lot of the stuff you did
were much more civic-minded than I
think I'm used seeing-- usually men who cash out from startups,
I don't see them doing the kinds of things you did.
And so I'm curious, what put you on that path?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Oh, wow.
I should probably give all the credit to my mom.
I don't know.
I mean, I think when you have the fortune that I had
of being a 23-year-old millionaire,
you can go one of two ways.
At the end of the day, though, what anchored me so much
was having the relationship that I had with both my parents,
but especially my mom, that made me appreciate
what really mattered in life.
And I won't go into too much detail
because it usually makes me sad and cry.
So instead, what I will say abstractly
is most 22, 23-year-olds, whatever,
they don't have the wisdom that usually comes with age when you
actually start questioning your mortality,
and wondering what's going to happen,
and what you'll care about when you're on your death bed.
As a 23-year-old, I knew very, very well
what people cared about when they were facing death.
And that something I wish I could, trust me,
I wish I could not have had that happen.
But the advantage was it gave me a perspective
that I think usually, we aren't fortunate enough,
I suppose is the word, to get until much later.
So all that's to say, it was easy because I knew that there
were not going to be-- I never wanted
to have things that made me happy.
I wanted to have experiences and actions and a legacy that
made me happy.
And look, I think altruism is selfish.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not a monk here.
It is an opportunity for us who have
done so well to make sure other people can too.
And look, I also say this, you correctly identified my gender.
But it is also, as a straight white dude,
the way I like to describe it is it's kind of like playing
on easy mode.
I played a lot of video games too.
MALE SPEAKER: No, really?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: That's not obvious.
And I don't think it in any way takes away from success
that I'm proud of that I feel like I've earned.
But it's an admission of the fact
that it is just a little easier for things
that are not of my control.
Like, it's the way the world is, unfortunately.
But it makes me really aware of the asterisk.
This isn't like a Barry Bonds kind of asterisk.
But it is an asterisk that points out
that, yeah, I had advantages other people don't have.
And if I really believe in the power of the internet,
it's for anyone with a great idea to be awesome.
That's why I wrote the book.
That's why I'm going on a crazy 150 stop bus tour.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, actually, I was going to just ask.
Say a little bit about that bus tour.
Because I thought that was-- for an the industry--
if you read the tech press, I mean,
I would love to do a study of every company mentioned
on Tech mapped.
And it would be very interesting to see
if there was anything between the West Coast
and the East Coast that is ever mentioned on TechCrunch.
I don't mean to single them out.
It's true, I think, of all the tech press.
What made you think, let's go across the country in a bus?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, I think you're absolutely right.
And you're talking a guy, mind you--
Reddit was not once covered in TechCrunch
until the day we got acquired.
I mean, we're based out of Somerville, Massachusetts.
We're still in a startup hub.
But there is very much, most of the tech press
stays to the Bay, New York, Boston, the Coast.
And last year, this pissed me off,
because I kept hearing Silicon Valley-- no offense,
guys-- defeated Hollywood in the battle against SOPA and PIPA.
And it's like, yeah, OK, you all showed up.
But the whole country showed up.
Millions of people--
MALE SPEAKER: The whole world.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: The whole world, right?
And so, I wanted to illustrate this as best I could.
And instead of just talking about it, we crowd-funded a bus
and drove it through the Heartland for 10 days.
We visited Google Fiber in Kansas City,
and took a number of other stops,
and met with farmers, and truckers, and startup founders,
and students, and all kinds of people
who were using the internet to be awesome.
Whether it was starting companies, running their family
farms better.
All that to really just show off that it wasn't just
Silicon Valley.
The internet economy is not just a few zip codes here
in California.
It's the entire world.
At least for our politicians' consideration,
it is the entire United States.
Every one of their constituents lives
in like, a digital district.
And so I thought, all right, that was fun.
That was my beta test.
Now let's do it for five months and go to 75 universities.
Because I basically want to deliver the class or the talk
that I wish I had had while Steve and I were at UVA.
We lucked out, right?
We heard Paul Graham was giving a talk in Boston up at Harvard.
We got up there.
But I want to deliver it.
I'm excited, because we're going to go to Ohio State.
Arizona State, all right?
I don't know how many Arizona State alums are in the crowd
right now.
Represent.
All right?
So Arizona State has a reputation
of being the school that has a very good time.
Would that be accurate?
When we announced the tour, and we
had all the obvious schools-- and I wanted to make sure
we hit a number of large schools.
Not just the Ivies.
I went to UVA.
I went to a public school.
But still, not just the obvious candidates.
Arizona State,
I don't know what they did, but that came out in droves.
There was a deluge of emails and tweets
from people at Arizona State.
Undergrads and grads--
MALE SPEAKER: They heard about MMM,
and they were all like, we need more of that.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Maybe.
I hope so.
At the very least, at the very least,
they were pissed off because they care about this stuff.
They want that spirit of entrepreneurship,
because it is there in pockets.
But they want someone to come in really be like,
yes, there's no reason why you can't do this too.
And it was great.
And I have to admit, even I was a little surprised at first.
Then I was like, shut up, Alexis.
Stop being surprised.
If the thesis is true, this is not just something
that kids at Stanford care about.
And obviously, it's easy to just cherrypick and be like,
every kid from Stanford wants to start her own startup one day.
And that's probably true, actually.
But more power to them.
But this is a nationwide, this is a worldwide phenomenon.
And it's not just starting companies.
It's getting your first film funded on Kickstarter.
It's opening your first Etsy store.
It's using these platforms, even if you're not building them.
MALE SPEAKER: And have you taken that message
out to other countries as well?
I imagine this is a message that a lot of people
are ready to hear.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yes.
And it's been funny.
Because of interesting-- I don't know how exactly
the world works with a publishing and licensing
internationally.
There have been a number of people abroad
who have had trouble getting the book because it's
not technically published there yet,
even in digital form, which is kind of a mind job.
So they found ways to acquire the book
on the internet using things.
Which is great.
I'm happy the ideas spread.
And there has been a ton of requests to go abroad.
But I'll tell you, I feel like I learn more from those things
than I could possibly present.
One of the stories that had such a big impact on me
was going to Egypt maybe a month or so after Mubarak felt.
And it was a tech entrepreneurship conference.
And here I am in Cairo talking a few dozen entrepreneurs who
are literally revolutionaries.
Like, they call founders like me and David Karp, Larry
and Sergey revolutionaries.
That's bullshit.
No offense to those guys.
But like, we're not revolutionaries.
That's a great hyperbole to throw in a magazine.
But like, these were people who were actually trying
to forge a new Egypt, and in the process
were also starting companies, and had the same ambitions.
They ask the same damn questions you
get asked in Brooklyn from a bunch of tech founders.
It's obviously very different starting a company
in Egypt versus here for lots of sort of macro reasons.
But at a micro level, they're just
trying to make something people want just the same.
And to see that same kind of hustle is so inspirational,
because I realize the life lottery ticket that comes just
from being born in the States versus being born anywhere
else, and how easy it is to just open a laptop and get
started on a business.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, absolutely.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: So I think it's a good time
to get to the politics part of our program today.
Obviously, a chapter of your book is about the SOPA/PIPA
that you played and Redditors--
ALEXIS OHANIAN: And Google.
Thank you, Google.
MALE SPEAKER: We did our part.
And Wikipedia.
And all kinds of other folks participated in it.
I'm curious.
What got you interested?
What made it possible when that happened for you to sort
of say, hey, yeah, this is something
I want to try to do something about?
And do you think there are any real lessons
that you want to impart to people about what you learned
and what the internet hopefully learned.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Oh, yes.
So I fell into this.
I had not been terribly politically active before this.
I mean, I voted, but I was not by any means an activist,
or any way really that passionate about it.
And then I got an email from a friend
of mine, Christina [? Shi ?].
And she said, hey, some friends of mine
are working on this thing called Fight for the Future,
and they're really worried about these two bills, SOPA and PIPA,
and they may actually become law.
And I took a look.
And I'm reading through it, and I'm like, no, no.
This is so stupid.
There is no way this could actually become.
And I start emailing, and I realized very quickly
that, no, actually, these bills are considered
to be inevitable, inevitable, in Washington.
They had Democrats.
MALE SPEAKER: They were wired.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: They had Republicans.
It was done.
The check was signed.
MALE SPEAKER: It was like, the Chamber
of Commerce and the unions agreed.
And they were like, well, that never happened.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Right.
Let's take advantage, right?
This would be at a time when, even back then,
I know it's hard to believe, government
was seemingly dysfunctional.
Back then.
MALE SPEAKER: Compared to what?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Good thing we got that one solved.
MALE SPEAKER: Exactly.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: But this was something
that was ostensibly bipartisan.
It was.
They had Democrats and Republicans lining up.
Hollywood, the entertainment industry,
had dropped about $94 million in lobbying.
It was all finished.
All going to happen.
At the time, I was just transitioning out of Hipmunk,
and it was clear I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't
participate, because Steve and I never
would have been able to start Reddit if either of those bills
were law.
And don't get me wrong.
I would've loved if my peers at Facebook,
and Twitter, and everywhere else were also joining in,
but it's fine.
It's fine.
MALE SPEAKER: We were there.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yes, I know-- no, I
know-- well, dude, between Google,
and then the Wikipedia blackout was the big one.
Because that made it-- I was ignored by even my friends who
are producers in the media up until Wikipedia went dark.
Because then, top 10 website.
Actually, I remember checking Wikipedia
at like, five minutes past midnight,
and I was pissed off because it was down.
And I was like, oh, no, wait.
Right.
Good cause.
This is a good cause.
MALE SPEAKER: [LAUGHING].
ALEXIS OHANIAN: And I felt that rage for a minute.
I was like, what's happening?
Oh, right.
But it was after that that all of a sudden, the phone
starts ringing, and I spend 24 hours pretty much on TV
explaining why the internet's enraged.
But like, all of this is to say, like I said,
I got a fortuitous email.
I was down in DC a week later.
And I started meeting with senators and reps
and their staffers.
And what was so wild was they were actually listening to me.
The ones we met with, at least.
This is a small sample.
But they were actually listening.
We would go around the table.
We'd have our three minute elevator pitch
for saving the internet.
And I just told my story of Reddit,
and how Steve and I got this thing started out
of an apartment for $12,000, and now look what it's doing.
And that story of the American Dream, that economic story,
was enough to get people to perk up their ears.
Because look, as sad as it is, the thing
that actually moves them is the potential of being
accountable for losing jobs.
MALE SPEAKER: Jobs.
Economic.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Jobs.
Jobs.
I actually went on the technology subreddit
the night before and asked for advice.
I said, should I talk about censorship?
Should I talk about the economic repercussions?
And it was great.
I was getting talking points from the internet.
And everyone was saying--
MALE SPEAKER: What could possibly go wrong?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, touche.
I lucked out because the ratio of cats to good advice
was actually pretty good.
Not too many cats.
But they all said, don't even bother with censorship.
And it was just cynicism.
There were a few people who claimed
to be staffers or former [INAUDIBLE] I
said don't even bother.
No one cares.
Talk about the jobs.
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Mentioned jobs every two seconds.
Jobs.
MALE SPEAKER: You mentioned in the book--
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Jobs.
MALE SPEAKER: Exactly.
Jobs.
The protest in New York that you attended in person.
The fact that one of the things you said-- I mean,
there's a whole bunch of people who
came out in IRL to protest against this.
And you asked mostly techies, I assume, how many of you
work at companies that are hiring?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yeah.
Every hand.
MALE SPEAKER: And I thought that was great.
Very powerful.
And that's exactly what people in DC can hear, for better
or for worse.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: And that message resonated.
And we saw a bill that went from inevitable to unthinkable,
almost overnight.
After the blackout on the 18th, you saw people running.
Running, because a bunch of citizens picked up a phone,
called up.
A bunch citizens signed petitions.
A bunch of citizens actually got engaged.
And millions of disparate people-- this
was a leader full movement.
It wasn't just a couple people pulling strings.
This was a decentralized, very internet kind of story.
And it worked.
It actually worked.
It did something that everyone in DC said was not possible,
and it defeated an entrenched lobbying group
that has spent their entire industry basically trying
to buy Washington to write laws to preserve
their outdated business models.
I'm a little biased.
But we actually won.
And so for me as a kind of political virgin,
that was so dangerous, because it inspired me so much.
Because I was like, holy shit.
Like, the system's broken 99% of the time, but look,
it actually worked.
And it was thanks to the internet
that we were able to connect and amass this.
MALE SPEAKER: I was really struck.
As part of that fight, as people talk about it in retrospect
now, there is almost a sense of magic about,
and then there was a blackout, and then the law was defeated.
But there's been a lot of great stuff being
written about actually what happened.
And one of the things that I think people shouldn't forget
is Tumblr.
Tumblr, early on, they did an interesting--
they blacked out pieces of their website.
And then they created, basically hacking together existing web
tools, they hacked together a web
to phone interface that led straight
to the congressional switchboard of your member of Congress.
And I thought that was just such a great concrete example of,
it's not magic.
It's existing web tools, bringing the technologies
of the web, and just tying stuff together to make things happen.
And Tumblr wasn't the end of the story,
but I think it was a very important beginning
to the story that led to the Wikipedia blackout,
and Google's partial blackout, and all that.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: The impressive thing,
and the thing that I hope to impart on
as many people as possible, is that we all
have a responsibility.
And I think, just as citizens, it
is so easy to get so cynical.
It is so easy to get so disappointed and frustrated.
But we have--
MALE SPEAKER: Again, this week in particular.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Trust me, I'm just like,
face-palming most the time whenever I get updates,
about what's going on in Washington.
It is still our government.
It is still a government by the people, for the people.
And the internet presents-- it is just a tool--
but it presents a tool that can be used to let us actually get
the leverage and input that we deserve.
That we've always deserved.
That we always should have had.
And so that part of that is just being-- I mean,
I go around demoing the contact Congress app on my smartphone,
just because I like the accessibility.
I've been calling my rep staff the last couple weeks
just to check in.
Like, I like the accessibility of knowing
that I can push a button--
MALE SPEAKER: Government going to go back online?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Just be like, hey, what's happening?
Like, we should feel that same kind of accountability.
Because so much of the inane stuff,
I can see the photo of some stranger's breakfast
right now on Instagram, or what have you.
That's great.
I'm happy that exists.
I'm not going to hate on it.
I like looking at food.
But if we get that kind of transparency and insight
into random things about random strangers,
shouldn't we have that kind of insight into our government?
Into the people who represent us?
MALE SPEAKER: So this was the thing
that really struck me reading your book.
And frankly, even after the SOPA/PIPA fight.
I agree with you completely.
I mean, that kind of transparency
is absolutely crucial.
But another piece of it, frankly, is the money piece.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yes.
Huge part of it.
MALE SPEAKER: And I've wondered for a long time,
why is there no Kickstarter for politics?
We've taken the tools of transparency.
We've taken the tools of phone calls and all of that.
But we haven't democratized the tools
of giving money to politicians when they do things we like.
Because that's positive reinforcement.
It can be effective.
So that's always struck me.
Why haven't we crowdfunded the government we want to see?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I don't think we've had candidates yet
that have really been able to have the savvy, or the gusto,
or the what.
MALE SPEAKER: Let's crowd-fund them.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I mean, right?
Like, I mean, there are--
MALE SPEAKER: What are you doing next fall?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, Google, I wanted
to come here to announce that next fall,
I am running for nothing.
Here's the thing.
We're going to get a candidate.
And because she's a technologist,
she's going to instinctively understand
how valuable this is.
And with that, we're going to [INAUDIBLE] technologically
right.
Let me go down the list.
OK.
Solved problem is crowdfunding.
This is a solved problem.
Right?
We could do this tomorrow.
We could do this in hackathon over the next 24 hours.
One of my favorite examples of a Google Doc,
shameless plug in action, is the nonprofit watsi.org,
which manages every single financial transaction
on that nonprofit in a public, real-time, of course,
Google Doc.
So at any moment, you can go to this nonprofit's website
and check up on their finances.
Every transaction.
That kind of transparency is solved.
That's done.
They're doing it right now.
And they're an example that's probably
going to affect every nonprofit going forward,
because why else would I want to give to a non-profit that
doesn't give me that kind of accountability?
Watsi can do it, why can't you?
We get someone running for office, crowdfunding.
Actually publicly sharing every dime of where money gets
spent, where it comes in.
That is already public, it just comes out too late
in real time.
Then all of a sudden, now we have a representative
or a senator who we can point at and say, she did it.
Why the hell can't you?
And have that example as a very real, concrete-- except
and all this software is pretty much off the shelf.
Like, I'm spending the next five months
on a bus just talking to college students.
But I hope it inspires some who are
at least-- I guess they'd have to be old enough to run.
Well, they could do it at the local level.
The point is, it is going to happen.
And when it does, I can't help but feel
like they're going to have such an amazing amount of support
from all of those people who called up
to fight against SOPA/PIPA.
All those people who care about the internet.
The internet public is just about everyone.
And it's about time we actually could flex some muscle,
because this is what we deserve.
MALE SPEAKER: So I totally agree with all of that.
And I look forward to seeing that.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: We should find this candidate.
[INAUDIBLE]
MALE SPEAKER: That's a great idea.
That's a great idea.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Take it, please.
Someone do it.
MALE SPEAKER: But let me just say,
I think it's sort of funny.
I mean, in Silicon Valley, we work at Google,
you read Reddit.
You forget that outside of this bubble,
the internet actually has a very different reputation,
if you will.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yeah.
MALE SPEAKER: And I just wanted to ask you,
so much to the press about the internet
is dominated by the bad guys, whether it's
malware people, or revenge porn.
It's like every media cycle finds some tiny corner
of the internet to say that this is what the internet is.
And of course, Reddit, you probably
have more than a fair amount of experience with this problem.
So I'm sort of curious, what are your thoughts?
Is this a PR problem?
Is this a real problem?
What, if anything, should the internet do about it,
or not do about it?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: OK.
Well, so the internet-- in this instance,
when I describe the internet, I'm
talking about this technology.
The internet is a reflection, like any other tool,
of the people who use it, whether it's
a hammer, whether it's a printing press,
whether it's a thing-- and whether it was the 5 o'clock
news 30 years ago, leads and leads,
we have a tendency to talk about this stuff,
because mundane things never make headlines.
Joe is a reasonable person one day.
Jane is a reasonable person the next day.
That doesn't get attention in a way that the extremes do.
That's not to say it's not a problem.
It is just that like all things, the stuff that is basically
the statistical minority, but that is doing offensive, awful,
whatever stuff, is the thing that gets the spotlight.
That gets the attention.
MALE SPEAKER: Unfortunately, then I worry, then
it gets the laws.
What leads the news becomes the thing the member of Congress
wants to introduce a law about.
I was just reading a blog by a law professor
in Santa Clara, Eric Goldman, who's great.
And he had a great line this morning.
He said, "I have never seen any law passed
by any state about the internet that
has been anything other than terrible."
And so I wonder, as long as that's the mechanism,
you see these extreme stories, and then
that's what yields policymaker attention,
we have this kind of-- I wonder if this
is going to be the next thing the cat signal gets used for.
And I guess that's my next question.
Where do you think the next internet cat
signal worthy threat to the open internet comes from?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: OK.
I mean, Verizon's at it again with that neutrality stuff.
Or at least thwarting it.
There's TPP, and I don't think any of us
have a clue what's going on there,
because it's all closed doors.
World leaders not telling us jack.
MALE SPEAKER: That's treaty that will include some copyright law
provisions that will involve a number of different countries
that are negotiating it in secret.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Totally in secret.
Copyright reform seems like it's on the table.
That could be great.
I'm hoping it's great.
MALE SPEAKER: Well, I will say this about copyright form.
That committee of Congress, they have not
forgotten PIPA and SOPA.
They are still paying close attention.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Excellent.
MALE SPEAKER: So that's pretty good, all things considered.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I mean, the hope there is we can actually
roll back copyright to stop protecting Mickey Mouse
and actually start helping people
innovate and be creative.
It's scary.
And I was able to dig up some old stuff from-- because I went
UVA, of course, I love quoting TJ.
And I found some old letters of his
where he even debated putting an explicit limit
in the Constitution for personal monopolies.
For copyrights, trademarks.
Because there is a short-term reason,
and a great reason to have copyright.
But the way it has been abused has taken it
so far from its intended purpose that it's actually
stifling innovation when it's supposed
to encourage it and enable it.
That's probably the next one, where
there's going to be some meeting, something coming up,
and it's going to be on us to rally as many artists,
as many musicians, as many authors,
as many creatives, copyright makers,
as possible to say, no, no, no, hold on.
Actually, the reason my buddy-- oh my gosh,
I can only think of "Dinosaur Comics" right now.
The reason that Ryan North, who creates "Dinosaur Comics,"
was able to remix "Hamlet" into a Choose
your Own Adventure version of "Hamlet"
and raise $600,000 on Kickstarter
was because it's in the public domain.
I don't think the estate of Shakespeare loses anything--
MALE SPEAKER: Because Disney has not yet
made their animated "Hamlet" version.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I know.
And it's like, we are so much better
off because it is in the public domain.
The saddest one is the fact that Dr. King's speech still
requires some kind of financial transaction to be viewed.
And it's like, that is itself an amazing remix
of so many amazing works.
And yes, sadly enough, here is one
of the most important public speeches of the 20th century,
and someone needs to be paid if you want to watch it.
MALE SPEAKER: One of my favorite stories
is the song "Happy Birthday."
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Right.
The lyrics.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah.
Currently in litigation with f Music claiming they
own the copyright to that.
now It was just a story about an online stream of a live event,
where they started singing "Happy Birthday,"
and the audio got shut down, because it was like, sorry,
that's a match.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Wow.
Worst birthday ever.
MALE SPEAKER: Anyhow, I want to leave time
for questions from this great audience as well.
So if folks have questions, I think there's a mike somewhere,
so that the video can hear what you had to say.
AUDIENCE: Thanks so much.
I loved what you said about Y Combinator and the culture
of like startup founders helping startup founders.
And that's one of the things that I
see so often on the internet.
When we look at why the SOPA and PIPA stuff failed
was because there was just a unified message
and a unified front amongst the internet citizenry.
How do we continue to take some of the biting commentary that
comes out of people online, when we forget that other people are
people buying keyboards?
How do we do that?
How do we foster that spirit?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I wish--
MALE SPEAKER: You mean to say that unifying YouTube and G+
comments won't solve it?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: No, it will not.
MALE SPEAKER: Inside joke.
Inside joke.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: That's the reality, right?
I mean, Facebook's the closest thing
we have to the realist of identities.
Real name, real photo.
And people still behave like awful human beings
to people they know in real life.
I mean, despicable stuff.
So the reality is, I think no matter what,
some extent of awful people will feel comfortable saying things
behind the device than they would in person.
You could make it so their parents have
to live-stream watch every comment they type.
Like, there's some subset that are going to always do that.
So on the one hand, there's the glib answer
of like, finding a way to like, electrocute them
whenever-- I mean, you guys, you,
could maybe plug that in Android somehow.
Unfortunately, it there is a certain societal thing
we can do for etiquette in terms of trying
to encourage that better behavior.
At some extent, nothing will be fool-proof.
The gift and the curse to an open communication platform
is people are open.
Whether they're open to say things-- because remember,
that same ability to say something
that you would not feel comfortable
saying to someone's face helps someone.
It helps someone say something.
If they live in a community where
they would be persecuted for their sexuality,
it gives them the confidence to say stuff
that they couldn't say with their real name attached.
Because they might be persecuted.
That is a great gift.
But the curse of it is, again, it lets some asshole abuse it.
And I-- only Sith deal in absolutes.
So I can't say-- you have to take the good with the bad.
And we need to do as much as we can to curtail the bad.
And I think a lot of that's just going
to come from us as a society.
I mean, so much of this has come up.
And I think specifically of cyberbullying.
And I think of Louis CK's recent observation, which
was so spot-on, in which she said,
the reason I don't let my daughter's have cell phones,
or really use the internet much is
because I need them to understand
that when they are bullies, it hurts people.
If you bully someone to their face,
it is a learning opportunity.
And as a kid, usually, you feel empathy.
You can't really help, unless you're a total sociopath,
but feel empathy.
But when these kids come up-- these whippersnappers--
when these kids come up and can do it
all from the safety of a phone, they never feel that empathy.
And here's Louis CK on "The Late Night Show."
And I'm like, damn, Louis.
You've nailed it.
I don't have a solution yet, but it is very clear
that this is a risk that we run.
Look, you guys are Google you can figure it out
probably faster than I can.
But it's a real issue.
Because we don't know.
This is all new territory.
The best thing we have going for us right now is this
is all a new frontier.
And in a lot of ways we, especially the people
here at Google, have an opportunity
to sort of guide that in some way, shape,
or form, whether through the technology that we build,
or the things we do.
But to some extent, we also have to accept the fact
that we can't totally control it.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I have a question towards your history major.
You mentioned Jefferson.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Any other figures, or maybe even trends historically,
or time periods, or things like that,
that really influenced your career?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Woah.
MALE SPEAKER: Oh.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Woah, deep.
Oh, man.
I do not get asked this question.
All right.
I need to make my history professors proud.
Uh, man.
One of the things that has really and tru-- well, OK.
When I think of the future of media,
I am so-- well actually, let's back this up.
Tim Wu wrote amazing book called "The Master Switch."
And it's a great pairing with my book,
because this is real talk from Professor Wu.
He's just like, listen, all the same shit Alexis
is saying about the internet they were saying about radio,
about film, about TV, about all these other communication
platforms.
And it was going to be so democratizing, and so amazing,
and so wonderful.
And every single one of them, every single one of them,
whether it's through big business, big government,
or some combination of the two, have
been what they are today, which is anything but democratic.
So I am very, very cognizant.
I keep that book like, floating in my head.
As optimistic as I am, there is a very real chance
that this ends up going the same way of all
those other platforms.
And humans are resourceful.
There's going to be some other iteration of it.
But I don't even want to go down that road.
Because right now, we have such an opportunity.
It is the world's largest library,
and the world's largest stage in one.
And it's accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
Which is part of the reason why I love you guys
doing this balloon internet thing.
Awesome.
Like, access is still a huge part of it.
And there's some author who wrote a book that's
saying Google was making us stupid.
Can't remember who it was.
Very link bait-y title.
Yes, I don't mind as a history major
not really remembering that the Civil War was
from 1861 to 1865, even though it was,
and having to Google that later.
Because yes, that is a cost.
Maybe I'm a little dumber because I don't remember
that particular fact, because I know
I can Google it, or Bing it.
[LAUGHTER]
But again, that's the curse.
The gift is anyone with an internet connection
can now get the world's knowledge about the Civil War
at their fingertips for nothing.
My trade-off?
That's totally worth.
I will gladly be a little worse at trivia night
if it means the world can get access to knowledge that's
historically been only accessible to those who
had the power, the money, or the connections, or the whatever.
And again, it's always a gift and a curse.
There's always, I think generally speaking,
with any of these new technologies,
it's always there.
But that is the thing.
And this one feels like it's going to be different.
I know a lot of people in tech have
gotten in trouble saying that.
But I really hope so, because in just the last five years,
it feels like we are on the cusp of really doing
something special.
And hopefully, not following suit
and following in the path of all those other technologies
before it.
Because that would suck.
That would really, really suck.
So let's not screw this up, people, OK?
OK
AUDIENCE: Hey.
So you said that your time at Y Combinator
had a huge influence on your success,
and you think that it's a great opportunity for young people
to get involved in the startup industry.
If you look statistically at the type of people
that are in Y Combinator, it tends
to be overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white,
overwhelmingly middle to upper middle class.
How do suggest bringing that kind of opportunity
to join the startup industry to people that have generally
been disadvantaged, like minorities,
women, that kind of people?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Well, so the only asterisk
I put on that is we actually-- I don't
have the numbers in front of me.
But typically, Southeast Asians also do well at YC.
But yes, definitely majority male, and still. .
And this is an issue for Y Combinator.
This is an issue for tech.
And where does it begin?
I mean, the short answer is, it is largely
a reflection of the applicant pool to Y Combinator.
So, all right.
How do we broaden that applicant pool?
I hope visiting 75 universities brings more people,
like a dose of what is possible.
And at the end of the day, I don't
care if they apply to Y Combinator.
I just want them to get interested in building tech.
But this is such a big problem.
Because the bias for tech investors
is to invest in founders who aren't themselves technical.
And so you are looking at fixing and correcting
what has been a problem for a very long time.
And so part of it is attacking it at the early stages, where
it's like, the reason I'm on the advisor board of [INAUDIBLE],
and I'm actually fund-raising for every STEM classroom
in Brooklyn right now, is because it's getting access
to technology in classrooms for kids at a very young age.
It is increasing the number of women and people of color
who are doing STEM who are interested in computer science.
They are amazing organizations that I support,
like Black Girls Who Code, that are doing a great job better.
That have single-minded focus on bringing women of color
into technology and teaching them how to code.
There are so many elements to it.
And I mean, from the tech community's standpoint,
there is also kind of a responsibility
that we all have to create an environment and a place that
is just welcoming.
And I don't know whether it is conduct at hackathons,
whether it is the kinds of events we run,
whether it's the people we have on stage.
I mean, it's all of this stuff.
It's a ton of stuff.
And I'm sure there's more that I could be doing.
But the low-hanging fruit that I've
been able to find myself most effective with sort of breaks
down to like, again, whether supporting classroom
[INAUDIBLE], whether it's helping organizations that
are specifically geared towards-- Girls
Who Code is another great one.
Geared towards actually getting these valuable, valuable skills
in the hands of the people who need it most,
as well as just sort of generally trying to be an ally.
But it's not something that's going
to unfortunately change overnight.
But I can already see an improvement
versus eight years ago when we were starting in tech.
So it's not a reason to get complacent,
but it's a reason to feel good about it.
I mean, I was so pleased.
The last Google science fair thing you guys
do with all the high schools, I don't
think there was a single dude finalist.
And that's like, awesome.
Sorry, guys.
But like, it's things like that, and stories and examples
like that that I think will hope to show and work on this.
But like, it's far from overnight.
AUDIENCE: So, it was kind of interesting.
There was another talk just before yours.
And it's an editor from "The Economist"
who's writing a book.
The book is called "The Writing on the Wall,"
saying that this version of new media
is actually kind of old media as well.
And how in the past, Romans especially, they
used to share information, and transmission
was relatively cheap, because you
had people that could transcribe it, and copy it, and send it
around.
And so, he was actually like, arguing the fact
that the establishment as it was before the internet
is kind of the fad.
And that this thing about being able to share information
more freely is the way things were done before the barriers
to entry became so large that people couldn't do it.
So I guess there's kind of like, some hope for-- like,
you're saying to be optimistic about,
that is where things are going.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yes.
And I actually bumped into him in Portland, actually.
And I was able to get a signed copy of his book.
So I'm a chapter in, and I know exactly what
you're talking about about ancient Rome.
What's so cool is, yes-- and it's really easy
to gush about how great the internet is.
All of those things that have been so successful
really are just better scaled versions of things humans
have always done.
Whether it's social media.
I mean, crowdfunding, right?
As soon as we had currency, actually people were bartering.
They were probably like, hey, let's all
pitch in to go create this thing.
Some of the best ideas are the ones
that are just highly scaled versions of things
human beings have always done, instead
of having to teach us a new skill.
MALE SPEAKER: And on that same note, I'd encourage any of you,
the next time you're going to complain about Reddit trolls
or the quality of YouTube comments,
there's a great article online-- I'm sure you can find it using
your favorite search engine-- about the graffiti in like
Vesuvius--
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Yeah.
Awful stuff on those walls.
MALE SPEAKER: Exactly.
It really is.
People are the same.
It's scaled, but the people are still the same
as they were then.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Let me, because it's again, always
very helpful.
One of the things that makes me so much happier is, so yes,
people always been the same.
And we can get all deep about like,
the duality of man and humans and the range of stuff.
But look, I think historically, we've
always had forces that have always tried to,
for whatever reasons, whether they were businesses trying
to sell us more toothpaste, whether they were governments
trying to make a scared, whatever, we've always
been pushed toward sort of fearing our neighbor
and being more afraid and being worried.
I really do believe most people are actually pretty decent.
They're just decent people.
And the fact that these stories, these sort of benign stories,
can now scale a lot further, when
you can read the story of some cute kids
in LA Children's Hospital putting up a sign that
says "Send Pizza," and that can go around the world, and all
of a sudden, a bunch of random strangers
are just buying pizza for a bunch of kids in a chemo ward.
And that story now doesn't just stay within the family.
I'm sure at some point in the history of hospitals, ,
someone did some random kind gesture like buy some pizza
for some sick kids.
But now that story scales.
And now that story gets seen by more people,
and more people actually go, oh, you know what?
That's kind of nice.
Like, that's cool.
And we can actually finally start scaling those subtle,
kind gestures of humanity that never would have made headlines
before.
That never would have gone beyond
our initial social circle.
Again, I am optimistic.
But I really hope we get a little closer to all realizing
we're all just carbon-based lifeforms
trying to get by on a little blue dot.
At least until the singularly.
And I saw Kurzweil earlier.
That's going to be amazing.
But until then, we got to try not to fuck this thing up.
MALE SPEAKER: As they said in "Star Trek," "Ugly Bag
of Mostly Water."
AUDIENCE: With all the revelations
of what the NSA has been doing to spy on a bunch of people,
I was kind of wondering-- sorry.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: I was like, is that God?
AUDIENCE: I was kind of wondering
what your thoughts on that were?
I know a lot of politicians seem to be OK and in support of it.
I can kind of guess what your thoughts are.
But two, also, how do you feel that the internet may change
in response to this information?
And also three, if there's anything
you think we could do to prevent any bad outcomes that
might come of it?
For example, you hear about Brazil and China
talking about decentralizing the internet.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Oh, man.
All right.
Well, NSA.
Yeah.
What is creepy, like there's a brief dystopian
section of the book where I'm like,
here's what's going to happen if we fuck this up.
And.
I joke about everything the NSA has
been doing for the last few years, which was awkward.
Because I didn't want that to be prophetic.
That is incredibly upsetting to me.
And I think more and more Americans
are realizing that-- maybe this is again wishful thinking.
But we have a Fourth Amendment that
protects our right to privacy in [? meet ?] space.
Right?
Our mail.
Our home.
If you want to see it, great, it's due process.
Let's get a warrant.
That should also apply to our digital email,
or our digital mail, and our digital space.
And I hope we can connect those dots for politicians,
so that they realize that one, that boundary needs to exist.
Absolutely.
Full stop.
And then we can actually have an honest, open, public discussion
about how much it's all a trade-off between security
and privacy.
And last I checked, this is ostensibly still a democracy.
We should have discussions about this.
We should be able to publicly make
decisions about just how much privacy
we're willing to give up in the name of security.
And so far, not only, we haven't had those discussions at all.
It's been a total cluster.
It's violated all of our rights to privacy.
And we are coming up on the 12 year anniversary of the Patriot
Act in a few weeks.
And as a nation, we were really worried, really
scared, and made some decisions that I think now
12 years later, now that we can all catch our breath
and look at, were not in the best interests of our rights
as citizens.
And I hope we can look back at those things now.
I mean, that was a Republican President, George W. Bush
that signed that into law, and then
a Democrat who has upheld them.
And so, everyone of us, regardless
of our political stripes, I believe,
is really starting to look critically at this.
And I hope we get that line drawn.
Because we need it.
Because we shouldn't have CEOs having
to deal with these requests when they're not
actually in the spirit of the Constitution.
So I am encouraged by the fact that humans are always
resourceful.
Like, every now and then, I see the Darknet thread bubble up,
where people are like, it's cool,
we're going to make our an internet again.
Long-term, I know humans are resourceful.
It doesn't matter.
Right now, how much time and money and energy
does the Chinese government spend
trying to keep people from looking at photos
of the Tenement Square Massacre?
And yet still, every day, people thanks to Tor
and other pieces of software, look at those things.
We are very resourceful.
And that in the end gives me hope.
I just don't want it to have to come to that.
And so in the meantime, again, it comes back to us
being active citizens, and actually using this government
that in theory represents us to not be stupid, and actually
have technologists in the room.
AUDIENCE: Thanks for coming.
I've really enjoyed seeing your work on "The Verge" with--
ALEXIS OHANIAN: "Small Empires."
AUDIENCE: --"Small Empires."
It's awesome.
So I want to know how that's going on,
and where you're going with that?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: So "Small Empires"
is a show that I do on "The Verge"
to basically highlight New York tech.
And not just show off the founders,
because everyone gets to see founders.
Show off people who work there.
And.
More interestingly to me, people who use these platforms.
In my way, it's like startup propaganda.
I want people to watch it and be entertained and think,
holy shit.
Not only can I start one of these things,
I could work there.
And I can even use this thing.
I'm a poet, and I can use rap genius to annotate my art.
That's an actual example.
And also, of course, show off the New York tech scene.
So we have part two of season one
that just launched on Tuesday.
It's going to continue through-- we've got six episodes up now.
The OKCupid one might be my favorite.
It just went up.
The couple on that episode will make you feel so unromantic.
Every one of you is going to feel
like you need to step up your romance
game after seeing that episode.
Mark my words.
But what do I hope?
I hope it scales.
I hope we can get it on, I don't know, Netflix,
so we get it somewhere were a bunch more people can even
see it.
And a lot of people have said, hey, come to Victoria
and do a "Small Empires" here.
Come to Orlando and do a "Small Empires" here.
And you know what I said?
I love traveling, but I cannot possibly do all that.
I'm on a bus for the next five months.
So one of the things we're trying to do,
and I don't think it's been done before,
is I'd like to open source the show,
or license out the show to some extent.
Kind of like how TED does TEDx.
I want someone to be like, hey, listen.
I want to run the show in Victoria, British Columbia.
Because we've got an amazing startup community.
We're building "Small Empires."
I want to show it off.
And I'll be like, cool.
Here's what you need.
Go forth and make awesome stuff.
And like, some basic branding guidelines.
Here's how you shoot the episode.
This isn't rocket science.
It's three cameras. .
Four really talented people do all the real work.
And I just sit there and talk to people.
Like, it can be run for pretty cheap.
And I would love to see "Small Empires" sprout
all over the world.
Because I want these ideas to spread.
I could spend a lot of time on planes
and go to a bunch of different communities
all over the country.
But like, I want to see "Small Empires, Nairobi" from someone
who actually loves Nairobi as much as I love New York.
Because like, I can love Nairobi,
but not in the same way I love New York.
And like, let's let locals show off their communities
that they're proud off.
Because to hell with what I think.
MALE SPEAKER: Solutions that scale.
We at Google care a little bit about that.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Is Google going to help me
with "Small Empires?"
AUDIENCE: I'm from Orlando, so sign me up.
MALE SPEAKER: There you go.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: That was not a hypothetical either.
Stay tuned, man. "Small Empires, Orlando."
And I was shocked too.
I was like, really?
Orlando?
And he was like, yeah, man.
We're doing shit.
It's not just Disney.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was kind of interested on what technologies
you think are going to continue help the growth of kind
of like, an open internet?
I saw the post by Shriner yesterday
about Aaron Swartz' software finally shipped
for a secure Dropbox.
And I used to work for iFixit, and all
of their commentary with press now,
like the press is actually requiring
that they use PGP on like, all of their emails,
which is pretty intense.
I mean, they're tech reporters but I figure that can spread.
So I'm kind of curious.
PGP's old, SecureDrop's new.
And I'm kind of curious like, in the next five years, what kind
of technology do we need to keep in open internet?
I mean, there's the Darknet stuff.
MALE SPEAKER: Say the word Tor again.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Tor, Tor, Tor, Tor.
Wow.
Here's what I love.
The nature of innovation is I actually
don't have a fucking clue.
I don't know.
It seems to me that, yes, secure file storage, secure mail,
this whole Lavabit fiasco, there is clearly even
from a business standpoint, I think
there's going to be an increased demand
in an actual secure messaging system.
There's going to be increased demand
for an actually secure storage system.
And it sounds like we're working towards getting that.
I would hate to see a sort of Balkanization that comes out
of the internet because of this.
Just even the standpoint of like,
there are going to be people who are going
to look twice at using a service.
Let's say it's an American company who's
servers are here in the States.
MALE SPEAKER: Let's say.
ALEXIS OHANIAN: That's terrifying to me.
If I'm putting on my businessman hat,
I'm like, that's terrifying.
We lead the world, essentially, in the internet economy.
Like, the world is using Google.
I generalizing here.
But like, there are not a lot of industries
left where the United States is sort of king of the roost.
And that is not guaranteed.
It is not guaranteed in any industry,
but especially one that is as competitive and fast
to grow as the internet, as online.
And I worry that if we aren't building these things
ourselves, someone else will.
And before long, the next big thing pops up,
and it's in Rakovic, or it's in Berlin, or go down the list,
where the laws are there that uphold the kind of privacy
rights that I wish we had in the States.
Well, that we ostensibly do have in the States,
but aren't actually being enforced.
So, yeah.
There are business opportunities here.
And you guys are lots of smart people.
I say, I hope my book does not necessarily
inspire you to go leave Google and start a company.
Because you guys have been such wonderful hosts.
MALE SPEAKER: I was looking in here.
I seem to remember a line in here about the only people
to go to Google are--
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Are waiting until they get the right idea
to go start a startup.
That's what they are.
MALE SPEAKER: Sure.
AUDIENCE: I have to give a little background
for this question, so I'll try not to take up too much time.
Early last year, I was in college.
I just graduated from Brown University.
And someone I new named Sunil Tripathi had disappeared.
And no one knew if he had committed suicide.
No one knew if he was kidnapped.
No one really had known what happened to him.
So take a step like, a couple months
to April, when the Boston Marathon bombings happened.
So no one had found this missing student at Brown.
And Reddit led this massive manhunt to try-- well,
there was a massive manhunt around the country
to find the Boston Marathon Bomber.
There was chaos everywhere, and Reddit had kind of
formed this mob mentality, where they thought that this missing
student from Brown was one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
And I was at the college at the time,
so I saw like the real, direct harm it was causing.
His family was shattered.
I wasn't particularly close with him, but I knew his girlfriend.
And she was just, I don't know.
She was just completely stunned by the whole ordeal.
But this is the background for my question.
Various forms of media have always had checks and balances
for free speech, like print media, like libel.
You can't print libelous information.
Right?
So I guess, how do you mitigate the power
of the open, free internet with its ability
to do harm to people?
ALEXIS OHANIAN: Traditional media
has gotten it wrong in the past.
I mean, even after the Navy Yard shooting,
CBS and NBC misidentified someone
who was involved in the attack.
This is to say, humans are themselves the problem,
whether they are trained professional journalists
or not.
There is no good answer for this.
Because yes, there was a particular subreddit
which had maybe 1,000 people using it that
was responding to an FBI request to help track the Boston
bombers.
And they misidentified someone.
"The New York Times" did a very thorough investigation
in the Sunday magazine about what happened.
And it turned out that a journalist
had tweeted that Reddit post.
A journalist, a professional journalist, had tweeted it out.
And then, it got re-tweeted.
Even Perez Hilton joined in.
And that spun it out of control.
So there are lots of humans responsible for this.
And at the end of the day, there just
is not an easy answer for this.
If one journalist draws attention to a random Reddit
thread, and it gets picked up, and "The New York Post" decides
to put it on their front page, how after the fact can
we actually say, what-- and this goes back
to being the gift and the curse of the open platform.
MALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE].
ALEXIS OHANIAN: It's an awful, awful thing that happened.
And unfortunately, there's no easy solution
for the next time.
I mean, every one of those trained journalists,
even the one who re-tweeted that Reddit thread may
make mistakes.
And now we've given an opportunity for anyone
with a connection to have a soapbox.
And they're going to make mistakes.
And so in response, Reddit has sort of
to the best of its ability now sort of said,
no more of these kinds of witch hunts.
You can't create a subreddit to try to identify the Navy Yard
shooter, or any other person who the FBI or someone wants
to track down.
But the reality is, they'll just do it on Twitter.
Right?
That's what happened during the Navy Yard shooting.
They just do it all on Twitter.
And people are unfortunately, as they have always
been, capable of being, even when
they have the best of intentions, being wrong.
And it is a challenge that will always
exist as long as we have people.
And once we have sentient robots,
they'll just enslave us.
So like, I don't know.
There's no easy answer.
I'm happy with response Reddit took.
But I just know that in a world with social media, whether it's
a journalist or Joe Six-pack, it's
probably going to happen again.
MALE SPEAKER: OK.
Well, I wanted to say thanks.
Thanks a bunch for coming.
And once again, plug the book.
Go read it.
It's available right over there.
And thank you, Alexis, for joining us.
[APPLAUSE]