My guest today is Okta CEO Todd McKinnon. Okta is a platform that big companies use to manage security and identity across all the many apps and platforms their employees use. Most of us run into it as login management at work.

SaaS companies like Okta are under a lot of pressure in the age of AI, which Todd even said on an earnings call he's "paranoid" about. But you'll also hear Todd say that for Okta specifically, there's also a world of opportunity as the very concept of a digital "identity" has to expand into things that aren't really people.

Links: 

• CEO ‘paranoid’ as vibe coders stir SaaSpocalypse fears | The Register
• $300B evaporated. The SaaSpocalypse has begun | Forbes
• How AI assistants are moving the security goalposts | Krebs on Security
• What everyone’s missing about AI and development | CRN
• Agents run amok: Identity lessons from Moltbook’s experiment | Okta
• Breakup of IBM is Antitrust goal (1972) | New York Times

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general now that the Trump DOJ has decided to settle its part of the case — even as several states including California, New York, and Texas carry on. 

To break it all down, I’m joined by Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner. Lauren’s our resident court expert, and she’s been chronicling this trial from the beginning.

Links: 

• States’ anti-monopoly case against Live Nation continues | The Verge
• The Live Nation trial restarts with a ‘velvet hammer’ | The Verge
• Live Nation settles government antitrust suit | The Verge
• The Live Nation settlement has industry insiders baffled | The Verge
• Listen to Live Nation CEO’s alleged threats to a concert venue | The Verge
• The threats and bare-knuckle tactics of MAGA’s top antitrust fixer | WSJ
• The Trump admin just gave Live Nation the gift of a lifetime | NYT
• How Live Nation allegedly terrorized the concert industry | The Verge
• The US government is trying to break up Ticketmaster | The Verge (2024)
• Taylor Swift vs. Ronald Reagan: the Ticketmaster story | Decoder (2023)

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Shishir Mehrotra, the CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, which is still its flagship product. Back in August, Grammarly shipped a feature called Expert Review, which allowed you to get writing suggestions from AI-cloned “experts,” and recently, reporters at The Verge and other outlets discovered that those experts included me, among many others. 

No one ever asked permission to use our names this way, and a lot of reporters were outraged by this. To Shishir’s credit, he did not cancel our interview and he came on and stuck it out. This conversation got tense at times, and it’s clear we disagree about how extractive AI feels for people. There’s a lot in this one, and I’m excited to hear what you think.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

• Why I’m suing Grammarly | New York Times
• Grammarly will stop using identities without permission | The Verge
• Grammarly to keep using writer identities unless they opt out | The Verge
• Grammarly turned me into an AI editor and I hate it | Platformer
• Grammarly is using our identities without permission | The Verge
• Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman | The Verge
• Grammarly wants to become an ‘AI productivity platform’ | The Verge
• Viacom v. YouTube, 2007 | Electronic Frontier Foundation
  

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, let’s talk about the big Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Right now, Paramount head David Ellison is very much acting like he’s over the finish line after outbidding Netflix, which walked away after what seemed like a done deal. 

Back in January, I asked Puck’s Julia Alexander to walk me through Netflix’s reasoning, and today I’m digging into Paramount’s with Rich Greenfield, a media and entertainment analyst and cofounder of research firm LightShed Partners. There’s a lot going on here, including the biggest question I’ve had throughout this entire saga: why would anyone want to buy Warner, which has basically killed every acquirer it’s had for the last quarter century?

Links: 

• David Ellison’s plan to compete with Netflix: Paramount+HBO | Rich Greenfield
• The worst acquisition in history, again | Prof G Media
• David Zaslav gets the last laugh | THR
• Warner Bros. Discovery agrees to Paramount merger | The Verge
• Tech, TV, Movies & News: Ellisons on brink of colossal empire | NYT
• Pete Hegseth says ‘the sooner David Ellison’ buys CNN, ‘the better’ | NYT
• Warner Bros CEO to pocket $887 million from Paramount deal | Reuters

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jim Lanzone is the CEO of Yahoo. It's basically impossible to sum up Yahoo's story over the last 25 years, but the short version is that once upon a time, Yahoo paid Google to run the search box on its website, and everything immediately went sideways. Jim calls it Yahoo's original sin.

But after a long series of mergers, spinouts, and a hot, weird minute as part of Verizon Yahoo is once again an independent, privately held company — and it's growing. But can Yahoo really take market share from Google?

Links: 

• Yahoo sells Engadget to Static Media | The Verge
• Yahoo sells TechCrunch to Regent | The Verge
• Yahoo Finance launches crypto partnership with Coinbase | Yahoo
• Yahoo Scout looks like more web-friendly AI search | The Verge
• Yahoo Finance launches crypto deal with Polymarket | Yahoo Finance
• Yahoo resurrects Artifact inside AI-powered news app | The Verge
• Yahoo Mail adds more AI to simplify desktop email | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Mike Masnick, the founder and CEO of Techdirt, the excellent and long-running tech policy blog. Mike has been writing about government overreach, privacy in the digital age, and other related topics for decades now, and he’s an expert on how the internet and the surveillance state have grown in interconnected ways over the past two decades.

I wanted to have Mike on the show to discuss the messy, fast-moving situation at Anthropic, the maker of Claude that now finds itself in a very ugly legal battle with the Pentagon. Instead of covering the daily drama, I wanted to dig in specifically on Anthropic's surveillance red line, and the important history and context around digital privacy in the U.S. that shapes how we should think about this going forward. 

Links:

• AI bros wanted Trump — now they learn what happens when you tell him no | Techdirt
• OpenAI’s ‘red lines’ are written in the NSA’s dictionary | Techdirt
• Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense | The Verge
• Anthropic launches new think tank amid Pentagon fight | The Verge
• How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance | The Verge
• Inside the backlash to the AI war machine | Platformer
• The Pentagon is violating Anthropic's First Amendment rights | FIRE
• Why the Pentagon wants to destroy Anthropic | Ezra Klein / NYT

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hasbro might be a toy company, but CEO Chris Cocks has spent the last several years pushing it more and more into the digital media, gaming, and collectibles space. That makes sense, since adults have money and kids don't. All those IP and licensing deals are working out for Hasbro so far.

But Hasbro is also facing a lot of risk from instability: in trade and tariffs, in politics and culture, and in the video game market, which seems to be in a more or less permanent state of crisis. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Chris Cocks on Decoder (2023) | The Verge
• Hasbro just made a massive ‘Harry Potter’ Announcement | Parade
• Businesses push for tariff refunds as Trump aides hint at fight | New York Times
• We’re finally seeing more of Hasbro’s forgotten space game | PC Gamer
• Xbox in is danger. Will Microsoft save it, or kill it? | Decoder
• OpenAI’s billion-dollar deal puts Mickey Mouse in Sora | The Verge
• A comprehensive timeline of JK Rowling’s descent into transphobia | Them

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today let’s talk about prediction markets, which continue to insert themselves into the news cycle and the news in increasingly weird, unsettling, and potentially illegal ways. 

My guest today is Liz Lopatto, a senior reporter at The Verge who owns what we cheerfully call the chaos beat. Liz has been writing a lot about prediction markets lately and especially why they all seem so intent on being perceived as sources of news — a position which directly incentivizes insider trading. That in turn creates a long list of very predictable problems.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

• Prediction markets want to eat the news | The Verge
• How anonymous bettors cashed In on the Iran strike | NYT
• With Iran, Kalshi & Polymarket Bet on the Depravity Economy | 404 Media
• Polymarket pulls bet on nuclear detonation in 2026 | 404 Media
• Polymarket defends betting on war as ‘invaluable’ | The Verge
• Someone made a ton of money betting on Maduro’s capture | The Verge
• Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO bets no | Decoder
• Prediction markets roll out war bets beyond Washington’s reach | Bloomberg
• Polymarket partners with Substack for some reason  | The Verge
• It’s MAGA v Broligarch in the battle over prediction markets | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman. Zillow is one of those apps that really exemplifies what you might call the smartphone era of software: the company built a great mobile app for looking at real estate listings, and it turned into not just entertainment for so many of us, but what has become a vertically-integrated platform for buying, selling, and renting real estate.

Jeremy’s argument is that the future of Zillow looks a lot like an end-to-end business platform for real estate agents, and we spent a lot of time talking about whether a business as local and as relationship driven as real estate can benefit from platform-level scale in the way he’s proposing.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Zillow’s new AI staging feature is impressively unimpressive | The Verge
• Zillow’s upgraded AI search will show you more homes you can’t afford | The Verge
• Zillow adds DMs so you can chat about homes you’ll never buy | The Verge
• FTC accuses Zillow of paying $100 million to ‘dismantle’ Redfin | The Verge
• Housing is frozen. Wacksman knows you’re still scrolling | NYT
• Wacksman on the US housing market | Bloomberg Talks

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re talking about the future of Xbox. Phil Spencer, a two-time Decoder guest who’s led Xbox for more than a decade, is stepping down. But in a shocking twist, his deputy long-assumed successor Sarah Bond is also out too, and the Xbox division is now in the hands of an Asha Sharma, one of Microsoft’s AI executives with no prior game industry experience.

There is no better person to talk to about all of this than Tom Warren, senior editor here at The Verge and author of the excellent Notepad newsletter. Tom is actually on parental leave right now, but Microsoft has a longstanding habit of disrupting his well-earned time off. So, Tom was gracious enough to come on the show after publishing a major scoop about what went down at Xbox this past week.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

• Inside Microsoft’s big Xbox leadership shake-up | The Verge
• Billions of dollars later and still nobody knows what an Xbox is | The Verge
• Xbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft | The Verge
• Read Xbox chief Phil Spencer’s memo about leaving Microsoft | The Verge
• Here’s what Xbox is working on for 2026 | The Verge
• AMD hints Microsoft could launch its next-gen Xbox in 2027 | The Verge
• The next Xbox is going to be very different | The Verge
• Xbox co-founder believes it’s being ‘sunsetted’ in favor of AI | VGC
  

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Hank Green, a longtime friend of Decoder and the co-founder and now former owner of Complexly, an online education company he started with his brother John in 2012. I say former owner because Hank and John have just converted Complexly into a nonprofit and given up their ownership of the company in the process.

That’s some of the purest Decoder bait that ever was, because it’s all about how you structure a company and how you make decisions about changing that structure. So of course I had to bring Hank back on to talk all about it.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Greens’ studio becomes nonprofit as they aim to make ‘trustworthy content’ | AP
• Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future | Decoder (2024)
• Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok | Decoder (2022)
• Hank Green and Sam Reich on running content companies | Decoder
• Hank Green and Sal Khan on AI in educational video | Decoder
  

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices