Apple wouldn’t let Jon Stewart interview FTC Chair Lina Khan, TV host claims
Apple wouldn’t let Jon Stewart interview FTC Chair Lina Khan, TV host claims
Tech company also didn't want a segment on Stewart's show criticizing AI.
I live life with the motto: Fuck Apple
It hasn't let me down yet.
There are 2 companies I would never buy from: Apple and Tesla.
Good choice IMO.
I decided to never buy another Apple product way back in the mid 80's, because of their protectionist closed in technology approach. Since then it's only become increasingly clear that that was the right decision.
Tesla despite trying to appear open, has the exact same mindset. Tesla can take control of your vehicle at any point in time they see fit.
That summary was quite the random walk.. I leave this article knowing less than when I came in.
Watching the actual Daily Show interview would probably be more helpful than this article was:
https://youtu.be/oaDTiWaYfcM?si=yKBpKqFXKgYxvyDL
It was a really good interview, Lina Khan was essentially a guest that Apple TV had blacklisted from Jon's now cancelled show, they break down some of the ways the Tech Robber Barons have been undermining regulations and laws, while making boatloads of money and manipulating the stock market. They then go into some of Jon's issues with Apple, his former employer, and why they had Lina Khan blacklisted as a guest on Jon's now cancelled show, and after hearing her speak I can see why, she's smart, and knows the topic well, and has some good ideas on how to fix some of the issues we have with regulating and controlling not just tech, but all out of control businesses. Then they discuss AI, how corporate leadership is going to fuck workers over completely using AI, and how AI is currently just a bunch of bullshit being used as an excuse to take our jobs and pay us less.
Thanks!
When Stewart started his show on Apple TV, I was interested, because I figure he wouldn't have gone there unless he had some assurances about being able to do whatever he wanted. And in some ways, the show seemed to be produced in a way that backed up that guess. It seemed pretty serious and not too concerned with ensuring ratings/engagement, and resulted in some awesome interviews from Stewart (better journalism than anything he's doing on the Daily Show AFAICT, though I haven't seen this interview).
I figured for Apple it made business sense to sell themselves as a media business that enables high quality content including some freedom of press values. I figured that they thought through how to distance themselves as a tech company from any views they disliked from their TV product, so long as people paid the subscriptions.
Of course, that they couldn't help themselves is of no surprise to anyone. The real surprise was that the show happened in the first place, and it'd be interesting to know if there was a struggle within Apple about the whole thing.
In the end though, the whole thing IMO is a good lesson in how news/journalism cannot be mixed with conflicting interests, at all.
It's really good that the story is being spoken about too by Stewart having first hand experience of how it went down ... because these sorts of interests are all over the industry and really need to be addressed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/oaDTiWaYfcM?si=yKBpKqFXKgYxvyDL
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Can you just make something up for the rest of us?
The chair of the FTC is a person in the USA, and was not interviewed by a not-chair on an Apple platform before he left the platform to take the chair Mondays on his old show.
I am surprised anyone with a career like his still depends on a publisher.
These large personalities, and the media world as a whole, would be so much better if they independently published.
Bingo
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over guests and topics were a factor in the decision.
She became the FTC chair in 2021 and has since garnered a reputation for an aggressive and critical stance against monopolistic tendencies or practices among Big Tech companies like Amazon and Meta.
"They wouldn’t let us do that dumb thing we did in the first act on AI," he said, referring to the desk monologue segment that preceded the Khan interview in the episode.
The segment effectively lampooned some of the doublespeak about AI, though Stewart stopped short of venturing any solutions or alternatives to the current path, so it mostly just prompted outrage and laughs.
However, the company is expected to roll out its first generative AI features as part of iOS 18, a new operating system update for iPhones.
iOS 18 will likely be detailed during Apple's annual developer conference in June and will reach users' devices sometime in the fall.
The original article contains 519 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!