Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Right, in part, because he thinks I'm fair, whereas he thinks a lot of other journalists aren't. What's the line between that and being you favor Facebook, because that's not the case at all. Number one, it doesn't drive subscriptions. I always make them free. To be clear, no one's going to have to pay to get access to that, because you shouldn't subscribe to Stratechery because you want to read Mark Zuckerberg. That's not a reason. But then it was really annoying, because Facebook had that bad earnings call and their stock went down. I'm like, I'm going to need to write an article about why this reaction is unwarranted. They're actually fine. It's going to be three weeks after I just had Mark Zuckerberg on. It's going to be a relatively positive article, but that's where you build up your reputation over years. Sometimes, you can't always be depositing. Sometimes you do a withdrawal. Me writing Meta Myths was a withdrawal on my reputation. Yes, it didn't look great that I just got an interview with Mark Zuckerberg and I wrote a positive article, a contrarian positive article about Meta three weeks later, but I hope I've built up enough credibility with my audience over the last nine years that they believe that I would have written that article with or without that interview. You're also unabashed about your incentives. You're like, look, everyone. My incentives are to have as many people subscribed for as long as possible. My incentive is not, I think I'm going to be Mark Zuckerberg’s best friend, so I'm really hoping that he invites me on as PJ and we get to hang out. It's tough because like I said, I'm super positive on Meta's advertising product because that's aligned with my passion. I do find the Zuckerberg one as the most challenging just because I generally have a contrary opinion about Meta overall, and it's generally positive, so I'm super wary about that. I also feel like I get more interesting stuff out of him than most other interviewers, so I want to do that. Surely, it's a feather in my cap to interview him, but I definitely don't want that to ever be perceived as, a lot of interviews don't drive subscriptions. I do it because, again, I want to push the tech product. A lot of people don't use my podcast product, and then it's a different kind of work. As you guys know, preparing for interviews is a lot of work. It's also different from writing an article.…

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