Brands vs. Covid-19

Justin  0:33  
Alright guys, this is gonna be our first episode of remote voices, our new video podcast here at Yak. We're just going to take a format of kind of talking about the top tweets of the week and giving our thoughts on them. Maybe that's remote work. Maybe that's just the coronavirus in general. We're just going to give our kind of feedback and have some open dialogue among co founders as well as bring on some guests. So we're going to go ahead and just start right into this. We got a couple tweets queued up.   This first one I think, Jordan you sent this in, didn't you?

Jordan  1:04  
Yeah, yeah, I saw Jeff tweeted the other day and I was like this is super fascinating and we have to dive into this I personally, I think this is really cool. I love this I think it'll be a thing.

Justin  1:14  
I am interested now that I have this whole setup like I actually just pulled the green screen down so that I would match my background a little bit more with you guys but I went ahead and looked at a bunch of like virtual backgrounds and it was very interesting how bad they were there was not like a great way to just find a background for this call. So I'm curious like what is gonna become the standard there? Is it like he says some kind of like ad unit, or is it going to be a brick wall? Or apparently I could make myself look like I was in a castle. I mean, Hunter you're more tied into the marketing side of things here. What are your thoughts?

Hunter  1:52  
Yeah, I don't know about ads, but I definitely see it like kind of like, like fortnight you know how you could buy like skins for your guns and for your characters, I could definitely see a marketplace where you could go in just the other day I was on. I was zooming on mobile. And the first thing that popped up was like, do you want a virtual background, and I've never seen that before. So obviously, there's somebody in the zoom office that's like, we have to push this out, because everybody's, everybody's on the train right now.

Justin  2:21  
I was on the call with Jason Calacanis just a little bit earlier. And the associate that started the call, must have had like the virtual feature turned on but didn't have a green screen. So it was just like a black background with his body cut out. And it was just weird, because it was like a disembodied human floating in black space, instead of it showing like an actual green screen background. So I feel like there needs to be some rules about how we do these virtual backgrounds, because otherwise it just looks creepy, I think.

Unknown Speaker  2:52  
Yeah, I don't know. I think it's really interesting. I'm really excited about it. It's like when, like when Drake and Ninja teamed up and like they did that stream. It's like Ninja ninja streaming songs now is like not how you like you get your song popular I kind of think of this as kind of like the same thing. Like if you have yourself like some gruesome background.

Hunter  3:10  
I could see like ninjas background like really popping off like $5 or whatever or like Gary Vee he has like that bookshelf behind him. Instead of having like, my bookshelf would look really cool open in New York City skyscraper.

Jordan  3:24  
Hundred percent

Justin  3:25  
I could see famous people like ninja or Gary Vee taking out like an ad where they say like, I'll put your book on my bookshelf, or I'll replace the ninja logo with like a logo of your company and you can click it and it takes to the website like these guys that have audiences I can really see it popping off. I don't know if zoom is the right system to have ad units because I feel like zoom calls are typically very internal. But affiliate streaming similar to this I can see it taken off.

Hunter  3:57  
For sure

Justin  3:57  
Cool, Alright, let's go to this next one.

Jordan  3:58  
Yeah, hundred percent.

Unknown Speaker  4:02  
I love this one because I had a recent conversation on Twitter. But basically the gist of this is like, should we be happy during a crisis? Right?

Hunter  4:14  
How about we go with a celebratory tweets, maybe just cheers your team members internally?

Unknown Speaker  4:20  
Like the idea like yeah, for us Yac, we're remote team. Should we be happy that we have a bunch of users coming in and be like, tweeting about the fact that we have new team signing up? Or is that in bad taste? Because it happens to be because of a pandemic?

Unknown Speaker  4:37  
I just don't understand this one because it's like, what's the alternative? Either just neutral news, or bad news? Like what? That doesn't seem right to me. I don't know. I disagree with this.

Hunter  4:48  
I saw somebody the other day. Maybe it was. It was Vlad from webflow. I think he said like, you know, I'm gonna cautiously say this, but I'm really proud. To my team, and then he went into like some sort of statistic. Like, you can do it in a way that's not tone deaf, but just not having any celebratory tweet when you did something that you're really proud of. It's just like, because it you had to think about it from a founders perspective. It's not just about you, it's about your team. So if you're not tweeting about it, that's also like, I feel like it's also telling your team that it's not that big of a deal. Maybe you could just do it internally. But it's like publicly saying, like, I'm proud of my team.

Unknown Speaker  5:29  
And also you team morale, like you. This is stressful for everybody. And if you're not taking those wins and celebrating those internally, as well as externally, that's going to affect your team and they're gonna all of a sudden not have that opportunity as an outlet to have some positive news in their life.

Unknown Speaker  5:50  
yeah, I guess my thing too, is like granted, the coronavirus is a little more extreme, but there's always something you know, bad happened in the real world. Like why why we do not, do not stop for those events or things like that, I don't know. It's real weird to me.

Unknown Speaker  6:03  
Yeah, I have a conversation on my Twitter yesterday, this girl tweeted out, I think we should cancel April Fool's this year for companies. You know, like every year companies do like prank products that they released and it's this whole thing. She's like, I think we should cancel it because I think it's tone deaf. I was like, yeah, you know, I don't think that that's the same as bad taste like, as long as you're not doing an in poor taste. There's an opportunity for companies to put out some light in the world, I guess and have some fun and like, release some tension, everything is so bad news, stress oriented right now. And I think that having this attitude of like, we can't have fun because that stuff is happening around us. It's just not going to help us move forward at all.

Jordan  6:50  
I totally agree. It's like misery just breeds more misery. It's so backwards in my opinion.

Justin  6:56  
Yeah, yeah. So it'll be interesting to see like how this pan out. I don't know if you guys saw that McDonald's changed their logo to like the arches being separated to show like social distancing and peep, they just renamed them out over it. So some marketing guy got fired over that because he thought it was a really good idea.

Hunter  7:21  
I don't agree with that

Unknown Speaker  7:22  
It'll just be interesting to see how brands deal with having, you know, commercials are typically not depressing and ads need to make you fall in love with a product. And if we're capitalizing on this move, we've talked about this a lot internally. How do you capitalize on this moment in remote work? Without it seeming like we're capitalizing on tragedy and I know Hunter, you talk to me a lot about toeing the line between that and a lot of it just has to do with language I think.

Hunter  7:54  
Like I said, I think it was webflow he he started off by acknowledging the situation But he's still did it anyway. I would rather that then some, I think there's two extremes. One is just not doing anything at all, like this guy is suggesting. And the other would be to just celebrate as if nothing's happening. I think there's a middle ground and I think we're, at least I'm doing the best I can on our socials not to, you know, be braggy like, don't get me wrong, like it's cool to have all the you know, have a great success and a great launch and obviously have users coming in. But we know why. So it's on one hand you want to celebrate on the other hand, it's it can definitely come off tone deaf because of the reason why it's popping up. So

Unknown Speaker  8:38  
Yeah, I mean, I think this next tweet, this is we got a couple series of Stewart from slack. There's a whole thread where he just goes into kind of his week and day by day, what the progression of the situation did to his company. And I found a couple of things in this really interesting. I mean, one, I do think he took that tone that you're talking about. Where he says like, Look, I am a human I am, you know, I understand that there's tragedy but at the same time, like I have investors, I'm a CEO and I have to run a business and so we have to make business decisions around this.

Jordan  9:14  
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think that's the worst alternative is just to like totally ignore. Like, what's happening like, sure. It's unfortunate in some regard but it'd be as a as a business it would be stupid to ignore what's right in front of you, in my opinion. I think that's even more tone deaf.

Justin  9:32  
We've got a couple things lined for him. Like I thought this was very apocalyptic sounding. He said, a quick drink snack with friends on the way home ends up being my last time in a restaurant. Like there was no like, there was just last time in a restaurant period.

Unknown Speaker  9:49  
It was interesting to me, because he had like a whole thread basically just showing how human he was. Can't tell if it has a political charge or not. But I think it's really interesting because, like, in his situation, he sort of plays both sides of it, because in one sense, he is a corporation. He is on Wall Street now. But at the same time, he is a human. And I think right now a lot of people are just throwing a lot of stones towards the pandemic of like, evil corporations, evil capitalism, but in this case, like I really like that, you know, he's, he's addressing the issue while also being like, obviously a capitalist like he's doing super well as in slightly just IPO'd, but at the same time, he's also showing that he's contributing to solving the problem and i i like that he did this because I actually didn't know who he was before he made this tweet.

Justin  10:43  
Oh, really?

Hunter  10:45  
Hmm.

Unknown Speaker  10:47  
So one thing that I found it was easy before we move on to this is he talked about tracking users down to the millisecond, which I thought was crazy. So they like had a he screenshotted. They're slack where they have like updates coming in. And it was down to the millisecond, like 10m, 10.1m, 12m users concurrent, I guess it's concurrently online. And that's impressive. It's A. impressive of that they can hold that amount of bandwidth and handle that. But at the same time, it's crazy to see the boon that happened because of the virus and how that affected them as a business. Mm hmm.

Unknown Speaker  11:27  
Yeah, I mean, hats off to them. Absolutely. I think Stewart's done a great job with it. And again, it's stupid to try to ignore what they're doing. I think they're doing super well.

Justin  11:36  
Yeah. And I think just like he said, like, he has investors, he needs to be talking about these numbers. He needs to be tracking them. He needs to be public about it because their IPO now so you know, having this stuff is almost required. I think for like filings. You have to say how many user numbers you have. They just had an earnings call like three weeks ago, I think and they were way under their expectations. And so now, a couple weeks later, being able to say we've got 12 million concurrent users online at the same time is insanely impressive, and it's going to help drive their stock up as well. I know Hunter, you talked a lot about even the legalities of just publicly talking about those numbers.

Unknown Speaker  12:18  
It scares me, man. It scares me. You know, because you see Elon, he's always getting in trouble for stuff like that. And he says he doesn't care. But it scares me that people are just constantly throwing out like, these numbers not realizing that sometimes they have way more impact than I think they realize. I guess.

Unknown Speaker  12:38  
Twitter has become like, too colloquial, like people just feel like its friends talking and they don't realize the impact of it being like public record.

Hunter  12:48  
Mm hmm.

Jordan  12:49  
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  12:52  
Alright, so I love this, this next one. For me. This was something I was talking about with my wife. Last week, she told me that the CEO of Mary, I think took half salary. Oh, and the owner was taking half salary both of them so that they could afford to pay hourly employee employees. And one of the things that I said was, this moment in time is going to define companies. It's going to be the make it or break it moment, depending on how they deal with it, depending on if they furlough employees, if they pay their hourly, I think Amazon right now is getting a lot of flack because they weren't paying hazard pay for a little bit. And they were requiring everybody to continue working in the warehouses. And, you know, likewise, I think Hilton today announced their CEOs foregoing all of the salary. It was like $30 million or something. And that just goes right back into those associates that can't work. But I'd love to know your thoughts and like, I think this tweet encapsulates what my thoughts were, that this is just going to define their brand, but I'm wondering if you guys have seen what other companies are doing or What's your thoughts on were.

Jordan  14:04  
Yeah, I mean, in general, I totally agree with this and you guys better than me like I'm a huge like people person first and I'm a huge fan of this and yeah, I mean, I agree because I think legacy is what ends up being what's most valuable in building brand. Sure, the products are important, but like if you're a horrible person or a horrible company, and you get a bad rap, it's really hard to overcome that. So yeah, I mean, I think this is what builds brand over the course of time and not just like gives you quick wins. I think this is super important. Answer.

Unknown Speaker  14:37  
Oh, man, this one's got me on the fence. Because when you look at 2008, there are several companies think GM was one of them. That was like, if you stick with us, and you take a pay cut, or maybe it wasn't you just don't get your pay raise. Then we'll make it back up to you later on. The CEOs taking a pay cut I can like I can take it away. It it to me, it just seems like everybody, I could be wrong. It doesn't seem to be coming out of like, a good place. It just seems to be like, Well, how do we get in front of the headlines right now? How can we make it seem as sort of a deeper? I'm not. I'm sort of indifferent on this one because I can't really tell. But that's what to me. That's what it seems like. But I do it. I mean, that's what they should be doing. Anyway. I don't know if a pay cut to zero. But you know, not making $30 million a year. It's like, I don't really I don't make $30 million so I'm not like "poor him".

Unknown Speaker  15:34  
What about the political side of this and say, Bernie, what's a billionaire shouldn't exist, period. Do you think that these guys even be making 30 million a year?

Unknown Speaker  15:43  
I mean, sure. It's it's that's the market rate for whatever they're doing. I get that part but I don't think that it's a head I don't think it's headline worthy to say, oh, man, this guy took a pay cut like, at unless you're unless you're somebody like zoom. Basically everybody should be cutting if you're cutting your your Employees 10% I don't see why you can't cut the CEO 10%. I don't know, it's a weird situation.

Unknown Speaker  16:08  
Do think employees should be taking 10% are having their hours reduced or should be paid regardless of their ability to work.

Hunter  16:15  
I don't even know.

I don't know, it's

because once you have people that are just they have their same employees, like my brother owns several stores. He couldn't keep up. He tried, he couldn't keep up with it. So he had to basically lay everybody off. And then when the stores repack, you open back up again, when the government allows him to, then, you know, everything can basically go back to normal, assuming that demand is the same as it was before. But at the same time, it's like I don't know. It's such a hard thing. We've never done something like this before. It's interesting.

Unknown Speaker  16:52  
I mean, let's take a different approach and not even talk about kind of what I was thinking maybe the moral side of it, you know, how does the company do that has a treat theirb employees, but let's just talk pure numbers. One of the things that I was talking about last week was just, I think you're gonna lose a lot of companies in this in companies that just didn't have two months of runway, they were so dependent on whatever their income was to survive that if they lose six weeks of income, they're just toast. And again, I think that this tweet still applies, which is how they deal with that, or what comes out of this when we start to realize like, wow, Airbnb, you know, lost two months of service, and all of a sudden couldn't survive, which is my prediction. Like, I think they're gonna have a really hard time surviving after this. What do you guys think about that concept of a startup or a company that their entire profit revenue, you know, income is all based off of consistent income, versus what happens if we lose maybe two months of income?

Unknown Speaker  17:56  
I mean, I think for me, the initial word that comes to mind is certainly scary. The idea of going under if you don't have a couple of weeks of businesses is really terrifying to me. But I think also it's kind of like a testament to kind of like the current landscape right now. Like there's a lot of hype around just like, raise as much as possible and move super fast. And don't worry about making money or having money in the bank or things like that. So yeah, I don't know. I think it's scary when just like not having money in general. But two that, like, this is weird can like vibe in the air right now to like, get as much money as possible and kind of burn recklessly. And that's kind of like the startup way right now. So yeah, I think it's really dangerous. I think it's dangerous, not only to the startups, but like people like a human level.

Jordan  18:41  
Because, you know, imagine how about that?

Justin  18:45  
Yeah, you're the one who's always pushing probably like the growth mindset. Jordan's a little bit more about like the math of it. And I'm more about the fear complex, like what happens when we run out of money and you're thinking, let's just grow and let's get users and I think that's what most startups are working towards.

Hunter  19:05  
So

Unknown Speaker  19:06  
I've been racking my brains about this because it's really confusing for me, because if you think about it, how would you know that like right now How would you know the difference between a startup that was going to fail and failed because of the pandemic? And so to me that that's the that's really the issue right is because if they were going to fail anyway, should we bail them out? Should they be able to get loans and at one sense I'm like empathetic towards the you know, the folks that are going to be losing their jobs but at the same time it's like you know, if Airbnb really wasn't, I mean, Airbnb is a little different because they don't have you know, they're the hosts aren't employees in a sense, they just get paid based off of, you know, their their homes. But in in those in those business models that don't work. Normally, I just, if it was going to fail anyway, I don't know it to me. It's just like It just it was inevitable that was going to happen anyway. So

Justin  20:06  
I think the theatre industry is toast, because I think during the next two months, Disney's just going to do direct releases to Disney plus, Netflix is going to pop by anybody else that's owned by some larger conglomerate like HBO just released directly to that. You know, do you think the theater industry I guess deserves is maybe not the right word, but do you think they'll get a bailout? Do you think they would survive a bailout if they got one

Unknown Speaker  20:35  
Theater industry was declining anyway. I mean, there was talks about I mean, we already know that malls were declining we know the theaters was shut down

Justin  20:44  
All malls shut down like yesterday

Unknown Speaker  20:47  
Movie pass shut down not too long ago. I mean, I just don't see these companies coming out of it anyway. They probably will get a bailout because he obviously need those stores and those employees but I don't know.

Justin  21:01  
Question is really interesting for the movie theater industry. They're 100% based off of people coming into a physical location. All those employees are out work right now. And there's no way that profit margins are high enough that the theaters could continue to pay them.

Unknown Speaker  21:18  
What's really interesting to me is so the day the government is like, Alright, everybody, you can go back to normal life and do things as normal. Do you think these businesses will still be impacted because everybody will still have some have some sort of like hesitancy to like, go to a movie theater? I know, for me, for example, I you know, for probably at least a month after I'll still be kind of timid to go out to the public places. So I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Justin  21:42  
Well, you did that live with hunter yesterday. And I think somebody asked like if you were buying stock in GameStop, and I was like, Gamestop is going out of business. So they announced yesterday 300 stores are closing.

Unknown Speaker  21:57  
I think GameStop was already closing but I mean to To answer your question, Jordan I saw LeBron James just said that he's never given somebody a high five again.

Unknown Speaker  22:05  
Yeah, I know

Justin  22:06  
Really?

Unknown Speaker  22:07  
Obviously, not serious about that. But it'd be funny though, because like, two months from now, I don't think I'll be I still won't be in a high five and people give people handshakes, right? It's gonna last a long time. This isn't, this isn't going to be okay. Government says it's healthy that therefore we're going to all you know, right. Like, I don't, that's gonna happen.

Jordan  22:29  
Yeah, I'm really interested in that. It's gonna there's definitely gonna be at least like a awkward two month period where everybody's kind of like, Alright, what do I do now? Like, what's socially acceptable? What's not going to get me sick? Yeah, I'm super interested in that.

Justin  22:42  
So what do you think malls and movie theaters will become gyms and yeah, like, what do you do with a mall? We already have abandoned malls here in Orlando and they're just sitting in

Hunter  22:53  
Gaming. Yeah, gaming. Now. Now that you know, I don't you know that I'm not a huge eSports fan. But

Justin  23:01  
Haha, You're the one who thinks like sports.

Unknown Speaker  23:04  
I don't, I don't think that's a different conversation. But there is a huge opportunity right now for  e-gaming.

Unknown Speaker  23:11  
Yeah 100%. I mean, a great example is remember when we were in Las Vegas earlier this year, and we were at the razor store and they have this razor setups where you can just go in and like practice like fortnight or Apex or COD or something like that. I think we'll see something like that. We're just like a Gen dedicated to like, esports him.

Justin  23:29  
Oh, man, that's crazy.

Jordan  23:31  
Or whatever we want to call it.

Unknown Speaker  23:33  
No, don't even call it a gym. Gym is where you work out. It's not where you sit down behind the keyboard. Am I in my home gym now?

Unknown Speaker  23:42  
listen, okay, well, at least it's documented.

Justin  23:46  
Jordan, that's a great example, though. You know, we're working with some clients right now that are working on some live stream gym combo stuff and I already had a gym owner. That's a personal friend of mine reach out and say how do I do live streaming because we are losing all of our memberships. And yeah, I talked to my trainer at my local gym. And he said people aren't like just pausing for two months like we had a line out the door of people just straight up canceling it.

Unknown Speaker  24:14  
Yeah. Especially people on Instagram Live now or, yeah. livestream on Instagram.

Unknown Speaker  24:21  
My instructor doing Instagram Live because it could obviously go to the studio. I think that I don't know the gyms will suffer because I still think that equipment has a huge factor. But I do think there's going to be something that rises up in this Meantime, that enables work like work out at home. Let's work from home. For gyms because I think that it's there's going to be such a long period of time that the gym suffers that they're going to have to find some alternative like i square cashed my trainer 30 bucks and took a photo of the equipment that I have upstairs and he built a routine Just like what I own at home?

Jordan  25:06  
Yeah, so I think I think it's also.

Yeah, I mean, it's also definitely forcing people to kind of work with what they have now, like, I mean, even when I go outside, like on a walk in my neighborhood, like so many people are out just like walking or even doing push ups, just like on the ground or something like that. So yeah, I think a bunch of people are also kind of rediscovering like, I don't necessarily need a gym to workout. It's nice, but like, I can do it on my own, too.

Justin  25:31  
So yeah, who knows? It'll be interesting to how I think that's an interesting thing that will come out right there is necessity versus desire. Like, did I need a gym? Or could I have technically done it at home this whole time? And I think that that's going to start to suss out really quickly is those things that we thought we needed in life are not necessarily as critical anymore?

Jordan  25:52  
You know, it's funny, Hannah, at this same point the other day, like when we were outside, she's like, you know, it's kind of weird. It's like going back to like, what things were like when we were younger myself. For technology and like all these wants that we had in our lives everybody's like out and about like it. Yeah, it's super weird like walking outside.

Justin  26:10  
People have reacted to it. Like Yeah, webcams are sold out everywhere. The Nintendo Switch was incredibly hard to find. So like things that people weren't even buying before all of a sudden became this like critical thing. I mean, we could talk about toilet paper forever, right? Nobody was freaking out about toilet paper before their entire life. And now all of a sudden that became a critical purchase

Jordan  26:33  
or even things like a rose at Target talk. I'm one of the guys board games you know, just got gone through the roof. Everybody's like trapped at home with their family and they want a board game to play.

Justin  26:45  
Yeah, I just really interesting to see how this like it changes a business plan or even businesses die or even pop up because of this. What were you gonna say hunter?

Hunter  26:56  
I said I've been ripping through board games. I went through one of my last times that target every Through the board game aisle, it was actually pretty empty. Surprisingly, there's like 10 different versions of Monopoly. I didn't even know. But basically that was the whole aisle. But I picked up Scribbler very similar to 26 and yeah, I mean that's like what else are you gonna do there's you can only stay inside so you either go outside or you play board games and or video this is

Unknown Speaker  27:22  
my opportunity, man, we got a launch 26 get some free packs out there. Like a website where you could like print or game or something.

Hunter  27:30  
Yeah, now's the time for side projects for sure.

Justin  27:34  
I don't know man yaks in high demand right now we're gonna focus.

All right, let's go to the next slide here. This one is just like crazy bonkers to me. I saw the video of it. It's full on like, oh my god six helmet with cameras. And they're walking around the streets with like AR scanning people to see if they have the virus or not.

Jordan  28:00  
Bro. That's something like big brother out of a movie type stuff

Justin  28:05  
That's dystopian, post apocalyptic future state stuff. I mean, it is China. So like, you know, you never know.

Unknown Speaker  28:15  
But that drones are patrolling the streets to and yelling at people to stay in their homes through like a speaker. It's, it's crazy what you know what's become normal?

Justin  28:28  
Dude, it sounds like sounds like that something right out of a book that's crazy or like a movie.

And hunter says he loves it don't have of course,

Hunter  28:36  
I don't don't listen. I'm not a huge fan of government telling you what you can and cannot do. However in this situation and see it's a it's public safety, like public health. And so if it's going to, if they're not going to stop you, and start, you know, doing all these intrusive things and versus just walking down the street and I can just spot somebody. I like that because otherwise what's the alternate Right. It's like a DUI stop. If you didn't imagine if you're driving down the road, right, you're on a highway. And police, you know, the police just had like this infrared thing like they're using here and it could just automatically detect the DUIs. To me. That's a public good. Maybe some people would find that intrusive. But to me, that's a public good because now I don't have to stop by the DUI checkpoint, like every single person. So that's the way I look at is like, if it's going to help save me because someone's really dumb and they just want to spread the corona virus. I think it's good thing.

I just hope him that he Now, the question is, is it a slippery slope? Yeah, is ita slipper slope. I'm more concerned with Yeah, I agree with that.

Jordan  29:39  
I agree. I can agree with you. Like do you example and yeah, I guess at the end of the day, I think this is a better alternative. But it definitely gets into some like weird territory. It's like All right, now we're just the next line get drawn or like, where does this keep going? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  29:53  
Remember that China has always been one step ahead to begin with. They were Yeah. pulling people out of their homes and quarantine them even if they had a fever but hadn't been confirmed. So like there was this fear of I'm just sick or I'm just running a fever but I don't have Corona virus and now you're gonna put me in quarantine with a bunch of people who do have it and now I'm definitely going to get it.

Unknown Speaker  30:17  
Exactly back when bush was president he did I don't remember the exact details but he did a few things as far as like national security goes like spying on spying on US citizens that were then abused later on by the government. A lot of that they said had to do with Bush and the rules that he put in place so that's why that's why I like this sort of thing but you wonder Okay, for it was it's used as an example for like, what we're dealing with now, but down the line is are they going to keep using infrared to check people's temperatures and discriminate against people that are sick or elderly or something like that?

Unknown Speaker  30:57  
That's the whole conspiracy theory is that it is the elderly or that certain population that typically are a drain on the economy, that thats why this virus is engineered from I mean, not to get into conspiracy theories, but it does certainly set a precedent that you could start to detect someone is of lower health, lower quality of life Now, therefore, they're not necessarily as important to somebody else.

Unknown Speaker  31:24  
Or that gives you a reason to stop and ask them questions. Or, you know, because at least in America, you have, you have to have probable cause. So now without even seeing anything, taking any test, now they have reason to stop you. That's where I can see, but it's on America yet. So I guess, don't worry about that.

Jordan  31:40  
what's what's also interesting about that is like as a person, how do you like you have no defense to yourself, right? Like if a guy walks up to you with like the camera and says, Hey, your temperatures really high. You have the virus. What are you going to do? Like, oh, you know, how do you argue that right, like you just put your own thermometer? That's right. Yeah.

Justin  31:59  
So is there a business opportunity here for like personal portable thermometers on the go. Yeah. To argue with the police state.

Hunter  32:08  
Yeah, exactly.

Justin  32:10  
I mean, I know like, there's a whole discussion just around face recognition on phones because it's a passive unlock technology where you can just like point a phone at somebody's face and unlock it. And I feel like this is very similar is that you don't have the ability to block it or stop it from happening. And therefore, it's kind of an invasion of privacy. I mean, the same thing they're talking about in facial recognition. That's why there was like, a whole thing around like wearing specific masks that like, mess up the actual recognition. I'm wondering if something will pop up around this where it's like, I don't know you wear clothing that like throws off your temperature or something. Mm hmm.

Jordan  32:51  
That's interesting.

Hunter  32:53  
I'm gonna bathe myself out every time I go somewhere.

Justin  32:57  
All right, we'll take that as our opportunity to skip to the last one

So I did not do enough research to eloquently talk about this. But I thought that this tweet in general was pretty crazy. So Casey Newton from the verge is always talking about these insane things that companies are doing. And somebody tweeted this out. He retweeted it. But essentially, as far as I can understand, the story is that Yelp started creating GoFundMe, fundraisers for other businesses on their behalf without asking them, basically to help raise funds for them in this pandemic. And that's pretty crazy. They had recently gotten in trouble, I think like six months ago for creating landing pages and enrolling businesses in Yelp on their behalf with a like custom landing page, because they didn't like that business's web page. And so they were driving traffic to a different web page. And I think actually like marking up the prices maybe, but this is this is pretty crazy to me. Do you guys have any thoughts on it?

Jordan  34:01  
That's super weird. Yeah, I mean, I I'm seeing this for the first time, so I'll have to go and read more later. But I mean initially Yeah, this is bad. Not Not Not great. Like,

Justin  34:14  
I don't know. It could be that to get it taken down you have to like sin right in and your official documents.

Jordan  34:21  
Yeah, that's what's super weird about it and also it's like each business is such like a case by case thing Like who? Yeah, like you just don't know what they're going to have going on so like why do something on their behalf super strange.

Justin  34:34  
Yeah. Again well invasion privacy right?

Hunter  34:37  
In their defense though you don't want let's say let's say you do want it and then some random person contacts them and says take it down saying that they're my business owner like you also don't want that so I see I mean, they're obviously trying to do the right thing I'll never as long as you're trying to do the right thing I feel like you probably shouldn't be punished too much even socially By the way,

Justin  35:03  
I know your videos like all messed up.

Hunter  35:06  
Oh, well, there you go.

Jordan  35:08  
Try turning your camera off and on.

But anyway, what I was going to say since it's kind of like it's kind of fresh and new for us the example I think I imagine if like someone just like random, we have hunted us on product on one day and we're just like, Oh, no, like, I just wanted you guys because like, you know, you want to be on product, we'd be pissed.

Justin  35:28  
It would mess up a lot of our stuff. Actually, I had to have product remove a post that somebody had launched, they took our URL, so it's like product makaan slash posts slash yak, and I didn't want to get like Yak dash one. And then when we looked at his profile, it seemed like he just did that all the time. Just constantly post random things without like talking to the company or anything. And I used to do that back in the day when Product Hunt was less about launching your own product and just kind of finding unique products but No, I think it's a weird, overbearing corporate thing that comes with as much money and resources as Yelp would start to, like dip their hands into what is arguably a very personal thing like your your local business.

Jordan  36:15  
Mm hmm. Yeah, totally agree. Totally, totally agree. Yeah, it's, uh, it this is even kind of like Big Brother ish to, it's like, they're just like, kind of forcing this on you because they have so much money. It's your corporate overlords. Yeah, overlord is a good word. I like that here.

Justin  36:35  
Yeah, I'm gonna start using them more in daily life. The bigger issue is that as smaller brands who have no chance of being as big as Yelp, they you start to become kind of beholden to these companies. And I've heard that especially of small businesses with things like doordash and Uber Eats, where they just like they can't afford a delivery force. People expect things to be delivered and They have to just be an Uber Eats, they have no option. And so if that eats X amount of revenue for them or profit, they just have to take it because otherwise people will be upset. They don't offer delivery.

And I feel like they had a similar thing where Yelp is just like, using their big fist because they can, and there's nothing that they can do about it because you can't afford to not be listed on Yelp.

Jordan  37:28  
Yeah, it is.

What did you say Hunter?

Hunter  37:35  
So we're going to follow up on the next one look into this more. It seems almost too crazy to be true.

Justin  37:41  
Well, Casey said that Yelp replied and said we're aware of the situation and we are handling it essentially a very generic response. Hmm, interesting. That's really weird. So they confirm they know that it's going on though. So wasn't just hearsay it's actually happening. Hmm.

Jordan  38:05  
Yeah, not great. Not great.

Justin  38:08  
Well, cool. That was our last tweet and what we hit like 40 minutes a little bit longer than needed or desired but we'll do more of these in the future guys. Anybody who tuned in, appreciate it. anybody watching on the replay? Give us some feedback on the format the length. If you guys have tweets that you think would be cool for us to talk about on lives, please send them to us. Just shoot us in our DMS and we'll add it to the next time we do one of these until then.

Alright guys, thanks for joining