Illustration by Alex Castro
Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.
This week on the show, The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, Ashley Carman, and Alex Heath discuss Meta’s rough week: Facebook reported its first-ever quarterly decline of daily users globally, along with lower-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock plunging roughly 20 percent. The crew discusses the takeaways from Meta’s earnings report and the company’s struggle to keep younger users on its platforms.
The crew also discusses Spotify’s response to the Joe Rogan controversy. This week, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek defended the company’s choice to work with Rogan and tried to explain why he believes Spotify is a combination of a platform and a publisher. The platform versus publisher debate has a long history on The Vergecast, and this episode is a healthy addition to that conversation.
There’s a whole lot more discussed on the show — including Sony buying game developer Bungie — so listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.
Further reading:
Facebook lost daily users for the first time ever last quarter
Meta’s stock price plunges 25 percent overnight
Google parent company Alphabet broke $200 billion in annual revenue for the first time
Epic largely lost to Apple, but 35 states are now backing its fight in a higher court
Spotify CEO defends Joe Rogan deal in tense company town hall
Spotify says it’s a creator company now
Here is the Spotify COVID content policy that lets Joe Rogan slide
Spotify finally responds to Joe Rogan controversy with a plan to label podcasts that discuss COVID-19
Joe Rogan defends podcast and apologizes to Spotify for backlash
The Joe Rogan controversy is what happens when you put podcasts behind a wall
Sony is buying Bungie, the developer of Destiny and original creator of Halo
Big video game companies just can’t stop buying studios
Wordle has been bought by The New York Times, will ‘initially’ remain free for everyone to play
Peloton’s latest gadget is a $90 heart rate monitor for your arm
Echelon persuades USPTO that Peloton’s streaming tech is unpatentable
Appeals court upholds California’s net neutrality law
Google leaks Pixel 6A name in, of all things, a coloring book
Tesla has a new feature that will disable your seat controls if you keep messing with them
Public accountants are deducting themselves from their jobs
What’s the difference between 5G, 5G Plus, 5G UW, and 5G UC?