Matthew Prince Wants AI Companies to Pay for Their Sins

My evidence that we’re onto something is we’ve seen a handful of content deals, and the company that has gotten the best deal by far is Reddit. We know from their public filings that last year they got close to $140 million a year from Google and OpenAI.

Hmm.

If you compare that with a similar deal that was done for The New York Times, they got about $20 million. So Reddit got seven times more than The New York Times. Why? Well, maybe it’s crazy …

I think I know where you’re going, and I’m gonna agree with you, but [$140 million compared to $20 million is] a wildly different number.

Yeah. But 20 minutes ago we both, I think, agreed that we’re nostalgic for the quirky internet …

Oh, I love Reddit.

… and there’s nothing that represents that more than Reddit. The New York Times is amazing, but if you have data from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, like how much real difference is there? Basically the facts stay the same between those, whereas Reddit is this unique content, and so we already have some evidence that the business model of the AI-driven web is going to be one that rewards the Reddits of the world more.

All right. I gotta figure out what hole in the Swiss cheese I’m gonna fill.

You know, the scariest meeting I’ve had in the last little bit was coffee with Anna Wintour. My wife was like, “You have to wear a suit.” And I’m like, “I don’t have anything.”

Wait. This is really important. What did you wear, Matthew?

It was in New York and it was a hundred degrees outside, a hundred percent humidity. The only suit I had was this light blue, fall, relatively heavy suit. So, I wore the suit.

Oh boy.

Anna probably rolled her eyes at this. But I also was just a sweaty mess. So I think it was a pretty embarrassing meeting.

This is a shocking visual. I’m sure she thought it went great. The thing about my boss is that she’s actually really, really nice. So there you go.

She was incredibly, incredibly lovely, and so thoughtful about the whole content and media industry. So I really appreciated the opportunity to get to pick her brain.

That’s really funny.

Even though my sartorial sense is pretty …

Trust me, so is mine. I know the feeling.

Before we end, I wanna play a little game we came up with. It’s called Control, Alt, Delete. What piece of tech would you love to control? What piece would you alt, so alter or change, and what would you delete? What would you vanquish from the Earth if given the opportunity?

So, delete. I’d probably say TikTok. Zero protein, very low-value content, I think, is really dangerous and damaging.

Um, control. I feel super privileged in terms of what we do at Cloudflare, so I would love to have significant influence in thinking through what the next business model of the web looks like. I don’t necessarily wanna control it, but I would love to at least control making sure that we’re rewarding filling the holes in the cheese.

Then, alt. I’m still longing for a home automation system that doesn’t suck. Because I showed up at my house in Austin and the light switches didn’t work and I couldn’t turn the TV on. You know, a smart home that was a little bit smarter.

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