The social media social revolution.

Buzzfeed news one of the first is shutting down while Vice Media.

Ben submit was the editor-in chief and joining Walter Isaccson what the last decade has shown us.

Walter: Thank you to the show.

Your great book "traffic" is all about Buzzfeed gawker when everyone was chasing traffic, it feels that era may be ending that Buzzfeed news which you were a part of, has closed down.

Is this the end of an era and what is happening now?

Ben: The era that was defined in 2010, I would say when Joe Biden got elected that was a sign that people were tired of the drama and conflict that defined that era.

But in the last few weeks, it has felt really like this is drawing to a close and figure out what is next.

Walter: You helped find Buzzfeed news division.

Why did it close?

Ben: That is a lot of reasons.

The biggest reason was our goal was to build a new news channel for the social web.

We imagined these new platforms like Facebook and twitter were the new twitter.

We would do it on the social media platforms.

I don't think they are enduring.

The whole era is changing and consumers are moving away from them.

The biggest problem which is we were building for an age that never arrived, that Cayman went.

There was media companies imagined they would be the ones that made the money off of this and Facebook and twitter, Facebook in particular, was the only company.

Walter: You talk in your book a guy who starts Buzzfeed.

His rivalry who starts Gawker."

Tell me about them.

Ben: When I went back to figure out what is the origin moment and it was in this City of Manhattan in 2000's.

Two guys who had optimism optimistic and kind of internet that would produce Barack Obama.

And that is Jonah who started Buzzfeed.

The kinds of things that people are going to share on Facebook will be more constructive and more positive.

And nick denton who founded Gawker and express the things they wouldn't express before.

Not the polite all truisms but real things that journalists would say to each other in the bars.

ANDREA: The porn that they really wanted.

Walter: What was Jonah's insight about going viral?

Ben: The core insight where media had been distributed through cable, broadcast towers, especially hand to hand on the internet we were our own distributors and the media rused things that they wanted to share and that was the core insight.

The insight that is neutral.

That can be pictures of kittens, that can be ante semitic propaganda.

Walter: Did it turn to be neutral or as Steve Bannon says, more enragement, more engagement?

Ben: It edged in a lot of different ways and began with a lot of harmless stuff.

In the mid-2010's and Facebook and twitter had been set up and the rules of the game.

What was more successful was the most engaging thing.

And I say something unbelievely and you reply to kill myself and we have a 15-minute comment exchange and you say fabulous, these people are engaged.

Walter: Is that because they had to inflame us and enrage us or could they have been written in a way that he would have wanted was to connect us and feel better?

Ben: I think they were technical choices.

Elements of human nature are not avoidable.

Some with Jonah and me, people are basically better than they are.

People would never publicly say the sorts of things you see on the internet.

Walter: The relationship between Buzzfeed, Buzzfeed News seem to drive this book.

How did Facebook affect the decade?

Ben: Facebook engineers were trying to get people to use our platform and come to something called.

ANDREA: For a while that felt kind of delightful to consumers.

Facebook freaked out about it.

And started taking criticism from people between you and me me and started to try to figure out, how can we keep our business and keep it sticky and engage people.

Walter: Was the biggest mistake?

Ben: After Donald trump was elected, they said, you know what?

People are engaging in ways that are not meaningful to them and they feel bad about it and switch to a technical measure called meaningful, social interaction that is about signs like writing a comment that you really care about this thing that you saw.

And what it did was inflame the absolute worst.

And there is an email that Jonah sent saying I don't know if you see what you are doing here, but we are finding the things that spread most on Facebook are inside jokes about race in particular that escape that inside.

There was a post like things white people like to do that was a funny joke among friends.

That if it spread widely enough, people found it offensive and insulted.

And Facebook said this is meaningful, let's show it to more people.

And was amplifying the most racially divisive content at the time.

Walter: You look at the Buzzfeed crowd, it was generally trying to find a way that our Barack Obama hope moment and yet it ends up producing not only a popularrism but a Donald trum.

trump.

How did that happen?

Ben: To get someone like Obama and thought that that represented the culmination of this internet and Obama visits Facebook and Facebook is a Democratic party thing, young progressive people.

And yet all along the people who found the new far right.

Andrew Breitbart was among the founders helping to post.

And Buzzfeed offices and they were learning from all of these techniques that we were creating.

But we were very kon sustained and didn't want to write things that weren't true and trying to do traditional journalism in a new form with all of the caveats and questions about fairness that came with that.

In 2016, I sat down with Steve Bannon in trump tower and he was totally perplexed we didn't turn into a Bernie sanders' propaganda outlet.

He said that's where the traffic was and the signal he had followed.

There were no and tearing down the system.

They were much more successful in the system than anyone else.

Walter: In your book there is a wonderful chapter on matt druj he is the Godfather and aggregating that people can click on.

But dealing with a political slant.

And you talked about a seminal moment in internet history when I was at "Time" magazine.

Nobody was publishing the story on Monica lieuins sky.

Druj publishes it.

No longer gatekeepers.

Tell me how that affected all of this.

Ben: This assault on the gatekeepers, I think in a way I saw my work at Buzzfeed and this was soon after the Iraq war and gatekeepers were seen as corrupt and having really profoundly messed up the most important story of that generation.

And so there was this real kind of positive energy around.

We have to build a new media that is more transparent open to outside voices and listen to people and weapons of mass destruction.

That was feeding a lot of that energy.

I think if you look back now, you say we did a number on these institutions and in terrible shape and the project we have to buttress the remaining one?

Walter: You think maybe this help undermine our institutions and kind of sorry for that?

Ben: I do.

I think that the institutions -- it's complicated.

These institutions earned their undermining.

There would be anger after the Iraq war was totally justified and it was healthy for them to face a challenge.

That said, 15 years later -- and I don't think what a few blogs attack.

All institutions in society have been shaken by a number of factors.

But I do think if you think about where we are now, the project is about building institutions and buttress and strengthen the existing ones that came under assault in part from social media.

Walter: One of the most self-reflective chapters is about the steele dose year.

I like to turn to this.

Buzzfeed news publish dances tell me whether you did that right or not?

Ben: I do.

I think we should have published it.

I think the specifics matter.

Probably the reason we publish it is we did have this instinct and tendency to say we are not gate keepers.

Walter: Let me push back, it was wrong and misinformation.

Ben: Nobody thinks if I send you an email with false allegations, that you should tweet it.

This document had been influencing American politics and Terry reed written a letter to James comey, I know you have these secrets and release it.

And James comey briefed it to two presidents, sitting President, Barack Obama and President-elect Donald trump and cc reported there is a document that has been briefed and affecting policy and it says the President of the United States has been compromised by the Russians.

You can't sit there and say I have a in my hand a list of communists and not show you the list.

As the court later found, the notion that it should sit there and you and I should say to my viewers and readers, we have seen it.

It would burn your eyes.

We don't trust you to look at it.

I think it is not tenable.

That said, when we published, we wrote -- we had been trying to but we found errors in it.

And descriptive things that were wrong and wrote.

Published the story.

ANDREA: Went -- and the caveat was cast aside and the document was symbolic element of gospel and I don't know if it made that much of a difference if we stapled them together but I regret that.

Walter: The traffic area, we'll call it, is trying to capture people's attention, certain number of eyeballs in the whole world that you can capture and advertising.

Was there something structurally wrong about this business model?

Ben: There was a core mistake about traffic.

People said we can click on the Web site and struck oil.

The more money we are going to make.

In 2003 and selling ads for $9,000 and selling 1,000 times more of them purview.

Oil is scarce and traffic is plentiful and not a commodity.

The price today, the price of the kind of ads this were in selling in 2003.

Not adjusted for inflation.

And so the core notion that you could sell limited attention just was swallowed by the scale in particular with people on Facebook who had infin it.

Walter: And your new publication seems to be a new way and people will pay for, not be holden to clicks and advertising revenue.

Explain what you are doing and how a few others are saying this is the next way?

Ben: In this new moment in the rubble of social media and things that we built and what consumers want to see.

We hire journalists who know what they are talking about and transparent about their own opinions and you could say, here's what I reported and here's what I think about and what someone else thinks about it.

And views from around the world and pull it together so you don't have to read a story and google other stories to try to get to the truth which is how people try to navigate this moment.

Walter: Thank you for being with us.