Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

Most people hand their ID to a bouncer without thinking twice. But what if your local bar was monitoring way more than your age?
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 Cydney Hayes is a tech and business reporter at the Gazetteer SF.and she joins me for this week's Free Speech Friday to discuss her investigation into Patronscan, a creepy biometric surveillance system being integrated into bars and restaurants across the country. 
We examine how these systems collect personal information, photograph and surveil patrons as they move from bar to bar, build databases, and raise serious questions about privacy, biometric tracking, facial recognition, and data collection.
We discuss:
How PatronScan works

Why bars are adopting these systems

What information is collected

Privacy concerns surrounding biometric data

Facial recognition and surveillance technology

How customer databases are created

The legal controversies surrounding PatronScan

Why surveillance is expanding into everyday spaces

What this means for the future of privacy

As surveillance technology spreads from airports and retail stores into restaurants, bars, and nightlife, it's becoming increasingly important to understand how these systems operate and what tradeoffs they create.

The internet has entered a terrifying new era where reality itself has become a marketplace. Adam Aleksic (Etymology Nerd) & Aidan Walker join me to break it all down.
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Pump Fun GO is a new service that lets anyone pay anyone to do anything, and the results are terrifying. From paying people in poor countries $13 to get forehead tattoos to offering $95 for degrading acts, the platform has become a marketplace for human exploitation disguised as "meme coin marketing."
From meme coins and viral stunts to political influence campaigns, prediction markets, and user-generated marketing, this episode explores how financial incentives are reshaping online culture and even the offline world.
Joining me are Adam Aleksic (Etymology Nerd) and meme researcher Aidan Walker to unpack why platforms like Pump Fun, Polymarket, and the rise of the "bounty economy" could fundamentally change how the internet works.
Topics covered:
How Pump Fun Go is literally recreating Black Mirror episodes in real life

The terrifying rise of the "bounty economy" and what it means for society

Why people in developing countries are being targeted for these stunts

The connection between prediction markets, UGC marketing, and political manipulation

What happens when EVERYTHING becomes a marketing stunt (and why that's breaking trust online)

The psychology behind why people participate in these challenges

How this platform is warping our physical reality and making us question everything

Pump Fun Go explained

Meme coin marketing

Black Mirror becoming reality

The new attention economy

Polymarket and prediction markets

User-generated advertising

Political influence online

Why everything feels fake

The future of social media

The internet's next evolution

The Kids Act Could End Internet Freedom As We Know It. 
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A massive new package of legislation, dubbed the "Kids Act," is moving through Congress with unprecedented speed. The package is a broad-based censorship and surveillance scheme that will affect every single American.
In this episode of Free Speech Friday, I sit down with Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), to break down the terrifying reality of what’s happening in Washington D.C. right now. Adam, who has been fighting for internet freedom since the 1990s, explains how these laws demand mass age verification (which applies to adults too), regulate design features like infinite scroll, and even target messaging apps and VPNs.
 
We also dive into the 1,800 AI bills popping up across states, Bernie Sanders' misguided plans for AI, and why the government is moving to create an identity layer for the entire internet. We also discuss the toxic brew of "moral panic," fake anti-big tech sentiment, and censorship that is driving this legislation forward.
Topics covered:
What the Kids Act is and how it passed committee

Mass age verification and the internet ID layer

The end of online anonymity

Why messaging apps and video games are targets

State laws controlling the national internet

State AI preemption and Bernie Sanders' AI plans

The history of internet censorship from 1996 to today

#AI #Tech #TechNews #InternetFreedom #KidsAct #Censorship #TechPolicy #OnlinePrivacy #AILaws #VPNBan #FreeSpeech #MassSurveillance #FirstAmendment #BigTech #BernieSanders #KOSA #DataPrivacy

SpaceX just pulled off the biggest IPO in history and made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. But is it all built on a fantasy?
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In this week's episode of Power User, I sit down with Ryan Mac, the main New York Times reporter covering SpaceX and co-author of Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, to unpack how SpaceX went from a startup mocked by aerospace veterans to a $2+ trillion company that governments, militaries, and your retirement fund now depend on.
We trace the full story from the early rocket explosions, the near-bankruptcy before Falcon 1 reached orbit in 2008, the NASA contract that saved the company, and how reusable rockets and Starlink turned SpaceX into an unstoppable money machine with 10,000 satellites in orbit. 
We dive deep into Elon's trillion-dollar bet on "orbital data centers," his plan to move AI infrastructure into space, the acquisition of xAI, the Cursor deal, a possible Tesla–SpaceX merger, and his 82% voting control that makes him almost impossible to challenge.
Is Elon Musk now too big to fail? Has he escaped the gravity of accountability? Or will his dreams of putting data centers in space come crashing back to Earth? And if/when that happens, who's left holding the bag? Ryan and I get into all of it.
In this episode:
– How SpaceX was founded and almost died
– Why Starlink became the company's cash engine
– Reusable rockets, barge landings, and the "chopsticks" catch
– The plan to put AI data centers in space (and why experts are skeptical)
– Inside the record-breaking SpaceX IPO
– How index funds and 401ks got pulled into SpaceX
– Elon's 82% control and the road to "Elon Inc"
– Whether Musk is now the most powerful man on Earth

Subscribe to my Patreon or newsletter to listen to the full episode!
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Over the past few months, Peter Thiel has become fully infatuated with Argentina. He bought a house there, enrolled his kids in school, has been attending local soccer matches, playing chess with locals, and the Argentine government is exploring offering the billionaire permanent residence and citizenship.
But why Argentina? Why now? Ryan Mac is a reporter at the New York Times and he's been covering Peter Theil's increased fascination with the country. Today, he's joining me to unpack Thiel's new obsession, and why other billionaires also seem taken by Argentina lately.