Editor-in-Chief
When Nilay Patel was four years old, he drove a Chrysler into a small pond because he was trying to learn how the gearshift worked. Years later, he became a technology journalist. He has thus far remained dry.
Nilay Patel is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Verge, the technology and culture brand from Vox Media. In his decade at Vox Media, he’s grown The Verge into one of the largest and most influential tech sites, with a global audience of millions of monthly readers, and award-winning journalism with real-world impact. Honored in Adweek’s "Creative 100" in 2021, under Patel’s leadership, The Verge received its first Pulitzer and National Magazine Award nominations.
Patel is a go-to expert voice in the tech space, hosting The Verge’s Webby award-winning podcasts, Decoder with Nilay Patel and The Vergecast, and appearing on CNBC as a regular contributor. He received an AB in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2003 and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2006.
Splice got itself in some trouble a couple weeks ago when it issued a YouTube copyright strike against Krystle Delgado, a music attorney who showed one of the company’s sample licenses on screen. Splice wised up and retracted the strike last week, CEO Kakul Srivastava tell me. “We fundamentally support the rights of creators to express themselves – even if we disagree,” she wrote in an email to Delgado.
For her part, Delgado confirmed that the strike was indeed retracted by YouTube, and tells me that she wishes she could have spoken to to Srivastava directly before Splice’s lawyers escalated the situation.
As always, I will remind everyone that copyright law is the only functional speech regulation on the internet, and using it to chill speech or block criticism never tends to go well!
Can’t think of the last time I opened an app to an apology for how buggy the app is!
Here’s an incredible WSJ piece about zoo visitors connecting with gorillas by showing them videos of themselves, and zoo officials trying to push back:
A few self-proclaimed gorilla groupies come almost daily to the world-renowned San Diego Zoo, filming and then showing the “home videos” to the apes. [...] Tears came to the woman’s eyes as she said the zoo might want to block her and others from showing the animals videos. “Any enrichment is good enrichment,” she said.
Debatable!
How the Supreme Court’s Chevron ruling could doom net neutrality
The court struck down Chevron deference last month. That’s a big deal for the future of net neutrality.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe: too many carmakers are copying Tesla
Rivian’s founder on the R2 / R3 roadmap and the company’s $5 billion VW deal.
What happened to the metaverse?
‘The Metaverse’ author Matthew Ball discusses the new update to his 2022 book and how the Apple Vision Pro and AI fit into the spatial internet.
Biden’s top tech adviser says AI is a ‘today problem’
Arati Prabhakar, a former DARPA chief and now director of the White House’s OSTP, says the time to regulate AI is now.
A core trope of Verge coverage over the years is that copyright law is the only functional regulation on the US internet, because it allows various actors to demand content takedowns without worrying about that pesky First Amendment.
Anyway, Splice, a company which sells music samples and beats, got upset at Krystle Delgado, a copyright attorney and YouTuber, for showing one of their license agreements during a livestream, and issued a YouTube copyright strike over it. Her response video is pretty good — and neatly demonstrates the pressures and complexity independent creators face trying to do what would otherwise be straightforward journalism.