Hey there, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of channels, the show about what happens when tech and media collide.

And this week, we're talking to Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram and who also runs Threads.

And he told me what Threads was originally going to be called.

I called it Textagram as a joke, which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it.

Textagram, great name.

Yeah, when you're making me regret telling you this.

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.

Welcome to office hours with Provji. Today we're continuing our special three-part series Profi on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today. What a thrill. Let's bust right into it. Okay. What do we have here? Our first question comes from Dom on Instagram. He asks,

More and more companies are taking political stances as part of their branding.

Growing up, I was told that businesses should never talk about religion or politics in order to

stay out of trouble and not segment customers. Does this hurt companies in the long run?

Do you think it is smart that businesses are moving in this direction?

This is going to require some nuance. So I've served on a bunch of public company boards,

seven. I'm kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal. And probably 24 private company boards.

And my general view on political statements is that it's

mostly virtue signaling from the CEO, likes to get in front, especially about three or four years ago,

maybe five years ago, get in front of a younger workforce and talk about all this woke nonsense.

Because why it was nonsense is because they didn't believe it themselves. They were just trying to score,

like acquire virtue. Like I don't have enough Gulf streams or shares. nonsense is because they didn't believe it themselves. They were just trying to score, like, acquire

virtue. Like, I don't have enough Gulf streams or shares or options here, so I want to capture

social status. I think that's actually a pretty decent criticism of the Democratic Party. Instead of

focusing on the material and emotional well-being of consumers, they want to pretend that they're

...