All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E17: Big Tech bans Trump, ramifications for the First Amendment & the open Internet

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Follow the crew: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/...allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lxk47phNV4&t=1s Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/MikeSylvan Referenced in the show: “I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo Show Notes: 0:00 David Sacks intros the besties 2:08 Jason & Sacks hash it out & the besties break down reconciliation in American democracy 21:09 Big Tech bans, did they give Trump an easy out? Ramifications for First Amendment 43:01 What laws can be written to prevent Big Tech oligarchy in the future? 59:32 Why Big Tech acted in unison against Trump: internal & external pressure, pending Democratic administration 1:09:42 Current Pence/Trump relationship, McCarthyism 2.0, should Big Tech be broken up? 1:32:46 History of the presidential pardon, Chamath on SoFi's Anthony Noto

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to the Olympus! Your illustrious moderator, Jason Calcanis, has been first. He's been cancelled. We cancelled him for his constant interruptions and low IQ comments. We decided that the minimum IQ required to be on this part of this, you know, 140, 150, he did not make the cut. And so now it is just me, Jamal and Freeberg. He is Jason is away. He is actively implementing our jerk off to win strategy to solve the pandemic and free speech Hey everybody. Hey, everybody,
Starting point is 00:01:05 hey, everybody, it is an emergency podcast episode 16. Hit number two in the rankings on the Apple iTunes podcasting store. Clearly we hit a nerve. It's been an insane week. And the dictator dictated that he was not satisfied with doing our podcast once every two weeks.
Starting point is 00:01:29 And so here we are on a Sunday, the queen of Kenwa, Rain Man himself, David Sacks, and the dictator chopping it up for you, the loyal, confused, angry, infuriated audience of all in. It's the craziest week of our lives. Jason, please don't describe to the audience the characteristics that describe yourself. Okay, this has been a crazy 72 hours. Can anybody remember a week that has been more crazy in their life with the exception? I guess 9-11, the financial crisis.
Starting point is 00:02:04 I'm trying to think of this level of crazy. I think we should start with what happened after the last all-in podcast between you and SACS over text. We should get it all out there. We should share it publicly. And I think we should. No, no, no, no.
Starting point is 00:02:20 I think it's worth doing. We talked about this before you joined us. And Timoth and I are having an intervention. And I'm gonna say something real quick. I think it's worth highlighting that one of the things that I think we have the opportunity to do as a group is to kind of elevate the conversation a bit and not frame things as being black and white
Starting point is 00:02:42 and not frame them as being one or zero or partisan or left or right. And everyone in this conversation has nuanced opinions about a lot of different topics. And when you sum up all those opinions, it doesn't define a left or a right person or a Democrat or a Republican. I think that's what makes us,
Starting point is 00:02:58 you know, a compelling and interesting group to talk to. Sachs has been characterized as the Trump guy. He took offense to that. And in particular, the heated conversation you guys had last time. And I do think it's worth kind of sharing that with everyone and letting you guys reconcile publicly. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:16 Have a good vlog. Yeah. And reframe kind of how we talk about each other and how, so that we can kind of set a bit of an example on how to do this well. I can start, you can start, David. I'll start because I'm the one who had the objection. You're the aggrieved?
Starting point is 00:03:31 Yeah, I mean, so look, I think that J. Cal does an amazing job moderating the pod and it's a difficult job. And, you know, so I don't want to, you know, this is not something I'm trying to blame him for, but I do have an objection to being labeled in a certain way. I think anybody would, you know, we don't want to be misconstrued and we want to be able to characterize our own views.
Starting point is 00:03:55 We don't want to be labeled in a certain way. Now, I think Jason has sort of branded me as a Trump guy because, frankly, it's amusing to him. I think he's mainly trolling me. But the audience doesn't necessarily understand that. I mean, if you go back and look at my Twitter feed or my blogs, I haven't written about Trump for years. I mean, I haven't said anything really about it.
Starting point is 00:04:15 That's not my agenda. And I think I don't have a pro-Trump agenda, but I also don't have a pro-resistance agenda. I've described my position as anti-histeria. Sometimes that means criticizing Trump like I did in the last pod. Sometimes it means criticizing the resistance. So I just don't like being labeled a certain way. And I think Jason, I sort of, you know, kind of resolve this.
Starting point is 00:04:39 You know, if I were labeled my politics, you know, Jason calls me the conservative. I think that's more accurate, but the question is, what am I conserving exactly? And I would describe myself more as like a 1960s style liberal. I'm a believer in free speech, ACLU style, I'm a believer in King's dream of a color by society. If I'm against all these foreign wars and interventions, if I had been around the 1960s, I'm against all these, you know, foreign wars and interventions.
Starting point is 00:05:05 If I had been around the 1960s, I would have been protesting Vietnam. That's kind of more where I'm coming from. And I guess the reason I'm a conservative now is because the political debate has moved so far away from that. But if I'm trying to conserve anything, it's really the liberal victories of the 1960s. So in any event, I don't think that qualifies me in any way as a as a as a Trumper per se. And I just don't want, you know, Jason making jokes to somehow have the audience get the wrong idea because I want to be heard. And I know Trump seems to
Starting point is 00:05:37 only polarizing figure. And the second you tell somebody your frankly pro or con Trump, the other half does it even stop, doesn't want to listen to you and so my my views are more complicated than that. Okay well thanks everybody for tuning into the all-in. It's amazing episode 17. We're really proud thanks to our sponsors. Listen I think what makes this podcast great is the diversity of opinion and the respect that we show for each other. If my breaking chops, which is, as everybody knows here, my superpower in life, and along with talking, has pigeonholed you into being something you're not, or if you felt I've taken a cheap shot at you in any way,
Starting point is 00:06:30 I apologize, and it was not my intent. My intent is to keep the conversation flowing to entertain the audience certainly, but not at anybody's expense, David. And certainly not yours, because I do consider you one of the best friends I've had in my life, and one of the most supportive people in my life. And I think we all feel that way about each other that we go to bad phrases to support
Starting point is 00:06:49 each other. I do think that this highlights and dovetails with what we, and I've given it a lot of thought. Actually, I've really spent since the last podcast a lot of time thinking about your position, David, and where you're coming from. And then also where the people who maybe, you know, you maybe agreed with some of Trump's victories and certainly you're a conservative.
Starting point is 00:07:19 I don't know if you voted for him or not or if you're willing to say if you did, I'll put that aside for a moment. But I do think that we're all seeing in our families, in our lives, and now as a nation, what is the off-ramp here to the people who supported Trump up until this coup attempt and this ugliness? And then how do we reconcile it, right? That is the grand reconciliation here is the thing that has me very concerned
Starting point is 00:07:48 because we're a microcosm, David. You and I are unbelievably close friends for a very long period of time and we struggle with, I think, Trump. Trump is, as I was saying in our group chat earlier, it's like the trolleycar problem. Like people will be pulling up, how do you deal with Trump as the example of, you know, what do you do if the trolleycar, you know, it's going to kill one person or five and do you, you know, the brakes broke in kind of situation?
Starting point is 00:08:19 It's, and I think Jack and the platforms also have a difficult task. Do you leave this person up after what we saw on Wednesday and a lot has changed since Wednesday? Can I just say something? I'll leave it at that and then I'll throw a Titchema. I don't want to. Jason, here's the thing. I think that we all have views. And I think the thing that I respect the most about Saks is that his views are independent of the candidate du jour. And I think his views, quite honestly, are in many cases the most well-reasoned and
Starting point is 00:08:50 well-thought-out because he's frankly, you know, one of the smartest people in our friend group, if not probably the smartest. So I think what it speaks to is the fact that you can have these momentary sort of pauses where you have these people that are so polarizing that you forget that there are legitimate views on both sides. I mean, I would characterize my political views as in some cases like deeply conservative, meaning get the government out of the way. There are a bunch of incompetent fucking buffoons. And on the other side on some issues, I think that they should be extremely interventional, like in healthcare or in climate change, because it's just so dire and there needs to be
Starting point is 00:09:30 a public mandate in order to drive change. I don't know where I fit anymore, especially because it's harder to be nuanced as Friedberg said at the beginning, without sounding like a complete crazy person, because one word triggers the other side against you. So I think the thing that I just want all the listeners to appreciate, not just amongst the four of us, but also amongst their own friends, is having a little patience and tolerance here is really important because we cannot become the worst of ourselves, especially because of a single person who will be rendered with an enormous asterisk
Starting point is 00:10:06 beside his name, and by him, I mean Trump, for the rest of our natural lives. And so let's just not allow what one person has been able to do to malign all of our natural ability to just not be completely stupid, quite honestly. So I just think it's important to realize that we all have completely, completely nuanced perspectives. They're all worth listening to. And I would just tell people, don't fall for the simple, easy out to assume that, you know, being a conservative means you're a Trump supporter or being a liberal means you're not a Trump
Starting point is 00:10:43 supporter, because I think that there's issues in which, you know, frankly, look, let's be honest, the Wall Street Journal opinion by, was it Lisa Lassel? What's your name? Lisa Lassel, Amy Lassel, somebody, SkyPosted in the group chat, Nick, can you find it? I can't remember, Sassel or Lassel is your last name. Anyways. Oh, Kim Strassel. Kim Strassel. And was she journaled yet? She had a paragraph intro where, and again, I wasn't a Trump supporter, have never been a Trump supporter.
Starting point is 00:11:13 I do have those some sympathy to some of the things he did. And the way that she described his four years, all those, she was selective, it was impressive actually. Meaning impressive, actually, you know, meaning getting the rhetoric right on China, getting the rhetoric on trade, right? The deregulation that he's created in some ways. So there is very much a reasonable narrative
Starting point is 00:11:37 up until the capital storming, where the glass was definitely half full. And it could have legitimately been viewed half full, and it was just a matter of opinion because he was just such a crazy person and his style was so shitty. I think the thing in David said this on the last pot after storming the Capitol,
Starting point is 00:11:56 it is very clear 100% categorically this guy is just a complete piece of shit. And so now the people that stand with him are extremely isolated. And so I the people that stand with him are extremely isolated. And so I just want us to remember that there there is probably something to learn from everybody. He actually did some reasonable things intelligently well until he fucking self-imulated himself. And so let's just not give into our basic instincts here. And I think there's a lot to learn from everything.
Starting point is 00:12:25 I think the frustration of a lot of people is some people saw this coming. And some people, you know, when Peter Tiel said things like, hey, you know, don't take Trump literally and all this kind of stuff, some of us were taking him literally. And some of us were very concerned. And people were saying, oh, you're being hyperbolic,
Starting point is 00:12:45 he's not Hitler, he's not dangerous. You know what? Bullshit, he is dangerous, and you should take him literally. And I think a lot of the folks who enabled him and who thought it was funny, who weren't on the other side of his vindictiveness, his dog whistling, and the anger and the violence
Starting point is 00:13:08 he put out into the world, and he consistently did this. You know, he started by saying, you know, get that person the hell out of here, like I would, in the old days, the cops would have thrown him down the stairs kind of thing. He is like Tony soprano or any other mob boss who knows how to incite people to do dangerous things without having the culpability himself as you pointed out, Chimoth, he might be the one who gets
Starting point is 00:13:30 off Scott free while they're rounding up all these people and you got the prediction, right? Chimoth, like, yeah, these people are going to chill. There's multiple felonies. He's not going to get off Scott free. He's not going to go. Well, I mean, do you think he's going to jail and do you think the people who broke into the, you think you think Trump's going to jail? And do you think the people who broke into the, yes, you think you think Trump's going to jail?
Starting point is 00:13:46 Yes. Oh, my lord. I'm not, I'm not sure about that. But I, I do think that, you know, like I said last time, Trump is now the first sitting president to cost his party the presidency, the House and the Senate since Herbert Hoover. Jason, if you're right about Trump, I mean, the voters and the Senate since Herbert Hoover. Jason, if you're right about Trump, I mean, the voters have certainly been able to see that and they've
Starting point is 00:14:09 punished him and his party at the polls. I do think that whatever you do to Trump individually at this point is sort of redundant with that. You know, he has now cost his party any share of the power, everything, any share of the power in Washington. So can I ask you a question, David? When I made that point about Peter Tiel and the people who supported him early, do you have any regrets in your own thinking about being supportive of Trump in his early years? You're coming at this from a place I've never even come at it from, which is,
Starting point is 00:14:48 I'm not like a partisan person. When Trump won the election in 2016, my first reaction was not, is this, you know, hard right or wrong? I don't, you know, what's side of my on? My first reaction was, why did this happen? I tried to understand it. I read the Hillbilly-Eology author. My surprise at that happening caused me to ask questions. What I think became really clear is that Trump won, despite his manifest flaws, because of the
Starting point is 00:15:31 failure of the elites. I mean, he was, you know, he's this sort of outsider populist, and the country was trying to send the elites, a bipartisan, I should say, bipartisan elites, and what was that message to Shamos' points? For the last 20 years, the bipartisan consensus in Washington has been to feed this Chinese tiger and so on. Again, it's now potentially on the cusp of supplanting us as the sort of richest economy in the world. We have mired ourselves in these forever wars in the Middle East. I mean, again, these were things that both Democrats and Republicans got us into. So my reaction,
Starting point is 00:16:12 was first and foremost to try and understand it. And then once he was in the presidency, you know, I didn't see my job as being to be part of some crazy resistance. I mean, there needed to be a rational opposition to Trump. And there was never a rational opposition. People would basically object to anything he said just because he said it. Which that made your side, and I'm gonna say your side, the conservative side, I wouldn't say your side.
Starting point is 00:16:41 The conservative side dug in, because they were like, well, the left's being hysterical. We're dig in not not really. I mean if you if you've been reading national review for the last few years and especially The last two months there's been plenty of criticism of Trump. Well, I was thinking more Ted Cruz Lindsey Graham All these people who said they would be never Trumpers became right in line Trump supporters And they're in their partisan. They're they're politicians, they're part of the party. For people who care about ideas, what I would say is I didn't change my ideas one way or another because Trump might happen to agree with one of them. Freeberg, what's your take?
Starting point is 00:17:21 I don't like talking about Trump. Well, that is kind of, I think, where we're getting to. This is the... I mean, look, what's the offer, Ampere, Friedberg? What's the end game? You guys remember how the emperor came to power in Star Wars? He was Palpatine turned the Republic against itself, and then he... Emergency powers. emergency powers.
Starting point is 00:17:45 Emergency powers. Look, to SACS's point, like I care more deeply, I care very little about Trump, the person, and I care more deeply about the motivations of people that want a person like that in power, and I care more deeply about the motivations of people that want a person like that in power. And I care more deeply about the way the dialogue is happening to resolve ideas and to resolve to decisions in this country right now. That is why I think that, you know, in my vote last year, in our last two podcasts ago, which seems like 10 years ago, was that the biggest political failure of 2020 is the Institute of American Democracy, and it's only gotten worse in the last two weeks. And I think that the mechanism by which we have debate is lost. It's from everyone from the
Starting point is 00:18:40 Republican to the Democratic leadership. It is attacking and finger pointing, and there is no resolve for forgiveness. Everything is all about justice and winning, and there is no resolve for objectivity and discovering the truth and doing the best thing for people, not the best thing for party, and doing the best thing for country. And that's really easy to say and really, really hard to do as I think everyone is realizing. Because as soon as you say, let's bring the country together, half the country raises their hand and says, but I want justice and we can't come together until we have justice. And so at what point do you break the cycle?
Starting point is 00:19:20 You know, revenge never ends until someone steps down first and says, you know what, I give up, I'm not going to, I'm going to end up in the losing position, but at that point maybe reconciliation can begin. And I'm more concerned about the heat, the temperature, and everyone says, turn it down, but no one's actually turning it down. And so, you know, the legacy of Trump, I honestly care less about, I care much more about going forward. How do we resolve to decisions that aren't all about the Democrats overrunning, and I
Starting point is 00:19:54 was actually upset about Georgia, because I do think it's a problem if you have a one-party state, and we don't have balance, and we don't have a forum for conversation, and we don't have balance and we don't have a forum for conversation and we don't have a forum for coming to kind of objective sentiment that's best for the people. And so I'm much more interested in flipping the conversation away from Trump and trying to think about going forward, what are the things? What are the forums? What are the mechanisms that we can have to create equity in the country, to create reconciliation, to create balance in decision making, and to turn down the temperature so that chancellor Palpatine doesn't become the evil emperor, and that we don't lose to China.
Starting point is 00:20:35 And, you know, all the things that are kind of emerging as being the unfortunate outcomes. Yeah. We have three or four major wars we need to solve. The pandemic, China, wealth inequality, global warming, Chimoff, do you think at this point in the podcast, we should walk through what's happened since Wednesday, vis-a-vis, you know, Trump being de-platformed, or do you think we should talk a little bit about,
Starting point is 00:21:01 and skip to reconciliation. I think we have a fork in the road here, as the moderator, I'll just ask, Tomoth, maybe you could pick which direction we go. Well, I think it's important to talk about what happened. And I'll frame this in the context of Peter Tiel. He has a philosopher that he's talked a lot about René Gerard.
Starting point is 00:21:21 And, you know, basically the Gerardian philosophy is essentially that people come into conflict because they're extremely similar. They effectively want the same things and they're competing for the same sort of essentially scarce resources. The way that you resolve that is through some cathartic sacrifice, meaning there needs to be a grand crime, a grand act. I think that we're at this point to Friedberg's sort of earlier statement where you got a choice, which is you either throw democracy under the bus or you throw DJT under the bus. And you don't have a choice in that, and that, and, and sort of like, it's not just even the United States. It's almost like
Starting point is 00:22:01 sort of democracy as an institution's hand was forced this past week. And so it is probably important to look at what's happened in the last few days through that lens, which is, you know, it's almost like people first were shocked and then now we're in the midst of that reflexive reaction to what is a simple choice, which is you can basically forgive the guy or you can reaffirm the institution, which means to sacrifice the guy. And I think that's the thing that's happening in real time. And it's going to be, I think, over the next few weeks, a super messy conversation because you're going to have a bunch of dumb decisions,
Starting point is 00:22:46 you're gonna have a bunch of overreaching, you're gonna have a bunch of dramatic sort of belly-aking on both sides. There was this thing today where Devon Nunez was like screaming about how he had lost his 3,000 followers on parlor, or 3 million followers on parlor, but he was saying it on Fox news Which is distribution to millions of people
Starting point is 00:23:11 And so I ask a question about this reality now. We're all facing do because the event that occurred on Wednesday We are all still trying to process and new information is coming in as we you know still trying to process and new information is coming in. As people get the videos and as we let the dust settle, the dust is settling. I'm curious, SACs, how do you look at what happened on Wednesday? Do you view it as a coup? Because some of the information that's come out about they were trying to get to Pence and that they wanted to kidnap people and then that dovetails with the kidnapping schemes that were going on. And there were pipe bombs and a police officer was beaten to death with a pipe and his skull was crushed or something.
Starting point is 00:23:55 We don't have all the details yet. Fire extinguisher. A fire extinguisher was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Some of the videos I've seen of police being dragged, you know, that counteract the selfie police, you know, so many different things occurred on Wednesday. I think we all have to just think about what happened on Wednesday. How do we each feel about what happened on Wednesday? I'll go to you first, Axe.
Starting point is 00:24:18 And not because I'm framing you as anything, just because you haven't. Yeah, no, I already gave my thoughts in the last pod. That it was outrageous. It was a travesty. It was a rally that turned into a riot, that turned into some sort of insurrection, I guess you could call it. It was a rebellion against authority. I think Koo is potentially a strong word because nobody ever had their hands on the levers of power.
Starting point is 00:24:49 I mean, the fate of the Republic was never in question. I know there were even people tweeting about how these marauders would call them, almost got their hands on the electors' ballots. I mean, yeah, but we all know how they're voting. Even if they had gotten them, we would just have gotten new ones. I mean, that was sort of a ceremonial thing. But look, it was an absolute outrage.
Starting point is 00:25:14 But I do think that there is a thing happening now called threat inflation, where using language like going from riot to insurrection to now coup, there is a type of inflation happening that is then used to justify the reaction by the other side to it, which is now the basically the ending of freedom of speech, which is really, I think the big thing has happened since the last pod, it's really the reason why we are having this emergency pod, I think, is because of what's happened there.
Starting point is 00:25:51 I think the emergency pod was just to make sure that the pod wasn't ending because of you not getting in a big fight. I think that was people's concern. Well, the Beatles were breaking up. Yeah, well, that's true. Look, just keeping the pod together, you know, with four big egos on it, you're right, it's hard.
Starting point is 00:26:06 It is like the Beatles. One day's gonna break up, but not yet, not yet. But I wanna tie in this issue with what you said about the off ramp, okay, which is, what is the off ramp from this? Look, everybody understands, I think, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you're on, that we are caught in a cycle of insane, hyperpartisan warfare and tit-for-tat retaliation.
Starting point is 00:26:31 And that is the thing that we need to, that is the ledge, we need to walk back from. But the problem that everybody has is that they can only see the other side doing it. They can't see themselves doing it. This is a two-way street. the other side doing it. You know, they can't see themselves doing it. This is a two-way street. Both sides are doing it. And that's how de-escalation works. It's both times how it can see something. Yes, unless you can see when your side is doing it, we're never going to break the cycle. Now, the thing that is happening right now,
Starting point is 00:27:00 now what Trump did was absolutely outrageous. And I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics. He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law. But now what has happened is the next step in the Tiffertout retaliation. The stormy of the Capitol has now been used to implement a sweeping attack on free speech. The Twitter employees who sent that letter to Jack who've been demanding this for years have finally gotten their way.
Starting point is 00:27:33 And there is a widespread purge going on. And not just of Trump, not just a permanent ban on Trump, and then a whole bunch of other people, conservatives. There are now liberal accounts. There's an account that I wasn't even aware of called RedScare. They're basically, you know, pretty, pretty much on the left. No one can say exactly what it was that got them banned.
Starting point is 00:27:52 I guess they had Steve Bannon on their podcast. They are suddenly banned from Twitter. Nobody knows why. I subscribe to the RedScare podcast. It's actually, it's called the Dirtbag Left. They're kind of like socialists into trying to be public intellectuals and it's oddly compelling.
Starting point is 00:28:10 I'll leave it at that. But they are now banned from Twitter. They somehow got out of the go. Let's pause for a second on DJT, getting banned from Twitter. This is close to 100 million followers. It's a billion dollars in value. He just had the PGA, say they'll never do a Trump golf course again. So the real world ramifications for Trump are, his businesses are going to be devastated. His platform is gone. But, and I was very pro Trump
Starting point is 00:28:43 staying on Twitter. I thought it was insane to think that the president of the United States would have their Twitter handle removed. That seemed crazy to me. However, it's a crazy concept. That being said, Trump knows how to dance right up to the line on the terms of service. And I think, well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think there's imminent danger.
Starting point is 00:29:03 And I think what we don't know is what is concerning to me. The fact that all of these services have turned him off, I believe is indicative of when they was underhyped and that they really did intend to kidnap folks and blow off bombs. And the proud boys founder was arrested days before with, you know, selling large magazine weapons. I think that they wanted to kill and kidnap people. And perhaps even like hang the vice president. Honestly, but that's honestly Jason. That's what I don't
Starting point is 00:29:39 think is going on with Twitter. I think they told that they showed them the seats. Jason stop. I honestly like, let's not fucking fear monger. Like we're no better than anybody else with that bullshit. We don't know any of that crap. And the reality is that if they were doing that, they are not stupid enough to do it on a platform where you basically follow anybody you want. Okay. Like I mean if that were the case then fucking ISIS would be using Twitter. They don't use Twitter. They use telegram. They use live streamed storming of the capital. These people are not smart.
Starting point is 00:30:09 We've established that. Anyways, can we just, let's just like, let's not do the left version of QAnon. Okay, let's not have now the left's version of the crazy conspiracy theories. Here's, here's I think what is worth talking about. We really really reflexively all of a sudden started to push back on free speech in a way that doesn't make any sense.
Starting point is 00:30:33 Meaning, I really was surprised like, why are these Silicon Valley companies reacting now? Like, if you had a reason to do it, it had been building for years and years and years. And in many ways, it was kind of like this random moment. And I mean random because I just don't think that, you know, everything up until that point was not equally sort of violent disgusting under the same lens that that moment was. And so had you had a reason to ban him, you would have banned him already. But then doing it in the way you did, and then having this cascading effect on folks on the left and the right, just getting basically pushed out the door, to me was just completely reactive and not rooted in anything.
Starting point is 00:31:19 It didn't, to me, it didn't make any sense. It, it's, it's, I don't know, I was, I was very frustrated and, and a little taken aback. Can I jump in? You let them on that because we know a lot about this. And then the last thing is they let Donald Trump hit a one-outer. He was painted in a quarter to be a complete demagogue. And instead, now it has been wrapped in a free speech issue where now more people are talking about free speech than what a more people are talking about free
Starting point is 00:31:45 speech than what a scumbag he is. How did we let that happen? Big big big tech blundered into it again. I mean we had a unanimity across the political spectrum that what happened at the Capitol was wrong and Donald Trump was responsible for it. And Jamal, these actually like you said, the topic has now changed to censorship by big tech, which is a real issue. I mean, look, our freedom of speech is an shrine in the Constitution in the first
Starting point is 00:32:13 amendment of the Bill of Rights. It's the first fucking one. Okay. It's the one the framers of the Constitution cared about the most. Because free speech is not just necessary, an important for democracy. It's the reason why we have our freedom is so because free speech is not just necessary, an important for democracy, it's the reason why we have our freedom is so that we can think and speak and worship as we please. And that is legitimately under threat.
Starting point is 00:32:36 You know, what big to, and by the way, it's not just the permanent ban on Trump, you had simultaneous to that. It wasn't just the ban name of all these accounts. You also had the de-platforming of Parler, which is sort of the Twitter alternative, by Google and Apple at the same time, and Amazon. And so you're talking about really de-platforming, not just Trump, but millions of people. And so the amazing thing is that we've had this sweeping appropriation of power by half a dozen oligarchs who now have the right to determine what we see and read and people cheering because they hate Trump so much they can't see that the biggest power grab in history has happened. Has happened. I want to say something on this,
Starting point is 00:33:27 because I'm not sure I really fully agree. I think that the point that SACS is making about freedom of speech applies to what you're legally allowed to say. SACS, we're talking about private services that a user chooses to use, and the service provider chooses to make available to that user in a market space. And in that context, it feels to me like everyone has a choice of where to go and what services to use. And frankly, if there aren't good services to use, and there's a lot of people that want to use one, the free market will resolve to create one. And we're already seeing that with Signal being the number one app on the App Store today, that emerging new platforms will win in a marketplace where old service providers are no longer catering to the market demands for a service.
Starting point is 00:34:17 I'll also say that- Can I respond to that one? Yeah, and then I'll make one more point, but go ahead. So I understand the First Amendment only applies to government. It doesn't apply to private companies, but here's the thing. The framers of the Constitution wrote that. Freedom of speech was something that took place in the town square. You go to the courthouse stamps and put on your soap box.
Starting point is 00:34:40 You could speak to people, gather or crowd. That is why the right to assemble is part of the First Amendment, is because assembling is tantamount to free speech. Where do people assemble today online? On these monopoly network services, like a Facebook, like Twitter. And again, it's not, and to your point, couldn't they go to some other site? Well, they did. They went to parlor, guess what happened? The operating systems just banned parlor. And so, you know, I hear this, this is hard. There's an open, there's an open web, SACs.
Starting point is 00:35:12 You know, you don't need to go to Apple's App Store or Google's Google Play. You can put an app on Android. You just don't need to do it through Google Play. And if you don't want to use Apple's, you know, OS, you can use another phone. And by the way, and everyone can access the internet. The internet is free and open
Starting point is 00:35:27 and anyone can create a new network node on the internet and anyone can put any information they want on that node, provided it's within the boundaries and constraints of the law and they can make it available to anyone else. Maybe for now, but you can't use AWS and Google might not make you show up in search results. You could turn your, I'm at, you could turn your, I'm at at home into a, into a web server
Starting point is 00:35:46 and you could make a little on the internet. If Google and Amazon and Apple have censored you at the operating system level and remove you from Google search results, how in the world is anybody supposed to find you? Yeah, you're gonna be able to remove from, so let me just, I think it's important. The app, so, so I do think that there's still an open market
Starting point is 00:36:06 and there's an open internet that people can access information freely and use the internet freely without being dependent on a handful of your right highly scaled services and highly scale platforms. But there's certainly a marketplace and an opportunity for innovation there. I'll also say that the platforms that made these decisions to ban these accounts and kick people off are not doing so under the demand of law. And I think that that is a really, and so I think to some extent, you know, I'm probably on your side in this context, but the standard is not a legal standard. The standard is a judgment. It is a moral or some principled standard
Starting point is 00:36:48 that is sitting above and beyond the legal standard that they're required to comply with. This is the point. And this is really scary, right? Because at that point, it becomes a subjective decision about who you kick off based on your interpretation of what they said and what they intended when they said it. And that leads to the infinite slippery slope and a tier. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:07 You nailed it. One fucking thousand percent. That is the exact issue. It's not necessarily about free speech. It is that when you have accumulated power and you effectively have a quasi-governmental organization that gets to operate in the free market when it wants to, but then operate like a quasi-governmental monopoly when it wants to. All of a sudden, the power becomes in the shadows. There is a random VP someplace who actually controls this decision. The problem is today, if a politician does something or a political body or a government body does something, you have redress, right? You can sue
Starting point is 00:37:46 that entity. You know who it is. There's a pathway through the courts, through the law, through the constitution. The problem with this is all of a sudden it becomes murky. And look, you flip a coin 50% of the time, guys, you're going to get your way. The other 50% of the time, who the fuck knows what will happen? And you may be completely on the wrong side of it. And this is, I think the problem. Let me, I just want to read you guys something. There was a, there was this manifesto or memo. This woman who was a former Facebook data scientist,
Starting point is 00:38:13 Sophie Zhang, she wrote, I'm just, I'm just gonna read this because I think it's, it's really interesting here. The 6600 word memo written by former Facebook data scientist, Sophie Zhang is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, she found
Starting point is 00:38:39 evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them. She said, in the three years I've spent at Facebook, I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry and cause international news on multiple occasions. Now, let me just stop there. Replace your United States with all those countries and we care. But there are people in all of those countries where those countries mean more to them than what's happening in the United States.
Starting point is 00:39:10 That's right. And that represents the problem. And the social swation that is influencing the leaders of the tech companies are largely their Democrat employees that live in the Bay Area. And that's a big part of why the decisions are being made, and the way that they're being made, and the priorities are being set, is because as you pointed out, I think it was Saka put it on Twitter and Jason, you've talked about this, but talent is everything in Silicon
Starting point is 00:39:36 Valley. And if your employees tell you they're going to quit working for you, they're not going to do their jobs, you're're gonna take that to heart. And there's not a lot of influence or swation that citizens of Bolivia and Uruguay can have with executives at Facebook and Twitter, but people in the Bay Area have a lot of vision. Have a fucking clue about the politics
Starting point is 00:39:59 and Azerbaijan or Bolivia. Does anyone of us have a point of view? And I think that's the point is like as soon as you add judgment to the equation, you're going to be wrong with some people and you're going to be right with some people versus using an absolute standard. And if the issue is that the law, if the law doesn't define the absolute standard, then you need to go and change the law.
Starting point is 00:40:21 I think there's going to be a couple of free market solutions that come here because even as difficult as this decision can be, you layer it onto it, somebody who is completely insincere and manipulating the system on purpose and to your point, David and last podcast is sitting in the President of the United States seat. It carries different weight. And if you look at the words that Trump used, or Rudy used, you know, we want to have combat, trial by combat, you know, is that, somebody's got to make a judgment call. Is that an incitement to violence, or do you just look at what occurred after they said the words? It's a very difficult thing to do.
Starting point is 00:41:01 There are free market solutions that will emerge. Bitcoin is something we've talked about as an incredible run. Nobody's controlling that. There is MasterDawn and plenty of other peer-to-peer software that will be deployed, I predict, and that will put up a competition now for these services. And it will be impossible to ban those peer-to-peer platforms, and so we'll have some products emerge. One universal truth, this information wants to be free. So if there is an opinion, if there is a voice, if there is information out there.
Starting point is 00:41:29 There will be a free market response to parlor being shut down. I sincerely believe that a lot of these decisions are being made, not just at the behest of the employees. I do agree, they have tremendous power. And I've said that obviously many times. I think what's going on here is people believe that Trump and we and you said it yourself David, there's gonna be a white knuckle 10 days And I don't know if you still believe that there's a chance on the 17th or 19th or whatever that there could be more unrest I actually think a lot of people woke up and said I don't know if I want to give this guy
Starting point is 00:42:03 The ability to say the next three or four crazy things that make people show up at a person's home or, you know, the dog whistling and, you know, if Trump's comments on Wednesday at that rally and Rudy Giuliani's and Donald Trump Jr.s, the people who really inside of this, and they're going to face some amount of civil and criminal charges, I believe. If they did that on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Periscope or whatever it happens to be, and then this happened, would those platforms have some liability, especially after, you know, what's happened.
Starting point is 00:42:45 I think that they're just in part of this is covering their asses. I think they should have just done a 30 day ban, not a permanent ban. So at least they would have the cover of saying, listen, this is too heated. We're going to pause for 30 days. And then we'll reassess it February 1st or February 15th. Right. So part of the problem here is that there is no policy. The policy is public outcry.
Starting point is 00:43:10 And if there's enough public outcry and there's enough pressure or letter writing from the employees or there's enough saber rattling by the people who are going to run the Senate judiciary committee next year. Or the language was so clear. It's, but there is so so three months ago I wrote a blog post about the so the policy that I thought the social media companies should take. I said for moderation and what I said is there actually is a moderation policy consistent with the first amendment that could be implemented because the first amendment does not protect many
Starting point is 00:43:43 categories of basically danger of speech. There's like nine major categories. It includes incitement of violence. It includes trying to provoke a crime. It includes fraud, includes defamation. There are many categories of speech that aren't protected by the First Amendment. And social media companies could have said, listen, this is our policy is we are gonna try and be broadly consistent with the First Amendment, but if somebody goes outside of those lines,
Starting point is 00:44:14 then we will remove it. So there was a way to your point, Jason, I think there was a way to remove some of Trump's tweets for incitement consistent with the first amendment. But that's not what they did. And maybe that would, it's not what they did is a lifetime ban combined with rounding up, twice the usual number of suspects, combined with a deplatforming, not at the account level, but now at the application level by Google, Apple, and Amazon. And none of
Starting point is 00:44:45 this has been explained. There is no policy. What it is is a, I mean, there is a lot. What it is is an appropriation policy by oligarchs. No, no, there is a policy. The problem is, as we've just discussed, it's an interpretation that must occur. And the interpretation of Wednesday's comments on a tweet might be, okay, yeah, they're borderline, but not enough to shut his account down. And these folks know how to do it. When Rudy Giuliani says, I want a trial by combat, or, you know, if Trump says, you're not going to have a country unless you fight, and you have to fight, and we're never going to accept these results. Is that inciting or not? So, they didn't say people. The policy that I want is something broadly consistent
Starting point is 00:45:28 with the First Amendment. Because that is. But in those phrases I just told you, are those inciting or those on the border line, if you were making the decision? Right, so you know, pretty my lawyer had on for a second. There's questions of law and questions of fact, okay? And we can debate what you're describing or questions of fact. What I'm trying to say is, well, what is
Starting point is 00:45:48 the law? What is the policy that we're trying to do? Well, what would say those were not direct incitement? No, there is no policy. These social media companies don't have any policy. They're making it up as they go along based on what would you do? What would you do with Trump's comments from Wednesday if they were in tweets? Yeah, I'll tell you. So first of all, I would have implemented a moderation policy broadly, consistent with the First Amendment, and then certain tweets that were inciting violence while there was writing on the Capitol, I would have been okay taking those down. I would have taken those down, where I think, and I think even doing something in total inauguration, if you think that
Starting point is 00:46:21 And I think even doing something until the inauguration, if you think that Trump poses a thread, I think that's okay. I think that's okay. So you would have been fine with a 30 day ban or something? Well, like a 10 day ban or whatever, but a lifetime ban, like on what basis, on what constitutional grounds do you justify that? And look, I know it's a private company,
Starting point is 00:46:42 but my point is this idea, our free speech rights got privatized. Okay, the town square got digitized and centralized. We used to have thousands, we used to have town squares where people could convene all over this country. We had a multiplicity of newspapers, all that got replaced by a handful of tech monopolists. Our free speech rights got digitized. If they take away our ability to speak, we don't have free speech rights. Who do we appeal to when we get canceled by a Google or Apple? What court can we go to?
Starting point is 00:47:15 Right. You have to create a computing process. By the way, I think this is the best argument for having an internet court. And if you think about the standards that are being applied, they're being applied half-hazardly, randomly, by these companies in response to near-term market forces, what is everyone saying they have to do, or what are their employees rallying for them to do? Security law?
Starting point is 00:47:39 Well, there's privacy laws that say that companies, that digital companies cannot take certain types of data. And why not have laws or what you want? There are things which you want out there as well. And why not be more specific and then let an internet court adjudicate and make the decision about what to take down and what not to take down. They are very responsive to warrants when there's a criminal act underway. And so why not let an internet court be responsive to take down requests or to-
Starting point is 00:48:04 Where do you think, Jamath? Or internet court? Good idea. No, it's mandatory. And again, it's centralizes the standards, right? So you don't have to have ad hoc random decisions and let if what SACS is saying is true, it creates a standard that everyone has to abide by and that every consumer can trust them to abide by.
Starting point is 00:48:24 First, we need to build a rights, right? First we need to say that we as citizens have rights that the court can defend. That is the problem. We don't have any rights. These companies are acting willy-nilly, cancelling people, depriving them of their speech rights, and don't tell me that you can still speak, you depriving them of their speech rights. And don't tell me that you can still speak, you know, somewhere if you get canceled. Here's the thought exercise, and I want everybody listening who's on the left to think about
Starting point is 00:48:54 this exact issue. Your favorite social media company is trying to get a really, really big deal closed. And they are trying to curry favor with a bunch of brands and a bunch of governments. And those governments and brands, let's just say it's in India, right? Huge market, 1.2 billion people. They say, you know what? We're a little tepid on abortion. They say, you know what, we're a little tepid on abortion. And so the deal is you need to dial down any ad from plant parenthood. You need to prevent plant parenthood groups from amplifying from being able to fundraise. Think about that exact issue now and ask yourself, is it okay? Because there's a lot of people that are, you know, pro-choice that listen to this and the, and I'm sure right now your blood is fucking boiling.
Starting point is 00:49:51 But there is no distinction between that decision and what happened over the last few days. There's none. It's arbitrary, it's random, it doesn't necessarily make any sense. There is no way to readdress it. Then that's the biggest problem with all of this thing. It just creates a concept that newspapers just have an abudzman and the New York Times had went up until I think 2017, and then they got rid of it because I think it was causing too much headaches,
Starting point is 00:50:16 but it's a person who works for the organization but has complete independence and sits outside of it to comment on these kind of situations. And I think that's what these companies do. Well, no, Jason, they have these things, but those are fig leaves and those are just it to comment on these kind of situations. And I think that's what these companies do. Well, no, Jason, they had these things, but those are fig leaves and those are just meant to basically just, they don't have it in the strife of a dumb politician.
Starting point is 00:50:31 It's not, it's not Jason, they have a fucking council. Facebook has a council with all these transparent. They don't say here's our decision making and talk to the public directly about it. I think that you can look to securities law. There's some examples in securities law, which I think are really interesting, which is that a CFO and a CEO has to certify quarterly results, right? Meaning for people who have issues with a company and with the statement
Starting point is 00:50:56 of their earnings, which is the sort of atomic unit of value creation and financial reporting, they have a mechanism to redress it because you're certifying that something is true, right? You're certifying a set of decisions have been made and audit has been done, you know, the software works, you know, the blah, blah, blah. What is the version of that for all of this other stuff, which is that, you know, where are the people? Who are they actually that make the decisions? You can't point to Jack and Zuck and say those guys are the decision makers.
Starting point is 00:51:24 I think in these examples, what you have to point to is there was a petition of potentially several hundred or a few thousand engineers and depending on how important they were, they may have gotten their way. That's crazy, guys. Well, and Trump served it up to him. I mean, if you know, and then the worst part is, no, but the worst part is these people who are probably very left of center Completely fucked the left and then they basically let Donald Trump off the hook because now we're gonna completely be talking about free speech Whereas the odds that Donald Trump would have gone to jail and been prosecuted was basically in my opinion a fucking stone cold Lock and then now after this happened there's a bunch of those people who are going to basically
Starting point is 00:52:05 like him and Ha and now they're not going to necessarily go along with it. Exactly. 100 100 100% and Jason. So good fucking job guys. Yeah. Exactly. The exact opposite of what you wanted. Exactly. And here's the thing Jason, you're right. Trump's outrage gave the censors the excuse to impose this. That's the way that censorship always works. If you are censoring somebody popular, it would never happen. Censorship always starts by censoring some outrage that everybody agrees should be censored. And no one even notices that what's happening is you're handing power to a group of people
Starting point is 00:52:45 that they can now use against you in the future. Sensation always starts as something you like and it ends as something you don't like when it finally gets turned against you. What is the policy of the people who are now canceling Willie Nilly? It's cancel culture. By the way, it's not the first amendment. Well, I think you've got to not say Willie Milley after Trump incited riots. If there's enough public, it might have been an
Starting point is 00:53:09 overreaction, but I think it's the proper reaction. You agree. It's the problem. No, no, no, no. People on understate and prohibit a proper action to maybe do a 30 day suspension, but maybe not indefinitely on all platforms. Forget about Trump for a second. There are all these like random fucking uses accounts with 60,000 people that were basically suspended. Well, a people that were basically suspended.
Starting point is 00:53:25 Well, a lot of them were about 60,000 followers. There's like, I mean, like, it doesn't like what's going on? It makes no sense. Jason, I mean, you used to be a member of the press. No one believed in the first amendment more than you. And you're letting your outrage. You still have your information. You're outrage at Trump. No, cause you to pull your punches. You still do your half-for-information. You're letting your outrage at Trump.
Starting point is 00:53:46 No. Cause you to pull your punches on these on-sensorship. No, no, I'll be totally clear. I think they should have an abudsmine. I think they should lean towards allowing speech. I was anti-kicking Trump off the platform when the entire left was asking for it to be it. And you can look at the receipts I've been saying for four years.
Starting point is 00:54:02 It's insane to take potas off. I actually, in my heart of hearts believe that there is imminent risk in keeping him able to communicate with this group of people and there should have been a 30 day timeout for him. And I don't think it should have been indefinite, it should have been a 30 day timeout. And I think we should do what folks said,
Starting point is 00:54:19 I don't know who said it on the last pot or if I heard it somewhere else. Like actually, if we actually were to audit some of these claims and create an independent council to audit the election, that might be a way to heal things. And I think giving Trump a- Freeberg said that. Who said, Freeberg said it?
Starting point is 00:54:34 Yeah. So I think that's like a power move as well. But I'm still pro freedom of speech. I think there's imminent danger. And I don't think it's willy-nilly. This is where I think sometimes you miss and you misreprepresent yourself David. And we started this off with me misrepresenting you. But when you say it's Willie Nilly, it's not Willie Nilly. We just had this active, you know, treason and this violence at the Capitol. It is not Willie Nilly. Jason, you have to overreaction.
Starting point is 00:55:02 I agree. It's not Willie Nilly. Jason, you have to admit though, the entire world had Donald Trump in a corner, debt to rights. And he didn't want to utter. And he didn't want to utter. It's a bad strategy to de-platform to this level. I agree. And then to include, the reason they're going after parlor, by the way, is that this guy, Lin Wood, threatened, he said that they should take vice president pants out and shoot him. And I think that, I'm saying Lin Wood is insane, but they literally
Starting point is 00:55:31 didn't take it down. Well, that was incitement to violence and under the first amendment, you can clearly pray about that. I would take it down. And parlor didn't take it down. They dragged their feet down. And he said, it's a metaphor to go take pants out and shoot him. This is Donald Trump's lawyer. Well, one of his lawyers, previous lawyers. That, in my view, that doesn't justify what's happened. What I mean by Willie Nilly is, why has Red Scare been taken down? So left wing sight.
Starting point is 00:55:56 I don't know. Why has Dan Bongino been taken down? He's like a Fox commentator. I've heard him. I mean, he's sort of, I don't know. He's kind of a pretty middle road Fox type guy. I don't really know what he did. We have no transparency into why people are being taken down. I can't go evaluate for myself what they said to see if it, you know, if it warranted censorship. And that's what I might say that this overreaction was playing into the hands of the
Starting point is 00:56:26 Jason, what happened to control senate congress? Jason, what happens is like a big pharma company who wants to do a big ad buy on Facebook says, hey guys, you got to really dial down anti-vax content. Now, I'm not an anti-vaxer but do I at some level believe in their right to talk about being an anti-vaxer? Absolutely. I think it's insane, but should they have a right to do it? Absolutely. Yeah, I'm a fan of the labeling. I thought the labeling was the right direction to go in, where if, but, but,
Starting point is 00:56:58 Saks, you did talk about how for the last 60 days Trump fermented this insane conspiracy theory. So I guess the question is, do you think that insane conspiracy theory or the question we have to ask all of ourselves? I'm not pinning it on you. And, you know, I'm sensitive to you being pinned as a president, as for all of Trump's bad behavior. But we, you did say, and you just say this is a two month process of indoctrinating people
Starting point is 00:57:22 into thinking this was all stolen. And then they put labels on it and then the capital gets stormed. So I think these companies are being put in a very uncomfortable position which is at what point do you stop this maniac if he's lying constantly? We were talking about these challenges on the pod for the last couple of months and we were laughing, I mean we were laughing at how ridiculous they were and how ridiculous the things that Rudy was doing. It was crazy.
Starting point is 00:57:49 Look, I think not to his supporters. Well, but here's the thing. One of which is dead. We're four of which are dead. I understand. And here's the thing. Democracy takes work. We have to spend the time to actually dispel these views. And it would be nice
Starting point is 00:58:08 to be able to wave a magic wand and disenter the things that we don't like. But here's the thing, none of us has a monopoly on the truth. And we knew what the truth was in this particular instance, but there are other cases where we don't. And the question is really, who has the power to decide? So I'll tell you a real quick story. When I went to law school all those years ago, the very first class that I had in law school, it's this very arcane class called Civil Procedure, which is about what court you take a case to.
Starting point is 00:58:41 OK? And I was kind of wondering, why is this like the first thing we learn in law school? And I'll tell you the reason why is because the first question in the law is who decides? Is jurisdiction? Who has the power to decide an issue? And here's a thing, I would love for Lindenwood to be canceled and to not be able to spout these insane theories. But who are we going to give the power to to make those decisions? And what we've done this week by we had this feel good moment, I you know, at least in the tech community of being able to say Donald Trump
Starting point is 00:59:18 paying for life and all these other people we hate. But we have now handed this enormous power to this big tech cartel, and it's not going to end here. This is what the end is the beginning. I don't think that the leadership at big tech want to be in this position. I think it's easy to blame the individuals, Zuck, Jack, Susan, Sundar, whomever. I worked at Google when it was a private company. Chamak knows work with Zuck. I think we've all had experience with these individuals.
Starting point is 01:00:00 I think one thing having spent time with all of them, I can tell you is that I believe that all of them want information to be freely available and accessible. And that's a really core principle. And the challenge that they're facing is that there is, you know, as we talked about, this social pressure to move away from that core principle because there is always an argument to be made. And there is no universal or unifying kind of court of law that says this is the way things should be done by law. And as a result, the pressure is what changes the behavior.
Starting point is 01:00:36 And that pressure will change, the tides will shift. And it's a very kind of ugly circumstance, but I think characterizing the individuals as being in charge of this sex or trying to make them feel like they should be handcuffed in some way is a bit of a mischaracterization. We saw that even in the Congressional hearings last July, just what an absolute joke it was to see Congress trying question these folks because the answers they have, I think were reasonable and rational, and as we all know as technologists,
Starting point is 01:01:09 like Congress doesn't understand this stuff. The biggest observation to me is that the law hasn't kept up with the internet. And if you look at how the DMCA was written, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, shortly after it was written YouTube with all this user-generated content, saw a lot of copyright content show up,
Starting point is 01:01:28 and they would get a take-down notice, which is the legal process by which you remove copyright content. And then as soon as they took it down, someone else would post the same content, and then someone else would post the same content, and then suddenly via a con sued Google, because they were like, look, our copyrighted content
Starting point is 01:01:42 is being continuously displayed on your site, on your platform, on your platform. And that's because the mechanism defined in the DMCA did not keep up with the law. The biggest issue, I think, is a legal one, which is, how do we create laws? And how do we create a private industry meets government, court, body governing principles
Starting point is 01:02:01 that allows these arbitrations to operate? Right, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, apply, which is what sentence? governing principles that allows these arbitrations to operate. Can I say something? Well, just one sentence. I mean, apply First Amendment obligations to these monopolists. That's what my bought post was about. I'll tell you where this could go in a bad direction, is if you look at, if you think about what social media has become, I would put it on the top of the list
Starting point is 01:02:25 that includes other critical national resources that any country has. So for example, if you look at in Bolivia, as it turns out, Bolivia has incredible access to lithium, right? And lithium is like an incredible, we all need that. We wanna medicate Trump with lithium, is that what you're saying? No, lithium, the, the, the, the input into, into lithium ion batteries.
Starting point is 01:02:51 But it also turns out that at every step along the way, Bolivia is basically nationalized every single private investment of a lithium ion. In countries all around the world, there's, you There's numerous examples of this privatization turning into nationalization when something becomes important enough. And part of, I think, what we're struggling with here is, you know, there's gonna be this crazy push pull in social media. What do you think happens if, you know,
Starting point is 01:03:21 India actually says, hey, you know what? You're gonna have to nationalize the rails of WhatsApp or the rails of Facebook if you wanna be in my country. Why is that so inconceivable? I think you're right that that is a second order, that is a second order consequence of censorship that nobody even thinks about. You have the leaders of many countries across the world
Starting point is 01:03:45 using Twitter as a channel. Do you think they are now gonna wanna rely on that? Given that Twitter can censor them at any time, they're gonna hand that lever of national power to Jack Dorsey in a way. They're gonna look at this. I mean, not even Jack Dorsey, David. Somebody in like the bowels of the user,
Starting point is 01:04:03 user access group. Some people, some brand OVP someplace is going to stop the president or the prime minister of a country and communicating to their people. It's not a problem. Exactly. Exactly. And this is exactly the kind of second order consequence that the people who, who I think engage in this feel good moment of censoring Trump, didn't even think through. Didn't even think through. This is exactly why the best solution would have been a temporary pause on these accounts to let the dust settle.
Starting point is 01:04:30 But any of these completely fundamental decisions that you can't go back from, what is the technical difference between saying it's banned forever and it's banned for 10 days today? Technically, it's the same decision. But exactly what David said, you feed into this emotion, just like the people that storm the Capitol fed into their emotion. And then you wake up the next day with this hangover, and you realize to yourself, what the fuck did I just
Starting point is 01:04:57 do? And I think that's that's what we're going to have to sort out now is you cannot unscramble this fucking egg. Because irrespective of whatever happens in the United States, there are two to three billion monthly active users, daily active users on these products. They all report to different people. And none of those people that they report to are Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. They are the presidents and prime ministers, duly elected individuals of these countries. And so you're not going gonna allow these two private citizens
Starting point is 01:05:26 to disrupt power. We have so much information, we don't know about what occurred this past week. I think it's all gonna get investigated. It's gonna be like a 9-11 commission all over again, or Ukraine, et cetera. I think that's why a pause would be really good to find out exactly, Trump's been telling people to come to this rally.
Starting point is 01:05:47 It's going to be a hell of a show and it's going to be incredible. And you got to be there on the six. It's going to be out of control. How much did they know? That's what I really wanted. How much did they know about what was going to go down? And why are these people carrying zip ties and pipe bombs? This could have been a lot worse.
Starting point is 01:06:05 I think that's why people are responding this way. And I saw something today that I thought was I'll let you pick it up from you, Freeberg. But I saw something today that I thought was particularly interesting and dovetails with reconciliation, which is what the country's got to do in 2021 and 2022. We got to reconcile this shit because it's bigger fish to fry like China and the pandemic and global warming. One of these people at the airport
Starting point is 01:06:33 who was coming home from the rally is now on the do not fly list. They're taking this group of domestic terrorists is how they're putting these American citizens who got whipped up into a frenzy by Trump and Giuliani. They're calling them domestic terrorists is how they're putting these American citizens who got whipped up into a frenzy by Trump and Giuliani They're calling them domestic terrorists now Some of them maybe maybe some of them are just you know got caught up in the wrong mob They're on the do not fly list this guy couldn't get home and he's freaking out and then not enough you saw Lindsey Graham
Starting point is 01:07:00 with 20 of the people who are going home from the rallies chanting at him that this is never going to end and that seemed like a very volatile situation. And so the escalation continues good, Freeberg. I'll tell you, like, it feels to me like this past week has been nothing but fuel for both sides because there isn't a black and white circumstance here and there isn't a black and white objective truth about, you know, what took place and what motivations were and what the connections were
Starting point is 01:07:30 When I was 16 years old I went to a rave in downtown LA and For New Year's Eve you did and right before you 16 and And the rave got shut down half an hour before midnight because there was some illegal drug being widely circulated for free So you guys can watch videos of this on YouTube. It's called circa 1996 and we and everyone the cops came in and they shut down the rave It was outdoors and down in parallel and we rioted and so everyone was ready and like I Participated I think I passed the the period where they can prosecute me. Oh my god
Starting point is 01:08:06 7000 yeah, I participated in the No, don't say that don't say that on the show you you were you witnessed I witnessed Participated in the sense that I was there and and I saw all this all this activity But when you're standing next to these people there was absolutely no thought around what to do and when and what the next step was. And I think if you watch the videos, yeah, if you watch the videos of the Capitol, there's a lot of videos on YouTube that you can watch now. And you can watch the interviews of people coming out of the Capitol building. It's like, what were you doing in there?
Starting point is 01:08:38 We were fighting for, you know, to, to, it's a revolution, right? I mean, we're taking back the country. And then some people were saying, well, we're trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden and other people were saying we're taking over the Capitol. There was no uniform sense of what the objective of the mission was and there was many interpretations. If you look at all the parlor messages that have been copied and published now online, there were many interpretations about Trump's words and really on tape. Yeah, parlor. And so everyone has a different point of view and I think that's the biggest challenge we're gonna have is we're all gonna try and get to the truth
Starting point is 01:09:08 and everyone's gonna cast this as a different point. They're gonna take what happened, they're gonna take some set of events that happened and they're gonna highlight that this is what the connections were and this is the reason why it happened and this just creates fuel, it doesn't create, there is not gonna be some objective outcome here where we're all to feel better.
Starting point is 01:09:25 No one's going to feel better at the end of the day. And we've basically just thrown a whole bunch of gas on a fire that was already burning. What did you think? That was my point. That was just like, it's all grace. No, my behavior. Yeah, crazy. Burned whatever photos you took.
Starting point is 01:09:40 Sacks, what do you think of this VP, you know, pens and Trump and their relationship vis-a-vis pardons in this endgame here because it does seem like Pence was upset, uh, obviously, what occurred and that Trump didn't even call to check on him and what was going on and then a number of these people because there are Q and on people there. There are, you know, I'm sure Antifa people there, but it was mainly Trump folks. They wanted to capture the VP. That was for some of them, the explicit purpose of this was to get the vice
Starting point is 01:10:14 president and to hold him accountable. And you know, there are some speculations to do bodily harm to him. What are your thoughts on that? I think one of the most insane aspects of what Trump did was the way that he denounced Pence, who's been the model of a loyal VP. I mean, certainly the other side has criticized him for that, for being sort of almost a totey. No one could have been more loyal than Pence or Trump for the last four years. And Pence simply told him, look, I don't have the power to cancel this vote of the electors. And for that fact, just for speaking truth about that, Trump denounced him in front of this mob, and made him a target.
Starting point is 01:10:56 And that is one of the more insane aspects of what Trump did. And I truck no sympathy for that. Again, this was an act of demagoguery. And this is an agnominious end for Trump's presidency. But in terms of like, I want to go back to what Freeberg just said about how he got caught up in that mob, I think that that was true, I think, for 90 something percent of the people who are there is they went to this Trump rally and protest and it turned into a riot and they got caught up in it. And then in addition to that, there were, I think, hidden in that crowd, some serious agitators who were there to carry out violence in Mayhem and had crazy plans, you know, hanging my pants, shooting Pelosi.
Starting point is 01:11:49 I mean, there really were, you know, a small number of those people. I don't know what the percentage is, probably one or two percent. It's not the majority. What do you think will happen if they actually did shoot Pelosi or they did hang pants? No, it's a possibility. But see, no, but see that threat inflation, what you're doing right there, Jason. Exactly. No, I think it's an actual could have happened.
Starting point is 01:12:12 It is. Five other people that have said it. What if one of the people who died was a senator? Yes, it could have happened, but here's the problem. People are acting as if everything that could have happened, but didn't actually happen, or may still happen in a later date. That is what I call thread inflation and it's the biggest tool the sensors have
Starting point is 01:12:30 for seizing power. It because it confuses all of it. But you yourself said these people had those plans. So we do have to think about it. I mean, the first time, we tried to blow the world trade center, it didn't come down, David. But the second time, it did come down.
Starting point is 01:12:44 I understand, but by constantly beating the drum of this threat. We needed to inflate that threat, didn't come down, David. The second time it did come down. I understand, but by constantly beating the drum of the straight, that threat, didn't we? But, but by constantly beating the drum of these threats, no, no, no, wait a minute. Stop. No, we did not need to do anything. There was a national security apparatus who needed to do it. Their job isn't to inflate threats, their job is to investigate, apolitically get to the bottom of shit and fix it. They fucking failed on 9-11. Okay. We know that conclusively. So, talking about it and amping people up, Jason, doesn't do anything.
Starting point is 01:13:16 I'm not doing it. I'm saying we need to call it what it was. A better example of threat inflation would be the Iraq war. Remember that? we got to go Absolutely, yeah bad data as of WMD. That was threat inflation Threat that whipping people up, you know, and making them worse I'm just talking to three of my besties and asking you what you think about what would have happened if a senator died I think it's a valid it didn't close to happening, but it came close
Starting point is 01:13:44 It didn't come with this this but it came close. It didn't come close. This, this is the thing that is, is convincing people, I don't think it convinced people to give up liberties that they should want to hold on to. I'm just asking you, I'm not saying everybody, and I'm not saying we need to be on edge that this is going to happen every day of our lives. We can't live in fear like that. But that's almost what happened. There are people who went there with that intent What what I think we don't we don't we don't we don't know any of this now. We're now we're no better than anybody else
Starting point is 01:14:15 You had you had a maniac Who was a vessel He basically spilled over There was a small fraction of the people that probably came to that thing with ill intent, and then there was a large number of people that got pulled into the undertow. All of their lives will be ruined because of one individual. And at the end of the day, there was, in my opinion, one singular person to blame, Donald Trump, and then a handful of people who were his accomplices.
Starting point is 01:14:46 Josh Holly, Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani, we know who all of these characters are in this terrible play. And then there were all these people that were caught in the undertow. And I would rather just deal with it that way because it actually allows us to have some sympathy. For a person who
Starting point is 01:15:05 struck that video. Yeah. So all I'm saying is let's just get back to the core issue at hand. Something bad happened and then something really, really stupid that is actually even worse also happened. And by that, you mean the banning of Trump and all platforms were all time? No, that that there is a there there was an arbitrariness to the decision making around free speech. And I'm telling you guys, I know that you may think banning him from Twitter is so much lower than this attack on the Capitol. And I'm telling you, it's not
Starting point is 01:15:41 because the slippery slope of event event number one is so obvious. The prosecution of that is so obvious. The law is so completely clear. But we've shifted now into this realm where things are arbitrary, where things are gray, and it's a worldwide problem. There are 180 some odd countries in the world, right? But these sites operate in with 180 different leaders multiplied by, you know, two or three political parties each, like there are now hundreds and hundreds of people who are trying to think about it. So, if I was to ask games, it's, so I just think we've now made the problem. I just think we've made the problem so much worse.
Starting point is 01:16:20 Yeah, I agree. And, you you know earlier today Our heated conversation extended to one of our friends in our chat group who is telling us that you know There's a group of SaaS companies that are talking about de-platforming Parlor as well from just using ordinary software as a service and other sites like it and You know and again, it's a little bit like, it's just like this interest of thing. It's like a red scare. It's like a red scare. It's like a red scare.
Starting point is 01:16:49 Not the podcast, the actual red scare that I'm talking about. Yeah, like Joe McCarthy. Exactly. Literally gonna go after anybody who writes a screenplay. Who literally accompanies or so so so. But let me ask you guys, how much do you guys, so I think that there's a severe amount of pressure on the leaders of these companies to do well by their employees. I think that there's a severe amount of pressure
Starting point is 01:17:05 on the leaders of these companies to do well by their employees. And that employees are all Bay Area-based. And Bay Area-based is a very heavy Democrat area. 9% plus. And so this is the argument a lot of conservatives make, which is that tech companies in general, as a result, act in the best
Starting point is 01:17:25 interest of the liberal movements. And, and, and Jason, do you guys think that it is an employee driven kind of set of actions that we're seeing and that the motivation is, is, is in part to kind of appease the employee base of these companies? In fact, I think that more than 70% or 80% of the impetus for these last-ditch efforts was internally driven. And this is where I think it's a complete crisis of leadership. Because if you had just gotten up in front of your employees and said, guys, if we do this,
Starting point is 01:18:00 we will shift focus away from what actually is the problem. So I think the right solution is temporary ban While we evaluate while we strengthen policy like some bullshit fucking statement and allow the legal court system to do their job Instead they acted like vigilantes In a way that basically appeased nobody and all of a sudden shifted the focus away from the person that all these hundreds of employees wanted to basically have, you know, have been found guilty and pointed to. One individual, they all wanted one individual to be held culpable and now he's not going to. A hundred percent and the proof of that is the fact that these employees have been calling for
Starting point is 01:18:42 this policy for years and now they finally got the excuse to do it. And so I agree. I mean, Jack is leading Twitter from behind. The mob runs Twitter now. So do you think that? Well, and they have for some time, and to Freebrook's point, it's like Padme, Padme, I guess, in the great American magazine. The great American magazine. Star Wars head is. I'm a dollar. Who said? I asked Padme who I was said. This is how democracy dies to a thunderous applause. Yes
Starting point is 01:19:09 Everybody's clapping over this censorship I mean the prequels are underrated I have to say Avenge of the Sith. It's definitely I don't know the last three were the best but um the last three were the worst But can I just want to go to sex? I'm just gonna add so so so from off is 100% right. There's, but I just want to go. Go. Sex. I'm going to add so, so, so from off is 100% right. There's one thing I would add to that, though, which is a, uh, just a few months ago, we had this Senate hearing on section 230.
Starting point is 01:19:34 Yes. And both, and we're berated by the senators, most notably Senator Blumenthal, who is basically arguing for censorship. He was telling him, you got to crack down. And so I also think there's not just pressure from below, there's pressure from above. These guys know who's coming into power in January, and I think especially Zach, who has to be terrified of being upset up right now.
Starting point is 01:19:57 And who's set up right now. He, yes, exactly. So he is thinking about how do I, malifying a piece, these politicians who now have the power and can break me up and I gotta use for him. It's too little too late. They're gonna break you up anyway. Too little too late.
Starting point is 01:20:13 You're gonna get broken up anyway. And by the way, I now agree with it. I gotta say, you know, on previous pods, I've defended these tech companies, but I've come around, they are too powerful and they are using their power Their power in two indiscriminate away without power and I say more believe the better But you didn't say that let me just let me just point something out tax You didn't say that before it affected the conservative movement's ability to have a voice, right?
Starting point is 01:20:40 Hey, don't call a canis sacks. Yeah, no, I mean, no, but I want to point out, like, I mean, and a lot of people are having this reaction, which is once it affects, and I just want to point this out, once it affects you personally, that's when you take issue with the way that the system is operating right now. You know, a lot of people make fun of this, but a few months ago or weeks ago, there's a porn website called PornHub, and Visa Mastercard and Discover stopped processing payments for them because the New York Times put out an opinion article about how do you spell that P?
Starting point is 01:21:11 Oh, no. Oh, no. It's just auto-filled. 30 URLs. It's just auto-filled. 30 URLs. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark.
Starting point is 01:21:19 Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to bookmark. Go to your bookmark and go to that number two. And so, and I want to just point out, like the electronic frontier foundation was the only organization that really made a stink
Starting point is 01:21:30 about this behavior from these monopoly payment processing that we're accepting in and blocking their ability to run as a business, not on any legal grounds and not on any grounds based on some court making a decision. It was a work grounds. It was work grounds and it was an opinion piece and suddenly everyone's waking up because now Trump is being silenced. And this is why no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no or Twitter, whatever, to regulate it according to their standards, as perfectly consistent with the First Amendment. I personally am not that upset about Trump per se being censored.
Starting point is 01:22:10 I'm upset about this new vast policy of censorship, including de-platforming, not just Trump, but Parler. I mean, you're talking about millions of people. And the fact that they're conservative is not the reason. If this was happening to a liberal app, I promise you I'd be acting the exact same way. For me, free speech is the most cherished value that we have. It's the first amendment in the Constitution. It's the first right in the Bill of Rights. That's the thing that has me upset. This is not a partisan thing.
Starting point is 01:22:37 And it's such a point for you, Berge. You asked us, what are we things going on here at these companies? I think there's three things. And we just heard two of them and and sax stole my thunder because I was going to say, I think that Zach, who I believe I'm very cynical about, I think he is thinking, how do I piece the left now after having a piece Trump for all these years? Now Trump's out of office. Now how do I piece the left? Okay. I have to ban him for life. And remember, Trump was, Zach was the first to give the lifetime ban, not Jack. So, Zach, who's previously been in Trump's corner is now not the third factor. So the first factor is obviously the employees. Second factor is getting broken up and appeasing all the centers. I think the third one is, I think that there could
Starting point is 01:23:26 be information that we are not privy to, that they are privy to, that is leading them to overreact here. No, because again, I'm going to disagree. I'm going to disagree too. It would not have come out in that way. It would have said, we are, you know, pausing the account, or suspending the account, it wouldn't have been this next step of saying your de-platform forever. No, I think in Jax.
Starting point is 01:23:52 It would have been necessary. If it was a real security issue, no, it was not. The other thing I'll say, can I just say one thing, which is that I've been in the bowels of these companies, I helped build one. My team was probably the most instrumental in getting one of these things to real mega scale. I think that these companies are complicated enough that everybody needs to realize that it is beyond the capability of any one
Starting point is 01:24:16 person to manage in a reasonable way. And these businesses are, they're too broad-based. They exist in too many countries with too many different standards that ultimately all comes back to one unified codebase. If Facebook was actually 182 different products on a country-by-country basis and Twitter was the same, there was actually be a path here. Right? And each one had a country-level CEO that actually had power. Maybe this could be different. But the problem is that if all roads go back to Mendel Park in San Francisco and you're putting the power in the hands of 15 or 20,000 people over a multi-million line code base, it's an impossible task for even the smartest of the smart people. These companies need to get broken up. I think we're all going to agree on that. I do think you guys
Starting point is 01:25:03 are missing a piece of information. I'll say that for another point. You guys are missing a piece of information. I'm just going to read to you what from the Washington Post. Twitter specifically raised the possibility that Trump's recent tweets could mobilize the supporters to commit acts of violence around President-elect, Joe Biden's inauguration, and analysis that experts saw as a major expansion in the company's approach. They specifically cited that. They said they were, and the tweet that they were concerned about was this one that got
Starting point is 01:25:29 taken down very quickly. American patriots will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form. And then he announced right after that that he's not going to the inauguration. So what Twitter believes is that that was some sort of a dog whistle to go do violence at the inauguration. And that's what they said in their lifetime ban, as they felt Trump was doing that. So that may be an intervention. And just to point out, you could interpret it that way
Starting point is 01:25:50 and you could also interpret it the other way. And that's the problem. Which is the problem of Trump. He knows how to do this. It's the problem of using judgment, right? And not, yeah. Fibrik, can I ask you a question? Would you be supportive of platform level open architecture?
Starting point is 01:26:04 So for example, that, you know, the messaging infrastructure that supports Facebook and Twitter have to be unified in a way. So that there was originally called like there was RSS. I mean, there's a lot of open communication protocols that exist out there. I mean, signal has made an attempt at doing this as well with with their approach and open sourcing every time. I'm just asking what is the technical solution if not to break them up to make them more predictable? Portability of your profile? I think you can pass the law. I mean, we do have a government, we can pass the law. So you can pass a law that says if you're
Starting point is 01:26:40 going to operate a communication platform, here are the rules you have to abide by, and now you're a regulated entity. And you could regulate them, and you could even create a regulatory body to oversee them, and make sure that standards of free speech are applied universally, and in an absolute way. You know, and- And give a chance to correct, right?
Starting point is 01:26:58 By the way, dear point, Shema, given that it may be so technically difficult to break them up, that may be one of the points, one of the paths of resolution. And we're gonna find out the next two to three years because I don't think that anyone on the left or the right likes big tech as they call it and the way it's operating today,
Starting point is 01:27:14 but I think technically having been in these organizations, it is impossible to break them up. And I will say something controversial. I also think consumers benefit from the scale that they operate at. And I don't think that they should be broken up and I think that there's economic value to having Google be at the scale at that and Amazon being at the scale at that and Facebook being at that. And it doesn't harm consumers. I think it helps in aggregate in terms of pricing and service availability. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be regulated in a way that everyone can kind of feel like there's some absolute universal standard applied.
Starting point is 01:27:44 But I know I'm in the minority on that. Yeah, I would say my view about antitrust used to be that it was all about consumer harm. And I've actually come around to more of the liberal point of view on this, which is it can't just be about consumer harm. It's also got to be about power and not just market power, but democratic power. And the fact of the matter is, these companies have just gotten too large and too powerful.
Starting point is 01:28:08 They have too much influence on our democracy. And it's incompatible with a country. Democracy. So what if they got regulated? What if they got regulated like a utility, SACs? So like we have regulatory bodies for utilities for both telecommunications and for power and energy. What if we had a regulatory body for internet services?
Starting point is 01:28:25 Well, yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I want an online bill of rights. You know, I want to know what my rights are online that these tech, this cartel of technopolis cannot take away from me because something is a right if it only, if it can't be taken away. And right now, it can all be taken away. You know, your online identity, your right to participate in the public conversation can be taken away with no explanation by these companies. We have no rights.
Starting point is 01:28:51 And like, what would you do if your online presence is taken away? Like that is a huge part of the modern world. What is going on in Trump's mind, do you think right now? Having lost his ability to communicate with a billion people. You know, like, he had this ability to control the conversation. And now he's, I mean, I don't even know if people will put him on air.
Starting point is 01:29:12 That's why I think something is brewing with him. He is not going to sit tight and wind out the last 10 days here. You know, whether it's some ad hoc press conference he calls tomorrow and just rants on TV or he tries to declare some, you know, pass some law without Congress as approval or does something. I mean, this guy has never proven himself to be able to sit quietly and to not be in the spotlight or to be told that he's wrong. And all three
Starting point is 01:29:42 of those things are being imposed upon him right now, so he is squirming like a cat being put in the bath. Also, it seems like they're doing some last-it-stuff pimpayo lifted restrictions for US Taiwan contracts. I don't know if you saw that. That was a little bit of an interesting thing that was slid in the last couple of days. Little jab to the Chinese on the way out. Where do you think Saks last 10 days? Hey, guys, the zip tie guy apparently got arrested. Yeah, I wanna know what's going on with him. I mean, these guys having zip ties with them is just,
Starting point is 01:30:16 Oh, but this is incredible that how systematically they've been able to basically get a lot of these folks. I mean, Jason Clearview AI. I will tell you, I will tell you the one thing we got going for us is the deep state. I mean, thank God for folks who are loyal to the Constitution and to the rule of law in this country. And the FBI is incredible. And our, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the civil servants who have been career civil servants in government as much as we make fun of the bureaucracy and the bullshit that goes on. It's great to be an American and to know that there's, you know, that there's
Starting point is 01:30:47 these folks out there looking out for for. This is like being in the final stages of a stress test. It's like the final. Well, I had my mind, as I predicted on the last pod, I said there would be major, major arrests. You know, everyone was saying that that these protests are being treated with kid gloves compared to BLM and I was like, just wait, there's going to be arrests. And and sure enough they're rounding up these people quick. A lot of charges are going to be taken. I think the most genius thing was, I don't know who said it was a honey pot, but the the parlor post that said,
Starting point is 01:31:15 you know, it was incredible, SACS, but like SACS pointed this out, so I'll give him full credit for this, but there was a parlor post where it was like the title of the person was like, you know, office of the Presidents pardon attorney and you know send me your name and phone number an email if you want to be pardoned for what happened in the capital Riots amnesty.org sort of website called popular riots amnesty.org. Please go to capital riots amnesty.org and tell us what you did. And if you outline each of the crimes you outlined
Starting point is 01:31:52 that you did, you will get amnesty for those crimes. You have to outline in detail what you did and give us any photographic and video proof you have. Yeah, but your crimes. The reason I suspected that was a honey pod is because Jimmy Carter pardoned, you know, after the Vietnam War, he pardoned everyone who had dodged the draft as part of the Vietnam War. He did that as a blanket pardon without naming any names.
Starting point is 01:32:11 So it seemed very suspect to me that Trump would need individual names and crimes to be able to pardon them. I knew it was ceremonial, right? That was like a healing a wound moved by Jimmy Carter. It wasn't... No one was going after that. Because we weren't prosecuting those. Sure.
Starting point is 01:32:26 Sure. V.M. Vets. Sure. But it was never litigated, so it became a precedent. I think I do think that Trump probably, I mean, this would be a very interesting court case, but I do think he could issue a blanket party and everyone on them all that day. It's possible. I'm not saying you should.
Starting point is 01:32:41 I think it's a terrible idea. And that would get to our early point of escalation as opposed to de-escalation. SACs being our lawyer and our historian, you know, what is the origin of the presidential pardon? How is that even legal? And how did we end up in a place in this country where any law could be superseded by the president telling you it's okay for you to break this law and pardon you after the fact or even before the fact. It's it's it's it exists because it's in the Constitution and the frames of the Constitution put it in there. I don't know what their thinking was. I've never really studied that. It is a almost a residue of or a a vestigial monarchical power that somehow was included in the
Starting point is 01:33:22 Constitution. It's incredible, right? I mean, the intention of it, my understanding was to correct injustices that occurred so that it would be a backstop against somebody who was... By the judgment of the one guy. By the judgment of the one guy. The court. It's like crazy that we live on tradition. It relies on people buying into America, right? And I think that's the Trump stress test.
Starting point is 01:33:46 And I can't wait till we don't talk about this guy anymore. I'd love to see an amendment getting rid of the pardon powers. I don't know, I never feel good about it. I feel like the court of the court should be where you should have unicate the appeals and such. But hey, well listen, we've beaten this today. Can I end on something? Let's end on something I took a bunch of SPACs public
Starting point is 01:34:11 at the end of last year. And on Friday, one of the vehicles that I'm the CEO of merged with SoFi. And I want to tell you something about the CEO of SoFi Anthony Noto. And I think he'll you something about the CEO of SoFi Anthony Noto. And I think he'll be okay because he shared the story a couple times. But his parents got divorced when he was three years old. He grew up on welfare, food stamps, sort of free lunch kids until middle school.
Starting point is 01:34:42 Went to the West Point, was it an all-star stock analyst, was the CFO of the NFL, was a CFO of Twitter, then the COO of Twitter. And you guys know my story, but you know, ended up in the United States after growing up in Canada after escaping a civil war. I grew up on welfare and I said to Anthony, what are the odds that two kids who grew up that way could have ended up in a moment where we were part of doing something really amazing that, you know, for each of us was a meaningful accomplishment. And he said only in America. And only in America. This is the single best fucking country in the goddamn world.
Starting point is 01:35:30 100% and it's worth fighting for and it's worth having these debates. And I think it's worth doing the pod. And so I'd like to suggest that the American Constitution keeps the pod going. Stop Jason, the American Constitution is the most incredible fucking document because that is the foundation on which all of these things are built. It's just the most amazing thing. So I am really glad that we're all having this conversation and I would just say guys, keep
Starting point is 01:35:57 the faith. Let's put the light back on Donald Trump. I would have as much sympathy as possible for as many of those folks in the capital. Maybe not the folks that were intending to do harm. Maybe not Ziptai guy, but there's a lot of other people that just got caught in the undertow. I would try to have sympathy for them. And I would really don't lose focus now people. Donald Trump, Josh Hawley Josh Holly Ted Cruz stay fucking I would also love you guys think about doing something for someone else this week. Yeah, yeah, that's all let's all do something nice Exactly. Yeah, I love you guys love you best. I love you sacks. Love you sax. on, Saxi! Say it, Goddamage! This is the time! You can say it!
Starting point is 01:36:45 Back at you! Back at you! Oh, man! What? Well, let your winners ride. Rainman, David Saxi- I'm going to win! And it said we open-sourced it to the fans
Starting point is 01:36:58 and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S.I.S. Queen of King Wild! I'm going to win! What? What? What the toilet! What? What? What? What? What?
Starting point is 01:37:09 Besties are gone! That's my dog taking a wish and you're driving away. So, what? Get it off! Oh, man, my hamlet has your witty ass with it. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or two, because they're all just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that house What you're that big what you're We need to get my cheese
Starting point is 01:37:41 I'm doing all it.

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