Hey everyone. Hey everyone. Welcome to Holland Park.
You're
serious your lustrous moderator. Jason calacanis has been perched
canceled.
They canceled we canceled him
his
constant interruptions and low IQ comments. We decided that the men like you required to be on this part of this, you know 350. He did not make the cut.
And so now it is just me to mouth and
Freiburg. 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. 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.
And so here we are on a Sunday the queen of quinoa Rain Man himself David Sachs and the dictator chopping it up for you the loyal confused angry infuriated audience of all in its craziest week of Our
Lives Jason. Please don't ascribe to the audience the characteristics that describe
yourself. Okay. This has been a crazy 72 hours. Can anybody remember?
Week that has been more crazy in their life with the exception. I guess 9/11 the financial crisis. 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 sacks over text. We should get it all out there. We should share it publicly and I'm going to put no no. No, I think I think I know we should I think it's worth doing we talked about this before you joined us and and what we're come up and I are having an intervention.
And you know, I'm going to 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 and not frame them as being one or zero or partisan or left or right and everyone on this 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 at our democrat or republican. I think that's what makes us
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. You have a
group hug.
Yeah and and reframe kind of how we talk about each other and how it so that we can kind of set a bit of an example on how to do this. Well, I can start a you can start
David. I'll start because okay wonderful.
Objection
your the aggrieved.
Yeah, I mean it's so look, I think that that Jake how does an amazing job moderating the Pod and it's a difficult job and you know the 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 and we want to be able to characterize our own views. We don't be labeled a certain way now, I think Jason
Has sort of branded me as a trump card because frankly it's amusing to him. I think he's mainly trolling me and 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 seen anything really about it. That's not my agenda, you know, 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 Auntie hysteria. Sometimes that means criticizing Trump like I did.
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, you know, if I were able I politics just you know, Jason calls me the conservative. I think that's more accurate. But the question is, you know, what am I conserving exactly and I would describe myself more as like a 1960s style liberal, you know, I'm a Believer in free speech, you know, ACLU style believer in Kings.
Dream of a color by Society, you know, if you know, I'm against all these, you know, Foreign Wars and interventions if I have been around the 1960s. I would've 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 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's an extremely polarizing figure and the second you tell somebody you're frankly Pro or con Trump. The other half doesn't even stop doesn't want to listen to you. And so My Views are more complicated than that.
Okay. Well, thanks everybody for tuning into the all in to our sponsors. Listen. I think what makes this podcast great is the diversity of opinion in the respect that we show for each other if my breaking chops, which is as everybody knows here my superpower in life.
And taught 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. 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 bat for each other support 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
Being from and then also where the people who maybe you know, you may be agreed with some of Trumps victories and certainly you're a conservative. 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 and Reconciliation here is the thing that has me very concerned because we're a microcosm David you and I are you know, 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.
It's like the trolley car 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 trolley car, you know, it's going to kill one person or five and do you know the brakes broken kind of situation? 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 I'll look for it has changed since Wednesday. Can I say something? I'll leave it at that and then I'll throw it with your mouth. I don't want to know listen. Here's the thing. I think that
we all have views and I think the thing that I respect the most about sacks 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 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 health care or in climate change because it's just so dire and there needs to be a public mandate in order to drive change. I don't know where I fit anymore, especially
Specially 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
Miss asterisks 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 like 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 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 Liesl a sir? What's your surname Lisa lat Amy. Lasso somebody Sky posted in the group chat, Nick. Can you find it? I can't remember. It's a soul or lassos or last name. Anyways.
Oh Kim's trostle chemist
rasul.
Yeah, she had a paragraph intro where and again I wasn't a trump supporter have never been a trump supporter. I do have those some sympathy to some of the things he did and the way that she described his four years. Although, you know, she was selective. It was 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
very much a reasonable narrative up until the capital storming where the glass is 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 capital 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
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-immolated himself, and so let's just not
Give in to our Basic Instincts here. And I think there's a lot to learn from I think that frustration of a lot of people is some people saw this coming and some people, you know, when Peter teal 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 would say, oh, you're being hyperbolic. He's not Hitler. He's 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 he put out into the world and he consistently did this, you know, he started by saying, you know get that person to hell out of here. Like I would in the old days the cops were thrown him down the stairs kind of thing. He is like Tony Soprano or any
They're mob boss who knows how to incite people to do dangerous things without having to cope ability himself as you pointed out Timothy. He might be the one who gets off scot-free while they're rounding up all these people and you got he's not coming right trim off like yeah, these people are gonna go to jail for this is multiple felonies. He's not going to get off scot-free. He's like, well, I mean, do you think he's going to jail and you think that people who broke into the yes, you think you think Trump's going to jail? Yes. Oh my
Lord. I'm not sure about that but
III do think that you're 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 a right the about Trump, I mean the voters have certainly been able to see that and they 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
Any sure everything our everything and he's sure of the power in Washington.
So can I ask you a question David?
When I made that point about Peter TL 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 I'm not like a partisan person when Trump won the election in 2016. My first reaction was not is this, you know whore right or wrong. I don't it. You know, what side am I on? My first reaction was why did this happen? You know, I tried to
And it you know, I read you know, the hillbilly elegy author, you know, I was so, you know, my my surprise at that happening cause me to ask questions and you know what I think became really clear is that Trump won despite his manifest, you know flaws because of a because of the failure of the elites. I mean, he he was he's a sort of outsider.
East and the country was trying to send the elite bipartisan. I should say bipartisan leads every
message and won't and what
was that message that point for the last 20 years the bipartisan consensus in Washington has been to feed this Chinese tiger and closed him up. 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, you know 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 men made your side and I'm going to say your side the conservative side. I would say your side the conservative side dug in because they were like, well the left being hysterical and we're going to dig it.
Not really. I mean 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 Troopers became right in line Trump supporters
and their in their partisan their politicians,
They're part of the 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
free. What's your take?
I don't like talking about Trump.
Well, I that is kind of I think we're we're we're getting to this is the what's the offer? Ampere Freiburg? What's the end game? You guys remember how the emperor came to power in Star Wars? It was Palpatine turn the Republic against itself. And then he emergency Powers emergency Powers. Look what I to Sax'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 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 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 has lost its from everyone from the Republican to the Democratic Leadership. It is attacking and finger pointing and there is no resolve for forgiveness. There is no risk. 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 till we have Justice and so at what point do you break the cycle, you know Revenge
JH 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 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
Democrats over running and you know, I was I 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. We don't have a forum, you know for coming to kind of you know, objective sentiment that that's best for the people and so, you know, I'm much more interested in flipping the conversation away from Trump and trying to think about you know, going forward. What are the things what are the forums? What are the mechanisms that we can have?
Took 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 and you know, all the things that are kind of emerging as being the and we kind of outcomes. Yeah, we have three or four major Wars. We need to solve the pandemic China wealth inequality global warming shimoff. Do you think at this point in the podcast?
We should walk through what's happened since Wednesday vis-Ã -vis, you know Trump being D platformed or do you think we should talk a little bit about and Skip to reconciliation? I think we have a fork in the road here as the moderator. I'll just ask trim off. 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 in the context of Peter teal. He has a philosopher that he's talked a lot about Rene Girard.
And you know, basically the the Girardi and philosophy is essentially that you know people come into conflict because they're extremely similar and you know, they effectively want the same things and they're competing for the same sort of essentially scarce resources and the way that you resolve that is through some sort of cathartic sacrifice right meaning like there needs to be a grand crime a grand act and I think that we're at this point to Freed Berg's sort of earlier statement where you got a choice, which is you either throw.
See under the bus or you actually throw djt under the bus and you don't have a choice and that and that and and sort of like it's not just even the United States. It's almost like sort of democracy as an institutions hand was forced this past week. And so it's 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.
Excessive reaction to what is a simple Choice which is you can basically forgive the guy or you can re affirm 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. You're going to have a bunch of overreaching. You know, you're going to have a bunch of
Dramatic sort of bellyaching on both sides. You know, there is a thing today where Devon Nunez was like screaming about how he had lost his 3,000 followers on parlor 3 million followers on parlor, but he was saying it on Fox News, which is distribution to millions of people and so he asked her 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.
Nation is coming in as we you know, as people get the videos and as we let the dust settle the dust is settling I'm curious Sachs. Do you how do you look at what happened on Wednesday? Do you view it as a kudu you've because some of the information that's come out about they were trying to get two pence and that they wanted to kidnap people and then you that dovetails with the kidnapping schemes that were going on and they were pipe bombs and a police officer was be
In to death with a pipe and skull was crushed or something. We don't have all the details yet fire extinguisher. A fire extinguisher was beaten to death of 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 ex not because I'm framing you as anything just because
as you
haven't yet? No, I already said I already gave my thoughts in the last part that it was outrageous. It was a travesty. It was a rally that turned into a riot that turned into, you know, some sort of insurrection. I guess you could call it was it was a rebellion against Authority. I think KU is potentially a strong word because he wasn't nobody ever had their hands on the levers of power. I mean the fate of the Republic was never
In question, I know they were even you know people tweeting about how the the these Marauders whatever want to call them almost got their hands on the electors ballots. I mean, yeah, but we all know how their voting even if they had gotten them. We would just forgotten new ones. I mean that was sort of a ceremonial thing but look it was it was an absolute outrage, but I do think that there is a thing happening now called threat inflation where
where you know using language like, you know going from Riot to Insurrection to now KU it there is a type of inflation happening that is then used to justify the reaction by the other side to it, which is now, you know, the basically the ending of freedom of speech which is really I think the big thing has happened since the last Pond is really the reason why we are having this emergency pot I think is because of what's happened there
I thinking
She probably just to make sure that the pot wasn't ending because of you not getting a big fight. I think that was people
not Sarah was that the Beatles were breaking up? Yeah. Well, it's true. Look just keeping the pot together, you know with with four big egos on it. You're right. It's hard. It's like the Beatles, you know, one day's going to break up but not but not yet. Not yet. But then when I want it, I want to tie in this issue with you said of what you said about the off-ramp. Okay, which is you know, what is the off ramp from this you look everybody understands? I think.
Regardless of what side political Spectrum you're on then we are caught in a cycle of insane hyper partisan Warfare and tit-for-tat retaliation. And that is the thing that we need to that is the ledge we need to walk back from okay, but the problem that everybody has is that they can only see 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 not the escalation works is both. Yes.
I'm seeing
something. Yes. And unless you can see when your site is doing it. We're never going to break the cycle. Now. The thing that is happening right now what Trump did was absolutely outrageous and I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics. He will pay for in history books. If not in a court of law. Okay, but now what has happened is the next step in the tit-for-tat retaliation. The the story of the capital has now been used to implement.
It's a sweeping attack on Free Speech, you know, the Twitter employees who sent that letter to Jack who've been demanding this for years have finally gotten their way and there is a widespread purge going on it not just of trump not just a permanent ban off 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 Red Scare. They're basically, you know, pretty pretty much on the left. No one can say exactly what it was.
Thump, and I guess they had Steve Banning on their podcast. They are suddenly banned from Twitter. Nobody knows why I subscribe to the Red Scare
podcast. It's actually it's called the Dirtbag left their kind of like socialists until trying to be public intellectuals and It's oddly compelling I'll leave it at that
that they are now banned from Twitter. They somehow got let's
go pause for a second on djt getting banned from Twitter. This is
Is close to a hundred million followers? It's a billion dollars in value. He just had the PGA say they'll never you do a Trump Golf Course again. So the ramen the real world ramifications for Trump are he's his businesses are going to be devastated. His platform is gone.
But and I was very Pro Trump 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 crazy it's a crazy concept that being says Trump knows how to dance right up to the line on the terms of service. And I think here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think there's imminent danger 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 Wednesday 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.
Sounds crazy, but honestly, that's honesty Jason. That's what I think's going on with Twitter. I think they told that they showed them that Elites 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 date, 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 off that he's known live-streamed.
Storming of the capital these people are not smart. We've established that I anyways I look can we just let's just like let's not do the left version of Q and on. Okay, let's not have now the laps version of the crazy conspiracy theories. Here's here's I think what is worth talking about? We really reflexively all of a sudden started to push back on Free Speech in a way. That doesn't make any sense. 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 at 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 it didn't it to me. It didn't make any sense. It it's I don't know. I was I was very frustrated and a little taken aback.
Well, can I can I can I jump you let me jump they let on that
because and then the last thing is like they let Donald Trump hit a one outer like he was painted in a quarter.
Be a complete demagogue and instead now. It has been wrapped in a free speech issue. We're now more people are talking about Free 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 with the capital is wrong and Donald Trump was responsible for it. And Timothy exactly. 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 enshrined in the constitution in the First 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 and 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.
You know what what big to edit and by the way, it's not just the permanent ban Donald Trump you had so little taneous to that. It was it wasn't just the Banning of all these accounts. You also had the D platforming of parlor which is sort of the Twitter alternative by Google and Apple at the same time and an Amazon. And so you're talking about really deep pot for me not just trumpet millions of people and so the amazing thing is that we've had this sweeping appropriation of
Power bi, you know half a dozen Oleg arcs who now have the right to determine what we see and read and people are cheering because they hate Trump so much they can't see that the biggest power grab in history has happened
has happened. Okay, I want to I'm not sure I really fully agree. I think that the point that sax is making about freedom of speech.
Eyes to what you're legally allowed to say sex. We're talking about private services that you know, 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 so 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
I'll 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. I'll also
say that it would respond to that one. Yeah,
come on and then I'll make one more point but go ahead. Yeah,
so I understand the First Amendment only applies to government. Okay doesn't apply to private companies but here's here's the thing is that when the framers of the Constitution wrote that freedom of speech was something that took place.
And that in the town square, right you could go to the courthouse steps and put down your soapbox. You could speak to people gather a 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 assembled today online on these monopolies 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 system.
Eames just ban parlor and so, you know, I hear this the
sergeant open. There's an open web sacks, you know, you don't need to go to Apple's app store or Google 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 apples, you know OS you can use another phone and you by the way and everyone can access the internet the internet is free and open 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 iMac at home into a into a web server and you can make them available on the
Internet. It's 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 going to people have been removed from single search results. And I think it's just I think it's important the apps it so so I do think that there's still an open market and there's an
Internet that people can access information freely and use the internet freely without being dependent on a handful of you're right. Hi Sky 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 an it is an it is a moral or some principled standard 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.
Up and a user. Yeah, you nailed it one fucking thousand percent. That is the exact issue. It's not necessarily about Free Speech it is that they 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, right? There is a random VP someplace who actually controls this decision and 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 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
I read you guys something there is a there is this Manifesto or memo this woman who is a former Facebook data scientist, Sophie Zhang. She wrote. I'm just I'm just going to read this because I think 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 entrepreneur has using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion in countries, including India, Ukraine Spain Brazil Bolivia and Ecuador. She found 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
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 caused 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 you know, those countries mean more to them than what's happening in the United States, right and that represents the problem. That's what's the deal with the social suasion that is influencing the leaders of
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 in the way that they're being made in the priorities are being said is because as you pointed out, I think it was soccer put it on Twitter and Jason you've talked about this but Talent is everything in Silicon Valley and if your employees tell you they're going to quit working for you or they're not going to do their jobs. You're going to take that to heart and there's not a lot of influence or suasion that you know,
Since of Bolivia and you know Uruguay I can have with Executives at Facebook and Twitter, but people in the Bay Area do they have a fucking clue about the politics and Azerbaijan or Bolivia? Does anyone of us have a point of view and I think that's that's that's the point is like is like as soon as you add judgment to the equation, you know, you're going to be wrong for 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 to make the law doesn't Define the absolute
Nerd then you need to go and change the law. There's going to be a couple of free market solutions that come here because you even as difficult as this decision Can Be You layer it on to 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. I'd States seat, you know, it carries different weight. And if you look at the words that trumped 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. There are free market solutions that will emerge Bitcoin is something we've talked about is an incredible run. Nobody's controlling that there is Master Don 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 universal truth is information wants to be free. So if there is an opinion if there is a voice if there is information out, there will be a free market response to parlor being shut down. I I sincerely believe that a lot of these decisions are being made not just at the behest of the employees. I do degree. 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
You said it yourself David? There's gonna be a white-knuckle ten 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 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 trumps
Comments on Wednesday at that rally and Rudy giuliani's and Donald Trump Junior's the people who really incited 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 with those platforms have some liability, especially after you know, what's happened. I think that they're just in part of this is covering their asses.
I think they should have just done a 30-day been 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 15,
right? Well, so part of the problem here is that there is no policy, right? The policy is public outcry 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 are going to run the Senate Judiciary Committee next year or the language was so clear.
If there is so three months ago, I wrote a blog post about the so the policy that I thought the social media company 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 categories of basically dangerous speech. There's like nine major categories. It includes incitement of islands includes, you know, trying to
You know trying to provoke a crime it 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 going to try and be broadly consistent with the First Amendment, but if somebody goes outside of those lines, then we will remove it. So there was a way to your point Jason. I think there was a way to remove some of Trumps treat tweets for
It meant consistent with the First Amendment, but that's not what they did. You know that and maybe that would if so what they did is is a lifetime ban combined with rounding up, you know twice the usual number of suspects combined with ad platforming not at the account level. But at now at the application Level by Google Apple and Amazon and none of this has been explained there is no policy. What it is is a there's a shield on what it is is an appropriations of
Also by oligarchs now 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 Jolley 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
social?
We didn't see people's the policy that that I want is something broadly consistent with the First Amendment because
but it has is those phrases I just told you is there are those inciting or those on the borderline if you were making the
decision, right? So, you know putting my lawyer have on for a second there's questions of Law and questions of fact, okay, and we can debate what you're describing are questions of fact, what I'm trying to say is well, what is the law? What is the policy that were too low? I would say those were
not
Incitement. No, there is no policy. These social media can be 70 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 consist with the First Amendment and then certain tweets that were inciting violence while there was writing on the capital. I would have been okay taking those down. I would have taken those down where I think and and I think even doing something until the inauguration.
And if you think that from poses a threat, I think I think that's okay. I think that's okay. So you would violate fine with the 30-day Banner something well like attend a band or whatever but a lifetime ban that like on what basis do you know? What constitutional grounds do you justify that and look I know it's a private company, but my point is this idea our Free Speech rights got privatized. Okay, the Town Square got digitized and centralized we used.
Have thousands we 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 monopolist 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 cancelled by a Google or Apple? What court can we go
to there is nothing you have to break. You didn't cry. By the way. I think this is the best argument for having an internet court and if you
Ink about the standards that are being applied. They're being applied haphazardly randomly by gut by these companies in response to to near term Market forces. You know, what is everyone saying they have to do or what are their employees rally around to do Securities Law? Well, there's a there's privacy laws that say what you you know that companies that digital companies cannot take certain types of data and you know, why not have lost boys out there as well and why not be more specific and then you let an internet
Adjudicate and make the decision about what to take down and what not to take down. They are as they are very responsive to warrants when there's a criminal act under way. And so why not let an internet Court be responsive to takedown requests or to what do you think Tomas or internal other sort of good idea? No, it's mandatory. And again that is X Factor. It centralizes the standards, right? So you don't have to have ad hoc random decisions and let if what's actually saying is true. It creates a standard that everyone has to abide by and that every consumer can't
Trust them to abide
by first first. We need a Bill of Rights. Right first we need to say that we as citizens have rights that the court can defend can defend that is the problem. We don't have any rights. These companies are acting willy-nilly to canceling people depriving them of their speech rights and don't tell me that you can still speak, you know somewhere if you get if you get canceled,
here's the thought exercise and I want everybody listening.
Who's on the left to think about this exact issue?
Your favorite social media company is trying to get a really really big deal closed and they you know 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 an India right huge Market 1.2 billion people 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 Planned Parenthood. You need to prevent Planned 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 you I'm sure right now your blood is fucking boiling but there is no distinction between that decision and what happened over the last few days. There is 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 goes to a concept that newspapers are having a buds men and the New York Times had what happened only thing 2017.
And then they got rid of it because I think was causing too much headaches, but it's a person who sits 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 should know that these the adjacent they had these things but those are fig leaves and those are just meant to base. No, they don't they don't have it in this crack of a dumb politicians. It's not it's not Jason. They have a fucking Council Facebook has a council with all not 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 and
Charities 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 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 where are the people? Who are they actually that make the decisions? You can't point to Jack and Zach and say those guys are the decision makers 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 if you know, and then the worst part is no but the worst part is
People who are probably very left of center completely fuck the left and then they basically let Donald Trump off the hook because now we're going to 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 like him and ha and now they're not going to necessarily go along with it
the exact hundred hundred hundred percent and and Json
server.
Fucking job guys. Yeah got the exact opposite of what you wanted.
Exactly. And here's the thing Jason. You're right Trump's outrage gave the sensors 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 that they can now use against you in the future censorship always starts with 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 willy-nilly it's cancelled Culture, by the way, it's not the first amendment. I think you have to not say willy-nilly after
Trump incited riots if
there's enough public might have been an overreaction, but I think it's
the proper reaction you agree. It's a problem. We don't know so
People on understated way to prop reacts 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 useless accounts with 60,000 people that were basically suspended. Well, a lot of them were Bots 60,000 followers is 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 me still do you still deny don't have fun.
Formation. Are you regarding your outrage at Trump? No calls you to pull your punches on these on
censorship. No. No, I'll be totally clear. I think they should have been a bud Turman. 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 and you can look at the receipts. I've been saying for four years. It's insane to take POTUS 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 time out for him and I
I don't think it should have been indefinite. It should have been a 30-day time out and I think we should do what folks said. I don't know who said it on the last pot or I heard it somewhere else like actually if we actually were to audit some of these claims and create an independent counsel to audit the election that might be a way to heal things and I think giving childbirth said that who said frayberg sounded. 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 get
You miss and you misrepresent yourself David and we started this off with me misrepresenting you but when you say it's willy-nilly it's not willy-nilly we just had this active, you know treason and there's violence at the capital. It is not a silly nilly Jason Jason you have said over reaction. I agree but it's not willy-nilly Jason you have to admit though. The entire world had Donald Trump in a corner dead to rights and he had a 100 and he had one other.
It's a bad strategy 2D platformer to this level. I agree and then to include the reason they're going after parlor. By the way is that this guy Linwood threatened? He said that they should take vice president pants out and shoot him and
I think that actually live but they literally would even take it down without and it was incitement to violence and on in under the First Amendment you can clearly prohibit that I would have had
you parlor didn't take it down. They drag their feet taken down and he said it's a metaphor.
To go take Pence out and shoot him. And this is Donald Trump's lawyer. One of his lawyers previously
is that in my view that doesn't D just that doesn't justify what's happened what I mean by willy-nilly is why is Red Scare been taken down so left wing, so I don't know II as well as Dan Bond Gino been taken down. He's like a fox commentator. I've heard him. I mean he's sort of you know, I don't know. He's kind of a pretty middle-of-the-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 like might say that this over reaction was playing into the hands of the Jason what happened to controlled Senate Congress Jason what happens if like a big Pharma company who wants to do a big ad by on Facebook says, hey guys, you got to really dial down anti-vaxxer content now, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but do I have
At some level believe in their right to talk about being an anti-vaxxer. Absolutely. I think it's insane but should they have a right to do it? Absolutely absurd. I'm a fan of the labeling. I thought the labeling was the right direction to go in where if but sacks 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 person who stands for all of Trumps bad behavior, but we you did say and you just say this is a two month process of indoctrinating people 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 steals my mind constantly
we were talking about these challenges on the Potlatch the last couple of months and we were laughing. I mean we were laughing at how ridiculous they were and how rude
ridiculous the the things that you know Rudy was doing and you know, it was crazy. So look, I not to his
supporters.
Well, but here's the thing one of which is debt
or four of which are dead.
I understand and here's the thing democracy takes work. I mean we have to you know, we have to spend the time to actually dispel these views and you know, it would be nice to be able to wave a magic wand and just sensor the things that we don't like but here's the thing not
Says a monopoly on the truth. And you know, we knew what the truth was in this particular instance, but there are other cases where we don't and and the question is really who has the power to decide. So I just I'll tell you just a real quick story. You know what I went to law school all those years ago the very first class that you know, that that I hadn't lost school at this very Arcane class called civil procedure, which is about what court you take a case to okay, and you know
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 the thing. I would love for Linton would to be canceled and to not be able to spout these insane theories, but who we're 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 banned 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. It's the
beginning. Look. I don't think that the leadership at Big Tech want to be in this position. You know, I think it's easy to blame the individuals.
Chuck Jack Susan Sundar whomever, you know, I worked at Google when it was a small one. It was a private company, you know Tomatoes work with suck. I think we've all had experience with these individuals and I think one thing it 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
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 should be done by law and as a result the pressure is what changes the behavior and that pressure will change the tides will shift and and it's a it's a it's a very kind of uh,
the circumstance but you know, I think characterizing the individuals is being in charge of this sex or you know, trying to handcuffed to make them feel like they should be handcuffed in some way is you know is a bit of a mischaracterization and 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 answer is they have I think were reasonable and rational and as we all know as technologists like Congress doesn't understand this stuff the biggest observation to me is that
The law hasn't kept up with the internet and you know, 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 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 supposed to same content and then suddenly, you know, Viacom sued Google because they were like look are copyrighted content is being continuously.
Displayed on your site 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 is a legal one, which is you know, how do we create laws? And how do we create a private industry meets government Court body governing principles that you know allows these organizations to operate. No, can I say something
well with this one sentence, I mean apply First Amendment obligations to these monopolist.
That's what my boss puss was about
how 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 that includes other critical national resources that any country has so for example, if you look at in Bolivia, you know, as it turns out Bolivia has incredible access to lithium, right and lithium is like anyway, we all knew that we wanted.
Her trumpet lithium is that what you're saying? No, lithium the the input into into lithium ion batteries, but it also turns out that at every step along the way Bolivia is basically nationalized every single private investment of ilithyia Mind in countries all around the world. There's numerous examples of this privatization turning into nationalization when something becomes important enough and Norway part of I think what we're
struggling with here is you know, there's going to be this crazy Push Pull in social media. What do you think happens? If you know India actually says, hey, you know what you're going to have to nationalize the rails of WhatsApp or the rails of Facebook if you want to be in my country.
Why is
that so inconceivable? I think you're right that that's that that is a second order that that is a second-order consequence of censorship that nobody even thinks about you have the leaders of many countries across the world using Twitter as a as a channel. Do you think there are now going to want to rely on that given that Twitter can censor them at any time they're going to hand that lever of National Power to Jack Dorsey. No way. They're going to look at this. I mean
not even Jack Dorsey day.
With somebody and like the bowels of the user, you know user user access group some dinner some Rando VP some places going to stop the president or the prime minister of a country and communicating to their people. It's not
exactly exactly and this is exactly the kind of second order consequence that the people 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.
What 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 band for 10 days today. Technically. It's not your decision. Yeah, but exactly what David said you feed into this emotion just like the people that storm the capital fed into their emotion and then you wake up the next day with this hangover and you realized yourself. What the fuck did I just 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 our Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. They are the presidents and prime ministers duly elected individuals of these countries. And so you're not going to allow these two private citizens to disrupt power.
We have so much information. We don't know about what occurred this past week. I think it's all going to get investigated. It's going to be like a 9/11 commission all over again or Ukraine Etc. And I think that's why a pause would be really good to find out exactly, you know, Trump's been telling people to come to this rally. 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 6 it's going to be out of control. You know, how much did they know right? Like that's what I really
Who knows how much do they know about what was gonna go down and why are these people carrying zip ties and pipe bombs? You know, like this could have been a lot worse. 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 for me Freiburg, 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 20 21 and 22 days. We are reconciled the shit because it's bigger fish to fry like, you know, China and the pandemic
Global warming one of these people at the airport who was coming home from the rally is now on the do for 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 terrorist. Now some of the maybe maybe some of them are just, you know got caught up in the wrong knob there on the do not fly list. This guy couldn't get home and he's freaking out and then I don't know if
you saw Lindsay Graham 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 Freiburg. 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
Innovations were and what the connections were when I was 16 years old. I went to a rave in Downtown LA and for New Year's Eve you did and right but however 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 rain. It was outdoors in Downtown LA and we Riot it.
And so everyone wants to Ray and like I I participated I think I'm past the the period where they can prosecute my God 7,000. Yeah. I participated in the
Don't say that. Don't say that on the show. You you were you witnessed. I witnessed and participated in a sense and I was there and and I saw 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 want the videos, yeah, if you watch the videos of the capital, 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? We were fighting for, you know 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 works. Yeah parlor and and so everyone has a different point of view and I think that's the biggest challenge we're going to have is we're all going to try and you know get to the truth and everyone's going to cast this as a different point. They're going to take what happened.
They're going to take some set of events that happened and they're going to highlight that this is what the connections were in this is the reason why it happened and this just creates fuel. It doesn't create, you know, there is not going to be some objective outcome here. We're all going to feel better. No one's going to feel better at the end of the day and and we've basically just thrown a whole bunch of gas on a fire. That was already. What do you think Sam? That's my point was just like it's all it's all great. No my behavior. I mean, yeah crazy burn whatever photos you took.
Sax, what do you think of this VP, you know Pence and Trump and their relationship vis-Ã -vis pardons in this end game here because it does seem like pants was upset obviously at what occurred and that Trump didn't even call to check on it and what was going on and then a number of these people because there are queuing 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 president and to hold him accountable and you know, there are some speculations as 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 has been the model of a loyal VP. I mean certainly the other side has criticized him for that for being sort of almost a Toady. No one could have been more loyal than Pence or to Trump the last four years in pencil.
I told him look I don't have the power to cancel this vote of the electors, you know, and for that, you know, just for speaking truth about that Trump denounced him in front of this this Bob and made him a Target and that is one of the more insane aspects of what Trump did and you know, I truck no sympathy for that again. This was an act of demagoguery and this is an ignominious end for Trump.
His presidency but if it in terms of like, you know to I want to go back to what Freiburg just said about how he got kind of caught up in this 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 hit in that crowd some serious agitators.
Who were there to carry out violence and Mayhem and had crazy plans, you know hanging my Pence shooting Pelosi. 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. What does not think so often majority sacks? What do you think Tomas? What
do you think will happen if they actually did shoot Pelosi or they did hang pencil right? There is a possibility but see
no, but see that's right inflation. What you're doing right there. Jason is exactly what your what we do. I think it's actual could have
Bend it 5 yes, it could have happened. But here's the problem people are acting as if everything that could have happened but didn't actually happened or may still happen to later date. That is what I call threat inflation. And it's the biggest tool the sensors have for seizing power it because it it can
faces. You yourself said these people had those plans. So we do have to think about it in the first time. We have tried to blow up the World Trade Center. He didn't come down David, but
Time it did come down.
I understand that by constantly beating the drum. We
needed to inflate that threat didn't we
but but by constantly beating the drum of these threads building wait a minute.
No, we did not need to do anything. There is a national security apparatus who needed to do it their job isn't to inflate threats. Their job is to investigate a politically get to the bottom of shit and fix it. They fucking failed on 9/11. Okay, we know that
Rusev lie, so talking about it in damping people up. Jason doesn't do anything. Yeah, it's not and I'm saying it
was a better a better example of threat inflation would be the Iraq War. Remember that we got to go absolute stop cidade data of wmd that was threatened flashin 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 that think it's a
valid it didn't happen.
It didn't but it came close. It didn't come with this. This is the thing that is is convincing people helping convince people to give up Liberties that they should want to hold on
to those pesky College. I'm not saying everybody 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.
Well, I actually 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. Mmm. 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. Okay, and at the end of the day there ways in my opinion One Singular person to blame Donald Trump and then a handful of people who were his accomplices Josh Holly Ted Cruz.
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 felt sympathy person who's struggling idea. 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 on all platforms were all time know 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.
Lower than this attack on the capital and I'm telling you it's not because the slippery slope of Event Event number 1 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 a hundred and 80 some odd countries in the world right that these sites operated with a hundred and eighty different leaders X, you know,
No, two or three political parties each like there are now hundreds and hundreds of people who are trying to figure out chess games.
It's so I just think now maybe I just think we made the problem so much worse.
Yeah, I agree and you know earlier today. Are he the conversation extend it to one of our friends in our chat group who is telling us that you know, there's a group of SAS companies that are talking about D 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 the censorship thing. It's like a Red Scare. It's like a Red Scare. It's like you're
not scared. I cast the actual Red Scare that a girl
like Joe McCarthy exactly literally going to go after anybody who writes the
screenplay who Richard Communists or socialists meeting, but let me ask you guys how much do you so I think that there is severely there's a severe amount of pressure on the leaders of these companies to do well by their employees and that employees are all Bay area-based and Bay Area base is a very heavy
Democrat area 9 you can plus and so this is the argument a lot of you know conservatives make which is the tech companies in general as a result act in the best interest of you know of the liberal movements sex and too much. I mean 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 in part to kind of appease the employee base at these guys.
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 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
Earth 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, I've 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 sand and the proof of that is the fact that these employees have been calling for 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 you can they have for some time and to Freiburg point. It's like Padma it pal padmé. I guess.
It's a great the Great American Tower set is I'm a dollar. Who's
that?
To a thunderous
Applause. Yes. Everybody's clapping over this censorship. Listen, I'm
in the prequels are underrated. I have to say and watch Revenge of the Sith. It's definitely I don't know the last three were the best but the last one with the
worst. But anyway, yeah, but can I have a second I just
want to good sacks are that's
gonna add so so so it's your mouth isn't a percent right? There's one thing I would add to that though, which is a just a few months ago. We had this Senate hearing on Section 230. Yes both Josh binstock were berated.
By the Senators most notably Senator Blumenthal who is basically arguing for censorship. He was telling him you got a Crackdown 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 personable right now. He yes exactly. So he is thinking about how do I mollify and appease these politicians who now have the power and can
Me up and I assume for him. It's too little too late too late too late way to Facebook State you're going to get pasted up anyway, and by the way, I know agree with it. I got to say, you know on previous pods. I've defended these tech companies, but I have come around they are too powerful and they are using their powerful their power into indiscriminate away without power and the say more broadly the better.
But can I say that let me just let me just pointing out text you didn't say that before.
It affected the conservative movement ability to have a voice right? Hey don't calacanis sacks. Yeah. No, I mean no, but I want to point out like I mean there were like and a lot of people are having this reaction, which is once in effect 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 stop processing payments for them because the, New York
Find put out an opinion article about on David David. How do you spell that P30 URLs going to and and I want to just point out like like the Electronic Frontier Foundation was the only organization that really made a stink about this behavior from these monopolies Payment Processing Network stepping in and blocking their ability to run as a business not on an illegal.
All grounds and not on any grounds based on some Court making a decision was what was announced it was way around it was an opinion piece and suddenly everyone's waking up because now Trump is being silenced and and this is why no, no, I'm regulate itself. Let's pick one. You can
just respond to that. So so first of all porn has always been in a separate category, the Supreme Court has said that you can regulate it accordance Community standards. And so I support the ability of Facebook or Twitter or whatever to regulated according to their standards as perfectly consistent with the first amendment. I personally am
Not that upset about Trump per se being censored. I'm upset about this new vast policy of censorship including depart for me. Not just trumpet parlor. We're talking about millions of people and the fact that their conservative is not the reason if this was happening to a liberal app, I promised you I'd be acting the exact same way for me free speech is the most cherished value that we have is the First Amendment of 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
and it's into your point Freiburg. You asked us. What do we think is going on here at these companies. I think there's three things and we just heard two of them and insects stole my thunder because I was going to say I think that Zack who I believe I'm very cynical about I think he is thinking how do I Peas the left now after having appease Trump for all these years now Trump's out of office. Now, how do I Peas the left? Okay. I have to ban him for a life. And remember Trump was Zach was the first to give the life.
Time band not Jack. So Zach who has 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 these centers. I think the third one is I think that there could be information that we are not privy to that. They are privy to that me that is leading them to overreact here. No the
I'm going to disagree disagree to it would 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 you're D platform for everything in Jack's 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.
a 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 person to manage in a reasonable way and these businesses are there to broad-based they exist in too many countries with too many different standards that ultimately all comes back to one unified code base if Facebook was actually a hundred and eighty two different products on a country-by-country basis and Twitter was the same there was actually be a path here, right an each one. Had a country level see
That actually had power maybe this could be different. But the problem is that if all roads go back to Menlo Park in San Francisco and you're putting the power in the hands of 15 or 20 thousand 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'm not I do think you guys are missing a piece of them for another point for another 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 are as a major expansion the company's approach it and so they specifically cited that they said they were and the tweet that they were concerned about was this one that got 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
Dog whistle to go do violence at the inauguration and that's what they said in their lifetime ban is they fell Trump was doing that. So that makes it even if you can't just point out you could interpret it that way and you could also interpret it the other way and that's which is the problem of trump. Well, he knows how people move its the problem of using judgment right and and not super. Can I ask you a question? Would you be supportive of platform level open architecture? So for example that we know the messaging infrastructure that supports Facebook and Twitter.
Have to be unified in a way so that there isn't that 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 what their approach and open sourcing everything. I must think 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 could pass a law. I mean, you know, we do have a government we can pass a law so you can pass a law that says if you're going to operate a communication platform here are the rules you have to abide by and here's how you have to end it now you're 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 and in an absolute way, you know and give me a chance to correct right between here cure Point chamade given that it may be so
Glee difficult to break them up that may be one of the points of one of the paths of resolution and we're going to find out the next two to three years because I don't think that anyone in the left or the right likes big Tech as they call it and the way it's operating today, 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. It's at and as on being at the scale, it's at and Facebooking scale.
At 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. 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 a 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 gone too large and too powerful. They have too much influence our democracy and it's incompatible with you know, a country Percy. So
what we can regulate it what if they got regulated like utility sacks? So like we have regulatory bodies for utilities for both telecommunications and for Power and Light and energy. What if we had a regulatory body for internet
services. Well, yeah, I mean first and foremost, I want to an online Bill of Rights, you know, I want to know what my rights are online.
That these type of this cartel of Technologies cannot take away from me because something is a right if it only if it 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 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?
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 people will put them on air. That's why I think something is brewing with him, you know, he is not going to sit tight and 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's approval or does something I mean this guy is 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 of those things are being imposed upon him right now. So he is squirming like like a cat being put in the bath also, it seems like they're doing some last-ditch stuff Pompeo lifted restrictions for u.s. Taiwan contracts. I never saw that that was a little bit of an interesting thing that was slit in the last couple of days.
Little little jab to the Chinese on the way out. What do you think sacks last 10 days? Hey guys, the zip tie guy apparently got arrested. Yeah. I want to know what's going on with him. I mean these guys having zip ties with them is just no but this is incredible that how systematically they've been able to basically get, you know, a lot of these folks. I mean Jason will review a 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 you know, folks who are loyal to the Constitution.
Until the rule of law in this country and the FBI is incredible and are you know the the civil servants who have been career civil servants in government as much as we make fun of the bureaucracy in the bullshit that goes on it's great to be an American and to know that there's you know that there's these these folks out there looking out for this is like being in the final stages of a stress test. It's like the final well
admins way as I predicted on the last pot I said there would be a major major arrests, you know, everyone was saying that that
that these protests are being treated with kid gloves compared to BLM and I was like just wait is going to be arrest and sure enough. They're rounding up these people quick a lot of charges that you
mean, I think the most genius thing was I don't know who said who said it was a honey pot. But the The Parlor Post Yeah that said, you know, it is a credible sacks but like Saks 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 the president's pardon attorney and you know since send me send me your name and spell
Number and email if you want to be pardoned for what happened in the capital. It's a shame the crime you committed. So we do yes instead of just sort of hanging upside riots amnesty dot-org. So cheese go to Capital right Sam just need not org. Yeah and tell us what you did and if you outline each of the crimes you outline that you did you will get amnesty for those crimes where you have to outline in detail what you did and give us any photographic and video proof. You
have your crimes. The reason I suspected that
is a Honeypot 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. So it seemed very suspect to me that truck will need individual names and and crimes peeled apart in them. I
do with ceremonial right that was like a healing a wound move by Jimmy Carter. It wasn't no one is going after them because we weren't Prosecuting the others
sure Vietnam Vets sure also that but it was never litigated so it became a press.
And 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 pardon and everyone on the mall that day. It's possible. I'm not saying should I think it's a
terrible amount would be to where can I get one point of escalation as opposed to D escalation sex being our lawyer and our historian, you know, what is the 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 exists because it's in the Constitution the framers of the Constitution put it in there. I don't know what they're thinking was. I've never really studied that it is a almost a residue of or a vestigial monarchical power. That's somehow was included in the
constitutional right? I mean like the intention of it my understanding was to correct injustices that occurred.
That would be a backstop against somebody who was by the Judgment of the one guy by the Judgment of the ones I had before it's like crazy that like, you know guys on tradition it relies on, you know people buying into America, right? And I think that's the Trump stress test and I can't wait till we don't talk about this guy anymore. I love to see it Amendment getting rid of the pardon Powers. I don't know. I never feel good about it, but they are thinking about the court should be referred to Juda Kate, you know appeals and such. But all right well,
Listen, we've beaten this today. Can I end on something? Let's end on something. I lifting I took.
The bunch of spax public at the end of last year and on Friday one of the vehicles that I'm the CEO of merged with Sophie and I want to tell you something about the CEO of so Phi Anthony no do and I think you'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 went to the the West Point was an All-Star stock analyst was the CFO of the NFL was a CFO of Twitter than the CEO 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
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 what keep that dream alive Google best fucking country in the goddamn world hundred percent and writing for and it's worth having these debates and I think it's worth doing the Pod and said I'd like to get in January again.
Constitution the Pod going
Stop chasing. The American Constitution is the most incredible fucking document because that is the foundation from 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 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 zipping I need to do.
Harm, maybe not zip tie guy, but there's a lot of other people that are 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 Holly Ted Cruz stay fucking ridiculous. I would also love you guys think about doing something for someone else this week. Yeah, and that's all let's all do something. Nice. Exactly. Yeah. I love you guys. I love you backstage. Love you sax lucky sex. Love you sack.
Come on, sexy say it God damn it. This is the time back to say it.
It's an
open-source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with love u.s. Ice queen.
We should all just get a room and just have one big huge or because they're all this useless. It's like this like sexual tension and they just need to release them how
your feet
to get Merchants are.
