Hey, everyone and everyone Welcome, Thio. Your history is your illustrious moderator. Jason Calacanis has been perched way canceled. He's been canceled, canceled him for his constant interruptions and low I Q comments way decided that the minimum like you required to be on this part of this, you know, 114 150. He did not make the cut. And so now it is just me, moth and Freeburg. Hey, is Jason is away? He is actively implementing our jerkoff toe win strategy to solve the pandemic and free speech. Well, let your winners ride way open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with

way. Hey, everybody here, 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 Kin Wah Rain Man himself, David Sacks and the dictator chopping it up for you The loyal, confused, angry, infuriated audience of all in the craziest week of our lives Jason, Please don't describe to the audience the characteristics that describe yourself. Okay, this has been crazy. 72 hours. Can anybody remember a week that has been more crazy

in their life? With the exception, I guess. 9 11. The financial crisis. I'm trying to think of this level of crazy e 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 think, no, I think I think we should. I think it's worth doing way. Talked about this before you joined us and what we're Tomato 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 is 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 right person or Democrat or Republican. I think that's what makes us, you know. Ah, compelling. An interesting group

to talk. Thio Sachs has been characterized as the trump guy. He took a fence to that on dim, particularly 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, have a group hug. Yeah, and and and re refrain kind of how we talk about each other And how s so that we can kind of set a bit of an example on how to do this. Well, I can. Sorry. You can start, David. I'll start because objection. You're the aggrieved. Yeah. I mean, so look, I think that that Jake, how does an amazing job moderating the pot and it's a difficult job and, you know, the s so I don't wanna 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 wanna be misconstrued and and we wanna be able to characterize our own views. We don't wanna be labeled in 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, but the audience doesn't necessarily understand that. I mean, if you go back and look at my Twitter feed or my blog's, I haven't written about Trump for years. I mean, I haven't seen anything really about it. That's not my agenda. Um, you know, and I think e I don't have a pro trump agenda, But I also don't have a pro resistance agenda I've described. My position is anti hysteria. Sometimes that means criticizing Trump like I did in the last pod. Sometimes it means criticizing the resistance, so I just don't like being labeled a certain way. And I think Jason, I sort of, you know, kind of resolve this, Um, you know, if I were able my politics, just you know, Jason calls me the Conservative. I think that's more accurate. But the question is, you know what? Um, I conserving exactly. And I would describe myself. Maura's like in 19 sixties style liberal you know, I'm a believer in free speech. You know, a C l u style believer in King's dream of a color blind society. You

know, if you know I'm against all these, you know, foreign wars and interventions. If I had been around the 19 sixties, I would've been protesting Vietnam. That's kind of mawr 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 in the 19 sixties. So in any event, I don't think that qualifies me in any way is a Trumper per se. And, um, 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 extremely polarizing figure, and the second you tell somebody you're frankly pro or con Trump, the other half just doesn't even stop. Doesn't want to listen to you on DSO my. My views are more complicated than that. Okay, well, thanks for everybody. For tuning into the all the Amazing Episode 17 emergency pod. Thanks to our sponsors. Um

, listen, I think what makes this podcast great is the diversity of opinion and the respect that we show for each other. If my breaking chops, which is, as everybody knows here, uh, my superpower in life, uh, 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 anything we all feel that way about each other that we go to Bat Frazier to 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. Ah

, lot of time thinking about your position, David, on where you're coming from and then also where the people who may be you know, you may be agreed with some of Trump's 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 on this ugliness? And then how do we reconcile it? Right? That is the grand 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, uh, Trump Trump is

, as I was saying in our group chat earlier, 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 with the trolley car? You know it's gonna kill one person or five and do you, 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 has changed Wednesday E. Leave it at that and then I'll throw You don't wanna know. 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 view is, 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 healthcare on 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 because it's harder to be nuanced, as Friedberg said at the beginning, without sounding like a complete crazy person, because one word triggers Thea other side against you. So I think the thing that I just want all the listeners to appreciate, not just amongst the four of us but also amongst their own friends is having a little patience and tolerance here is really important because we cannot become the worst of ourselves, especially because of a single person who will

be rendered with an enormous Asterix 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 Lisa last year? Was his her name Lisa. Amy last. Will somebody, um, sky posted in the group chat? Nick, can you find it? I can't remember. It's Astle or Lhasa was your last name anyways Kim Strassel Kim Strassel

She 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 All those, you know, she was selective. It was impressive, actually, you know, meaning getting the rhetoric right on China, getting the rhetoric on trade, right? Um, the deregulation that he's created in some ways. So there there is very much a reasonable narrative up until the capital storming where the glass was definitely half full and it could have legitimately been viewed half full. And it was just a matter opinion because he was just such a crazy person. And his style was so shitty. I think the thing. And David said this in the last pot after storming the Capitol. It is very clear, 100% categorically. This guy is just a complete piece of shit. And so now the people that stand with him are extremely

isolated, and so I just want us to remember that there there is probably something toe learn from everybody. He actually did some reasonable things intelligently. Well, until he fucking self immolated himself. Um and so let's just not given to our basic instincts here. And I think there's a lot to learn from. I think the frustration of a lot of people is some people saw this coming. And some people, you know, when Peter Thiel said things like, Hey, you know, don't take Trump literally and all this kind of stuff Some of us were taking him literally on. Some of us were very concerned, and people were saying, Oh, you're being hyperbolic. He's not Hitler. He's He's not dangerous. You know what? Uh, 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

, Uh, and the anger and the violence he put out into the world. And he consistently did this, you know, He he started by saying, you know, get that person the hell out of here like I would in the old days, the cops would've thrown him down the stairs kind of thing. He is like Tony Soprano or any other mom boss who knows how to incite people to do dangerous things without having the culpability himself. As you pointed out, Jamaat, he he might be the one who gets off scot free while they're rounding up all these people. And you got to write him off like these people are gonna go to jail thesis multiple felonies. He's not gonna get off scot free. Well, I mean, do you think is going to jail? And do you think the people who broke into the you think you think Trump's going to jail? Oh, my Lord, I'm not I'm not sure about that. But I I do think that you know, like I said last time, Trump is now the first a sitting president to cost his party the presidency, the House and the Senate since Herbert Hoover. Jason, if you're right

about Trump, I mean, the voters have certainly been able to see that. And they've punished him in his party at the polls. I do think that whatever you do to trump individually at this point, it's sort of redundant with that, you know, he has now cost his party, uh, any sure. Everything, Everything. Any share of the power in Washington. So can I ask you a question, David? When I made that point about Peter Thiel 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 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, hard, right or wrong? I don't. You know what side of my on my my first reaction was Why did this happen? You know, I tried to understand

it. You know, I read, you know, the hillbilly elegy author. Um you know I was. You know, my my surprise at that happening caused 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 waas, you know, he's a sort of outsider populist, and the country was trying to send the elite bipartisan, I should say, bipartisan elites message. And what was that message that to shamas points. For the last 20 years, the bipartisan consensus in Washington has been to feed this Chinese tiger. And again, it's now potentially on the cusp of of supplanting us is the sort of richest economy in the world. We have admired ourselves in these forever wars in the Middle East. E 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, uh 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. Um, people would basically object to anything he said just because he said it, which that made your side. And I'm gonna say your side, the conservative side I won't say your side. The conservative side dug in because they were like, Well, the left being historical, we're going to dig in? Not not really. I mean, if you if you've been reading National Review for the last few years and especially the last two months, there's been plenty of criticism of Trump. Well, I was thinking Maura, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham All these people who said they would be never Trumpers became right in line Trump supporters and and they're in their partisan their their their politicians. They're part

of the party for people who care about ideas. What I would say is, I didn't change my ideas one way or another, because Trump might happen to agree with one of them. Freebird. What's your take? I don't like talking about Trump. Well, that is kind of I think, where we're getting to This is the What's the offer? NPR Friedberg What's the end game? You guys remember how the Emperor came to power in star wars. He was Palpatine turned the republic against itself, and then he emergency powers. Emergency powers. Um, look what I two Saxes point. Like I care more deeply. Um, I care very little about Trump the person. Um, and I care more deeply about the motivations of people that that want a person like that in power. And I care more deeply

about the way the dialogue is happening, um, to resolve ideas and to resolve the decisions in this country right now. Um, 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. Um, and it's only gotten worse in the last two weeks. Um, and I think that the mechanism by which we have debate, um, is lost. It's 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 everything is all about justice and winning. And there is no resolve for objectivity and discovering the truth on doing the best thing for people not the best thing for party on doing the best thing for country Onda. It's really easy to say and

really, really hard to do. As I think everyone is realizing because as soon as you say let's bring the country together, half the country, raises their hand and says, But I want justice and we can't come together until we have justice. And so what point do you break the cycle? You know, revenge never ends until someone steps down first and says, You know what? I give up. I'm not gonna I'm gonna end up in the losing position. But at that point, maybe reconciliation can begin. Andi, I'm more concerned about the the heat, the temperature and everyone says, Turn it down. But no one's actually turning it down. Um, and so you know the legacy of Trump I honestly care less about. I care much more about going forward. How do we resolve to decisions that aren't all about the Democrats overrunning? And 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. And we don't have a forum, you know, for coming thio

to kind of, you know, objective sentiment that that's best for the people on dso. 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 two 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 Andi that we don't lose to China. And you know all the things that are kind of emerging as being the intended outcomes? Yeah, we have three or four major wars we need to solve the pandemic. China wealth inequality, global warming, cha meth. Uh, do you think at this point in the podcast, we should walk through what's happened since Wednesday? Visa vee, You know, Trump being de platform 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 asked him off. Maybe you could pick which

direction we go. Well, I think it's important to talk about what happened. Um, and I'll frame this in the in the context of Peter Thiel. He has, ah, philosopher that he's talked a lot about Rene Girard and, um, you know, basically 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 democracy under the bus or you actually throw D J T 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 institution's hand was forced, um, things past week, and so it

is probably important to look at what's happened in the last few days through that lens, which is, you know, it's it's almost like people first were shocked. And then now we're in the midst of that reflexive reaction to what is a simple choice, which is you could 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 gonna have a bunch of dumb decisions. You're gonna have a bunch of overreaching. You know you're gonna have a bunch of, um, dramatic sort of belly aching on both sides. You know, there was this thing today where Devin Nunez was like screaming about how he had lost his 3000 followers on Parlor three million followers on Parlor. But he was saying it on Fox News, which

is distribution to millions of people on DSO. I ask a question about this reality. Now we're all facing do because the event that occurred on Wednesday, we are all still trying to process and new information is coming in as we you know, as people get the videos and and as we let the dust settle, the dust is settling. I'm curious. Sacks do. How do you look at what happened on Wednesday? Do you view it as a coup? Do you? Because some of the information that's come out about they were trying to get to pence and that they wanted to kidnap people. And then that dovetails with the kidnapping schemes that were going on. And they were pipe bombs. And a police officer was beaten to death with a pipe and the skull was crushed or something. We don't have all the details yet. A ah, fire extinguishers beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Some of the videos I've seen of police being dragged. Um, you know that counter act, the selfie police, you know, s 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. Sex. Well, I'm not because I'm framing you as anything. Just because you haven't No. I already gave my thoughts in the last part that it was outrageous. It was a travesty. Um, it was a rally that turned into a riot that turned into, you know, some sort of insurrection. I guess you could call it. It was it was a rebellion against authority. Um, I think coup is is potentially a strong word because it 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 you wanna call them, almost got their hands on the electors ballots. I mean, yeah, but we all know how they're voting. Even if they had gotten them, we would just have gotten

new ones. I mean, that was sort of a ceremonial thing, but look, it was it was an absolute outrage. But I do think that there is a thing happening now, uh, called threat inflation where, you know, using language like, you know, going from riot to insurrection to now coup. There is a type of inflation happening that is then used to justify the reaction by the other side to it, which is now, you know, the basically the ending of freedom of speech, which is really I think the big thing has happened since the last pot is Really This is the reason why we are having this emergency pot, I think, is because of what's happened there. I think the emergency was just to make sure that the pot wasn't ending because of you not getting in a big fight. I think that was people with the Beatles were breaking up. Well, that's true. Look, just keeping the pot together, you know, with with four big egos on it. You're right. It's all right. It is like the Beatles. You know, one day is gonna break up, but

but not but not yet. Not yet. Uh, but but but I wanna I wanna tie in this issue with you set up what you said about the off ramp. Okay? Which is, you know, what is the off ramp from this Look, everybody understands. I think regards of what side political spectrum you're on that were caught in a cycle of insane hyper partisan warfare and tit for tat retaliation. And that is the thing that we need. Teoh. That is the ledge we need to walk back from okay. But the problem that everybody has is that they could only see the other side doing it. You know, they can't see themselves doing it. This is a two way street. Both sides air Doing it and then escalation works is both. Yes, yes. And unless you can see when your side is doing it, we're never gonna break the cycle. Now the thing that is happening right now, now, what Trump did was absolutely outrageous. And I think it it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics. He

will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law. Okay, But now what has happened is the next step in the tit for tat retaliation. The storming of the capital has now been used to implement a sweeping attack on free speech. You know, the Twitter employees who sent that letter to Jack, who have been demanding this for years have finally gotten their way. And there is a widespread purge going on, and not just of trump, not just a permanent ban on Trump. And then a whole bunch of other people you know, conservatives there are now liberal accounts. There's an account that I wasn't even aware of called Red Scare. There basically, you know, pretty pretty much on the left. No one could say exactly what it was that got them banned. I guess they had Steve Bannon 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. They're kind of like socialists. Um, until trying to be public intellectuals and it's

oddly compelling. I'll leave it at that, um, that they're now banned from from Twitter they somehow got Let's pause for a second on D J t. Getting banned from Twitter. This is close to 100 million followers. It's a billion dollars in value. He just had the P g A. Say they'll never you do a Trump golf course again. So the Ram, the real world ramifications for Trump are he's his business. Is there gonna 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 United States would have their Twitter handle removed. That seemed crazy to me. however crazy. It's a crazy concept. That, being said, Trump knows how to dance right up to the line on the terms of service. And I think e 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 under hyped 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 on DPI, perhaps even like hang the vice president on it. Sounds crazy, but that's honestly, Jason. That's what I think is going on with Twitter. I think they told that they showed them that Jason, stop. I honestly like, let's not fucking fear monger like we're no better than anybody else with that bullshit. We don't know any of that crap. And the reality is that if they were doing that, they they're 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, but he's no livestreamed storming of the capital. These people are not smart. We've established

I Anyways, I can we just Let's just like let's not do the left version of Cuban on Okay, let's not have now the lapse version of the crazy conspiracy theories. Here's here's, I think, what is worth talking about. We really reflexively all of a sudden, um, 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, uh, it had been building for years and years and years, and in many ways it was kind of like this random moment on and 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 to me, it didn't make any sense. It e don't know. I was I was very frustrated and a little taken aback. Yeah, and and on. And then the last thing is like they let Donald Trump hit a one out er like he was painted in a quarter to 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 to the capital is wrong, and Donald Trump was responsible for it. And Chamot exactly like you said, the topic has now changed to censorship by big tech, which is a realist. You 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 cured about the most, because free speech is not just, uh, 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. Um, you know what? What big toe. And by the way, it's not just the permanent band on Trump. You had simultaneous to that. It was it wasn't just the banning of all these accounts. You also had the deep plat forming 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 platform, not just trump, but millions of people. And so the amazing thing is that we've had this sweeping appropriation of power by, you know, half a dozen oligarchs

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, E I want I want to say something on this because I'm not sure, I really fully agree. I think that the point that Sacks is making about freedom of speech applies 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, um, space. And in that context, it feels to me like everyone has a choice of where to go on 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 signal being the number one app on the APP store today, that emerging new platforms

will win in a marketplace where old service providers they're no longer catering to the market demands for a service. I'll also say that can respond to that one. Yeah, I'll make one more point, but yeah, so I understand the First Amendment only applies toe government. Okay, it doesn't apply to private companies, but 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 in the town square, right? You would go to the courthouse steps and put on 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 assemble today online on these monopoly network services, like a Facebook like Twitter? And again it's not. And to your point, couldn't they go to some other site? Well, they did. They went to parlor. Guess what happened. The operating systems just banned parlor. And so you know, I hear this. This there's an open. There's an

open Web sex. 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 Apple's 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 could put any information they want on that node provided it's within the boundaries and constraints of the law, and they could 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 back at home into A into a Web server, and you could make it available on the Internet. If Google and Amazon and Apple have censored you at the operating system level and removes you from Google search results, how the world's anybody's supposed to find you? Yeah, you're gonna have a S e I. I think it's important s So I do think that there is still in open market and there's an open Internet that people can access information freely and use the Internet freely without being dependent

on a handful of your right highly scaled services and highly scale platforms. But there's certainly a marketplace in 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, um, the standard is not a legal standard. The standard is a judgment. It isn't. It is a It is a moral or some principle standard that is sitting above and beyond the legal standard that they're required to comply with the point. And this is really scary, right? Because at that point, it becomes a subjective decision about who you kick off based on your interpretation of what they said and what they intended when they said it. And that leads to the infinite slippery slope. And, yeah, you nailed it one fucking 1000%. That is the exact issue

. It's not necessarily about free speech. It is that when you have accumulated power and you effectively have a quasi governmental organization that gets to operate in the free market when it wants to, but then operate like a quasi governmental monopoly when it wants to, all of a sudden the power becomes in the shadows. 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 sooth at entity. You know who it is. There's a pathway through the courts through the law, through the Constitution. The problem with this is all of a sudden it becomes murky and look, you flip a coin 50% of the time, guys, you're going to get your way the other 50% of the time, Who the fuck knows what will happen? And you may be completely on the wrong side of it. And this is, I think, the problem. Let me I just want to read you guys something. There was a there was this manifesto or memo. This woman who is a former

Facebook data scientists Sophie Zhang, she wrote. I'm just I'm just going to read this because I think it's ah, it's really interesting here. The 6600 word memo written by former Facebook data scientists, Sophie's saying, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and on Honduras, using fake accounts for 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 years I've spent at Facebook, I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry and 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, and that

represents the problem. That's the social. The social suasion that is influencing the leaders of the tech companies are largely there 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 they're 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, they're not going to do their jobs. Um, you're going to take that to heart, and there's not a lot of influence or persuasion that, you know, citizens of Bolivia and you know Uruguay can have with executives at Facebook and Twitter. But people in the Bay Area you have a fucking clue about the politics and Azerbaijan or Bolivia. Does any one 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, um, you know you're gonna be wrong for some people and you're gonna be right with some

people versus using an absolute standard. And if the issue is that the law, if the law doesn't define the absolute standard, then you need to go and change the law. I think 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 onto it, somebody who is completely insincere and manipulating the system, um, on purpose and to your point, David and last podcast is sitting in the President United States seat. You know, it carries different weight. And if you look at the words that Trump used or Rudy used, you know, we wanna have, uh, 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 competition now for these services. And it will be impossible to ban those peer to peer. Ah, platforms. And so we'll have some products emerged. Universal truth. This information wants to be free. So if there is an opinion, if there is a voice, if there is information out, there will be a free market response to parlor being shut down. I I sincerely believe that Ah, lot of these decisions are being made not just at the behest of the employees. I do. They agree they have tremendous power on, and I've said that obviously, many times. I think what's going on here is people believe that Trump and we and you said it yourself, David. There's gonna be a white knuckle 10 days on. 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 Theobald witty to say the next three or four crazy things that make people show up, um, at, ah persons home or, you know

, the dog whistling. And you know if if Trump's comments on Wednesday at that rally and Rudy Giuliani's and Donald Trump Jr is the people who really incited this on and they're going to face some amount of civil and criminal charges, I believe, um, 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 ass is I think they should have just done a 30 day band, not a permanent band, so at least they would have the cover of saying, Listen, this is too heated. We're gonna pause for 30 days and then we'll reassess it February 1st or February 15. 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 were going to run the Senate Judiciary Committee next year or the language was so clear it's there is s 03 months ago, I wrote a block post about the policy that I thought the social media companies should take. I said for moderation on 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 violence. It includes, you know, trying thio, uh, trying to provoke a crime. It, uh, 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're 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 to your point, Jason. I think there was a way to remove some of Trump's treat tweets for incitement consistent with the First Amendment. But that's not what they did. You know that and maybe that would, it said. What they did is a lifetime ban combined with rounding up, you know, twice the usual number of suspects combined with a deep plat forming not at the account level, but now at the application level by Google Apple on Amazon. And none of this has been explained. There is no policy. What it is is a variation. Hold on. What it is is an appropriation of power by oligarchs. No, no, there is a policy. The problem is, as we've just discussed, it's an interpretation that must occur. And the interpretation of Wednesday's comments on a tweet might be okay. Yeah, they're borderline, but not enough to shut his account down and and these folks know how to do it when when Rudy Giuliani says I want a trial by combat

. Or, you know, if Trump says you're not gonna 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? Well, it didn't see people. The policy that that that I want is something broadly consistent with the First Amendment. Because But in those in those phrases I just told you is that Are those inciting or those on the borderline if you were making the decision right? So you know, pretty, my lawyer had on for a second. There's questions of law and questions of fact, okay, And we can debate. What you're describing are questions of fact. What I'm trying to say is, Well, what is the law? What is the policy that you would say that we're not direct incitement? No, there is no policy. These social media coming to have any policy. They're making it up as they go along. Based on what would you do get? What would you do with Trump's comments from Wednesday if they were in tweets? Yeah, I'll tell you So, first of all, I would have implemented a moderation policy broadly consistent. The First Amendment, and then certain tweets that were inciting violence

while there was writing on the capital, I would have been okay, taken those down. I would have taken those down where I think and And I think even doing something until the inauguration. If you think that Trump poses a threat, I think I think that's okay. I think that's okay. So you would find with a 30 day ban or something? Well, like a 10 day band or whatever, but, ah, lifetime ban that, like on what basis? On what constitutional grounds do you justify that? And look, I know it's a private company, but my point is, this idea are free. Speech rights got privatized. Okay. The town square got digitized and centralized. We used tohave thousands. We used to have town squares where people could convene all over this country. We had a multiplicity of newspapers. All that got replaced by a handful of tech monopolists. Our free speech rights got digitized. If they take away our ability to speak, we don't have free speech rights. Who do we appeal to when we get canceled by a Google or Apple

, What court can we go? Thio, By the way, I think this is the best argument for having an Internet court. And, um, if you think about the standards that are being applied, they're being applied haphazardly randomly by God by these companies in response toe near term market forces. You know, what is everyone saying? They have to dio or one of their employees rally todo Well, there's there's there's 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 law we owe, and why not be more specific? And then you let an Internet court adjudicate and make the decision about what to take down and what not to take down there as they are very responsive toe warrants when there's a criminal act underway. And so why not let an Internet court be responsive to take down requests or Thio or some other sort of video? No, it's it's mandatory, and again it's central centralizes the standards right, so you don't have

to have ad hoc random decisions and let if what Sachs is saying is true. It creates a standard that everyone has to abide by and that every consumer can trust them to abide by 1st. 1st, we need a bill of rights, right? First, we need to say that we as citizens, have rights that the court can defend. That is the problem. We don't have any rights. These companies are acting willy nilly, 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, ah bunch of brands and a bunch of governments and, uh

, those governments and brands. Let's just say it's in India, right? Huge market, 1.2 billion people, they say. You know what? We're a little tepid on abortion, 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 that. And 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's none. It's arbitrary. It's random. It doesn't necessarily make any sense. There is no way to readdress it then That's the biggest problem with all of this thing. It just There's a concept that newspapers is having. A Bud Zeman and The New York Times have went up until I think 2017, and then they got rid

of it because I think it's costing 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 know. That Jason, they have these things, but those air fig leaves and those were just meant to base, you know, they they don't have it instructive about politics because it's not. It's not Jason. They have a fucking council. Facebook as 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 could look to securities law. There's some examples and securities law which I think are really interesting, which is that a CFO and a CEO has to certify quarterly results, right, meaning for people who have issues with the 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. An 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 suck and say those guys that the decision makers, I think in these examples what you have to point to is there was a petition of potentially several 100 or a few 1000 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 if you know, and then the worst part is no. But the worst part is thes people who are probably very left of center completely fucked the left. And then they basically let Donald Trump off the hook, because now we're 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 gonna basically like him and ha. And now they're not going to necessarily go along with it. Exactly 101 100%. And so good fucking job, guys

. You got the exact opposite of what you wanted. Exactly. And here's the thing, Jason, you're right. Trumps 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 to 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 cancel culture, by the way. It's not the First Amendment. Well, I think you have to not say willy nilly after Trump incited riots. If there's enough public, it might have been an overreaction. But I think it's the proper reaction. You agree it's the problem. We are just so people understand proper

reaction to maybe do a 30 day suspension. But maybe not in definitely 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, but yeah, 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 your e o. You still don't have full information. Your outrage at Trump No cause you to pull your punches on the censorship. No, no, I'll be totally clear. I think they should have a Bussmann. 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 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 toe, 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 Trump, who said Freeburg center. Yeah, so I think that's like a power move as well. But I'm still pro freedom of speech. I think there is imminent danger, and I don't think it's willy nilly. This is where I think sometimes you get you, you missing, you misrepresent yourself, David on. 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 act of, you know, treason and that this violence at the capital it is not a willy nilly. You have overreaction, I agree, but it's not willy nilly. The entire world had Donald Trump in a corner dead to rights, and he had a one hit wonder whether it's a bad strategy

to d platform into this level, I agree. And then 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 pence out and shoot him, and I think that actually limits insane. But they literally didn't take it down on incitement to violence. And under the First Amendment, you can clearly prohibit that I wouldn't and parlor didn't take it down. They dragged their feet down and he said, It's a metaphor to go take pence out and shoot him. And this is Donald Trump's lawyer. Well, one of his lawyers, previous lawyers, that in my view, that doesn't d just that doesn't justify what's happened. What I mean by willy nilly is what? Why is red scare been taken down? So left wing site. Why? Why Dan Bongino 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 what he's kind of Ah, pretty middle of the road Fox type guy. I don't really know what he did. We have no transparency and toe why people are being taken down. I can't go evaluate for myself

what they said to see if it, you know, if it wanted censorship. The cynic might say that this overreaction was playing into the hands of the Jason. What have controlled Senate Congress? Jason, what happens is like a big pharma company who wants to do a big ad buy on Facebook says, Hey, guys, you gotta really dial down, uh, anti vax content. Now. I'm not an anti vax. Er, um But do I have some level believe in their right to talk about being an anti vax? Er, absolutely. I think it's insane, But should they have a right to do it? Absolutely absolute. I'm a fan of the labeling. E 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 toe you being pinned as the president stands for all of Trump's

bad behavior. But 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's lying constantly? We were talking about these challenges on the polit for the last couple of months, and we were laughing. I mean, we were laughing at how ridiculous they were and how ridiculous the things that you know Rudy was doing. And, you know, it was crazy. So look not to his supporters. Well, but here's the thing, one of which is dead or four of what you're dead. I understand. And here's the thing. Democracy takes work. I mean, we have to, you know, we have to spend the time toe actually dispel these views. And, you know, it would be nice to be ableto wave a magic wand and just censor the things that we don't like. But here's the thing. None of us has 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 the question is really who has the power to decide. So, you know, just I'll tell you just a real quick story. You know, when I went to law school all those years ago, the very first class that you know, that that that I had in law school, it's this very arcane class called civil procedure, which is about what court you take a case to okay. And, you know, I was kind of wondering why is this like the first thing we 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 Linwood Thio to be canceled and to not be able to spout these insane theories but who were 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 gonna end here. This is what the end. It's the beginning. I don't think that the the leadership at big tech wanna be in this position. Um, you know, I think it's easy to blame the individuals Zuk, Jack, Susan, Um, Sundar Whomever? Um, you know, I worked at Google when it was a small when it was a private company. Um, you know, Jamaat knows work with Chuck. I think we've all had experience with these individuals. And I think one thing having spent time with all of them, I could tell you is that I believe that all of them want information to be freely available and accessible. Um, and that that's ah, really core principle. And the challenge that they're facing is that there is, um

, you know, as we talked about this social pressure to move away from that core principle because there's always an argument to be made on dear 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 on. But pressure will change, the tides will will shift and and it Zaveri kind of ugly circumstance. But, you know, I think characterizing the individuals is being in charge of this sex or, you know, trying thio handcuffed t to make them feel like they should be handcuffed in some way. Um, 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 answers they have, I think we're reasonable and rational, as we all know is technologists like Congress doesn't understand this stuff. The biggest observation to me is that Law hasn't kept up with the Internet. And, um

, you know, if you look at how the d. M. C. A. 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 takedown 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 suppose the 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 defining the DMC A did not keep up with law. The biggest issue, I think, 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 arbitrations toe operate. Can I say something like I just what sentence? I mean, apply First Amendment obligations to these monopolists. That's what I bought Post was about. I'll tell you where this could

go In a bad direction is if you look at if you think about what social media has become, I would put it on the top of the list 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 on lithium is like an English. We all knew that we want to medicate trump with lithium. Is that what you're saying? No lithium, the 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 a lithium mine. Um, in countries all around the world, there's numerous examples of things privatization turning into nationalization when something becomes important enough, and part of I think what we're struggling with here is. You know, there's gonna be this crazy push pull in

in in social media. What do you think happens if you know, uh, India actually says, Hey, you know what? You're gonna have to nationalize the rails of WhatsApp or the rails of Facebook. If you wanna be in my country. Why? Why is it so inconceivable? E think you're right? That that's that. That is a second order. That is a second order consequence of censorship that nobody even thinks about. You have the leaders of many countries across the world using Twitter as a as a channel. Do you think there are now gonna wanna rely on that? Given that Twitter consensus them at any time, they're gonna hand that lever of national power. Thio, Jack Dorsey. No way they're gonna look at this. I mean, not even Jack Dorsey. David somebody in like the bowels of the user, you know, user user access group some. Some Rando VP someplace is going to stop the president of 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 consequences of the people who

who I think engaged 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. Toe let the dust settle. But any of these completely fundamental decisions that you can't go back from, what is the technical difference between saying it's banned forever and it's banned for 10 days today? Technically, it's the same decision, but exactly what David said. You feed into this emotion just like the people that stormed the capital, fed into their emotion. And then you wake up the next day with this hangover and you realize to yourself, What the fuck did I just do? And I think that's that's what we're gonna have to sort out now is you cannot unscramble this fucking egg because, irrespective of whatever happens in the United States, there are 2 to 3 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 there. The presidents and prime ministers duly elected individuals of these countries, and so you're not gonna allow these two private citizens to disrupt power. We we we have so much information we don't know about what occurred this past week. I think it's it's all gonna get investigated. It's It's gonna be like a 9 11 commission all over again. Or Ukraine, etcetera. Andi. 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 gonna be a hell of a show and it's gonna be incredible. And you gotta be there on the six. It's gonna be out of control, you know how? How how much did they know? Right, Like, that's what I really don't know. How much did they know about what was going to 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 from the Freeburg. But I saw something today that I thought was particularly interesting in

dovetails with reconciliation, which is what the country's got to do in 2021 22 years ago to reconcile this shit because there's bigger fish to fry, like, you know, China and the pandemic and global warming. One of these people at the airport who was coming home from the rally is now on the do not fly list. They're taking this group of domestic terrorists eyes 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, uh, some of them maybe maybe some of them are just, you know, got caught up in the wrong mob 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 Lindsey Graham with 20 of the people who are going home from the rallies, chanting at him that this is never gonna end. And that seems like a very volatile situation. And so Theo escalation continues. Good. Freeburg, I'll tell you, like it feels to me like this past week has been, um, nothing but fuel

for both sides because there isn't a black and white circumstance here. And there isn't a black and white objective truth about you know what took place and what motivations were and what the connections were. When I was 16 years old, I went to a rave in downtown L. A. And for New Year's Eve you did, and right before 16. And the rave got shut down half a hour before midnight because there was some illegal drug being widely circulated for free. So you guys can watch videos of this on YouTube. It's called circa 1996 and we and everyone the cops came in and they shut down the rave. It was outdoors in downtown L. A. And we rioted. And so everyone was on like I participated. I think I've passed the period where they can prosecute my God 7000. Yeah, I participated in the Don't say that you witnessed. I witnessed participated in the sense that I

was there, 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 watch the videos yeah, if you watch the videos of the capital There's a lot of videos on YouTube that you could 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, Thio. 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 capital. There was no uniforms, 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 you Yeah, parlor. And and so everyone has a different point of view. And I think that's the biggest challenge we're gonna have is we're all gonna try and get to the truth, and everyone's going to cast this as a different point. They're gonna take what happened. They're gonna take some set of events that happened, and they're gonna highlight that this is what the connections were. And this is the reason why it happened on

dis just creates fuel it doesn't create. Um, you know, there is not gonna be some objective outcome here. We're all gonna feel better. No one's gonna feel better at the end of the day on Dwight, We basically just throwing a whole bunch of gas on a fire. That was already What do you think? Um, that was my point was just like, it's all It's all great. My behavior Crazy, Bernie, whatever photos you took, uh uh, Sacks, what do you think of this, VP? You know, Pence and Trump and their relationship Visa vee pardons in this endgame here because it does seem like Pence was upset. Obviously what occurred and that Trump didn't even call to check on him what was going on and that a number of these people, because there are queuing on people there. There are, you know, I'm sure. And teeth of people there, but it was mainly trump folks. Um, 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's some speculations

to do bodily harm to him. What are your thoughts on that. I think one of the most insane aspect 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. Uh, no one could have been more loyal than pencil to trump the last four years. And Pence simply told him Look, I don't have the power to cancel this vote of the electors, you know, And for that fact, you know, just for speaking truth about that, Trump denounced him in front of this this bob and and made him a target. And that is one of them, or insane aspects of what Trump did. And, uh, you know, I truck no sympathy for that again. This was an act of demagoguery, and, uh, this is a nominee ascend for for Trump's presidency. But if it in terms of like, you know, I wanna go back toe what Freeburg 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 were there is that they went to this trump rally and protest, and it turned into a riot, and they got caught up in it on day. Then, in addition to that, there were, I think, hidden 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 2%. What's not thinking about the majority? What? What do you think will happen if they actually did shoot Pelosi or they did hang Pence? It is a possibility. But you know what? That threat, inflation, What you're doing right there, Jason. Exactly what you're No, I think it's an actual could have happened if other people one of the people who died was a senator. Yes, it could have happened. But here's the problem. People are acting as if

everything that could have happened but didn't actually happened or may still happen in a later date. That that is what I call threat inflation. And it's the biggest tool the sensors have for seizing power because it convinces you yourself said these people had those plans. So we do have to think about it. I mean, the first time we're trying to blow up the World Trade Center. It didn't come down, David, But the second time, it did come down. I understand. But by constantly beating the drum meteo threat, but by constantly beating the drum of these threats, you know it up. 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 conclusively. So talking about it and amping people up Jason doesn't do anything. I'm saying we need to Better

what? It waas a better. A better example of threat inflation would be the Iraq war. Remember that. We gotta go. Absolutely a bad data. WMD. That was threat inflation threat. Whipping people up, you know, and making them worse. I'm just talking to three of my besties and asking you what you think about what would have happened if a senator died, I think it's a valid came close to happening, but it came close. This'll is the thing that is convincing people helping convince people to give up liberties that they should want to hold on. I'm just asking you. I'm not saying everybody. I'm not saying we need to be on edge, that this is gonna 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 way. Don't We don't know any of this. Now. We're now we're no better than anybody else. 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 under toe. All of their lives will be ruined because of one individual. Okay. And at the end of the day, there was, in my opinion, one singular person to blame Donald Trump and then a handful of people who were his accomplices. Uh, Josh, Holly, Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani. We know who all of these characters are in this terrible play. And then there were all these people that were caught in the under toe, and I would rather just deal with it that way because it actually allows us to have some sympathy for a person who struggled. 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 for all time

. Know that that there is a there. There was on arbitrariness to the decision making around free speech. And I'm telling you guys, I know that you may think banning him from Twitter is so much lower than this attack on the capital. And I'm telling you, it's not because the slippery slope of event event number one is so obvious. The prosecution of that is so obvious. The law is so completely clear. But we've shifted now into this realm where things are arbitrary, where things air gray and it's a worldwide problem. There are 180 some odd countries in the world right that these sites operate in with 180 different leaders multiplied by, You know, two or three political parties each like there are now hundreds and hundreds of people who are trying to figure out games. It's so I just think, e I just think we made the problems so much worse. Yeah, I I agree

. And, you know, earlier today, uh, are heated conversation extended toe one of our friends in our check group who is telling us that you know, there's a group of SAS companies that are talking about deep platform ING parlors 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 It's like a red scare. It's like a podcast, actually, a like Joe McCarthy, literally gonna go after anybody who writes a screenplay, your Communist Socialist. But let me ask you guys, how much do you guys? So I think that there is severely, um, 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 s. So this is the argument a lot of you know conservatives make, which is

the tech companies in general, a za result act in the best interests of, you know, of the liberal movements, sex on Jamaat. I mean, Jason, do you guys think that it is an employee driven, um, kind of set of actions that we're seeing and that the motivation is in part to kind of appeased the employee base, that these countries 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 court system to do their job. Instead, they acted like vigilantes in a way that basically appeased. Nobody

and all of a sudden shifted the focus away from the person that all these hundreds of employees wanted to basically have, you know, have been found guilty and pointed to one individual. They all wanted one individual to be held culpable. And now he's not going to, ah, 100%. And and And 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 they have for some time. And to free Brooks Point. It's like pad mint. Uh, Pat, may, I guess. Great. Great Star Wars said E said. This is this is how democracy dies with thunderous applause. Everybody is clapping over this censorship, Lucas. I mean, the prequels are underrated. I have to say, Watch revenge of the fifth. It's definitely you were the best, but the last one of the worst. But anyway, but

I just wanna go S's gonna eso mouth is 100% 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 2 30 on both Jack and Suck were berated by the senators, most notably Senator Blumenthal, who is basically arguing for censorship. He was telling him, You gotta crack down and so I also think there's not this pressure from below. There's pressure from above. These guys know who's coming into power in January, and I think, especially Zuk, who has to be terrified of being open up right now. He Yes, exactly. So he is thinking about how Doe I mollifying appease these politicians who now have the power and can break me up. And I got no use for him. It's too little, too late breaking up anyway to you're gonna get broken up anyway. And by the way, I now 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're using their powerful, their power into indiscriminate away without power and a better can you say that? Let me just let me just point something out. Tax. You didn't say that before it affected the conservative movement ability to have a voice, right? Yeah. No, I mean no, but I want to point out like I mean, like, and a lot of people are having this reaction, which is once it affect. And I just want to point this out once it affect 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 make fun of this. But a few months ago or weeks ago there's a porn website called Porn Hub and Visa MasterCard and Discover stopped processing payments for them Because the New York Times put out an opinion article about E 30. You are you just auto filled 30. You are your book market. Go down to number two s o

. I want to point out like like the Electronic Frontier Foundation was the Onley organization that really made a stink about this. This behavior from these monopoly payment processing network stepping in and blocking their ability to run as a business, not on any legal grounds and not on any grounds based on some court making a decision. It was around. It was around that it was an opinion piece and suddenly everyone's waking up because now Trump is being silenced. And this and this is why. No, no, no, no. Unregulated, like J. C. L. Let me respond to that. So So, first of all, porn has always been in a separate category. The Supreme Court has said that you could regulate it, accords, community standards. And so I support the ability of Facebook or Twitter. Whatever to regulate it according to their standards is 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 de platform, and not just Trump, but parlor. I mean, we're talking about millions of people, and the fact that they're conservative is not the reason. If this was

happening to a liberal app, I promise you I'll be acting the exact same way. For me, free speech is the most cherished value that we have. It's the First Amendment. The Constitution is the first right in the Bill of Rights. That's the thing that has me upset. This is not a partisan thing. Uh, and to your point, Freeburg, 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 and and sacks stole my thunder because I was gonna say I think that Zuk who I believe I'm very cynical about I think he is thinking how Doe eyepiece the left. Now, after having a piece trump for all these years Now Trump's out of office now, How do I P is the left? Okay, I have to ban him for life. And remember, Trump was Zack was the first to give the lifetime ban, not Jack. So Zuk, who has previously been in Trump's corner, is now not the third factor. So the first factor is obviously employees. Second factor is getting broken up in appeasing all these centers. E think the third one is I

think that there could be information that we're not privy to, that they are privy to that. Me that is leading them to overreact? No, because that would have I'm gonna disagree, Thio it would It would not have come out in that way. It would have said we are you know, uh, pausing the account or suspending the account. It wouldn't have been this next step of saying your D platform, for I think 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 thes cos I helped build one. Um, my team was probably the most instrumental in getting one of these things to really 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 thes businesses are there too 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 182 different products on a country by country basis and Twitter was the same, there was actually be a path here, right? And each one had a country level CEO that actually had power. Maybe this could be different, but the problem is that if all roads go back to Menlo Park in San Francisco and you're putting the power in the hands of 15 or 20,000 people over a multi million line code base. It's an impossible task for even the smartest of the smart people These companies need to get broken up. I think we're all going to agree on that. I do think you guys are missing. A piece of you guys are missing a piece of information. I'm just gonna read to you What from The Washington Post. Twitter specifically raised the possibility that Trump's recent tweets could mobilize his 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, um, and so they specifically cited that

they said they were and and the tweet that they were concerned about was this one that got taken down very quickly. American patriots will not be disrespected to treat unfairly in any way, shape or form, and then he announced right after that that he's not going to the inauguration. So what Twitter believes is that that was some sort of a dog whistle to go do violence at the inauguration and that's what they said in their lifetime. Ban is they felt Trump was doing that just to point out, you could interpret it that way, and you could also interpret it the other way. And that which is the problem of Trump. You know, the problem of it's the problem of using judgment, right? And if you can ask you a question, would you be supportive of, um, platform level open architectures? So, for example, that, you know, the messaging infrastructure that supports Facebook and Twitter have to be unified in a way, eso that that was originally called like there was r s s I mean, there's a lot of open communication protocols that exist out there. I mean, Signal has made an attempt of doing this as well. With their approach and open sourcing everything. I'm

just think I'm just asking What is the technical solution, if not to break them up to make them mawr predictable portability of your profile? I think you could pass a law. I mean, like, we do have a government, we can pass the laws so you could pass a law that says, if you're gonna operate a communication platform, here are the rules you have to abide by. And here's how you have to. And 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, um, you know and a key points him up, given that it may be so technically difficult to break them up that maybe one of the points that one of the paths of resolution and we're gonna find out the next 2 to 3 years because I don't think that anyone on the left or the right likes big tech is they call it on 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 is economic value to having Google beat the scale. It's at Amazon being the scale. It's at Facebook being scale it's at, and it doesn't harm consumers. I think it helps in aggregate in terms of pricing and service availability. Um, 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. Um, but I I know I'm in the minority on that. Yeah, I would say, um, my view about antitrust used to be that it was all about consumer harm. And I've actually come around more of the liberal point of view on this, which is it can't just be about consumer harm. It's also gotta be about power and not just market power, but democratic power. And the fact of the matter is these companies have just gotten too large and too powerful. They have too much influence our democracy, and it's incompatible with, you know, a democracy. So what if they regulated? What if they got regulated like utility sex? So, like, we have regulatory bodies for utilities, for both telecommunications and for power and energy. What if we had a regulatory body for Internet services? Well, yeah. I mean, first

and foremost, I want a new online bill o rights. You know, I want to know what my rights are online. That thes techno. This cartel of Technopolis 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 his ability to communicate with a billion people, you know, like he had this ability to control the conversation and now he's I mean, I don't even know if people will put him on air. 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, Um, 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, passed some law without Congresses approval or does something I mean, this guy is never proven himself toe 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 a like a cat being put in the bath. Also, it seems like they're doing some last ditch stuff. Pompeo lifted restrictions for US Taiwan contracts, and you 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. Where 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. Ah, lot of these folks. I mean, Jason, interview May 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 and government. As much as we make fun of the bureaucracy and the bullshit that goes on, it's great to be an American. And to know that there's, um you know, that there's thes thes folks out there. Looking out for this is like being in the final stages of a stress test. It's like the final way, as I predicted on the last pot, I said there would be major major arrest. You know, everyone was saying that that that these protesters being treated with kid gloves compared to be alive and I was like, Just wait, there's gonna be arrest. And sure enough there rounding up these people quick. Ah, lot of charges. I think the most genius thing was, I don't know who who said it was a honey pot, but the parlor post that said, you know, it was incredible sacks, but like, um, Sacks 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

president's pardon, attorney and, you know, send me your name and phone number and email. If you wanna be pardoned for what happened in the capital, E O. You committed CEO video called capital riots amnesty dot or GTA. Please go to Capitol riots amnesty dot or GTA 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. 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 was the Honey Pot is because Jimmy Carter pardoned, you know, after the Vietnam War, he pardoned everyone who had dodged the draft is part of the Vietnam War. He did that as a blanket pardon without naming any names. So it seemed very suspect to me that Trump would need individual names and and crimes field apart in them. I do with ceremonial, right. That was like a healing a wound moved by Jimmy Carter. It wasn't because we weren't prosecuting those. Sure

, sure, and so that. But it was never litigated, so it became a precedent. I think I do think that Trump probably. I mean, this would be a very interesting court case, but I do think he could issue a blanket party and everyone on them all that day. It's possible I'm not a terrible E. A point of escalation as opposed to de escalation, sex being our lawyer and our historian, you know, what is the origin of the presidential pardon? How is that even legal? And how did we end up in a place in this country where any law could be superseded by the president telling you it's okay for you to break this law and pardon you after the fact or even before the fact it zit exists? Because it's in the Constitution and 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 somehow was included in the incredible right. I mean, like the intention of it. My understanding was too, um

, correct injustices that occurred so that it would be a backstop against somebody who was the judgment of the guy by the judgment. One way lies 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. E love to see an amendment getting rid of the pardon powers. I don't know. I never feel good about what they are thinking about the court, you know, appeals and such. But all right, well, listen, we beat this today. Can I end on something? Let's end on something uplifting. I took, um ah, a bunch of spats public a t end of last year. And on Friday, one of the vehicles that on the CEO of Merged with So fi Andi, want to tell you something about the CEO of Sofia, Anthony Noto. Um, and I think he'll be okay because he shared this story a couple

times, but his parents got divorced when he was three years old. He grew up on welfare. Food stamps, um, sort of free lunch kids until middle school. Um, went to the West Point, Um, was a All star stock analyst was the CFO of the NFL, was the CFO of Twitter than the CEO of Twitter. Um and you guys know my story, but you know, ended up in the United States after growing up in Canada after escaping a Civil war. I grew up on welfare, and I said to Anthony, What are the odds that two kids who grew up that way could have ended up in a moment where we were part of doing something really amazing that, you know, for each of us was a meaningful accomplishment? And he said, Only in America and Onley in America, this is Let's keep the single best

fucking country in the goddamn world 100% and we're fighting for and it's worth having these debates and I think it's worth doing the pod. And so I'd like to the American Constitution, the pod going stop, Jason Thea. American Constitution is the most incredible fucking document because that is the foundation, which all of these things were 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 intending to do harm. Maybe not. Zip tie guy. But there's a lot of other people that air that just got caught in the under toe. I would try to have sympathy for them on Guy would really don't lose focus now, people. Donald Trump. Josh Holly. Ted Cruz. Stay fucking vigil, Honey, I

would also love you guys. Think about doing something for someone else this week. Yeah, that's all. Let's all do something nice. Exactly. Yeah. I love you guys. Love your best. Love you, Sacks. Love you. Love you, Sacks. Come on, Socks. He say it, Goddamn it! This is the e. Well, let your winners ride, right, Rain Man. David. Way open Sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with a suite of kin. Wow. What? What? They're winners Line five trying. Besties are gone. My dog Thinking innovation, your drive way? No way! Should all just get a room and just having one Big George, because they're always used. It's like this, like sexual tension. But you just need to release that way

. I'm going all in