Insights from Mark Zuckerberg on Censorship, AI, and the Future of Social Media

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all

day all right BR what's happening good to see you you too what's going on you know chill week yeah sort of um this uh

recent announcement that you did about uh content moderation how has that been received um probably depends on who you

ask but but you know but look I mean I've been working on this for a long time so I mean you got to do what you

think is is right you know we we've been on a long a long journey here right I mean it's um I think at some level you

you start you only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice right I

mean I mean the whole point of social media is basically you know giving people the ability to share uh what they

want right and um and you know it goes back to you know

our original Mission is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and

connected what do you think started the pathway towards increasing censorship because clearly we were going in that

direction for the last few years it seemed like uh we really found out about it when Elon bought Twitter and we got

the Twitter files and when you came on here and when you were explaining the relationship with FBI where they were

trying to get you to take down certain things that were true and real and certain things they tried to get you to

limit the exposure to them so it's these kind of conversations like when did all that start yeah well well look I I think

going back to the beginning or like I was saying I think you start one of these if you care about about giving

people a voice you know I I wasn't too deep on our content policies for like the first 10 years of the company it was

just kind of well known across the company that um we were trying to give people the ability to share as much as

possible and issues would come up practical issues right so if someone's getting bullied for example we deal with

that right we put in place systems to to fight bullying um you know if someone is saying hey um you know someone's

pirating copyrighted content on on the service it's like okay we'll build controls to make it so we'll find IP

protected content but it was really in the last 10 years that

people started pushing for like ideological based censorship and I think it was two main events that really

triggered this in 2016 there was the election of President Trump um also coincided with uh

basically brexit in the EU and and sort of the fragmentation of the EU and then you know in

2020 uh there was covid and I I think that those were basically these two events where for the first time um we

just place we just face this massive massive institutional pressure to uh to basically start censoring content on

ideological grounds I'm sorry to interrupt you but when it first came up in 2016 did it

come under the guise of the Russian collusion hoax yeah and this is the thing I at the time I was really sort of

ill prepared to to kind of parse what was going on right it's um you know I I think part of my reflection looking back

on this is I I kind of think in 2016 in the aftermath I gave too much deference to um a lot of folks in the media who

were basically saying okay there's no way that this guy could have gotten elected except for misinformation people

can't actually believe this stuff right it has to be that there's this kind of like massive misinformation out there um

some of it started with the the Russia collusions stuff um but it kind of morphed into different things over time

well it was it was he was so ideologically polarizing right like people didn't want to believe that

anybody looked at him and said this should be our president yeah so so I took

this and and just kind of assume that everyone was acting in good faith and I said okay well there's like there are

concerns about misinformation we should just like when people raised other concerns in the past

and we try to deal with them okay yeah people you know if you ask people no one says that they want misinformation so

maybe there's something that we should do to to basically try to address this but I was really worried from the

beginning about basically becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world right that's like kind of a crazy

position to be in for billions of people using your service and um so we tried to put in place a a you know a system that

would deal with it um you know an early tried to basically make it so that um it was really limited we're like all right

we're just going to have the system where these these third party fact Checkers and they can check the worst of

the worst stuff right so um things that are very clear hoaxes that there's like it's not like like we're not parsing

speech about whether something is slightly true or slightly false like Earth is flat um you know things like

that right so so that was sort of the original intent we put in place the system and it just sort of veered from

there I I think to some degree it's because some of the people whose job is to do factchecking a lot of their

industry is focused on political factchecking so they're just kind of veered in that direction we kept on

trying to to basically get it to to be what we had originally intended which is just you know it's not the point is to

like judge people's opinions it's to to provide in this layer to to to kind of help fact check some of the stuff that

seems the most extreme but um it just you know it was it was just never accepted by by people broadly I think

people just felt like the fact Checkers were too biased um not necessarily even so much in what they ruled although

sometimes I think people would disagree with that a lot of the time it was just what types of things they chose to even

go in fact check in the first time in the first place so I I kind of think like after having gone through that

whole exercise it um I don't know it's something out of

like you know 1984 one of these books where it's just like it really is a slippery slope and it just got to a

point where it's just okay this is destroying so much trust especially in the United States to have this program

um and I guess it was probably about a few years that I really started coming to the conclusion that we were going to

need to to change something about that um Co was the other big one where that was that was also very tricky

because you know at the beginning it was you know it's it's like a legitimate Public

Health crisis you know in the in the beginning and it's um you know even people who are like the most

Ardent First Amendment um you know Defenders that the Supreme Court has this clear pressent that's like all

right you you can't yell fire in a crowded theater there are times when if there's an emergency um your your

ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control so I was sympathetic to

that at the beginning of Co it seemed like okay you have this virus seems like it's killing a lot of people I don't

know like we didn't know at the time how dangerous it was going to be so at the beginning it kind of seemed like okay we

should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health Authorities on how we should play this

but when it went from you know two weeks to flatten the curve to um you know in like in the beginning it was like okay

there aren't enough masks masks aren't that important to then it's like oh no you have to wear a mask and you know all

the like everything was shifting around I it just become very difficult to kind of follow and and this really hit the

most extrem I'd say during it was during the Biden Administration when they were

trying to roll out um the vaccine program and now I'm generally like pretty Pro rolling out vaccines I think

on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative but I think that while they're trying to

push that program they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it and they pushed us super hard

um to take down things that were honestly were true right I mean they they basically pushed us and and said

you know anything that um says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down and I was

just like well we're not going to do that like we're clearly not going to do that I mean that that that that is kind

of in our who is they who's telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects it was people in

the um in the Biden Administration I think it was um you know I wasn't involved in those conversations directly

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$76 value gift for free if you go to drink a1.com slj Rogan seriously get on this that's

got to be strange too right because you're running the the company but there's clearly you're moderating at

scale that's beyond the imagination the number of human beings you're moderating is [ __ ] insane like what is what's a

Facebook what how many people use it on a daily basis forget about how many overall like how many people use it

regularly it's a 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day that's yeah it's no it's wild more than a third

of the planet that's so crazy and it's almost half of Earth well on a monthly basis it is probably happen but just I

want I want to say that though for there's a lot of like hypercritical people that are conspiracy theorists and

think that everybody is a part of some cabal to control them I want you to understand that whether it's YouTube or

all these and whatever place that you think is doing something that's awful it's good that you speak because this is

how things get changed and this is how people find out that people are upset about content moderation and and

censorship but moderating at scale is insane it's insane what we were talking the

other day about the number of videos that go up every hour on YouTube and it's bananas it's bananas that's like to

try to get a human being that is reasonable logic logical and objective that's going to analyze every video it's

virtually impossible it's not possible so you got to use a bunch of tools you got to get a bunch of things wrong and

you have also people reporting things and how how much is that going to affect things there you could have mass

reporting because you have Bad actors you have some corporation that decides we're going to attack this video cuz

it's bad for us get it taken down MH there's so much going on just I want to put that in people's heads before we go

on like understand the kind of numbers that we're talking about here now understand you have the the pandemic and

then you have the administration that's doing something where I think they cross the line where it gets really weird

where they're saying what you were saying they were trying you to get you to take down vaccines side effects which

is just crazy yeah so I mean like you're saying I mean this

is it's so complicated this system that I could spend every minute of all of my time doing this and not actually focused

on building any of the things that we're trying to do AI glasses like the future of social media all that stuff so um so

I I get involved in this stuff but in general we we have a policy team there are people who I trust they're the

people are kind of working on this on a day-to-day basis and the interactions that um that I was just

referring to I mean a lot of this is documented I mean because uh you know Jim Jordan and the the house had this

whole investigation and committee into into the the kind of government censorship around stuff like this and we

produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain I mean basically these people from the Biden

Administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse and it's like these documents are it's all

kind of out there did you record any of those phon phone calls I don't no I don't think I don't think we but but I

think I want listen I mean there are emails the emails are published it's all it's all kind of out there and um and

they're like and basically it just got to this point where we were like no we're not going to we're not going to

take down things that are true that's ridiculous um they wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio

looking at a TV talking about how 10 years from now or something um you know you're going to see an ad that says okay

if you took a covid vaccine you're um eligible you you know like uh for for this kind of payment like this sort of

like class action lawsuit type Meme and they're like no you have to take that down we just said no we're not we're not

going to take down humor and satire we're not going to take down things that are that are true and then at some point

um I guess uh I don't know it flipped a bit I mean Biden when he was he gave some statement

at some point I don't know if it was a press conference or to some journalist where he basically was like these guys

are killing people and and and um and I don't know then like all these different agencies and branches of

government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company it was it was brutal it was

brutal wow yeah it's just a massive

overstepping also you weren't killing people this is this is the thing about all of this it's like they suppressed so

much information about things that people should be doing regardless of whether or not you believe in the

vaccine regardless put that aside metabolic health is of the utmost importance in your everyday life whether

there's a pandemic or there's not and there's a lot of things that you can do that can help you recover from illness

it prevents illnesses it makes your body more robust and healthy it strengthens your immune system and they were

suppressing all that information and that's just crazy you can't say you're one of the good guys if you're

suppressing information that would help people recover from all kinds of diseases not just covid the flu common

cold all sorts of different things high doses of Vitamin C D3 with K2 and magnesium they were suppressing this

stuff because they didn't want people to think that you could get away with not taking a vaccine which is really crazy

when you're talking about something that 99.07% of people survive this is a crazy overstep but scared the [ __ ] out of a

lot of people redpilled as it were a lot of people because they realized like oh 1984 is like an instruction manual it's

like this is it shows you how things can go that way with wrong speak and with bizarre Distortion of facts and when it

comes down to it in today's day and age the way people get information is through your platform through X this is

how people are getting information they're getting information from YouTube they're getting information from from a

bunch of different sources now and you can't censor that if it's real legitimate information because it's not

ideologically convenient for you yeah so I mean that's basically the journey that I've been on Right started off very Pro

free free speech free expression um you know then over the last 10 years there were been these two big episodes it was

the Trump election and the aftermath where I feel like in retrospect I deferred too much to the kind of

critique of the media on what we should do um and since then I think generally Trust in Media has fallen off a cliff

right so I don't think I'm alone in that journey I think you know that's basically the the the experience that

that a lot of people have had is okay it's the the stuff that's being written about is not kind of all accurate um and

and even if the facts are right it's kind of written from a slant a lot of the time of course and then um and then

there's the government version of it which was during Co which is okay like it's like our government is is telling

us that we need to censor true things it's like this is a disaster and it's you know it's not just the US right I

think um you know a lot of people in the US focus on this as an American phenomenon but I kind of think that the

reaction to co probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of um governments around the world because I

mean you know 2024 was a big election year around the world and um you know there all these countries India you know

just like a ton of countries that had that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one um so

there is some sort of a global phenomenon where the the um whether it was because of inflation because of the

the economic policies to deal with um with covid or or just how how the governments dealt with Co um seems to

have had this effect that's Global not just the us but like a very broad decrease in trust at least in in that

set incumbents and maybe in in sort of these Democratic institutions overall so I I think that what you're saying of

yeah how do people get their information now it's by sharing it online on social media um I think that that's just

increasingly true and my view at this point is like all right like we started off focused on free expression we kind

of had this pressure tested over the last period I I feel like I just have a much greater command now of what I think

the policy should be and like this is how it's going to be going forward and um and so I'm I mean at this point I

think you I think a lot of people look at this as like a purely political thing you know it's because they they kind of

look at the timing and they're like hey well you're doing this right after the election it's like okay I try not to

like change our content rules like right in the middle of an election either right it's like there's not like a great

time to do this it's you know um and you want to do it a year later yeah it's like there's no good time to do it there

you know at whatever time is is going on there's going to be you know so um the good thing about doing it after the

election is you get to take this kind of cultural p pul as like okay where are people right now and how are people

thinking about it we try to have policies that reflect um you know mainstream discourse uh but yeah I mean

I I don't know this is something I've been thinking about for a while I think that this is going to be pretty durable

because at this point we've just been pressure tested on this stuff for like the last8 to 10 years with like these

huge institutions just pressuring us and um and I I I feel like this is kind of the right place to be going forward what

was it like when they were attacking you like first of all what was the premise like what what would they were they

saying was your offense was it that you were allowing information that was not true that was getting out there I know

there was also they're saying that you guys were allowing hate groups to speak there was a lot of this yeah I mean the

the TR the tough thing with politics is that there's like well when you say who someone's

coming after you are you referring to kind of the government and investigations and all that I mean so

the issue is that there's the there's what specific thing an agency might be looking into you for and

then there's like the underlying political motivation which is like why do the people who are running this thing

hate you and I think that those can often be two very different things so I we had organizations that were looking

into us that were like not really involved with social media like I like the cfpb like this um Financial I don't

even know what it stands for it's the it's the financial organization um that Elizabeth Warren

had set up oh great and and it's basically it's like we're not a bank theing section yeah no so so like we're

not a bank right it's like like what what does meta have to do with this but they kind of found some theory that they

wanted to investigate and it's like okay clearly they were trying really hard right to to like find find some Theory

but it like I don't know it just it kind of like throughout the the the the the party and the government there was just

sort of I don't know if it's I don't know how this stuff works I mean I've never been in government I don't know if

it's like a directive or it's just like a quiet consensus that like we don't like these guys they're not doing what

we want we're going to punish them but um but it's uh it's uh it's tough to be at the other

end of that what was it like um well it's not good I think well the thing that I think is actually the toughest

though is um it's it's Global right so and and really when you think about it the US government should be defending

its companies right not be the tip of the spear attacking its companies so when we so we we talk about a lot okay

what is the experience of um okay if the US government comes after you I I think the real issue is that when the US

government does that to its tech industry um it's basically just Open Season around the rest of the world

right I mean the the EU I I pull these numbers the EU has fined the tech companies more than $30 billion over the

last I think it was like 10 or 20 years holy [ __ ] so when you when you think about it like okay there's it's like you

know hundred million here a couple billion dollars there but what what it I think really adds up to is this is sort

of like a kind of eu-wide policy for how they want to deal with American Tech it's almost like a tariff and I think

the US government basically gets to decide how are they going to deal with that right because if the if the US

government if if um if some other you know country was screwing with another industry that we cared about the

US government would probably find some way to put pressure on them but I think what happened here is actually the

complete opposite the US government led the the kind of attack against the companies which then just made it like

the EU is basically and all these other places just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do

whatever you want but I mean look obviously like I don't want to come across as if like we don't have things

that we need to do better obviously we we do and when we mess something up we deserve to be held accountable for that

and and and just like everyone else um I do think that the American Technology industry is a bright spot in the

American economy I think it's a strategic Advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the

strongest uh companies in the world and I I think it should be part of the US's strategy going forward to defend that

and um and it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump is I think he just wants America

to win and um and I think think some of this stuff like the the other the other governments who are kind of pushing on

on this stuff it's you know it's like at least the US has the rule of law right so the government can come after you for

something but you still get your day in court and the courts are pretty fair and you know so we've basically done a

pretty good job of Defending ourselves and when we when we've chosen to do that basically we we have a pretty good rate

of winning um it's just not like that in every other country around the world like if other governments decide that

they're going to go after you don't always get kind of a a clear shake at at kind of Defending

yourself on on on the rules so I think to some degree if the US tech industry is going to continue being really strong

um I I do think that the US government has a role in um in basically defending it abroad and that's one of the things

that I'm optimistic about will will happen in this Administration well I think this Administration uniquely has

felt the impact of not being able to have free speech because this was the this is the administration where Trump

was famously kicked off of Twitter that was a huge issue like after January 6th like they removed the at the time the

sitting president was kind of crazy to remove that person from social media because you've decided that he incited a

riot um so for him without free speech without people without podcast without social media they probably wouldn't have

had a chance because the mainstream narrative other than Fox News was so clearly against him the majority of the

television entities and print entities were against him the majority of them so if without social media without podcast

the they don't stand a chance so they're uniquely aware of the importance of giving people their Voice free speech

but you do have to be careful about misinformation and you do have to be careful about just outright lies and

propaganda complaints or propaganda campaigns rather and how do you differentiate well I I think that there

are a couple of different things here one is this is something where I think X and Twitter just did it better than us

on on factchecking we took the critique around factchecking sorry around misinformation we put in place this fact

checking program um which basically empowered these thirdparty fact Checkers they could Mark stuff false and then we

would downright it in the algorithm I think what what Twitter and X have done with Community notes I think is just a

better program um rather than having a small number of fact Checkers you get the whole Community to weigh in when

people usually disagree on something tend to agree on how they're voting on on on a note that's a good sign to the

community that this is there's actually like a broad consensus on this and then you show it and you're showing more

information not less right so you're not using the fact check as a signal to show less you're using the the community note

to provide real context um and and Show additional information so I think that that's better

um for when you're talking about like nation states um or people interfering a

lot of that stuff is best rooted out at the level of kind of accounts doing phony things so you get like whether

it's like China or Russia or Iran or like one of these countries they'll set up these networks of of fake accounts

and Bots and they coordinate and they post on each other's stuff to make it seem like

it's authentic and kind of convince people it's like wow a bunch of people must think this or something and the way

that you identify that is you build AI systems that can basically detect that those accounts are not behaving the way

that a human would and when we find that that there's like some bot that's operating an account how how do you

differentiate how do you figure that out it just I mean there are some things that a person just would never do right

so um have you met Lex fredman yes right yeah yeah he might not be well pass your he going to take yeah is he going to

take is he G to make a million actions in a minute it's like yeah probably not okay so it's that well I mean it's it's

more subtle than that I think like these guys are pretty sophisticated and it's an adversarial space so um so we find

some technique and then they um they basically kind of update their their techniques but but we have a team of

their it's effectively like intelligence Counter Intelligence folks counterterrorism folks AI folks who are

Building Systems to identify um what are these accounts uh that are just not behaving the way that

people would and how are they interacting and and then sometimes you you you trace it down and um and

sometimes you get some tips from different intelligence uh agencies and then you can kind of piece together over

time it's like oh this network of people is actually some kind of fake cluster of accounts and that's against our policies

and we just take them all off um but what how do you how are you sure like is there a 100% certainty that that we're

that you are definitely getting a group of people that are Bad actors or is it just people that have unpopular opinions

no I don't think it's that for this I think um but what I'm saying is how do you

determine like how do you at what percentage of accuracy are you determining do you ever accidentally

think that people that are going to get moderated are actually just real people um yes I think that's I think for the

specific problem around these like large coordinated groups doing kind of like election interference or something it's

a large enough group we have like a bunch of people analyzing it it's like they study it for a while I think we're

probably pretty accurate on that but I actually think one of the bigger issues that we have in our moderation system is

this Precision issue that you're talking about and that is actually of all the things that we announced this week in

terms of how we're going to update the content policies changing the content filters to have to require higher

confidence and precision is actually going to be the thing that reduces the vast majority of the censorship mistakes

that we make right the um you know the the removing the fact Checkers and replacing them with Community notes I

think it's a good step forward like a very small percent of content is fact checked in in the first place so it's is

that going to make the hugest difference I'm not sure um I think it'll be a positive step though um and we we like

opened up some content policies so some stuff that was restricted before we opened up okay that's good it'll mean

that's some set of things that might have been censored before or not but by far the biggest set of issues we have

and and you and I have talked about a bunch of issues like this over the years is like it's just okay you have some

classifier that's it's trying to find say like drug content right people decide okay it's like the opioid

epidemic is a big deal we need to do a better job of cracking down on drugs and drug sales right I don't I don't want

people dealing drugs on our networks so we build a bunch of systems that basically go out and try to automate

finding people who are who are dealing with dealing drugs and then you basically have this question which is

how precise do you want to set the classifier so do you want to make it so that the system needs to be 99% sure

that someone is is dealing drugs before taking them down uh do you want to to be 90% confident 80% confident and then

those correspond to amounts of um you know I guess the the statistics term would be recall what percent of the bad

stuff are you finding so if you require 99% confidence then maybe you only actually end up taking down 20% of the

bad content um whereas if you reduce it and you say okay we're only going to require 90% confidence now maybe you can

take down 60% of the bad content but let's say you say no we really need to find everyone who's doing this bad thing

and it doesn't need to be as as severe as as dealing drugs it could just be um I mean it could be any any kind of

content of uh any kind of category of harmful content um you you start getting to some of these classifiers might have

you know 80 85% Precision in order to get 90% of the bad stuff down but the problem is if you're at you know 90%

Precision that means one out of 10 things that the classifier takes down is not actually problematic and if you

filter if you if you kind of multiply that across the billions of people who use our services every day that is

millions and millions of posts that are basically being taken down that are innocent and and upon review we're going

to look at and be like this is ridiculous that this thing got taken down which I mean I think you've had

that experience and we've talked about this for for a bunch of stuff over time and um but it really just comes down to

this question of where do you want to set the classifiers so one of the things that we're going to do is basically set

them to be um to be require more confidence which is this trade-off it's going to mean that we will maybe take

down a smaller amount of the harmful content but it will also mean that we'll dramatically reduce the amount of people

who whose accounts were taking off um for a mistake which is just a terrible experience right it's like okay you're

you're going about your day and then one day you wake up and you're like oh my WhatsApp account just got dis like

deactive ated because it's connected to a Facebook account and the Facebook account um is uh is is is or like I'm

I'm using on the same phone as a Facebook account where uh like we made some enforcement mistake and thought you

were doing something bad that you weren't because our classifiers were set to too low of precision has that

happened before oh yeah where their WhatsApp app got canceled as well yeah because I mean there there are a bunch

so your Facebook app gets taken out like say if you have a Facebook and you have like a sock puppet account and the sock

puppet account you post offensive memes and you're generally gross yeah if that if you get caught for that does your

WhatsApp get killed not for memes but but go back to like a very severe thing like let's say someone is terrorist

let's say the most severe sure yeah let's say someone is is like terrorist content they're planning some attack

okay so we take down their account right but then let's say that person can just go then sign up with another account but

I think like you know how does WhatsApp get connected to that though oh well if it's I I mean we run these different

services and if they're on the same phone it's basically you know it's one thing that you know it's basically

Regulators or governments will come to us and say okay it's you're you're clearly not doing enough if you kick

someone off for terrorism and then they can just like sign up for another account on the phone right okay you're

also they also think okay well we're not doing enough if we deactivate their Facebook account because they're like

planning a terrorist attack but we let them use all our other services right right if you're aware yeah yeah so so if

we if our systems think that someone is terrorist then you probably need to deactivate their their access to all the

different accounts yeah they can't get on threads threads Instagram yeah um yeah

so that makes sense so it's you can understand how you get there but then you just get to this question around the

Precision and the confidence level and then you're you're just making all these mistakes at scale and it's just

unacceptable but I I think it's it's a very hard calculation of like where do you want to be because on the one hand

like I get why people kind of come to us and they're like no you need to do a better job finding more of the terrorism

or the drugs and and all this stuff but you know over time the technology will get better and it'll get more precise

but at any given point in time that's the choice that we have to make is do we want to make more mistakes airing on the

side of of just like blowing away innocent people's accounts right um or do we want to um get a higher a somewhat

higher percent of of the bad stuff off and I think that there's some just some bance that you need to strike on this we

were having a conversation yesterday Mel Gibson and I about how that can get weird was it Theo it might have been

Theo I think it was Theo where that can get weird because I think like if you're a person and you work at some accounting

firm but you like posting about stuff but you don't want it to come back and reflect on your life you want to [ __ ]

post you want to post jokes you want to be silly you should be able to be anonymous I I think there's nothing

wrong with that I don't think just because you state your opin people should be able to search where you sleep

that doesn't make any sense to me but if you're going to allow Anonymous accounts you're definitely going to open up the

door to Bad actors having enormous blocks of accounts where they can use either AI or just programs where they

have like specific answers I'm sure you've seen that before it's it's come up on Twitter multiple times where they

found hundreds of sock puppet accounts tweeting the exact same thing so you you've literally word for word even

certain words in caps like either keep people are copy or pasting it or there's an email campaign that's getting

legitimate people to do it or these are fake people you're going to have if you're going to have Anonymous accounts

which I think you should because I think whistleblowers I think the the benefits of anonymous reporting on important

things that the general public needs to know about especially whistleblower type stuff you have to have some ability to

be anonymous but you all if you're going to do that you're also going to have the possibility these aren't real people

that these are paid actors these are paid people or not people at all or they're running programs and they're

doing this to try to sway public opinion about very important issues yeah

um a lot of what we've seen too I me there's the anonymous accounts also just over time I think a lot of the kind of

more interesting conversations have shifted from the public sphere to more private ones so WhatsApp groups um

private groups on Facebook um I'm sure you have this experience where like maybe 10 years ago you would have posted

your kind of quick takes on on whatever social media you're using now you know the stuff that I post on on Facebook and

Instagram it's like I put time into into making sure that that's kind of good content that that I want to be seen

broadly and then like most of the jokes that I make are like with my friends in WhatsApp right in groups um so yeah I I

think that's sort of that's kind of where the world is more broadly now yeah yeah no I think so for jokes for that

kind of stuff with for comedians for sure because also we'll say things that we don't really mean we just say it

because it's a funny thing to say I think everyone does for sure yeah which is just a weird thing about taking

things out of context particularly on social media where people love to do that but there is this problem of like

let's just say that you're a country that's involved in some sort of an international conflict and you have this

ability to get out this fake narrative and just spread it widely about all sorts of things you're accusing this

other government of all sorts of things that aren't true yeah and it just muddies the water of reality for a lot

of people yeah and that's why that side of things the kind of governments running these broad manipulation

campaigns I mean we're not letting off the gas on that at all I think every like most most categories of bad stuff

that we're policing everyone agrees is bad right no one's sitting there defending

that terrorism is good right child exploitation or drugs or IP violations or people insiding violence or it's like

most of the stuff is bad people clearly believe that um that um you know election interference and foreign

government manipulation of content is bad so we we have this is the type of stuff that the vast majority of our

energy goes towards that and we're not changing our approach on any of that the two categories that I think have been

very politic ized are misinformation because who gets to judge or what's false and what's true um you may just

not like my opinion on something and then you know people think it's false but it but it's uh but I think that that

one's really tricky and the other one is um is basically what you know what people refer to as hate speech which is

I think also comes from a good place of you know wanting to crack down on that of um of wanting to promote more

inclusion and and and belonging and people feeling um feeling good and like having a a pluralistic society that can

um that can basically have all these different communities coexist except everyone yeah but I think the problem is

is that you know you just all these things are on a spectrum and when you go too far on them um you I think on on

that side we just basically got to this point where there were these things that you just like couldn't say which were

mainstream discourse right so you know it's like Pete Heth is going to you know probably be defending his nomination for

Secretary of Defense on on the senate floor and I think one of the points that he's made is that he thinks that women

shouldn't be able to be in certain combat roles and until we updated our policies that wouldn't have been a thing

that you could have said on our platforms because it would call for the exclusion of a protected category of

people and so and it's like okay like on its on its face yeah calling for the exclusion of a protected category that

seems that like that's okay there's like legal protections there's stuff but okay if it's like okay to say on the floor of

Congress you should probably be able to debate it on social media so um so I think some of the stuff I think

well-intentioned went too far needs to just get rationalized a bit but but it's those

two categories misinformation and hate speech I think are the ones that got politicized um all the other ones which

is the vast majority of of the stuff that we do is um I think people generally agree that it's that it's good

and we need to go after it but then you just get into this problem of the mistakes like you're talking about okay

well what confidence level do do people want us to have um in in our enforcement and at what point would people rather us

kind of say okay I'm not sure that that's um that that one is causing an issue um so do you so on balance maybe

we should just you know leave that person's account out because the pain of just nuking someone's account when

you're not sure or you making mistake is like that's pretty real too right yeah very very complicated yeah

it's it's all all very nuanced and you know you made a point earlier about the the

government supporting its companies that it would be a good thing for the government to support its companies it

makes sense it's an American company I think the issue that we're dealing with is companies as we're describing them

have never existed before right there's never been a thing like Facebook before there's never been a thing like Twitter

before X there's never been a thing like Instagram these are new things in terms of the Imp that it has on Society on

opinions on conversations on distribution of information there's never been a thing like this that the

government didn't control so it makes sense from their perspective continuing the patterns of behavior that they've

always exhibited which is to have control over the media I mean there has been CIA operatives that have been in

major newspapers forever there's always been that there's always been this sort of input that the government had in

mainstream media narratives they are in a position now where they're losing that there they've essentially lost it and

especially with this last the push during covid deteriorated as you were saying before the opinion and the

respect that people have for the facts that are coming from mainstream journalism in a way that I've never seen

before in my life where an enormous percentage of the population does not trust mainstream media anymore so well

what do they trust they trust social media well who's running that well a bunch of people figured it out and

invented it well no [ __ ] that like we got to crack down on that like we've got to get our hands on this which is what

we saw during covid which is we saw during the Biden administration's attempt to remove the hunter Biden

laptop story from Twitter and from all these different things that we saw happen the way they contacted you guys

what they're trying to do with getting you to remove real information about vaccine side effects like that this is

like this new attempt to crack down on this new thing which is a distribution Outlet

that's far more successful than anything they've ever controlled before and they have no control of it right they they

had CBS they had NBC they had when they had the New York Times and all these Washington Post when they were in

control of narratives in that way it was so much easier there there wasn't some sort of Pirate Radio voice that came on

and said hey guys look here's the the latest studies that show this is not true here's why they're lying about that

here's why they're lying about this and now that's what you get all day long on X it's all day long is like dissolving

Illusions MH and that's a completely new thing that probably led to Trump getting elected yeah I mean the causality there

is tricky but um because there's a lot of things I a lot it's um without it he probably doesn't get elected

um it's yeah it's tough know I mean I I do come back to this point that there were every major incumbent lost their

elections around the world this year but I think that's also it might be it might be because of that revealing how how

kind of Incorrect and and dishonest I think some of these governments were yes yeah

so I think that that's that's quite possible and I mean I do think that there is this cycle that goes on where

you know within a society it's not just the government that has power there's like certain people who in these like

culturally Elite positions and you know journalists um TV news anchors like who are the people who people broadly trust

right they're they're not all in government they're like um a lot of a lot of people um in other positions it's

like who are the people that that uh basically people look to and um I think that's basically it needs to

shift for the internet age and I think a lot of the people who um people looked to before they're kind of realizing hey

they weren't super honest about a lot of these issues that we that we face and I think that that's partially why you know

social media isn't a monolithic thing it's not that people trust Facebook or X they trust the creators and the voices

that that they feel like are being authentic and giving them valuable information on there so there's I think

going to be just this whole new class of creators who basically become the new kind of cultural Elites that people look

at and are like okay these are the people who give it to me straight and I think that that's that's a thing that is

maybe it's it's possible because of social media um I think it's also just the internet more broadly I I think

podcasting is obviously a huge and important part of that too um I me I I don't know to what extent you feel like

you kind of got to be large like because of social media or just it's or just the podcasting platforms that you used but

um but I think that this is like a very big sea change in terms of like who are the voices that matter and you know what

we do is we we try to build a platform that gives people a voice but I that there's this

wholesale generational shift in who are the people who are being listened to and I think that that's like a very

fascinating thing that is going on because I I I think that that's like what is what's going on here it's not

it's it's not just the government um and people saying hey we we want like a very big change here I

think it's just like a wholesale shift in saying we just want different people who we actually trust um who who are

actually going to like tell us the truth then like and not give us like the [ __ ] opinions that you're supposed

to say but like the type of stuff that I would actually like when I'm sitting with my in my living room with my

friends like the stuff that we know is true like who are the people who kind of have the courage to actually just say

that stuff um I don't know I think that whole like cultural Elite Class needs to get repopulated with people who people

actually trust yeah um the problem is these people that are starting these jobs they're coming out of universities

and in the universities are indoctrinated into these ideas as well it's it's very difficult to be a person

who stands outside of that and takes unpopular positions you get socially ostracized and people are very they're

very hesitant to do that and they would rather just keep their mouth shut and talk about it in quiet conversation and

that's what we experience which is another another argument for anonymous accounts I think you should have

Anonymous accounts I think you should be a like if there's something like Co mandates or some things that you're

dealing with and you don't want to get fired because of it you should be able to talk about it and you should be able

to post facts and information and what you've learned and uh you know anecdotal experiences with people in your family

that had vaccine side effects and not worry about losing your job which people were worried about which is so crazy and

you know and you're seeing uh a lot of the people that used to be in mainstream media got fired and now they're trying

to do the sort of podcast thing but they're trying to do it like a mainstream media person so they're like

gaslighting during podcasts and people are like hey [ __ ] face like this you can't do that here it doesn't work yeah

well it's a new medium I mean I know I'm sure you know the history on this it's like when when people transition from

Radio to TV the initial TV anchors were the same radio people but just like being filmed while speaking on the radio

but it turned out it actually was a completely different type of person that you need because on your radio is just

like your voice and your Cadence and all that it's like you know the whole phrase it's like you've got a good radio voice

right it's like um okay on TV you need to be telegenic right you need to kind of has have Charisma in that Medium it's

like a completely different thing and um I think that that's going to be true for the internet too it's you know it's not

as cut I think part of it is the format right the fact that you do these like two three-hour episodes I mean I hated

doing TV because you know I basically got started I started Facebook when I was 19 and I was good at some things

very bad at others I was good at coding and like real bad at at kind of like talking to people and explaining what I

was doing and I just like had these experiences early on where I'd go on TV and like it wouldn't go well and they'd

like cut to they'd cut it to some down to some random sound bite and I'd like look stupid and then like and then

basically like I'd get super nervous about about like going on TV because I knew that they were just going to cut it

in some way that I was going to look like a [ __ ] idiot and like and so I'm just like this sucks right so so I just

like it's it's kind of a funny thing about like it's like in some ways it's like okay at the same time I was you

know gaining confidence being able to like build more and more complicated products and it's like even as an early

20s person I was like I could do this and then on the kind of TV and comm's public side I was like this is a

disaster every time I go out it's worse and worse and worse and it just get but um but I mean it's it's one of the

reasons why I think on the internet like there's no reason to cut it to a 4minute sound bite conversation it's like I

think part of what what makes it authentic is like we can just I mean these are complex issues we can unpack

it for hours and and probably still have hours more stuff to talk about it just it's I I don't know I I think it's just

more real yeah it's definitely that and the other thing about television that's always going to hold it back is the fact

that every conversation gets interrupted every x amount of minutes because you have to cut to a commercial so you you

really can't get into depth even Bill Mar show is only an hour you know you have all these people talking over each

other then you sit down with one person for short amount of time it's just not enough time for important subjects it's

also a lot of them for whatever reason want to do it in front of an audience which is the worst way to get people to

talk like when imagine these disasters that you had if there was like 5,000 people staring at you in a TV crowd as

well so there's that added element which is so not normal and not conducive to having a conversation where you're

talking about nuanced things yeah where you have to like think you have to be able to pause and and not concern

yourself being entertaining from of these [ __ ] people just sitting there staring at you yeah and and also like

when you're having a conversation it like I don't know it's like when you start talking about something your kind

of subconscious kicks in you start thinking about the the topic so it's like you might not actually have the

thing that you want to say until like five minutes later and right I mean it's like when we started this conversation I

think like the first few minutes were just kind of slow it's like warming up like I'm like okay kind of like

downloading into my memory like how how am I going to like you know it's like how am I going to you know just explain

these different things but it's um yeah know I just think that that's sort of how people work what's also like it's

conversations are like a dance you know one person can't be dancing at another speed and the other person is going slow

like you kind of have to find the Rhythm that you're going to talk with and then you have to actually be interested in

what you're talking about that's another thing that they are at a huge disadvantage of in mainstream media is

like they're just doing that because that's their job you know they probably don't even know a lot about climate

change they probably don't really understand too much about what space SpaceX is trying to accomplish but

they're just reporting on it yeah I mean I'm sure there's the and a lot of the people I've met there I think are good

people it's just a tough format terrible format yeah and the problem is they get locked into that format and no one

trusts them and then they leave and they go yeah but you were just lying to us about this that and the other thing and

now I'm supposed to believe you're one of the good guys you're one of the Straight Shooters now

yeah well getting back to the original point this is why I think you know it makes sense to me that the government

didn't want you to succeed and to have the sort of unchecked power that they proce ceed social media to to have and I

think one of the benefits that we have now of the Trump Administration is that they have clearly felt the repercussions

of a limited amount of free speech of free speech limitations censorship government overreach if anybody saw it

look it there's I don't know what the actual impact of the hunter Biden laptop story would have been I don't know but

there's many people that think it probably amounted to millions of votes overall in the country of people that

were on the fence the people that weren't sure who they're going to vote for if they found out the hunterbiden

laptop was real they're like oh this is [ __ ] their family's [ __ ] crazy and they would have voted for Trump that's

possibly real and if that's possibly real that could be defined as election interference and all that stuff scares

the [ __ ] out of me that kind of stuff scares the [ __ ] out of me when the government gets involved in what could

be termed election interference but through some some weird loophole it's legal whereas some I don't think that

the pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal I mean it's like that's I mean there's all this

stuff about what like people talk about the first amendment and okay these these Tech platforms should should offer free

speech like the first amendment it's that I think is a philosophical principle the First Amendment doesn't

apply to companies in what in our content moderation it's more of an American ethos about how think that that

um you know best dialogue is carried out but the First Amendment does apply to the government that's like the whole

point right the government is not allowed to censor this stuff so at some level I do think that you know having

people in the administration calling up the guys on our team and yelling at them and cursing and threatening

repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is like it's pretty bad it sounds illegal I would love to

hear it I wish somebody recorded those conversations would be great to listen to somebody could animate them maybe

poly Tunes the a lot of the material is is public I mean it's I mean Jim Jordan LED this whole investigation in Congress

I mean it was basically I think about this as like you know what Elon did on the Twitter files when he took over that

company I think Jim Jordan basically did that for the rest of the industry with the the Congressional investigation that

he did and we just turned over like all of the documents and everything that we had um to them and they basically put

together this report and the people that actually did call for censorship what was the response to all

this uh to what to the to the investigation yes I don't know I don't know did was anybody held accountable

was there any I mean any repercussions I mean they lost the election yes so that's it well

in a democracy I mean that's kind of right um um right but if if what they did was

illegal do you not think that some steps should be put in place to make sure that people are punished for that and that

that never happens again it seems that that has a massive impact on the way our country goes if that's election

interference and I think it is that has a massive impact on the direction of our country yeah well the co thing I don't

think was election interference as much as it was just like meddling where it shouldn't have but yeah no I mean it's

I'm for me to say you know like what specific retribution or Justice should happen to anyone who is involved in

these things but I think your point about let's make sure this doesn't happen again yeah is um is the one that

I'm more focused on right because then it's the thing that I reflect on on my journey on all this which is like okay

yeah so we didn't take down the stuff that was true but we did generally defer to the

government on some of these policies that in retrospect I probably wouldn't knowing what I know now and um

and I I just think that that's that's sort of the journey that we've been on is like okay we start the thing focused

on free expression go through some like pretty crazy times in the world get it pressure tested see where we basically

ended up doing stuff that led to a slippery slope that we weren't happy with the conclusion and like try to

reset and that's sort of the moment that we're at now is is trying to just rationalize um a bunch of a bunch of the

policies and and look I mean obviously crazy things can happen in the future that might unearth something that I

haven't um you know some some kind of angle on this that I haven't um thought enough about yet so I know I'm sure I'm

not done making mistakes in the world but um but I think at this point we have a much more thorough understanding of

what the space is and I I I think our our kind of values and principles on this are likely going to be much more

durable going forward um and and I think that that's probably a good thing for the internet I think it's a great thing

for the internet I was very happy with your announcement I'm very happy that you took those steps I'm very happy you

brought Dana White aboard oh he's awesome been talking to him for a while about that I mean he's like talk about

like an amazing entrepreneur right it's like I just want like because I control our company I have the benefit of not

having to convince the board not to fire me right it's like normal corporate environment it's like basically the CEO

just tries to like you know they're just trying to convince the board to like let them have their job and pay them more

it's like all right the board doesn't pay me except for security and um and I'm not worried about losing my job

because I control the majority of the voting in the company so I actually get to use our board to like have the

smartest people who I can get to have around me help work on these problems so it's like all right who are the people I

want like I just want like the best entrepreneurs and people have created different things and like I mean Dana is

like this guy who I mean he basically took the sport from being this like I think it was viewed as like this pretty

marginal thing when he got started right I think John McCain was trying to outlaw it and um and you know now it's like I

think it and F1 are the two fastest growing sports in the world it's got hundreds of millions of people viewing

it it's like I mean what Dana's done with the UFC is like one of the most legendary business stories and um

and the brand is beloved and and I think he's just um so he's like a worldclass entrepreneur and he's just like a he's

got a strong backbone and I think part of what the conversation that I had with him around joining our board was okay

like we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company and like we need

some like strong people who are going to basically you know help help advise us on how to handle some of these

situations and um and so yeah that's but but yeah I mean this is running this company is not for the faint of heart I

mean you definitely there's definitely a lot of pressure from from like all these different governments and and then then

it's like okay I could spend all my time doing that but I'm not even a politician like I want to I just want to spend my

time building things right so so it's um so yeah I think Dana is gonna be great he's the best great entrepreneur I agree

with everything you said about him without him none of the UFC would have ever taken place the way it did I mean

you needed the fertita brothers they had to come in with all the money and the vision and it's really funny because