David Sacks on Tucker Carlson: Insiders' Game, WSB Censorship, Robinhood | FOX News
00:00:00.000 | So as you recall, just last week, people on Reddit nearly bankrupted a very famous hedge fund.
00:00:08.300 | They did that by using a strategy that hedge funds have used for years.
00:00:12.200 | They shorted stock in companies like GameStock and drove them up for that purpose.
00:00:18.160 | Now, of course, only hedge funds were allowed to manipulate the stock market, so corporations turned to a familiar tool.
00:00:22.540 | They censored the people on Reddit.
00:00:24.740 | The online service Discord, for example, accused the Reddit day traders of hate speech.
00:00:29.520 | And then there were the questions around Robinhood, which was a service they used to conduct those trades.
00:00:33.240 | All of this is filled with lessons for the rest of us.
00:00:36.540 | We're not financial experts.
00:00:38.260 | We're talking to someone now who is.
00:00:39.600 | David Sachs is a technology entrepreneur, very well known in that world.
00:00:43.060 | He co-founded PayPal.
00:00:44.060 | He wrote a really smart piece about the implications of this story.
00:00:47.580 | You can find it on the online publishing platform Persuasion.
00:00:50.100 | We wanted to talk to him tonight.
00:00:51.480 | David, thanks so much for coming on.
00:00:53.020 | So you have the grounding in this world sufficient, I think, to draw informed conclusions,
00:00:59.180 | about what happened and what it means for everybody else.
00:01:02.320 | What have you concluded?
00:01:03.640 | Sure.
00:01:04.500 | Well, Tucker, you've been warning about censorship and the slippery slope when people start to invoke censorship.
00:01:10.520 | And I think we see it here with Discord.
00:01:13.420 | You have a case here where some Wall Street traders, their message board was taken down.
00:01:18.120 | They weren't engaging in political speech at all.
00:01:20.160 | They were engaging in a plan to give these Wall Street predators a taste of their own medicine.
00:01:25.040 | Because of that, they were very threatening to the people in power,
00:01:28.040 | and they were accused of hate speech.
00:01:29.500 | And they were taken down.
00:01:30.500 | Now, if you were to actually go into these message boards, you wouldn't see hate speech.
00:01:33.500 | You would see a lot of very raunchy speech, but nothing that's too different than what you'd see on any trading floor or boiler room on Wall Street.
00:01:41.500 | And all of a sudden, these sort of titans of Wall Street are just shocked by the language that's going on here.
00:01:46.500 | So, you know, look, this is a really good example, I think, of when you strip away sort of partisan issues,
00:01:53.500 | you see that the real purpose of censorship is, as a tool,
00:01:58.500 | for the people in power to keep the outsiders out.
00:02:01.840 | I think that's really smart.
00:02:04.920 | So when they invoke the phrase hate speech, especially, of all the phrases they use, I think it's the scariest.
00:02:11.100 | Nobody wants to be thought of as a hater or, you know, using hate speech.
00:02:15.560 | That's an awful thing.
00:02:16.420 | That's certainly how I feel.
00:02:17.900 | But what you're saying is they don't employ that in order to protect the weak.
00:02:22.080 | They use that phrase in order to protect the strong.
00:02:24.880 | Yeah, exactly.
00:02:27.200 | I mean, hate speech is a very...
00:02:28.260 | It's a very malleable term.
00:02:29.760 | And so the people who get to decide what it means, which is really always the issue with censorship,
00:02:34.760 | is who decides who has that power.
00:02:36.760 | It's the people in power get to decide what it means.
00:02:38.760 | And so, you know, you had a case here where, look, these message boards weren't set up for the purpose of organizing hate
00:02:45.260 | or even any political topic.
00:02:46.760 | They were organized to talk about a trade.
00:02:49.760 | And they, you know, figured out actually a plan that worked perfectly to execute a short squeeze.
00:02:54.260 | And these hedge funds lost $20 billion.
00:02:57.260 | And so they were...
00:02:58.160 | You know, in a lot of trouble, a lot of financial distress, and they were looking for a way out.
00:03:02.160 | And so the way they found a way out was to go through these message boards.
00:03:06.160 | They screenshot any posts that could plausibly be characterized as hate speech.
00:03:10.660 | They report it.
00:03:11.660 | And then they get the site taken down.
00:03:13.660 | And so this is kind of where the slippery slope of censorship goes, is that whenever outsiders become too threatening
00:03:19.660 | to powerful insiders, the insiders use censorship as a weapon.
00:03:23.660 | They weaponize these speech rules to prevent the threat.
00:03:27.660 | So you're making a very traditional liberal argument.
00:03:31.660 | I mean, you're saying what the ACLU said for about 100 years, what, you know, Nat Hentoff used to write about in The Village Voice.
00:03:38.660 | Why aren't more people saying that now, do you think?
00:03:42.660 | More people in power with authority?
00:03:44.660 | Well, it's a really good question, Tucker.
00:03:47.660 | And I think part of it is that a lot of the people in power are frankly threatened by these new social networks.
00:03:53.660 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:03:57.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:03:59.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:01.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:03.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:05.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:07.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:09.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:11.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:13.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:15.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:17.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:19.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:21.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:23.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:25.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:27.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:29.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:31.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:33.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:35.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:37.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:39.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:41.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:43.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:45.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:47.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:49.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:51.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:53.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:55.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:57.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:04:59.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.
00:05:01.560 | And so certainly the traditional media has been very upset with that.