E157: Epic legal win, OpenAI's news deal, FCC targets Elon, the limits of free speech & more

00:00:00.000 | We're going mullet this week in honor of your your closest to

00:00:05.680 | mullet right now sacks. I see you trying to tuck the lettuce

00:00:07.880 | in. It's not gonna work. We see it back there. I need the

00:00:10.480 | ponytail. Wow, you went full knot. Where's the secret camera

00:00:16.080 | in his room? What is this? No, my kids took it. Are you really

00:00:20.700 | doing a douche not? One of my daughters is playing with my

00:00:23.280 | hair. She wants to see if she can make a ponytail with it. So

00:00:25.840 | she made a ponytail that took a photo. So we send it into chat

00:00:29.200 | TPT to ask who it looked like. And it said Thomas Jefferson.

00:00:32.280 | Just serious question. Did you do a fit check with with Tucker

00:00:35.000 | on that? Did you send him that and say fit check?

00:00:37.040 | You know, not everything has to do with Tucker. J. Cal the

00:00:39.960 | jokes.

00:00:40.220 | If you guys don't know what a fit check is, as your daughters

00:00:43.960 | away, what what check a fit check? Check it, you take a

00:00:47.880 | picture of yourself, you send it to your friends, you say fit

00:00:49.800 | check, and then they tell you if you look good for the day. Oh,

00:00:52.360 | okay. It's kind of like it's kind of like a wellness check.

00:00:54.440 | But but for how you look for fast.

00:00:57.480 | Friedberg send you I'm having anxiety about this. And then we

00:01:00.680 | do a wellness check on Friedberg. See who's going to

00:01:02.440 | show up for the show.

00:01:03.240 | Or we do a wellness check on you and Alex Jones comes back to

00:01:06.440 | Twitter.

00:01:07.000 | I'm putting it out there right now. And Alex Jones is on the

00:01:09.520 | back half of the show just to tease it. Just like I'm going to

00:01:12.520 | tease these photos. I pulled the archives and here I am in 1984

00:01:17.480 | with my mullet. That's a J. Cal mullet from 1984 in Staten

00:01:21.840 | Island on the way to a Boy Scout trip, but I thought we'd have a

00:01:24.080 | little fun. Sax actually has been working. He's got his

00:01:28.720 | hairstylist. Yeah, well, the great Lord of the Rings

00:01:33.600 | character, like an elephant warrior. No, he looks like an

00:01:37.600 | arrow. Exactly. So when it will punch that up, but surprisingly,

00:01:42.560 | surprisingly, I can't look. It's horrible. Freebird. You're not

00:01:48.080 | getting away. Looks like I think we should all go this way. He

00:01:54.880 | looks like Orlando Bloom and Lord of the Rings, right?

00:01:57.040 | Actually, it looks like more like that vampire movie was

00:01:59.920 | that he does look like interview with the vampire or Yeah, he

00:02:03.400 | looks like he's teaching gender studies at Berkeley and his nine

00:02:07.360 | box non binary. So if you want to take understanding, non

00:02:11.080 | binary, gender studies 101. It's coming this spring. Freeberg

00:02:16.320 | should be teaching at his alma mater. Well done. I'll send it

00:02:19.640 | to you as my I did have a ponytail. I sported it from

00:02:22.240 | about age 16 to 19. When I smoked cigarettes, too. And I've

00:02:25.560 | got photos with the ponytail. I'm smoking cigs. So it's the

00:02:29.320 | fits the mold.

00:02:30.040 | Alright, so in the spirit of mullets, let's go business

00:02:33.520 | first. And we will go to the party at the end. Let's get

00:02:38.400 | started, boys.

00:02:39.120 | Rain Man David

00:02:44.440 | Jackson.

00:02:44.800 | With me again today here on the all in podcast, the king. We've

00:03:00.720 | retired Queen of quinoa. Because David freeberg is CEO of a

00:03:04.360 | startup. He can still be the queen.

00:03:06.400 | The main product freeberg.

00:03:08.240 | No. So he's the king of B.

00:03:11.080 | He's the king of vegetables off the record.

00:03:13.440 | Wait, wait, it's classified what crop you're working on?

00:03:15.600 | Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

00:03:17.200 | Absolutely. It's a SaaS company, like a SaaS company wants to

00:03:19.960 | keep it on the DL, which vertical they're going after

00:03:22.280 | finance or sales, whatever. He's got to keep those. It could be

00:03:25.560 | carrots. You never know. You could be Captain carrots. You

00:03:28.200 | never know.

00:03:28.560 | Just not beats. Okay, freeberg. We don't need more beats in the

00:03:31.520 | world.

00:03:31.840 | Yeah, I'm gonna say no fennel. Dude. No, delicious. Beets are

00:03:35.120 | delicious.

00:03:35.760 | Yeah, you're right.

00:03:36.560 | No more beets. Beets with some feta cheese. Delicious.

00:03:39.360 | Yeah, you're right.

00:03:41.840 | Brussels sprouts can be very good. You know, saute them.

00:03:45.400 | Look, you caramelize the

00:03:47.360 | Yes, I'm with you. Very good. Let's make those cheaper

00:03:50.400 | freeberg.

00:03:50.880 | Yeah, bigger and cheaper and more tasty. You know, you know

00:03:54.040 | what people people people dunk on but it's a great vegetable is

00:03:57.400 | cabbage. I like cabbage. You like shred cabbage into a salad

00:04:02.360 | and you put a little oil, little lemon, little salt,

00:04:05.440 | Chinese salad, like chin chin in LA. That's nice. Exactly. Yeah.

00:04:09.720 | sacks. Did you like freeberg? Christmas party last week? How

00:04:12.320 | was it? Did you enjoy it as much as we did?

00:04:13.840 | Oh, great. Oh, right. sacks didn't show up. I missed the

00:04:17.200 | party. Next week, who does a Christmas party first? Before

00:04:21.680 | you tell your story. A very kind gentleman rings the door to my

00:04:25.520 | gate. I opened the gate. The guy drives in he gets out. He's like

00:04:28.520 | a big guy kind of says Mr. freeberg. And I'm like, What am

00:04:31.600 | I getting served? And he goes to the backseat. I'm like, Oh my

00:04:34.080 | god, I'm gonna get shot. He reaches in. And he pulls out a

00:04:37.320 | beautifully wrapped gift. He's like, Mr. sacks, Mr. freeberg.

00:04:41.080 | Happy Holidays. And then he gave me like a touch on the shoulder

00:04:44.760 | or like he does this thing where he goes like this little bow. He

00:04:46.960 | got back in his car and he drove away.

00:04:48.320 | What is he sure?

00:04:49.400 | It was like when you go to an award, he did the Amman thing

00:04:53.040 | that they do.

00:04:53.480 | That wasn't his. That was his valet. That's his valet. He stole

00:04:58.040 | the valet from the Amman.

00:04:59.200 | It was the most thoughtful no show I've ever had. I will say

00:05:03.040 | sex. Okay, well, I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear

00:05:05.680 | that. Well, what's funny is, I just checked my inbox and my

00:05:09.240 | invitation from you was sitting in there. Because I've been

00:05:12.360 | meaning to go, but I didn't realize it was so soon. So I'm

00:05:15.960 | just looking at the date. It was December 9, I didn't realize it

00:05:18.880 | was five days ago. Sorry about that.

00:05:20.440 | Someone in your household did. So we appreciate it. Someone

00:05:23.040 | knew. I went but this is my this is my second or third year

00:05:26.080 | going. So I pre I pre gamed it. I went and I got protein. I got

00:05:31.800 | meat, a bunch of steak and a burger. And then I went and sure

00:05:35.920 | enough. I talked to the staff. And the staff said, after much

00:05:40.880 | debate, and haranguing with Freeberg, he allowed cheese this

00:05:45.200 | year. He allowed sushi with a whole sushi platter thing. No,

00:05:48.040 | stop. He didn't have sushi. Okay. To tell the truth. Go

00:05:51.760 | ahead. Tell the truth. I get in the car to drive 90 minutes. 90

00:05:55.520 | minutes to free. Okay, that's the poker trip for me, by the

00:05:58.960 | way. But yeah, and I not texts, Allison and David, we're on our

00:06:05.000 | way. trough wants to know, will there be meat? Because I'm

00:06:07.960 | driving so I can't. And Ali says, Oh, yeah, don't worry,

00:06:12.920 | there'll be sushi. And then not text back. Okay, we just got off

00:06:16.960 | the highway. We're going home. We'll see you later. Because we

00:06:18.680 | don't say there's gonna be fish fine. I get there haven't eaten

00:06:22.480 | a thing. I am starving. Raven. I start I start to work my way

00:06:27.040 | through the appetizers. There's like, sliced green peppers and

00:06:30.920 | red peppers. There's like some falafels. Then there was a

00:06:33.760 | Spanish omelet felt pretty decent. Okay. And I'm like,

00:06:36.760 | where's the sushi? And so Phil Deutsch says 1000 bucks, there's

00:06:40.760 | no sushi. And I said, No, there's Freeberg texted me. He

00:06:43.960 | said, I've asked all the people working here. They say there's

00:06:47.000 | no sushi. So I bet him $1,000. I go outside to where the sushi

00:06:52.200 | is. And you know how we used to make fun of sky for having the

00:06:56.760 | filler fruit at the poker game, like cantaloupe and honeydew.

00:07:00.960 | And that's all there was. Yeah, there was no sushi, but there

00:07:03.960 | was two or three rolls with four pieces of salmon strategically

00:07:09.960 | cut just laying over. I won the bet. I was so hungry. I was

00:07:14.880 | like, What do I eat? I'm starving. So I keep eating the

00:07:17.920 | omelet. I keep eating the vegetarian food. And then I see

00:07:21.800 | these brownies. And I'm like, I'll just have a brownie. Then I

00:07:25.920 | had two brownies. And then I was like, Okay, I need to stop. I

00:07:28.120 | can't I can't have this. I'm still so hungry. I walk outside

00:07:31.360 | J. Cal where I saw you. We're having a cup of coffee. And you

00:07:34.200 | know what I did? I ate five baklava. And then I was like,

00:07:38.680 | this is disgusting. I've had no protein. I've had no

00:07:41.440 | carbohydrates. I've had no fiber. I've had a fucking 3000

00:07:44.880 | calories of sugar. I grabbed Nat and I charged him. I was so

00:07:48.400 | dead. He did he Irish mad. I didn't even say goodbye. Irish

00:07:51.120 | goodbye. Freeberg and I talked about it yesterday. We talked

00:07:53.120 | it out. But I was I must have had 6000 calories at his

00:07:58.480 | Christmas. I'm coming over to Tim off tonight. Yeah, it's only

00:08:01.040 | gonna be tried to the whole night. I'm sure. Not a simple

00:08:03.880 | insight.

00:08:04.280 | That sounds like J. Cal preloaded the meat. He did. He

00:08:07.800 | got ready.

00:08:08.400 | I on the way. No, seriously. After last year, last year, I

00:08:11.680 | left that party. And I just typed in I just said to my

00:08:15.200 | to go to Papa closest In-N-Out Burger. And I literally got a

00:08:18.960 | double double. And then I just had a second one. On the way up

00:08:22.840 | this time, I literally had a steak for dinner. And then I

00:08:25.120 | went and then I too had some pop. Have you guys ever had

00:08:27.640 | Popeye's? Of course. I had never had it. My son asked to get it

00:08:32.800 | last week. Last week. I'd never had it. Can you believe it? Here

00:08:35.880 | we go. It is the most incredible thing I've ever tasted.

00:08:39.120 | Wow. Wait for the out of touch YouTube comments.

00:08:42.720 | Problem is not the eating of it. It's how you feel two hours

00:08:47.560 | later.

00:08:47.920 | But I mean, I've had chick fil a you know, I've done the chicken

00:08:50.840 | sandwiches at other places never. Popeye's is incredible.

00:08:55.080 | Incredible. So then I had Nat almost on the edge of convincing

00:09:01.600 | her to go to Popeye's on the way home. But we missed the closing

00:09:04.800 | time. So we couldn't get it.

00:09:05.960 | I got go to starboard or banchan. Those are two other

00:09:08.880 | elite.

00:09:09.480 | No, bro. Not not I'm not talking fancy chicken. I've had like the

00:09:12.760 | fancy chicken sandwiches. I'm saying Popeye's is incredible.

00:09:16.160 | I like it. I like it. Austerity. Chema. Here we go. Have you had

00:09:19.960 | a flay of fish? All right, let's get the show started here. Of

00:09:22.800 | course with me again. The king of beep, the dictator and the

00:09:26.760 | rain man. Let's get to work. All right, everybody epic. The

00:09:30.000 | makers of fortnight just won a huge case. With Google over the

00:09:35.040 | play app store on Android phones. For those of you don't

00:09:37.320 | know, app stores have become an absolutely huge business for

00:09:41.600 | Apple and Google. Google App Store generates $50 billion of

00:09:45.800 | revenue a year now that's about 17% of Google's total revenue.

00:09:50.520 | Apple's app store and services 85 billion in annual revenue.

00:09:53.920 | These are on top of their franchises of hardware and

00:09:57.880 | search. But during San Francisco, unanimously found

00:10:01.600 | that Google violated California's federal antitrust

00:10:04.080 | laws through sweetheart deals, and annoying workarounds that

00:10:08.520 | stifled competition. For example, Google got spooked that

00:10:12.200 | other game developers would follow epics, lead and launch

00:10:15.800 | their own app stores or route people directly to their

00:10:19.000 | websites to avoid the 30% take rate. Some might call it a tax.

00:10:23.280 | Google calculated they would lose 2 billion to 3.5 billion in

00:10:28.080 | revenue annually if the other major game developers followed

00:10:32.000 | epic so they created a program codenamed project hub where they

00:10:36.480 | basically paid out bribes or incentives to discourage large

00:10:40.280 | developers from building their own competitive app stores. They

00:10:42.960 | also gave Spotify a sweetheart deal of 0%. And Google paid

00:10:47.600 | Activision $360 million to keep in the Play Store. And the

00:10:54.360 | discovery in this case was absolutely wild. According to

00:10:57.120 | testimony in the trial, Google had deleted some employees chat

00:11:00.040 | logs. And the judge told the jury to assume that the deleted

00:11:04.320 | information wouldn't have been favorable to Google. Dray only

00:11:07.880 | deliberated a few hours, and Google plans to appeal the

00:11:10.960 | verdict. Obviously. Epic isn't seeking damages. They just want

00:11:15.760 | Google to change their practices. They want to

00:11:18.000 | basically let people plug in their own billing system to

00:11:20.680 | avoid the 30% tax. We'll see what happens next. Freeberg.

00:11:24.320 | These stores clearly have monopolistic characteristics,

00:11:28.320 | but and Google actually allows for third party app stores.

00:11:32.640 | Maybe you can explain why you think Apple won their case

00:11:35.720 | against epic but Google lost.

00:11:37.200 | These are pretty different cases. The Apple case was a

00:11:42.000 | judge. This one was a jury of citizens in federal court. I

00:11:48.760 | think it's worth just backing up a minute and talking about the

00:11:51.000 | history of like apps on phones and how Android came to be.

00:11:53.840 | Prior to Google acquiring Android, you guys may remember,

00:11:57.520 | there were a few companies that were the dominant OS providers,

00:12:00.640 | operating system providers to mobile phones. There was Nokia,

00:12:04.080 | there was Microsoft, there was Apple, and there was also

00:12:08.160 | BlackBerry. And at the time, a lot of the telcos, the Verizons

00:12:13.680 | and AT&Ts of the world, prior to this, we're trying to make money

00:12:16.880 | by charging for people to install apps on phones. So that

00:12:19.440 | was the first business model in the mobile internet was the

00:12:22.560 | telco would make money. And everyone fought against it. All

00:12:26.160 | the open internet providers said this is ridiculous. And it was

00:12:28.640 | clear that that was not going to be allowed. So ultimately, these

00:12:31.880 | operating systems became the play, and which operating system

00:12:35.160 | was on which mobile phone, and what did that operating system

00:12:38.040 | then allow to control what apps were allowed, and so on. So the

00:12:41.160 | reason Google bought Android is they wanted to make an open

00:12:43.840 | source alternative to all of these closed app and closed

00:12:47.440 | systems. So Google bought Android 2005, made a huge

00:12:51.280 | investment in growing the team, and allowed anyone to use the

00:12:54.920 | Android OS, fork it, make their own versions of it, install it

00:12:58.480 | on their own hardware, run it however they want it. Meanwhile,

00:13:01.720 | Google made an internal version of Android that could be used on

00:13:05.160 | any mobile handset companies phone as a pre installed OS. Now

00:13:09.200 | why did Google want to do this, they wanted to do this number

00:13:11.520 | one to make sure that the internet was still open, and it

00:13:14.160 | wasn't going to end up being closed from a user's perspective.

00:13:16.960 | And number two, so that anyone can install any app they wanted.

00:13:20.280 | And the commercial interest for Google, which is number three is

00:13:23.360 | so that Google could make search Google search the default search

00:13:26.160 | engine on that phone, and have YouTube installed and all these

00:13:29.260 | other tools that Google makes money on, including their own app

00:13:32.960 | store. Now in Android, anyone can install any app they want on

00:13:36.960 | the phone. And so there's no restrictions, unlike in Apple in

00:13:41.520 | the iOS, if you try and download an app off the internet, install

00:13:44.760 | it, it has to go through the app store, it has to be Apple

00:13:46.560 | verified, in order to be allowed on the phone. So the whole point

00:13:49.600 | of Android was that it could be open, anyone can install

00:13:51.520 | anything. What Epic claimed in this case was that Google's

00:13:55.120 | Android OS gave people security warnings. So if you ever have

00:13:59.040 | tried this, you download an app from a website on Android, it

00:14:02.040 | says warning warning, this may cause a virus on your phone, are

00:14:05.480 | you sure you want to do this, this app hasn't been verified by

00:14:08.200 | Google, etc, etc. So it gives these warnings that scare

00:14:11.240 | consumers off of doing that. So Epic can, you can install

00:14:14.160 | Fortnite direct on your Android phone today. And you can do it

00:14:17.200 | by downloading it from Epic's website, you don't have to go

00:14:19.320 | through the Google Play Store. And you can enter your credit

00:14:21.400 | card, you can pay for stuff. So it is it is an open system that

00:14:24.640 | allows that what these guys are claiming is that because Google

00:14:28.280 | can default the Google Play Store on the phone, it's

00:14:30.880 | basically what most consumers are going to use anyway. And so

00:14:33.360 | they're saying it's not fair. And because they also have

00:14:35.600 | influence over the OS, and they're putting these security

00:14:37.920 | warnings, it's inappropriate, because now it's scaring people

00:14:40.400 | from downloading stuff off the internet. So that's the big

00:14:42.520 | claim Epics making. So Google has already said they're going

00:14:44.760 | to appeal this case. Because fundamentally, again, if this

00:14:47.960 | were really true, and there really was deep antitrust issues

00:14:50.360 | with this, you would likely have seen a federal agency come

00:14:53.760 | after Google, not a private company suing them in a civil

00:14:57.080 | case, this would have been a much more significant action if

00:14:59.840 | there really was antitrust behavior. But it's a lot easier

00:15:02.840 | to win a jury trial, party to party where Epic can go to a

00:15:05.520 | court and say, Hey, let's go after Google, they're awful, we

00:15:08.000 | make fortnight and all this sort of stuff. So they do have a bias

00:15:10.680 | in that sense of being able to do this, Google is going to

00:15:12.720 | appeal, they feel very strongly they'll win on appeal. And the

00:15:15.760 | markets obviously did a, you know, voted with the fact that

00:15:19.680 | Google stock didn't really move anywhere. And the market said,

00:15:22.680 | Hey, this isn't this is a nothing burger, Google's 40

00:15:25.360 | billion in annual Play Store revenue, worst case scenario,

00:15:28.080 | like you said, if it gets impacted by $2 billion, that's

00:15:30.640 | 2 billion out of 300. Overall, doesn't really matter. And

00:15:34.040 | likely, they're going to win on appeal anyway. So you know, I

00:15:36.520 | think the saga will continue. But I think Google's got a

00:15:39.480 | pretty strong case on appeal. And it seems like, you know,

00:15:42.480 | that's going to be very hard to kind of see a massive change in

00:15:45.160 | app store behavior as a result of this case, even though it's

00:15:47.200 | been hyped up to be that. That's my take on it.

00:15:49.360 | Yeah, great take. Chamath, what do you think about this jury

00:15:53.040 | shopping and maybe the fact that this isn't Lena Khan's isn't the

00:15:56.320 | FTC, you know, as company to company, do you think that the

00:15:59.760 | claims here were valid? Do you think the jury shopping impacted

00:16:03.960 | this in a significant way?

00:16:05.240 | Probably, I guess the simple thought exercises, what do we

00:16:08.160 | think the outcome would have been had this trial happened in

00:16:11.080 | Dallas, Texas? Probably different. And so I think

00:16:16.600 | freebergs, right, what does it materially prove nothing with

00:16:19.880 | respect to the body of law, it just goes to show that if you

00:16:23.760 | pick the right place to convene these trials, in the right

00:16:27.480 | format, you can give yourself a slightly better probability of

00:16:31.600 | winning. But the question is, what will you win? It's not

00:16:35.440 | clear to me what happens now? Is there going to be a damages

00:16:38.760 | portion now of this trial? Is that what happens next?

00:16:41.120 | They're not seeking damages, they want changes to how they

00:16:44.720 | operate, and they're

00:16:45.480 | trying to get a settlement. And they want Google to settle out

00:16:48.520 | with changes to the app store policies. That's what they're

00:16:50.720 | asking for.

00:16:51.440 | And then what about the epic versus Apple lawsuit? Is it

00:16:54.720 | being done in the same way? No, they lost.

00:16:56.880 | They lost and they appealed and there's one element that's being

00:16:59.360 | appealed to the Supreme Court now. But basically, they lost

00:17:01.760 | and that's over.

00:17:02.360 | And that was that convened in California in a jury trial as

00:17:06.600 | well in San Francisco?

00:17:07.560 | No, that that was not a jury trial. It was a judge.

00:17:11.040 | And it was California. It was a bench trial in California. Yeah,

00:17:15.280 | it was also in Northern California. That's right. Yeah.

00:17:18.720 | So Saks, let me bring you in on this. Do you think that these

00:17:22.040 | stores are monopolies? And do you think if they change their

00:17:25.440 | behavior, especially Apple, you know, allow other third party

00:17:28.280 | stores, what impact that would that have on the startup

00:17:30.560 | ecosystem, because the 30% tax is significant. And we see that

00:17:33.960 | every day. With our startups. I mean, if you have to give away

00:17:36.760 | 30% of your revenue to Google and Apple, it's brutal. And then

00:17:40.680 | you're advertising on Apple and Google and Facebook. That's

00:17:44.720 | another 30% of your revenue or 50% of your revenue.

00:17:47.840 | Yeah, no, I agree with that. So first of all, these app stores

00:17:51.680 | are absolutely monopolies within their ecosystem. And Apple and

00:17:56.520 | Google Android are absolutely a duopoly within the mobile space.

00:18:00.520 | My experience with these types of monopolies or gatekeepers is

00:18:04.920 | that they exercise more and more control and extract more and

00:18:08.320 | more of the value over time. It's an iterative process, in

00:18:12.040 | which they just keep, you know, extracting, keep taxing, keep,

00:18:15.360 | keep imposing more rules on the ecosystem for their benefit,

00:18:19.120 | and to the detriment of innovators. And so I do think

00:18:21.760 | they have to be controlled. And I think Epic is doing the

00:18:23.600 | ecosystem a favor. For example, on this 30% rake that you're

00:18:27.760 | talking about, Jekyll, that level of rake might have been

00:18:31.840 | appropriate for certain types of apps like a hobbyist app where

00:18:35.600 | it's literally 100% margin, okay, you pay 30% to the app

00:18:38.840 | store. It doesn't work for SaaS companies. I mean, I can tell

00:18:41.640 | you that. I mean, this would be like half of their gross margin

00:18:44.680 | or something like that. It doesn't work for a lot of

00:18:48.200 | companies that spend a lot of money on content creation, like

00:18:51.040 | Epic, which spends a lot of money in Rd to create a game

00:18:54.040 | like Fortnite, Spotify, break their models immediately, or

00:18:57.560 | Amazon with Kindle. And so what happened is it used to be the

00:19:01.360 | case that Amazon could have a link in their app, at least

00:19:05.600 | directing the user to go to the amazon.com website, and you

00:19:08.680 | could buy the book there and you could circumvent the the rake in

00:19:12.440 | the app, and it was inconvenient for the user, but at least it

00:19:14.600 | was a way around it. Then Apple banned those links, then they

00:19:18.600 | banned the ability for the app to even message to the user what

00:19:22.560 | was happening. So if for example, if you use the Kindle

00:19:25.160 | app on iOS, which I do all the time, you can't buy a book in

00:19:30.040 | it. And the reason why is because Amazon doesn't want to

00:19:33.220 | pay the 30% rake, but they can't even tell you that it just looks

00:19:36.240 | like it's broken functionality. Right? So those of us who know

00:19:39.240 | go to amazon.com through the browser, we buy the book there

00:19:41.760 | and then it magically appears in the Kindle app. We've all had

00:19:44.760 | that experience. So I just think that these duopolies have to be

00:19:47.840 | controlled. I think that it'd be good if the government could

00:19:51.360 | figure out better ways to do it. I don't think M&A is the right

00:19:54.760 | way to do it. We've talked about this before. I think that

00:19:57.240 | restricting anti competitive tactics is really the way to

00:20:00.560 | stop it. And like I said, I can't speak to the details of

00:20:04.560 | epics case, but I do think they're doing the ecosystem a

00:20:06.680 | favor here by pushing back on these monopolies and helping to

00:20:10.720 | keep them under control.

00:20:11.680 | 100% agree with you, Saxon, your take. And I think actually

00:20:14.880 | other people should join them. And the industry should really

00:20:17.960 | force this issue because you are absolutely correct that they're

00:20:20.680 | boiling the frog. Now they did make some cuts under a million.

00:20:23.280 | I think they charged 15% on the first million. So they try to be

00:20:26.320 | nice to the smaller developers.

00:20:27.680 | Pull it up. That's not like it's actually the larger ones to pull

00:20:30.240 | up the link I just said. So you'll see here, Google charges

00:20:34.520 | through the Play Store. If you doubt if you want to have

00:20:36.840 | distribution, I mean, think about the Play Store as being

00:20:38.560 | like a retailer, you make clothing, you need to have a

00:20:41.320 | retail store that someone can go to and buy stuff, the retail

00:20:43.600 | store has to make money, you're not gonna have a retail store

00:20:46.040 | that's free. So how does the retail store make money? Well,

00:20:49.120 | they charge 98% of apps, as you can see here are free, because

00:20:52.320 | the you know, they, they don't make any money on that. But then

00:20:54.440 | if you start to charge subscriptions, it's 15% take on

00:20:57.680 | automatically renewing subscriptions, where it's easier

00:21:00.160 | second year. Yeah. Yeah, it's easier. No, each year, look at

00:21:03.680 | the second. No, no, no, it's for renewing. So I know, that's

00:21:07.120 | because of calm. So in the first year, it's for renewing

00:21:10.280 | subscriptions, subscription products. So all subscriptions

00:21:13.520 | that have an automatic renewal feature to them are instantly at

00:21:16.640 | 15%. And as a result, you know, you can think about the what is

00:21:20.480 | it worth to get a user to not have to enter their credit card

00:21:22.560 | info, you know, plus the credit card fees, it's like 15% is not

00:21:26.360 | too crazy. Honestly, I'm just, you know, I'm not trying to be a

00:21:29.200 | super Google advocate. But I'm just saying like, I don't think

00:21:31.040 | that's too crazy. And then they've got this like negotiated

00:21:33.600 | tier, where if you are a very large app developer, and you

00:21:36.600 | want to go and negotiate with Google, they have a biz dev team

00:21:38.800 | like Spotify and others get where they'll negotiate fees

00:21:41.440 | down. And you can actually go and like argue for better

00:21:44.040 | economics. So they've tried to be commercial, which I'm

00:21:46.640 | guessing is probably why Lena Khan and others haven't gone

00:21:50.240 | after them for antitrust and monopolistic behavior, because

00:21:53.120 | they've tried to find the comfortable place where it's not

00:21:55.440 | going to be too crazy. At least that's my read on what's going

00:21:58.080 | on. Because otherwise, I mean, obviously, folks would be all

00:22:00.080 | over him. You know, if it really was the boiling of the frog

00:22:02.920 | issue is the one for me, because then they want to charge you

00:22:05.440 | now for placement in the App Store and get revenue from you

00:22:08.640 | there.

00:22:09.200 | Oh, yeah, I mean, that's Amazon to Amazon's got that, like

00:22:12.000 | everyone's gotten squee every DTC company in the last five

00:22:14.560 | years, has gotten obliterated, their unit economics are upside

00:22:17.440 | down now. And we've talked about this, both Google's taken out

00:22:20.080 | the margin, but Amazon forces you to buy ads in order to get

00:22:22.880 | your placement. Yeah. And then they force you to pay all the

00:22:25.360 | extra fees for inventory. Amazon squeezed everyone way more than

00:22:29.400 | any of these digital apps.

00:22:30.760 | This is the perfect place for Luna Khan to get active, I think

00:22:33.400 | and the settlement super easy. The entire industry should come

00:22:36.680 | at them in unison, tons of lawsuits, group lawsuits, until

00:22:41.760 | they allow when you turn on your Apple phone, the ability to load

00:22:45.240 | Amazon's App Store, epics App Store, whoever else wants to

00:22:48.720 | have an App Store, that should be your right. If you buy a

00:22:50.720 | hardware device, it should be your right to load these and

00:22:52.920 | they shouldn't be ankled in any way. And that's the other thing

00:22:56.320 | Android does all kinds of ankling to make those with those

00:22:58.680 | pop ups and hey, this isn't safe, etc. They should have a

00:23:01.600 | verified App Store program. Amazon's App Store, epics App

00:23:05.280 | Store, they should be verified or something. And maybe they pay

00:23:07.680 | 5% to have a verified App Store. But yeah, this is a this is

00:23:12.760 | going to be an ongoing issue. And we'll see more of it, I

00:23:16.080 | think. So let's go on. Anybody else have thoughts on it? No.

00:23:20.320 | Okay. So in other news, open AI is starting to cut licensing

00:23:25.600 | deals. If you remember, we had a big debate about this back on

00:23:28.760 | Episode 115 in February. And I was saying, Hey, this content is

00:23:34.800 | owned and the opportunity to create LLM or derivative

00:23:38.760 | products, you know, is the right of the people who make that

00:23:41.640 | content. Saks you told me I was gonna get rolled over. But here

00:23:45.480 | we are.

00:23:45.920 | I wouldn't say I said you're going to rolled over. What I

00:23:47.720 | said is the ecosystem is going to figure this out.

00:23:49.720 | Okay, let's play the tape. If chat GPT takes a Yelp review,

00:23:54.720 | and a you know, a condominium traveler review, and they

00:23:58.080 | represent it based on the best content that's out there that

00:24:01.920 | they've already ranked because they have that algorithm with

00:24:04.040 | PageRank or Bing's ranking engine, and then they republish

00:24:06.920 | it. And then that jeopardizes those businesses that is

00:24:09.600 | profoundly unfair and not what we want for society. And they

00:24:12.640 | are interfering with their ability to leverage their own

00:24:15.680 | content is profoundly unfair. And those magazines and

00:24:19.120 | newspapers need to what's that?

00:24:21.400 | You're gonna get steamrolled. Okay, hair. There it is. Man is

00:24:25.640 | my hair worse now or then? Yeah,

00:24:27.800 | cut back then. I think you were like post COVID back then. Yeah,

00:24:31.600 | I think you look much better right now.

00:24:33.320 | Like a toupee. Can you can you just show us a picture of that?

00:24:37.560 | It looks like an era that was like a like an early ad. This is

00:24:42.480 | like the common era now. You know, that's a toupee. That's a

00:24:45.960 | toupee. It does look like a to it looks like a raccoon. Okay,

00:24:50.040 | J. Cal, I'll get some comments on this, because I think your

00:24:52.960 | offer has as fluff too much on the upper parts, and and unfluff

00:24:57.480 | the bottom parts, which I think I mean, listen, don't criticize

00:25:00.040 | him when he was in an in between phase. We all go through an in

00:25:02.240 | between phase with our hair. It's it's part of the process.

00:25:04.960 | Now I know why we're talking about this topic of J. Cal's

00:25:06.960 | because you think you it's it's a total non story or it's I

00:25:10.200 | shouldn't say it's a non story. Let me finish it off. Okay. So

00:25:13.240 | just so we know what's going on here. Open AI announced a

00:25:15.640 | licensing deal with Axel Springer to bring real time

00:25:18.840 | news from Politico and the fake news from Business Insider to

00:25:22.200 | chat btk you literally sound like Alex Jones. I mean, thank

00:25:27.400 | you complain all your news is right about that. I got one

00:25:34.000 | thing right. As part of the deal. Axel Springer can use

00:25:37.000 | chat GPT to improve their products includes other

00:25:39.480 | European sites. This is on top of the deal that open I did with

00:25:43.480 | the Associated Press. But most importantly, let me just most

00:25:46.440 | importantly, I'm going to throw it in a second. Most importantly,

00:25:48.560 | when chat GPT relies on these sources, it'll include a

00:25:51.680 | summary and a link back. Other examples of licensing are

00:25:55.400 | happening all over the industry. Adobe is using static images for

00:25:58.240 | theirs and stable diffusion. As you know, that brazenly used

00:26:02.800 | Gettys images are being sued. So Freeberg, you thought this was

00:26:07.720 | unrealistic, but here we are.

00:26:08.840 | No, I don't agree with your framing. And I think I think

00:26:12.360 | it's unrealistic for you to frame this as validating or

00:26:16.040 | justifying the fact that these companies won't be able to

00:26:19.080 | access and utilize open data under fair use to train models.

00:26:23.880 | So that's what's going on historically, right. So the open

00:26:26.640 | web, you know, we talked a little bit about where folks can

00:26:29.480 | get content from the open web, you can browse the internet, you

00:26:32.160 | can download all this content, it's all freely available, it's

00:26:34.920 | readily available, it's in, it's in the open domain. And then you

00:26:38.040 | can train models, and then the models can ultimately make stuff

00:26:41.120 | based on all that training data. What this deal is, is it's

00:26:44.520 | actually a content integration deal. And I'll read this with

00:26:47.680 | the partnership chat GPT users around the world will receive

00:26:51.400 | summaries of selected global news content from Axel Springer

00:26:55.080 | media brands, including yada, yada, including otherwise paid

00:26:58.000 | content. So a chat GPT is doing is they're accessing content

00:27:01.360 | behind a paywall. And there'll be able and instead of training

00:27:04.600 | models on it, they're able to fetch that data as a retrieval

00:27:08.160 | aspect of the chat GPT service. So now you as a user want an

00:27:12.080 | update on, hey, what's going on with Donald Trump, it can search

00:27:15.440 | notch, it can not just use its training data, but it can

00:27:18.040 | recognize that, hey, there's a current event news question

00:27:21.440 | embedded in this query. And I can go fetch that current event

00:27:24.800 | news answer from this content that I've now paid for. So it's

00:27:28.560 | not a training data set that that's now being unlocked, which

00:27:31.240 | is what the complaint was before that all the open web data was

00:27:34.000 | being used for training. But it's behind paywall data that

00:27:36.840 | can now be fetched and integrated. And I think it's

00:27:38.880 | more interesting because it really speaks to a new model for

00:27:42.400 | how the internet will work, which we've talked about, which

00:27:44.760 | is that there may be the sort of new chat interfaces that cannot

00:27:48.240 | just send you to another page and link you over somewhere, but

00:27:51.280 | can fetch data for you and present it to you in an

00:27:53.800 | integrated way in the response it's providing. And these

00:27:56.680 | services have to pay for access to that. So chat, you know, open

00:27:59.320 | AI, it's a three year deal, they're paying 10s of millions

00:28:01.880 | of dollars to Axel Springer to access their closed content and

00:28:05.000 | present it to the user. So I think it's quite a bit different

00:28:07.360 | than, you know, using training data, which is what, you know,

00:28:10.080 | the complaint was the first time around. And it's more of like a

00:28:12.360 | really interesting front end feature for what chat GPT is

00:28:15.560 | becoming.

00:28:15.960 | Saks you wanted to add to that?

00:28:17.640 | And I don't really have a lot to add to that. I think freebird

00:28:21.520 | did a great job explaining that issue. I mean, look, I think

00:28:24.880 | Jay Kyle, you've had a little bit of a session with this

00:28:26.560 | copyright issue.

00:28:27.520 | And acting protecting rights holders, I do believe in, I

00:28:31.640 | don't know,

00:28:31.840 | freebird makes a really great point, which is there's a

00:28:35.000 | difference between copying somebody's copywritten work,

00:28:38.960 | which would be a violation of copyright, and using content

00:28:43.080 | that's available on the open web to train a model to create

00:28:46.520 | entirely new content. And I do think that AI models should be

00:28:52.120 | able to use the content that's available on the web

00:28:54.720 | under a fair use doctrine to train their models for the

00:28:59.080 | benefit of consumers. And I don't see a reason to try and

00:29:03.720 | tie that up in a bunch of copyright lawsuits. If chat GPT

00:29:06.760 | is producing a plagiarized result, then you may have

00:29:09.960 | grounds for a copyright infringement claim.

00:29:11.520 | So what I would say is, you know, when you look at that

00:29:14.800 | fair use doctrine, I've got a lot of experience with it.

00:29:17.080 | Having done this in blogs and other content companies, you

00:29:20.560 | know, the fourth factor test, I'm sure you're well aware of

00:29:22.560 | this is the effect of the use on the potential market and the

00:29:25.200 | value of the work. And if you look at the lawsuits that are

00:29:29.280 | starting to emerge, it is Geddy's right to then make

00:29:33.200 | derivative products based on their images, I think we would

00:29:35.680 | all agree, stable diffusion, when they use these open web,

00:29:39.560 | that is no excuse to use an open web crawler to avoid getting a

00:29:43.960 | license from the original owner of that just because you can

00:29:46.280 | technically do it doesn't mean you're allowed to do it. In

00:29:48.200 | fact, the open web projects that provide these say explicitly, we

00:29:53.000 | do not give you the right to use this, you have to then go read

00:29:57.200 | the copyright laws on each of those websites. And on top of

00:30:00.560 | that, if somebody were to steal the copyrights of other people,

00:30:03.880 | put it on the open web, which is happening all day long, you

00:30:06.860 | still if you're building a derivative work like this, you

00:30:09.680 | still need to go get it. So it's no excuse that I took some site

00:30:13.120 | in Russia, that did a bunch of copyright violation, and then I

00:30:16.240 | index them for my training model. So I think this is going

00:30:19.720 | to result in bird paper, can you shoot me in the face and let me

00:30:23.000 | know in this segment?

00:30:23.840 | Alright, so the segment is now over. I was about to throw it to

00:30:29.480 | you. And now I mean, like, stop with this navel gazing nonsense.

00:30:34.080 | We're in anyone. And nobody knows anything. And the most

00:30:40.080 | important thing is that this will get sorted out through

00:30:44.040 | trials. That's where you are right, Jason, it's going to go

00:30:46.120 | to court. And, and I think we should just not opine on this

00:30:49.320 | stuff, because it's esoteric at best. And it's kind of like,

00:30:52.680 | whatever,

00:30:53.680 | well, some of it will go to court, other ones will be done

00:30:56.800 | in the free market, like we see here. Another thing I care about

00:30:59.880 | this more than most people, because you're a journalist, and

00:31:01.640 | you think that's going to put people out of work.

00:31:03.080 | I am a content creator. I'm also an author, as you know, and a

00:31:06.520 | podcaster, and I create all kinds of content, I do think

00:31:08.640 | that you should get permission before you leverage people's

00:31:11.000 | work to create different derivative products. Correct.

00:31:13.400 | And actually, you're starting to see this in Dolly in chat GPT

00:31:17.480 | seems to be getting ahead of this because of all the incoming

00:31:20.000 | lawsuits. Check this out. I started asking Dolly to make me

00:31:24.600 | Star Wars characters of Bulldogs. And I said, make a

00:31:26.960 | Jedi Bulldog, it did that no problem. Then I asked it to make

00:31:30.480 | a version of this using and make a Darth Vader. And it said, I'm

00:31:34.800 | unable to generate images based on your request due to our

00:31:38.040 | content policy. If you have other ideas and concepts you'd

00:31:40.440 | like to blow up, feel free to share. So I said, make me a

00:31:43.240 | syphilis cat. And it basically made me Darth Vader. And so it's

00:31:46.880 | very clear that the team over at open AI is now taking your

00:31:51.320 | proper engineering,

00:31:52.240 | you're like a clever prompt engineer that

00:31:54.160 | well, yeah, I got around copyright here, right. And so

00:31:56.560 | it's silly, like all of this stuff is this is just a drag

00:32:00.960 | coefficient on development of AI because, and on users, because

00:32:05.160 | now you've got to like word your prompt exactly the right way.

00:32:07.720 | Well, I think what they're doing is they know that Marvel and all

00:32:11.200 | the Disney characters, all the Star Wars characters, they're

00:32:13.240 | very protective of their IP. Disney is going to launch their

00:32:16.320 | own Dolly type stable diffusion product where you can do this,

00:32:19.040 | put yourself on a star, make a Star Wars character is any good

00:32:21.960 | at this. It doesn't matter if they're good or not. It's their

00:32:24.520 | IP. And so

00:32:25.360 | I mean, fans can create their own artwork that's in the vein

00:32:28.800 | of like a Darth Vader. Yes,

00:32:30.320 | they can, but they can't do it commercially. And what chat GPT

00:32:33.960 | and open AI here is commercial because I pay $20 a month to

00:32:36.600 | chat GPT. So that's what you're missing. A fan, of course can

00:32:39.260 | make a Jedi cat.

00:32:40.760 | All right. Well, all I know is you played this like way back

00:32:43.360 | video from episode 15.

00:32:45.960 | No, no, no.

00:32:48.720 | From episode 115. As if you guys never want to think it turns

00:32:53.200 | out that Freeberg totally blew up your case.

00:32:55.320 | He didn't blow my case. I will be right and continue to be

00:32:57.960 | right. Okay, now let's go to something we can all we're

00:33:00.240 | definitely not striking this segment. I liked it. Let's go.

00:33:02.320 | No, no, no, no. You like a little spicy here. I didn't

00:33:04.920 | even have to refute you. Freeberg just did it was

00:33:07.160 | beautiful. I mean, listen, okay, you came in, you thought you had

00:33:09.880 | the goods. Admit it. No, he's like playing this way back video

00:33:13.640 | from like 45 episodes ago. I finally got him. I finally got

00:33:18.040 | socks. I was finally right about something you hadn't claimed you

00:33:20.680 | never used the word steamroll. I would have never played the

00:33:22.920 | clip. Oh my god. I have some live footage. I just want to go

00:33:25.560 | through it. I'm just talking like it. Anyways. Yeah. So guys,

00:33:30.480 | there's this copyright thing. I want to Okay, hold on. Let me

00:33:33.760 | let me just reframe. Let me just start that again. Okay, you

00:33:36.960 | know, copyright issues. Okay, hold on. Well, listen, there's

00:33:41.720 | this thing I want to talk about copyright, which

00:33:46.760 | Oh, these are

00:33:47.360 | when you do a deal for

00:33:51.640 | something and you want to get Okay, hold on. Everybody that

00:33:58.000 | writes gets a chance. Okay, hold on. I mean, if I could get up

00:34:00.520 | that high, I would miss the dunk. And so

00:34:02.160 | he's about to steamroll.

00:34:05.560 | Thank you.

00:34:07.280 | Come on, Jay Cal, you teed up the way back clip of yourself.

00:34:15.840 | You teed up the way back clip of yourself. So you brought

00:34:19.360 | deny it. And I just

00:34:21.240 | you brought this

00:34:21.840 | Yeah, but you try to dunk and it didn't work. Okay, okay. Okay.

00:34:26.560 | Every bit has to take the piss out of me. I'm seeing a trend.

00:34:29.120 | No, okay.

00:34:30.080 | Unless you have a clean dunk. All right, here we go. Don't

00:34:36.840 | bring it to the hoop and then break it.

00:34:38.560 | Break it.

00:34:40.360 | It turned out the credit card was stolen.

00:34:44.360 | Here we go.

00:34:49.200 | You know, who actually deserves credit for admitting? Well, he

00:34:55.440 | was wrong.

00:34:55.920 | Oh, we'll get to we'll get your flowers. Okay.

00:34:59.080 | It's coming. Here we go. Great transition. Great transition.

00:35:03.720 | Here we go. Elon versus the FCC. Another government agency is now

00:35:07.840 | targeting Elon. This is a little bit complicated. But let me

00:35:11.440 | explain on Tuesday, the FCC rejected starlinks application

00:35:14.560 | for 900 million in subsidies for rural broadband starlink

00:35:19.920 | originally won these back in 2020. When they agreed to

00:35:22.880 | provide high speed internet to 640,000 rural homes across 35

00:35:27.200 | states funding would have come from the RDF, rural digital

00:35:31.760 | opportunity fund, I guess the government is paying for

00:35:34.400 | expanding broadband services in rural areas. And starlink

00:35:38.440 | obviously is perfect for that. It's actually the only solution

00:35:40.880 | for this really, she can't run fiber to these locations. So the

00:35:45.400 | FCC found that starling quote had failed to meet its burden to

00:35:49.160 | be entitled to those funds. And here's the quote, FCC has a

00:35:54.120 | responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds

00:35:57.040 | meant to expand access to rural broadband not fund applicants

00:36:01.040 | that fail to meet basic program requirements. Brendan Carr, one

00:36:05.440 | of the FCC commissioners dissented from the agency's

00:36:08.680 | decision. And he did not hold back last year. So the quote

00:36:12.120 | after Elon acquired Twitter, President Biden gave federal

00:36:15.240 | agencies a green light to go after him. Today's decision

00:36:17.720 | certainly fits the Biden administration's pattern of

00:36:20.360 | regulatory harassment. This is a decision that cannot be

00:36:24.160 | explained by any objective application of law facts or

00:36:26.920 | policy car went on to explain how his decision was made and

00:36:31.320 | why it's unprecedented instead of applying the traditional FCC

00:36:33.920 | standards to the record evidence, which would have

00:36:37.240 | compelled the agency to confirm starlinks $885 million award,

00:36:41.120 | the FCC denied it on the grounds that starlink is not providing

00:36:44.840 | high speed internet service to all these locations today. As

00:36:48.320 | noted, the FCC is milestone does not kick in until 2025. Let me

00:36:52.320 | talk to you sacks thoughts on the Biden hit squad going after

00:36:56.280 | he

00:36:56.520 | I mean, I can't remember anything quite like this. This is

00:37:00.360 | absolutely extraordinary. I mean, you have a sitting member

00:37:03.440 | of the FCC telling us that the FCC is engaging in political

00:37:07.520 | retaliation. He sits on the board of the five commissioners

00:37:09.880 | of the FCC. They just canceled an $885 million contract to

00:37:13.840 | starlink. What was that contract for to provide rural internet

00:37:17.360 | service. Starlink is the only company that has that capability

00:37:20.680 | today. It's the only one that has that capability. If you look

00:37:23.960 | forward a few years, it is by far the best at providing

00:37:27.040 | broadband from space, which is the best way to get into these

00:37:29.560 | rural areas. So what did the commission do? Well, they

00:37:33.400 | cherrypicked they took speed test snapshots from to cherry

00:37:37.680 | pick moments in time. And so even that probably was not an

00:37:40.960 | accurate reflection of where starlink is today. But they then

00:37:44.240 | said based on those snapshots that starlink would not be able

00:37:47.120 | to meet the standards in three years. So remember the

00:37:50.520 | requirements that they're saying that starlink violated don't

00:37:54.800 | even have to be met for three years. So somehow they're saying

00:37:58.120 | that starlink will not get there in three years or preemptively

00:38:00.520 | judging the service to meet a standard that is not even

00:38:04.640 | required to meet today. And nobody else is even close to

00:38:07.840 | meeting the standard. So Elon's response to this was, guys, okay,

00:38:12.120 | if you're going to cancel the contract for us, like just save

00:38:15.360 | the money because the competitors that you're giving it

00:38:18.280 | to have even less of a service than we do. Yeah, so just like

00:38:22.240 | save the taxpayer the money, but they're not doing that. So this

00:38:26.600 | is really remarkable. And what car said here is that the Biden

00:38:31.880 | administration is choosing prioritizes political and

00:38:34.000 | ideological goals at the expense of connecting Americans, we can

00:38:37.040 | and should reverse course. This is now part of a pattern of the

00:38:41.360 | federal government harassing Elon and his companies. And it

00:38:44.640 | all stems from Biden at that press conference saying, we got

00:38:47.940 | to look at the sky. You know, like Tony Soprano, yeah, we got

00:38:51.040 | to look at the sky, you know, whatever. I mean, it was. And so

00:38:55.840 | since that's a nice restaurant, you got to be terrible if

00:38:58.120 | anything ever happened to it. Yeah, Jake, I can't do it. In

00:39:02.080 | any event. So Biden says this press conference, we got to look

00:39:05.400 | at the sky. And since then, they've investigated Tesla for

00:39:08.560 | supposedly building a glass house, which I didn't know was a

00:39:11.320 | crime. That's amazing. Yeah. SpaceX, which is partially a

00:39:16.920 | defense contractor was sued by the DOJ because they were hiring

00:39:20.320 | too many Americans and didn't, they weren't hiring enough

00:39:23.760 | refugees into sensitive national security roles, that they would

00:39:27.800 | surely be sued for doing if that was confounding. Yeah. And now

00:39:31.520 | they're they've canceled a contract for SpaceX, having the

00:39:34.880 | best service in the space, but somehow missing a goal that

00:39:38.580 | they're not required to meet for three years. This is harassment.

00:39:42.120 | It's transparent. Yeah. And the question I have is, do we want

00:39:45.480 | to live in a country where the government can engage in this

00:39:48.880 | kind of naked political retaliation against its critics?

00:39:52.920 | And I have to say, you know, there was a there was a time in

00:39:55.840 | America where, you know, Nixon was roundly attacked for having

00:40:00.040 | this quote, unquote, enemies list, where supposedly, you

00:40:03.160 | know, he had made a list of all his enemies and the IRS was

00:40:05.640 | auditing them. Okay, we are so far beyond that point. And the

00:40:09.880 | media isn't interested at all. And no one's really interested

00:40:13.960 | unless you like what Elon's doing. But if you don't, you

00:40:17.360 | know, if you're on the opposite side of the political spectrum,

00:40:19.280 | as Elon, you don't care. And there's nobody who's willing to

00:40:23.120 | say in a neutral way that political retaliation should not

00:40:26.000 | be part of our system.

00:40:26.840 | I mean, we have a presidential candidate running specifically

00:40:31.160 | saying I am your retribution. I mean, this is something that

00:40:33.360 | has to stop across all of politics, nobody should be using

00:40:37.080 | their political power to do any retribution against any buddy,

00:40:40.160 | they should be operating the government efficiently, and the

00:40:43.400 | best interest of all Americans.

00:40:45.200 | Okay, so maybe I don't like that rhetoric from Trump. I don't

00:40:47.920 | think it's helpful. But what did Trump ever do? That's in this

00:40:50.880 | league. I mean, everything they accused Trump of doing the

00:40:54.640 | fascism, the retribution, and all that kind of stuff. Seems to

00:40:57.560 | me the Biden administration is doing here.

00:40:59.320 | Yeah, well, I mean, he says he's gonna do it. He says the first

00:41:02.040 | thing he's gonna do is go after journalists. And

00:41:03.840 | do you think Trump did no retribution when he was in

00:41:06.040 | office?

00:41:06.480 | I mean, we have to look through every single issue. One doesn't

00:41:14.120 | come off the top of my head. I'm trying to remember if he ever

00:41:16.400 | said, I'm going to go after this person or that person. I don't

00:41:19.080 | remember an instance of him saying

00:41:20.360 | he said, lock her up. That wasn't he never did it. Trump

00:41:24.040 | was all talk in this respect. He didn't actually do it.

00:41:26.760 | Yes, this is what Peter Thiel said, like, you know, his great

00:41:29.480 | quote about him, like, just look at his actions, not what he

00:41:31.760 | says. He say brattles, and he says he's going to do

00:41:34.720 | retribution against everybody. But you know, then he doesn't.

00:41:36.960 | So

00:41:37.260 | tomorrow, even talking about Trump in this context is a

00:41:39.440 | deflection to account the action is being taken by the Biden

00:41:42.040 | administration. They've now weaponized multiple federal

00:41:44.320 | agencies to go after Ilan on these cases that seem

00:41:47.280 | transparently trumped up a glass house, not hiring enough

00:41:51.480 | refugees to national security roles. It's obviously a

00:41:54.720 | contract for the for Starlink, which is by far the best rural

00:41:57.800 | internet service. How do you even justify it? These cases on

00:42:01.560 | there? I'm not just 100% I'm in 100% agreement. You think

00:42:06.080 | there's this is politically motivated harassment of Ilan by

00:42:09.400 | the Biden administration? 100% He said it. He said it and he

00:42:12.600 | didn't invite him to the EV sun. So you just take Biden at his

00:42:15.440 | actions. If you don't invite by if you don't invite you on to

00:42:18.440 | the EV summit. It's obvious that he's got it in for this guy. And

00:42:22.280 | now it's obvious he's told people to, you know,

00:42:25.200 | investigate him and harass him. It's obvious.

00:42:27.360 | So why do you think they don't like him? Why do you think

00:42:30.800 | Biden doesn't like?

00:42:31.600 | Why doesn't Biden like him? Because he's non union. It's

00:42:34.640 | obvious. That's the that's the beginning and end of it. I mean,

00:42:37.280 | I'm sure the freedom of speech things and, you know, Twitter

00:42:40.080 | doesn't help. But this predates, Biden is a union guy. And he

00:42:44.760 | will not have non union people. He will not support non union

00:42:47.960 | people. He is bought and sold by the unions. That's 100% anyone

00:42:50.800 | said that.

00:42:51.200 | That may be how it started. But I think you're underrating the

00:42:54.320 | free speech aspect.

00:42:55.480 | Oh, I said it could have to do with that. But it's definitely

00:42:58.960 | that's the number one issue.

00:43:00.080 | More importantly, you're saying enabling dissenting voices

00:43:03.840 | strongly dissent. Absolutely. I think I think that from the get

00:43:07.320 | go, they have sought to exercise control over the Twitter

00:43:12.000 | formerly Twitter now x platform, because it is the town square

00:43:16.160 | for political speech.

00:43:17.240 | Oh, they succeeded. They succeeded the FBI, everybody

00:43:20.000 | total control of it until Elon somehow bought the company which

00:43:23.160 | was not in their plans. Frankly, that was just a fluke. I mean,

00:43:25.920 | that was something that Elon did out of the blue, because he

00:43:28.480 | cares a lot about free speech. And he opened up the Twitter

00:43:31.520 | jails and, you know, stop the censorship and open up the

00:43:35.040 | Twitter files, we found out that this was not just a private

00:43:37.480 | company acting on its own. It was being directed or

00:43:43.000 | encouraged by

00:43:44.600 | they were giving them a list of tweets saying, Hey, these tweets

00:43:48.680 | probably

00:43:49.160 | Yeah, you know, and the FBI acting as the quote unquote

00:43:53.760 | belly button of the whole federal government, directing

00:43:56.160 | all these takedown requests, totally unamerican.

00:43:58.040 | I think that the pattern of actions more than anything,

00:44:01.280 | mandates that Biden and his team actually have to address

00:44:05.840 | publicly why it is not retribution. The absence of

00:44:09.520 | doing that the absence of doing that at this point, is going to

00:44:12.520 | be more damaging to them than just letting things go on and

00:44:15.640 | claiming down the road. Hey, this is all part of the normal

00:44:18.320 | course of business. Now, the guy does

00:44:20.920 | what why would they address it? Why do they have to address the

00:44:23.640 | media doesn't hold them accountable. The media doesn't

00:44:25.160 | report it. The media pretended like the Twitter files never

00:44:27.040 | even happened. Remember that zero mainstream media coverage

00:44:30.040 | of the Twitter files? Zero mainstream media coverage of

00:44:34.440 | these retaliatory lawsuits? Why would the administration need to

00:44:37.200 | explain itself? Why would they even talk about it? The fix is

00:44:39.960 | in? Well, I mean, now the question is being I think the

00:44:43.120 | mainstream media are stenographers for one side of

00:44:45.840 | the political spectrum, which is precisely the reason did you

00:44:48.680 | guys? It's precisely the reason why they're so upset with Elon

00:44:52.400 | with opening up free speech on Twitter, because they had total

00:44:56.040 | control of the public discourse until he did that.

00:44:58.920 | Did you see that thing this morning where somebody called

00:45:01.960 | out the New York Times for selectively editing what Hunter

00:45:05.400 | Biden said to make it more broad, broad? Do you see that

00:45:10.020 | Jason?

00:45:10.360 | Yeah, he basically said my father has not financially been

00:45:14.200 | involved in my businesses. And the New York Times took out the

00:45:17.320 | word financially, to make it more broad to say he's not been

00:45:20.200 | involved in my business. He was involved in his business is

00:45:23.000 | really? Yeah, yeah. And then there's a clip where they show

00:45:26.080 | the article. And they show and then they show his interview.

00:45:29.360 | And the interview is very clear. He says it, but the New York

00:45:32.200 | Times headline omits the word, and doesn't doesn't put it in a

00:45:35.640 | bracket so that it shows that it was edited. It shows that that

00:45:38.240 | was the quote. Can you pull it off? You have? Do you have that

00:45:40.720 | thing? Yeah, crazy. Let me find it. That's crazy.

00:45:44.640 | I mean, I would like to think there's a possibility this was a

00:45:47.400 | mistake. But man, it's pretty bad. I mean, this is really bad

00:45:50.280 | by the New York Times. And they got to figure out who actually

00:45:53.400 | took that word out. Because it's pretty clear Biden was very

00:45:56.960 | involved in hunters businesses. And that's why he put that word

00:46:01.080 | financially in there. Because he was on, I think he's on all the

00:46:05.600 | documents as being part of it. And he's in the emails. So he

00:46:10.360 | was a branch.

00:46:10.920 | There it is. Thank you, Nick, you're very good at finding

00:46:13.920 | these things. Okay. So if you look on the left, that's the

00:46:16.680 | article in the New York Times. And it's clear that that was the

00:46:21.360 | quote. And then if you play it on the right, it's actually what

00:46:23.920 | he said,

00:46:24.400 | let me state as clearly as I can. My father was not

00:46:29.200 | financially involved in my business.

00:46:31.240 | Wow. Yeah. And then quotes as clear as I can. My father was

00:46:36.320 | not involved in my business. Now. If in journalism, you could

00:46:40.520 | put an ellipsis after involved, you know, three dots in but why

00:46:45.840 | would you do that? This is like breaking very basic journalistic

00:46:48.560 | standards. My point, there's like a format, right? When you

00:46:50.960 | edit out a word like that? Yeah, you would only edit out a word

00:46:54.080 | if it was superfluous. And you wanted to have a tighter quote,

00:46:57.440 | you have the person said, Ah, you can take that out. And if

00:47:00.640 | you were taking out a long quote, you put three dots, and

00:47:03.280 | then you would show that you cut the quote, there was something

00:47:06.120 | in between. And then you went to that. In the case of something

00:47:08.520 | this important, you would never take out a keyword like that.

00:47:12.480 | That was this is just journalism one on one. So I mean, if this

00:47:15.840 | happens, man, it is, it's the keyword in the sentence, by the

00:47:20.240 | way, it's the keyword in the sentence, it is the keyword in

00:47:22.600 | the sentence. So if the person took it out, man, who took it

00:47:25.640 | out. And this is the problem with the New York Times is they

00:47:28.600 | bury their corrections, they need to, and this is back to

00:47:32.280 | accountability, you're saying Freeberg, the Biden

00:47:34.120 | administration has to explain why they excluded Elon from the

00:47:37.240 | EV summits. And the New York Times needs to explain why they

00:47:40.080 | did this, or else, you know, the mind wanders that there's some

00:47:43.480 | conspiracy going on here or targeting. And I wonder if they

00:47:46.780 | changed. Well, here's the live story. Is it changed in the

00:47:48.720 | story? Did they change it yet? Luke Broadwater, I mean, Luke

00:47:52.680 | Broadwater, is that a name from central casting? That's not a

00:47:55.200 | real name, is it?

00:47:55.920 | I don't know. Let's say they post a correction.

00:47:57.960 | Oh, here we go. Correction. An earlier version of this article

00:48:00.280 | misquoted Hunter Biden, you said my father was not financial. It

00:48:02.840 | was not my father. So the only room I have here is if the

00:48:06.960 | person was live transcribing it, maybe, and they left it out.

00:48:10.320 | But this is too important to not have a fact checker go through

00:48:12.880 | it. And to have to get called out on it to fix it. He just

00:48:16.200 | shows how far the

00:48:17.000 | Jake Allah putting on the front page, I did not kill that

00:48:22.040 | person. And then a day later, it buried in page 812. I actually

00:48:26.640 | did kill that person.

00:48:27.640 | I mean, if the correction at the bottom of the story is good,

00:48:31.880 | everybody sees the front page, very, very people you would

00:48:34.920 | agree with me very, very few people see the correction in the

00:48:37.240 | old days, they would put the correction on like, a two a three

00:48:40.280 | of the paper, and it would be small and be at the bottom in

00:48:43.160 | the digital age, you put the correction at the bottom of the

00:48:45.280 | article. So it's a little bit better. But the truth is, most

00:48:47.960 | people don't go to the bottom of the article. So there's an

00:48:50.680 | argument to put corrections at the top of the article. But

00:48:53.440 | journalists don't want to admit when they're wrong. I think that

00:48:56.280 | I saw I saw a list of all of the organization's investigating

00:49:00.520 | Ilan. And what was surprising was how broad some of these

00:49:05.800 | organizations felt that they had a mandate to look into him. So

00:49:10.760 | there was like, I want to say, Nick, maybe you can find this on

00:49:13.520 | Twitter, but they had a list of them. And it was like, the Bureau

00:49:16.280 | of Land Management investigation. I mean, it just

00:49:20.280 | makes no sense. Like, it just does not smell right.

00:49:24.360 | In fairness, Ilan is involved in many, many very important

00:49:28.560 | projects. So there would be a lot of agencies that speaks to

00:49:31.080 | overregulation. And then you have to drill down and say,

00:49:33.400 | okay, when are they actually targeting him? And so that's

00:49:36.440 | going to be a lot of parsing wildlife, you know, health and

00:49:40.160 | human housing. I mean, it's a list goes on. You might have a

00:49:42.400 | fishing story.

00:49:43.040 | You fish in the wrong pond or what?

00:49:45.560 | No, I think my understanding of it is, you know, at Starbase,

00:49:50.600 | there's some estuaries or something. And there was a lot

00:49:54.680 | of estuary. I mean, yes, we protect animals and whatever.

00:49:59.680 | This is something that happens all over the country, where

00:50:02.880 | California is actually probably the leader in this, but I think

00:50:06.240 | some crabs might have got burned, not in a barbecue, but

00:50:09.760 | by the rocket. I mean, literally, that and then this is

00:50:13.160 | this, this speaks to what risk Are we willing to take to make

00:50:15.920 | progress as humanity? freeburg? Remember, we had this discussion

00:50:18.720 | about self driving cars? Like, if getting to Mars and being

00:50:23.040 | multi planetary kills some crabs, I think we should be okay

00:50:26.240 | with that. In fact, if it decimated, I mean, it's not

00:50:29.880 | decimated, but let's just say 100 square miles got decimated

00:50:32.800 | by getting to Mars on planet Earth. Well, you'd make that

00:50:35.440 | trade off, right?

00:50:36.160 | Yeah, it's a I mean, this is the same standard. I think I feel

00:50:40.440 | around if there's a mouse infestation in my house, I'm not

00:50:44.400 | going to let the mice live in my house, even though I'm completely

00:50:48.000 | ethically against killing animals, killing animals to eat

00:50:52.040 | when I have other options, I'm against and I think animal

00:50:54.840 | testing and medical applications, I have a totally

00:50:57.520 | different standard than I think what is standard in the market

00:50:59.680 | today. So for me, it's like a pretty sensitive topic, because

00:51:02.920 | my ethics are don't kill animals unless absolutely necessary. And

00:51:06.160 | the question is, what is necessary? What is the

00:51:07.760 | definition of necessary? And so these sorts of points that

00:51:10.360 | you're making about, you know, if it gets all humans to Mars,

00:51:13.680 | that might be a trade off worth making for some crabs. I don't

00:51:16.680 | you know, it's like,

00:51:17.520 | probably hard to understand the analogy here. Are you saying

00:51:20.520 | that he wants the mouse? The rocket may have killed the mouse

00:51:25.320 | the regulators on the house. Wait, what's the who's the mouse

00:51:28.280 | and who's the house? The house is the rocket ship. Clearly,

00:51:32.080 | the mouse is the mouse in the house, right? Yeah, yeah. Let's

00:51:35.480 | pull up this quote from Brendan Carr is the FCC Commissioner. I

00:51:38.360 | thought this is amazing. This list is incredible. This is the

00:51:41.920 | FCC Commissioner. He said. He said the DOJ, FAA, FTC, NLRB,

00:51:47.880 | SDNY, and FWS, I guess it's Fish and Wildlife have all taken

00:51:52.040 | action. The FCC now joins them. Man, that's incredible. Yeah,

00:51:56.000 | it's a little bit nuts. Look at that Biden quote, where I didn't

00:51:59.320 | actually know about the second part. I knew about the first

00:52:01.120 | part where he says we got to take a look at this guy. But

00:52:03.680 | then he was asked how this President Biden responded.

00:52:07.200 | There's a lot of ways a lot. You know, you know, there's a lot

00:52:09.640 | of ways. There's a lot of ways to get to somebody. I can get to

00:52:13.320 | you, you might be able to get to me, I might be able to get to

00:52:15.960 | you. And, you know, maybe you watch it back.

00:52:18.760 | You know what else Biden said? There's a lot of ways is when he

00:52:24.320 | was talking about the the Nord Stream Pipeline. And he said,

00:52:28.600 | that pipeline is not going to move forward. And then they said,

00:52:32.120 | Yeah, but the press said to him, Yeah, but that's that's like a

00:52:35.160 | German Russian project. Like how? What's your involvement?

00:52:38.600 | He said, we got ways that a lot of ways we got ways. Wow.

00:52:43.680 | Ouch. Okay, so on the counterpoint, obviously, Elon

00:52:46.520 | has several pretty sprawling businesses. He has self

00:52:49.560 | driving cars, right? And they push that, right, they push the

00:52:52.240 | envelope on, you know, where there's an existing regulatory

00:52:56.240 | framework, same with going to Mars, right, same with

00:52:58.760 | transmitting internet services, wireless communications, like,

00:53:01.840 | you know, there is a regulatory framework for all of these

00:53:03.920 | businesses. And he's on the bleeding edge, and typically

00:53:06.400 | beyond the framework to some degree. So I think it's like

00:53:08.840 | worth acknowledging, at least that there's a necessity of

00:53:13.080 | scrutiny and involvement in these agencies, given that they

00:53:15.240 | do have regulatory authority and responsibility over these various

00:53:19.560 | businesses. And he's well beyond where anyone else is in each of

00:53:22.480 | them. So I just want to acknowledge that hold on me

00:53:24.400 | respond to that. Yeah. He's well beyond where other people are in

00:53:28.080 | his industry in terms of innovation. He's the first to

00:53:30.600 | acknowledge because I've heard him say this many times that

00:53:32.640 | he's in highly regulated industries. And they've got, you

00:53:36.160 | know, massive compliance programs at Tesla and SpaceX and

00:53:39.920 | all these different companies. What we're judging these

00:53:43.480 | regulatory agencies on is not that there's a need to regulate

00:53:47.880 | Elon's companies within the framework of their industries,

00:53:51.080 | but rather the specific actions that are being brought. Remember,

00:53:56.560 | DOJ suing SpaceX for not hiring enough refugees, right, Tesla

00:54:01.840 | being sued on this glass house business, whatever that is,

00:54:04.720 | right. Now, those are voluntary actions in the SEC cancelling a

00:54:08.400 | contract. Yeah, three years speak volumes. Yeah, exactly

00:54:12.840 | three years before the they even need to judge that contract

00:54:16.680 | whether that contract's been met.

00:54:17.920 | 100% of things that happened this week, which I think is

00:54:20.960 | important along this vein is that the IRS is in charge of

00:54:24.640 | making sure that you can claim the $7500 EV tax credit for cars.

00:54:28.440 | And a lot of us that have been looking at this issue, the way

00:54:32.440 | that they break the EV tax credit is in half. And part of

00:54:36.320 | it is about where the material is sourced. And part of it has

00:54:39.680 | to do with the total sum of certain components of the car

00:54:43.240 | and how much of those are made in the US, etc. Okay. And it was

00:54:48.880 | presumed, just based on the trend that Tesla would lose half

00:54:52.800 | the credit, keep half the credit. And in a bit of a

00:54:55.680 | surprising move, they the IRS came out and said the whole

00:54:59.720 | thing, we're not going to acknowledge anymore. So Tesla

00:55:02.200 | had to go and put on the website that the credit ends as of

00:55:06.280 | December 31. So I would add the IRS to this to this list as

00:55:11.040 | well. That's so crazy. So I got to be investigated. I like

00:55:13.680 | freeberg suggestion that prove to us that you're not doing this

00:55:18.800 | at this point. Because it's pretty clear that it is

00:55:21.800 | happening. And it's all good luck.

00:55:24.360 | Good luck getting them to do that. Just on the on that EV

00:55:28.360 | subsidy, you know, one of the perverse things about this is

00:55:31.600 | that the administration is putting the thumb on the scales

00:55:35.120 | against Elon in favor of these less innovative competitors who

00:55:39.960 | have worse products. So like Elon said, if you want to

00:55:43.600 | cancel our contract for Starlink to provide this rural

00:55:47.160 | broadband, that's fine to save taxpayers the money. But by all

00:55:50.680 | means don't then give the money to these other services I can't

00:55:53.440 | deliver. What's the point of that? And same thing on the

00:55:55.720 | electric cars. I mean, the subsidy is going to these other

00:55:58.680 | car companies that make worse products.

00:56:00.560 | Yeah, totally. This is the key point. The The fact is, all of

00:56:04.160 | those people who just had their Starlink cancel through the

00:56:06.440 | government, I guarantee you, they will buy Starlink, because

00:56:11.200 | it's the best product. So irony of ironies, they're just gonna

00:56:14.720 | go spend 60 7080 bucks a month to put their own Starlinks in

00:56:17.760 | like everybody else around the world who lives rurally. I have

00:56:20.800 | Starlink one more thing to add the under pressure from

00:56:24.480 | regulators, they announced a recall on Tuesday of 2 million

00:56:28.360 | cars to to fix some of the autopilot software.

00:56:31.640 | Yeah, but that's an over the air update. So the press went crazy

00:56:34.320 | about that, right?

00:56:35.000 | No, no, no. What I'm saying is, if you read that, if you read

00:56:37.680 | the article, that over the air update is specifically because

00:56:41.120 | of, again, how it's written, regulatory pressure to change

00:56:46.040 | how the software behaves some tuning and some edge cases. My

00:56:49.160 | point is that one could guess that there is an attempt here to

00:56:53.960 | kind of do the death by 1000 cuts approach, right? So the

00:56:57.480 | drip drip water torture of just like, a thing over here, a thing

00:57:00.800 | over here, a thing over here, a thing over here, eventually

00:57:03.040 | companies can get distracted and misfire. And so the question I

00:57:09.840 | do think is like, you know, does it make us better off if all of

00:57:13.320 | these little ticky tacky footfalls are enforced by the

00:57:18.080 | government? I think I think we all know what the answer is. No,

00:57:21.240 | we have an example that Microsoft got so distracted by

00:57:24.360 | their court cases that the company went sideways for a

00:57:26.560 | decade.

00:57:26.840 | Well, but I mean, I think there was a lot of good basis for that

00:57:31.280 | particular entity trials and antitrust case and Microsoft

00:57:33.440 | clearly had a monopoly just on the recall thing. I did see that

00:57:36.120 | story at the top of drudge or whatever last week, whereas it

00:57:39.240 | said, every Tesla has to be recalled. In when I see the word

00:57:43.760 | recall, yes, I think that means you got to bring it to the

00:57:46.240 | dealership and get like some part swapped out. But that's not

00:57:49.600 | what happened.

00:57:50.160 | No, well, so what's so interesting is they refuse in

00:57:52.320 | these articles, I can show you the New York Times version of

00:57:54.440 | it. They refuse to write that it's actually an OTA update to

00:57:57.800 | breaking news. I don't know if you guys saw this, but a billion

00:58:00.480 | five iPhones were just recalled for the 17.2 update. So

00:58:04.560 | everybody's gonna have to bring their iPhones in 1.5 billion

00:58:08.040 | iPhones recall, bring it to the store. Yeah, you got to bring it

00:58:10.840 | to the store. And then they give you this new journal app. I

00:58:13.160 | don't know if you got it in the latest update. But Apple made a

00:58:15.920 | journaling app so that you can have more anonymity. Yeah, so

00:58:18.960 | that's the recall. Yeah, it's total recall. All right, listen,

00:58:21.960 | now we keep the red meat going. Saks is cooking with oil. Alex

00:58:25.320 | Jones, the controversial conspiracy commentator of info

00:58:29.840 | wars fame is back on Twitter after Ilan did a poll. He got 2

00:58:33.760 | million people to respond asking if he should be reinstated 70%

00:58:37.280 | said yes, of course, Jones encouraged fans to vote in this

00:58:40.080 | poll. So I'm not sure how scientific it is. For

00:58:41.960 | background, Twitter permanently banned Jones in 2018 after

00:58:45.440 | accusing him of posting direct threats of violence and hate

00:58:47.960 | speech. It already received bans from Apple, Facebook, and

00:58:51.280 | YouTube is pretty much the the number one person to be D

00:58:55.200 | platform. As you know, Jones was ordered to pay $1.5 billion to

00:59:00.320 | the families of eight Sandy Hook victims. This is across two

00:59:05.840 | cases in Texas and Connecticut. And here is Jones in his own

00:59:09.760 | words on the Sandy Hook parents.

00:59:11.400 | Sandy Hook, it's got inside job written all over it. Sandy Hook

00:59:16.760 | is a synthetic, completely fake with actors. In my view,

00:59:22.560 | manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first the Newtown kids.

00:59:25.680 | They take them put them in our face. Tell us their names who

00:59:29.800 | they were. I heard an ad this morning on the radio Bloomberg

00:59:33.560 | paid for locally going. I dropped Billy off and watched

00:59:38.160 | him go around the corner. And he never came back all because of

00:59:41.800 | the guns. Won't you just turn your guns in for my son? Why'd

00:59:46.400 | you do it to him gun owners? Forgive my language, but that

00:59:50.000 | guy. Okay, there it is. We have that guy. But let me censor him.

00:59:56.680 | Unfortunately, I absolutely cannot stand that. That is just

01:00:01.040 | like heart wrenching, like evil, awful spewing out of his mouth.

01:00:06.640 | And he still, you know, should have a right to speak. But that

01:00:11.040 | guy, I was never a big crier. Part of it was just my defense

01:00:16.080 | mechanism. And I remember Sandy Hook, because I had just become

01:00:21.760 | a parent. I had, I think, two kids by that point. And I was

01:00:28.320 | uncontrollably crying when that happened. And it was the first

01:00:31.640 | time I realized how you change as a parent and you just develop

01:00:35.720 | this empathy. And then you realize how precious kids lives

01:00:40.520 | are. And I become more and more of a crier as my kids have grown

01:00:46.040 | older. And I really appreciate that what my kids have done for

01:00:50.640 | me. So when I hear him talk like that, I guess he has a right to

01:00:56.840 | say what he wants, but he is a complete piece.

01:00:59.360 | Yeah. Okay, so let's get into this very difficult question.

01:01:03.960 | In fact, I don't want to force you to defend, you know, one of

01:01:07.640 | those horrible humans. I think we can all agree.

01:01:10.240 | Well, my position is pretty similar with the other guys

01:01:12.160 | said, which is what he said was odious. However, that doesn't

01:01:15.760 | necessarily mean he should be censored. We have standards. We

01:01:18.600 | have First Amendment standards around

01:01:20.040 | I agree with that.

01:01:21.680 | So first of all, me back up. I mean, I didn't even really know

01:01:23.880 | who Alex Jones was. I mean, I only knew him because of the

01:01:27.120 | controversy. I've never actually listened to a show. I'm not

01:01:29.320 | really interested in what he has to say. I do think that if

01:01:34.280 | you're going to play this clip of his mistake going back many

01:01:37.360 | years, you should supplement it by playing a clip of what he

01:01:41.120 | says now. And what he says now is, he's apologized, he's

01:01:44.520 | admitted he made a mistake. He basically bought into a

01:01:47.600 | conspiracy theory. But it wasn't just him saying it. Apparently

01:01:51.040 | he had some people on the show, who I don't know if they were

01:01:54.120 | purported experts or what, but they were making a case that the

01:01:57.720 | whole Sandy Hook thing was a hoax. And it was being done to

01:02:02.080 | basically, you know, get people's guns. I mean, look,

01:02:04.880 | it's nutty stuff. I'm not defending it in any way. But he

01:02:07.600 | explained that he bought into that, into that theory or hoax

01:02:11.160 | or whatever. And he thinks it's a terrible mistake, and he's

01:02:14.640 | apologized for it. And the question is, are you going to

01:02:17.840 | have a lifetime ban on somebody for saying things that were

01:02:22.440 | wrong and odious, when they have now apologized? And for me, it's

01:02:27.400 | not about Alex Jones, it's about censorship. Remember, when this

01:02:33.480 | case happened way back in 2018, it was really hard to defend

01:02:37.600 | keeping this guy on the platform in light of what he had said and

01:02:40.920 | done, because everyone's reacting very emotionally to

01:02:43.680 | it. And it was people like defenders of free speech, like

01:02:47.120 | Len Greenwald, who said that, listen, if you take Alex Jones

01:02:51.040 | out now, if you have a permanent ban, it will basically be a

01:02:54.560 | slippery slope, and it will create a precedent, and other

01:02:57.720 | people will get banned. And sure enough, just two years later,

01:03:01.200 | Twitter was banning people like Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford

01:03:04.880 | doctor for saying dissident things about COVID that turned

01:03:08.560 | out to be completely correct. Marie authored the Great

01:03:11.000 | Barrington Declaration, talk about how lockdowns wouldn't

01:03:13.760 | work, and so on. And so even within two years of this

01:03:18.280 | decision around Alex Jones, the censorship was totally out of

01:03:21.840 | control. And so I think the people who warned us that Alex

01:03:25.520 | Jones would become a slippery slope ended up being completely

01:03:27.560 | correct. To me, that's the symbolism of the restoration of

01:03:31.440 | Alex Jones's account. It's not endorsing what he did. It's not

01:03:34.840 | saying that what he said wasn't odious. I mean, look, again, I

01:03:40.040 | have zero interest in even listening to the guy. But the

01:03:43.240 | point is that free speech does requires to put up with people

01:03:48.160 | who are wrong people who are even hateful, sometimes, and

01:03:53.320 | stating misinformation, people who put out misinformation.

01:03:56.960 | That's what free speech requires us to do. And if you want a

01:04:01.920 | different standard, it's going to become a precedent for a lot

01:04:04.480 | of censorship that you don't like.

01:04:05.680 | I agree with sacks. The only place where I disagree with sacks

01:04:08.520 | is on Twitter, not having a right to do this as a private

01:04:13.560 | enterprise. I think Twitter had a decision to make on what kind

01:04:16.120 | of editorial position they wanted to do with the content on

01:04:19.120 | their platform on their product. And they made a choice. I don't

01:04:22.120 | think that I think it was the wrong choice, personally. And

01:04:25.280 | we've talked about this in the past. I think, you know, it's

01:04:27.640 | it's great that Elon's making a different choice and create

01:04:31.240 | catering to a, you know, a different audience, perhaps,

01:04:33.760 | with a different product that has more open speech. But that's

01:04:37.920 | not, you know, a government free speech mandate. That's a private

01:04:42.200 | enterprise mandate. And I do believe in the right to free

01:04:45.440 | speech, I think it's a little bit ironic to say that it's

01:04:50.880 | inappropriate when someone says something that is

01:04:52.960 | misinformation, because it's incorrect or unprovable. When we

01:04:57.840 | have an entire group of people that believe in something called

01:05:02.000 | religion, and much of religion is based on this concept of

01:05:04.960 | faith and belief without necessarily hard proof or

01:05:08.960 | evidence. And we allow religion religious speech, you know, in

01:05:13.760 | many forums, without saying, hey, that's misinformation, or

01:05:17.000 | hey, it's not true, or hey, it doesn't meet the standards of X

01:05:20.040 | or Y or Z, scientific assessment or understanding. And so I think

01:05:24.280 | it's just worth acknowledging that this whole concept that

01:05:26.560 | someone has to ultimately be the police of the truth, and the

01:05:29.360 | police of fact and the police of information is going to lead to

01:05:32.000 | a bad place. And I'd rather have more free speech with people

01:05:34.520 | saying misinformation and saying awful putrid things than one

01:05:38.160 | where a few people get to decide what everyone gets to hear. So

01:05:40.920 | as much as I absolutely despise this guy,

01:05:42.960 | you may be right that Twitter as a private company had the right

01:05:48.360 | as our laws currently exist to decide who they were going to

01:05:50.760 | suspend and ban from the site. However, once that censorship

01:05:54.320 | power was created, it attracted powerful entities from our

01:06:00.000 | government who wanted to co opt and use that power. That's what

01:06:02.600 | we saw in the Twitter files, right with the ad FBI agent

01:06:04.960 | sending takedown requests. That's what happens is, when you

01:06:08.320 | create the censorship power, people will abuse it, people

01:06:11.440 | abuse it, but but more to the point, it's such a tempting

01:06:16.880 | power to use by people in authority, right? It's like the

01:06:21.320 | ring of power, those tools that Twitter created, it's like they

01:06:26.040 | released a pheromone or something that attracted all

01:06:28.920 | these powerful shadowy actors from the federal government in

01:06:32.280 | the FBI and all these agencies. And so that that is why I think

01:06:36.360 | it's just very dangerous for even private companies to create

01:06:38.680 | these censorship regimes is that they can be co opted and abused

01:06:42.720 | being co opted and abused is the issue. I don't think that the

01:06:46.000 | issue is their choice in what kind of content they want to put

01:06:49.760 | out. You can go to the Netflix kids version of Netflix and

01:06:53.280 | kids, they control what content is on Netflix, and they provide

01:06:56.160 | a different version than what they provide to adults. And I

01:06:58.600 | think like editorializing the content platform that you're

01:07:01.040 | making available, whether it's user generated, or paid for or

01:07:04.320 | whatever, is a totally reasonable, like approach to

01:07:07.200 | running a business, a content business, the point you're

01:07:09.800 | making is the right one, which is the point at which you allow

01:07:12.840 | government agencies to intervene and have control and

01:07:16.160 | manipulation over private citizens user generated content

01:07:19.080 | is where I think it crossed the line. So I don't disagree with

01:07:21.960 | you on that point.

01:07:23.000 | May I ask two clarifying questions here, because I'm

01:07:25.400 | curious how you would handle this. If you were the CEO of x,

01:07:28.920 | formerly known as Twitter, would you have reinstated Alex Jones?

01:07:33.040 | Yes or no. And then number two, if Alex Jones, then as a new

01:07:37.920 | member of the community who's been reinstated and forgiven,

01:07:40.360 | because he apologized, and then he did this again, this exact

01:07:44.360 | same thing again, with another school shooting with parents,

01:07:48.520 | would you remove him for the platform?

01:07:50.280 | I don't know that these are yes or no questions. What I would

01:07:53.360 | say is that I've written what I think should be a speech policy

01:07:56.800 | for social media platforms, in a blog post I did several years

01:08:00.000 | ago. And what I said is that I would take First Amendment case

01:08:04.440 | law and operationalize it for social media platforms. There

01:08:10.320 | are nine categories of speech that the Supreme Court has said

01:08:13.200 | are not protected speech because they're dangerous in some way.

01:08:17.880 | So for example, incitement to violence is one of them, you

01:08:20.440 | know, harassment is one of them. So I would use

01:08:23.200 | this clearly falls under those two.

01:08:24.760 | Well, people, his fans went and knocked on the door. His fans.

01:08:30.320 | So as I understand the whole Sandy Hook thing, what happened

01:08:33.600 | is, he said the whole thing was a hoax. That obviously wasn't

01:08:36.080 | true. He paid a huge price for that. His fans, then some of his

01:08:40.840 | crazy fans went and harassed the parents, which obviously is not

01:08:44.440 | right. But according to him, he didn't. And I don't know that

01:08:48.680 | anyone's shown that he did that. I don't think he encouraged

01:08:51.280 | that. It just happened.

01:08:52.520 | By the

01:08:54.000 | chance. Well, of course he does. It's a conspiracy show. So

01:08:58.360 | knowing it's a conspiracy show, knowing that incitement to

01:09:01.640 | violence is one of your criteria. If his fans after him

01:09:05.280 | saying it's fake, then went to the house, knocked on the door

01:09:09.280 | and asked the parent to see little Susie because you know

01:09:12.640 | she's alive. Would you kick him off the platform?

01:09:16.080 | Listen,

01:09:17.120 | the Barrington declaration, the Barrington declaration was

01:09:22.000 | declared to be a conspiracy show. The idea that COVID

01:09:25.120 | originated in a lab was considered a conspiracy show. I

01:09:27.920 | don't think you can prejudge in advance that a show is, quote

01:09:33.200 | unquote, dangerous, factually wrong conspiracies. As I

01:09:37.800 | understand it again, I haven't watched the show, but I did

01:09:39.560 | watch a clip by Joe Rogan, who provided something of a

01:09:42.280 | character reference for Alex Jones. I don't know if Nick can

01:09:44.840 | find that and play that it was actually quite good. What Rogan

01:09:48.360 | said is look, I've known Alex Jones for like 30 years. He's

01:09:51.800 | had problems with alcohol abuse, substance abuse, whatever. He's

01:09:55.440 | had mental health issues that he's acknowledged. And sometimes

01:09:58.320 | he goes off the rails. At the same time, he's also been way

01:10:02.440 | ahead of the curve on certain things. For example, he told me

01:10:05.200 | about the Epstein Island, like 10 years before the story broke.

01:10:09.000 | I don't know how he figured that out. But somehow he did. Now

01:10:12.040 | that was a conspiracy theory until it was proven true. And it

01:10:16.120 | probably would have been a good thing for the public if that

01:10:17.960 | story had come out a lot sooner, so that it could have been shut

01:10:20.680 | down a lot sooner. So I don't think you can just judge in

01:10:23.640 | advance that somebody is a conspiracy theorist and basically

01:10:26.080 | blackball them from the internet. One other data point

01:10:29.000 | I want to bring up is that is something that Elon mentioned is

01:10:32.880 | that he looked at the Twitter tools, the admin tools to seek

01:10:38.200 | to look at Alex Jones's account and the third strike he

01:10:40.960 | received, that that caused him to be banned from the Twitter

01:10:45.520 | platform by the former management, was he actually

01:10:48.240 | insulted a reporter, which was a very borderline case. So, you

01:10:53.720 | know, the things that you're saying that he was banned for

01:10:56.520 | weren't even the reason he was banned.

01:10:57.960 | Yeah, no, that's true. I think. Yeah, so that's why I was

01:11:01.680 | framing it to you as, you know, and this is the issue that I

01:11:05.480 | think, and maybe what some people are missing here, a

01:11:08.680 | mentally ill person like himself, if he's admitted to

01:11:10.880 | mental illness and substance abuse, when they do this real

01:11:13.600 | when they when they go on these tirades, or they go off their

01:11:15.800 | meds, or whatever it is, or they're just evil, and they do

01:11:18.440 | this for ratings to make money, it starts to cause real world

01:11:21.960 | harm, people start showing up on these people's doorsteps. And so

01:11:24.760 | then, are you going to wait 10 years for the courts to do this

01:11:28.800 | $1.5 billion judgment, and then make the decision while real

01:11:32.320 | world harm is occurring. And if you own the platform, my belief

01:11:35.800 | is you have a higher standard, obviously believe in freedom of

01:11:38.120 | speech, he can make his own website. But if you own the

01:11:40.520 | platform, and the platform enables him to reach a large

01:11:43.000 | number of people, and those people are being harmed and

01:11:45.280 | parents, his doors are being knocked on demanding to see

01:11:47.280 | their children, because Alex Jones said that child is still

01:11:49.360 | alive, and they're trying to take our guns. And he knows his

01:11:52.440 | fans are crazy. There's responsibility that comes from

01:11:55.080 | it. And there's responsibility that comes with owning a

01:11:57.000 | platform like this. I know he wants going full freedom of

01:11:59.680 | speech, but I would be very careful about this.

01:12:01.920 | Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip was shot by a

01:12:05.360 | crazy Bernie Sanders supporter. Does that blame go to Bernie

01:12:08.440 | Sanders? I think we have to separate. There is hold on

01:12:12.400 | there. There is a legal standard for incitement. Okay, there's a

01:12:16.960 | legal standard for judging that you're saying that these crazy

01:12:20.120 | people were incited, but there is actually a legal way of

01:12:22.760 | determining that. I don't think that's been proven.

01:12:24.840 | I would do a common sense one, which is, do we see real world

01:12:28.800 | happening? I would just use common sense. Do we see real

01:12:31.000 | world happening? Okay, real world is happening. We own the

01:12:34.520 | platform, we need to stop this, which is what happened. That's a

01:12:37.720 | judgment standard, right? Yeah, I would I would make the

01:12:39.920 | judgment. If I was the CEO, I'd make the judgment. And I would

01:12:42.520 | make the judgment based on, you know, the courts are going to

01:12:45.120 | take years to adjudicate this. And it's my platform. I don't

01:12:48.120 | want this happening.

01:12:49.320 | I would operationalize a content moderation policy based on First

01:12:53.480 | Amendment case law, you're right that you can't always wait for

01:12:55.480 | the courts to adjudicate it, there's gonna be judgment calls.

01:12:57.640 | I would have been fine, I think, with the suspension of Alex

01:13:01.880 | Jones in that context, because it does seem pretty egregious,

01:13:04.680 | and he's apologized for it. The question is whether there should

01:13:06.840 | be lifetime bans. And I'm pretty much I think I'm against

01:13:11.920 | lifetime bans. I'm okay with timeouts. I'm okay with

01:13:14.080 | suspensions for egregious behavior. When somebody has

01:13:19.320 | apologized, they've, I mean, had to pay. I mean, I think he's

01:13:22.920 | been bankrupted. He's had to pay all these fines. I think he's

01:13:26.840 | paid his price to society, so to speak. And he's admitted he was

01:13:31.320 | wrong. The question is, do you still have the lifetime ban? It

01:13:34.360 | seems to me he's acknowledged his mistake. If he doesn't like

01:13:37.400 | this again, then you can suspend him. Maybe you do the ban. But I

01:13:41.640 | do believe in giving people second chances. And I'm just

01:13:44.880 | sort of viscerally against the lifetime banning people.

01:13:47.960 | I don't like the standard of what can be deemed dangerous

01:13:52.000 | speech, because I think that, as Zack said, there's a clear way

01:13:56.320 | to measure whether someone's inciting violence or inciting

01:13:59.000 | harm, versus saying speech that can be deemed dangerous in some

01:14:03.920 | contexts, and then not be deemed dangerous after the fact. COVID

01:14:08.120 | vaccine conversations are the perfect example. Telling people

01:14:11.600 | that there's health risks associated with taking a vaccine

01:14:14.360 | in the period when everyone was worried about a pandemic killing

01:14:17.920 | us all was deemed too dangerous to allow. And after the fact, it

01:14:22.320 | wasn't dangerous, because there was suddenly clear evidence that

01:14:25.400 | there may be some costs and benefits associated with the

01:14:27.800 | vaccines. And so I really don't like this standard of dangerous

01:14:31.160 | speech. In fact, I think that the biggest changes that are

01:14:34.040 | necessary in society initially start as dangerous speech, and

01:14:37.720 | then they eventually become true. And then they become a

01:14:40.160 | standard and then things change. My my repeated calls for

01:14:44.920 | reduction in fiscal spending at the federal level, and lack of

01:14:48.640 | accountability and fiscal spending at the federal level,

01:14:50.960 | by some measure could be deemed dangerous speech, and an

01:14:53.800 | incitement against the government. But really, my point

01:14:56.440 | is to call out the importance of this, like issue. And after the

01:15:00.720 | fact, I may be right, I may be wrong. And I need to be able to

01:15:04.520 | say that. I think it's critically important to say those

01:15:07.160 | sorts of things. And I think that other people in their own

01:15:08.920 | domains will find other things that are critically important to

01:15:11.520 | say, and that would be deemed by some standard to be dangerous at

01:15:14.640 | the time. So as much as I have great disdain for, you know,

01:15:19.520 | certain people and certain things that they may say, I do

01:15:22.520 | think that what might be deemed dangerous speech is a critical

01:15:25.000 | element of the kind of progressivism that's allowed the

01:15:29.200 | United States to prosper.

01:15:30.320 | I think it was dangerous speech, to promulgate the false

01:15:33.680 | conspiracy theory that Trump was an agent of Putin. I mean, that

01:15:37.480 | was in the steel dossier, they basically said that Putin had

01:15:40.360 | compromise on Trump, and Trump was basically working for the

01:15:44.320 | Kremlin. I mean, he was a traitor. I mean, what if there

01:15:47.880 | were people out there who tried to assassinate the President on

01:15:50.640 | the grounds that we can't have a traitor in the White House,

01:15:54.240 | that was a private document, right? That wasn't like a

01:15:56.080 | public

01:15:56.440 | absolutely leaked during the campaign.

01:15:58.960 | You make my point. Exactly. It's leaked, right. So there's like a

01:16:01.480 | private document by somebody.

01:16:02.920 | But then it was by BuzzFeed. And then once it was in the echo

01:16:06.680 | chamber was endlessly repeated by the mainstream media. So the

01:16:09.560 | idea that like only people like Alex Jones, promote conspiracy

01:16:15.400 | theories, the mainstream media promotes a lot of conspiracy

01:16:17.360 | theories. And some of those theories, if acted upon by crazy

01:16:20.640 | people, will be just as dangerous as the things that

01:16:24.040 | Alex Jones has said,

01:16:24.880 | you're in hypothetical, but actually, I think you and I are

01:16:27.840 | not too far apart, you wanting to take these harms and

01:16:31.280 | operationalize them is sort of what I'm saying. And in each of

01:16:34.200 | these cases, it's a judgment call. And this is where I think,

01:16:36.920 | you know, I, in many ways, I'm proud of what you want is doing

01:16:40.800 | and saying, like, freedom of speech is an absolute thing. And

01:16:43.120 | that's what the platform is going to be his right to do it.

01:16:45.480 | It's his platform. And so I'm fine with that, I would I would

01:16:49.000 | do something different if it was my platform. Everybody's

01:16:51.320 | different, you know, everybody can can take their stance, I

01:16:54.000 | would have some basic humanity as my stance. And I'd be willing

01:16:58.520 | to give up a little freedom of speech in my restaurant in my

01:17:01.440 | cafe. In order to have it be more delightful for everybody

01:17:04.760 | there. I wouldn't go as far as banning people talking about

01:17:07.280 | COVID. But yeah, if somebody was trying to claim that parents of

01:17:11.240 | murdered children were liars and actors, that would be fine for

01:17:14.560 | me to say, yeah, no good. And then, of course, there's Kanye.

01:17:17.680 | So you know, Ilan ban Kanye, that was under his realm. And

01:17:20.680 | this is what Kanye said. And I think this falls into hate

01:17:23.160 | speech and real world time. I'm a bit sleepy tonight. But when I

01:17:25.800 | wake up, I'm going death, death, con three on Jewish people. The

01:17:30.120 | funny thing is, I actually can't be anti semitic, because black

01:17:32.840 | people are actually Jew. Also, you guys have played with me and

01:17:35.920 | tried to blackball anyone whoever opposes your agenda. So

01:17:38.760 | when you see this tweet, would you have banned him sex? Or is

01:17:41.720 | I might have given him a timeout? I think his family

01:17:44.920 | wanted him to get a timeout because he was having an

01:17:47.440 | episode. I certainly wouldn't give him a lifetime ban. Give me

01:17:50.080 | a year or something. Look, I don't really know this Alex

01:17:53.160 | Jones guy. I certainly don't know him in person. I don't even

01:17:55.120 | listen to him. It's not a show I'm interested in. Even now. I

01:17:58.640 | only know he's a conspiracy theory. I like knowing the

01:18:02.200 | truth. I like hearing facts. And I don't believe that factional

01:18:06.640 | information, like the lab leak theory should be censored by

01:18:11.400 | labeling it a conspiracy theory. Yeah, for example, but what I

01:18:16.040 | would say about Alex Jones is there is some humanity and

01:18:19.200 | allowing him a forum to apologize for what he did and

01:18:23.960 | acknowledge his mistake and explain why he thought what he

01:18:28.120 | did and why he was wrong. And that's what he did on x.

01:18:31.560 | And I went on the Twitter spaces and I asked him a follow up

01:18:34.040 | question, which he wouldn't answer. I said, How have you

01:18:36.040 | changed your behavior? Yeah, but honestly, Jake, he wouldn't

01:18:39.080 | answer it. You came bounding in in the last five minutes. I

01:18:42.360 | didn't ask him a bunch of questions about what he did when

01:18:44.800 | it already been covered at the top of the pod. And I listened

01:18:47.560 | to it. And he had not answered the question. How is your

01:18:49.720 | behavior changed? And so he doesn't want to talk about that

01:18:52.720 | might be for legal reasons. The first half hour re litigating

01:18:55.240 | Sandy Hook and you weren't aware of that. It was the first 10

01:18:58.360 | minutes, but he won't answer questions on how he would change

01:19:01.320 | his behavior. And so I think that's one of the things I would

01:19:03.800 | want to see from him. How have you changed your behavior and

01:19:05.840 | how you you know, do shows? And I don't think he's answered that

01:19:09.600 | question. Anyway, we're going to disagree on this one. Any final

01:19:12.100 | thoughts to map as we wrap here on this on this issue.

01:19:14.840 | The free speech litmus test is is very simple. It's this exact

01:19:20.280 | thing. It's when the person that you dislike says the thing that

01:19:24.280 | you find very displeasing. What do you do? And I am a free

01:19:29.060 | speech absolutist on this. I just think it's a very slippery

01:19:31.920 | slope. And I don't think we're very capable of making these

01:19:35.740 | delineations. And so I agree, the right solution or timeouts.

01:19:39.640 | But lifetime bands, I think, again, go down this path where

01:19:44.120 | human judgment gets involved, and then it's about the person

01:19:46.520 | in charge, and then it becomes a power play, and then it

01:19:48.560 | eventually always gets corrupted. So I can hold two

01:19:51.920 | thoughts in my head. One, Alex Jones should be able to say what

01:19:54.880 | he thinks, and two, it was disgusting, and he should be

01:19:59.080 | ashamed of what he said.

01:20:00.080 | You know, the bands doubling every time is probably a good

01:20:04.960 | precedent as well. So I mean, we should do it like we do at our

01:20:07.080 | poker game that fines go up. Yeah, phone penalty, penalty

01:20:10.360 | doubles, exponential back off. I mean, you're gonna you're gonna

01:20:14.600 | put your phone down and play the goddamn game if it gets to 800

01:20:17.400 | or 1600. Because that's things a little bit. So there it totally

01:20:20.880 | does. But maybe that's the right solution. Jason's like you have

01:20:23.440 | a finding mechanism somehow, and it just like it increases. And

01:20:26.360 | so there's a financial penalty of nothing else as well as a

01:20:28.680 | timeout. When you violate these laws, at least that's a scalable

01:20:32.320 | way to solve the problem in a way that's hard to corrupt and

01:20:37.320 | gain. But if it goes down to the person to an individual or a

01:20:41.360 | group of people's judgments, as we saw with the previous

01:20:43.840 | management of Twitter, I think it's going to be a very

01:20:46.880 | difficult problem. I don't think that those were bad people. But

01:20:49.440 | I think that they were led astray.

01:20:50.720 | Yeah, I mean, Nick, do you have that clip from Rogan? Because

01:20:54.080 | when I listened to this clip from Rogan, it did have an

01:20:57.080 | impact on what I thought because

01:21:00.640 | it does show like 20 years, it does show the human complexity.

01:21:04.200 | And again, you're judging him based on the worst thing he ever

01:21:07.520 | did. And Rogan presents a more balanced viewpoint about this

01:21:10.560 | guy. Again, I have no dog in this hunt. I don't really care

01:21:14.760 | about Alex Jones. But I'm just saying that if we're gonna sit

01:21:18.800 | in judgment of people, I think maybe we should have a more

01:21:21.800 | balanced view. Because, I mean, it does bias the conversation to

01:21:24.840 | play the clip of the worst thing you ever did. This display

01:21:27.360 | Rogan for a second. I think it's interesting.

01:21:28.800 | Look at the way people look at Alex Jones now. Because Alex

01:21:31.720 | Jones has been on my podcast a few times. The people that have

01:21:34.400 | watched those podcasts think he's hilarious. And they think

01:21:37.840 | that he definitely f***ed up with that whole Sandy Hook

01:21:41.080 | thing. But he's right more than he's wrong. And he's not an evil

01:21:46.800 | guy. He's just a guy who's had some psychotic breaks in his

01:21:50.920 | life. He's had some genuine mental health issues that he's

01:21:53.800 | addressed. He's had some serious bouts of alcoholism, some

01:21:57.520 | serious bouts of, you know, substance abuse. And they've

01:22:01.320 | contributed to some very poor thinking. But if you know the

01:22:05.160 | guy, if you get to know him, like I have, I've known him for

01:22:08.400 | more than 20 years. And if you know him on podcasts, you

01:22:11.520 | realize, like, he is genuinely trying to unearth some things

01:22:17.280 | that are genuinely disturbing for most people. Like, this is a

01:22:21.400 | guy that was telling me about Epstein's Island decade ago, at

01:22:28.200 | least.

01:22:28.880 | Yeah. I mean, this platforming mentally ill people during an

01:22:33.800 | episode is a whole nother can of worms. I mean, I told this to

01:22:36.960 | Lex Riedman when he had Kanye on during that episode. I said, I

01:22:39.880 | think it's a very bad idea to spend two hours with somebody

01:22:42.080 | who's having an episode. And sure enough, what did he do?

01:22:44.680 | More anti semitic insanity on his podcast. And I just told

01:22:49.000 | Lex, like, leave the guy alone. It's not worth it. Let him get

01:22:52.920 | help.

01:22:53.120 | Look, I think I think you have a point there. But, you know, that

01:22:56.240 | that would be an argument for a temporary suspension, not a ban,

01:22:58.320 | in my opinion.

01:22:58.920 | Yeah. All right. sacks in other news. Something insane has

01:23:03.600 | happened on the internet. It's never happened before. But

01:23:07.200 | somebody has apologized for getting something wrong. This is

01:23:10.760 | breaking news. We're in year 34 of the internet. And somebody

01:23:14.000 | says they had my wife. Is it my wife? Did she? She's never gotten

01:23:18.600 | anything wrong. I've listened. I've been there for this whole

01:23:20.520 | relationship. She has been 100 out of 100 times correct.

01:23:23.880 | She makes a mistake. We'll know but it hasn't happened yet.

01:23:30.240 | Actually, paradoxically, same with my wife. She's been right

01:23:32.720 | for 22 years.

01:23:33.640 | No, my wife has been wrong four times. And I've gotten three on

01:23:38.560 | voice memo, I taped them, I pull out the phone. And I'm like,

01:23:40.640 | Hold on, I need you to say it again. Yeah. So I've gotten three

01:23:44.000 | on voice. But that's because it's been only three.

01:23:46.120 | Did those three have something to do with deciding to marry you

01:23:49.320 | for her to move in with you and make children and start a life

01:23:53.080 | together? It's so frustrating. How can one person be so wrong?

01:23:56.200 | I eat me all the time. Well, I mean, at least you're self

01:24:00.040 | aware. Everybody loves self aware. Chuck Chobot. It is. God

01:24:03.720 | is a new trend in the world. But yes, Nassim Taleb publicly

01:24:08.040 | admitted. We're gonna pull it up here, sacks. Here we go. He

01:24:11.280 | publicly admitted that techno watermelon. That's your name,

01:24:14.520 | sacks. That was his insult. I don't really understand the

01:24:17.080 | insult. Either. I think he's saying your head is the size of

01:24:20.360 | a watermelon. And that you're involved in technology. That's

01:24:23.160 | my was my interpretation. I don't think you have a melon

01:24:25.160 | head. Does it mean like I'm green on the outside and red on

01:24:28.520 | the inside or something like somehow I'm supporting

01:24:30.040 | communism, or I don't I don't really understand it. But that

01:24:32.800 | has come up. Well, listen, it's better than mine. I'm a

01:24:35.240 | psychotic ignoramus. So he knows attracted that for some reason.

01:24:39.320 | Not yet. Not yet. But at some point, I'm sure he will. But

01:24:43.440 | here it is. Well, he just said, I can see that David sacks is

01:24:46.360 | correct about the relative strength of the parties in the

01:24:48.680 | Ukraine war and I was wrong. All caps. Russia is not as weak as

01:24:53.200 | it seemed to that staying power. This means a settlement is

01:24:55.880 | likely outcome. Anyway, it's so rare on the internet for anyone

01:25:00.440 | to admit they were wrong. And what they usually do is just

01:25:07.160 | memory hole, which is why you know, I always like to produce

01:25:10.320 | receipts. I only do that for the people who strongly denounced me

01:25:12.920 | about something. And then I end up being right. They never can

01:25:16.080 | see it's not just about the fact that I was right. It's about the

01:25:18.200 | fact that they attacked me personally. And they never come

01:25:22.160 | back and apologize or correct the record. And to love did

01:25:26.000 | that. So kudos to him. I mean, I admit when I read this, I was

01:25:29.240 | like, you know, like, yeah, I'm like, Okay, what's the gotcha?

01:25:34.280 | I thought a trapdoor is gonna open under my feet. I thought a

01:25:40.520 | cartoon piano was gonna fall on my head. I just I thought this

01:25:44.800 | can't be it. And but no, that was it. So that was it. Well,

01:25:48.480 | there it is. kudos. By the way, just I mean, the reason why I

01:25:54.320 | understood what was going to happen in this, you know,

01:25:59.600 | counteroffensive and why the war is not going to go as well as

01:26:02.400 | people thought. It's not because I purport to be some sort of

01:26:05.600 | Ukraine expert or foreign affairs expert, I mainly just

01:26:08.760 | spent the time to figure out who the real experts were. And the

01:26:12.560 | real experts are never the people who the media tells you,

01:26:15.160 | you actually have to spend the time to look at people's track

01:26:18.480 | records, what they said in the past, did it come true or not?

01:26:21.920 | You know, it's basically a falsifiability standard, look

01:26:25.600 | at what they predicted, look at what actually happened. And you

01:26:28.240 | can figure out who the real experts are. And that's what I

01:26:31.200 | did in the case of Ukraine, it was possible to figure out who

01:26:34.080 | are the foreign policy scholars who got this right? Who are the

01:26:36.960 | military bloggers who are accurately reporting

01:26:39.640 | information? And who are the ones who are basically putting

01:26:41.880 | out propaganda? If you spend the time to do that on virtually any

01:26:44.920 | issue, you can effectively become an expert.

01:26:48.320 | It's a great point. That's really good point. Yeah.

01:26:50.400 | You have to you have to find your own process of finding the

01:26:53.600 | truth today, because I don't think you can trust the

01:26:55.280 | journalists out there to do it. So

01:26:56.840 | 100%. And by the way, as a VC, people say, well, what does a VC

01:27:01.280 | think? You know, in a way, like what VCs do is when you get

01:27:04.520 | interested in a topic, you kind of go deep, you're trying to

01:27:07.000 | simulate a lot of information, you try to figure out who the

01:27:08.800 | real experts in the space, so that those are the people I

01:27:11.720 | should listen to. And then you develop a take. It's not the

01:27:14.080 | worst skill set in the world for doing a pod or tweeting out hot

01:27:18.760 | takes on on Twitter. Again, I'm not saying I'm an expert. I'm

01:27:22.040 | just somebody who is independent minded enough to get to the

01:27:24.960 | bottom of an issue without just relying on what I'm supposed to

01:27:29.080 | believe. And I just try to figure out who the real experts

01:27:31.720 | are.

01:27:32.040 | All right, producer Nick, are you there? You did a tweet about

01:27:34.640 | questions that people might want to have to ask the besties here

01:27:38.320 | as we wrap this up. So we'll take to your two favorite

01:27:40.520 | questions. Producer

01:27:41.320 | thoughts on the Harvard board standing behind President gay

01:27:43.600 | despite her transgressions.

01:27:44.720 | Okay, that's a good question. That's a great question. That's

01:27:47.040 | good one for tomorrow. Here's what I'll say. I think that the

01:27:49.920 | Harvard board was probably in a really difficult position in the

01:27:55.160 | following way. You know, when you hire somebody, and you

01:28:00.720 | realize that that person has some faults, you have three

01:28:06.320 | choices, right? One is to fire them. Two is to be unequivocal

01:28:15.120 | in their support. And three is to basically give a milk toast.

01:28:20.600 | CYA kind of a statement to give yourself time. The reason why I

01:28:28.600 | think that President gay wasn't fired was probably because the

01:28:32.280 | board for whatever reason didn't want to seem like they were

01:28:34.920 | kowtowing to Bill Ackman and all the other people that were

01:28:38.000 | asking for her resignation. But what they didn't do is equally

01:28:42.400 | important. They may not have fired her. But what they also

01:28:45.040 | didn't do was come out with an unequivocal statement of

01:28:47.320 | support. I think it was kind of a little bit wishy washy and

01:28:51.440 | acknowledging her mistakes, which seems to be a setup to

01:28:56.080 | allow her to basically make a couple more mistakes so that

01:28:58.920 | then they can fire her and they can all seem like they did the

01:29:02.400 | right thing. So I suspect that that's what happens. She

01:29:05.880 | probably won't be in that job in a year from now. Or, you know,

01:29:09.520 | she kind of muddles along and in two or three years, she quote

01:29:11.800 | unquote, retires to spend more time with her family. Anyone

01:29:15.720 | else want to get in on this sex?

01:29:16.800 | Yeah, I mean, I think this university presidents debates

01:29:18.960 | been a little bit of a Rorschach test. And I've seen people that

01:29:23.760 | I generally agree with fall into one of two camps. Some see it as

01:29:27.160 | a free speech issue. Other people see it as a kind of woke

01:29:30.480 | double standards or DI issue. I think for those who see as a

01:29:34.640 | free speech issue, they're emphasizing the motivations of

01:29:38.840 | people like Elise Stefanik, the person who asked the university

01:29:41.520 | presidents a question in saying when she said basically, the

01:29:46.040 | question was, does your code of conduct allow calls for genocide

01:29:49.480 | of Jews? And their argument is that's a loaded question,

01:29:53.920 | because there is not an epidemic on campus of people calling for

01:29:58.200 | genocide of Jews. And so this is basically all kind of an

01:30:01.720 | invented hysteria. And the purpose of it is to suppress

01:30:05.360 | debate about this Israel Hamas war in Gaza, and it's designed

01:30:11.200 | to expand campus speech codes, so that it's harder for

01:30:16.040 | Palestinian supporters to protest in favor of their cause.

01:30:20.760 | So that's one way of looking at it. My view on that is, if it

01:30:26.560 | ends up being the case that campus speech codes get expanded

01:30:31.280 | in that way, that'd be a bad thing. I don't think we need to

01:30:33.960 | restrict speech on campus. So I agree with them on that point.

01:30:37.280 | However, there is a different way of looking at this, which is

01:30:40.120 | the motivations of the university presidents and

01:30:43.040 | answering that question. And yes, it was a loaded question,

01:30:45.960 | but they flubbed the answer. And the question is why, because as

01:30:49.320 | we talked about last week, if they were asked about calls for

01:30:52.800 | the murder of any other group, a racial group, or trans people,

01:30:58.440 | or something like that, Asian, again, I don't think their

01:31:00.760 | answer would have been the same. And I do think that that comes

01:31:03.040 | back to the fact that they have a preconceived notion of which

01:31:07.000 | groups deserve protection, and which ones don't. And that is a

01:31:09.840 | double standard. And I think anything we can do to get rid of

01:31:13.560 | that poisonous ideology, that wants to treat people

01:31:17.640 | differently, on campus, I think is a good thing. And so I

01:31:21.640 | support what Bill Ackman is doing on that basis. But if Bill

01:31:25.200 | Ackman goes too far and demands restrictions on the ability of

01:31:28.240 | students to protest, then I think it would be a bad thing.

01:31:30.640 | And that's going too far. So this would be a great thing to

01:31:32.960 | ask him, like what his motivations are, that you know,

01:31:37.080 | if he comes on the pod,

01:31:38.560 | the thing that's crazy is that just the crazy hypocrisy, like

01:31:41.560 | these are the same people who were firing people or not

01:31:45.000 | letting them speak on campus, if they had a, you know, a

01:31:48.760 | microaggression, where they didn't, they misgendered

01:31:52.280 | somebody, or they used a different pronoun, or they had a

01:31:54.360 | different feeling about what defines a woman versus a man or,

01:31:57.880 | you know, gender differences, whatever their massive

01:32:00.520 | intolerance and the crazy hypocrisy, which you're alluding

01:32:02.640 | to your sex is the thing that I think has broken everybody's

01:32:05.120 | brain, like, this is bizarre. And the di stuff is a road to

01:32:08.560 | nowhere. I tweeted today about the absolute grift that was

01:32:12.800 | going on in tech not long ago, which was call out a company,

01:32:17.000 | venture firm, whatever it is, for their di stats, then

01:32:20.920 | quietly contact them after you've done this brigadooning of

01:32:24.640 | them and say, Hey, we can solve your problem, hire us as

01:32:27.760 | consultants and speakers to come in and fix your di and tell you

01:32:31.480 | what you've done wrong, and then publicly come out. And I saw

01:32:34.800 | this happen, publicly come out, and then tell the same group,

01:32:38.400 | hey, this person is now an ally. Rinse and repeat. It was a crazy

01:32:41.960 | grift. And it's all coming out now. And there's a

01:32:43.520 | yeah, that that Bill Ackman thing, Jay Calvert, you

01:32:45.880 | retweeted is crazy. That story.

01:32:47.920 | Yeah. So we could just go down this rabbit hole forever. But I

01:32:51.840 | think you call it a cul de sac. I call it a road to nowhere or

01:32:55.200 | dead end. identity politics and de it's just a dead end when you

01:32:58.520 | start judging people based on, you know, any criteria other

01:33:02.120 | than their character and performance in the world. Do we

01:33:04.760 | know if there was a response by MIT? Is this one MIT? Yeah, I

01:33:11.040 | don't, I don't think yet there has been. So anyway, we'll

01:33:13.520 | cover that story next week, for sure.

01:33:15.120 | And Bill Ackman is doing is brave, because he is taking on

01:33:19.480 | di. And that is, historically, that's been one of the most

01:33:23.000 | dangerous things you can do. I mean, that is what people get

01:33:25.320 | canceled for. Now I know there are there are people who I am

01:33:30.840 | fans of, like like Lynn Greenwald, who's been very

01:33:33.120 | critical of Ackman, because he thinks that Ackman is trying to

01:33:35.680 | restrict free speech, and prevent, again, the pro

01:33:39.400 | Palestinian cause from protesting or saying it's peace.

01:33:43.840 | And I guess Bill can clarify that. But I think this issue is

01:33:48.200 | less about foreign policy and more about domestic policy,

01:33:52.000 | these de policies. And finally, we have someone who's willing to

01:33:55.320 | take it on and challenge it challenge it at an ideological

01:33:59.360 | level, and then challenge it at like a just grift level.

01:34:02.400 | Yeah, shout out to Brian Armstrong. He got this right.

01:34:05.400 | And he went right up the hill and took the arrows for it. And

01:34:08.120 | I think we've turned a corner. And if you the tweet I did

01:34:11.720 | today, I would not have done two years ago, because I just didn't

01:34:14.240 | want to, you know, risk my firm or the companies I work with,

01:34:18.160 | you know, to kind of expose that grift, because it could blow

01:34:22.360 | back on people. So but now I feel totally comfortable doing

01:34:25.360 | it. So

01:34:25.800 | Uber's at 70.

01:34:27.320 | Well, that also puts me in. That's for sure. He's got a few

01:34:33.760 | money now.

01:34:34.280 | Ackman's got a lot of firepower. You know, that bond call was

01:34:37.520 | totally right. No, the 10 years now sub 4%. I will say. Yeah, I

01:34:42.320 | will say that does. Your bank account does give you the

01:34:45.120 | ability to Okay, final question, please. We must we must wrap, we

01:34:48.480 | must have a final question. And please throw it to Friedberg.

01:34:51.440 | First, I got Friedberg involved early on offense today. It's a

01:34:55.280 | great show

01:34:55.720 | from mom cooks fast and slow on x. For Friedberg, I guess, what

01:35:00.280 | is the correct way to hire kids out of school now that an elite

01:35:02.840 | university degree tells you very little about the applicant? And

01:35:05.840 | will you follow this path in your own companies?

01:35:07.800 | Oh, I have a great answer for that.

01:35:10.040 | Come on, go ahead. No,

01:35:12.000 | please, let me go to the schools with co op. Why? Because it

01:35:16.560 | allows you to evaluate these kids in situ on a real time

01:35:20.840 | basis without an obligation to hire. You can find the ones that

01:35:24.280 | can really do the work have the energy.

01:35:26.320 | It's like higher programs, please.

01:35:28.200 | I went to a co op school, University of Waterloo in

01:35:31.520 | Canada, the way that it works there, not not everywhere, but

01:35:34.760 | there at least is you go to school for the first eight

01:35:38.600 | months. And then you never get a break. You're either in working

01:35:42.560 | for four months, or you're in school for four months. And you

01:35:45.360 | go back and forth until you graduate. So instead of

01:35:48.080 | graduating in four years, you graduate in five. But you

01:35:51.920 | graduate with with basically two full years of work experience.

01:35:55.280 | And depending on the employers that you work at, you typically

01:36:00.200 | get two to three job offers from those folks if you do a good

01:36:03.400 | job when I was helping to build Facebook, we went there, we had

01:36:09.440 | never hired an intern before and we started to hire people. And I

01:36:12.320 | think now it happened in Microsoft, it happened at

01:36:15.760 | Google, I think it's happened to Facebook. If you look at the

01:36:17.640 | number of kids that work at those schools now from co op

01:36:22.200 | schools, they're higher than any other school. There's a bunch of

01:36:25.440 | schools in the United States that have co op. But I would go

01:36:29.520 | and find those schools and hire those kids.

01:36:31.960 | Freeberg, any thoughts you're now running a company, you're

01:36:35.360 | back in the saddle? How are you going to hire people? And tell

01:36:39.600 | everybody the name of the company again. It's called Oh,

01:36:41.360 | hollow. Oh, hollow, not Mahalo. Oh, hollow. And your hollow was

01:36:47.840 | taken. Who owns that domain name? Now? I still have it.

01:36:50.280 | Yeah. If somebody wants to have it, I have Mahalo and I have

01:36:53.840 | cuckoo. Happy to sell it to somebody if they want to. But

01:36:57.400 | tell us Harry, what's your hiring criteria? And how do you

01:36:59.360 | think about this now? I'd like to start an enterprise software

01:37:01.760 | business called cuckoo. It means to help or to guide in Hawaiian.

01:37:06.440 | So probably the third or fourth most important word. Yeah. Go

01:37:09.960 | ahead. freebird, please. I have criteria around raw horsepower,

01:37:14.000 | skills or experience, and then motivation. And I have systems

01:37:18.440 | for how we try and assess those and then matching our

01:37:20.600 | principles. It's kind of the fourth bucket of things.

01:37:23.680 | horsepower, you can test skills is based on experience and fits

01:37:28.360 | the role and the need. But motivation is one that there's a

01:37:31.320 | lot of question marks around. Does this person have they

01:37:36.880 | demonstrated that they've had a not just a desire, but an action

01:37:41.640 | that they've taken, that has pushed them beyond the limits of

01:37:44.360 | the systems that they've operated in. And that's what I

01:37:47.280 | would typically look for, regardless of the schooling

01:37:49.880 | background, the education background is some demonstration

01:37:53.200 | of that, because that's necessary in in business

01:37:55.400 | building. So those though, that's, that's my framework for

01:37:57.960 | hiring. We call it, you know, smarts or horsepower skills,

01:38:01.560 | motivation and principles. And we score each one of those and

01:38:04.360 | then try and come up with hiring.

01:38:05.960 | You started to do that with the CEO candidates. I got that email

01:38:09.200 | from you. And I was very intrigued. So I like that. All

01:38:11.840 | right, everybody, this has been another amazing episode of the

01:38:15.080 | all in podcast for the king of beef, and the dictator and the

01:38:21.560 | rain man himself. I'm your boy, Jay cow. We'll see you next

01:38:24.080 | time. I love you guys. Bye bye.

01:38:25.720 | Rain Man, David.

01:38:31.120 | Sack. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've

01:38:37.120 | just gone crazy with it. I love us. I'm the queen of can walk.

01:38:40.800 | Besties are gone.

01:38:48.640 | That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

01:38:52.160 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy

01:39:00.520 | because they're all like this, like sexual tension, but they

01:39:03.480 | just need to release

01:39:04.280 | waiting to get

01:39:12.200 | these are

01:39:12.640 | going all in. I'm going all in.

01:39:22.320 | (upbeat music)

E157: Epic legal win, OpenAI's news deal, FCC targets Elon, the limits of free speech & more

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