Bill Ottman's Problem with Twitter | Joe Rogan

There are alternatives that are getting very big. Yes. And together, like what? Like Signal has tens of millions of users. I don't know what that is. I've never heard of it. That's like the encrypted messaging app that... Do you know it? Oh, yeah. I don't know. It's open source. What is it? Snowden is on their advisory board or whatnot. What is Signal? It's just a messaging app. So a messaging app, like a WhatsApp or like a Twitter? Yeah. Like WhatsApp. So it's, you have to know the person and then contact them through it? Yeah. But we're considering using the Signal protocol for our messaging system because our messaging system needs an upgrade. But all of us together are going to be able to create sort of like a group of apps that are like sort of a more open freedom supporting privacy alternative. And like, so we're not going to solve it by ourselves. And it would be way easier if one of these big companies would just switch gears and start doing things the right way. I mean, we've spent eight years building this. If one of the big companies, Google, Facebook, had just been free and open source, we would have spent the last seven years building on top of them. Right. Because they already did something cool that they're sharing with everybody. So it's actually closed source projects, stifle innovation. Because if you think we had to reinvent the wheel, we literally, we went and built an alternative with much of the similar functionality. Think about how much further the world would be if everyone was building on top of more common protocols. But you're looking at it in terms of your own personal benefit. You're looking in terms of mind's personal benefit. I mean, you created this thing. It was not just purely for altruistic reasons. It's a business. So if they had established this open source network that was Facebook and you just came along and built yours, well, yeah, that would be great for you. But why would that be great for them? They're obviously in a business. Now the problem with the business is this business is the business of distributing information. And then we have to decide, okay, at what point in time do we allow these, air quotes, overlords to dictate what can and cannot be distributed. And how did this happen? Because in the beginning, I bet it didn't happen. I bet in the beginning, you could just put on whatever the fuck you wanted. And then they had to deal with that. And then they had to figure out after a while, okay, maybe we shouldn't have this on. Like hey, if we're going to sell advertising, we really should maximize the amount of clicks. Okay, how do we do that? Well we put things in people's feeds that they want to see. We put things that people want to debate about and argue about and political things, all sorts of different things that excite them and get them to be engaged with the platform. That's their business. The businesses, I mean, it's no different in a lot of ways than Amazon or than any other business that wants to grow. Like how do they grow? Well they grow by maximizing their profits and by maximizing the amount of eyes that get to their advertising so they get more clicks and more people get engaged. That's what their business is. You're deciding by saying if they were open source, look how much further along the world would be. They would be further along too. I don't know if they would agree with that. I don't think they're worth fucking kajillions of dollars so they figured it out. Well it just depends on whether or not you think that people have a right to know what is going on. I mean, it's like food transparency. Well yeah, we're... So I'll talk about that, I will talk about that until the end of time. We're interfacing with this and it's affecting us. I agree. I fully agree with what you're saying. I'm playing devil's advocate by saying that in their position they have a business and their business is to make money. And they're going to lose because of what they're doing. Because it's not sustainable. But their business is up. Even after post hearings. They're losing active users. Are they? Yeah. But I thought their business went up after the hearings. Probably. Did it? But it's not going to last. Why do you say that? It's just the game's over. It's going to take a long time for us to build it up as all of these different organizations and companies working together. But Linux for instance is the operating system that most banks... It is the most popular operating system in the world. Open source. Yeah, it's open source. It's in your phone. It's in everywhere. It got there because of that. Because everyone used it and incorporated it into their product. Facebook, they are all using free and open source software in their stacks. They're just not sharing their product with everybody else. So they're benefiting from it but not giving back. And I almost feel like I shouldn't even be saying that they should just pivot because that's their only chance to survive. So this is based on your estimations of the future. Yeah, it just seems like things are becoming more open. Is that possible because you engage with a lot of other super nerds and you guys all have these similar ideas? You just have to look at what's happening with Bitcoin. I don't know what's happening with Bitcoin. It's becoming... Bitcoin and Ethereum and lots of other blockchains are growing really fast. Maybe the price is separate. The development energy, the number of people who are building apps on top of Bitcoin and Ethereum is growing massively. It's a whole new infrastructure that's like a common protocol that people can build on. So that is growing rapidly. The price is secondary. That's not even what Bitcoin and Ethereum are really about. It's a decentralized database. So this is just where the internet is meant to be decentralized. It sort of started out that way. And then we moved into this like web to silo system with like just these massive companies that are controlling everything. But it's going to keep waving. Okay, again, to play devil's advocate, the vast amount of users are not using those platforms. The vast amount of users are using these controlled platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Like if you're talking about, I'm just guessing, but if you're talking about the gross number of human beings that are interacting with each other on social media, they're mostly uncontrolled networks. You're saying that this is not going to last, but there's no evidence that it isn't going to last. There's tons of evidence. What is the evidence? Wikipedia. What is happening in card? I remember that disk you put in your computer. That was your encyclopedia. Where is that? No one uses it. Okay, that's that's different. This is not a social media network. The social media networks that people are using are almost all controlled. Right? Yeah, no, it's not. It's going to take a very, very long time. How long? I would say 10 years. And what do you think is going to be the catalyst? What's going to cause these people to make this radical shift to open source? I think we have to be, we have responsibility to be competitive functionally. Like you know what? Yeah, we do. We're moving there fast. We just hired a ton of new developers and it's going to take time. We're not there yet. But once we have functionally competitive products that you wouldn't even know the difference and there's enough people there, then it's basically the decision of, you know, am I going to choose the one that respects my privacy and freedom or the one that doesn't and people are kids don't like Facebook. Right? No, everyone is sick of it. We're just drug addicts. Hmm. Is that what it is? They're just sucked into this thing where you constantly want to check and see who's writing what? Yeah. And there's monopolies, arguably. Yeah. Right. Especially when Facebook owns Instagram, right? What if they bought Twitter as well? They almost did. I think Google almost did. What if Google steps in and buys everything? Then you're like, Oh no, they probably could, right? Yeah, they easily could. They could probably buy everything. Apple could with cash. Yeah. Yeah. Tim Cook could come in with a big purple pimp suit on, just slap down a briefcase. Bitch. I just wonder and like, look, all the, all these executives, you know, Jack seems like a cool person. He's a very nice guy. It's not, I just sense so much inconsistency and, you know, he's talking about Bitcoin. Mm-hmm. Like it's this important new internet money. Simultaneous, which is he knows the infrastructure is open. Mm-hmm. But then his platforms are the opposite. Why is he so inconsistent? It's like there's, it's just hypocritical to the maximum. I think it's partly because it's a giant business, you know? And I think when you have an obligation to your shareholders and to maximize profits and when you're trying to maximize profits too, and there's the, this universal growth model where every year just has to get a little bit bigger. Otherwise you're fucking up as a CEO. Like you don't have to experience that with minds. You're one of the co-founders. How many people are involved? It's like 15 of us now. And do you have like a board where you sit around, where you make critical decisions? Mm-hmm. Is that stressful as fuck? Yeah. Luckily we've started off from the point where we're saying, okay, we're embedding principles into how we're doing things. So we're not in a position where we would ever change that. That that's, for us to do that would just be a total waste of time. Right. And we're making it harder for ourselves to make money in the beginning. We're making it harder for ourselves to grow because we are not going to compromise people's privacy in order to do those things. And so we're just going to build up slowly, steadily, find, and just get there when we get there. How much?