Joe Rogan and David Pakman Debate Social Media Censorship

Televangelists are one of the very weirdest elements of society where we're allowing people to just lie, like clearly lie, but we feel like the lie is so obvious that you have to be so dumb to believe them, I can't help you. And this is, I made this analogy recently because I was talking about YouTube censorship and how YouTube has decided that they're going to pull down videos from doctors who have different opinions on how to handle the coronavirus and criticisms of how things are. And I'm like, it's really interesting that they make that line, that that's the line that doctors practicing physicians, they'll pull their video down. But people talk about the flat earth. They'll leave that up because it's obvious. It's like it's so dumb. It's like, ah, you can leave that up. That one's that one's so dumb. You have to be a moron to think the earth's hollow and that there's aliens living inside it, traveling around on laser beams. There's videos that say that. And they'll leave those up and they'll leave televangelists up. But then it gets to these doctors that are saying, we're looking at the statistics. This is the deaths. This is the deaths in terms of age groups. And this is why it's not nearly as dangerous as we thought it was. And these quarantines are not the best way to handle it. We think there's better way. They'll take that video down, even if it's someone who's saying rational things. And I, yeah, I don't think that's smart. I don't think that's a healthy way to handle things. I don't think it's good for the debate. I think in fact it strengthens the resolve of the people on the other side that watch those videos and some of those points resonate with those people. I think that's not the way to handle it. I don't think removing those videos is the way to handle it. I think the way to handle it is let other people with opposing points of view put their videos up and let people discuss and debate and see which one makes more sense to you. And usually the weight of the information overwhelms the bullshit. And at least with most people, I don't understand why it's okay to leave some obviously full of shit videos up, but take down things that are very, very controversial, but debatable. Okay. So this, this now gets into that part of your episode with Bridget from over the weekend that I saw where you basically accurately characterize the view that I had last time I was on with you about the regulation of social media. Yeah. So first, just to play devil's advocate just for a second on why do you leave up flat earth, but take down the coronavirus videos that you tube or whoever disagrees with one can make an argument that there is no real action someone would take because they believe the earth is flat that would endanger others. I mean, I guess you might try to go to the edge and see if you fall off or something, right? There's no actionable thing for the most part that flat earth belief does cause. That's a good point. Whereas if this disinformation about, so like, I'll give you one, there was a video I saw about coronavirus where there was a doctor saying, you know, these quarantines are dangerous because if you're not exposed to bacteria, your immune system will be out of practice essentially and it's not, it's going to shut down. It's not going to work as well. And then another doctor, another YouTube guy who has a YouTube channel did a counterpoint where he said he's talking about the hygienic theory, but he has it backwards. It is true that if you were never exposed to dirt and bacteria and whatever, it will impact your immune system, but it's actually the opposite is what happens. It's that because you're not regularly exposed to things, your immune system will overreact and it'll start attacking things that aren't really a threat. Okay. So what's the harm? I guess, right? There's a video where these doctors identified what they think is the problem with the quarantine and then another doctor. Can I pause you for a second there? I think it's both things though. I think it's actually been proven that yeah, that does happen where your immune system overreacts to people that don't get exposed to enough. But I think there's also, it's also been proven that people that are around a lot of different people and constantly exposed to people have stronger immune systems because of that, that it does get practice and it does get strengthened by exposure. Oh yeah. I think that's what the sort of fact check was saying, which is it's completely true that exposing kids to the world out there is good, but that what is being asserted will happen from staying home for two months is both wrong and it wouldn't happen in two months anyway. That it weakens it. Like the idea that it weakens immune, yeah, I was wondering about that, whether or not it was like a cardiovascular system. Like that it only responds to the level of work that it needs to do. Like your cardiovascular system, you know, if you run, if you take some time off, boy, it slacks off really quickly. It'll be a real shame if that was the case with the immune system. I don't think it is, but I mean, I guess the point I was trying to make was if you, there are a lot of people who are understandably frustrated by what's going on and they're looking for any excuse to just let it rip, so to speak, and go and do whatever. And so I think that the play devil's advocate, there is a different level of risk from allowing some of this disinformation to be propagated that doesn't exist with leaving flat earth up. That's a very good point. Very good point. But that being said, you know, we last time we talked, we had this conversation about like, okay, if a platform gets to a certain size, does it not kind of enter some new space where you need someone to establish some guidelines or something like that? Real quick, one of the problems with this argument though, is that particularly like those doctors in Bakersfield, they weren't spreading disinformation. They were basically spreading the actual facts of fatalities and age groups and, you know, they just had a different perspective. Different interpretation. Well, not even the different interpretation, because they're basically just going over the statistics, but they had a different viewpoint of how they should move forward. And they were also discussing things like furloughed doctors and nurses because hospitals are no longer doing elective surgeries. So in the many hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy, which apparently is true. The problem is that's not disinformation. And so if you're saying that if giving people disinformation makes them make poor choices, then they could be putting themselves at risk or putting loved ones at risk because of that. Yes. Okay. I'm with you. Yeah, I agree. But this isn't disinformation. This is factual information. It's just information with a different perspective other than the what we're getting, which is only one point of view from the World Health Organization and people who subscribe to those ideas. So it's not a lie. But I think your point of if someone believes in the flat earth, there's no harm in that. That's true. So if someone believes in pizza gate and they think that there's kids being held in a basement somewhere and they go and shoot up the store, then it is a problem. Right. And now that kind of a video I could understand where someone would say, hey, you know, that shouldn't be up there because this is bullshit. And this is what gets caused from that. I don't think it's the same argument when we're all trying to figure out what's going on with a medical situation and to practicing physicians to actual medical doctors are talking about their perspective on this virus. So I don't think they're really on the same line. Yeah, I totally agree that these are not all equivalent situations. Yeah. For the purposes of our conversation about like who what regulation should be in place. Right. And that's to regulate or this sort of thing. The point that I had made last time we talked about this was not necessarily that I'm in favor or against having some kind of infrastructure that says here's how a social network has to operate YouTube, Twitter, whatever. We could talk about that and I'm glad to. My argument last time we talked was I don't know what the legal case is. How do you define legally what it is that is supposed to happen? Is it like what would be the legal framework? And there's also a double standard element of it because there's a lot of really, really loud right wingers who are saying the left is being propped up on social media and the right is being suppressed, to put it very simply. And they're calling for regulation. They're against new regulation on gun safety. They're against business regulation. They're against stay at home or etc. Now they want to regulate tweets like that's where now they want regulation. That seems extremely cynical and hypocritical to me. But we don't even necessarily have to dig into that to think about like okay if we regulate it how do we regulate it who gets to decide is where you start. I think we're dealing with a thing that's very similar to what we talked about earlier. The founding fathers who set up this country in the 1700s had no idea what 2020 was going to be like. And I think when you're talking about freedom of speech it's like do you still have freedom of speech if you could just talk and you can't tweet? Well I guess you do right? Do you still have freedom to get the word out? Well you do but you don't have freedom like you or I do where you could tweet or you could make a YouTube video and who gets to have that and is that an essential service? Is that a thing like the post office or a thing like the electricity and the utilities? Is it an essential thing? I think one could make the argument that in 2020 it's used by so many people to convey so much information and it's so significant that I believe it is an essential thing. And I think that just banning someone because you don't like what they say or you don't like how they say it I don't think that's a solution nor do I think there's a clear solution because I think that if you have someone who is hateful and is doxxing people and insulting people and stalking people online and saying horrible things that's not good either right? There's laws about that in person. You can't harass people in person. Why can you harass people online? Why can you put up your address and have a bunch of people send terrible things to your house? Why is that okay? Well it shouldn't be okay either. We need to figure out what's okay and what's not okay and I think one of the problems with isolating tech I think tech people and people whether it's Google or Apple and you've made a really good argument that they may appear left socially but they absolutely operate right when it comes to finance, when it comes to their business. I think that is true but I think that when you're dealing with the ability to discuss things and you might say that your perspective is the one that you want to hear because you're a left-wing person and these are your beliefs but you're isolating the whole other team from being a part of that conversation and maybe they have something you want to hear and maybe they don't have anything you want to hear but to not allow them to communicate you are alienating a giant chunk of the population and if someone gets to a prominent level where they're communicating a certain way and you just decide that that certain way is unacceptable and you kick them off, you don't just kick them off. You also silence all the other people that are along or aligned with them because they have similar ideas and they don't want to speak out either. When you ban James Woods, you don't just ban James Woods. You ban a lot of other people from saying something. They might be furious about the Russian investigation or whatever. They want to express themselves and they panic. They get scared. They worry that they're going to get – that's censorship. That's a form of censorship and I think these companies – I don't blame them because I don't think they had any idea what they were going to become and I think they're all adjusting along the way. I think when Twitter first came out, do you remember that? Like you would write at David Pakman is going to the movies. You're like at Joe Rogan just had a great pizza. That's what you did. I mean it wasn't this thing where you got to express yourself in 240 whatever characters and we're in a different world now and I think this different world needs some different examination about what the ability to communicate online is. This is an important point because Alex Jones made some crazy video after our conversation that I had with him yesterday where he was saying that I'm going to war against censorship and a war against YouTube. I'm not doing any of those things. I made this deal with Spotify because it's a great company and it's a great deal and I'm excited to be in a partnership with a company as opposed to like a company that I just put my stuff up on their platform whether it's Apple or YouTube. I don't like that YouTube censors things. I don't like that they do that like with those doctors in Bakersfield but I'm not at war with them. I'm not at war with anybody and I'm not – Okay. I don't envy them their position. I don't think it's smart to censor practicing doctors when they have differing opinions. I think we need to find out who's right and I think the way you find out who's right is you get people who are experts and they disagree. There's Nobel laureates out there and I've watched several videos that are talking about this lockdown and that it's not a good idea. There's people that believe in herd mentality versus immunizations or vaccines and I don't know who's right and I would like them to all be able to discuss it equally and openly. That said, I don't envy Twitter. I don't envy YouTube. I don't envy any of these people. The idea of trying to manage this in real time while it explodes and takes over the way human beings communicate over a period of a decade just like that. That's so instantaneous and mistakes have been made and in my opinion when it comes to the way things are censored and the way these mistakes particularly on Twitter far favor the left and they're not balanced. Some horrible things that people on the left say about people on the right and it's nothing. It just gets washed away but when the people do it who are on the right about people on the left, they get banned. It's not fair and when things aren't fair, one side has a better argument that they're being censored and that there's some sort of a conspiracy and it divides people even more. It strengthens the hate. I think most people, the vast majority, 70, 80% are reasonable people that you could have a conversation with if you were in front of them one on one. When they don't feel like they're a part of the conversation or when they speak their side and their stuff gets deleted or removed or put into some shadow ban category, it's fucking infuriating for people. It's not good for all of us as a community and I think that is the burden that these places like YouTube or Twitter, they have to shoulder this burden and I don't know how to do it. Republicans have one perspective. There's many people like yourself that have the perspective like, listen, it's their company, should not they be able to make their own rules? I think they're too big. I think they're too big for that now and I think that it's in this position where it literally is a part of who we are as human beings. The ability to express ideas and communicate is so critical right now and as we're evolving and as we're evolving our culture and our civilization, discourse is so important. It's a giant part of being a human being in 2020 and I don't think it should be just flippantly removed from people. My personal view is very similar to yours in terms of short of illegal content and really very specific things. My instinct is leave it up and let people evaluate it, let people publish counterpoints. That's my personal view. The conservative view on this is if this cake baker doesn't want to bake a cake because of who you want to marry, you don't do anything to the baker. The market will, if there's a demand for those types of cakes, for those types of weddings, others will enter the market and that's it. If you apply that here, and we'll get to the differences in a second, if you apply that here, if the James Woods want to say stuff and a whole bunch of people want to hear that stuff, why don't they just go and make their platform and bring everybody over? It sounds like a great business, right? Yeah, it does sound like a great business. It's way harder to do. Way harder to do than just do it. I mean to say, why don't you make another Twitter? Well there would be a thousand Twitters. It's obviously very difficult. No one's ever been able to do it. It's not something that's ... You're talking about something that takes an enormous amount of resources. It's not that simple. It's not that simple, but everybody already does use Twitter. I think the question really is, does Twitter have a responsibility for fair and even treatment? I'm sure you've seen some of those James O'Keefe or other Project Veritas videos where they have secret cameras filming executives talking about how to censor conservative people. I've seen a little bit of it. What I do remember is from the Planned Parenthood era where what they published was pretty dramatically dishonest from what I recall, but I've not seen the one you're referring to specifically. That was a long time ago. Was it? How long ago was that? The Planned Parenthood stuff? Was it five years? Are you talking about the Acorn stuff? The stuff where they brought in a pimp to try to get money for opening up a brothel? It's been so long that the details escape me, but I remember that incident. I've not really seen anything recently that they've done. Whenever you have deceptive editing, the problem is even if in the future you don't do that anymore, it's like everyone's always going to remember that you did do something. You did do something that wasn't straightforward, cut and dry, no emotion journalism. Here are the facts. Planned Parenthood awarded $2 million in lawsuit over secret videos. Interesting. That's not good. That's my big memory when you mentioned that organization. I think that let's say we agree about something needs to be done. Once you're at a certain level, you enter a new category and some kind of regulation has to be done. Who does the regulation? When you look at redistricting, for example, this has been like a multi-decade thing where when Republicans are in power, they draw the districts in a way that's favorable to them. Democrats are in power. They take the opportunity to redraw districts that are favorable to them. You have these ideas of, okay, we'll have a commission with three Democrats and three Republicans and together they'll figure out how the districts could be drawn fairly. How do you apply that? The lesson from that, how do you apply it to, does the Trump administration decide what kind of content must be left up versus what can be removed, but then that administration gets replaced. Now the next administration says, here's how Twitter is supposed to operate. How do you do it? It's a really good question. It's a really hard question. That's what I'm saying. I don't envy those people. I really like Jack Dorsey as a person. I really enjoy talking to him. I think he's a very thoughtful guy. In discussing this with him, both on the show and off the show, they don't really know exactly how to handle these things. They don't really know what the perfect solution is. He's even proposed a Wild West Twitter and then a Twitter that's under some sort of moderation. I don't know where they stand on that right now, but that was something that he was actively bringing up. Let's have a Twitter where anything goes. You could Reddit in the early days. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted versus what they have now. Here's another example. When a person gets so big like Trump, you can do shit on Twitter that there's no way you could do. Have you seen the recent thing where he's accusing Joe Scarborough of possibly being a part of a murder or something like that? He's bringing up ... I mean, apparently, totally ... I don't know the exact details of the story, but it had been investigated. It had nothing to do with it. It was just someone he worked with. Trump is ... he's putting out this thing just to try to target Joe Scarborough, get his fans to go nutty and fuck with him. That's a weird way of ... That's a right-wing guy who is literally the top right-wing guy. Right-wing bias doesn't seem to apply totally, negative bias, when it comes to the president. When you get to a certain level, you could just do shit like that? You could just threaten North Korea? You could say, we have the best missiles, we'll fuck you up? He could tweet that. He could tweet, hey, buddy, I'm glad you faked your death and I know you're still alive, but I just want you to know, we got the best missiles and we'll fuck you up. Have he tweeted that? Whoa. But this is not really unique to Twitter in the sense that if you look at our justice system, there's the justice system for the elites and then for other people, the focus on street crime instead of white collar crime. This exists in a lot of different places. What kind of really big business get away with versus what kind of small business sometimes get away with? I don't think that's different. One of the things I'm thinking about is, what's the main point of Twitter? Twitter is a publicly traded corporation. At this point, is it fair to say that the main point of Twitter is to be profitable and deliver a return to shareholders? Because if it is, all the stuff we're talking about, about how we would like to see it operate is sort of irrelevant because they now have this fiduciary responsibility to just make money. Right. What do you think Twitter's worth? If someone wanted to come over and buy it, what if the government bought Twitter and just applied the first amendment to Twitter? What if the government said, listen, you guys are kicking ass, great job. However, you're basically a public utility for communication of ideas and it's imperative that for liberty and for the ability for people to have free speech, everyone has to have access to this. Maybe it's like one of those things, you go to jail for a horrible felony, you lose your ability to vote. Maybe you go to jail for something and you lose your ability to tweet. Could it be 300 billion? I have no idea. I wonder how much it is. How much are they spending on these goddamn stimulus packages? I wonder if they could probably buy it cheap right now too. I don't think Twitter really makes money either. I don't think it makes money. I think Twitter is one of those weird situations where it's worth something, but I don't know if it actually does. I don't think it's in the profitable area. I don't think it's making ... Jamie and I talked about this fairly recently. It's complicated. Some things make sense. Like Google makes sense. They use Google ads, they make a shitload of money, YouTube makes sense. It's profitable. It all makes sense. Twitter's like, where's the money coming from? It's so valuable and it's such a useful tool. But how do they make money? I mean, so literally there are ads on Twitter as well, right? Boosted posts, promote advertisements, et cetera. I have no idea how much money they're making from that versus what is the value of the user base. Wasn't there a point recently where a very conservative investor bought a giant chunk of Twitter and was thinking about kicking out Jack Dorsey? Wasn't that something that was brought up really recently? No, I don't know about that. You remember that, Jamie? That was a situation, right? It happened once, but I don't know if that's how it went down. Like fairly recently someone just bought a controlling stake or a large stake. Look, man, I just think ... Is there anyone you would trust to regulate Twitter and YouTube and Facebook? Like who would do it? Ooh, that's a good question. I don't think it should be one person either. I think it's also like president. Like being president, I don't think she should be the president of Twitter. I really think it might be wise for all of us to consider it like a public utility. You would socialize Twitter. Yeah. I'd give it to Bernie. Wow. That's incredible. I think something that has that kind of power when it comes to expression, it's valuable for human beings. I would never want to take it away from the people that own it, obviously. But I just think as a concept that we should consider that what we have here with something like Twitter or even maybe ... There's a good argument for YouTube as well that what these new abilities to express yourself are ... They're incredibly important in terms of the process of our culture, the process of going over ideas and evolving those ideas. There's no better way to do that than open communication. There's no better open communication than Twitter and YouTube. In terms of regular people, you can start a YouTube video right now on your phone. I could just set the phone up here, press record, and start talking, and then upload it. Bam. My thoughts could be available to anybody. I think that's so valuable. It's so important in terms of our ability to go back and forth with ideas. We're changing those ideas. Obviously, the way we thought about life in 1960 is very different than the way we think about life today. A lot of that comes from discourse. A lot of that comes from discussion and the evolution of these ideas. Jamie has something. Hold on a second. I think there was a potential corporate takeover that tried to maybe happen, but they made an agreement. Twitter reaches deal with activist fund that wanted Jack Dorsey out. They made a deal. They met on Fuck Island and they all ... No. Well, listen, I couldn't agree more strongly with you about the importance of these platforms. My entire business is built on them. I mean, I'd have no business if it weren't for these platforms. I think the difficulties are, what are the standards that are applied? I don't want to sound like one of these free market right-wingers, but what's the legal basis? You would have to first establish a legal basis. You would have to establish law that says, once you have this number of users or this number of page views or whatever, you now are bound by this new set of laws. That is complex to say the least. It's very complex. It's very complex. I have no idea how one would even begin and how long the process of figuring out what the rules should be, how long it would take before we all agreed on that. I think that would be another great argument for the ability to express yourself, because in forming these laws, we would want to hear all perspectives, perspectives from people that have been harmed by social media and Twitter mobs and shit like that and what should be done about that. The same thing could be said about YouTube as well. One thing that no one can deny is how significant these tools are, whether it's Twitter or YouTube or any new one that comes out, whether it's TikTok or whatever. They're really powerful. There's something to them that's unprecedented in the history of humanity. We can't just apply the old rules to them. It just doesn't make sense. I don't think it's good for us. I have talked to conservative people about this. If you're not accustomed to it, if you're not accustomed to feeling like you're censored and you're angry, you don't know what it's like until you're around these people. Then you see their frustration and their anger and their fury at Twitter for doing that and for censoring voices that are similar to their perspectives. Instead of just letting the process take place like it always has been, it's just in a different form. Being able to talk through ideas. One of the risks of this is that once you assert a right to a platform, to exist on a platform that supersedes Twitter or YouTube's ability to say for whatever reason, because they're a company that can have terms and conditions and they say, we just don't want this. If YouTube was determined that they don't want gardening content on YouTube, I can't think of a legal reason why they can't say no gardening content. As long as they're not by virtue of banning gardening content, banning people on the basis of membership in some protected class or something like that. If all gardeners were of a certain race, you could make the case that by proxy, by banning gardening content, they're banning people of a certain race. I don't know how you prevent that from then being applied elsewhere. What other platforms would people have a right to? This gets to speakers who say, I was censored because a certain school wouldn't have me to speak there. It's like, well, hold on. You don't have a right to speak at any particular school. Schools can make decisions about what they want and what they don't want. As long as you're not being discriminated against based on your identity, is it not sort of the same thing with YouTube? What is the legal basis for saying they can no longer make these decisions? Well, it's a big, there's a big difference. First of all, a school is a single destination that's a physical place. So you can decide, this is a conservative school. We don't want people coming over here and talking about this, or this is a very progressive school. We don't want to have someone from the KKK come here and tell us how all races are not equal. That's a very different thing. When you're doing something like YouTube, the real question is, is it just a business? Is it just a business that's owned by people and they have the right to do whatever they want? And that is, at least, I mean, you know you're on YouTube, you're called a partner, right? They refer to you as a partner. David Pakman is a YouTube partner, right? But you, you know, and in some ways you are, right? Because you put out a lot of content. You're huge. You put out a lot of content and that content is an integral part of, like, look, they have a progressive news sort of empire, really, when you really stop and look about, and homemade shows like yours, you know, like, there's many, many of them that you could watch. Kyle Kalinsky and Jimmy Dore, and all these folks are doing these shows basically from scratch, right? There's no large production company behind it or any of the things that, so they've got this whole empire of, you're a part of it. You're part of this whole news empire. And there's many categories. But what they are is not as simple as just a business. They are a business, but what they all are as well with, you know, all the executives, all the people that YouTube as an entity is one of the most powerful tools for expression the world's ever known. So if you have this incredibly powerful tool for expression, at what point in time, or when are you able to deny people the use of that thing and why? You know, and what is freedom of expression if it doesn't apply to these new tools? What is the First Amendment if it doesn't apply to these new tools? If someone can come along and say, hey, I know you're a doctor and a practicing physician, but I'm 28 and I live in Palo Alto and I say, fuck you, because I believe in the WHO and I don't believe in you and I'm just going to delete your video. And it seems to me that I followed the rules that YouTube has set forth about, you know, if you don't agree with the WHO and you're giving some sort of contrary coronavirus information, delete. I don't think that's wise. I don't think that's wise. I think that's a very, very complicated issue that should be debated publicly and discussed publicly whether or not these people have the right to be heard. And this is just one example that we keep bringing up, but there's many different kinds of things that fit along those lines. You know, when you just want to ban all conspiracy theories, air quotes, the problem with conspiracy theories is, first of all, the word as a pejorative was created to try to steer people away from the Kennedy assassination, which is like one of the greatest conspiracies of all time. Some people did that, whether it was Lee Harvey Oswald by himself. I highly doubt it. I think there's probably other people involved. I think it was a conspiracy. So call it that. I don't know enough about this. I don't know much about it. I know too much about it. We could spend the rest of the day discussing that. Let's not. But my point is First Amendment, though, I don't think the First Amendment is in play here because you're not talking about the government when you talk about YouTube. Well, I think we should revise the First Amendment. This is what I'm saying. I think freedom of expression used to be, I can't infringe upon your right to express yourself. But that was like yelling on a fucking Apple box. You know, like when that was created, other than writing something in print or yelling something in a public square, there were a lot of ways to express yourself. Now the most powerful way the world has ever known has come along to express yourself. And that's social media. That's YouTube and Twitter. And what are those things and how much of a responsibility do the people who own those things have to adhere to the fundamental ideas that got us to this republic in the first place? And I think there's a real good argument that they're more powerful than simply just a company, that they have this amazing ability to get information out and that this is, I mean, it should certainly be profitable. I don't deny them their profitability. I mean, they've made an amazing thing. They've created something that we all benefit from. They should make a shitload of money. But I think we should really be careful about who gets to use this and who doesn't get to use this. Just because someone says something that you disagree with, they get other people to also agree with them, doesn't mean they should be shut down. If you don't agree with what they're saying, if you don't like what they're saying, you probably shouldn't view it or listen to it or read it. You should probably find something else to or examine why you don't like it. And this is where thinking comes in. This is where critical thinking and discussion comes in. And this is a huge part of managing a community, of managing a civilization. So one of the biggest parts of managing this civilization, this kind of discourse, is limited. And it's limited and censored and people can arbitrarily decide to just remove you from it.