Joe Rogan Apologizes for Jack Dorsey Podcast

So we should talk about this, the Jack podcast, because everybody got so upset about it. And let's clear up a few things. First of all, the guy seems to be willing to talk about anything. It's not that I didn't want to talk to him about those things. It's just he was being, I wouldn't say he's evasive, but he was basically just saying what he knew based on the company policy. I didn't know what else more to ask him. And people felt like I didn't press him hard enough. And he, to his credit, reached out to me and said that he would offer to do another one to ask more questions. That's cool. And I said, that would be awesome. So I said, well, this is the thing that people seem to be upset about. They seem to be upset about very specific cases where people showed, like if people were right wing and they were posting things, they were banned, whereas people who were left wing or maybe people of different races were allowed to post racist things or more offensive things and even dox people and didn't suffer any consequences for it. This is the argument. My problem is I don't spend enough time reading this stuff. I don't know. Like this is like when people get banned, like Anthony Kumi is a friend of mine. I don't really know why he got banned. I don't know what happened. I know there was that incident with that woman that punched him and he wound up getting fired. He was drunk. He said a bunch of really stupid shit on Twitter and then later apologized for it. But I don't know if that's what got him fired, kicked off of Twitter, but he's my friend. So what I'm saying is all these other guys that have problems, I don't know what the fuck happened, man. I'm busy. I really don't. I don't know. I don't even know what got Alex Jones kicked off, which is why I asked him because that was one of the last platforms for Alex Jones was Twitter. But something got him kicked off. Their take on it was that they never kicked him off before because he didn't violate their terms of service. And another thing that's very encouraging that Jack said, and I know it's fun to get mad at things. It's fun to get mad at him. It's fun to get mad at me for it. I get it. I'd probably do the exact same thing. I totally understand it. But one of the things that he said was that he believes that the ability to communicate on the internet through Twitter or through these platforms is a basic human right. That's how he looked. Like I said, do you think of it like a network, like NBC? Like if you're on NBC, they can decide what's on and what's not on. Or do you look at it like a utility? And he specifically said that he looked at it more like that, that he thought it was a basic right. That's very encouraging. He also said that he would bring on whoever it is in his team that's responsible for these things. So we could hear from the actual person who decides who's getting banned and why they're getting banned and what's the decision making behind all these things. We can go over all of them. I didn't think the podcast would create such a controversy, but that's probably poor prior planning on my part because my thought about it was, hey, I want to say like, it's fucking crazy to be running Twitter. Like it's crazy that this thing exists, that the president uses it as a platform. I want to talk about the dude who created this and what is this like to have this thing evolve to become what it's become because it didn't start out that way. It started out like fun shit, like at Brian Red bands going to the movies. You know what I mean? Like that's what people used it for. And then along the way, it became this global method of distributing information where people use it in war zones, man. They use it to tell people where attacks are. They use it for all kinds of crazy shit. It's a really powerful but strange medium. I didn't think about getting into the weeds with all the very specific people that got banned. I just wanted to find out why they banned people. That was my take on it. I know there's a lot of conservative voices that have never been banned. I don't think Steven Crowder's been banned. I don't think Cernovich has been banned. Has he been banned? There's a bunch that have not been banned, right? So it's not like they banned all right-wing voices. So what is it? I don't know what it is. I think it's what he said, people reporting the tweet and then somebody's looking at it going well, this does violate our policy. And maybe all these people that got banned violated the policy somehow. It's probably as simple and clean as that. It's not that simple, right? Because they make their own policies. And it's also not that simple if people are allowed to say similar things that are very racist and vast generalizations about white people, which seems to have been the case in at least a few instances where people reported that people said fucked up things about white people, but there was no repercussions. And that's where the argument becomes these people are more oppressed. And so the white people were thought of as the oppressor. So you have this white privilege thing that people like to use now as a reason to decide to like silence someone, like check your white privilege. That's an interesting thing that's happening. So if there's this genuine movement where people think that it's okay to say things about one race, whether you like it or not, that's racism. And if you're allowing that from any one side and not allowing it from another side, it seems hypocritical. Look, it's very distasteful. The idea of racism against black people in this country is very distasteful to everybody, almost everybody who's not a racist, right? Because of the history of this country, because of slavery, because of all these things, it's a different connotation. But if you just allow people to say terrible things about any race, it's racism. You are allowing a predetermined attitude about a race. Some people have done this. They have made generalizations, generalizations, racist statements about white people. The really weird thing that people are throwing around these days is that you can't be racist against white people because racism is about power and influence. It's about using your, that black people are not powerful, the white people are powerful, the white people are the ones who are oppressed. So it's impossible to be racist against them. That sounds like horseshit to me. I'm not buying that. That doesn't make any sense. It's not beneficial to anybody to generalize. This is what we got to get in our head. It doesn't matter if you're black or if you're white or if you're whatever the fuck you are. It is not beneficial to generalize, to take a person out of the group that we think of as just human, individuals. You have to be an individual. I mean, I acknowledge the fact that people look different. They have different heritages. They have heritages. They have different ancestry. They have different occupations. There's different parts of the world. There's all these differences. But at the end of the day, the only way we're all going to get true equality and true kinship and camaraderie as human beings is that we recognize we're just all a human being. That's it. There are very big differences in the way we look and the things we like. That's cool. As soon as you can say shitty things about white people or white men, that leaves everybody who doesn't fit that description guilty in this weird way or presumed guilty because of a racist statement. That's all it is. It's not good for anybody. I get it that it's different than racism against black people in America, a country that was built essentially in a lot of ways by slavery. There's a war for slavery in this country. It is a crazy reality that it's not your responsibility. It's not mine. I didn't do it. You didn't do it. But it's real. Therefore, as a person who's aware of history, the history of this country, racism against white people seems different. But it still sucks to be racist against black people, rather. It seems different. But it still sucks to be racist against white people. Sucks to be racist against Puerto Ricans. It's not good. It's not good for anybody. That's what we have to understand about this social media thing. What actually did happen and what is happening and why is it happening? And if it's just some social justice warrior ethic that you're not debating, it doesn't seem fair. It seems like there should be a conversation about this. And I bet they're super reasonable, really intelligent people, and it's possible they can come to a good place that we can all agree to. That is possible. I'm not a cynical person. I'm sorry. I'm a lot of you like, fuck them. They just want this. They just want that. Guess what? They already have it. They have more money than they could ever spend. And my dealings with Jack as a person, he seems like a very nice guy and a very smart guy and a very empathetic guy. I just think he's in a crazy unmanageable situation. To be running something like Twitter? Yeah, and there's probably people that did something that they should have done in terms of silencing people and moving things around. It's probably happened. It's a weird thing when people have influence over people. There have been videos that have been proven where executives from a bunch of different social media corporations have talked about how to silence certain voices, how to push down certain voices. This is something that needs to be discussed. Is this a policy as a whole? Because you think you're pushing the right message? As soon as someone thinks they're pushing the right message, but there's no debate about that. They just decide our way is the right way. And they're pushing this. And there's a radical opposition to that message from half the country. Like nobody knows, but this is the one that's in control of the narrative. This is the one that's in control of social media. It's this far left leaning ideology. And the other part gets pushed aside. That's a very bad situation for all of us. Because there has to be conversation. There has to be debate. Because if there's not, it just shores up the differences between two people and they fucking hate each other even more. I did not take that into account. And I fucked up. That's my mistake. That is my mistake when I made that podcast. But I didn't take it easy on them because I didn't want to discuss those issues. I just didn't think enough of it in advance. I'm not as involved in it as other people are. I'm aware that there's censorship in social media. I'm aware. My ideas going into that conversation were more about how insane this method is for distributing information. For the people that have been banned, and for the people that were fans of the people that are banned, I can understand why they'd be upset at me. It has nothing to do with any preconceived notions that I had. It's just how the conversation took place. It's all it is. And if you felt left down by that, you didn't feel like it was extensive enough, I'm more than willing to do it and go further into it. We're going to. And Jack offered it. And he's going to bring someone else who's going to explain things to us. I think this would be very beneficial for everybody. I also think that there should be a road to redemption. I think if you've got something that's important as Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, if you're not stealing someone's stuff like using copyrighted music or something on an Instagram page where you get banned over and over again for doing it, but you keep doing it. If it's not something like that, if it's an ideological difference, if maybe you crossed a line that they decided was a line, you should be able to work your way back. There should be a way where you can sign up again. You mean like get a new email address? I don't mean that, man. I mean be the same person. You should be able to be the same person. There should be a way. Well, there should be different levels, definitely. People fuck up, man. They fuck up and they make mistakes. And people also grow. I mean, there's this guy that was on Sam Harris's podcast, Christian Piccolini, I think is his name. He was a fucking white supremacist, a full on white supremacist. And now he is the exact opposite. He's like this very progressive guy who gives speeches on the dangers of racism and that and the ideology, how it caught up with him. Now if he got banned when he was a young man and making terrible decisions and then became a better person, shouldn't we give a guy like that a chance to get back in a platform, right? And without making a whole new screen name, like maybe it would be, I don't think there's anything wrong with the anonymous model. There's some things that are really good about it, right? Like Jack even talked about this, that people can report news stuff and not worry about fear of retribution, that they can whistle blow and not worry about fear of retribution. If someone's life is on the line, but they're trying to provide a service to the general public or they're trying to give people information that might even save lives, but could put them at risk, especially in third world countries or war-torn countries, that could be a, you know, a huge problem if you have to post, you know, Brian Redband. If this is the only way you can get this information out, you have to use your whole name. But it'd probably be better off for everybody if people had a way of communicating with each other like it's just person to person. And I think the real problem is when people try to engineer these conversations, and this is another conversation about YouTube. People have said that we're deleting comments on YouTube. We're not deleting anything. We haven't deleted any comments. I don't know how it works. I don't read them. I'm sure people say mean things. Have a good time. The thumbs up, thumbs down thing. Look, you don't have to have that on there. You don't have to have comments on there. YouTube gives you the option to have comments on and to have the thumbs up, thumbs down. I'm not taking those off. Have a good time with it. But we're not fucking with that. There's something that they're doing that's not, it's not, I post at 341 and Jamie posts at 342 and this is the line of the comments. It's not like that. They've got their own way of doing it. The question is why does YouTube do it? What's their, what are they trying to do? Are they trying to block out spam? Are they trying to block out hate speech? Are they trying to engineer conversation? Are you talking about comment order? Comments on, no, the comments disappear. They go away. A lot of times it's automatic. If somebody flags a comment that will just take the comment away until it's like looked over upon. Only one person? Yeah. On, I think on YouTube that happens quite often. Probably as little as one or two people. So that is probably what's happening to all you folks that think your comments are getting deleted. No one's deleting shit. Yeah. I'm not attached to what I do in the sense that I'm unwilling to look at what I do wrong. I try to look at everything that I do wrong, including this. So if you were upset at this podcast because you thought somehow or another I sold out because I didn't ask him any more questions. I just asked him the questions I wanted to ask. I understand you have more questions and I do too. I have more questions too, especially upon seeing people's reaction to it and upon, you know, making myself pay more attention to all these various stories. Matt sent us a list of them. Some of them are really fucking crazy. There's some crazy things people have said and not gotten in trouble for. Whereas other people said things that really weren't that bad and got in trouble for it. Why is that? That's a good question to ask. So we'll concentrate on that. We're just going to work out a date. So my humblest apologies to all of you. Not trying to let anybody down. I always try to do my best. That's it. And also here's another clear one. No one tells me what to do. There's no one. There's no secret person behind the scenes. If I fuck up, it's because of me. It's my fuck up. I should have prepared more. I should have thought about it more, but I didn't realize like how upset people would be. I think you did a great, I thought it was a great interview and I didn't even think of that. I thought you kind of touched on it a little when you were talking about Alex Jones and I think that was like, okay, you know, this is what happens. Well, it's a very specific group of people that are upset. It's right wing guys. Right. So there's a lot of American flags, a lot of Pepe the frogs. It's all right people, which look man, easily could have been me at many points of my life easily, especially being a troll online. You know, if you're working in some fucking job and you're making Pepe the frog memes and you're fucking with people, I get it. I get it. It's one of the things I like about the internet. I don't, I don't want to be comfortable. I'm like, I don't want to be comfortable all the time. I want, I want a little bit of chaos. I like the fact that just people like, they're like that fucking, I was upset that that radio lab podcast, they took it down where they were fucking with Shia LaVoe or those guys from 4chan and the way they took it down was they contacted radio lab and said, those guys are white supremacists and they support white supremacy, you know, and you just, you know, you made these people that are awful, terrible people that write terrible things. You gave them props. But the thing about something like 4chan is, no, you might read some terrible things, but you got to realize you're also reading terrible things from anonymous people that are working at their jobs most of the time and they're trying to fuck with people's head and they're trying to get people upset. They're having a good time fucking with people. If you want to take them as that, that's like them giving a talk to a dear friend or them giving an affidavit in court, well, you're missing the whole thing. It's entertainment. Like half of the whole reason why they're doing it is entertainment. They didn't go steal Shia LaVoe's flag and go right into the camera and go fuck Shia LaVoe by using coordinates from photographs of the sky where they figured out where the fucking, where the constellations lie and then drove around honking their horn so that they could locate where it was by using the webcam and listening to how close they got to it. I mean, it's fucking genius shit and it got taken down just by this accusation of them being racist. When you think about a forum like 4chan or Reddit or anything, you have so many fucking people. You have thousands and thousands and thousands of people. If you just have 10 cunts posting jokes about black people, that's all you need to ruin the reputation of thousands of people. So for someone to say that everybody that was like fuck Shia LaVoe is some racist and white supremacist, that's a cheap way out. That's a cheap way out. I bet more likely it's some dude who's bored and he's sitting in front of his fucking computer and he works all day and this is where he escapes. He escapes and types and writes things, then checks him later and then goes back to it and types things and checks and it keeps him sane. It's this stupid fucking cubicle. That's a lot of the people. So they pulled that whole amazing podcast down because of that. Look, the Shia LaVoe thing was ridiculous. He will not divide us. Come on. Stop. Stop. We get a chant that everywhere. It's funny what they did. They mocked something. That's their way of mocking it. Nobody got hurt. They made it out like it was an awful crime they committed on this amazing person who's just trying to change the world. No, no, they pranked Shia LaVoe and they said fuck Shia LaVoe. Is that how you say it? Shia LaVoe? LaVoe, whatever it is. Shia LaVoe. I'm sure he's a nice guy too. He probably did something silly. It's a little silly. He will not divide us. What they did was funny. It's a funny reaction. I like that. I like that. This is an important part of this thing. If it wasn't for people like that, there would be no podcast. Now the dislike ratio that you see on YouTube videos is fascinating, right? Because it's weaponized and they're thinking about trying to ban that now because so many people use it to fuck with people. I hate to say this about you folks, but every time we have a chick on here, they get fucking tortured. The like to dislike, right? It's ruthless except Rhonda Kabbatryk. Except Rhonda Kabbatryk. But it's just weaponized. They're just going to dislike it because... Because it's fun though. Because it's fun. It's also fun to throw a rock at a window. It's fun. Yeah, I mean, and some of them probably didn't even watch the podcast. It's like thumbs down. Disliking it gives a little bit of power in the algorithm of deranking it. Yeah, when... Things you affected something. And people who liked it, there's probably a lot of them that didn't even watch it. It's a button you can press. People are weird, you know, but it's clearly it shows by the amount of dislike that people moved on it and they were upset about it. So that's basically it.