Joe Rogan Talks to Hotep Jesus About Social Media Censorship

Two, one, boom Hotep Jesus How are you sir? I always wanted to say that I wanted to call somebody that I need that drop How the fuck did you get a name like Hotep Jesus? How'd that come about? It wasn't my idea You know, I was uh I had just went through my spiritual awakening Oh shit I just had the hip hop industry And I went through like that mace thing You know, you go to church every morning What are you doing with the headgear? We got a lot going on up there I had to top my hair down This is a black thing, man I got a squeeze So you had spiritual awakening Yeah, I had this spiritual awakening And I'm, you know, tweeting on Twitter like I do And somebody said What do you think you are? Some kind of Hotep Jesus? Ooh, that's good And I was just like, ooh, that's sexy Yes, I do think I'm Hotep Jesus That's perfect And now you own it That person is probably like fuck God damn it, that was a great name I gave that dude Yeah, I don't know who that person is Or was Or where they are now Shout out to whoever you are Exactly And Vibe High, your Twitter Why didn't you switch it to Hotep Jesus? Can you switch it? Does anybody own Hotep Jesus? I do So you have Hotep Jesus on Twitter too? Yeah, I reserved it Oh, dude, I think they could probably swap Do you have one of them cute little blue check marks yet? No What the fuck is that? How do you get one of those? I don't know There's some people that have those that have like a thousand followers Yeah How are you getting it? Like if you work for the New York Times or some shit I thought you had the hookup No I was like I'll do Joe and then I get verified I don't know how Twitter feels about me I mean I think Jack likes me He's been in a couple of times But I think they're weird, man They want I mean I think all social media, all tech companies want you to toe a line right now And if you're not toeing that line And you're bringing on forbidden guests And you have people that have controversial ideas You know, they have that finger on the button of getting radio They don't know what to do It's just like radio Mm-hmm You know, like radio A lot of people don't know it but radio has to play happy songs Because happy people buy things Really? Yeah, that's what the studies say, allegedly The marketing studies and advertising studies say People who are in a good mood tend to buy things, right? So the radio is supposed to play happy songs all day long And the radio works for the advertisers Kind of like media, you know, so on and so forth So social media is no different They have advertisers So if there's people on the platform Who are creating disgruntled crowds It could be hurting the bottom line Yeah, but Facebook's algorithm actually favors that The way Facebook has it set up Like say if you get into debates with people on abortion Or something like very controversial They will start sending that shit to your feed They will sort of steer it in your direction Because the more you engage, the more clicks they get The more money they get The more advertising dollars they get Absolutely, absolutely The Facebook algorithm is quite unique And the way that things can go viral there Twitter, I feel like the Twitter Safety and Counsel Board Yeah, what do they call it? Trust and Safety? Yeah, is that what it's called? Something like that Yeah, so when I go and look at the entities that contribute to that board I kind of start saying, oh, okay, I see why certain topics are taboo When there's a board Those people on the board are the voice They're the ones that have the opinion So if your group isn't represented Maybe you need to figure out how to get on that board You know what I mean? Right, I don't know, anybody's getting on that board No, it's not going to happen And you better be left wing if you're going to get on that board I don't think there's any right wing people on that board But do you think, I think Jack's more like in the middle Yes I think he's closer to the middle I don't think it's Jack I think it's, you know, Jack's working on a bunch of different projects But I think it's probably, you know, whoever else is in the office making the day-to-day decisions Yeah, I like Jack a lot But I think Jack is in the middle of a gigantic corporation And there's so many people with so many ideas Essentially, the founding fathers of our country had a great idea when it comes to freedom of expression They felt like it was very important that you have free speech And you can't be silenced, you can't be, you can't be undermined by people who disagree with you Because it's dangerous It's dangerous when someone can just decide that you can't have a voice anymore And only their voice can be heard And we're kind of seeing that with Twitter And we're kind of seeing that with Facebook and with Google And they're deciding what could be heard and what not could be heard They think they're doing it for good reasons They think they're doing it to preserve our culture and our civilization And they want to protect people from the election Do you know, Reddit shut down the Donald, the Donald Trump support Reddit page? Yeah That's not a good idea Right before the Dem debate Right before the Democratic debate And, you know, that was like where all the funny memes come from And look, man, you can't do that I mean, just because, if you have some people that are saying some shit that's bad on there Get rid of those people, get rid of that But you can't just shut down a whole forum Like, it seems, that seems insane Is there a reason for it? It's not shut down, it says it's quarantine What the fuck does that mean? Does it have a disease? Sort of like temporary suspension It happens to people, they gotta do something It says there's violent threats, I'm looking to see what happens Repeated misbehavior Violent threats You see Skeptical Very Seems weird, right? I feel like all this stuff We're seeing what the First Amendment is really all about Why it exists We're seeing it play out with all these social media sites I really think that You know, my thing is with the Reddit thing, right? It's very easy to create an actor The left can create a right-wing actor online to pretend like it's something else Sure It's something else They can go on the Reddit, do something malicious to get the whole Reddit band Like an agent provocateur Yeah, exactly And I never leave that off the table when I look at instances like this When you say, oh, somebody was It's the internet, everybody's anonymous Right Are you tracking this back to who it is? Do you know it's conservative? Do you know it's a Republican? Are you sure? So, you know, I take these things, these pieces of information with a grain of salt Yeah, you should But is this election meddling? It kind of is, right? It's what it feels like If you're killing a whole sub Well, it doesn't depend So if they're really... that would be really interesting if it turns out that it was someone from the left That was posing as someone from the right in order to shut down a forum and pretend there's death threats But I mean, you look at YouTube, right? And what's been happening with YouTube, even just the algorithm I'm pretty good with keywords, I do SEO and marketing So when I type in certain keywords or find certain things, I know what's going to come up Or what type of content comes up And now when I type in those keywords, it's like ABC, ABC, ABC, CNN And I'm like, that's not what I wanted They don't even talk about these keywords, what are you talking about? So when you start seeing that, you start thinking about Ingsoc and Orwell and 1984 And socialism and communism and fascism and the degradation of society And a lot of control coming down You know, people... You know, in some ways it's like, was the internet created for freedom or was it created for control, right? So it's two different pathways, we could probably look at that But it seems like in many ways, they set us up to be controlled And they're doing it through monopolies Google controls search through YouTube and Google And by what you search, you can think it's the truth But what did Kanye say? Kanye said Google lied to you You know, so... Kanye says a lot of crazy shit though, you don't really think about that He does, and I like crazy I do too, I'm a big fan of crazy I'm a little crazy, a lot of crazy sometimes So I appreciate his crazy side more than his calm side Well, great things come from wild thoughts Right, exactly I think the internet was initially created to exchange information And then when it got loose to the general public, they realized what a crazy idea that was What I think we're seeing right now with the algorithms is that these corporations are influencing these companies To say, hey, when someone's looking for these things, how about you send them over to ABC? How about you send them over to NBC? How about you... You know, like, we want to be able to get the first views on these things So if someone's searching for that, I don't know how they do it I don't know whether they have agreements with them I mean, there's also a lot of copy written shit that's on there That could get YouTube in some significant trouble if they ever really decided to pursue it And how many videos are on YouTube that people have on their channel that are just straight off of Fox News or NBC News And there's a lot of copyright protected content that YouTube is essentially profiting off of Oh yeah, yeah, they make a ton of money off of that stuff So they might have deals where they say, look, we'll send these people to this first Yeah, and that's why I say, you know, that's where the control comes in You know, the advertisers Advertisers are the ones paying, you know, for the platform to be a thing It's not us, the users that are paying for it, YouTube's free So who's paying, right? They're monetizing us, they're monetizing us, the users and the viewers Yeah, that's where it gets tricky, right? Because as soon as the advertisers get on board, they say, look, we, you know, we want to give you money But this content is not advertiser friendly Right Yeah, and then they start moving stuff around and demonetizing things And with demonetization, the real thing that they're doing in a lot of ways, whether it's intentional or not Is you're influencing what people post You're kind of, you're asking them to self-censor Because if you say, hey, you guys want to discuss abortion rights Or, you know, there's some things that you start discussing them and they will automatically demonetize you Yeah, well, who is the girl that put out the abortion documentary, right? Which girl is that? And they snatched that down I forget what it's called I'm bad at memorizing these things But there was basically an anti-abortion thing that exposed some things about abortion As a documentary, I believe the day it went up, it got shut down, she had to re-upload it Was it Lauren Southern? Might have been Lauren Southern Yeah, there's those two cute white chicks that everybody thinks are super racist Lauren Southern and Tammy, what's the other one? Tammy Lauren Tommy Lauren So she did a documentary, but then you have like the James O'Keefe thing Where, you know, he put up the exposing YouTube and then that got, you know Obviously, they're going to take it down The most recent one that exposed Google, right? Right Yeah, I've been asking people about that I'm like, okay, break this down for me Is there any way that this could have been deceptively advertised or deceptively edited? Like it seems to me Yeah Like they're saying that they're going to manipulate search results And they're going to manipulate the way people see things because of the 2016 election They don't want that happening again in 2020 That's what it seems, what I'm looking at it Absolutely, that exactly looks like, could it be doctored? Of course it could, you know That's always possible But when you go and experience it for yourself Like what I was talking about with, you know, doing the keyword search You start seeing the parallels And then, you know, Uncle Hotepp, you know, his channel was, you know, doing great And then the algorithm flipped and next thing you know, like he wasn't making the same money anymore So it's like, I don't have to go to some doctor video or whatever video to understand this problem The people around me are being affected by it You know, this is a primary source I don't have to look at somebody on the internet But, I don't know, it's In a way, I don't like playing victim with the topic Right? Stay a platform, do what you want with it We choose to be there We don't have to be there There's not another game in town though It's not, it's weird, right? When you think about how big the internet is There's only one YouTube Right Vimeo and all those other ones, they're great, but Well, you know, I always relate it to the black community You know, the black community always say, oh, you know, white people this, white people that White people this, white people that, they're not giving us opportunity And it's always like, well, is that the only opportunity? Can you not create your own opportunity? You know what I mean? So, I never want to take a victim mentality and say, oh, you know, let's take Google to court You know, all this stuff, it's like, if you want to do that, that's fine That's not how I'm looking at this I'm looking at it long term, like hooking up with Andrew Torb over at Gap You know what I mean? And building tools So, you know, we do the coinbitsapp.com And creators can actually It's based upon approval right now, but Creators can go on there and receive Bitcoin as a donation You know, so we're circumventing the things that happen like with the d platforming at Patreon, right? And the other payment platforms for creators So, we're creating tools to circumvent these things So, that's how I look at it I'm like, oh, Google's doing this? Great! This is a great opportunity here Let me seize it and let me build it and be, you know, the alternative I love to see that Is the alternative going to be YouTube and as popular? Of course not It's just not But it's still a viable option You can still communicate with your people The number one communication tool for an influencer with their community is email Build your email list, right? People still subscribe to your email list, right? That's not YouTube, that's not Google, that's your email list, that's your contact list So, it's like, you can complain about YouTube or Google, but you can build your audience almost anywhere It depends on how powerful you are Are you powerful enough to convince people to come to this other platform or to wherever you are? A lot of people are powerful enough to pack a room at $2,000 a ticket You tell me you can't get somebody to go to another platform for free? Who charges $2,000 a ticket? I mean, a lot of these speakers, you know, like the Tony Robbins type cats He charges $2,000? I think he charges like $10 I think some of his stuff is like $10,000 But he's doing like these week-long events where everybody gets together I'm going to change your life Doing karate kicks and shit Well, that's how you get the bigger check You got to create a bigger experience So it's like, alright, so we'll do a one day at $2,000, right? It's like, well, how do I get $10,000? It's like, well, let's just extend it for the week and, you know, add like, you know, the kickboxing class You know, we'll chat in the sauna You just, you know, create that part of marketing, you know But, yeah, I'm not complaining about these tech companies These tech companies, man, I'm not scared of these dudes, man The content is us The content is certainly us And like, I get, what I got from talking to Jack and Vija Was it's almost impossible to manage a site like that Just the influx of not, like, I used to have a message board on my website One of the things that I noticed before we shut it down was I was getting thousands and thousands of Russian emails That were signing up for my website Remember that, Jamie? This is years ago, this is like three years ago I mean, fucking tens of thousands of Russian email addresses were signing up Like, similar addresses It was something like the IRA, something like the Internet Research Agency Which does that, which is responsible for all those fake pages on Facebook and Google and Instagram and all that shit And they were signing up for websites that had message boards And then they would jump on and pretend that they were whatever the fuck they were Pretend that they were a social justice warrior Pretend that they were with Black Lives Matter Pretend, and they'd just start fights, start arguments And I was like, wow, this is fascinating And then when it also happened, and then it happened with Facebook And it became a big part of the election And then we realized, this is like concerted effort to use these platforms So when you're Jack, or whoever runs Google, you have to look at that and go, okay, how the fuck do we manage that? I mean, if we're into free speech, we should just let these people manipulate everybody Right, yeah, let it be Wild Wild West