Why Twitter Banned Alex Jones | Joe Rogan

a hugely significant thing. But I also think about it because of podcasts, because podcasts are in a similar way. Just no one saw it coming and the people that are involved in it are like, what the fuck are we doing? Like me. I'm like, what am I doing? Like, what is this? Like for me, it's like, oh boy, I get to talk to guys like Ben Greenfield and Jonathan Haight and all these different people and learn some stuff. And I've clearly learned way more from doing this podcast than I ever would have learned without it. No doubt about it, unquestionably. But I didn't fucking plan this. So now all of a sudden there's this signal that I'm sending out to millions and millions of people and then people are like, well, you have a responsibility. I'm like, oh, great. Well, I didn't want that. I didn't want a responsibility to what I distribute. I just wanted to be able to have a freak show. Just talk to people. You know, there's certain people that I have on whether it's Alex Jones or anyone that's controversial where people will get fucking mad. Why are you giving this person a platform? I go, okay, hmm. I didn't think about it that way and I don't think that's what I'm doing. I think I'm talking to people and you can listen. But it's giving that person a platform because they're saying, well, no, they'll tone down like Milo Yiannopoulos. That was one of the arguments people gave me. Like he toned down his platform when he was on your show so he could get more people to pay attention to him. Like, okay, but he also talked about, that was one of the reasons why he was exposed was my show because he talked about that it's okay to have sex with underage boys if they're gay because there's like a mentor relationship between the older gay man and the younger man. People are like, what the fuck are you talking about? And that was a big part of why he's kind of been removed from the public conversation. There was one of the, and then there's the discussion like, well, what is that? What is removing someone from the public conversation? If someone is very popular and they have all these people that like to listen to them, what is the responsibility of these platforms? Whether it's YouTube or Twitter or anyone. What is their responsibility to decide whether or not someone should or shouldn't be able to speak? And this is a thing that I've been struggling with and I've bounced around inside my own head and I see that you guys struggle with it and pretty much everyone does. YouTube does. And it is a hugely significant discussion that is left to a very relatively small amount of people. And this is why this discussion of what is social media, is it something that everybody has a right to or is it something that should be restricted to only people that are willing to behave and carry themselves in a certain way? I believe it's something that everyone has a right to. Yeah, everyone has a right to, but you still ban people. Like say like, like Alex Jones, you guys were the last guys to keep Alex Jones on the platform. You were the last ones. And I believe you hung in there until he started harassing you personally, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He did not. He came to your house, he banged now. No, no. He did very different things on our platform versus the others. Oh, okay. So we saw this domino effect over a weekend of one platform banning him and then another and another and another in very, very quick succession. And people I think would have assumed that we would just have followed suit, but he didn't violate our terms of service. And afterwards he did. And we have a policy and if there's a violation, we take enforcement actions. One might be asking the account holder to delete the tweet. Another might be a temporary suspension. Another might be a permanent suspension. So what you say, so like let's use it in terms of like him saying that Sandy Hook was fake. He did not say that on the platform. He did not say that on Twitter. He only said that on his show. I don't know. I don't know all the mediums he said it in. What did he do? But what we're looking at is a conduct and what he did on our platform. So what did he do on your platform that was like, that you all were in agreement that this is enough? I'm not sure what the actual like violations were, but we have a set number of actions and if they keep getting, if an account keeps violating in terms of service, ultimately it leads to permanent suspension. And when all the other platforms were taking him off, we didn't find those. We didn't find those violations and they weren't reported. But again, it goes back to a lot of our model. People weren't reporting a lot of the tweets that may have been in violation on our service and we didn't act on them. Right. Like a good instance is what's going on with Patreon. I'm sure you're aware of the Sargon of Akkad thing. He did a podcast a long time ago, I believe six months or so ago, where he used the N word and the way he used it is actually against white nationalists. And he also said a bunch of other stuff and they decided, Patreon decided that what he said on a podcast was enough for them to remove him from the platform, even though he didn't do anything on their platform that was egregious. And also they had previously stated that they were only judging things that occurred on their platform. And there's been a giant blowback because of that, because people are saying, well, now you're essentially policing and not based on his actions, just on concepts and the communication that he was using, the way he was talking. That you're eliminating him from being able to make a living and that you're doing this because he does not fit into your political paradigm, the way you want to view the world. He views the world differently. This is an opportunity for you to eliminate someone who you disagree with. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the nuances of their policy, but like we have to pay attention to folks who are using Twitter to shut down the voices of others. Right. That's where it gets weaponized. And we also have to pay attention to where people are using it that put other folks in physical danger. And that is where we need to be most severe, but otherwise everyone has a right to these technologies. And I think they also have a right to make sure that they have a very simple and open read of the rules. And we're not in a great state there. Our rules and our enforcement can be extremely confusing to people.