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π¨ CENSORSHIP ON TWITTER? | What is Free Speech? | w/ @SethDillon
Recorded: June 2, 2023 Duration: 2:15:37Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion centered around the complexities of free speech on social media platforms, particularly Twitter, under Elon Musk's ownership. Participants debated the balance between free speech and censorship, the role of advertisers, and the impact of ideological biases. The conversation also touched on the implications of content moderation policies and the challenges of maintaining a platform that claims to support free speech while navigating external pressures and internal inconsistencies.
Full Transcription
Well, I guess I can spend a few minutes talking to myself here until we get people up on the panel.
That's what we're working on right now, guys.
So it might take just a second.
Meanwhile, I can shamelessly plug the comment section down there in the bottom right hand corner.
I have a weird question.
This is an internal debate that we constantly have.
Should we do like the whole Twitter hold music thing that you get when you're going to some of these spaces?
I'm not going to, you know, mimic it for you.
Maybe some of you have heard it.
But I'm curious. Would it make it more entertaining in the beginning? Would it be interesting or would it be annoying?
So I'm going to settle this tonight. Getting a lot of thumbs down over here.
Let's go through the comments real quick. Let's see. Yes, with a lot of exclamation points from Brian.
Appreciate that feedback. The music is ass. Hard no. Thank you, William.
So so far, we're 50-50, guys. I don't know what to, I don't know where to go from here. Need more feedback.
Caroline, welcome back to the panel.
Preston Henshaw, Twitter music with a heart.
Yeah, that's good.
Laura? It's annoying. Laura Hall, it's annoying, I guess.
You people are killing me.
Meredith, no music, soft, cool dialogue from great spaces would be better.
You know, that's the attempt here.
It's really hard to have dialogue by myself, though,
because I just sound like an idiot while I'm sitting up here doing it.
I'm literally talking about hold music.
So, that's the way man made it.
Hey, Nick, is there connection problems?
I got a little message that said,
Mario, I just got a host reconnecting
message. I don't know if that's
still an issue or not, but it just came through.
Hey, Nick? How are you doing, Sarah? Yes, I can.
Hey, there's a thing that keeps popping up at the top that says
the host is having connection issues.
Yeah, that's what I was just saying to Slemyman.
So I was just,
hopefully, you can check on that.
I haven't seen it here in probably 45 seconds, though, so hopefully
it went away.
If it does cross, we'll talk.
Yeah, yeah.
Then I have to do more small talk by myself.
So please don't crash.
Please don't crash.
Salaman is not a good small talker, is he?
It's almost embarrassing.
I don't know if you heard the beginning here.
I was trying to figure out, because we have had this debate as to whether or not we should be having the hold music in the beginning, right?
Yes, you should.
Right now we're at 50-50.
We've got like 10 votes in the comments here, and we're at 50-50.
So...
Well, awkward silence makes people want to fill it.
You know, you interview people when there's that weird awkward silence.
Yep.
You sort of want to fill it.
So awkward silence never a good thing.
But I get it.
Mario's awkward and he doesn't care about the awkward silence.
No, typically when he starts the space up, he sits there silently as well.
And he types.
He types and breathes.
That's all you hear.
It sounds like a prank phone call.
It's really disturbing.
Oh my gosh.
So we have you listed as our resident liberal here.
Oh, God.
Really?
Resident liberal?
I promise I shave my armpits, people.
I do.
And my legs occasionally.
I wasn't going to ask that question, but it definitely went through the head, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't shave my legs because, you know, it's not really hot enough to do that yet.
So, right?
Yeah, you don't want to be mistaken for a conservative or anything.
Right.
Exactly.
All right, so we got Joe now.
But I will say, Nick.
Pro-censorship Joe.
Oh, hi, Sarah.
Good.
I will say on this topic, I'm here, I'm here.
We're all going to agree.
I don't think there is.
Well, Joe.
What about me?
He doesn't count.
Yeah.
I don't count.
I just call it.
I don't count.
That's the only thing I heard as I'm connected.
she said it's not going to be anybody
pro-censorship on the panel up here.
And I said,
I said,
nope,
it's Joa.
Joe's a pro-censorship guy.
I saw the tweets yesterday
day.
He's looking for me to be banned.
Well, I mean, I've been doing that for years, and obviously Twitter support has not been listening to me.
But fingers crossed, the next person they hire will listen to all of my reporting.
I wonder if it's going to be full on anarchy now.
That's what I know.
Because now who's in charge of the censorship button?
Because, you know, Ella Irwin is gone and her deputy is gone.
So now what?
Is it just, it's Elon.
Elon is the moderator now.
Why did she, did she specify why she left?
Was it because of the, what is a woman thing?
She, I mean, obviously it happened on the same day and it was on a controversy, but she would not comment to, because she actually is the one that told Reuters that she resigned, right?
And then they asked her why and she said, no comment.
So, no, we have no idea.
I don't necessarily believe in coincidences.
If I had to guess, I would say that was why.
Yeah.
But no, we can't confirm that we deal in fact here in this space.
We are not CNN.
So more people watch us than CNN, that's for sure.
So that's cool.
Sorry, Sarah and Joa.
I know.
That made my liberal tears almost fill up an entire cut.
I hate CNN.
Who is supposed to like to see it?
And it's going to get even worse now with the new hire as he tries to move it to the right to copy Fox.
I think it's going to be an absolute nightmare.
They're going to get lost in the sauce, to be honest.
Well, they were already lost in the sauce.
So how much worse can it get?
Yeah, true.
I mean, that's why they're throwing the hell Mary to see if it's six.
Yeah, so we're finishing up here, getting people up on the panel.
So I'm going to keep bullshitting around up here for just a few minutes.
So you guys would stand by.
I'll keep harassing Joa.
Yeah, so did you watch what is a woman now?
Or did you spend it?
Because, oh, man, they extended it for the entire weekend.
It was really good, by the way.
Yeah, it was good, wasn't it?
Did you learn anything?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, nothing.
I'm not, I don't know if I heard it there or if I heard it, someone say it on...
On TikTok. Yeah, I think I saw it on TikTok. Someone in like a beauty pageant was asked about
Should women participate in sports? Was that on I am I a woman or was it on TikTok? And I kind of went into it. I'm pretty sure it was Riley Gaines that the swimmer that did that. She was the most vocal one about it.
No, there was a beauty pageant contestant who was asked this question and she had the best answer I've heard, which is, I'm all for people being able to express themselves. If they want to change checks, they should be able to. We should support those people. But when it comes to sports...
I don't think it's time yet.
Like, we're just starting to accept people.
And it made me think, like, you know, you can't take steroids.
If you put a man who has a lot more testosterone than a woman does, a biological man,
isn't that the same thing as, like, having a woman take steroids?
Like, should we allow them to do that so that their body chemistry is the same,
so that it's equal?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, there's so many questions that are just, I think it's ridiculous.
Right.
And it's the first time I heard someone publicly make that comparison.
I'm like, oh, good on her.
It made me think.
So Nick, sorry, go ahead, Nick.
I was just going to ask for all over you about what you going to do.
Go ahead.
Maybe you know what I'm going to do.
Seth Dillon, CEO Bablon B, welcome back to the panel, man.
I just want to ask you, do you think we've come full circle here?
We went, you know, women's rights first.
And I'll get off this topic here in just a second.
But, you know, we had this whole women's rights movement and stuff,
and we created women's sports.
And now we're having biological men in women's sports.
Am I right to say we've come full circle now?
Are the men taking back over?
Oh, that's what you mean by that.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
It certainly would appear that women are not being protected and...
you know, their equal rights aren't being advanced in the way that the original intent was, you know, with this whole women's rights movement.
I mean, obviously, obviously now you have a situation where women's spaces are being invaded by, and I don't like saying biological males because there's no other kind of male.
To be male is to be biologically male.
Their spaces are being invaded by males.
And, yeah, so there's certainly a sense in which it's come full circle that men are now, you know, taking over and in places that we're supposed to be protected and specifically for women.
But it's not just a crime against women. It's a crime against truth and reality because you're expecting everybody to just kind of go along with this.
Um, but I ultimately, I think the solution to that is for women, uh, women, women have to have the power to solve this problem. You know, when you talk about men and women's sports, whenever Leah Thomas jumps in the pool, Leah Thomas should jump in the pool by himself.
the other women should refuse. And that would solve this problem very quickly because women's sports would
grind to a halt until men are removed from them. So I don't know why this is such a drawn out long
ongoing problem. You know, women should stick up for for other women. They have the power to do that.
They don't need men to save them. So I need a little bit of balance here. I will go to you, Millie. I promise I will,
but Sarah...
You know, you're a little bit more to the left, as we know.
So, I mean, do you echo the same sentiment that Seth does on this?
I do.
I think that as a woman that was athletic in high school and beyond,
that I could not compete with a man.
And I do think that if there, I am fully supportive of transgendered people participating in sports, professional sports, whatever it is.
But when it comes to that, I believe that there should be a separate category.
Okay, so let me shift to the actual topic that we're on today.
And Millie, I will go to you first because you are a seasoned journalist.
You've been doing this for a long time.
Obviously, we've had the controversy over the past 24, 36 hours about the daily wire situation and how there, what is a woman documentary, has been censored.
or was censored before there was a shakeup in Twitter's trust and safety leadership.
But being a journalist and being on Twitter for a while, do you notice a difference now between, you know, a couple of years ago, let's say Twitter 1.0 and then what you can post now?
And, you know, were you ever sanctioned before, banned, suspended?
And Millie, while you answer that, either if you or Nick can give an overview of what happened and where we are now, because I know there's been a number of developments since yesterday's space in terms of the whole Daily Wire issue and the documentary they made.
So, Millie, if you know that, go ahead and explain to us.
If not, Nick can give us it over view and then you can answer Nick's question.
Yeah.
Sure. You know, I was originally raising my hand to comment on the women in sports subject, but I can comment on this as well.
So just really quick, though, on the women in sports thing, and then I will comment on this.
I definitely think that it is an attack on young women, young girls, especially young girls coming from poverty and middle class situations where they rely on those sports.
sports scholarships in order to get into college to pay for their education to be furthered. So I
definitely think it's not fair because men are anatomically, you know, stronger, faster. Their
pelvis is completely different. It helps them run faster and compete better. So anyway,
Let's go back to journalism and censorship on Twitter.
I definitely think that things have to.
Well, before we do that, Millie, I want to, I want to do like a timeline here because, you know, just to be clear for the audience, I did go over it, you know, when we first started the space, but obviously our audience now was a little bigger.
The, with the Daily Wire, they reached out to Twitter originally to buy a package that would distribute the
their what is a woman documentary out to every single Twitter user.
They were ready to make that purchase.
The video or the documentary was sent to Twitter for review.
And the trust and safety team told them that they needed to take certain parts out of the documentary
due to quote unquote misgendering or else they were not going to allow the documentary on the platform.
It's worth noting that the misgendering policy was actually removed
from Twitter's terms of service very soon after Elon Musk took over.
Hence, why it was a surprise to a lot of people that they would censor this documentary.
A little bit later in the day, Elon Musk responded to the CEO of the Daily Wire,
saying that this is wrong, and we're going to try to fix this, among other things.
And it seems like he was still getting a lot of pushback from trust and safety because the Daily Wire did attempt to post this documentary after Elon said that it should be okay.
Trust and safety still censored it.
You couldn't retweet it.
You couldn't like it.
You couldn't bookmark it.
And I believe you couldn't even reply to it.
Luckily, after Ella Erwin, the trust and safety head left Twitter.
She resigned last night.
Elon was able to come in, open up that post that they had, that tweet, and allow everyone to distribute that video.
He actually even retweeted it himself and said every parent should watch this.
And that's how we got to where we are today.
And they're up to about 60 million views now, and I'll post that to the top here in just a second.
But go ahead, Millie.
So I just want to give everybody contact there.
Thank you so much, Nick.
So, yes, I've definitely noticed a difference.
And I've been someone who has been censored, demonetized, suspended on multiple different social media platforms for expressing similar opinions as what you find in the what is a woman movie.
So I actually wasn't surprised.
If anything, I was surprised originally to hear that Twitter would even entertain
allowing that content on its platform.
And then seeing that there was this controversy,
I'm actually shocked that it's even been allowed to stay up and out.
The surprising part is that,
Elon Musk somehow vetoed them and then now we're seeing it on Twitter.
But I'm actually not shocked that it was originally censored in any way or they tried to stop it from being up on the platform because it's a systemic issue across social media.
And social media back in 2016 is a lot different now than social media in 2023.
Right.
We are heavily censored.
They regulate what we say.
Our stuff gets downranked.
If they don't like it, we saw that in the Twitter files.
I saw that one of my videos was one of the videos that they censored a lot of the hashtags.
The sunrise Zoom calls videos that I put out was heavily,
heavily shadow banned essentially and downranked because they didn't want that getting out.
So, yeah, I mean, it's a serious problem.
Yeah, so I'll go to Caroline. I actually haven't interacted with you on the panel before. I'm not sure if you've been on before, but welcome and let's get your take.
Thank you. I have not been on before. So thank you for the welcome. And I guess I have more of a question than a comment, you know, since the whole discussion tonight is about, quote unquote, censorship. My question to, you know, the other panelists, co-hosts is, how are you, what is censorship to you? Because in this instance, you know,
I'm not necessarily seen that anyone was censored.
There was a brief time when the video wasn't able to be amplified and interacted with,
but it wasn't, it wasn't banned and it is now on the platform being spread quite widely.
So my question, I guess, is what is censorship to you guys?
Okay.
Oh, no. Well, actually, Seth, go ahead and jump in.
Yeah, I have a comment on that.
I mean, well, there's a number of ways of looking at, I think there's hard censorship, there's soft censorship.
We were just...
We were just at Twitter interviewing Elon Musk recently.
We just released that interview a few days ago.
And the topic that we discussed with him at length was Twitter.
It was our, you know, the restoration of our account.
We had made a joke that was censored.
We called a man, a man in a joke.
And we were censored for that.
And, you know, he ended up ultimately unlocking us eight months later after he bought the company and,
set the bird free, as he said. And so we went to Twitter to interview him and have a conversation
with him about Twitter and its policies. And we got into some of these things. We talked about
these things. It was really interesting to hear some of his viewpoint on what, on what censorship
is and what it isn't. He actually gave some examples of censorship that's still happening,
secret censorship or these forms of soft censorship that happen at these tech companies. He gave
Google as an example, you know, if
If they want to bury something, if they want to censor something and keep a lot of people from seeing it, they don't have to take it out of the search results.
They just have to put it on page two or further down, you know, where no one ever sees it.
And so I actually pushed back on him when he said that because it sounds a lot like his principle of freedom of speech but not of reach.
You know, it sounds like they're very similar where you're allowing someone to say something.
You're just not really amplifying it or allowing it to be heard.
And he didn't respond much other than to say that he thinks that there are concerns there.
He wants to make sure that that principle isn't practically applied in a way that results in some kind of dystopian outcome.
But beyond that, he didn't really speak to or try to elaborate on the differences between his take on freedom of speech but not of reach and what Google does with their search results.
In my view, you know, censorship, so there's the censorship that comes from the government, right?
What the First Amendment protects us from is government,
censorship, state censorship, where, you know, they're involved in controlling what you can say.
And, you know, in modern times where the public square has moved online, many arguments have been made to say that, you know, censorship, well, it's obviously, typically historically a government issue where they're controlling speech.
Now these privately owned companies are controlling the vast majority of public discourse.
what's to protect us from their acts of censorship?
And what is censorship?
Is it even possible for them to censor?
Or does that not even count as censorship?
I think it does count as censorship.
I think that we do have to make a distinction between the way things are and the way they should be.
Right now, presently, there aren't laws that protect us from censorship by privately owned platforms.
But I think there should be laws that protect us from viewpoint discrimination on these platforms because they are in effect the public square.
And so, you know, if you have a situation where, okay, you're invited to this platform, it calls itself a platform for free expression without barriers.
That's what Twitter says that it is.
It's a platform for free expression without barriers.
And you're invited to come there and speak in the town square.
But if you're going to say something that Twitter considers sensitive...
then you need to go into a little soundproof booth over in the corner and talk to yourself
where no one can hear you.
Well, I mean, I don't go to the town square to talk to myself.
I go to the town square to be heard.
And so if you're going to have a platform for free expression without barriers, then you shouldn't
put up those barriers that limit what people can say.
People have freedom on Twitter to block or mute anyone that they don't want to listen to,
that they don't want to follow.
They can filter out certain keywords.
There's a lot of control that the user has over that.
If you're going to have a platform for free expression without barriers, then you shouldn't put up all these barriers that actually do, in fact, limit who's able to hear what you're actually saying.
And on that sensitive content issue, you know, it's, you know, the Walsh documentary, what is a woman, was labeled sensitive.
And that's an interesting standard, too, because how do you determine what's sensitive?
Who determines what's sensitive?
Are there viewpoints that leftists express that are ever considered sensitive that would be throttled?
I can't think of any.
I can think of some that are offensive to people on the right, but none of these policies have the ideology baked into them the way that these β
kind of secular progressive policies are the radical gender stuff is baked into the policies and only
recently was removed where misgendering and dead naming and things like that are considered
prohibitive and hate prohibited and hateful um so you know defining the terms is very important but
censorship is anything that limits what you can where someone else is deciding what you're able to say
and who can hear it
And a lot of that is obviously still happening.
And Elon is still dealing with some of the layers of it happening under the surface with people defying him.
And he's trying to correct it to the extent that he can.
But I still want to better understand his principle of freedom of speech but not of reach because I do find that problem.
Yeah.
So I want to ask, well, you can.
But I want to ask one more question because this is relevant to this.
And quickly, Seth, so you were...
The Babylon B was suspended for quite, or locked out, for quite some time,
months and months and months until, I believe, Elon took over in October.
of last year.
In March, you had...
What got you locked out was
you guys had awarded
Rachel Levine,
which is one of the top
health officials in the Biden administration,
who happens to be
a man, but
is declaring
to be a woman.
You declared Rachel Levine, man
of the year. And
that is what got you locked out.
Now...
Do you make posts like that on other platforms or was Twitter the most censored out what you had?
Did you get sanctioned for that on Facebook or any other platform that you were posting that on?
I don't believe that that article was flagged on those other platforms.
But they would have been posted there.
Yeah, we didn't just post it to Twitter. We posted it to our other social media too. It's inconsistent. Some of our articles will get flagged as incitement to violence or hate speech on Facebook, but not on Twitter and the other way around. This one in particular was Twitter that flagged that as hateful conduct because it violated the misgendering policy.
which is a, it's an ideological policy.
It's not an, it's not an, it's not an, it's not an ideology neutral policy to say that misgendering is wrong.
I would, as a, as a conservative person who believes in biological realities, I would say that it's misgendering when a male person refers to himself as a woman.
And so I don't think that ideology should be baked into the terms where you have to either agree with it or stay silent.
Anytime that you try to object to that ideology, your voice is, you know, your account has suspended or you're locked out.
That is absolutely censorship.
It's viewpoint discrimination.
And a platform for free expression without barriers should not have ideology baked into its terms of service.
Okay.
Okay. Yeah, so I do want to get, I need some balance here. So Caroline, I do want to bring you in on that. Just, you know, going back over what, what Seth said, is it fair game to keep in place these policies, you know, against misgendering and, you know, quote unquote misgendering or whatever?
Give me your overall feedback on that, and I'm going to have a question for you.
Well, first I wanted to comment on one other thing about the issue of whether there are, you know, left wing or liberal viewpoints that are considered, you know, banable or eligible for censorship.
And I was four years ago...
when I was reporting on the mass shooting in New Zealand,
Twitter flagged my account and then
It was supposed to be a temporary flag and it never got removed.
And so my account was essentially de-boasted and my tweets were like hidden for three years.
So it does happen.
And it's not just a thing on Twitter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was actually...
Joel Roth, who finally figured out what was going on and fixed it.
So that was, it happens.
And I don't think that was appropriate.
But also, I did not create a health sensation out of it because, again, it happened.
You know, these are, we're dealing with millions of accounts and mistakes open.
And that's, that goes.
In terms of, I don't,
censorship, again, when a private company takes a stand on,
speech that is
damaging
has led to violence
threats. There have been bomb threats
with the recent stuff at Target.
you know, if a private company doesn't want to be
involved with that and they don't want their
brand associated with that, you know, that's their decision. And I certainly don't think that it is
censorship when Twitter or another social media company, you know, limits the amplification of certain types of
of content because it's, you know, it's not, it's not a, I want to get a little further into that real quick.
Nick, Nick, I've got a question. I've got a question, actually. Shereen, let me bring you in on this, right?
So we saw this movie, what is a woman? There was a bit, there was drama that it was being censored.
And essentially what we saw today was, it was the opposite. It wasn't just censored. It was
promoted. It was promoted so massively by the head of Twitter. I think his own post, I'm sure
got like 50 million views, if I remember right, because I was just looking at it quickly before
today.
it. So essentially we got the opposite effect where he promoted it.
If anything, it's the opposite of censorship where he's promoting a specific ideology, it seems like.
So, Shereen, what's your thoughts on this? I'd like to hear what you got to say.
Yeah, I think that people are confusing this a lot. And the fact that he decided to promote it should also...
We can't hear you, Shereen. Can you hear me?
I can hear it fine.
Oh, sorry, I can't hear then. So just...
Yeah, just go ahead. Now, jump in for a second.
Okay, okay. And I do think that I think that people are confusing some things here. Ideology is not even the issue in regards to anything that's happening. And I don't know why people keep throwing that in there. But what I do know is that when we talk about censorship, we're talking about it from different perspectives. And that's what's clear in this room to me right now.
I was banned off of YouTube for 10 years because I was talking about diversity in the tech industry and the lack thereof and the problems that were created, which I feel that we're dealing with right now.
10 years.
So the only reason why my account was given back because all of a sudden there was debate over the Alex Jones conspiracy theories, then they wanted to give it back to me.
I think that we are honestly...
not realizing that there are plenty of voices that haven't been heard before.
Y'all are not hearing them because they have been what, what, soft ban or kept quiet.
It's the elevation, it's the escalation that we're still having issues with.
And it's also the false amplification of many of these things that was happening before,
where we had these fake accounts also helping to amplify false narratives that weren't true.
and that's why we have a disinformation debate.
But the issue that I have about censorship and the way that people use it, a private company gets to do whatever they want.
I don't agree with this movie at all.
But if they decide to put it on there, I think that that doesn't mean it's been censored.
Now, here's the kicker.
I don't think it should have been amplified, period.
Period.
That's a different conversation to me.
That's amplification. That's a separate.
That's not censorship. That's amplification.
And I also believe that people should not have the right to participate in hate speech on the platform.
If you have a terms of service in place that is supposed to protect certain users, then you should be implementing them.
When you're not implementing them, then we have a whole different series of problems because other people are being silenced by the hate and
and the attacks that they're experiencing personally sometimes,
because they turn into offline aspects of harm,
which we work on daily.
I can tell you many stories around that.
But I also think that when we have this conversation
about a private entity, they have the right
to decide what happens on this platform.
Your status, politically, media, or otherwise,
is irrelevant, actually.
I don't know what you even think that.
It's a relevant.
100% irrelevant.
The only thing that we can talk about is when we talk about the First Amendment,
and we're talking about that in the case of the government.
I mean, did you,
Well, the thing is, though.
Shereen, I'm going to drop you back down and bring you right back up.
That way, you know, the entire panel can do you.
Well, Nick, what did she say?
I mean, I saw Doc, I was trying to figure out what she's saying.
So I saw Doc do a laughing emoji.
Thumbs up, he agreed with her laughing emoji.
So you could hear me?
I mean, did Doc agree with her?
You couldn't hear me?
Silly man, soy man couldn't hear.
Doc, I'll let you respond.
Go ahead.
So my concern really is for Elon's shifting standards when it comes to speech.
I think he ended up at the right place with the,
with Cess program last night and,
and promoting what is a woman.
Because I think it's a,
it's a very serious issue,
particularly as it targets children for,
for conversion and trans conversion,
which is being supported by our government and governments around the world.
So I've posted just as a test of censorship,
a before and after picture of a,
of a penis sewn on to a formerly female human being.
So not a penis, right?
It's not, well, I would, I would call it a flesh dildo, but just to shock people and to really what's happening.
Because that is what's happening.
So if I won't post it in the nest or in the bubble, but people can go to my wall and see it.
It's still up.
The problem I have is when Elon purchased Twitter, great.
My account was banned for four years that got brought back.
I had 17 accounts in the interim that got banned because I'm talking about the same stuff now that I was talking the same stuff then than I am now.
So I appreciate Elon, and I defend him a lot to my supporters who attack him in any number
of ways.
But his first standard was, well, we're going to comply with the legal standard of the country
of origin from the tweet.
So freedom of speech does not in America, does not include freedom of reach.
If this is the public square, analogous to a park or a sidewalk, you
You cannot limit my speech in the public spare because it's offensive to some people.
Offensive speech is permitted under the First Amendment in America.
So is quote unquote hate speech.
The problem shereen with labeling something hate speech is the subjective definition of what is hate.
You and I will not agree on what hate speech is.
And therefore, what should be an objective standard becomes subjective.
And that's where fights start.
So that's my sort of opinion on it.
We come from completely
opposite sides of the spectrum,
and I understand
why he came to me
after she spoke.
I don't try to...
I'm not trying to spend her
or anyone,
Doc,
I only got to you
because you were smashing
the emoji,
so I thought
there was something deep there.
Sarah,
let me come to you,
right?
Because you love your
emojis as well.
So Sarah...
I mean, let me just reiterate what I said to Shireen.
And let's talk about the issue, right,
because we're getting a lot of people telling their life stories
about banning and stuff like that,
which is cool.
I understand you went through bannings and stuff like that.
But Sarah, specifically to you, right?
You've got a scenario where, you know, people were up in arms yesterday about...
this alleged documentary being censored.
Even then, you know, we had, they had a Twitter space
and I think nearly 30 million people watched it
or tuned in at a set, I don't know, sorry,
30,000 people tuned in simultaneously.
And then today you basically had it propagated everywhere,
the CEO of Twitter essentially,
or almost the head of Twitter,
ensure that everyone, sorry, I think there's 50 million views.
Is it not the case or is it, what do you think?
Does it not seem like the case that he's actually,
propagating, it's gone the opposite direction.
Now this actual video is being propagated and endorsed by Elon Musk, Sarah.
Well, yes, of course it is. I mean,
It's everywhere.
There were spaces about it.
I couldn't scroll, you know, five seconds on my timeline before I saw something about it.
I don't think that it was throttled in any way.
If anything, it was promoted.
And that is what people are talking about today.
I don't think this is a good example of censorship because it sort of had the stricent effect.
Nobody was supposed to talk about it.
And now today, everybody is talking about it.
The thing, though...
But is it really, is it really the Streis and effect?
I mean, everyone's saying it, but in reality,
you don't need much of a Streisand effect if the CEO or the head of Twitter is basically
sending it out everywhere so everyone can see.
I think his post himself got 50 million views.
You don't need much of a Streisand effect when the guy who's the whole show is sending it out everywhere.
I mean, like to hear, Seth, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
Well, okay, a couple of quick things.
Going back to the comment on the private companies can do whatever they want, I mean, that's not exactly true.
Private companies have to honor the commitment that they make to the users on the platform.
You know, a company that holds itself out as a platform for free expression without barriers that throws barriers in front of you is not being straightforward.
They're not being honest.
An argument could be made that they're defrauding you.
So if they're making promises that they aren't keeping...
That's a problem. But beyond that, there's plenty of precedent for private companies having limitations on what they,
having limitations on what they can do in terms of discriminating against people.
Common carrier doctrine, for example, which Justice Thomas has argued could apply to big tech companies.
It prevents telecom providers, transportation companies,
It prevents them from discriminating against users.
You can't, I mean, based on your viewpoint, you can't be refused access to Verizon or AT&T.
and the services that they provide.
So there's plenty of precedent for regulating the conduct of these companies.
And that's an important point is these are conduits for the speech of others, these companies,
these platforms that are social media networks.
They're not speaking when you're speaking.
So when we talk about them, you know, not wanting to be associated with your messages.
When I tweet, it's not Twitter's voice that's being heard.
It's my voice.
They're a conduit for my voice.
And if they engage in censorship of my voice, then that's their, that's not their speech.
They're not counteracting my speech.
That's them engaging in conduct.
And there's plenty of precedent for that kind of conduct to be regulated.
The question is, should it be?
Because it isn't presently.
So right now we have protection against government censorship.
We don't have protection against private companies censoring us.
And the question is, should we?
I think the answer is yes, because it wouldn't compel or curb these companies' speech.
It's not a First Amendment issue for them as they try to argue,
because all it's doing is regulating their conduct.
It's saying that they can't discriminate.
Let me go to you something.
But the other, let's say.
I'll say this literally just.
Yeah, there was another comment that was just made.
You wanted me to comment on the comment right before I spoke.
What was that question?
So was it my question?
So my question was that essentially is it Musk really propagating this idea and thought
as opposed to this being some form of censorship?
Because he actually posted it on his own page.
I believe.
Well, I mean, things changed every time.
Initially it was being censored.
Initially it was being limited.
Then it became amplified.
It's often the case that things that you try to suppress become louder.
You amplify them by trying to censor them.
That doesn't mean that censorship didn't happen.
It means that people objected to the censorship so strenuously that they made the voice louder than it would have been in the first place.
The censorship was overcome in that case.
It wasn't non-existent.
All right, let me go to Brick on this, Chief Fethor, sorry, and then I'll come to you.
Brick, I think you've got a slightly different position on this.
I was going to come to you anyway because you normally do give a fair and balanced argument.
So go ahead, Brick.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Brick, go ahead.
Just unmute you, Mike.
Can y'all not hear me?
This is Serene.
I can hear you now, Shereen.
Yeah, yeah, I can.
Let me go to Brick first.
I'll go to the Sheree.
I just want to counter what was just said.
There was actually a Supreme Court case that just showed up that speech.
Shereen, Shereen, Shereen, let me just go to Brick first.
Then I'll come to you.
Is that right?
So Brick, go ahead.
Don't say I can't hear you either.
Nick, can you hear Brick?
I cannot.
I can't either.
Okay, so Brick will drop you down and bring you back up.
Go ahead, Shireen.
I just want to say that that argument about like, this is not your speech being shared.
I mean, that's a Section 230 argument, but there was actually a SCODIS case where literally a company who was quote unquote planning on having a website.
and having other people share their content for their weddings,
that they were actually saying that every wedding was a,
was a identity of them as a business.
So they didn't want to have to host any gay weddings.
because it represented their speech.
I do think that this argument is going to keep coming around,
but I want you to know it already went to SCO-this on this same argument about these platforms actually representing our speech.
I'm just letting you know it's already happened.
The thing, though, it's like we're having two different conversations.
The first initially was about censorship.
And I have my dictionary here, and we look at censor, it goes and says the subject to
censorship, and censorship saying the action of a sensor, especially in limiting or stopping
the transmission or publication of the matter considered objectionable.
So it is being, by definition, censor.
And I think everybody here can agree that it is.
The question is whether...
or not we think the censorship is appropriate or if it really falls under free speech.
And I think that this active censorship shows that it is selective free speech.
We, you're allowed to say some things, but then sometimes you're not allowed to.
And Twitter operates and how it, how it is.
And Elon has the ability to go and change policy as needed.
But I think there is a bit of, you know, it's very ambiguous how the policy affects some users and then sometimes it does not affect other users.
The actual film was censored.
It was limited.
They had a throttle on it.
So it was by definition limited.
And by definition, it was censored.
I believe Elon said that the reason why sometimes it was promoted was because other people paid for it to be promoted.
And Elon said that.
in reply to someone that Elon and X were not amplifying it, but other users chose to amplify his tweet talking about that issue.
So I don't think, I think the policy actually still is in place by being throttled.
The issue, we're not that issue, but the thing is, other users are amplifying other users who have retweeted it or have talked about it.
So that's kind of the distinction here.
So the risk ownership for sure.
And I think everybody can agree that there was censorship by that definition.
The question is whether or not it's allowable or not.
I think that we should allow that film to go on.
I think that if we were to be for free speech, you have to be four free speech.
You have to be four things you may not like to hear.
I mean, the problem is, I get that.
I get what happened.
But the issue is, and which nobody's talking about is,
and it's a greater thing.
For me, it's even larger thing than censorship.
You essentially have...
Elon Musk was able to advertise any idea and ideals and that idea and ideals gets propagated by tens of millions.
Do you think that that's basically, it's almost the risk there is not censorship,
but that it becomes an ideologically driven website where Elon comments on something and that almost be considered truth.
Justin, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah, look, I think...
I think Elon is trying to write the ship.
I mean, this thing was tilting leeward for so long that I think he's trying to balance things out and make some changes as he goes along.
Obviously, it's his prerogative in that he paid his own money for it.
But also, you know, Shreem brought up section 230.
There's another section part of 230 that a lot of people don't talk about.
And that's the directive from the government that it is their goal to preserve...
the vibrant and competitive free market of free speech on the internet.
And so in the lawsuit that I have against the government when they censored me,
that's one of the things we bring up.
That it's one thing, of course, for these private companies to act on their own.
But when the government utilizes them as a proxy to censor you,
now you've infringed on my First Amendment rights.
More importantly, there is lots of case law indicating that the government should have a role
in defending these public areas of speech.
And I think, so from Elon's perspective,
I think he's just trying to balance things out
and write the ship, if you will.
But from a larger perspective,
I think there is a government role to ensure
that there is this type of free speech.
The answer to speech you disagree with
is never, ever to censor.
The answer is always to counter it with more speech.
The answer to those two.
Yeah, but it's not the case, though, Justin.
Like, I know, I know.
How is that more speech when it's being falsely amplified?
I really do.
Like, every time we land on that, on that particular.
How is it falsely amplified?
Okay, because initially it was falsely amplified by fake accounts doing it.
Now we have people like people who have, you know, millions of followers doing it.
that is the problem.
So when he tilts it,
when you think he's tilting it,
he's tilting it in a completely different direction
if you think that there was a different direction,
because to me it was always tilted that way.
For me,
it was always...
So the government basically...
Should the government balance out Elon's tweets then?
What's the solution that you're saying?
Juan, the thing is the equivalent of Elon saying,
ex-mation point, or amplifying a tweet,
is the equivalent of like of Obama or someone left this person
with a lot of following, liking or supporting a comment too?
Like, both sides have people who have a large profile
or have a large following who can go and like, share,
or comment on things at their own will.
And I think, I think the,
the government issue that I don't think the government is censoring this film on Twitter.
I think the issue more so is,
I guess how it was throttle initially,
which it is still throttle under my understanding and that other people are amplifying it
and promoting tweets of other people talking about it,
which is how they're getting around it.
So without a doubt, objectively speaking,
it was censored.
It was limited.
I don't think it's a problem.
Elon says ex-
But he.
Yeah.
Yeah, what was...
Chief, can you compare Obama to Musk?
Like, I'm looking at Obama's page.
He gets viewership, like, 1 million, 2 million.
He's getting the same kind of viewership as, like, for example,
average accounts, even though I know he's got same number of followers as Musk.
I'm just looking at his pitch right now.
He's got, like, 2.5 million, 1.7 million.
980k
6.9 million so essentially
you can see that his reach
is nowhere near
as Musk his latest post was
50 million so there's a
I get that he's got a large
coverage but Musk
owns Twitter. He runs Twitter.
When he comments on something,
people, first of all, it has a huge reach.
And then people on top of that believe also,
because they think he's a genius. Like, that is reality.
So that's the additional.
Yeah.
Unbed it. Unbed it's reality.
I can answer that question.
So, yeah, I know Elon's probably, I think, the biggest person on Twitter.
If I don't think anyone else has more followers, I could be wrong about that.
But, yeah, he's got the most followers, but he just went past Obama recently.
Right, right.
But to answer the question, I still think, again, this is, I've seen no...
prove that Elon's tweets are being amplified by Twitter policy or by Twitter Twitter's
own algorithm.
I haven't seen any evidence of that.
I think people like Elon Musk because he is someone who did SpaceX and he did Tesla and he did a variety
of really crazy companies that people told or him that you couldn't do and he persevered.
I don't think he's a person.
He's an individual.
He has the right to go and comment on things.
And if you're going to say as a solution,
you want to stay out of the Twitter public space on his own platform
and comment to avoid pushing some people in a certain direction.
I think that's a bit of a reach.
He has the ability as a CEO to comment on things.
It's his company.
He bought that.
I don't think it's that he...
The problem you have chief is, I get that, but remember, you can't detach him being a CEO from his actions.
So he is banning people.
People are getting banned on Twitter.
Let's not pretend this is like some ultimate free speech platform.
Oh, of course.
So he's banning people based on ideology.
And then when he's posting about certain ideology, if anything, what that demonstrates is not that it's a free speech platform, but it's a Elon idea.
Who's he banning on ideology?
So, for example, he's banned here.
He's banned Nick Fuentes.
He's banned Scott Ritter.
And yesterday we had the presidential candidate for the GOP nominee, Yvesevac Raviswav.
And he said he believes an absolute free speech.
And he said, and I asked him directly, would you have banned them?
And he said, no, that even though what they say is grotesque,
but to be a free speech platform, to truly be a free speech platform, you have to allow them on.
So essentially, Vivek is explaining what it means.
And he said, look, it's a private company.
And if his company is that he doesn't care about free speech and it's about advertisers, that's fine as well.
but you have to be honest about what your platform is let me go to brick brick let me hear your thoughts on
this i think really quickly i'll take 30 seconds i promise um go ahead jith i never go to break
yeah the issue i mean i think everybody i believe my my impression on twitter it's very selective
free speech i think there are some opinions that have been suppressed um and i don't think
this is entirely a free speech i mean selective free speech isn't free speech everyone there's
nobody like there's nobody who doesn't believe in selective free speech right
Isn't there?
Like,
nobody believes in,
every one believes in some form of selective free speech.
That's not what the,
so essentially do not advertise it as a free speech.
Even,
even,
even,
even chief,
sorry,
I'm an entrepreneur,
apologies,
I'll let you,
Karen,
even you're rough and as mental as that,
guy was. He believed in some form of
limited free speech, didn't he?
He wasn't completely banning everybody. So everyone
believes it in some context, but please go ahead, Gene.
Yeah, yeah, I'm saying I agree with you. I think that
it's, when I say selective, I mean, he's implying
it in some place and not, not other places, too.
I'm agreeing with you. It's not entirely free speech.
and I agree, I saw the clip with Vivek, and I agree with that too.
It's not free speech.
There is an opening of dialogue, but it's not all the way there.
It's not entirely free speech.
So I agree with you on that front.
Let me go to Brick.
Sorry, I'll probably,
I will go to your next
Brick's out of the ageers.
Go ahead, Brick.
All right.
Thank you very much.
So, first of all,
I think that what happened last night
and, you know,
late yesterday and last night,
Certainly the distribution was being censored.
I mean, you can definitely describe it as censorship.
But I think it's also important to look at was, you know,
is that,
was that censorship the intent of Elon Musk?
Is that what he really wanted to have happened?
And I think the answer there is no.
He was up in the middle of night.
He was tweeting that he was going to get it fixed by the next day.
And that transpired.
And, you know,
Jeremy Boring tweeted that he was, you know,
pretty happy with the outcome.
So, you know, I think if you look at what happened, it's a legacy of the old Twitter and whether or not it's the code or the personnel or the reporting procedure that allows mass people to flag something as being offensive and then an action is automatically propagated against it or a combination of all those factors.
for whatever reason that censorship took place and it's changed today.
So is Twitter free speech? No, I think we all agree on that.
Personally, would I like it to be? Yeah, a part of me would. But under current law, it doesn't necessarily have to be. And Twitter is well within their rights. And Elon Musk is well within his rights to have limits on what can be said on his platform. And in that regard, it doesn't really bother me that there are limits.
It only bothers me when the limits aren't clearly communicated and fairly enforced.
So you shouldn't have being able to have one side flagging people that they disagree with.
and, you know, banning them, getting their accounts or their posts banned, because Elon has expressed that one of his visions for Twitter is that when action needs to be taken on a post, it will be a post-level action in general and not an account-level action.
So it will be the actual offending post that gets...
action taken against it as opposed to your entire account, which I think is great.
And like I said, I have no problem with Twitter having limits.
I just want those limits to be clearly communicated, to be fairly enforced, and for there
to be some sort of legitimate appeal process when the eventual mistakes do happen.
And in that regard, I mean, maybe some people think I'm just going to be all free speech,
free speech, free speech on Twitter.
I'm really not that.
That's not something I think, I don't think that serves Twitter.
I really don't.
I don't think it helps it grow.
I think it's absolutely true.
And I think everybody here would agree that we have much freer speech on Twitter than we used to have.
And I'm happy with the trend so far.
I would rather err on the side of caution than put the needle all the way to the other side and hope it works out.
Actually, let me go to Seth on this.
Seth, I'm going to ask you the same question because obviously you were banned and your page, it was quite big, Babylon.
I mean, I mean, you've heard the argument I've made in terms of why certain people are being banned.
What's your thoughts on that?
We asked Vivek the exact same question because he believes an absolute free speech.
And so I'm going to ask you the same question.
Like, what's your thoughts about people like who have made grotesque comments,
have made comments that we all find deplorable?
But yet...
It's not illegal.
And so, I mean, what about their speech?
So, I mean, I asked Vivek about Nick Fuentes,
Yeh, Scott Ritter, and there's many such others.
I mean, what's your thoughts on them getting banned?
Yeah, I would, I would tend to agree with Vivek.
I think that, you know,
Musk has described himself as a free speech absolutist.
We're not, we haven't really seen that in practice.
It hasn't been consistently his,
there is no clear consistency in terms of who will get banned and who won't.
And,
So I would tend to agree with Vivek that speech that's offensive is still free speech.
When you're talking about what should be limited, I don't think that viewpoints should be one of those categories that's limited.
There shouldn't be certain viewpoints that are marked as sensitive to express.
Like, for example, saying that a man is a man.
Something as basic and fundamental as that should not be considered sensitive content.
But yeah, there's definitely inconsistency in terms of who's been banned.
I do think that...
If you're going to call yourself a free speech absolutist and you're going to call this the town square, then people need to be able to say even grotesque things.
And if you don't like it, you can block them.
You can filter that stuff out.
You can mute them.
But they shouldn't be de-platformed and penalized for it.
you know, you can obviously ignore and tune out those people without taking their voice away.
And the answer, as someone else said earlier to speech that you don't like if they say something false,
is to refute them and bring in new speech that responds to that speech and rebuts it.
I think community notes has been valuable to that end.
Elon himself has been community noted several times.
It was brought up earlier about how.
when Elon says something, it's taken as the truth or whatever.
He's been community noted a few times, and he's, and he's, and he welcomes that.
He welcomes anybody to be challenged and have their speech challenged on the platform, which I think is good.
That's a healthy thing.
And so more speech is the answer to speech that you don't like, not censorship.
And so I would err on the side of allowing more and letting people control who they view and who they listen to themselves.
rather than being heavy-handed, especially ideologically.
I think ideology has a huge part to play in this
in terms of deciding what people are allowed to say
and what's considered sensitive.
Let me go to...
Do you mind if I could...
Yeah, go ahead, Millie.
Okay.
All right, so I think it's pretty clear.
We're all on the same page that Twitter...
does engage in censorship and there's not really true free speech. Just as you were saying
Suleiman, like how they have banned Milo, they've banned Nick Fuentes, they've banned Alex Jones,
they've banned yay, many of these people who we don't necessarily agree with all of their viewpoints
and for some of us, mostly all of their viewpoints we disagree with.
But at the same time, if you're banning them, it's actually not free speech and it's actually doing more harm than good because a lot of these conservatives out there have been fooled into thinking someone like Nick Fuentes for the longest time was not anti-Semitic.
Because many of his anti-Semitic posts were being so rapidly removed and censored,
people didn't actually have anything to reference in the public square to support the accusations
that were coming from some of the people on the left.
Now, what I will say is this.
I know it's entirely possible to create a platform in which you can allow people to engage
in free speech, but also allow them to self-moderate their own content
And so I'm just going to put this out there.
I've been part of that and I've been delving into the tech industry to do just that.
So if you actually guys want to go on a real platform that values freedom of speech doesn't censor you and doesn't spy or sell your data to third parties like all these other big tech.
platforms do go to q ux.tv and check that out because we're making some revolutionary things in
tech right now happen in order to put platforms out there for people that are sick and tired of all
the censorship because let's get real what we see now with elan musk in charge of twitter okay we have
seen some improvements but it really just feels like there's free speech for some people
And there's not free speech for other people.
So the fact that Elon Musk can tweet about his opinion on gender surgeries where someone like me, I actually have to fear on Twitter as to the safety and the status of my Twitter account if I were to try to say something like that.
It just goes to show that it's like there's this feudalism, this thing where there's, you know, people who are in the in crowd get to have certain permissions and access, just like certain people get to have the subscribe button now for paid subscriptions and other people are not being given that.
So to me, it just seems like there's a lot of unfairness and unfairness.
lack of freedom for certain groups of people and it reeks of information operations.
So it's like, I'm not sure what's something you talked about, but if they rely on servers like Amazon servers, then it is...
Does not.
It's not.
Well, I think that GA, because I'll say that GAB probably is another one also because GAB isn't...
It's not a website.
You have to understand.
Again, we've got hardware.
So it's a hardware private network that's gaps decentralized on our own proprietary hardware.
And inside, people can literally create their own content, streaming, comments, chat rooms, all that stuff in a private network that literally we've gone to the most high, secure stuff.
you know, talking to people in various intelligence agencies, contractors, really picking the brains.
As a journalist, I picked the minds and the brains of a lot of these people who I've had the opportunity of bumping into by doing journalism,
into how to create a system in which bots can exist.
They cannot exist inside QUX, okay?
Which that's a major issue on Twitter right now and on these other social media platforms.
Buts.
are largely used by, you know, private companies and contractors out there who are engaging in psychological operations and information operations on social media.
And that's why there's such a big bot problem on Twitter.
It's on every social media site out there because they don't have a way to deal with the bots.
The way we've done it, you can't create pops.
I'm going to shift you a little bit, Millie.
Um...
One of the questions that we asked back yesterday had to do with how much speech is still considered free speech.
And Shereen, I want to go to you on this.
Where is the barrier?
Should you be able to, you know, talk about Nazis?
Should you be able to use racist terms?
And at what point do you cut that free speech off?
I appreciate that question finally.
And I do think that we also have to be honest about some of the conversations that we're having because in some countries, there are things you cannot talk about.
And Nazism is one of those things.
Actually, there's a lawsuit against Twitter that's actually happening right now because some of that was available to certain countries.
During elections, I thought that's what we were going to go to some of this conversation.
But during elections, during other elections,
actions that were happening in other countries,
we have to also understand that Twitter is,
a lot of this conversations is American-based.
And I'm okay with that.
But it's also American based in the context of defining free speech.
Like if we're going to have a full conversation, then we also have to say that then
Twitter needs to just turn into an American company and then we can debate that.
That is not what's happening here.
And so that's why I have a problem when people say, you know,
how to count a free speech is more speech.
But if you have fake accounts amplifying.
conversations, then the more speech is not coming from actual people, right?
If you can control 500 accounts, which I know can happen, then that amplification is false.
This one person controlling five accounts, 500 accounts, and making it look like this is a major part of the conversation.
But I do, Nick, the question that you're asking, I don't, I feel very strongly.
A private company has the right to determine which of those things are hate speech, which are those things that should not be on their platform.
And if they have to do legal, you know, deal legally with other countries that have completely different laws against Nazis versus what we seem to be fine with Nazis running amok.
We need to be honest about that.
And that's the problem that we're having.
I really don't think that we're honestly sort of looking at the laws itself,
looking at, yes, the definition of censorship when something gets throttled, but also this concept that, well, Nazism is just ideology.
Like, we need to be very honest about the way in which we're throwing even ideology around because I keep...
We need to talk about Nazism so people understand how evil it was and it won't happen again.
ignoring it is not a solution.
And yet the hate speech,
the hate speech for other groups of people
is fine on the app
because people don't know anything about that either.
Like I want to make sure that we understand
that we're sitting here in one instance saying
we need to define hate speech
and then another instance going,
we know this thing over here happened
and was horrible, but we don't want to talk about that.
We want to make sure no one's talking about that.
But all the other horrible things
that happens to all the other groups of people,
well, we need to talk about that.
I think the imbalance of that, the fact that that's an imbalance.
And I think some people on here has already agreed.
The fact that that's an imbalance is also part of the problem.
You're talking about two different things, though.
Like, the first part is about about, um,
hate speech you can throw around
um terms or or people who you may not agree with or like but by definition uh if you are
throwing removing that is censorship and i think that when when you censor people remove them
doesn't really get the problem uh nipped or whatever and i it's also more that people
central people is a way of hiding views that they don't like not not just the ideas that you
may importantly disagree with but ideas you just don't like i think that uh
that Yay and that Nick and everybody else who has been banned.
Don't say Nick.
Don't say Nick.
Yeah, but associate me with it.
Go ahead.
But I'm not talking about us disagreeing.
I'm not, nothing I'm talking about is disagreement.
Nothing I'm talking about is like, you hurt my feelings.
I'm not talking about any of that.
The fact that everyone keeps like leveling me to that, I am actually not speaking to any of that.
Okay, so, Shereen, obviously, an example that we had yesterday with Vivek, we were asking about specifically the N-word, okay?
It's a pretty hot, pretty hot topic right there. That's a pretty pressing word. Is that too far? I mean, should that, should that word be banned? Should you be, should that, you know, those tweets be removed for using that?
More people have been banned for calling out the N-word towards them trying to protect themselves from the harassment and harm than the people who've been using it.
So that's what I mean.
Like there are distinct differences in how we handle certain situations.
Some words are acceptable when I consider that, that word, actually hateful content.
However, if black people say white people, we will get banned for saying white people.
Like, be clear.
We're not having the same conversation.
Is it bad for me to say the white people that they're white people?
Like, we're not having the same conversation.
And so when people limited to making it seem like, well, I'm just talking about the things that are pouring to me, I'm not.
I'm telling you that I get banned for saying white people to white people.
Why are y'all protecting?
Has that actually happened?
Has that actually happened?
Yes.
Yes.
So I think a lot of it has to do with like their algorithm and their AI and whatever is like automated because I have actually been limited for using the word black people before even though I was saying positive things about black people.
I think if they get overly reported like somebody attacks it with mass reporting, I think that's.
then it automatically gets kind of sent in your censored until somebody's able to review it.
At least that's been my experience.
This happens on every platform.
Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, same IG, same thing.
If black people say white people, they will get bands.
Dirty day.
Yeah, no, I, I don't.
Well, bands and suspended, Brian, are two different things.
Just say cracker.
You'll be okay.
So, you know, like black people, how to say, you can say whatever you want,
then that's a policy.
I always solve that problem.
You can say black people and someone can say white people.
And there you go.
That's the problem solved.
So I want to ask.
Elon Musk talked about the standard of lawful speech.
He's talked about that a lot.
He told Tucker Carlson, when Tucker was concerned about being censored, that as long as what
he's saying is lawful, he won't be censored.
The asterix seems to be, but you might have limited reach.
That's kind of the asterisk.
And so the question really is, you know, I think lawful speech is a good standard if you're going to treat this as the town square, which is also how he's described Twitter.
then the standard should be lawful speech.
I think there's room for making laws that safeguard that.
We don't have them now, but I think there could be laws that would be constitutional
that would safeguard lawful speech on these platforms.
And that's a good standard, but having it
Having a rule that if it's marked sensitive, it will have limited reach is very dangerous when it comes to free speech because who's going to be deciding what's sensitive, what's not, and what gets limited.
If it's limited, it's not really the town square.
You don't go to the town square to talk to just one or two people or to yourself.
You go there to be heard.
And so the standard of lawful speech, I think, is a good standard.
I can't make sense of this idea that you have freedom of speech but not reach.
It's contradictory to me.
If you're speaking, it's to be heard.
That's the whole purpose of speaking.
I agree with that.
So when he said freedom of speech, not freedom of reach, I was like, huh, like, what does that actually mean?
Like, if you're going to limit somebody's reach, isn't that kind of like censoring them?
Also, like, if you push your comments so far down that nobody sees it, isn't that actually going to be?
trampling on somebody's free speech.
Yes, and Musk objects to that when companies like Google do it.
In our interview, if you watch the interview we just did with him, he brought that up as an example of censorship that he doesn't like when Google bury stuff on page two, page three, page four, where no one will ever see it.
So, Seth, I have a question. So you said lawful speech, but like don't you think that that also is not clearly defined? I mean, certain things are clearly illegal, but some things could be deemed illegal, but you depending on who you ask, right? So like even that has, I feel, lines that you have to kind of figure out.
Well, I mean, there's there are things like incitement to violence, you know, fighting words, death threats, harassment.
There are things that there's clear legal standards for that would be prohibited.
Otherwise, anything goes.
You can say what are, you can have any opinion that you want without being throttled.
That would be a, that would be a lawful speech standard.
so I'm no no I I get that I was just going to say like so I I get that but I also feel that
that could also be unclear so like somebody says that this is a threat like is it a threat like
there could be people that argue this isn't a threat why other people say hey it is a threat so
So I think that no matter where the line's drawn, you're still going to have people arguing back and forth saying, yeah, this is illegal, this isn't illegal, you're going to have lawyers get involved.
And I don't know if it's going to solve anything if you make that line.
Sure. I think it would be much less restrictive because you do have, you do raise a good point.
I mean, like, for example, Libs of TikTok has been accused of inciting violence by simply reporting on,
activity that happened at a hospital, you know, where they were performing surgeries on minors or
something, and that merely reporting that was considered by some to be incitement to violence,
when obviously from a legal standard, though, incitement has a different definition than that.
You have to actually call for violence explicitly and imminently.
So, you know, it's a matter of people can make whatever claims that they want,
but there are legal standards that you could apply in that case.
And a lot of, you know, this speech has been dealt with.
so much in the courts
that having a lawful standard,
obviously you'll have debates about it,
but I think there is something that you can reference
to determine what's lawful and what's not.
I think that's the problem,
because,
for example,
Nick, go ahead.
Real quick.
Before we get to, Shereen, I guess I'll let you jump in right after this.
I want to ask everybody that's listening here to kind of tell us in the bottom right
handker in that common section where you think the line should be.
Should you be able to use, you know, racially charged terms and, you know, and just be sort of open to post-
posting whatever you want to within the laws of the United States.
If it falls into freedom of speech within that First Amendment,
should you be able to post it?
I want to know where your line is.
So put it right there and give us your questions as well
because we're actively going through them right now.
Yeah.
So I meant, do you want to say something?
And just to add to that, yeah, yeah, just to add to that, guys,
make sure that you subscribe because we will be having subscriber only spaces.
They are off the hook because we do not.
They're not recorded.
You can ask us anything.
We will be having another subscriber only space straight after this space.
It's fun.
It's basically relaxed and...
it's uncensored in the sense of you're able to ask us anything.
So it's just joining it.
And also on top of that,
there is going to be exclusive guests coming onto that subscriber only space.
So as we're building the subscriber numbers,
there's going to be major exclusive guests on that.
And so there's like,
just join it.
Sarah loves it.
She loves her.
She learns a lot.
So be like Sarah.
Please let me go to Shereen.
Shereen,
we're going to go to you.
Yes, thank you.
And I,
And I want to make sure that that part that was just mentioned, like, is there law?
There is law.
But there are also people who know how to skirt the law.
Like, for example, someone saying, I hope you get raped.
They didn't say they were going to do it, which means that they would have to be censored in that regard.
They're just leaving it out there in that regard.
The same thing with death threats.
What about blocking them a moving on?
Hold on.
Let me finish.
Let me finish.
even with death threats, right?
The death threats, the law says a certain thing about those death threats.
So if someone says, I hope someone comes to your window and kill you, that's not covered by the law.
Like, I think that sometimes we're having this conversation and not realizing where the bridges of the lines are.
And as we're trying to have this conversation, I want us to be honest about how many people have been able to skirt that.
And that content is out there.
Yet other people are now sharing it.
And then someone, you know, shows up another person's doorstep, right?
Like, we're not connecting the full dots.
I just think that there's like a big disconnect about like, yes, some of the stuff is legal.
Some of this stuff isn't.
But we're still having this argument over where that line is.
Thanks.
So, Brick, you have been laughing uncontrollably here on the panel recently.
And so I want you to jump in and I want you to respond.
All right. Look, on the issue, some of these things that are mentioned here,
I don't know how many of you've actually reported to tweet or looked at terms of service lately,
but wishing harm upon somebody is an actionable event on Twitter for which a tweet can be reported and taken down.
It's already protected there.
You've got to realize that this is there.
You don't have free speech on this platform.
Now, if it were all government funded,
We would, and that'd be great, but it's not.
It still requires substantial corporate funding in the form of advertisement payments to Twitter.
So you can't just say, we're going to go free speech until everyone in America is willing to accept...
a totally open free speech without consequences for advertisers, which we already know is not the case
from a recent beer debacle and a recent department store debacle. We know that's not the case.
If you want to see the most recent example of censorship on Twitter, it's about the AOC parody account,
recently reinstated, as funny as ever,
drawing immense amount of attention,
and yet deactivated by its owner today after...
numerous and just an incredible amount of threats to their physical safety that they received
after AOC complained about the account. So does that make AOC a stochastic terrorist because
she incited a response against the account? Well, yeah, it absolutely does. So you can't say,
you can't say that, you know,
You've got to know what the rules of the game are.
You've got to play by the rules of the game.
And Twitter has policies.
If you take the time to learn them, you'll understand why you can't say white people or
this color people or that color people because you can't make statements about racial groups
that are disparaging.
So if there's an attendant thing after that, then yes, your tweet will become actionable.
The thing I was laughing about the most, and I could be wrong, but I don't think I am,
is the notion that more people have been taken off of this platform for complaining about people
citing their race or ethnicity than have been taken down for calling somebody another name.
Or, you know, I'm, I don't need, this is just the way I'm wired on Twitter.
I don't even want to say.
I don't even want to say the word that begins after M.
I don't even want to say that,
I don't even want to say that term.
But the notion that more people have been,
have been banned or suspended for defending themselves
against the use of that word than have been for using that word is laughable to me.
It's still up.
I haven't documented.
And there's many stories about it.
So y'all can laugh at it if you want to,
but it's been document time and time again.
And I have...
You can't possibly know the number of accounts that have had or tweets that were taken down for using the word.
You may know people. You may know people who have had their accounts throttled, suspended, tweets taken down because of that defense. I'm not saying that didn't happen.
I'm just saying it's laughable that you claim to know that that number is larger than the amount of tweets taken down for you.
It is. We've documented. We had to go to Twitter about it. It had to go to Facebook about it. Yes. We know this number.
It's on Wikipedia, Brooke.
Shereen, what's the number from? Can you explain where you got your data from?
Yeah, I mean, I can send you the reports on it so that y'all can see that.
I'll do the little thing at the Jumbotron.
But yes, more people are held accountable for defending themselves against the words
than the people who are using it.
What does the data show?
What does the data show on to you, Shereen?
I just said it.
More people.
No, no.
Where's the data from is what I want to know.
Who provided the data?
No investigative reporting.
I will put the thing up here at the top.
I'll show you so.
From whom?
From what?
One of them is from Reveal.
The others are from our reports from the people that report to us.
And the third is from the Senate.
Okay, Seth, you wanted to jump in before we come back to Shereen?
Yeah, I just wanted to raise the point again that there's two conversations, really.
One conversation is about the way things are.
What is Twitter like now?
How do they enforce their policies now?
Is it consistent?
Is it right?
Is it the way that it should be?
And then there's the other conversation about how...
how things should be.
Should Twitter change?
Should social media companies be required not to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint?
You know, those are really two different conversations.
And I'm not sure which one we're having in this space right now, or are we trying to have both?
I think that's a great point.
Yeah, I would say what I hear is a lot of people complaining about unfairness rather than censorship.
That is to say, yes, it's ultimately unfair that Elon Musk has such a reach and that he has a broader account than other people on another spectrum might have.
I mean, look at the U.S. Constitution.
It starts with all men are created equal.
That's clearly not the case.
I mean, some people are born without limbs.
Some people are born with higher IQ.
Some people are born into rich families.
But according to the government's view, the government views all men is equal.
So we want Twitter to act perfectly, but it's run by humans and it's not going to be perfect.
The issue isn't about perfection.
The issue is that when you basically...
claim that your platform is a free speech.
I don't think anyone disagrees
that the platform is much better than it was previously.
Like a lot of accounts have returned.
We're able to post things that we know
we weren't able to post.
So that's not what the argument is.
I think that's kind of a good.
Yeah, but I think,
what happens is...
it becomes this sort of slippery slope where you say, well, look, this sort of censorship is going to be okay, right?
And the next thing you know, the former director of the FDA is calling his friends of the White House to call Twitter on his behalf to get your account removed, which is exactly what happened to me.
And so you build up these calcified trenches where people start censoring. And that's what happened over the last week.
three years. And that's why I defend absolutely, you know, you have free speech. You don't
count out to it. You do it very rarely. You account for human error. But in the end, you cannot
have a policy. Would you have banned year then, Justin, and Nick Fuentes and Scott Ritter?
Yeah, I don't know.
I think that's, I'm so glad I don't have to make those choices.
So see what I mean?
You're saying you don't know and that demonstrates that you don't believe in absolutely.
No, I, I, it's human, it's human stuff, right?
You got to deal with human issues all across the board.
There's human stuff that you got banned.
Like if you want to go down that road, then why you complain that you got banned?
Because that's human.
It was human stuff that became calcified at the policy.
And that was the problem.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
It's still humans.
It's still humans.
So don't complain.
It's cool.
Like you got banned.
Okay.
All right.
No, no,
but that's the point.
That's the argument because it's human stuff.
Yeah.
when it's on others and when it's not when it's on me then it's a it's an ideological problem and
so solomon to your point it's actually something i wanted to bring up as i'm hearing everyone
i know a lot of people on here like absolutely no censorship and even Vivek yesterday was
absolutely no censorship but if it was on their turf if if they owned a restaurant and someone
started screaming out like um anti-semitic
slurs to a Jewish clientele, they would kick them out, right? And I think everyone here would.
And that's where it becomes like, you know, Elon shouldn't, but, you know, if I own a restaurant,
I would kick them out. I don't know anyone here, although they're saying they're for,
they're doing the same thing that he does do the same thing, Elon did. It's a fallacy. It's a
it's not because Elon said he's four free speech and.
And everyone here is saying they're for free speech.
Joe, which restaurant owner at the front of their restaurant advertisers, please enter free.
Elon did an advertiser.
He said he for free speech just like so many people here, just like so many people here.
I've been on spaces night after night saying they're for free speech.
Let alone, I mean, that's not a speech platform.
This is literally a speech platform.
Even if you don't want to call it a free speech platform.
That's what you're supposed to be doing here.
Yeah, exactly.
Elon Musk literally in his
interview. He said, Elon Musk in his
interviews, he literally said, you know, I'm a free
speech absolute is giving like this theatrical
sort of diatrive as to how much he cares about free
speech on this platform. I've actually
got a question because it seems
as though right now a lot of this censorship
is being targeted at Trump populace
allies. We see it not just on
Twitter, but from like all
all over the place in the country, public sector, private sector.
We saw James O'Keefe, Tucker Carlson, Texas, AG, Kin Paxton,
and now even Gavin Wax from the Babylon B.
So I'd like to ask Seth Dillon the question,
because we are talking about private sector versus Twitter,
a platform that's supposed to be free speech.
You know, in the past you've said that it's Christian to defend yourself from slander on the internet.
You say you should speak your mind if you work at a company and not be afraid to do so.
So why is it that you say those things and then you decided to take down Gavin Wax?
That was a question directed at me, I assume. I just heard Gavin Wax.
You're saying, am I contradicting myself on free speech?
Uh, you, yeah, contradicting yourself on free speech and the, in the previous statements you've made about defending yourself, whether you're being slandered or not, and, you know, speaking your mind, even if you work at a company where it might be risky to do so.
I address this another space and that's not what this space is about.
Well, I mean, it kind of is.
We just brought up a conversation about private sector versus like, you know,
restaurant versus Twitter, these sorts of censorship things.
So where you're a business owner, a business owner, you know,
much more successful than probably most people in this space.
Where's the line that you draw at your company?
I have fired employees for insubordination.
I've fired employees in the past for poor performance.
I've fired them for excessive absences.
I've fired them for conduct.
And so, I mean, there's a lot of reasons to fire somebody.
I've never fired anybody for expressing an opinion that I don't like.
So why was Gavin Wax fired?
That's the situation that we're dealing with his attorneys on now.
So that's not something for this public space.
Sarah?
Yeah.
Thanks. Is it okay if I shift a little bit here?
Sure, sure. Go for it.
I just want to ask a question the person who was just asking me this question.
Why is there this assumption that somebody was fired by me for an opinion that I don't like?
Where does that come from?
Well, it comes from the fact that we've seen a lot of these Trump populist allies, James O'Kee, Tucker Carlson, Ken Pexton, you know, removed from their positions of influence in recent months, really over the past month. And Gavin Wax is the most recent one on that list. And it was made from my understanding. And that's why I asked the question, you know, I don't I don't know what you're thinking. I don't know what your rules are at your business. And that's.
your prerogative but it seems as though this was made after Gavin Wax was defending himself
from slander from DeSantis, uh, spokespeople.
Gavin was a rabid Trump supporter when he was hired.
I took a, I was, I had dinner with Trump in February.
Should I fire myself?
Because I took a, like, what is, I don't, I don't even understand the accusation that I fire Trump supporters.
Well, I have Trump supporters on my staff.
They work for me right now.
Times change.
Times change.
It's so laughable.
In 2016, Foxx News.
We're talking about free speech and censorship.
I never censored Gavin.
Gavin can still speak wherever he wants to speak.
I just no longer want to employ the man.
and the reasons for that are being worked out with his attorneys of course and that that's totally
understandable if you have to keep that private because it's a legal matter i was just at and if you
want to hear me speak to it you can go back and listen to the space where we address this for several hours
we don't need to rehash all that old
Well, I mean, this is, it's a conversation of free speech.
Right now, a lot of Trump allies are being censored.
This is not 2016.
It's not 2020.
This is 2023 times change.
DeSantis is running.
I've noticed this trend.
And you're one of the people that took out one of those Trump populist allies.
So I asked the question.
I did what?
I took him out.
Correct.
He's got a bigger platform now and a new job than he ever had before.
He's gained followers.
How did I take him out?
Do you think that Fox News, he said he's not taking that job?
Do you think that Fox News took Tucker Carlson out?
I have no idea what happened at Fox News.
I think we all know what happened there.
Tucker Carlson has a bigger platform you could say now, but he's out of a job.
Are the moderators just going to let this guy drive this conversation?
Well, I tried to shift, but you asked him a question, so I just assumed you were trying to engage.
You bought it back.
Sarah, jump, yeah, jump back in.
You said you wanted to shift a little bit.
Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, I find that people are all for free speech until they are themselves the target of hateful, hurtful, or threatening speech, and then they want it censored. But Salamon, you mentioned something, and I'm curious. You said that...
before Elon Musk took over, that there was speech that you could not say that you can say today.
What example can you say today that you couldn't say prior under the previous Twitter leadership?
What can you say today?
Anything.
Masks, vask, everything.
Yeah.
You couldn't even talk about the U-TRA and Russia war for the most part.
You couldn't bring up transsexual thunks.
I couldn't use the word vaccine without getting beamed.
But then it doesn't seem to be applied fairly because I talked about vaccines.
I talked about sexuality and transgender ideology.
You talked about it in the right way, according to them.
Tell me the right way.
Well, look, for example, whenever I question, for example, the efficacy of vaccines, the first time my account was banned was when I questioned the efficacy of masks back in 2021 for the use of containing the spread for children.
Turns out I was 100% right, but I was kicked off of Facebook and Twitter by the likes we believe of the White House over the pulpit of Jen Saki.
Okay.
And so, you know, there's a perfect example there. I had three dozen colleagues that I had to have reinstated.
Thanks to Jay Bocetaria and who's his new stardom with Elon, he went to Elon and said,
Elon, here are some accounts that have been seriously banned for over a year for not for doing wrong speak about COVID.
I have 300 accounts at least that were canceled because of that.
And it was citing opinions.
That's why I say, Justin, it does not appear that Twitter applies it evenly across the board.
It seems that you couldn't say something maybe because your reach reached further than mine.
We have about the same.
No, no, I had counsel.
I had people who had like 100 followers that got canceled and dinged.
And again, that was before Elon took over.
Once Elon took back, he really stated those accounts.
The COVID policy went away.
In fact, it was just today.
I mean, just today, for example, YouTube.
Sarah, are you saying that you wrote tweets that were anti-vaccine?
I would join spaces that were anti-vaccine.
No, but did you write tweets?
No, no, I get that.
But I didn't necessarily write tweets.
That's what I mean.
So what example of a tweet,
Sarah, if you can give an example of a tweet,
sorry, sorry, I apologies for it, Sarah.
So what, if you can give examples of a tweet that you think
others would get banned for, but you did not get banned for?
I'll find one and I'll send it to your or post it in the nest.
But I'm curious, what can you say, Salaman?
You know, they were talking about anti-vax and whatnot.
I saw plenty of accounts that were constantly anti-vax, anti-mask, that were always around.
I'm wondering, what was it specifically that you couldn't say?
Did you ever get suspended from Twitter and had to be reinstated?
No, no, so let's be clear.
I, myself, wasn't using Twitter, like, before Musk.
What I'm saying is what the current content that I'm posting now, based on the previous rules,
and the reason I didn't join Twitter was for that specific reason that it wasn't worth talking about these things because you'd get banned.
So some of the examples are the things that I post about, which based on the policy of Twitter prior, um,
which I would have got banned for is, for example,
I wrote about the COVID vaccine recently.
I wrote about the Andrew Tate content.
I've wrote about the issue about basically women are falsely accused
and men of rape.
I've wrote, so all of these issues would be things
that would have been flagged and most likely would have been bad
in the previous regime.
So that's what I was talking about.
So that's what I said.
I would, that's the reason I didn't join Twitter in the first place
because I knew it wasn't worth it.
Like, why would you just be a sheep a part of like the herd?
Well, and also, the Shireen said that she was going to post those numbers.
Are they in the chat or was she going to put them in the nest?
You see me working on it.
I put one up there and I'm putting others up as I went along with all the things I called out.
That one is, I saw that one you put there.
That is...
one story.
That was from USA Today.
Then there's a whole documentation
that comes from USA today about this too.
I'm trying my best to get to all of them.
So I'm going to keep putting them up.
Okay, well, to bring it back, though, also, I mean, there, there, you can talk about a vaccine in a positive manner on Twitter or Facebook, YouTube, and you would be allowed to say that.
The issue is if you went against the, uh, beliefs of the science at the time, you would be kicked off or removed.
And specifically, they had a lot of, uh, COVID misinformation policies where they completely removed accounts or questioning.
of the efficiency of
the vaccine, especially
even some of the doctors,
at front of the doctors,
we're talking about how it's not as efficient
as the CDC
and other companies were claiming it was.
They were debausted and banned off
of pretty much all platforms.
Even Twitter, some of them were at a point.
But,
the issue though again it's like free speech if you're for free speech you should be for free speech
if you're a free speech absoluteist you have to abide by that and understand that there are
advertisers out there that may not want to do business with you that's a cost of free speech if someone
wants to be pro free speech and say anything that's illegal to be said if that's allowed then that comes
with advertisers saying they may not want to do business with you but i am if if i were you on position
he spent $44 billion on on Twitter probably a thing a bit more action than that I would
let free speech absolutely and I would accept that the cost of that would be some uh advertisers
i let you know nick i let nick Fuentes and uh kani west and anybody who i may you know
who you may disagree with and i might let people on who i think you know don't agree with all
their positions either but guess what happens uh that's free speech absolutism you have to buy with those
consequences if you want to be...
So, Chief, like, that's the problem you see
because when you look at this, and this is the issue
I have, this platform
currently seems like
it's ideologically driven. Like, it's things
which Elon likes and then they'll
stay on. If Elon doesn't like them,
they'll get banned. So it's just
in that aspect, it's no different to the
previous regime. They had an ideology.
It's just most people didn't agree
with that ideology. An example of
that is I see like significant amount of
like Islamophobic polls.
throughout and they don't get banned,
but then someone like Nick Fuentes,
yeah,
these type of people get banned.
So my problem is that I want systemized approach,
either approach that is consistent throughout,
or have an absolute free speech, but having a situation where there is disparity in the types of
posts that are being banned, but that's where I have a problem. So either consistency or
absolute free speech. Yeah, but Suleiman, the problem with the previous regime wasn't their choice
or their differences in that. It was that there were government channels that were pushing a
proper narrative and holding the feet of people at Twitter to the fire if they didn't
abide by those, right?
Like I said,
it's one thing for a private company.
But Justin, also,
there were people at Twitter
who were using the government
as an excuse to do what they wanted.
So it wasn't Twitter being forced to do it by the government.
I mean,
they were willing accomplices in some cases.
Yeah, but you have to see, I mean, in the recently revealed foias that Alex Berenson just got on his case, I've got my own coming too, but it reveals that the lawyers thought that it was worth taking on Alex because they feared the government more. In those, they reveal that they were worried that they probably had a 50, 50% chance on.
of losing the case to Alex,
but they were more worried about the repercussions
against the government.
And I think that is a legitimate issue.
You had Vivek Murphy, Jen Socky, July 15th,
2021 over the pulpit of the White House,
saying, we don't know why there aren't more accounts
being taken down on these social media companies,
We are going to have these companies held accountable.
I want to understand your argument.
So your argument is that you're okay with an individual having supreme power and limiting speech, blaze, carte blanche, however he pleases.
But what you have a problem is, if a government body does it?
That's great because I have no recourse against a private entity.
I have very little recourse actually.
Now I think the government, I think there's a lot of mess that Section 230 is brought about.
But Elon has his preferences, the previous regime.
Yes, they did have their preferences.
The issue I have is when the government used them as a proxy to silence people.
That is against my fundamental rights.
So your problem isn't even about speech.
You're just like, why did the government get involved?
No, I totally care about speech.
I'm just a realist.
I'm a realist to understand that people are going to make choices.
And there's nothing I can do about it, really.
Okay, let me ask a question.
So let's say hypothetically speaking, advertisers,
let's change the word government to advertisers,
advertisers were pressure on Elon to ban certain people.
And then he obliged, based on what you're saying,
you wouldn't have a problem with that.
Oh, I'd speak up very roughly about it.
But the problem is, when I say, I don't have a problem with it.
No, I have a problem with that.
I just think it's a private entity.
There's really little you can do there.
Until the government decides that Twitter is the absolute private public space or the public square and that it needs to be sustained in a specific way, then we got other problems in hand.
I'm just saying it's a messy thing.
Isn't it, I mean, isn't this worse?
Because what you're saying is you've got a scenario where the.
advertisers can basically um force Elon to act in a certain manner and your only issue with it is
I can't act against them whereas the government can do it and your thing is I can act against them
so isn't that isn't that worse that you've basically got entities
who have this power and you can't even act against them.
Whereas at least with the government, you've got some kind of...
That's the marketplace.
I mean, that's the...
I can't go against the marketplace.
So it's worse now than according to what you're saying,
because now we can't even do anything about it.
We have to accept it.
Whereas at least in the...
I thought Elon's compromise was fine, which is,
hey, I'm going to put this movie up,
but there are advertisers who object being next to...
I'm not talking about the movie.
I mean, he didn't do that.
He advertised it himself.
There's 50 million views.
But I'm not talking about the movie.
I'm talking about the fact that he's banning certain people.
He's stopping certain ideologies getting attacked and not others.
This specific way he's going about it, you don't have an issue with even though
You cannot even speak about it.
You can't go after the advertiser who may be forcing this issue on Elon,
but you have a problem with the regime where you actually had some kind of recourse with.
I reserve my vitriol towards channels that I can actually have an impact on.
And I know the impact of the government using Twitter, using Facebook,
using YouTube as a proxy to push their narrative is where I can take the most action on.
Sounds like what you're saying is...
It's much worse now, like, in terms of who you can...
So you can hold a government account, so it's less worse.
But what you...
But then...
And you can...
And what you're able to do is take the vote as you have...
Take the government or take people to court.
So the fact that you're able to do that...
you have a problem with even though it's less worse because at least you've got some kind of
avenue to basically hold them to count even though you don't have now so i can't can't see the
logic behind your argument another point though thinking about this like so why why did uh this is this is
relevant though so what the reason why bays was bought uh
Washington Post at a time,
wasn't it because it was
profitable,
because it was losing money.
It was because he wanted that outlet
to go and spread a message
that he agreed with or aligned with.
I think advertisers do have a lot of impact
on how far free speech goes.
And that's why with the,
with that film in reference to that,
you know,
some advertisers I'm sure were I'm not happy
with that being up.
And that's why it,
could clear this up, it still is throttled on an advertiser level.
However, other users have amplified other tweets that I've been promoting it, which is
countered that censorship, which is still going on to my understanding.
That policy is still in place for that.
But the impact that the power companies do have on our tweets is still there.
It's not free speech completely.
And if it were free speech, you'd have...
You know, we have yay and you have Nick Fendez and anybody who may disagree with that would be on the platform still.
So that the consequence of free speech, total free speech is the loss of money with, you know, example being what happened with the advertisers pulling out from that.
So if you are willing to be a free speech.
No, but that's fine chief, but the problem is Elon continues to say.
It was worth paying $44 billion to ensure I've got free speech.
He said it on multiple occasions, on interviews and posts,
that he's all about absolute free speech.
So the problem is, and what everybody in the panel is saying is, yeah,
yeah, it's cool.
Like he doesn't believe in free speech, and it's all good.
And then when you ask him and you try and break it down,
this has had huge problems with what's happening.
So that's where the issue I have.
Tony, Michael, thanks for joining us.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
Yeah, I'm driving, but I can talk for a second.
I just want to say that everyone keeps using the phrase absolute free speech
and debating on what free speech is.
I don't think anyone should be debating on what free speech is.
And it baffles me that adult humans who have lived in this country
are known about free speech their entire lives.
Don't understand that you have the absolute right to say that
almost anything you want as long as you don't act on hate speech, but you do not have the right to not have
consequences. There are consequences for everything you say and do, no matter what, whether it's on
Twitter or in real life or at your job or in a grocery store or wherever the hell you are. If you're
using your right to free speech and not your right to remain silent,
there may be consequences to that action.
And just because your consequences you don't like on a platform that you want to say whatever the hell it is you want,
regardless whether it's true or it's not true or it's misinformation or it's whatever the hell it is.
I mean, my logo says fuck them on it.
A lot of people don't like that I say the word fuck a lot, a lot of people, including YouTube.
YouTube hates that I say the word fuck.
But I say it, and I know the consequence is that YouTube won't monetize me because I say fuck too much.
And I'm okay with that consequence.
So the idea of absolute free speech doesn't exist is ridiculous.
You have quote unquote absolute free speech, but you don't have absolute immunity from the consequences of your speech.
But I agree that, though, because there is, by definition, not absolute free speech on Twitter.
In real life, right, if you're a person-to-person, you can say whatever he wants another person.
And, yeah, there are consequences for some of your speech.
But on Twitter specifically, there is a...
banning or removal of certain speech.
So that's the point we're trying to make.
We're not disagreeing with you that in real life and, you know, talking person to person,
there is free speech.
There is.
That's what we have a constitution for.
We have respect for this.
But private companies are not allowing for free speech.
We're kind of pointing out that Elon Musk, when he said that he's a free speech absolutist,
he in reality is not.
And Twitter is still while having open some.
Right, I understand.
But I actually, and I don't agree with Soleiman a lot, but I think he's right here that
Elon is bullshining you.
He's both cheating. He's not about absolute free speech. He's saying he's about my speech that I like that I don't want to have consequences for. Again, speech with consequences what you are complaining about. Rather, you're banned from a platform that you don't own, which is a private company or a publicly traded company. Those are consequences that they're going to give you when you type in or you say something on their platform.
It's theirs.
They own it.
Not you.
If you want to have a free speech,
absolute free speech,
you need to go open your own website
and say whatever you want to say
without those consequences.
Yeah.
I think you're missing a point though.
So when Elon Musk, so this is why we're saying this work,
Elon Musk in interviews have said that he's a free speech absolutist.
Elon Musk is attributing, he's putting that title on himself.
Elon is saying he is a free speech absolutist.
I disagree with that.
He's not a free speech absolutist.
Yeah, but I think he also said, I'm going to equally piss off the extreme right and the extreme left, right?
Well, what?
Justin
so I'm trying to answer
where did he say that
Justin I like to see that
oh yeah he said that multiple times
but has he done that
so my problem is this
like when you look at a
again, the interactions he does,
like some of them are fine,
like I'm going to problem with them.
Some of the people he's interacting with are like clearly Islamophobic.
You have people who are basically some of them,
some people on the left have some of the issue,
people that he's in track with people on the left
have severe issues with.
So I don't believe that it's the case that he's doing that.
I think there is, again, significant ideological specificities
in terms of who he replies to and who he doesn't.
Tony, I like to hear what you've got to say.
Sorry, I missed that last.
All right.
Chief, no problem, Chief.
Go ahead.
I was going to clarify because I want to answer this full question.
So to answer the full question, I don't think Elon's a free speech absolutist.
When Elon says that he is, I don't agree with that statement.
Now, to attribute what Elon's motives are, I don't think we can be all, like, get his head and make a decision on that.
I think that he, in theory, wants to open dialogue up.
However, on a business level, there are advertisers who will pull out and who will go and say, if you allow a certain speech on here, we will go and not advertise on this platform.
And I think that's what's holding Elon Musk up, you know, in terms of allowing a total free speech.
So, yeah, I don't think it's a free speech platform.
It's not entirely free speech.
There's some speech that's allowed.
Some it's not.
It seems selective.
You know, but I don't think that we can really know Elon's full motives and go that far.
Tony jump in and then I'll go to break.
Yeah.
So back to that about him being not an absolutist.
I don't actually, I agree with you.
He's not an absolute free speech.
You know, he's not for absolutist, I guess you'd say.
Now, I will say that since he's bought Twitter and he overspent, obviously, a lot of money on Twitter,
did...
The thing is, is that it is his speech now.
He owns it.
He can do whatever.
He could just ban every single account that he absolutely wanted besides his.
And Twitter would just be Elon's feed if he wanted because it's his free speech now.
It's his website.
It's his, not ours, not publicly traded company.
It's his.
This is his speech.
And he is the one responsible for allowing whatever speech is on or off this site.
because he is the one who owns it.
Now, he's obviously, you know,
he's got to keep investors happy,
which that is maybe what you're saying with the advertisers.
But it's also the advertisers free speech
not to post on the website or buy advertising.
I mean, again, I don't understand why...
in every single free speech conversation, people don't talk about the consequences of your actual speech.
And yes, if you don't like the consequences, fine, you can bitch about that.
But there's still consequences for every single piece of speech that you have.
It could be good consequences.
It could be bad ones, ones that you like and ones that you don't like.
I think that everybody in the space here, from my understanding, agrees that your speech has consequences.
If you say to someone a bunch of mean things, expect...
Right, right. But people keep saying that, oh, I was banned here and I got banned and this, I got punished here.
And it should be equal punishment.
Well, it's not equal. It's not equal punishment.
right now because of Elon owns it. It's his speech. He gets to the side, ultimately. I mean, we watched last night as the theater went on with him and the Daily Wire. I actually think it was all theater. It wasn't real. It was all fake, to be quite honest, because I don't think anyone actually pay attention to that 90-minute video on Twitter. Twitter is the last place anyone wants to watch a 90-minute video.
So why did they continue the theater of how he was censoring them?
And then, oh, thank you, Elon.
And then he pens the video to his profile.
I think it was all contri.
Tony, I had that thought, right?
But the defeat to that argument is that two people are fired yesterday.
You had Ella Irwin and another person.
So what's your thoughts on that?
What was the fight?
Sorry, I missed it.
Sorry, so basically, you know what you're saying?
That was one of my thoughts.
I was like, was this all a player?
Like, did they all do this in Cohoose
and make sure they could blow this video up?
Because they did they have to be able to.
I think it was
I think
I think in Shapiro
and the Daily Wire
they were in contact with
Elon and the idea was
that no one was going to watch a 90 minute
video on Twitter no fucking way
you can't convince me of it
I post a lot of videos on Twitter
I look at a lot of analytics of videos that I post
and Twitter is not the platform
to have a long form
video like that it just isn't
it's not set up that way it's not designed
that way
The defeated to that argument, because like I said, I had that thought,
but then I thought, no, it can't be the case because the defeated to that argument is
that over this issue, two high-ranking people on Twitter got fired for this issue.
Yeah, but what is that happening?
Yeah, but come on, just because two people got fired or two people resigned, whatever actually happened.
I don't know.
Do we know exactly what that is?
I think this morning it was still up in the air.
Yeah, Ella Irwin was head of trust and safety.
This was literally- Right, right.
But was she fired or did she resign?
I mean, we don't know the specifics.
She resigned.
I mean, we don't know that she resigned.
So just because she resigned.
Yeah, but come on, that's not proof because she resigned.
Well, the issue, though, so.
to answer
the question,
I mean,
I think that
there is argument
that we made
that,
you know,
Ivan,
you know,
kind of went around
his own policy
that he had in place
and boosted that up.
And then Ella didn't like it and resign.
We don't really know
the motives of,
Elon or of Ella or the other, I think, ad quality executive who resigned.
And I wouldn't put it past that this was a marketing employee.
I think it was, at least in terms of day wire, 100% of marketing employee by day wire to go and really boost this issue up.
and it would have worked either if or if they didn't get their thing throttle because it would say
Elon uh why did you throw all this more and say thank you for restoring this this this
this film here it is or the conversely they could say Elon did not restore this this this
this this this forbidden film chief this video would not have had the kind of engagement it had
if it wasn't for this whole census issue yeah and the second point is it wouldn't even had 10
or even 5% of the engagement if Elon
hadn't shared it if all of that interaction with Elon didn't happen like that is with like he's right about that
the only thing that makes me think that it wasn't something that was planned is the fact that them either
eleanor irwin and that other guy got fired so then that makes me think like oh they resigned but resigned
over this issue so we know like right but if they resigned over the issue it could be they were
pissed off because it was all contrived
Well, hold on.
All I'm attributing is that DeWire had more of a,
there's more of a possibility or chance that this was a marketing ploy by DeWire deal
and boost this engagement up by bring up this whole issue of censorship and putting it with
the film.
That's all I'm saying.
Like,
The, like, the whole film got boosted a lot in part because of this controversy.
Does that really matter, though?
If that was their goal, isn't that just a smart play in the Elon's part?
He's going to demonstrate that to other independent film, movie producers, documentarians.
Why wouldn't they bring to Twitter?
If they could get Elon's attention.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It made him look bad.
It made him look like he's sunscreen.
It made him look like he wasn't control of the ship.
And then it made it look like that.
Then he had to retweet it.
Like, I don't think he can take that slam on his reputation.
I don't think that bothers him very much.
I think that's bad.
Hey, Doc, I'll give you, let me give you a.
I actually agree with you, Doc.
Let me give you a biblical analogy real quick.
This is what I'm trying to get at.
Look, 99.9% of the accounts on Twitter are totally fine intact and are never a threat to anything.
It's kind of like when you look at the Bible in Leviticus, Moses lays down the law, and it's directly from God.
And God says, look, every firstborn son is going to get the birthright.
They're going to get all the land.
They're going to get the priesthood.
But take up, but then...
Breaking news.
I'm sorry, just encouraging trouble.
I'm going to let you carry on, so I'm not being rude.
I know what you're saying is very important.
Ella Irwin is just tweeted, and she's going to be tweeting a 24 tweet thread.
Tweet number one is up, and tweet number one says,
so one or two people noticed that I left Twitter yesterday.
I know there's been a lot of speculation regarding what happened.
Was I fired?
Did you know?
Did I quit? Why?
Here's what really happened.
So you set this up, Slayman, didn't you?
You totally set this up.
You knew this was coming.
You opened up the topic.
Let's get her on here.
I'm in cahoots with Ella because we were going to take down Elon.
That's what it is.
You told me.
This was the total setup, Salaman.
That would mean that I'm in the setup too, and I can tell you that I'm...
Bro, Tony, you're definitely in the setup.
Like, you were totally not, bro.
The most entertaining option is...
Money under the table here.
Right. Nick, we need to get Leron.
Like, this would be sick if she was willing to come on.
I just sent you something in WhatsApp. Check that.
Yeah, I've seen that.
It does look, it does look suss, so, I'm on, because when I came to the stage,
you called on me and I started the ball rolling, so, you know.
That's because he knew it was coming.
Soleiman, come on.
Me and Tony are behind it all.
Me and Tony are, like, I got to admit Tony's my boy, so, like.
Hey, don't insult me like that.
What tweet is she on now, Salaman?
Has she...
I just see
one or 24 still.
I don't see a second tweet,
yeah.
But no,
I think,
I think so it's pinned to the top now.
But, oh,
wait, somebody else.
Yeah,
it was pinned to the top.
Elon should go banner account right now.
That would be huge.
Maybe it's positive.
Maybe it's not negative.
Doubtful,
but maybe.
Yeah.
Maybe she's trolling and will not do any more tweets.
I think she's struggling.
She's not,
she's maybe never written a thread before.
I'm sure it's 24 tweets in,
in praise of Elon.
Sure, right.
Well, we should bet.
That only happened, then we know Ian's taken over that account.
But, Brick, until we find out what's going on, go ahead, bro.
Yeah, I want to go back to something Justin mentioned a while ago,
and we kind of skipped over it.
And that's that Elon said that he would piss off people on the right and the left.
And he did say that, and he has done that.
Now, it is his ideology, but ideologically, he is not completely right,
and he certainly isn't completely left.
And you can't just say he's right in the middle. He's not King Solomon either. You know, he has certain stances that are on one side and certain ones that are another. And that's why in this space, I hear a lot of people saying, boy, we really want free speech, absolute free speech. And mostly, from what I can tell, the people making that request are by and large from the right.
I don't really see anybody here from Antifa saying, you know, I want the right to be able to talk about my viewpoints on the left.
And that's why I want absolute free speech.
So, yeah, he's made some of us angry.
And at the same time, he's made people on the left angry because he wouldn't take things down, because he let certain people back.
So, yes, Elon Musk has stayed true to his word.
to piss off people on the right and the left.
It does not bother me.
But, you know, I just want to be recognized that he has done that.
I think so.
To pick up on your biblical analogy of Solomon, I'll finish mine.
So God says to Moses, the firstborn gets the birthright, the land, the priesthood, everything.
Right.
But then when the rubber hits the road, God has to choose Moses over Aaron, Jacob over
Esau, Joseph over his brothers. It's like, he's like, look, I wanted the firstborn, but I'm left
with these guys. So I think it's absolutely consistent that Elan can be 100% an absolute
free speechist, okay, but still when the rubber hits the road, have to make very difficult
human decisions that may not reflect on.
on that but absolutely you know it's it's it's part of the human condition and i think for the
most part 99.9% of all accounts are totally fine and i think anyone would say that's fine i disagree
so essentially if you yourself believe in absolute free speech no problem and if in your
platform you are not going to implement that ideal that's not a problem as well
but when you're going around in speeches
and you're writing and posting
and saying that basically the reason you bought
this platform is for free speech
and is because you're going to believe in absolute
free speech. When people are asking you
about Twitter policy, that's
when I have a problem because your platform
isn't that. You have to be
honest with your people and say, look,
I'll be honest to say, look,
initially when I bought it,
I wanted absolute free speech.
Since I bought it,
I've realized I can't.
And so, therefore,
this platform is going to be run
based on some advisement from advertisers
and a lot of my ideological perspective.
I think the issue, though,
so like, you know,
the point is,
right,
if it's absolute free speech,
it has to be 100%.
It can't be 99% or 98%
or 99.9.9%
it has to be 100% free speech.
The thing also to point to you is that
The reason why billionaires buy publications like, I guess Vice or BuzzFeed or whatever,
it's not because they're profitable, at least at that moment,
but because they like the message or they agree with that general company.
I don't think that Washington Post is profitable.
I don't think most of these companies that they get are profitable.
I think there is a cost to free speech, though.
And I think that if someone is willing to take that costs...
and say, I'm willing to lose some money from advertisers.
If I do have a platform that is absolutely 100% free speech,
that would be a humongous strive for someone who could say,
without a doubt they are 100% free speech.
Well, so, like, what platforms are the most free speech?
Like, 4chan.
Like, do we really want Twitter to be, like, 4chan?
I think that they can use algorithms.
Yeah.
and the blue checks and verification in a way that it can give free speech for the most part,
but it can also push down some of the really bad content.
So I think that's kind of what was going through Elon's mind,
I think when he took over and I think still do day.
No, but Brian, that's fine.
I'll get it. Elon's your boy, right?
If he can't do...
Breaking news.
Sorry?
And then she just responded.
Just kidding, folks.
There's no thread.
In all seriousness, seriousness, I did resign, but this has been a once in a lifetime experience.
And I'm so thankful to have worked with this amazing team of passionate, creative, and hardworking people.
We'll be cheering you all and Twitter as you go.
So I pinned that to the top of the time.
I love her.
That's awesome.
So I was right.
She was bullshit.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
I love it.
That was a good one.
Brian,
I was going to come back on to you.
Basically,
I know Elon's your boy,
right?
So, you know,
we get,
you got to defend him in that.
Yeah,
we hang out all the time.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's cool,
bro.
It's cool.
Like,
I get it.
But the thing is,
the issue is this,
like,
It's fine if you don't want absolute free speech.
We all are cool with that.
But then what we want your boy to do is have some form of consistent approach.
Whatever your ideal, the whatever methodology that you're going to use on the platform,
let's say it's about hear speech.
apply consistently.
Let's say it's about speech, about specific ideology.
Like, let's say he's like, look, I want all the right wing boys to say what they want.
I want to attack the left wing boys.
That's cool.
I'm not saying that's his ideology, but I'm saying as long as everybody knows what's going on, that's what the issue is.
I mean, what's your thoughts, Brian?
Yeah, no, I agree 100%.
And I think that one big issue is the whole shadow banning thing.
Like he said that we were going to see it was going to be transparent,
but people get shadow banned all the time.
And it's for things that most people don't even know why they're being shadow banned.
Even Facebook, they tell you why you're being censored.
Right.
Ed was Shadow Band the other day and he had no idea.
And he actually contacted Ella Irwin and she took care of it.
But it's funny because like that's in my mind, that's the biggest issue.
People are making posts and then they're,
being censored, but they don't even realize they're being censored in many cases.
Most of the time it's through the search ban where people can't search and find your post.
So I think that should be priority number one.
Let people have a dashboard in their profile, and it shows any infractions and why those
infractions are taking place.
Elon said in the beginning when he took over that it will be, if people report your
post and it's hate speech or if it's speech that shouldn't,
be on the platform, you're not going to get banned, but that post will be pushed down.
But there's actually whole accounts that are being censored for seven days for reasons that
most people don't understand.
Yeah, I agree, but I just don't think they've had time to implement that yet.
I mean, that's, I don't expect them to have that now in this timeframe, but, you know,
I'd like to see them make progress as time goes on.
Yeah, that's fair.
Yeah.
I mean, I think with Elon, though, is the point...
So real quick, I want to get an audience question in here because this one just came through and just a reminder, in case you forgot, you can submit it in the bottom right-hand corner.
This one's from somebody that I interact with a lot named Noda.
It seems that so many of the speakers here just assume there needs to be a restriction on free speech.
They read.
They regularly cite nebulous harms.
Can we get a discussion about what these harms they fear so much are with a degree of specificity?
And I'd actually like to go to Brian on that.
Do you think you can answer that question, Brian?
What's the harm?
I'm sorry, I got a phone call and you cut out for a second.
What was the question again?
Oh, no.
All right.
So I'll just say the last part here.
what are these harms that you guys would feel so much
you know with a degree of specificity you know for
free speech and maybe some terms that should or shouldn't be banned
what is the need for restrictions why do we even need them
Trump's running for president again I think that's
That's actually a good question.
And I'm on the left, but I would say I'm much more open-minded and lenient about that than I think a lot of people in the left.
I think that if people are...
I mean, Brian, don't attack Sarah, but please hear it.
Sarah, sorry, I won't attack you, Sarah.
No, I think that, like, so definitely illegal stuff.
And like I said before, I think that it's not always crystal clear what is illegal.
I also think that maybe certain hate speech, so like if people are posting, all Jews should die, I mean, that might not be illegal, but it's pretty bad.
And I think it's beneath what...
what Twitter should be allowing.
It's all about a line, though, and I think that there's good arguments on both sides on where that line should be.
Joe, you have been probably the most pro-censorship person that we've had up on the panel here, as you were last night as well.
I'm sorry to call you out.
But what are your thoughts on that?
What is the harm to just allowing, you know, free range, free speech on the platform?
Who's getting hurt by it?
Yeah, I mean, there's, someone said...
Sorry, Joe, I was just censoring your speech because you're pro-censorship.
The, when I was a kid in school, I remember, like, the parents got up in arms because the Guns and Roses cassette tape launch had a woman's boobs on it or something.
So they wanted to censor it.
And then there was some rap group...
I think it was fucked up police, the NWA cassette tape or whatever.
They wanted to censor that.
And what they did is they put a sticker on it, right?
It still went out.
They put a sticker on it.
It was still considered censorship.
That was Tipper Gore's group.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly. So, you know, there are ways to do it. I think community notes does it somewhat, but there are some cases where I think censorship is needed. Like the whole reason Twitter started censoring in the first place was with the whole, um, uh,
ISIS movement and they were trying to recruit people through Twitter and then then Congress got on top of
Facebook and YouTube and everyone else about why aren't why are they just leaving these things on on their platform and
And I agree, like they shouldn't, they shouldn't be there.
Now, the, what is a woman thing?
I thought it was actually tasteful.
I don't know why they censored it.
You know, people should have been able to retweet it.
I think it is a subject that could be argued.
I didn't see where there was any hate speech.
I think it was pretty respectful in a lot of his, a lot of his interviews.
There are people who approach that subject much more from a hate perspective, right?
which, you know, should hate speech be on there?
I don't know.
If it should, then he should let he should let Kanye back on.
And that's all.
I think there's, and I actually think hate speech should be allowed on there
so you can see who that person is,
but I don't think things like ISIS recruiting kids should be allowed on the platform.
Okay, so we've gone a little overtime here.
So I'm going to give the three of you with their hands up final statements.
I'm not trying to start a debate here, but I just want to know overall what you thought of the space, what your, I guess the verdict is.
I mean, did you change your mind at all?
Let's hear it.
We'll start with Chief, then we'll go to Tony and then Rick.
Right. So I think we all agreed that they engaged in censorship of the film. I think that is what we all came together and agreed with. The question was whether or not...
I mean, Tony didn't agree with you, but please continue.
He didn't? Well, okay.
Okay.
Well, yeah, he wasn't actually there when I asked that question.
That's funny.
You're right about that.
But I think that the censorship of, well, I think that the film itself, despite the throttling of it, is doing pretty good because of other amplification.
I don't think there should be any center and censorship or whatever if you're going to proclaims be a free speech absolutist.
um i think that if you were to say that you are going to have all free speech and you're a free speech
absolutist then you should stick with your word and allow all speech if you want to go back and say
i'm not a free speech absolutist then that's one other the thing too and i don't want to start
a debate actually or anything i i forgot um i saw that shereen put uh her sources up uh
I didn't get to address that, but it was Facebook for one of them, so Facebook apologizes.
One of them was about hate speech on Twitter, but didn't refer to the source.
They didn't refer to people being removed specifically for responding to hate speech.
It is.
In the reports is there.
And the one that I showed where you talk with, where it says Facebook apologizes, that's a part of that narrative.
Right.
I gave you all of it.
You can dig through and see every report.
Every one of these has a report in them.
Right.
And now, of course, people can look at it aside for that for himself.
I just want to point the source as the right.
I think it was a great dialogue.
And I think that free speech is a paramount thing for Twitter.
And I think they should be having all free speech.
Maybe as a free speech absolute.
It's still letting back all on.
Yep. So I just want to remind everybody, we're going to have a subscriber only space right after this. So subscribe to Mario. It's only a dollar. You know, I hope that most of us here have a dollar. Or maybe we shouldn't be sitting on Twitter spaces all day.
I mean, Nick, Nick, Nick, like, we know how you got your dollar, bro. So like, don't be a time.
What, shaking it for pennies? I don't know.
But anyway, yeah, so pay that dollar.
It's worth it.
You can hear me and Sleighman shoot the shit at each other.
Trust me, we wait all day for this.
So it kind of gets the anger out at the end of the day.
But before we do so, let's hit Tony and then Brick.
We'll give you all like 45 seconds each because we've got to wrap.
Okay, well, I don't know if a dollar's worth Nick and Soliman shooting the shit, but you know, go ahead.
Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, bro.
Waste your money if that's what you want to.
Team blacklist, please, blacklist.
Oh, okay, yeah, well.
So I do want to say that seeing her thread was, you know, too long and a joke.
That only wins to the idea that it was all set up probably anyways.
I mean, in my opinion, I mean, I get a problem to know how much was it.
All right.
So, yeah, totally agree.
If it makes everybody happy, we'll shoot the shit at Tony and Brick, too.
So let's do that.
So I totally agree that censorship is still on Twitter, but I'm okay with the level of it now compared to where it was. I share Suleiman's desire that what the policy should be enforced fairly. I still, I think that right now we're at least a lot.
better at that than we were before. Before there were policies, they were not universally
enforced. I think the right board, the disproportionate amount of the brunt of them. I'm glad that's
no longer the case. Change and movement is still in my mind in the overall
correct direction and it is getting better. Would I love to be able to snap my fingers and have
Twitter perfect right now? 100% yes. I think all of you would agree with that. But, you know,
that's not the reality of how the software can be retooled on the fly. And we're going to have
to live with the progress they can make.
in the time frame they can make it for the amount of resources they have available to put towards it.
In that regards, I'm still happy.
I am criticized every day for buying a blue check.
I had my Twitter blue before the check came with it.
I think it's a great way to support the platform.
And, you know, I'm still with it for that.
So, you know, am I censored even as a blue check?
I guess it doesn't matter.
You know, I think things are a lot better than we thought they were last night
when it became apparent today that Elon Musk's position was that what happened to the film
late last night was not the appropriate response.
All right. So I guess that'll do it for us tonight until the subscriber space, which is going to come right after this, literally like 25 seconds after this. And it's going to be a roast fest. So whoever wants to get in line and roast a bunch of people on stage, I'm sure several of the speakers that are up here right now.
Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, it be the roast fest against you. All my peeps be there. They show in love all day along.
Yeah, you have a loyal cult following now, so.
But, yep, so I guess we'll go ahead and end here.
Go ahead and fire up the space guys, and we'll see you there shortly.
