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THE FUTURE OF TWITTER w/ Matt Taibbi & Kim Dotcom
Recorded: May 14, 2023 Duration: 4:57:49Space Recording
Full Transcription
We're just waiting on a few more people to join and then we'll get started. Hey, Matt.
Hey, how's it going? This is Mario?
Incredible. Just give us a couple of minutes. We're just waiting for a few more speakers
to join and then we'll get started. Excellent. Thank you.
Hey, how's it going to? Mario. Hey, Matt, your mic is open. Just an FYI.
Yep. Okay. Is it not supposed to be?
No, it's just we can hear you like drinking.
But your breathing is so soothing.
It is soothing.
Keep going.
Right, guys.
Yeah, thanks for joining.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for coming, Matt.
That's for coming here.
Much appreciated.
Um...
So just to give a brief update about what we want the space to be about and hopefully we'll get some kind of discussion going.
So initially we had, so today we got the results in Turkey.
The Turkish elections are going on.
So Erdogan seems to have got the most votes at 49% according to most reporting with the opposition getting around 44%.
About 94% of the votes are in.
Now, why that's important is, first of all, there's going to be a runoff.
So there'll be a second, it seems like, unless Erdogan does get the extra 0.5% and gets about 50%.
If there is going to be a second round of voting to see who is going to be the president of Turkey.
Now, why that's relevant to an extent to this discussion, especially the first half of it, is we had a situation where Elon Musk,
tweeted and essentially said that at the request of a Turkish government, certain posts,
as he put it, were going to be censored. And I'm glad Brian's up because he had an interaction
with Elon Musk where he kind of agreed with him. I obviously...
also posted and disagreed with it because I believe it was some form of censorship.
But that's what we're here for.
That's what we're here to talk about to see if he made the right move,
whether he was right to censor the opposition to stop basically the entirety of Turkey
not having access to Twitter.
So, I mean, Danish, I'll pass it over to you.
What's your initial thoughts before I start passing over to the guests?
I think that the approach that we took towards Twitter files
How can we back off right now when in reality the action was the exact same?
I don't see how this action is any different than what Twitter was doing when they were working closely with the U.S. government.
And there was a lot of things that were done that were questionable ethically and were completely legal.
Yet we made a huge deal out of the Twitter files.
We made a huge deal out of, you know, government working with social media to move elections in a specific direction.
And yet we're seeing that happen here in a country that has not had a free election in a very long time.
And how can we stay here and not call him out for this?
Two points.
So, first of all.
Turkey doesn't have free speech, right?
It doesn't have a First Amendment.
It's not the same country as the United States.
It doesn't pretend to have free speech.
It's different over there.
Secondly, what was happening with the Twitter files was done in...
Do we lose Ian?
Yeah, we lost him.
Can you hear me or no?
Yeah, yeah, equing.
Yeah, so just one thing, Danish.
This is ironic.
I don't know if you can't.
Mike's echoing significantly.
Yeah, I know, I can.
Let me try to fix it.
Is it better now or no?
No, no.
Hold on me.
It's not echoing from you at all.
Okay, while Mario sorting his mic out, I still echoing,
let me go to Matt.
Matt, you were monumental in the release of the Twitter files
about the government impact on Twitter.
the policies within Twitter and the impact it had in terms of the direction of Twitter
and the deep state involvement as well.
So essentially, I mean, do you agree with Danish that this is another example of it?
Or do you agree with Ian and it's a different country?
So therefore, you have to look at it from a different perspective.
No, I'm more in tune with what Danish is saying.
I think it's the same basic story.
It's a little different because the legal situation is different.
The United States does have laws that theoretically protect free speech, but the overall overarching theme is basically the same story, even though they didn't spell it out quite so graphically with the U.S., what happened?
And what we saw in the Twitter files was that in 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee essentially approached Twitter.
And, you know, not so openly, not so graphically, but essentially told them that they were going to be regulated more severely, that they were going to have more difficulties.
Right.
in terms of maybe investigations or taxation or new legislation that might be passed,
that would be difficult for them.
If they didn't take a series of measures beginning with shutting down RT,
refusing certain kinds of political ads and then letting the intelligence services in
to engage in sort of wide-scale content moderation.
Again, it wasn't put quite so openly as it was in this case,
but to me it's the same story.
I don't see how you can look at it any other way
and not see that as hypocritical.
Matt, I've got a question for you.
Is it my echoing now Slaman?
No, it's much better.
Yeah, yeah, so.
Yeah, all right, cool.
Look, Matt, is it, look, I think you make a valid point,
but isn't it a bit ironic we're making this point with accounts on the panel right now
that we're suspended with the old Twitter,
and not long after doing spaces about topics that we wouldn't be allowed to in the previous
Twitter.
So my point is, is that we're not where we would like to be,
but is that even possible in the world we live in today?
Is that because...
The other argument is that Twitter wouldn't even exist
if it operated like we want it to be.
We know Elon has the same vision,
but we don't know what he's facing in the background.
Or maybe we've got a taste of it, and I'm sure you have Matt
and O'Kim has and others on the panel have, and I do.
So we know a taste of the pressure that we could face
and the importance of having advertisers and, you know,
we're still running a business
while trying to achieve that vision of complete free speech.
Is that a fair argument as well, Matt?
Well, I mean, the only thing I would say is that, you know,
we don't know how they're responding behind the scenes with this version of Twitter.
We have a much better idea of what happened.
with the Twitter, with the old regime of Twitter because of the Twitter files,
we saw basically that the company went from a posture of not wanting to be partners
in a content moderation scheme to being very enthusiastic partners with the government
over a period of about four or five years that change came about.
I don't know what happened here exactly, but I think we'd be hypocritical to
to say that, you know, we don't like it in the United States context, but it's okay in the Turkish context.
I don't see how you can... I understand that it's a difficult balance for tech companies because this is the problem they're going to face all over the world.
They're not going to be able to make money because governments are going to do this to them all the time.
They're going to make them face this choice. But
You know, at the same time, companies at some point have to make a stand.
And if they're not going to do it in Turkey, they're not, they're certainly not going to do it in Europe and the United States.
And that's the problem.
And the hypocrisy of saying, sorry, Salaman, I was going to say that the hypocrisy of saying that this is the first bastion of free speech.
out there that Twitter is going to be all about free speech,
but free speech until it becomes about money?
I mean, it is a complicated.
No, I'm being honest.
What you say?
Hold on why am I testing testing?
I'm echoing, yeah?
Yeah, you are.
You're good, Mario, I can hear you.
No, no, exactly.
Danish, Danish, can you mute?
Yes.
Oh, it's Danish. I'm muted because of Danish's voice.
So, Danish, when you're unmuted, I'm echoing, bro.
I thought so.
But, Danish, you run a businessman, and I see hands up, Brian Kim.
But you run a business.
And if you're achieving a certain goal, whatever that is, at the end of the day,
you cannot run, the goal would not be achieved if you don't play by some rules of the world we live in today.
So I just wanted to ask, sorry, go on, go on, go to Anish, go on.
No, my only point is, though, that even if I'm running a business, the question really is, what is the mission of that business?
Right?
Like, what is the, what we would call a North Star metric, right?
The North Star metric, according to Elon Musk, is...
is truth.
It's about maximizing truth.
He talks about it.
He spoke about it multiple times on Tucker.
He spoke about it multiple times on spaces.
And ultimately, if that is truly the North Star metric
and not revenue, not eyeballs, not profit profitability,
he has made it very clear.
He even started a company called, you know,
he was talking about two GPT and X dot AI.
So the point here is either we're full of crap
And just like everybody else, or this is truly the platform that will stand up for that.
And by the way, old Twitter, the Twitter that everybody hates on to what Matt was saying,
many, many years ago, they actually stood up to the Turkish government.
They did the right thing.
And so it's not like you cannot do the right thing.
Yeah.
You don't understand that Twitter is about to die.
You don't get it.
To me, I rather die.
You'd rather die.
You'd rather decide die that we don't have any platforms for free speech because you want to make a stand on this.
This is not the place to make a stand.
Dying with Dignity is worth it, Ian.
Okay, so we don't have a platform anymore.
But that's just not what's going on.
I feel like that's a bullshit excuse.
It has nothing to do with that.
The Turkish elections have nothing to do with dying.
And then we don't have any free speech platform.
And then you can whine about how there's no free speech platforms.
Compromises have to be made.
We don't like them.
Nobody likes it.
Nobody likes it.
But we don't live in a world where Twitter is self-sustaining that it can say,
fuck you to governments.
We don't live in that world.
That world is maybe five years from now.
This idea that Twitter can simply do that right now and just like give a middle finger to the European Union for banning Russian websites or Turkish government for wanting to ban its opposition.
That doesn't exist. We don't live in that world right now.
That's what we were, that's what we were complaining that they didn't do in the American context.
Yeah, I agree with Ian.
This is Robbie.
I think, you know, Elon was in a very tough position here where, you know, if this had happened weeks before an election, then you go to the courts, you can go and protest it, you know, and try to make something happen there like Twitter previously.
previously didn't years back, but that wasn't really truthfully an option this close to the election.
It was, hey, Twitter's going to be banned in Turkey, or you're going to take the action they're asking.
And you have to do the pragmatic thing here and say, okay, what's going to leave the most access to open information to Turkish people?
And it was actually...
to comply momentarily with this request. Now, do I think they should go fight it in the courts now?
Yeah, I think that would be the smart thing and the dedication to free speech thing to do.
But in terms of pragmatism, this was the smartest thing to keep things as open as fair as he could possibly have them be so people could search out things because this didn't just eliminate all information from the Turkish people.
The amount of people...
So, Robbie, where I don't agree with you is...
One second, Mario.
So where I don't agree, is this whole argument of, like, Twitter would die
if he didn't basically ban certain accounts in Turkey.
Remember, the...
The majority of the Twitter user base is the United States.
As far as I remember, it was 70%.
So the previous regime, clouded to the Americans,
and that was a bad thing where Twitter actually would have died.
But a Turkey, which is a very small amount of the user base,
and you essentially are curtailing and impacting an election,
that's going to destroy Twitter.
I just totally agree.
And the president desets.
The precedent is significant.
So now when Modi basically wants,
and a fascist government wants to basically censor his opposition,
we'll do that.
And we're basically going to decide elections and help decide elections in many countries.
But that's fine because you might use a, lose a small amount of a...
It doesn't set a precedent's alignment.
They're already doing it.
But that's, but not, I mean, under Musk's regime.
So Musk told us we're going to see something different.
There's going to be a free speech.
He posted today, I'd rather lose advertisers than curtail free speech.
So that again is affecting his bottom line.
But anyway, let me go to Kim.
I'm glad you made the distinction.
I'm glad you made the distinction about the United States because that should be the principal idea here is that number one, Elon's an American citizen.
And, you know, most of us here in this space are too.
And so we have very different views in terms of, hey, this is how things should be in the U.S.
Had this been done in the U.S.?
I would be the first one raising absolute hell over it, okay?
Because it's wrong.
And do I think it's wrong that Turkish government did this?
Absolutely.
I think it's insane.
I think it's corrupt.
I think it's tyrannical.
However, we are not in Turkey.
And Turkey has their own system.
And we've got, you know, at least if you're Elon, you put yourself in his shoes,
you've got to figure out how you can best be dedicated to getting people information
to keep things as fair as possible.
And so as much as like we can all have an idealistic,
approach that we prefer in some fantastical world, that's not reality. Reality is that, you know,
you've got to make pragmatic tough decisions sometimes. And so, you know, put Twitter dying away,
because I don't agree with that from Ian, but I think he made very smart points about the differences
between the countries and...
And the fact that, you know, you've got to make the best decision possible at the time.
And so I would pose this question to you.
Had Twitter been entirely removed as a platform in Turkey right before the election, how would that have affected the election?
Would it have affected it more than taking the action they did or less?
And I would argue it would have affected it more because total...
ban on information via Twitter
would have been the reality in Turkey.
So again, we don't know.
I mean, one could hypothesize
that actually what happened is
you allowed those who were pro Erdogon
to have access to Twitter
and those who were opposed to him,
didn't have access.
And remember, this is...
I'm coming from the perspective.
I actually...
Out of the two, I prefer Erdogan to win.
I think the opposition is way too liberal leftist.
He's way too woke.
He's very secular.
That doesn't matter.
All that doesn't matter.
I think that moves away from the point.
It matters because I'm trying to explain that even despite me not wanting to win,
I'm still honing a stance of being consistent about this issue.
Let me go to Kim.
And remember, the Rumble CEO also, we asked him the exact same question.
He was willing to lose certain countries to.
keep his integrity and keep sure that he was consistent in his approach throughout the world.
Sorry, Kim, go ahead.
Yeah, I was also going to mention the example of Rumble.
they face the same situation.
You know, France threatened to block them if they don't block RT from their video site,
and they refuse to do that.
And since then, I think French users have been blocked using the platform.
And that's the kind of stance you should make.
If the Turkish government forces Twitter to silence certain voices,
Elon could have used this as an opportunity to say, we're not going along with this, and it would have probably reflected badly on the current Turkish government and not help them in the election.
You know, you are either a free speech absolutist or not.
free speech isn't about geographics. It's not about borders. It's not what the law is in Turkey or in the United States. If you are for free speech, you have for free speech globally. And also the argument that
Twitter is going to die if Turkey is blocked as a country has no validity.
Elon Musk is a multi-billionaire.
He paid $44 billion for the site.
He has another billion to keep it alive for a year.
You know, he's made significant cost-cutting efforts.
And I think that's just a loose argument.
You know, it's either free speech or not free speech.
And this is really a test.
to where Elon stands and, you know, is he actually enforcing what he promised to the entire Twitter community and not just users in the U.S.?
Let me go to Brian because Brian had an instruction.
Before, I just don't want to issue correction for what people are saying.
So when Rumble was asked by the French government to block certain accounts, they wanted them to ban them entirely from the site.
Twitter is not banning these accounts.
They're not suspending these accounts that are being requested by the Turkish government to do so.
They're simply blocking them to Turkish users.
This is a thing that Twitter itself is doing for the EU,
where they're blocking RT, for example, in Sputnik from being viewed by a European Union and British users,
because that was requested by their governments.
They can be viewed if you're using a VPN or if you're in the United States or outside of the EU.
But...
He's, just to make it clear, he's not banning these accounts on behalf of some, you know,
desperate, right? That's not what's happening. They're simply blocking it in Turkey.
So you're saying this is, just a second. So you're saying this is censorship light. It's a
light version of censorship. It's only limited.
Freedom of reach, right? That's always been the mandate. And
Like, this will continue.
This will 100% continue.
Otherwise, it would have unblocked RT in Europe, right?
But they haven't done so.
If the U.S. government were to request that RTB blocked, for example,
then I think he would have to comply.
That's just the law, right?
He doesn't want to fight that.
But here's the thing, right?
Geographic...
locations shouldn't impact the matter of free speech.
It's either free speech totality, as Elon said,
or it's like some partial free speech that, you know,
depending on jurisdiction, there are different terms in different countries.
And I just don't agree with that.
I think that's not really what I understood Elon to mean
when he said he is a free speech absolutist.
I just want to go to Brian, because I know, Brian, you had an interaction with Elon and I mean you had an interaction after that.
But essentially, you were supporting Elon's decision.
So please, yeah, go ahead, Brian.
Yeah, so that was a really short post, and I didn't really get to kind of express everything I said.
So I think some of it was taking out context.
I actually made a longer post this morning about the situation, kind of explaining things and more details about how I see it.
I kind of fall, I think, in the middle here.
I think that Twitter definitely could have done more.
But I think to back up, I think we don't know exactly what,
what was being blocked or what was being censored, you know, like for all we know, and I highly doubt it was anything non-election related,
but for all we know, it could have been something totally unrelated, right?
Since the election's taking place today, I'm guessing that it had to do something with the election.
But I think that they could at least, like I said in that one tweet, they could have at least...
been more transparent and let people know what was blocked and why it was blocked and
and what their policies are regarding this.
Obviously, they are following basically the law.
And I know Elon said this when he took over that he's going to have to follow the law in different countries.
I know Germany has specific laws regarding Nazi posting, right?
Like anything to do with Nazism.
And...
he would have to obey whatever the German law says.
So I think number one, they should be more transparent.
They should at least let people know what's happening behind the scenes.
We don't really know that.
He will disclose the request from the Turkish government,
so we will know soon what exactly they were asking for.
Yeah, yeah, and that's good.
So I think that's a first step.
I do agree with, I think, you Kim, that...
If you really want free speech, you can't do this kind of thing.
But I don't think that the β I think Elon's looking at it as the laws of free speech in every nation.
And as crappy as that is in Turkey that this is happening, I don't think it really strays from what he originally said.
I would hope that they would not cave to the government.
But I think what if they had to take down the whole site?
What if Turkey took down the whole site?
I know that prior...
Well, Ergonne would have to face the consequences for that.
Right, right.
And that's a good point.
Yeah.
So if Erdogan is the person that is forcing this kind of censorship and Elon would stand his ground and say, no, we're not limiting the voices of these people.
And Erdogan actually goes ahead with blocking Twitter and Turkey.
That will backfire for him in a big way.
Yeah, exactly.
What do I mean?
Yeah.
Would it really piss them off?
They've blocked Twitter.
They've blocked Facebook.
They've blocked YouTube, Instagram.
They've blocked a bunch of news websites.
They've blocked online newspapers.
So this is what the people are in Turkey are potential voters, Mario, right?
So if you piss off the entire Twitter community in Turkey by basically blocking the site that they love and use every day, it's going to affect Erdogan in a negative way.
Yeah, he can block it, but Kim, he can block it after the elections.
No, no, but you're not understanding what Kim's saying.
Kim's saying, if he stood his ground and said, no, I'm not blocking these individuals.
I'm not going to decide an election.
And then he refused and then Turkey blocked the entirety of Twitter.
That would have some form of impact on the actual general election.
Unless, yes, I understood it.
I understood what I said.
I said he'll block it after the election is done.
He'll block it after the election is done.
He doesn't do it.
He doesn't impact the election.
He's basically ensured that there's a fair election.
He's not.
how good is that?
He's not decided.
He's not held to decide.
Yeah, but assuming the outcome ends up him winning the election.
And I think he won by a wide margin.
I'll tell it before I went to bed.
He won by a pretty wide margin.
So my concern...
He did not.
He did not win.
He's in the lead, but there's going to be a runoff because he's below 50%
and that's against the extra 0.5%.
Oh, shit.
Okay.
Well, I wasn't away.
But going back to...
So I just want to say one thing.
The other alternative is that Twitter could challenge Turkey and say, hey, we're not going
to censor this.
Take us down.
And if they take...
if they take Twitter down, Twitter could then provide alternate means of access.
And I know that they've done this before, where they were taken down in the country,
and they actually tried and helped those users in that nation find other ways, other methods
of getting onto Twitter.
So I think that's another solution.
But.
But it's more complicated.
You know, like these things are way more complicated than just talking about it, right?
Yeah, but you know what's fascinating.
I would really like to have some transparency around this and get to see what specific Twitter accounts were required to be muted in Turkey.
And that information will be so helpful.
I hope we're going to get this so that we know is there actually any...
real reason why these people are to be silenced or are they just political operators that have
their own opinion and their own voices in regards to the election in Turkey. I mean, those things
are important and I hope that Elon is going to release more detail about that. How close the election
was, Mario, you know, how close the election turned out to be?
you know, again, there's no way to prove one way or the other,
but we know that Twitter is used in a lot of countries for communicating,
for getting out the vote,
and ultimately, this could have potentially skewed an election.
And the truth is that there's no reason why it had to be done
outside of just making sure that, quote, unquote,
they don't get blocked in Turkey.
Again, as a reminder, Twitter has...
stood up to authoritarian countries in the past and not lost its ability to function.
And let's say that it did have an impact.
The new government for sure would not have done that.
They chose sides.
They made a decision.
And again, if it was in the U.S., I understand the laws are different, but then don't
tout that this is freedom of speech.
This is not about freedom of speech versus freedom of reach.
This is legitimately about freedom of speech at this point.
Can I just say we, this undermines the entire argument.
I mean, we spent months with the Twitter files talking about the decisions that old Twitter made over a period of time to give in.
I actually did this and censored my account and had, you know, one second.
Sorry, Matt, go ahead.
You're breaking up. Let Matt finish. Go ahead, Matt.
Yeah, I was just going to say, like, I mean, it makes it very difficult to make the argument that you're supporting free speech and that you're a backer of free speech.
After we went through all this drama with the Twitter files to turn around and then roll over for Turkey in public, what's the argument going to be?
Like, we're...
We either do or do not roll over for governments when they ask us to censor speech.
And, you know, I don't think it's a very difficult question.
If it's a revenue-based decision, is that better than what...
what they did under the previous incarnation of Twitter when they did it for a variety of reasons.
I just think it undermines completely any moral argument that he might have had previously.
I don't look, I think it's somewhere in the middle.
I like how Brian you played it in the middle because we don't have all the information.
We don't know what was censored.
I agree with Kim that we do need that transparency.
I think this is an important part of the new Twitter.
But at the same time, anyone that thinks that we're going to have a free speech totality within Twitter, it's a very naive expectation, at least in the short term, because I don't think Twitter would survive complete free speech.
I don't think it will survive not playing by some rules.
I think it's going to be a process.
I think it will take time.
I don't think it will be equal in all countries.
If a country has free speech like in the U.S.,
then it's easier to stand your ground and offer free speech.
But there's other countries like in China, for example,
give you another extreme.
That and Michael, bro, you can't meet you
because you got all the birds around you,
but if you go to a country like China and Saman,
I'll target that to you.
If you go to China, you know,
then they know that they're not going to have complete free speech.
They know, and we've done a few spaces on this.
They know that there's some things that you just don't talk about.
There's something that you just don't say.
The people in power know that.
We saw what happened with Jack Ma.
founder of Alibaba, and the average Joe knows that as well in China.
So I do think we need transparency.
I think it will be a process.
And I think the concerns that, even though I don't share those concerns,
I think they're good concerns to have on whether Twitter will be leaning more towards
or heading back to what old Twitter was.
Because if you really think of it, a lot of, if not all these social media platforms
we're seeing today, believed in free speech in the early days.
Then what was the point of the Twitter files, Mario?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Hey, can I suggest a couple of distinctions here that I think are relevant?
And Matt, I'm actually curious since you're here, what you think of this.
Okay, so the problem with the Twitter files, at least as I understood it,
was not simply that the U.S. government was issuing binding legal orders to Twitter
and compelling Twitter to comply with those orders.
It was that Twitter erected this whole regime where they were...
incessantly colluding with the security state agencies voluntarily, like going out of their way to forge these secret connections and like whisper networks with the FBI and so forth.
It's called social engineering.
So Twitter was going out of its way to proactively...
collude with the security state agencies, not just receiving passively an order that's legally
binding on them from a certain country and complying. Right. So I think that's a pretty key
distinction. And the other thing I wanted to suggest is how does anybody know exactly how this
policy wasn't forced. Who was targeted by it? I haven't seen much evidence at all that really
illustrates who was bore the brunt of this purported censorship. I was looking up Turkey's
election law and like lots of countries around the world, UK, Japan, etc.,
About a day or so before the vote begins, on election day, they institute what's called a silence, silence period of silence where broadcast media is not permitted to electioneer.
And I don't know, for all we know, given the dearth of evidence...
This could be in relation to that regulation, but we just don't have the information.
So I actually don't think that the easy sort of claims of some sort of neat hypocrisy really apply here in the way that people have suggested.
Yeah.
My understanding of the law is that what you just mentioned only applies to candidates for people that are actually taking part in the campaign or members of political parties, not the news media.
No, it applies to the media.
And that's, that's, you know, it applies to the broadcast media.
And that's generally what these periods of silence regulations apply to.
Yeah.
Like in the UK, for example, on voting day, it's bizarre because if you tune in to like Sky News, the BBC or something, they're talking about everything but the election, even though people are voting because that's what they're...
barred from talking about on that particular day.
So that, I read the, I looked up the regulation myself on the, I guess, Council of Europe or something or other page, and that's what it does bar.
So I don't know.
It's just a theory.
I just don't understand how people are so certain that they know exactly who this was aimed at or what the censorship rationale was.
And one last thing.
I mean, I was in Germany recently.
It's amazing when I just pull up my feed,
how many random accounts are just banned, right?
Meaning censored.
You can't access them in Germany
because of some legal stricter
instituted by the German government.
And Elon's continuing to comply
with that German scheme
that it's had in place before he took over Twitter.
So I don't know.
I don't think complying with a sovereign government's
legal regime is really meaningfully comparable to the whole constellation of security state collusion
than Matt uncovered with the Twitter files. Maybe I'm wrong. I want to go to Mark.
Michael, you're making a valid point and I think we do need to wait for more information.
If this was a lawful request that had to be complied with
under Turkish law and it's benign.
It's not something that goes into the territory of, you know,
free speech limitation or people just voicing their political opinions.
Well, then that's something to judge after we have that information.
But here's the thing, right?
what's happening on Twitter right now is that people are concerned about a couple of things that are happening where, you know, it isn't really free speech absolutism.
You know, you don't have people like Alex Jones back on Twitter.
He's paid his price.
He's been found, you know, liable in a civil case for a billion dollars or something for something he said.
You know, why isn't he on here tweeting?
Right.
Why are people like Scott Ritter who are critical of the war in Ukraine not allowed to be on Twitter?
You know, why are we now finding ourselves with a new CEO that has, you know,
connections to the W.EF is, you know, a mainstream media player that has been endorsing censorship, right?
Right. To make it back.
better for advertisers on Twitter. So, you know, there are a lot of things that are coming together
here that are just a bit concerning. And I do understand that Elon has a challenge, you know,
keeping Twitter going, that, you know, subscriber payments may not yet be enough to be
break-even. And, you know, obviously this hire looks like it's going to help
bring more advertisers back to Twitter, and that's all fine, right?
But it cannot be at the expense of what Elon promised to his users,
which is, you know, a free speech platform where every voice can be heard.
And I just feel like, you know, I'm a bit concerned with the direction that Twitter is taking at the moment.
But Kim, by the standard, from the minute Elon took over Twitter, it's never been
reflective of his free speech absolutism, because he never even purported that he was going to flout
like German social media regulations. That's been the case since the get-go. And the other thing is,
I don't really understand some of the rationale in terms of why this is the biggest, the worst of all
possible free speech infringements in Turkey. If it is true that the choices were between
either capitulate to certain censorship demands for a handful of people.
And again, we don't even know the facts there,
but let's just stipulate that there were several people, I don't know,
10, 20, however many, that were kind of unjustly limited in their reach for 24 or 36 hours.
How is that worse than the alternative, which we're told was the alternative,
that by not capitulating...
Twitter is just cut off completely from the entire country a day before the vote. And, you know,
there are Turkish journalists who have been saying that Turkey is actually even more reliant
on Twitter for news than lots of other countries. So you're limiting the speech of everybody
in the country versus a few people that are maybe arbitrarily demanded by the government. Like,
Well, yeah, what's worse?
So, Michael, you already have...
25 people or 85 million people.
So Michael, I will push back.
All the details of this censorship.
Do you already have the facts?
Please share them with us.
Who was blocked and why?
I don't know.
I'm asking you.
I don't know why.
I'm just postulating.
Let's wait for the fact.
Elon Musk said the choice was between...
capitually, you know, acceding to whatever these demands were, which presumably was the lower
number of people banned than 85 million. That's the population of Turkey. So it was between
the discrete bans that were demanded or cutting off Twitter for the entire country hours before
an election. So you're depriving the entire country of speech. Michael, let's say that there was two
options. Hold on.
Hold on.
Let me just kind of get...
Let's make it very simple.
Imagine there were two options before the 20 election.
One, that Twitter allows the Hunter Biden story, or two, they shut Twitter down for a few days.
What do you think they should have done in that situation?
Again, this is like a crazy commentary because we don't know...
It's not even a parallel about it.
How is it even making that comparison.
That's not even a NAP parallel.
That was Twitter willfully going out of its way to collude with the FBI to proactively intervene and stage the censorship scheme.
It wasn't a legal order that was issued.
All right, let's go to Matt.
Let Matt speak and I want to go back on that.
Go ahead, Matt.
Twitter was pressured by the government, you know, in 2017.
That's one of the big stories that's in the Twitter files is how, you know, people like Mark Warner from Virginia were,
pressuring Twitter to
take action and basically
threatening them with increased
regulation if they didn't. It's
really not that different of a story.
It's just that they did it in a more subtle
and clever way in the United States than
they did in Turkey.
No, I got... Yeah, I know that.
difficult to get people to take the story of what's happening in America seriously
if you're not going to take a stand with a country like Turkey.
It seems to me.
But Matt, wouldn't you say that there's a pretty clear difference between...
Turkey issuing a binding legal order to Twitter that they're compelled to comply with in order to be in compliance with the law,
versus Twitter entering into this month-long collusion sort of relationship with the FBI,
where they're priming themselves to be on the lookout for some hack and dump Hunter Biden laptop, uh,
thing and then they are ready to jump in and censor it at a moment's notice.
Like, yeah, I think it's just a different sort of qualitatively type of thing.
I mean, somebody who like Mike Benz was in the audience can speak to this better than I can,
but it was, yes, it was, it's different, but and it took place over a period,
a long period over a period of five or six years, that transition took place.
but it's really just it's really ultimately still the government pressuring a company in the end yes they were voluntary colluders that's the thing that's so odious about it and that's why these people came off is so unattractive in the emails that we all read but in
in the beginning of the story, it was basically the same story.
The people at Twitter, this was Jack Dorsey's Twitter, they didn't want to go along with any of this,
but they ultimately did.
And that's the problem.
And so, in addition to that, I just want to read a message.
And we did explain this, that the difference is, if you ban a select person, let's say your opposition and
and their interactions on social media,
you only get a one-way narrative.
You are helping someone win the election.
That's different.
Let's say they were to block the entirety of Twitter.
Now it's a fair playing field.
In addition to that, you have a scenario
where a lot of the users would say,
you know what, what's going on here?
Twitter's been banned and may even vote,
especially the younger ones, a different way.
And then therefore, based on his bad,
decision, Erdogan's bad decision, the election could be changed, but based on a decision he made
as opposed to collusion with Twitter to ensure that the election goes a specific way.
Let me read you something Elon Musk posted and CryptoLink sent this to me and it says,
If it's from Elon Musk on Twitter, on the 5th of March 2020, he said,
Stalin has been told by some governments, brackets, not Ukraine,
to block Russian news sources.
We will not do so unless at gunpoint.
Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.
So essentially, my argument is...
When did he tweet that?
That was the 5th of March 2022.
My point, I'm just reading that out,
but in terms of my point is,
the reason I say,
I agree with Matt completely,
this is impacting an election.
And remember,
I've already explained to you guys,
I want Erdogan to win this election
when you look at the opposition guy.
But again,
you have to have ethics
and you have to follow,
you have to have a principle
that you follow throughout.
And so that's the reason why
I think what happened was wrong.
Yeah, so, Samarah,
I've got a question for you.
First,
Someone said that Twitter in the past stood up to the Turkish government.
So I go on chat GPT, my good old friend.
I'm like, hey, give me examples.
And it lists a whole bunch of examples of previous censorship,
which including blocking of accounts,
temporary access restrictions, removal requests,
multiple removal requests over the years.
So saying that Twitter hasn't played ball in Turkey is not correct.
Now unless someone can give other examples, that'll be good.
Now, what Dr. Danish said, no, no, so I'll answer your point now.
So what Dr. Danish was referring to was 2014.
I posted that when I had my exchange with Brian.
And he is right.
Yeah.
that did happen.
They tried to pressure Twitter and Twitter refused.
You're right.
Twitter did do censorship.
It ain't nobody saying Twitter were the good guys.
Matt TAB, along with Elon Musk, through a number of Twitter files, exposed them.
The whole reason the Twitter files came about was because we all believed,
and we believed, Elon Musk believed, that this was wrong and it shouldn't happen again.
Yeah, yeah, shu.
The point you're making is they stood up to the government.
So Mario, don't believe everything you don't do.
No, no, Chad GPT did confirm in 2014, my friend, that they didn't censor, Twitter did not censor, and Twitter itself got censored.
So that makes the point.
But then the only point you've made Islam is that Twitter stood up in some cases, but not in all cases.
How do we, because we don't have all the information.
No, no, no, that's not my point, Mario.
My point is Twitter...
And Elon Musk did a whole load of drama and which we agreed with.
We had the Twitter files.
You were doing spaces on it.
Ian was the main show on it.
We all agreed what was happening was wrong.
Now, what we're saying is that regime, which was horrendous, the actions were terrible.
Even they, in one instance, basically did not kow to the demands of the Turkish government.
That's what the argument is.
In one case, they did it in one case.
Michael, Michael, there's a lot of speakers with their hands up, man.
But just to give my point before going to the other speakers, the Twitter files gave
a whole bunch of examples, including most of it was focused on the US.
You cannot compare the Twitter that we have today to the Twitter that we had back then.
I think we'd all agree with it.
Now, the question is, are we heading in that direction?
with the appointment of the new CEO and what we saw happen in Turkey right now.
It's a valid concern, but I just want to point out anyone that think we're going to have free speech totalitarian totality in Twitter, that's not going to happen.
At least not in the short term.
This is not the world we live in.
And it's very never.
And anyone that acts like that, it's not right.
And I've even pushed back against it back then.
It's just impossible to have.
It's impossible to have anyone that runs a business today and anyone that...
I want a consistent approach, Mario.
Yeah, consistent approach, but you can't have...
You can't go to Turkey and have the same approach as the US and the same approach as UK.
No, no, you need to have a...
No, no, you do.
You do, but you need to have a consistent, systemized approach,
not just about this governmental thing, but throughout.
So Kim mentioned about...
what you call it, Alex Jones.
I'll add that Kanye West.
And a number of people have been banned just based on Musk's feelings.
Now, my argument is...
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
You can't put it...
You can't put it as just based on Musk's feelings.
I'm not sure.
So does anyone know why you got...
Why can you...
He actually said Alex Jones that anyone who does that to kids...
I don't like them and I'm not gonna have it.
He explained the reason he banned Kanye was because he felt like punching him.
And so therefore that's why he banned him.
That's putting words in his mouth, man.
It was because didn't he put a Nazi simple on Twitter?
Does anyone get out?
No, he didn't.
It wasn't. It wasn't a Nazi symbol.
Yeah, he did.
He did put it.
It was a Nazi symbol with the star of David.
Oh, shut up.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Seriously, shut up.
What are you on about, Ian?
Like, why you tell you?
nonsense like oh i know you're like
i know you're like ean hold on
let's say on it ain't a and a n n
simon can you let ean respond
with exactly what was because you put
well he just simon you said shut up
Yeah.
It's silly.
It's like, it's like you're buying into this bullshit Kanye narrative that, oh, he didn't
post a Nazi symbol.
He posted an Auralian symbol.
He claims it was a alien symbol.
No, it's a picture of a star of David with a swastika in the middle.
And he's like, I love everyone.
It's like, it's like, it's a troll.
And Elon didn't like it, right?
No one likes that shit.
It's like you're denying the Holocaust by that point, you know?
And it's not like...
It's not denying the Holocaust.
Put in a symbol means you're denying the Holocaust.
What kind of ridiculous argument is about?
I don't get to talk.
The point is,
let me, let me come up on you now.
Let's return back to the main point.
No, no, no.
So the reason I'm saying consistent in a protein is because I see in many accounts where they do be,
for example, Islamophobic, they do be even, even they do have similar content,
anti-Jewish content on there.
even worth than what he did and yet he got banned.
So that's the reason I've talked about
because nobody's supporting them.
I don't know.
Yeah, so maybe, I don't know what example.
You're a frag to slime man, but just again,
Kanye West posted an image,
I want to get back to the point,
an image of the swastika inside the star of David.
um i i i you know i that to me he did it on purpose because he was going to test musk's idea of
absolute free speech and he even literally said yeah and there's not absolute free speech i i don't
understand that concept of absolutely free speech you're not going to be on this platform with
absolutely it's like a straw man i mean everyone assumes you know i mean like it's a wrong
assumption to assume that that uh i mean he keeps saying it has said it repeatedly that that's not
Maybe he says, yeah, but Semes Semen, Semen.
Maybe he wants it.
Yeah, yeah, maybe he wants it.
Semen, Semin, Semen, Semen, Semen.
He wants it.
Danish, I'll give you the mic, but he wants free speech.
Doesn't mean you can actually achieve it.
That's a different.
You need a consistent approach, Mario, so I can give an example.
Oh, for God, say.
Because I know you're going to use the argument of, or Kanye is more famous
or what he does is worse than an average person.
When, for example, there was a well-known YouTuber.
He's got a...
about 700,000
subs and he's got
I think nearly
200,000 followers
on Twitter.
He did an Islamophobic post.
He did not get banned.
Now,
I'm saying either both should get banned
or neither should get banned.
My point is...
Okay, so I'm going to give the mic
to Danish,
but I just want to say...
And, you know, I used to push back against Elon before and against the concept of centralization of power.
And I was not critical, but I was a skeptical one.
But I think we just took it too far.
I think now that, you know, we stand for the same thing as Elon.
Some people on stage are on stage.
because of the steps Elon is taken.
We know he lost a third of a more, a half of advertisers.
Because I'm speaking to investors myself.
And they also didn't Twitter lose most of his advertisers.
And that was a fact.
The company was close to bankruptcy.
He had to let go of all these different employees.
He had to let go of a lot of executives that were censoring content.
He's taken all these steps.
in the right direction.
Yet we see some hints that, hey, shit,
we can't expect him to be perfect
because he's running a fucking business
that's facing a lot of pressure
and could be banned in different countries.
And he has to play ball in the world we live in today
because he doesn't control the world we live in today.
Suddenly we're all jumping, trying to attack him on these small points.
I don't think that that, that just, for me,
it doesn't make logical sense, Danish.
So ultimately, I think the reason why people are a little bit more sensitive right now
is because we are in the midst of a regime change.
The regime is changing right now.
And we know that there are people out there, some of them are up on this stage,
who have voiced significant concerns about the choice of CEO.
Ultimately, we have to have a conversation around the timing of this.
We, you know, I think there's some, there's some aspect of this where is this something that represents where Twitter is going in the future?
Is, did Elon bend the knee and bend the knee to people to advertisers?
Because as John Stewart has said, their business model is arson.
And ultimately, the more provocative, the better, but at the same time, on the back end, they
have to kow to the leaders, to people that, to the countries.
And, you know, a good example that Sileman gave was Modi and what they did in India.
You know, you can see similar examples in other countries.
Ultimately, we have to have an honest conversation about where Twitter is going, which is
what the goal of this space today was.
So, Kim...
Is that part of your concern is that there is a regime change going on right now?
And that's why this is even more concerning?
First of all, I agree with Mario what he said about the things that Elon has already done for us.
They are significant.
I'm grateful for it.
I love the guy.
I've said it over and over again.
He has taken a lot of risk.
He's taken a lot of heat.
You know, the president is ghosting him.
Whenever it comes to EV or space, Elon is not invited when it came to his AI meeting that he had to bring all the industry leaders together to talk about it.
Elon wasn't invited.
This is because he is going against the stream and he is helping us, you know, have a platform of free speech.
But here's the problem.
how long can he withstand the pressure that he is under?
Because you can be sure there are a lot of things that we don't know about
that are happening in the background where Elon is pressured in many different ways
to try and change the,
the way Twitter is working now.
And that is what I'm concerned about.
Is he someone who's really here, you know, for the long run,
enforcing free speech and giving us a space where we can voice all of our opinions,
which we couldn't really do before?
Or is this the first step?
to trying to appease the other side that is now constantly attacking him.
And those are the people in power.
Don't forget that we're talking about the White House.
We're talking about, you know, the corporations that refuse to spend money on Twitter ads and things like that.
So, you know...
The reason why we need to look at all of this very carefully is to see, is Elon still strong in his position?
And he's saying the right things.
When I read his tweets, he's confirming no one, even the new CEO will be able to change his position on free speech.
And I applaud him for that.
And I do want to give him...
credit for what he's done and I will look carefully about what's happening. But I just think
this appointment is bad optics. You know, the timing couldn't be worse. He's still in the honeymoon
period with us. He's building this trust.
people are looking at everything that he's doing. Does he keep his word? Is he, you know, true to the statements that he made? And then we have this appointment of someone who has been, you know, on the other side. And that is something that is concerning me. But I do give him
the credit for what he's done and I will look carefully at how this plays out.
Maybe he's right.
Maybe he has some kind of plan that we can't see right now, but the optics in my mind are not ideal.
You know, it reminds me of the line from Batman.
You die, hero, live long enough to become a villain.
That's literally what's happening with Twitter right now.
Reeve, I wanted, I read some of your...
Don't exaggerate, Danish.
Donish, you're like exaggerating.
Ian, I'm going to go to Reeve real quick.
We're going to kill Twitter.
It's better if it dies.
It's like, no, it's not better if it dies.
Where will we speak?
Where will we host these spaces if it's dead?
Think about it.
But that's not...
him doing this and not having
Turkey not having a fair
election because it was skewed by this
decision. How is it skewed by this? If you talk to Michael,
he says that this is a part of a media blackout.
We're actually looking on the back end. We'll have some more data.
There's a few articles that have come out that
have highlighted specific people that were blocked according to
you know, sources, so I want to have our team review it.
And when they do, it's pretty clear that there was definitely a skew.
I want to go to Reeve.
Sorry, Michael.
I'm going to go to Reeve.
Reeve, you've been waiting very patiently for a while.
You know, I read some of your tweets about, you know, freedom of speech.
Do you think that this, again, is another mark against Elon on freedom of speech?
No, I really don't.
I agree with and disagree with probably 50% of everybody's commentary
because I think we're all just human beings trying to figure out
what the right place for all of us in terms of this issue is.
But, you know, what Mario said about...
free speech absolutism kind of resonated with me because I think I am a free speech fundamentalist
or absolutist, but at the same time, I also acknowledge that there really is no such thing.
And so for me, you know, I kind of look at this through the lens of an American. We have
a very unique status in the world. We have a Bill of Rights that I'm fairly certain. No other country in the world has anything close to what we have. And so that's how I look at the issue. And then...
Recognizing that foreign countries and other nation states have their own sovereignty, I think that if Twitter wants to be a global company, it's going to have to face the reality that not every country looks at the world through that same free speech lens as we do.
And so, you know, I don't know.
Part of me thinks that there might be some things that Elon can do.
And, oh, by the way, I wouldn't even be on Twitter if it weren't for Elon.
I was never really much of a fan.
But I think the idea of bringing speech back to the common man, if you will, people like me,
who as a former, you know, when I was a Marine and a federal prosecutor, I didn't have free speech.
Now that I'm retired, I can say whatever the hell I want to say.
And Elon has opened the door for all of us to...
come to the table and express our thoughts and our opinions.
And I think that's an incredibly important thing.
And he does deserve recognition and gratitude for that.
I will say that if he wanted to, he could get creative in this realm,
in terms of how he deals with foreign governments, whether it be Turkey or anywhere else.
And, you know, we've got tons of opportunities to get creative with the lack of free speech for the so-called common people, if you will, because every totalitarian government, totalitarian government, I believe, has its own...
government or official Twitter accounts and if if Elon wanted to take a position that if you don't allow
free expression for your citizens then your government officials don't get to have
expression on my platform and I don't know if that would be a good business strategy
but it certainly would be a way for him to to
defend his principles, his stated principles of free speech for everybody.
Hey, can I just give some factual context that I think is kind of necessary to bear in mind?
So in 2020, Turkey enacted this new law that afforded the government, namely Erdogan,
significantly increased powers to regulate.
Social media required that social media companies...
establish a compliance entity in Turkey itself. So Twitter had already done that in
2021. So you know, well before Musk took over. And Twitter's also published these transparency
reports, again, well predating Elon stating how many court orders are received from Turkey,
how many were complied with to remove content and so forth. Twitter had a
60.9% compliance rate with various legal demands in the last six months of 2021.
So there's obvious continuity here. And the difference is that Elon Musk and whoever's running this
operation regarding like global governance issues, they announced it proactively. They could have
just hidden it.
And they, or they could have done what the prior Twitter regime did, which was erect this sprawling secret collusion apparatus to get secret directives from the FBI to do this sub-rosa censorship that they don't disclose.
Michael, did he write it or was it that somebody posted and then when he exposed it and Elon responded?
I thought that's how it happened. Please correct me if I'm not.
Oh, I thought.
Well, I first saw it when Twitter announced it through its, whatever that account was, like
Twitter policy, something or other. I could be wrong about that. I'm not sure, either way,
it was it announced? I mean, was the FBI, like, collusion alliance that spanned the course of
months in the 2020 election? Was that ever publicly announced? No, Matt Taeevy is in the room
right now, had to expose that. So, I mean, I'm not...
I'm not trying to just arbitrarily be a fanboy for Elon Musk.
I actually don't care to.
I'm happy to do a reasonable critique where warranted.
I just don't think that the easy comparison between what was revealed in the Twitter files and this is America.
I'm going to add one more dimension to Mario.
Sorry, go ahead, Mario.
I'll ask you a question since you want to talk.
Just I want to see your position because I'm surprised on your position on this.
Because it just doesn't, you're generally a logical person,
a very biased logical person,
but this one doesn't seem to even be logical.
So do you think if Twitter was in a position
where they had to restrict some content
or they'll be banned out of China?
do you think they should restrict the content or be banned out of china and i'm using china as an
example because it's such a yeah i'm very i'm very low yeah i think i'm being very consistent in my
approach i'm saying irrespective of what the country is you should not be blackmailed into
basically impacting elections
Now, let me be clear.
I'm on Erdogan side on this.
Like, I actually want him to win.
I'll explain.
Enough.
I'll say that.
You said it like three times, though.
And let me just give you another dimension to this.
Just from Erdogan's perspective, even though I don't agree with it.
So Erdogan's perspective, maybe, because early reporting is looking like it was mainly opposition parties that were basically blocked.
But we need to verify that because the article didn't seem that strong.
But...
The reason for that is because he believes that there's actual Western interference in his elections
and essentially trying to basically put in people like Gilan who basically,
United States are basically, you know, giving him extradition, giving him like basically protection.
So essentially he believes that there is this kind of outward external...
impact where they're trying to basically make him intentionally lose that.
That's not relevant to my question though.
My question is, you asked my question.
I'm given his perspective to be fine.
From Mario, it's the selective blocking of opponents that is very different than blocking of certain information that's not allowed.
We don't know, but we don't know the information blocked though.
Here, this is one article.
I'm sorry, it's one article.
It's Kurdish businessman Mohammed Yakut.
This is from Business Insider.
It was one of the people that was restricted.
Yakut had previously shared information about Erdogan's government dealings
and alleged that the Turkish leader had been involved in the disappearance of his son-in-law.
And this is based on the Turkish Minute, which was then reported in Business Insider.
This is one of the people that was blocked.
Now, how can this possibly be related to...
to some sort of, you know, last-minute interference.
This is clearly related to that information not getting out.
Now, again, this is from one source, Turkish minute,
that was then reported in Business Insider,
not the bastion of information in this country.
But, you know, ultimately,
and that's the reason why we're still looking for other people
to confirm that that person was blocked.
But this is...
clearly, if it's true, it's clearly election interference. Who here is going to tell me that
Erdogan being involved in the disappearance of someone's son-in-law, and that being reported by
someone of prominence is not, and by the way, this happening right before an election, is not
considered election interference. I'm sorry, if this was happening in even in other countries
that were authoritarian, we'd all be up in.
in arms, it's just because it's Elon,
and we just have to say, you know what,
it's okay when he does it.
And if that's what you believe,
I don't, I can't believe that that's how people are on the stage really.
I made this argument, and I do wanna go to one of the other panelists,
but I made the same argument earlier under the previous regime.
And I used to make those points during the discussions.
I'm like, and we saw that as the files continued coming out.
And Matt, you could probably relate to this.
It's an issue we saw some pushback.
And then slowly they started facing more and more pressure
that made it difficult for them to push back.
Now, their position was very different to Elon.
Bias had a bigger role to play.
Mario, you also know that Elon's made decisions.
And then when people have called him on it, to his credit,
he's reversed that decision.
And even I've had issues where he's had to reverse too many times,
but even then you made a fair argument that that's actually a good thing.
You'd rather realign your position and do the right thing.
So essentially just agreeing with him for the sake of it is wrong as well.
Maybe he'd realize that, look, by making this move, it is a problem,
and then he'll realign his position again.
I think that's the better way of going about.
Fair, fair point, fair point.
I think Kim, last time Kim had the mic, I think he articulated it well.
He said, we're concerned.
and it's a valid concern
and we're holding him accountable
directly or indirectly by doing spaces like this
and more importantly all the different
tweets criticizing these decisions
so I respect that and that's important
I'm sure he respects that as well
but jumping to conclusions is a different story
but with my with your answer though
Slaman it just shows me that it's a very naive answer
because and if Dynish agrees with it
I'll be very surprised because to say
that we should treat all countries equal
but that's ridiculous you cannot
operate a business and operate the same in all these countries.
We had the CEO of Robert.
That's one example.
They barely faced Rumble.
How many users does Rumble have?
How many users does Twitter have?
No, no, but the point here is Mario.
He's a new company.
He has more of a risk of basically things going wrong.
And essentially, he was very consistent.
And he said, look, even if it affects us, we are going to make sure that we are consistent with our
Yeah, but what I'm saying, fair point,
but there's a difference, no,
there's no difference, no, but you need to,
let me, yeah, I'll give you the mic,
let me ask you back, yeah, and I'll give you the mic,
but the tag team,
but Saman, that's a fair point,
rumble, okay, they didn't,
they didn't curtail to France's request
and they don't know the operation on France.
How long do you think they can keep doing this until Rumble no longer exists?
Eventually, they'll have to play ball in some cases if they are to survive in a business.
If they get banned in country after country, including countries like China,
and eventually countries like some Western European countries,
the business will no longer exist.
Ian?
Yeah, so I want to back you up on that.
So the thing about Rumble is that, yeah, you can argue it's a new company and all, but where are they focused?
They're focused primarily on America, right?
They're focused on trying to get political influencers, mostly from YouTube and some from Twitch, to start streaming on Rumble to start posting their videos on Rumble.
So they're competing directly with YouTube for a predominantly U.S. audience.
They're not competing against the European Union or any of the, like, Jou video, for example.
You know, it's pretty big in France.
they're not competing against any of these companies and I don't think they intend to.
I think their goal is pretty small.
Their goal is not to become some multinational large corporation like YouTube or even Twitter.
Twitter's a multinational, international, international company.
Rumble is predominantly just an American company.
That's really all it is.
So something like this, like, you know, telling French, fuck you, it plays well for
U.S. audience.
But if they were actually in the European Union, if they were competing,
for that audience in the EU, they would not be taking that position.
It's very easy for them to say this because they don't really have any skin in the game
whatsoever.
It'd be like a Russian website saying, you know what, we're going to ban all Americans.
So what if they do?
Americans don't use Russian websites, right?
So for them to say that, to just put out that statement, it's pretty meaningless, right?
It doesn't equate to anything.
They don't see a loss of money because they don't even advertise in Europe.
If you were, let's say you're a European content creator, you can't even get paid out in Europe.
So it doesn't really matter at all.
I'm gonna go to Cambridge.
Yeah, yeah, let me mention some breaking news quickly.
So in the same point, Mario.
Oh, sorry, go ahead, mine.
Yeah, just some quick breaking news,
but I'm mentioning it because people keep sending it to me like crazy.
So I'm going to mention it, but I would prefer not,
I usually wouldn't because the sources are shit.
But according to two sources that people have said,
I've had like six people send it to me in the last five, ten minutes.
George Soros passed away, but just want to be clear, this is not confirmed that there's no legit.
Who reported it, Mario?
So one of them is, so the first one that reported it is according to politics for all Ireland.
And then the world bulletin.
Never heard of it.
Exactly.
And then the world bulletin.
So in other words, it's bullshit.
Yeah, it just, it's like bullshit to me.
Yeah, it seems like bullshit.
And I've seen similar stories in the past.
So just for people sending it, and there's a tweet about it going viral.
This is most likely BS and it hasn't been confirmed.
So, Saman, I'll let you respond.
In the meantime, I'm going to the comments as well.
Yeah, I think the argument is very weak, because when you look at the Twitter user base, as large as it is, from what I know, 70 to 75% of his user base is the United States.
It's not.
It's user base in Turkey is very minimal.
So I don't agree that this would have impacted them to an extent that they would have closed down.
It's almost on the same levels as Rumble in terms of impact on company.
And you need to have some kind of consistent approach.
And so that's what it is.
And in the same manner that the US is also a government.
And so if they decide to basically start restricting people, then you have the same problem.
But let me just go to Kim.
Kim, go ahead.
Yeah, so I do want to give some credit to Elon for his approach when it comes to with this kind of criticism.
He was proactive by saying he's going to release the information about what exactly the request was from the Turkish government and why.
He said he's going to host a space.
Right.
with the new CEO he has appointed Linda so that we can ask her questions. And I'm personally
looking forward to that because I do have some questions for her. And, you know, everything
that happens in terms of criticism when it comes to free speech or how the site is changing,
Elon is very responsive and he's dealing with his users in a very transparent fashion. And so,
you know, maybe this space is a little bit,
premature and we should just see what the actual information is that he's going to provide before
you know we criticize him everyone here is concerned everyone loves twitter the way it is now a space
where we can all you know have free speech and and share our opinions and i think we are all
kind of worried that someone will try and take that away from us
And I think the same I agree with you.
The whole point is I know I would be banned in the previous regime.
So we value what Elon Musk's done.
There's no doubt about that whatsoever.
But then at the same time, the concern is when some of these moves are made that, you know what?
We get worried that the actions taken might end up reverting back to the previous regime.
And hence why, by calling it out early, Elon...
is very open most of the time to have willing to reverse his decision and make a different
decision and hence why we're calling it out for that reason.
If I'm going to, Dr.
I just want to just for the audience, I'm going through your comments as well.
And I'll read out some comments, some different perspectives on what's going on here on Twitter.
I'll go to Dr.
I mean, without reading the comments, I bet most of them my Mario's wrong.
But yeah, go ahead, doctor.
Doctor, you got to unmute your mic.
Yes, we can, Doctor.
How are you?
Hi. Hi guys. I just wanted to say that I'll be going to sleep shortly because it's almost 2 o'clock in the night in Denmark.
So if there was something you wanted to ask me.
Yeah, but Dr. that's fine because according to the new Twitter CEO, it's okay not to tweet after 3 a.m.
So if it's 2 a.m., you still have an hour. Go ahead.
Yeah, okay, that's good. So now we just wanted to...
We are very concerned and we are also very disappointed.
We have been treating a lot of the past few days after these news.
And like you all said, there has been lots of things going on in the past month.
And I'm from one of these European countries.
So we are also concerned about that part.
I have had...
extremely many tweets with held in both Germany and France and so we also kind of want to know what's going on.
And we are very much against these censorship because we, I came back with a whole group of doctors
that we had been suspended almost nonstop for three years during the COVID policies and, and
And now it has turned out that everything we said was true.
We were against the mandates.
We were against the lockdowns.
We said the vaccine wasn't safe and so on.
And we were shut down for three years on every platform.
So we are extremely grateful that Elon reinstated our whole group.
And...
And we might not agree on everything with him, but, you know, it's kind of a deal breaker, I think, for most of us that he now has decided to hire a person.
Why, Doctor, why is it a deal breaker?
Like, I just don't understand how.
That he has hired a person associated to the World Economic Forum.
because these people and their philosophy and their view on life is so concerning.
Okay, Doctor, can I ask you a question?
Dr. Can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
I bet.
I bet you don't know that Mario went to the W.EF.
Ian, number one, I didn't go to W.E.F.
So just to educate people, I wish I did because I would love to see how it operates there.
I went to Davos.
No, no, no.
I'm not going to turn to that side.
You went to Davos.
Can I ask you one of them?
Yeah.
You're one of the bad guys.
Ian, do you're gonna answer, bro,
before he makes such silly statements?
So Davos has a lot of mini,
ah, you're being sarcastic.
Okay, cool.
So, yeah, so WF has a lot of events around it.
So crypto events, AI events, et cetera.
Investors go there, startups go there.
So any investor that has startups goes
to support their startups and speak on panels.
So I went there to a crypto event next to WEF.
If I was invited to the World Economic Forum, I would go there.
I would want to talk to them.
And there's a lot of people.
So let me make my point.
Let me make my point.
So, doctor, do you, if I told you to ask you to describe every single politician out there, how would you describe them?
Which...
In general, in general.
Wouldn't you say...
And I don't want to put it in your mouth, but wouldn't...
Go ahead.
I would say that prior to COVID,
I was like a regular brainwashed person
watching the MSM news every day
and believing that that was somehow the truth.
And I think we all got a lot smarter since that.
Yes, so the point, so, Dr.
All the corruption and all the fraud.
Dr. Doctor, Doctor, Dr.
Okay, Dr. Doctor, you've gone down a different rabbit hall.
So just the question I want, the point I wanted to make,
and I tweeted about this as well,
the point I want to make is that politicians,
Jenny are frowned upon by everyone.
And they looked upon as corrupt and in some cases
evil people ruining the world.
That's how people like to look at them.
But putting every single politician, like if let me search, how many politicians is there in the world?
There's going to be hundreds of tens of thousands minimum.
If you put every single politician, including the ones trying to do the right thing, it's like saying billionaires.
Every single billionaires corrupt and is part of the establishment, blah, blah, blah, well, there's Elon, among others that are doing the right thing.
So going to the world economic firm, I'm not protecting the CEO.
I know she has a background that makes a lot of people very concerned.
And I've never met...
It's not only a background.
She's...
She's an active participant and a chair.
It's not only her background.
She's still an active chair of the World Economic Forum.
So I don't know how many active...
So she's on the board of the...
Is she a chairwoman of the World Economic Forum?
No, she's not.
She's not.
No, she's not.
No, she's not.
Okay.
So, Dr.
Well, we went to check.
She's the chairperson of a task force.
There's about 17 of those every year.
Essentially, a task force is a glorified chat group.
It's like one of these spaces, to my understanding.
You go there, you have a conversation.
But see, this is, this is, isn't what bothers me.
It's like, this is where things take out of, take out, take out, to be taken out of context.
You go to an event and Davos suddenly you went to the World Economic Forum or you went to the World Economic Forum.
Suddenly you're part of the establishment.
There's 3,000 participants in the World Economic Forum.
So, Doctor, I want to just kind of give you credit.
I think, well, let me give you credit.
Since the announcement, we have been checking out what this woman has been saying and we're
There's a lot of videos going around, and she has been saying a lot of concerns.
Yes.
That one I agree with.
Especially with these vocableness.
You can do that with anyone, right?
I mean, you can easily take people out of context and present the narrative.
She made a good point.
This is no different than taking, you know, Tucker Carlson, taking all of his statements and saying he's a white supremacist.
Yeah, doctor, so I want to give you credit.
This is like a weak argument.
I get people are taking out of context.
I'm totally against it.
But when you look at the long time...
I like if someone made, you know, videos of all the good things, the more conservative things that she said.
You know, she's very proudly a question.
Why doesn't people, why don't people make a video about that?
You know, instead it's like all these...
He has been saying that she wants to hire 50 percentage...
Not her.
Not her.
She was praising NBC for that.
She was praising NBC for doing that.
I mean, she worked there.
Of course she's going to say that.
That means no job for a white man.
We think this is a little extreme.
If Elon picked a CEO in accordance with the wishes of people who spend all day, every day, having paranoid hallucinations about the World Economic Forum, then I would probably question his judgment.
Because this idea that it's like this unique locus of evil, and there wouldn't be some other international institution for people in finance capital to meet up, is just like...
silly, it's like, it's an impoverish view of the world.
I'm not saying, there's not sketchy things that go on.
It's just that they made it into this like mythological villain.
Right.
Well, the person who helped make that into a mythological villain is Elon himself.
I just saw at least four tweets where he was talking about how WWF was an elected government,
was one of the tweets I read.
I mean, the issue of the Will Economic Forum is not even the forum itself.
It's more like the position.
Which has too much power.
Like Elon credit.
He may change his mind now.
He's hired a W.
I'm sorry, freelance.
Like, no, no, no.
One of the thing is that there's a different,
we have to differentiate the, you know,
the W.E.F as a whole, which is a whole bunch of people.
Ian, now listen this, listen.
Like, I just, Ian, I just did some quick homework,
like just a couple of minutes.
So, so people that were,
that participate in the World Economic Forum,
because, Doctor, you make some good points.
I want to go back to your point,
but let me just kind of,
move away from the World Economic Forum discussion.
So Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has been involved in the World Economic Forum.
Edward Snowden went to the World Economic Forum to raise concerns about surveillance and the protection of privacy rights.
Mariam Nawaz Sharif, a Pakistani politician, activist, has participated in the West and has voiced support for freedom of free speech and democratic value.
So I'm just saying there's people that are good that go to the World Economic Forum, not every single person that steps forward to the world.
He's good, bro.
Mario, I would not bring up, Mario, I'm the last.
I'll take it back.
I don't know.
I don't know about her.
But there's a whole list of the,
Shireen Ibadi,
human rights lawyer,
Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
was associated with the World Economic Forum.
Anyway, someone else could do the homework
if everyone's been there.
You can point to a lot of names that are concerning.
But what I mean, Doctor,
is that just going to the World Economic Forum
doesn't immediately put you as a bad person.
No, it's not...
Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. I want to make, okay, Ian, guys, guys, let me, can I finish my sentence, please?
But doctor, what I want to give you credit for is that you pointed out videos and things she said in the past that are concerning that people dug out.
That one is a very valid point in my opinion.
When you start looking at actions she's taken and things she said and raise concerns based
on that, absolutely.
And I think he's a very valid concern.
I know Elon said he'll get the new CEO into a Twitter space so she can ask the questions,
but I do want to point out that people that did the wrong thing before doesn't mean they
cannot do the right thing and Elon has the ability to fire a CEO.
Does that mean he's changing his entire approach to Twitter?
I think we all thought it was a very extreme when she was telling Elon like he should moderate when and what he was treating.
And you know what? This is not his mom. I don't know how she even dares.
And it's grotesque. So we just don't understand his choice.
Does she not allowed to disagree with him?
Does she have to agree with him on every single thing?
That doesn't mean that he has to follow what she says.
I mean, she has input, but at the end of the day...
It's concerning that it's...
She may be CEO, but he's the owner.
He's the owner.
He can do whatever he wants.
Her title doesn't matter.
Her job is to deal with advertising.
This idea that...
It's hilarious.
Suddenly it doesn't matter.
I mean, it's just like, you know, whenever it's...
Whenever follows a specific narrative, it doesn't matter.
But if it doesn't, it's just, I'm very confused by this.
Why does it not matter?
Why does it not matter?
Because he's the owner.
He is the owner.
He's the chairman, technically.
I'm confused about who people have a thing.
Sorry, sorry, too many people are talking.
I just want to go to Matt, because we've got Matt here, and I just want to ask him specifically,
Matt, what are your initial thoughts about the new CEO of Twitter?
Yeah.
Matt Tabby?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's hard to say.
Superficially, it doesn't seem like a great thing.
But I don't know that person personally.
Elon's obviously under a lot of pressure financially.
You know, there's...
very severe advertiser boycotts.
Maybe that's part of this situation here,
but it's not a move that inspires a lot of confidence in me personally
as somebody who thought I wasn't going to have to make these kinds of compromises anymore.
So I don't know.
It doesn't feel great.
It's the only thing I can really say.
From a truly creator perspective,
are you excited about the fact that they're going to move towards video streaming
and everything that's going on with Tucker Carlson?
Well, I'm not going to be part of that.
So it does seem interesting.
I'm sure it'll be, you know, it'll provide,
as we've seen from Substack, the...
The traditional media is so unpopular and so untrustworthy now that something like Twitter getting involved in that will create the opportunity for a lot of independent media.
journalists and influencers to make money and monetize their situations and do, you know, reporting that will be trusted and important.
So that's a good thing, I think.
I think the bad thing is that you still have, the reason I personally wouldn't make a move to that platform is because I would still be subject to.
to the whims of an owner.
I mean,
I think the thing that's,
that makes substack a better arrangement for somebody like me
is that it's kind of censor-proof.
You can't really censor email.
You can dial down Twitter,
and that's why I would worry about it
from the point of view of a contact,
contact creator.
Matt, Matt,
Matt, did you notice that Twitter's been like,
devalue or I mean
messing up messing with the
engagement of posts that have links to substack
where they don't get as much engagement
yeah are you kidding I mean
yeah it's
like obvious I mean it's obvious
what he's trying to do
I mean in business sense it makes sense
everyone's trying to post like SBTK
just to not even put the word in that's how scared everyone
of being throttled
yeah I mean
look
That seems to me to go against any, you know, all the principles that, you know, we were talking, that we thought this new regime is going to be about, but, you know, I guess, I guess not.
I mean, it makes sense to throttle rival platforms, right? Because why are you giving them free traffic? I mean, all these other websites throttle everybody else, so...
Twitter should do this thing.
Well, then you're creating, yeah, well, but, you know, I don't think they're right in doing it either.
And you're creating as an ecosystem where essentially you're not able to freely spread information, right?
That's news articles, that's information.
And that's the value, I think, of a platform like Twitter.
where you can link to a resource that's whether it's a study or it's a substack article
or it's a news media article or a YouTube video.
I find that incredibly valuable to be able to do that and to as a user also to get that
from other people.
So like not allowing that, I think diminishes the value and speech on such a platform.
There's been a lot of work.
Go ahead, Matt.
Guys, I was going to ask Matt.
Yeah, I was going to ask Matt, and then Matt, you can go ahead.
Matt, I was going to ask you, and then if you can add it on to this, whatever you wanted to say.
But essentially, the way Elon is gear in Twitter is to essentially have some form of system
where you can have a substack version of a longer articles and whatever, what have you.
So from that perspective, from a business perspective, do you think it makes sense?
A, and then B, why do you still think it's a bad move?
Matt.
You got to unmute Matt, bottom left corner.
Yeah.
Sorry, I mean, the answer to that is what we've been talking about.
Why would I not make that move?
I mean, previously I wouldn't make it because...
I didn't want there to be even the appearance of a financial relationship when I was doing Twitter files reporting.
But now, why would I put myself in a position where somebody can do something like throttle down the traffic to my audience?
Where, you know, with substack, they can't do that.
There's no way for the company to get involved with.
you know, throttling down email.
They can't dial, they can't visibility filter email.
So I think that's a major disadvantage.
Also, this whole idea of doing that to Substack.
Substack is like one of the few places in the media landscape
where there's influential independent media.
And for somebody like Elon to go after Substack,
they...
where there were a lot of people who were very supportive of him initially.
It's just very, to me, I think, just self-destructive.
It's a bad move.
It makes them look like he's not supporting the values that he said he was.
So, Matt, you know, I have a question for you.
I've got a question for you, Matt.
And you can completely say, I don't want to answer this publicly or whatever.
But...
Are you disappointed at what's going on at Twitter now overall and at Elon possibly?
You know, you fought for him with Twitter files.
You took a lot of flack for this.
We all know that you've gone through hell and back because of Twitter files.
You went through all of this and now it feels as though nothing has really changed.
Do you, are you disappointed?
Well, I didn't go into the Twitter files experience with the idea that this was going to
primarily be about changing the world. I think the most important thing initially was just finding
on what was going on. I mean, in the pre-Twitter Files universe, we didn't even have confirmation
that shadow banning existed exactly, right? And now there's so many things that we know,
you know, that not only that the companies do, but also about their relationships with the FBI and
DHS and ODNI and all those things.
I think that's, those things are still good that we have some clarity about that.
But yeah, of course I'm disappointed in what happened with Twitter.
I mean, at least implicitly, you know, I had to defend the company for a long time.
And then for them to make a move like this makes it very, very hard to defend the reporting.
So it's, it is disappointing.
I like the fact that, you know, it's being done right.
You know how I know this?
The fact that we're all...
Your mic is clicking like crazy.
It should be better now.
It should be better now.
So, so the reason I think we're heading in the right path is that we're being so critical with...
censorship in Turkey, whereas under the old regime,
everyone turned, almost turned a blind eye to significantly more censorship,
systemic censorship within the US, within Western Europe.
So just seeing the response that we're seeing now,
including the appointee of the new CEO,
and knowing that no one would give a shit if the same thing happened by META,
just shows that we're doing the right thing in holding Twitter's executives accountable,
and Twitter is in the right place.
Yeah, I agree with you, Mario.
I mean, by and large, Twitter is an amazingly improved space in comparison to where it was even, you know, 10 months ago, right?
Before Elon took over.
And the fact that we're complaining about these very small, I would say, inconsequential issues is proof that, you know, that has improved that much, right?
Because before, you couldn't give a shit about anything.
Like, it would be like, oh, it's part of the course, it's whatever, you know.
I disagree that there's small issues, though, Ian, but I know, I know you feel differently, but I do, I do feel, like, Matt, I do feel strongly about those kinds of things.
I mean, I think there's some criticism that is absolutely unfair, like the, I think, like, I, as you know, like, with the CEO move, for example, I think we are somewhat in agreement about that, but I think when it comes to, like, the, uh,
substack and just throttle it's not just substack it's throttling of other things and I do think
there's some inconsistencies like there's some things that I think Elon did really well and I'm glad
for but there are some things and I think it's important to sort of hold people accountable
even if what they do some things that are good I think when they do things that aren't I think
you know you have to be kind of honest about that
I think I don't understand about the reaction to the CEO.
All right, guys.
I do want to go to Kim, but my response to this is when did we ever talk about censorship in Turkey?
Most people can't point Turkey on a map, let alone talk about censorship there.
Kim, would love to get your thoughts.
Yeah, Matt, I have one question for you.
Elon made a tweet where he alleged that Substack has been using the Twitter API
to mass download data of Twitter profiles to, you know, offer potentially some kind of service
where, you know, you could just merge or backup your Twitter account and all your past tweets
onto the competing service at Substack.
I mean, if that's true...
maybe that is why he got upset with substack and, you know, undermined their effort to launch that new competing service.
And what is your view on that, if that is accurate?
But, Tim, what you said, what you said, like, what you did.
Maybe, Judge, I'll give you.
That was a question for Matt.
Yeah. And we'll give you the mic, God, Joe, I don't think you are Matt, so let's
let it.
So, Joe, I don't think your name is Matt.
I was going to add to you.
I didn't know, I was going to add to what you said, but yeah, I didn't hear you say
Matt.
Yeah, I would love to, Joe, let, let, let Matt go.
Go ahead, Matt.
No, I'll just, first of all, the companies, I've obviously asked both companies about that.
They both have different takes on what's going on.
Substack denies that, that they've done that.
Twitter obviously says they are, but also Twitter's like, what, a thousand times bigger than Substack.
The idea that Twitter's going to be a...
you know, destroy the company.
That seems a little...
I mean, you've got to kill a child when it's a child.
You know, you don't let it grow up to become a conquer.
I mean, come on.
No, it's just a fact.
Like, if they help Substack and Substack grows into this, you know, this gigantic thing,
they'll be like, well, that's too late done.
You know, you can't take it down anymore.
Well, let's even stipulate that that's true.
What does that have to do with MAP?
me and the thousands of other substack users.
I don't know.
You're caught in the middle.
I mean, you use substack, right?
And Twitter wants to compete with them.
I use it as a service.
I'm not a, I'm not, I don't, I'm not substack.
I have my own company.
I'm an independent.
I know, but you subsstack, you could be using Twitter for all of this.
You could have subscriptions and then you could post all of your articles.
Well, people should come to that because they like Twitter for it, not because they're sort of poor.
But then it wouldn't be proprietary humanity more, Ian.
That's really poor product design.
Go ahead.
Matt, it has a proprietary.
So, Matt, shouldn't we draw a distinction, Matt, between free speech and anti-competitive behavior?
You might want to call what Twitter did anti-competitive, but I wouldn't put it in the same basket as free speech.
By the way, you're muted, Matt.
I had to mute everyone.
Matt, you're there?
You got to unmute.
Yeah.
Yeah, you love questions.
Twitter,
Twitter, they took down my Twitter files,
which weren't even Substack accounts in reaction to this whole thing.
Now, they put them back up, but still, that's clearly not a competitive issue.
That's just being angry with me because I'm associated with Substack.
And again, like, if you're anti-competitive, if you're,
reaction to
substack as a competitor,
as a much smaller
competitor is going to be so extreme
that you're going to take it out
and the people who use them as a service.
That makes it very difficult
to use,
for people to use Twitter
for what it once was great at,
which is,
you know, marketing, and for small people who otherwise would have very small audiences to build up a profile,
how are they going to do that if they have to use Twitter for everything?
Well, that's the everything app, right?
That's the whole point of this, is that, you know, they're planning to compete against all these websites.
They have no obligation to boost them.
Excuse me, why, as an independent journalist, would I use an app that has already censored me?
Why would I do that?
And the other thing is, Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, through Substack, the business that you have is clearly proprietary to you.
Exactly.
The vehicle, if you would do the same thing within Twitter, it's within the auspices of Twitter.
Like, people don't understand.
Subsack, you're like your mailing list is portable.
It's not the property of Substack.
It's yours.
You're just using Substack as a platform.
Twitter wants to, I guess, bundle that all under the umbrella of Substack.
So you don't actually have possession of it yourself.
Right, yeah, exactly. And if I were to move to the, right now at Substack, I could take my subscribers and move to Ghost or some other platform at any time.
And I have my own company. I don't have any interaction regularly with Substack apart from, you know, using their platform.
You can't monetize it without their platform, though, can you?
I mean, I could take my subscribers and go somewhere else if I felt like it.
I guarantee you Matt could send a PayPal link to his email list, and that would probably suffice.
Maybe.
And again, the major differences, substack can't censor what I do, but Twitter can and has.
So I think that's an important distinction, and it's something people should keep in mind if you're thinking about it.
making this move to be you know to do twitter subscriptions you're you're always going to have an
owner uh who at whose whims you're you're you're going to be at the mercy of and that's that's a
big distinction a quick question i think that's true for any platform it's not just twitter you know
so let's not just single out elan for this so man can you just refresh refresh our memory
before we keep go to joan reeve and go deep into the rabbit hole what was exactly censored in turkey
you know, we're doing this space about it, people are tweeting about it, what do we know?
So, I mean, I'm sorry, Mark, Mark, go ahead.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, my understanding is that they were given an ultimatum and told that they had to take down certain accounts,
or at least during the period of the election, or else be completely turned off in Turkey.
I don't really...
completely understand the situation. I haven't paid a lot of attention to it. Apart from
having people yell at me as if it were my decision. But, you know, it seems to me very similar
to the kinds of dilemmas that old Twitter was under repeatedly over the years. And sometimes
they bent to the will of, you know, local governments. And sometimes they didn't. And
That I thought was what the Twitter files was all about was the whole idea of you have to eventually make a stand in these situations.
So I don't know.
Well, do you think, Matt, if you take a stand in this situation,
wouldn't it mean that potentially, I mean,
especially with a country like Turkey,
that Twitter would potentially cease to exist in that country?
And I know that like Rumble, I think it's Rumble.
They've chosen to not operate at all in countries
where the freedom of speech laws don't allow for freedom.
In one country in France.
And I can't remember the reason, but it was not related.
Right.
It was...
friends, but it's not just, but I think in
general that's their sort of policy.
They went to an RT band, but you know, they
don't even operate in France, so they don't have
any skin in the game. They can say, oh, we're
not going to operate in China. Well, who
invited you there? Nobody. No, no,
I agree with us, and so
But what I'm wondering is like you could say that, but then you don't have, then that company doesn't end up existing.
Like it's not like they're necessarily influencing the governments.
The governments aren't changing their laws because they want Rumble in, for example.
right and so well you know i don't know that twitter has that kind of power to then be well now we're not
and you know turkey is going to change their freedom of speech laws in the u.s it's a bit different
because we have a very different you know in general there's just a different temperament towards
freedom of speech laws
but in if you take away that tool if say Twitter takes the stance people do lose you know I've grappled with this myself but people do lose like access to you know earthquake warnings and other kinds of things so what are your thoughts on that Matt
I mean, that doesn't feel like a compromise that I would want to make.
I mean, does the world need there to be an American-owned commercial Twitter in Turkey
if it's going to make those kinds of moral compromises?
I just don't think it's a...
This is an opportunity, it feels like to me, to put pressure on a country like Turkey to use the fame and the power of this company globally to make them the bad guy and put pressure in them not to make this kind of move.
Because now that they've made this move in Turkey, what do you think they're going to do when the EU comes rolling around and starts asking for?
you know, increased influence on content moderation when Sissau starts doing it.
I mean, what do you think is going to happen?
Do we know?
Just one question.
And Siaman, I know you gave the overview and I see Kim, Reeve, and Sarah with their hands up.
But Siaman, again, what do we know exactly happened?
Who was censored in Turkey?
Are you sure there was no pushback from Twitter?
Was there a request to censor a lot more?
Maybe the request was to censor 10 times what was censored?
Yeah.
So Elon most posted and what he said was that he was basically giving a request to censor certain accounts.
We don't know what those accounts are.
We have some reporting that the opposition but we need to verify that and we need more information on that.
Elon is claiming in his text that he had a choice to make whether to ban those accounts or the entirety of Twitter will be blocked in Turkey in total.
Yeah.
So that's what the initial report is the only one that has been reported to date is the Kurdish businessman Mohammed Yakut, who was amongst those that were restricted.
Yakut previously shared information about Erdogan's government dealings and alleged that the Turkish leader had been involved in the disappearance of his son-in-law.
And this was reported last week and now he has been banned.
We just don't know if it's reported by who, Danish?
Business Insider, but again, they use the Turkish minutes.
So I just want to be clear that they only use one single source.
Did you say the Turkish minutes, which is a...
Yeah, just the Turkish minute.
Okay, I don't know how...
Here's what I understand.
If you have a binary choice.
Yeah, exactly.
Perfect.
I was going to make that same point.
And just one question before I do.
Before I do, hold on, Michael.
And I do want to go to Kim afterwards.
But one more question, Samad.
How did we find out about all this?
Because I wasn't there for the space that we did on a new CEO.
We never did on this topic.
So how did we find out about the Turkish session?
Okay, so Elon was the reason we found out.
Yeah, the Elon's credit.
Yeah, yeah. If Elon's credit, and Michael did clarify, I do believe he's right, that it was actually posted by Twitter first.
It blew up because someone did a quote tweet and then talked about how this was a problem and how it's...
Yeah, it's someone who hates Twitter. Just keep that in mind. They framed it in a certain narrative.
Yeah, yeah. Whoever he is. Someone who dislikes Twitter, basically, quote, tweet and showed how this was censorship.
And then Elon replied that...
he was stupid and that the in reality the decision was whether to ban some accounts or
Turkey would be banned in total in Twitter but again it's just
okay so let me ask you a question before going to him I'll ask you a question if you're if you're
if you had to make that decision if you had to bad so they were requests to ban a large
amount of people multiple requests you pushed back against most of them they're like yo after a lot of
negotiations
You've got to remove at least these 10 accounts or five accounts.
Otherwise, I'm going to ban all of Twitter.
I'm not playing.
You're going too far with this free speech thing.
Would you remove those 10 accounts or would you actually lead to the ban of Twitter in Turkey?
So I would allow the ban in Turkey because I wouldn't want to impact an election,
but I can see how somebody...
The ban of Twitter could impact the election as well, just to be clear.
Well, it would impact the election, but impact it in a more fair manner because essentially, if you're banning the entire opposition, you've now got only, you've got the only access to social media that positively impacts you only.
If everybody is banned, it would probably negatively impact you because you've made a stubborn decision to say that, you know what, Twitter needs to be banned.
And if you don't ban it, we're going to remove Twitter.
And then youngsters, and they did believe in Turkey, that what was going to impact.
I think, I think, I'll just end it with this.
I think, there is a third option, Mario.
There is third option.
So, so these youngsters would then vote against Erdogan, and then that could impact
the election, but that impact would have been based on Erdogan's own decision rather
than him being silent.
Yeah, Dan, what's the third position?
I wish I would have the same properly.
It's Erdogan, by the way.
It's not Erdogan, it's Erdogan.
But, but, Ian, the Salama struggles, it's a, it's just,
to pronounce DeSantis.
But just on the two points you made Slaman Danish,
I'm glad you have a third option before going to Kim
because Slaman, your point is just,
you said the cool thing that people would love to hear.
You know how people say something that sounds so great,
but when it comes to executing it's impossible
because it goes to my second point,
Those decisions could kill a business.
You start with Turkey, which he cannot compare Rumble in France.
Yeah, so why would he cry in?
Why was he crying about the Hunter Biden laptop?
That would have affected his business.
You cannot compare free speech in the U.S.
You can't compare.
He could have been transparent, Mario.
He was transparent.
We found that because Twitter came out and said it.
He was not transparent.
The transparency would have been.
And all the Turkey doesn't have first amendment.
Hold on, Ian.
Let me just kind of.
You don't have the First Amendment.
Come on, Guy.
Wait, I wanted to do the third option.
The third option that I've been trying to get out is that he could have clearly said,
hey, I have been approached by the Turkish government.
The Turkish government has asked me to get rid or to block these specific accounts.
If we block these accounts, if we don't block these accounts, we will be banned in, Twitter will be banned in Turkey.
And based on this, I have made the decision to do this.
He would have done something different than what he fought against in the Twitter files.
This is the problem.
This is complete hypocrisy.
I think, I think, Ian, I want to give credit to Danish.
Well, wouldn't it have been the exact same thing?
Sarah, I'll give you the mic right after Kim and I'm glad you managed to make it.
Danish, I think this was a valid answer, assuming that, you know, Turkey's okay with it and
then they say, hey, you're not allowed to talk about it, blah, blah, blah.
I think this is a very valid answer.
It makes sense you take the steps that you need to take to save the business and the revenue
you get from that country.
Right.
But at the same time, trying your best to stand for what you stand,
to stick to what you stand for.
So that one, I think is a great solution.
I have a floor for the community.
Let's go to Kim, Sarah.
He did what Donish said.
No, he couldn't.
He didn't say who he suspended, why.
He didn't say.
He actually did, but hold on, Donish,
he did say that in the comments that,
hey, otherwise Twitter would have been banned completely.
Didn't he say that in the comment?
The difference here is knowing who.
But maybe.
I think the difference here is knowing who.
That would have been very important.
Here, we're all now sitting in the fog of smoke, or the fog of war, sorry, and really trying to understand what the hell happened.
And I think that is actually part of the problem.
I think if you would have been upfront about it.
So, Dan, your point is, because he did what you said, but the only thing he didn't do was named the specific journalist.
So he should have just said, these are the 10 journalists that I'm ban, or these are 10 opposition people that are banning.
and this is the reason and that's the only extra step you took and that would have made it acceptable
i agree that is the only extra step and i would have trusted him more
kim what do you think of that i don't think that would have made i don't think that's any
different to be what i mean no no at least he's offering transparency because it's consequential
to me but i think the more transparent the better yeah but this is a new regime right we were
told it's going to reveal these names let's go let's go to kim but sam i just want to your point
let's not you know jump to conclusions here and assume that you know just as bad as the old regime just because
It's way too far.
And Saman,
you're just being
very naive
with your solution.
No, I stand for
absolute free speech
and I will stand for Turkey
and I will get...
No, no,
why did I say that?
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
I did not say that.
What I said was
that if that's Danis's position
then he should not have
that much of an issue with Elon
because
Elon.
No, no, no.
What he said earlier,
your solution earlier
is that you would not curtail
to Turkey's requests.
Yeah, I wouldn't cow down to blackmail.
Yeah, yeah, but this is,
I know you're always,
Yo-Yo.
All right, so when you get into,
when you get into the world of business...
You get into the world of dealing with people.
And unfortunately, if you're going to take the stand that I will never, I stand for this and I will not listen to anybody.
And I will, these are my values.
Not saying these are my values, this is my rule and I'm going to be very binary about it.
You know, it's just going to sound great when you start saying it on spaces like this.
But it's not practical in the world we live in today.
The complexity...
I felt like he did a whole month and months and months...
And your account...
And we talked about some of the...
And we...
Yo, and we had some of the most controversial people on stage.
We've talked about some of the most controversial topics day after day yet.
I'm not suspended.
Neither are you, neither is any other speaker on stage.
So if you're talking about the Twitter files, I think change was implemented since then, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
And again, the people we had on stage or the people that we've talked to...
No one's denying that...
All right, so I'm glad, let's go to...
You're shifting the argument.
You're shifting the argument.
No, you're saying you're going back to the Twitter files.
I'm saying this is not apples and apples.
You know, the Twitter files...
But, Mario, the Twitter file, we had the Indian Twitter files.
Hold on.
I'll give you an example of a country.
A country that actually...
No, no, no, hold on.
We made a pretty big deal out of this.
I remember this.
You know, and there were certain people that were shadow banned.
There were certain people.
And we were like, oh, how could the old Twitter do this?
And the same people up here there defending Elon were our...
unwilling to do it today because their laws over there or whatever Modi said.
Fair point, fair point.
How many people were, I do want to go to Kim.
Kim, I promise just one more second.
Danish, how many people were suspended this time around or shadow band this time around?
Yeah.
This is what you say? I don't know. Perfect. Exactly. So this is, I think your concern is valid.
I does not, we don't have enough fact. And Ravi, who's down on stage, you know, he's come on stage before and talked about this.
The scale of the censorship that happened in India. And again, to the credit of Twitter's old regime, they, they weren't just, they weren't curtailing to everybody.
They weren't accepting everyone that blackmailed them to censor content.
They were pushing back in many cases.
But when it came to content that's against their biases,
they provided less resistance.
But Kim, I want to go to you.
We've kind of gone back and forth a lot.
Yeah, actually, Sarah had her hands up.
Exactly.
I'd love to go to Sarah.
Perfect.
Yeah, I agree.
Maybe that first speak first and then.
I agree.
Sarah, go ahead.
Oh, thank you.
That's very kind.
I'm a little confused, Dr. Danish.
You said that if Elon would have released the names of the account and maybe did a deep dive
as to why there would have been suppression that you would have been okay with it, but then wouldn't that have just...
brought up additional issues saying that, well,
transparency always does.
Transparency always does.
Whenever you're transparent upfront,
it always causes trouble.
You know this.
So ultimately...
I would agree,
but ultimately wouldn't we be right here
at the same exact point.
I think we would have all said,
and by the way, he didn't just bring it up.
Twitter...
posted it like it was nothing and then we're called out by it was nothing they didn't have they were not
obligated it hold on hold on twitter posted it in a very official way how about that much better it wasn't
like elon went out there this is not a small thing i this was clearly a pretty big deal and it was
not something that he addressed beforehand he just it was brought up
And then he was, it was brought up by other people that clearly said that there is something wrong going on here.
He responded to that criticism.
It's not like Elon went out there transparently saying.
Are you going to get Elon to find people?
Let's take in. Let's get Sarah to.
finish the question.
So I wanted to make sure
that Sarah understood my thought process
before Ian
before Ian tries to steamroll the conversation.
Ian, Ian, Ian,
let's get Sarah to speak a bit more.
That's great.
So Sarah, to go back to your question around.
Ian, Ian.
Ian.
But people criticise Iran.
Ian,
much love,
I do want,
because Sarah's been waiting for a while.
If you don't mind,
I'll give you the mic right after Kim,
if you don't mind, Ian, please.
Danish, I'll let you just go back and forth with Sarah
before we go to Kim.
No, no, all I was going to say to Sarah
is that the difference for me was that
Given how much respect, I think the hard part here is he has earned our respect.
He has earned our trust.
And given how much we trust and respect Elon and how he has dealt with everything,
I expected him knowing beforehand that this was going to become a bigger issue and addressing it right away and saying, look, here's exactly what's going on.
Here's who they told me to ban.
And here's we had to ban them.
Otherwise they would ultimately block us.
Where's that Twitter?
Can someone send me the Twitter?
Sarah, I'll give you the mic.
In the meantime, Slaman, can you DM me on WhatsApp, the link to Twitter's tweet about this issue?
I want to read it.
I want to see what all the fuss is about.
Please, Sarah.
Go ahead.
Thank you. I think it was a response that he made to Brian, in fact.
But my next question would be because Ian mentioned something about Twitter not being able to afford
and being able to afford losing Turkey, I guess.
Wouldn't, I mean, can he? Can Twitter make that decision and decide we don't want to operate in countries
where freedom of speech is not...
At the forefront, can he afford to make those decisions?
Look, without even doing that, the business is struggling to survive.
The business didn't have long to live.
Without doing that, the business is not profitable yet.
I'm glad you're making that same point.
Yeah, Sarah, it's making a rhetorical point.
Okay, because it just, Sarah, it just drives me nuts.
Like, suddenly everyone's a business person who can run a multi-billion dollar social media platform.
It's...
I understand holding him accountable, but also she's got to do it with some logic.
People seem to be under the impression, right, that Elon is like 10 different people operating at the same time that he can monitor every single thing, that he personally bans everybody who gets shadow banned.
I see people yelling at him saying, you personally ban me.
It's like he doesn't even know you exist.
So why are you yelling at him?
And it's like, it just blows my mind that people are using to those DMs.
Ian, do you get those, and then we'll go to Kim and Brian, but,
Do you get those DMs from people saying,
hey, Elon Shadow Band Me because X, Y, Z.
I'm like, bro, you got 2,000 impressions.
I don't think Elon's sitting there watching your tweet.
Yep, I get that all the time.
People are like, please, please tell Elon to unband me.
And, like, dude, like, you're not even Shadow Band.
I see your tweets.
You're not...
What do you completely?
It's not good.
Yeah, I don't.
I'll just say one more thing and then be done.
I'm not a fan girl of Elon.
In fact, I've been very critical, but I do think he's trying.
I just don't think he's trying as hard as many people wish he were, but I do think he's trying.
I will go to Kim. Kim, I want to get your thoughts on what Sarah just said.
And Kim, my question to you is, is it while I wait for that link from Slamans,
so read it out to the audience, do you think people are being a bit naive?
And when I say people, I'm referring to just one specific person right now, do you think
they're being a bit naive in how suddenly they think they can run a business and how to
be able to balance profitability with values?
Well, I mean, Elon is clearly on a rescue mission.
You know, Twitter wasn't in good shape when he took it over.
It was even in worse shape after he made it a free speech platform and all the advertisers
were running away, right?
So he is certainly, you know, struggling, trying to.
to turn this thing around.
And that to me also is probably why this appointment of Linda for CEO is happening,
because she does have all the big advertiser relationships through her role at NBC Universal.
She brings a content network to the business that Twitter urgently needs.
And so it does make sense.
It's unfortunate.
It's unfortunate.
that she has that side gig at the W.E.F. And it's certainly not good optics. But I do hope that he has conveyed his clear wishes that Twitter has to remain a free speech platform to this new CEO and that she is going to execute on that.
you know clear wish by Elon
and then there's no problem with it right
is it still a free speech platform
Kim as up today as of what happened in Turkey
is it still a free speech platform
of course of course free speech is not
I'm asking again Mario let him answer
let him answer let him answer
let me answer this question Mario it's a fair question
let me answer this
I do think the space is a bit premature because we do not really have the full story about what
happened in Turkey. Elon said he's going to release it. We're going to get more detail about it.
And I think then we should really look at the situation and the facts and make judgment. Right now, it's
premature. The fact.
that Elon has come out and made a statement about it is promising.
We're going to see what went on.
And I think that's important.
And, you know, he has been acting with transparent...
transparency throughout
and he does take these
concerns about censorship seriously
at least that is my impression
so I do give him the benefit of the doubt
I have to ask this I'm meaning
to ask this question
would it be more
and then go to Brian after
yeah go ahead what's my problem
yeah yeah cause
let me actually be
okay go ahead and then I've got to read something
I've got to read the tweet by Twitter
because that's when I read the tweet I'm like
I think this makes your argument a lot
weaker slid man but please go ahead
Okay.
It's probably not my argument.
But anyway,
the problem with your argument is,
Mario,
essentially your argument disagrees with what Elon's saying.
Your argument is it's all about the money.
It's all about a business.
You've got to look out for the business
and the money beforehand.
Yeah.
The issue is this.
Before you say the issue is this, I can't, I cannot interrupt.
I cannot interrupt.
No, because you can't just make, you do this all the time.
You just said something I didn't say to make your argument stronger.
I think I called the strongman argument.
I never said, I said it's a balance.
You said, it's all about the money.
No, it's a balance between money and values.
Welcome to business, my friend.
Okay. Okay, so let's come to that. So you're saying it's a balance of money against values and in certain situations money is going to take precedence. Correct?
Thank you. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. So today he posted and said, I'm willing to lose advertisers.
Okay.
to ensure that this platform stays as a free speech platform.
Hence,
he is not agreeing with the opposition.
He's not agreeing.
Hold on,
not values over money.
You understand it.
Let me ask you.
Let me ask you.
Mario, do not see the hypocrisy.
No, no, it's not hypocrisy.
Guys, guys, okay.
So this is, yeah, can I, can I,
can I, let me live,
let me get the fucking
spoon.
you.
You want
all the
game but none
of the
crap.
Oh fuck
sick.
Let me get
the spoon.
Let me
spoon feed you
the premise of
your argument
how weak it is.
I'm going to
lose advertisers
for free speech.
He already
lost advertisers
for free speech.
He never said
I'm willing to
bankrupt Twitter
for the sake of
free speech
because then free speech
wouldn't exist.
Big difference.
If Twitter's
because...
No, no, because you're making the extreme...
You're making the extreme...
Let me make the point.
I beg you.
It's...
So what I'm saying is that it's a balance.
He will lose advertisers.
He won't bankrupt Twitter.
That means he will not give the Turkish government everything they request,
but he might need to play by some rules for Twitter to even exist in Turkey.
I've spent a lot of time in Turkey.
So I understand the culture there, like as in at least a year in Turkey.
So...
Does that make sense?
And let me read the tweet by fucking Twitter.
Hold on.
And they did that before anyone knew about it.
They could have said nothing.
And then I could have been covering another topic today instead of this stuff.
In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey,
we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.
We have informed the account holders of this.
of this action in line with our policy.
This content will remain available in the rest of the world.
And then they say the same thing in Turkish.
So I want to go to Brian.
Brian, the point that I'm making is that they'll have to play by some rules.
And then Danish is like, yeah, but they need to be transparent.
Well, now I know that Twitter made a tweet itself.
Someone criticized that Elon brought a text.
of more attention to the criticism by responding pretty directly and openly.
And you know, whenever Elon responds to something, it gets all that traction.
So I don't get the argument anymore because the transparency was there, but like, oh, they didn't call, they didn't docks the person and say exactly you got suspended.
Like, that's fucking too far.
I'll also add one more thing is that Elon did also state that he will add more transparency to what happened by stating exactly what the requests will are and what and he will post exactly what the request from Turkey were and share it with Twitter.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You just added, I'll give you the mic.
I'll give you the mic right after Brian.
Brian, Catherine just added more to my argument.
Yeah, yeah. So I remember back in, I guess it was what, November, October when he was buying it, right? And my argument, I mean, I was in these Twitter spaces. We were talking about the Twitter files and all that. And my argument was, where do you draw the line, right? And Elon actually came out and he said, I draw the line at what's legal in the jurisdiction where we're operating.
So, like Germany, like I talked about before, if you post a swastika, that's illegal.
And Twitter has to obey that.
Even though it's trampling on that Nazi's free speech, it's Twitter.
Twitter can't protect that free speech because it is illegal.
The same thing can be said in Turkey.
Now, obviously, there's a difference between forcing someone to be.
ban a swastika and forcing someone to ban if it is the case something that's information people
can use in turkey to make a decision in the election right so i i mean it's apples and oranges but it's still
the law in turkey if that's what turkey is saying is the law right so i
I don't think he's straying from what he originally said.
It can definitely be argued that he shouldn't be following Turkey's laws or Turkey's regulations or whatever you want to call it, Turkey's rulings.
But,
I don't think it's, it's, you can really blame Elon for going against what he came on and said he was going to do.
Brian, can let me ask you a question.
Hold on, Michael, I'll give you the next, but Michael, Brian, let me ask you a question.
Do you know the decentralized social platform we met on?
Okay.
They stand for complete free speech, almost complete free speech, yeah?
Except illegal things and hate speech, blah, blah, blah, there's always exceptions.
All right, they're doing, they're following the right values.
They're following the values that Slyman would be proud of, okay?
Do you agree so far, Brian, with my argument?
Yeah.
How much impact are they having on the world right now?
How many users do they have?
Like maybe 500 daily active users.
This is exactly what will happen to Twitter if Slaman takes over and leads it with his values,
instead of knowing that business is more complicated than that, Michael.
Here's what still hasn't been explained, okay?
If the option were chosen, remember, we're told this was a binary choice.
So if the choice was made that resulted in something like 16 or 17 million Turks,
suddenly being deprived completely of access to what I've been told is actually a hugely influential platform,
that being Twitter in Turkey for just the...
receipts of news and following politics, if the day before the election, all of a sudden
that were just cut off entirely, how would that have been the speech maximizing option to
have chosen? It clearly would have been wildly and drastically speech,
applicating option to have chosen. I thought by hearing about speech maximization. I thought he cared
about truth maximization. That's the actual problem.
I don't know about truth.
I mean,
that's literally what he said.
okay,
well,
I mean,
forget what he said.
I'm talking about,
make it just like the,
the principle of the thing then.
I won't forget what the owner said.
I just thought the owner really mad.
If all the sudden,
if all the sudden, you know,
16 million Turks who were about to go vote,
had the rug swept out of them,
and have been using Twitter to follow the election all this time,
including lots of the opposition,
who,
as far as I can tell,
like,
By and large, we're not censored at all because the opposition seemed to be the most active on Twitter and Turkey.
Somebody can tell me if I'm misjudging that.
But that would have been such a more drastic...
abridgment of the speech, you know, expectations of this population on Twitter.
And then one quick point that I've been thinking about the CEO, and this sort of relates to it,
because I feel like people have this weird relationship.
It's like this parissocial relationship with Elon where he's like this, you know, emotional
friend or like you're disappointed in him.
And like, I don't know.
It's like people have like an emotional reaction to him more than a rational one.
Just from a purely rational perspective, right?
I always had the working assumption that anybody who would be selected as CEO of Twitter for the purpose largely of overseeing its advertising operations.
would just be like a presumptively banal and kind of annoying person.
So the fact that a banal and annoying person was picked is like completely consistent with my expectations.
I don't know.
People have this like fantastical vision of what they think Elon is doing that is either like pro or con given their weird emotional investment.
And Elon, it's almost like there are people here that wouldn't be satisfied unless he picks Steve Bannon as CEO.
Okay, give that a shot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's literally not it, Michael.
The issue is this.
I already explained your first argument about not everybody having Twitter,
and I explained how that's basically election interference.
That's the issue we have.
That's the issue we have.
So you're basically saying election.
You're making assumptions.
You're jumping to conclusions.
We don't know it's election interference.
It can.
could be and we don't know how much
impact on time
you know how many people would have.
Mario,
Mario,
keep interrupting right,
but the whole point is
we don't know
but the only reason
it's news in the first place
or why we're talking about
is because based on some reporting,
based on what was posted,
we are then making the assumption,
although it's an assumption,
we're making...
It's been made by...
It's a narrative.
That he did silence the opposition.
And hence why we're having it.
If somehow, hypothetically speaking, the Turkish government requested for their own government's account to be banned, obviously, then it's not opposition.
But I think that's highly unlikely that he was like, bro, ban my account and ban my account.
Don't ask you.
Why wouldn't it be far more drastic?
Hold on Michael.
Let's just say, me.
Also, in terms of what Michael said, the issue you have is nobody, I'm not expecting perfection from Musk.
Neither am I asking for absolute free speech.
The Mario's putting those words into my mouth.
I'm just asking for consistency and approach.
Oh my God.
You said that.
Talk, stop talk.
Hold on.
Michael, Michael.
Why wouldn't it be far more drastic interference to cut off, to terminate Twitter access for the entire content?
This is, like, wouldn't that to be the most drastically cutting off the access for a few people on the opposition is worse?
and that's what we're saying.
Then cutting it off
for the entire country
and putting the entire position.
The idea here is that ultimately,
the point that we're making
is that picking and choosing
winners and losers
is not the role.
But you know,
he is being consistent.
I think Brian made it really good.
Why are we acting like?
Why are we acting like Elon is the king of the world?
I mean, this is a ludicrous burden that we're placing on him.
Like, just take a moment.
Let me make one.
And Saman, listen carefully because, you know, stock talk, you invest in businesses.
Hold on, no, no.
Guys, guys, guys.
Yeah, I want to give Stock Talk to Mike.
But Stock Talk, as you speak, Saman, listen carefully.
Because Danish understands what Stock Talk is about to say,
but Danish is trying to say the cool things in the space.
Stock Talk will tell you the truth about how businesses are run.
Okay, so listen carefully.
Stock Talk, go ahead.
I'm not even going to comment on the business side.
I'm just going to say this.
Okay, look, the lens on this conversation to me is crazy.
Like, this conversation about regulation in Turkey, I think, is absurd.
I'll tell you exactly why.
First of all, in 2022, Turkey passed a pretty...
massive social media regulation legislation.
You can go look it up.
It's like big news on the big deal on the news.
Everyone was talking about it.
It was considered a massive encroachment of free speech.
Okay, the Turkish government passes legislation in 2020.
That's the first point.
Okay.
The second point is that the Twitter files were necessary,
shocking, stunning to some people
because they were occurring in the United States
where we have guaranteed free speech.
Very few countries on earth have that, but we have it.
That's why they were journalistic.
That's why they were necessary.
And that's why they were spread so rapidly and achieved the virality that they did.
Because it happened in the United States of America where it should be a guaranteed right to speak freely.
If it came out that the Chinese government was censoring speech, would that have been a story?
Right? So that's the second point, okay? And the third point is that for the people that say it's a slippery slope and it could spread to the EU or that those, guess what? Those countries don't have guaranteed free speech either. So what you're really advocating for, what everyone is clamoring for and blaming Elon for a year is that you're mad at the legislation that these countries are passing. Your real problem should be why the fuck does Turkey have the ability to suppress the opposition?
You guys are advocating for a legislative change and you're pinning it on Elon who runs a private company.
You're telling him to violate the law in these nations.
I mean, have at least a modicum of logic to what you're saying, right?
Yeah, you're basically wanting a company.
Let me finish the point.
Let me finish the point.
What the advocacy is a legislative advocacy. That is the argument that all of you are making. None of you are making a sound argument that Elon should violate the law within sovereign nations. He does not have the ability to do that.
And to the extent that you should say Twitter shouldn't exist there, that's another stupid argument.
Because those governments that do impose their will on social media, do it on every platform.
So do you want the people to not have a way to communicate with each other to discuss opinions that may not be censored?
I mean, you're making the argument of there's a small hole and you're like, I don't want any, I'd rather nothing get through it.
Because I'm so enamored with this idealism of free speech that I've disposed any sense of logic.
It could discard it.
I mean, these things are fucking mind-blowing to me that this is a conversation.
I mean, this is the Turkish government's fault.
Not Elon's fault.
Not any company that operates within Turkey.
And to the extent that the EU does this, guess what?
The citizens in the EU should be at their parliament houses saying,
why do you regulate my free speech?
We shouldn't be blaming companies that are forced to comply with the law.
I mean, use your fucking heads.
Jesus.
I'll listen to you guys clambering.
Sleman, how does it feel?
How does it feel?
No, it is great.
Sleman, how does it feel to be punched in the face?
Do you want to respond?
Yeah, I will
I will, I mean it's a weak argument
I hope you let me go on for like 20 minutes
Like stop, talk, Dave
You've been speaking the whole space
He's spoken once
A nice comparison
Exactly, so man you haven't stopped speaking
Go ahead
Spoken 20 minutes in a row
Under-interrupted
Let's be clear, right
So let's be clear
Like your argument is very, very weak
And goes against
Exactly what Elon has been saying
No one's saying that
Elon is the king of the world
Although Ian may disagree with me on that
What we're saying is that
No, I'm agreeing with stock here
What are you talking about
Sorry?
No, no, hold on it.
I said,
he's the owner.
He's just taking a jab at you,
but they're like,
so man, if you don't want Ian,
if you don't want Ian to interrupt you,
maybe a good idea is not to take a jab at him.
I mean,
they don't mention you.
No, no, it's fine, it's fine.
I mean, I know Ian thinks he's the king of the world,
but none of us,
none of the rest.
Well, see, how I'm supposed to let you complete your sentence?
It's,
But this is Ian, this is exactly why Samakart run a business.
You can't deal with people.
You don't know how to talk to people, my friend.
I don't deny that.
I don't deny that.
I find people annoying, right?
But the thing is, you made him co-host, Mario.
I'm regretting it, Kim.
I know.
I'm looking for someone else.
There's an application.
It's open, everybody.
But go ahead, Simon.
the applications are open guys
i think brian is looking for that rule
no no brahans
brian's brine's
i'm just feeling you're avoiding
responding to stock talk
zoolia man tell me why the argument is weak
Yeah, yeah, I will. I will.
So because basically, first of all, Elon, first of all, let's look at Twitter.
Twitter isn't some small little company.
The amount of impact it has in the world is monumental.
The second point is when you look at Elon, Elon has literally posted and many times that,
and I gave the, and you weren't here stock talk, but I read a tweet out where he literally said that he would not interfere in Ukraine, in Ukraine, even if someone put a gun to his head.
Right? So he has made it clear what his position is.
Sorry, just on that, before you could, on that point, it's the question, no, no.
It's not interrupt you this question.
The Ukraine one, is that, when you say it interfere, is that censorship within Ukraine or in the US about Ukraine?
It was in Ukraine because it was about using Stalin in Ukraine.
And in addition to that, you basically have a scenario where you are, and it's not the whole country not having Twitter,
that's such a childish argument.
Because essentially what you're saying is,
He has literally, and it's not law because those people had Twitter accounts.
They used Twitter.
They had all of that throughout.
But what happened was, the request was, while the election is going on, a day before it, the opposition, and this is what the concern is.
This is what some of the reporting is saying, that they wanted to stop that speech of the alternative side to ensure.
Okay, totally want, I understand the point.
But I'm saying, okay, so let's play this out as realists for a moment.
Okay.
So scenario one.
Turkish government contacts Elon and says, I want you to oppose, to ban these accounts, censor these accounts, whatever actually happened, okay?
You're telling me that he should have just said, no, I'm shut down Twitter in the whole country.
Is that what you said?
Twitter did that.
So, Jack Dorothy.
Do you know who Jack Dorothy is?
Do you know who Jack Dorothy is?
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
I'm just trying to get to a point.
Are you saying, would you have preferred that?
Just simply yes or no?
Yes, I would have preferred him to do.
I would have preferred him to stand his ground and not ban
Or at least be transparent about him.
Hold on, understanding his ground is not a thing.
That's not a solution.
I thought there is a world in which he could have just been transformed.
But Danish, okay, now stop.
Please don't talk about transparency anymore.
That guys, guys.
Hold on, okay, go ahead.
Simple question.
Why should I not talk about transparency?
That is all I have.
He's already fucking Twitter tweeted about it
and he responded to it and he did a reply about it.
He tweeted about it in the moment.
Can I just quickly have a conversation?
Go ahead.
So, um,
Okay, so you're saying you would have, when you say stand his ground, that's not an answer.
I'm saying, would you have preferred him to say, okay, I'll send to the accounts or no, shut down Twitter in the whole country?
You would have preferred the latter, right?
Well, he wouldn't shut down Twitter.
No, no, just answer the question.
Hold on.
Hold on.
That's right.
That's right.
Okay.
No, no, but your point was in.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Wait, stock, stock.
I'm not even finished.
I asked you one question.
Well, you asked me a question.
How can you not be finished when you'm not even let me finish my answer?
I'm saying he would not a complicated answer.
But the government would have knocked.
I just wanted to hear you say yes to that.
Hold on.
Now that you said yes to that, let me play out some basic game theory for you, okay?
Just very basic.
Okay.
If that is truly your position, the consequences of that are every major nation on earth that has the ability to regulate or interfere in their population speech, which by the way is a lot more fucking countries than you think it is, then all of those countries, which inevitably somewhere along the way, users of Twitter within those countries will violate the law.
One, maybe many, maybe hundreds, maybe a whole opposition party.
If your solution is to then say, no, we cannot comply with your legislated regulations on free speech.
And so therefore we're seizing operations in the country.
Twitter will effectively only be operating in nations that guarantee free speech, which is very few nations in the world.
So it doesn't make sense.
What you're saying just doesn't, like you have to be a realist and think these things through and think about what if this happens 20 more times?
What is the consequence then?
Then Twitter is shut down.
No, no.
What are those people going to do?
It's quite simple.
Let me finish now because you've,
in stock,
you've like literally spent about half an hour.
And also, Salima,
I just want to add your point about Ukraine
doesn't make any sense because he has a leverage.
I wrote it down.
I wrote it down.
That's such a silly example.
They literally don't have an issue.
Sorry,
go ahead.
It doesn't make sense.
They can't afford to piss off Elon, right?
They can get mad at him,
but they can't suspend Starlings because they be treating them.
Hold on, but what does Starlink have to do with Twitter?
We're talking about Twitter as a company.
No, no, because, like, Sul lineman brought...
Yeah, no, no, but my question, too,
is kind of question to Slimeon.
Let's not go to Starlight.
We're talking about Twitter.
Stick to Twitter as a business.
Let me just answer stock talks, yes.
The issue is this, and it's very simple.
You've got a scenario where...
Elon has made it clear that he's against censorship, right?
And he's against, in this scenario, what he's doing is.
He doesn't have leverage over all these countries when it comes to free speech.
He can't afford to piss all of them off.
Guys, he's competing on a global market.
And so then the argument comes back, Ian.
If he can't afford to piss people off, if he can't afford to piss people off, you're going to be back into the situation.
situation the same regime. No, but it's not about the advertisers, Soleimani. It's not about the
advertising. The government money. That's where this argument. So moving back to the government
argument, because I don't want to change that argument. I want to specifically talk about your
arguments, doctor. So specifically about the government, you're going to have a scenario where
Twitter is very powerful. It's not some little company. It can interfere and impact on an election.
So he should say it. And...
Sorry?
Well, no, no, go ahead.
Yeah.
So in this scenario, he has basically essentially decided an election.
He isn't sure that Erdogan basically gets more votes.
Because if the opposition, if the opposition is unable to basically have to have to the only way.
Do you really think that the only way that the Turkish government is interfering in the election is through Twitter?
Really?
It's not the only way, but Michael,
Michael made the argument that actually Twitter was right the main avenues.
Do you think this is the free and fair election outside of Twitter?
Stop talk.
Michael made the argument that's based on the data he has or the reporting he has,
that Twitter is the main avenue by which...
The people in Turkey have to use.
So yes, this would be.
Just to clarify, that's not me reporting it.
That's not me reporting it.
That's Rajib Soilu, who's the Turkey Bureau Chief for the Middle East Eye saying Twitter is by far the largest news source for the general Turkish public.
I don't know if that's true or not.
That's what I'm the most prominent,
or one of the most prominent English language
journalist in Turkey says.
I'm just relaying that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael.
Yeah,
Yeah,
but this doesn't make sense.
You guys are expecting Twitter
to be this, like,
beacon of legislative freedom
in these countries.
Like, what the fuck you want to do?
It doesn't have to be.
I'm not saying about Dorsey's Twitter.
It doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be.
And the problem is,
the whole issue is that we know
that Dorsey's Twitter was
coutowing to everybody and ensuring that they're maximizing in all these aspects that you're talking about.
The problem is that Elon has made it clear that he is not going to be doing that.
So when he goes against...
Hold on. That's not what he said.
What do you want them to do?
Scott, hold on.
I can't hear you guys.
All three years talking.
Yeah.
So going back to the point that Brian actually made earlier on, what Elon said is that he would maximize freedom of speech as long as it doesn't violate the rules, the laws of the land in each country.
We can't just arbitrarily put laws in it.
Like I would love free speech in every country.
So, Catherine, the law of the land was that.
the opposition leaders were allowed Twitter
and then just before the election they were banned.
Yeah.
I mean,
I mean,
How could the law land be that your opposition leader doesn't happen?
How can that be the law?
Saman,
I'm not going to,
look,
I'm not going to ask you,
because I've said it so many times
we're going in circles.
I want to go to Joe out instead,
then Reeve and Ryan.
Go ahead, Jova.
Yeah,
I think these absolutes are ridiculous.
Like,
I remember back when,
Al Gore was bringing awareness to global climate change.
And because he drove an SUV, all of a sudden, he wasn't for climate change.
He was actually against it.
Like, you can be a good...
You can be a good Catholic and still have sex before marriage, Solomon.
Right?
No, but if you're against climate change and then you're doing that,
they call hypocrisy, bro.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Because you're moving towards that direction.
You're doing drama about climate change.
You're basically...
Okay, so hold on.
Listen, listen, Joe, Joe, Joe, listen, let me question for you.
Joe, I'll do your favor, and I'll give you the mic.
Let me crush him.
All right, so Slyman, if someone is arguing, is, is, uh...
trying to save the environment, traveling the world, arguing that narrative, changing policy,
making an impact, yet they travel using a private jet.
It's called hypocrisy.
It's not a good thing.
Okay?
That is the benefit.
That's not hypocrisy, bro.
I was going to actually write about these climate change guys for the hypocrisy in this aspect.
So the point, hold on, Simon, Simon, Simon.
Yeah, exactly.
So despite, so then private, then flying private.
I can't hear you.
It's okay.
I'll make his point.
So then flying a private jet is negative.
Ian, let me, let me go with this.
It's an easy one, Simon.
Let me enjoy this one.
So, Simon.
Again, you'll make a tweet about it.
It will get traction because you're saying the cool thing, okay?
Criticizing them for flying in a private jet, fair.
That's a good point. Does that mean they're not bringing any value to the world in terms of, if you believe that the environment needs saving? They're not achieving that. So in other words, if they're traveling the world, I'm changing policies, saved different parts of the Amazon rainforest, reduced carbon emission in different countries, all these benefits, which are 100x or let's say even 1,000 X,000x,
100x,000x,
improvement from the private jet,
whatever it is,
because one private jet.
So would you agree that
it makes sense to criticise them
for flying a private jet,
but you don't just ignore the fact
they brought a lot more benefit.
You don't just say they didn't bring any value
and all their argument is void.
This analogy is there.
So quick question, Mario.
I just need one word answer for you
before I answer your question.
Do you agree it's hypocrisy?
Benadolid hypocrisy.
Okay. Now, moving on to your point, the reason why...
Yeah, yeah, sorry, Jo.
I mean, Joe, Joe, Joe, let me smash him, and then I'll go to you, bro.
And so the problem is Mario, and this is why it's important in terms of climate change example.
So, essentially, a lot of people are not, and are not even sure about the veracity of this whole climate change drama.
I think it's irrelevant to him.
Yeah, it's completely irrelevant.
When somebody, well, I've got certain...
No, he was just using there's a hyper-
I know, I know, Ian.
He does that, he does that.
I shouldn't have used the climate change example.
So, Slamant, something,
let me change a question.
I like, okay, sir.
What are you guys doing?
No, no, we're not talking about climate change.
The point is not climate change.
Okay, let me change it.
Look, mate, say, you can't mute me.
Hold on, Slamant, Simon.
Did you just press mute everyone
because you wanted to mute me, bro?
Did you just do that?
Is that how much...
How much confidence you have, now.
Hold on.
I'll change my question, bro, because you just change it.
Okay, examine, you've changed it to discussion about climate change.
Bro, bro, okay, forget about fucking Ian for a second.
Move away from climate change because you're starting to debate, the concept of climate change.
That's not the point.
The point of if I kick you off as co-holt right now, put another co-hors, does that mean
I haven't brought any value to fighting censorship?
And does that discount everything I've done fighting censorship for the last six months?
And all the.
costs and expenses that I've had fighting censorship? No, I've just made one decision that might
seem like, hey, Mario's censoring. I'm censoring, Slaman, for whatever reason, but it does not
mean I've been censoring the whole time. It does not mean I've been fighting for free speech.
That's a very valid point that moves away from the fucking concept of climate change. I'll let you
respond and we'll go to Joa.
It's just like AI, right?
I mean, people like to say that you want to...
That's why I press the Mew button,
now you know, Mario,
to get it, I press the Mew button,
because minority...
I know...
The Vue button...
The view button...
It's like it's a silly point.
It's a silly point. It's a silly point.
It's a very, very...
I think Elon kind of put a code in the mute everyone button.
Never works on Ian.
You press it, but Ian always, always beats the mute everyone button.
So you could say, is Elon being hypocritical by not allowing the mute all button to work on Ian?
No, he's done a lot for free speech.
I have a perfect way of explaining this to Sue Eamom.
I guarantee you.
You're going to be floored.
Okay, so...
I still want to finish...
Complying...
Hold on, very quickly.
Complying with a binding legal dictate.
Michael, hold on.
Slayman needs to speak.
Because John needs to speak.
Because Ian needs to speak.
Because I need to speak.
There's a few layers before you speak.
Let's get through Leo number one.
Bro.
Slam.
Can you see?
No one's letting me smash each person.
Smash me, bro, please.
The problem in Mario, what you're saying?
The problem with what you're saying, Mario, is your argument is this.
Your argument is, guess what?
Someone can say that they want to do something, but when the shit hits the fan and they actually have to do it, they cannot do it.
What the fuck did you say?
How's my argument?
What did you just say?
Did you hear what you said?
Yeah, yeah.
I thought you didn't understand.
So, for example, now, let me make it.
Let me give a real-life example because obviously you never understood it.
I thought you had the intellectual level to do so.
So let's say somebody, like...
Elon, let's just give Elon's example.
I'm not saying he did this, Ian, but let's say hypothetically, he says, guess what?
I'm all about absolute free speech, right?
Absolute.
Let's say he says it.
He says, I'm about absolute free speech.
And then there comes a scenario where there's a major figure who basically impedes on that free speech aspect, right?
And now he's got a decision to make.
I'm going to ban his speech.
Right?
And then I'm no longer got free speech.
I'm not an,
I don't,
I'm not advocate of
absolute free speech.
Or I allow him,
but then it's going to impact my finances.
It's going to,
even my,
and then he bans that person.
I think he's going to make a,
let him finish,
let him finish,
because he's going to say he smashed,
let him finish,
and we've got to Joea.
And then we'll go to.
Yeah, yeah.
So that shows that that person
does not believe in absolute free speech.
It's not binary.
It just shows he doesn't believe in it.
So that's it.
No, no,
it doesn't,
he is.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Like, you've got to make a cost evaluation.
If I'm censoring you and it maximizes everybody else's free speech,
that I'm still a free speech maximalist, right?
Right?
So, Simon, this is just, but I would, guys, look at this.
So, Simon, did you just smash me, by the way, Simon?
Of course I did, girl.
I don't know.
He did, man.
He did.
He destroyed me.
It was a fucking, it was a beautiful rebuttal.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
You're being funny right now.
No, no, no.
What are you talking about, Ian?
Ian, at the end of the day...
I'm being sarcastic.
If you're a free speech maximum list,
if you're a free speech maximalist, you'll want to,
maximize all the people.
You didn't say that.
You didn't say that
you're pressing one person
and you get to maximize
everybody else.
Guys,
guys, guys, guys.
Guys, guys.
Okay, Ian,
Ian Slaman,
let's go Jawa.
Jolla.
You had the mic before I jumped in.
But unfortunately,
so I think,
but Joe,
Slaman smashed us both, man.
So maybe we should just
change the subject
because he's too good for us, bro.
No, I'm not,
Joe is,
Joe's a dream, bro.
He won't,
he won't do,
he won't,
he won on this one,
because this one is,
I am also, although I don't think in absolutisms, someone can be moving today, I don't think any would argue, anyone would argue that Twitter is a freer space and it's getting freer, I believe, by the day.
But what Dana said, I also believe, because if he would have, let's put it into context that everyone will understand.
If we knew that Twitter banned the Hunter Biden story per request of the president,
could that have swayed the election in favor of Trump for people who are on the fence?
I believe it would have, just like him censoring his opponents and then not being transferred about who they're censoring.
Let's go back and forth.
Could it sway it.
You'll have the mic, so I'll continue going back and forth.
Fair comparison.
But do you think if Twitter did not censor the Hunter Biden story, it would have been suspended in the country in the U.S.?
How is that in Apple's versus... How is that in apples versus apples comparison then? How can you compare the U.S. to Turkey?
Because if you want to compare both countries, there's a whole list of other things that you cannot compare and bigger concerns than this.
Yeah. What I'm comparing is if you have full transparency, people can still make a decision on...
because they know they're not getting...
So when you said you agree with transparency,
with Dynus, you're referring to his point
that he's repeated a few times
regarding being transparent,
ignoring the fact that Twitter tweet,
the reason we know about this is thanks to Twitter
and Elon's reply to that guy,
ignoring that fact, correct?
Yes.
I'm saying who they're banning because knowing who they banned.
Like Mario, if you ban a certain person from the space and everyone knows,
they're going to look at what the other person has said about you and then make a decision about it.
Fair point.
Now, no, fair point.
So he was, he was transparent.
but wasn't completely absolutely transparent.
So now we're going to...
He wasn't transparent by the thing he was going to release that.
And he said, hold on.
Just a quick announcement.
Everybody, please make sure you put your comments in.
I've been reading them.
I appreciate you all saying that I'm speaking all these guys.
Continue commenting.
It's the bottom, right inside.
And comment, we'll read your comments out.
And everybody's saying, let me just read a few comments out.
Soleiman is smashing this whole panel.
Soleiman, action speak louder than the word.
There's another one.
Why is Slyman?
There's one.
The most comment.
Why is Slyman still co-host?
What the fuck you're doing, Mario?
Mario, please find a new co-host.
All right, guys.
We'll just.
ease up with the comments. Let's go back to topic please. I don't want tweets about Slaman.
But Joa, just to go back to your point, Slaman, you kind of gave more ammunition to Joa
because and you kind of smashed Danish. That's the only person you do you smash now accidentally,
your ally Danish. What you're saying is that Elon said he will release the name of the person
that got suspended, correct?
Which...
Yeah, but he said...
But doesn't change the election.
It doesn't change...
It doesn't change.
It doesn't change.
What would have been helpful, Mario?
But what if it's part of the...
But what if it's part of the...
Yeah, but what if it's part of the terms not to release the names?
I'm sure he would have loved to release the names.
Like, it just...
It just, for me, he's trying, like, I don't fucking get it.
Twitter tweeted, hey, we suspended someone based on the request or silence or whatever.
We had to abide by some requests, and that's how we know about it.
Then Elon even replied to someone tweeting about it and saying why he did it.
And you're like, yeah, but you're not being transparent enough.
Yeah, I'm going to give you guys the name later.
No, you're still not being transparent enough.
Just a year ago, less than a year ago, Twitter wouldn't have taken any of these steps.
Like, the argument just seems weak.
I understand the concerns, but...
I just don't want constant references to free speech absolutists.
You cannot run a business based on this premise.
The world doesn't function this way.
Here's the crux of the dilemma.
Let me just explain it really good.
Michael, let's get Joe to finish off before I got to write.
My only goal, Mario, though.
I'm not going to respond to the comment that he made.
So Mario, my only point, the thing that I think we all agree is that we want to minimize skewing of any elections.
We want to minimize any impact of this decision on any elections.
So the more transparent he could have been before the election, the better.
That is all I've been asking.
This is what, this is.
Here's the question.
Michael, Michael, Michael.
Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael.
I know you really want to, I know, Joe, and Ryan and Reeve have been waiting, Michael.
I know you want to wrap that you want to summarize what we've been talking about.
And I'll give you the mic right after.
But I think just, I want to give you credit.
That was well articulated.
That was very logical.
And that makes sense.
And I agree, Joe.
Yeah, we know Elon listens to the space, right?
By what happened yesterday with the whole Pepe thing, we were talking about it and all of a sudden, then he tweeted about it.
So what I'm saying, I don't believe in absolutisms.
I don't criticize them for not releasing the names of who was censored.
I'm saying it as an easy suggestion based on Danish's idea.
I think it's a good idea.
If he releases what is being banned to the rest of the world,
other people can make decisions prior to the election
based on why would this guy want to ban these people.
That's all I'm saying.
It's a suggestion.
It's not a criticism.
Ryan?
So the thing here that we need to hit on here that's very important is there's two entities in this situation, right?
We understand that Elon is a pro-free speech.
I won't even say free speech absolutist, right?
And we know that he went out and he purchased Twitter with the hopes of making it a free speech platform.
And one thing we have to understand and re-center here is that the United States
is free speech.
That's our very first amendment.
And like you guys mentioned earlier,
around the world,
unfortunately,
even Canada that you wouldn't even expect
it does not have free speech.
And one thing that Elon said
when he first took over Twitter
and purchased Twitter,
I believe it was on a space or a tweet
I remember this vividly because I kept quoting this to people was that he said he will allow free speech within the bounds of the law
Now if you kind of stretch that a little bit it's within the bounds of the law of every country now do I agree with them censoring certain politicians and stuff outside of these countries that could possibly sway elections no, but I do think that it is very very very very very bad
to say that this is very similar to old Twitter, because old Twitter, you would have never heard about this.
You wouldn't have official Twitter accounts of Twitter coming out and saying that this has happened.
Yes, could this have been executed better and time efficiently much, much better?
Absolutely. And I think with time, they'll get better at this.
This is probably the first time that Elon's new regime is dealing with this.
And they're doing a decent job, not perfect, but decent job.
But one thing we have to remember is around the world that this is a business, right?
Like you guys keep mentioning, this is a business that needs to operate around the world to have maximum daily active users, maximum users to be able to generate revenue, especially when they're paying a billion dollars a month on interest on those loans.
He needs to maximize this business to at least get it to somewhat affordability to then profitability and free cash flow.
But I think that saying that he should have banned everyone in Turkey instead of these few individuals would be mass censorship because he would be deciding to say that, hey, I'm going to silence the voices of a whole country, right?
A whole country instead of three or four, whatever number of people.
But what we forget is even if they silence those three or four people that were quote unquote the opposition of the in-house party.
Again, I'm not an expert on Turkey.
I don't want to comment on it.
You would still have those people supporters being able to speak.
So if they decide to censor the whole country, everyone gets shut down.
But if they censor one or two people, again, not saying it's the optimal solution.
Those people's supporters would still be out there, still would be talking, still would be making decisions.
So I have to disagree.
I don't think it's a good idea to say that this is the same regime as previous Twitter.
And I don't think that you should ban a whole country instead of a few individuals.
But I do think that it could have been handled much better had they come out and said this sooner.
And I do think that it will get better with time.
But I have to give them credit for even letting us know this happened in the past.
We have to remember what happened in Twitter in the past.
These things would happen.
under the, under the company, we would never feel about them.
That's the first time on the panel.
Have you ever considered co-hosting your show?
Because I love your logic.
I love how balanced you are.
And you made sense.
I think there was a very well-articulated discussion.
And, yeah, just submit your application to censor Slayman at Marioanofel.com.
You got it, buddy.
Is that at Gmail or is that a-o-o-f?
It's at Marianawful.com.
It's all about Mario.
You got it.
Reeve, I'd love your thoughts, so let me turn off the alarm.
Reeve, I'd love your thoughts on.
I think, Ryan, first, before you go on, Reeve,
Slyman, do you think, and jokes aside,
do you think Reeve made a good point?
Who's Reeve?
Ryan, sorry, Ryan,
and then we've got to Reeve, I mean,
I agree with some of what he said,
but then again, the issue you have it is,
I don't repeat.
Okay, okay, okay.
I thought you'd agree with it.
Reeve, I would love your thoughts on the discussion so far.
I know it's like the cool thing on these spaces to say I want free speech.
It is, it is.
That's bothered.
Ideal.
Yes.
It bothers me, right?
Right, Mario?
I mean, it's like, it's like everybody says this on Twitter.
Like, not just in the space, but on the main.
Everyone wants to farm followers.
Everyone wants to farm followers.
Everyone's like, comes.
There happens not only on free speech.
You're like, oh, look at me.
I got all these ideals.
It's like, you know, ideals are nice and all, but they're not pre-
Yeah, and this is what I can want.
Are you saying, Ian, that Elon Musk is not practical because that's what he said, that he is a few.
No, no, it's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that people criticizing him are not being practical.
They're not being fair to him.
They're not even representing it.
Ian, that was next to the point I was going to make.
That's what Elon said.
So you basically saying that Elon's doing that.
No, no, that's not what I'm saying.
Like, he is a free speech maximalist, you know, like, yeah, he has fallen.
You can use the word maximalist.
I know, he said absolute.
He said that he, uh, all right, everybody.
Freedom speech versus freedom of reach, you know, like, I think, Mario, let's get Reeve.
All right.
Let's get Reeve, go ahead.
Mario, let's get Reeve, guys, guys, let's get, let's get Reeve.
Mario called on me and my wife says I got to go to dinner soon, and apparently I don't have free speech on that matter.
Go ahead, Reeve.
So, you know, Mike, I actually just sent a tweet or comment on this space.
As you all know, I'm not a Twitter expert.
I'm relatively new to this entire environment.
And I wouldn't have come on if it weren't for what Elon Musk did with journalists like Matt Taibi.
I think that was critically important for the nation.
So, but my perspective is really not a global perspective.
It's more of a, of a, perhaps a selfish perspective.
I want to make sure that because we have something that most nations don't have,
which of course is the First Amendment,
we have inalienable rights in this country that the government cannot take away.
because they exist in and of themselves and it's enshrined in the Constitution.
That's special and it's worth fighting for and that's what I spent my entire career doing
since I joined the Marines at 17 years old.
I've done nothing but fight for this country and its principles both in the courtroom and as a Marine.
That means necessarily that we are not the rest of the world.
And so Twitter, I am assuming that Elon wants to continue Twitter as a multi-billion dollar global company.
That means he's going to have to comply with the laws of nation states.
It just is what it is.
So there's a reality-based perspective that has to be employed here that...
might be what in the courtroom we might call an inconvenient fact, but it is a fact.
And so, you know, Twitter has come as razor thin close as any social media company can become in becoming a mirror of the First Amendment.
And I hope that it continues.
I am, just like everyone else or a lot of people,
I am somewhat concerned about the new CEO announcement.
But I also want to give her a chance.
I do think that Elon has set the tone,
and I think he set the tone quite aggressively.
So from a, you know, U.S.-based perspective,
I think we're in fairly good hands.
The rest of the world is much different.
I mean, even the European Union and somebody said earlier, Canada, Australia, you name it,
nobody is allowed to have the kinds of perspectives that we are allowed to have in the United States.
because they don't have what we have.
And we came really, really close to marrying those nations
and wouldn't even know about it if it weren't for Elon Musk,
Matt Taibi, and all of the other journalists that gave us the Twitter files
and the exposure that that brought for all of us to understand
what was happening behind the scenes.
Yeah.
So I think it's just, you know, I try to look at this through that lens.
And I do hope that we continue to have what we need to have in the United States.
But if Elon wants a global company, unlike Rumble...
Like somebody else mentioned earlier, and I pointed out in my comment, you know, they're basically a U.S.-based social media company, a streaming company.
They don't seem to care, and that's their business model about what's happening in other nations and whether or not they will be available in other countries.
But Elon does care.
And I think by bringing in this new CEO, he's got apparently a really good executive to handle what he has to get.
And that's funding, right?
Advertising, et cetera, because, you know, paying eight bucks a month isn't going to fly.
for Twitter to survive.
And so hopefully she'll be able to do that.
And then over time, I really feel that at least in the United States,
the business model for the United States will allow that...
reality for us in the US that the reality meaning that we have a right to say whatever the
hell we want to say and if somebody's offended by it that's their problem maybe that will will
grow um you know over time into other countries and create the kind of response that he's looking
for that he can't get now
after having just bought Twitter and having to comply through regulations and statutes and so on in other countries.
I agree. And I think the point that you made, even, and I know you need to go to dinner. So I appreciate you coming and tell your wife, we're very grateful she gave you the chance to kind of contribute to the discussion.
But thank you so much. I'll let you go to dinner. And I want to kind of.
Add on to Reeve's point and go to Ravi before going to Catherine and Stock Talk,
because, really, the point, the main point you've made is that you cannot compare,
you cannot have Twitter play by the same rules in every country.
And you have to play by the country's rules if you are to expand and operate as a business.
It's a very valid point.
Now that we're all US-based or Western-based on the panel.
So I want to go to Ravi.
Ravi, you came on the stage during the Twitter files discussion.
I remember you.
and you talked about the previous regime censorship within India
and how concerned you were.
And you've done a lot in the space focusing on censorship in India.
I don't know your political stance, I don't know much about you,
that's all I know about you.
So my question to you is, how does this compare what happened in Turkey now
to what happened previously in India?
And are you concerned as a person leading the fight
against censorship in the country that's very different to the US?
And I'm going to India, by the way, Ravi,
I'm going to India in two days for a business trip, funny enough,
so timing is perfect.
Okay, lovely, but just on the India trip, we should connect.
I'm in New York, but definitely it'll be great if we can get you to meet with some interesting folks in the space.
So maybe I'll send you a WhatsApp and we can connect there.
But really, I think the issue is that, you know, as you said, you know, for Twitter to really, and I was on another panel earlier on with the creator of Twitter space, right?
And Amata, I think that's her name.
So, you know, it was very interesting because I was saying that one big difference you see, first of all, Elon is doing extremely well.
And it's very difficult for somebody like him to really, you know, take on all the gutter and all the shit that was created by Jack and his team.
And he's really putting a very good piece, you know.
It's not that he'll answer all the questions.
But of course, you know, if you go to my Twitter profile, you'll see a pinned, you know, poll that I was trying to conduct.
Because in India, for example, after Matt Tejee, there's this fantastic revelation about Hindu accounts being banned and the Indian accounts being banned.
Some people still feel that it continues to be banned, but many people have reached out to get a formal answer, you know, like to see whether the ban has been removed.
There's never been a formal communication from Elon or the team to say that we have removed.
He said it on a tweet.
So people are really hoping that, you know, the attention is given to the Indian market and it's been given to the U.S. and the Western markets. I think definitely the issue remains. But there's also a huge economic opportunity here, right? Because unlike U.S., Europe and Canada, as I said before, India doesn't have TikTok.
Right? And all the Indians obsessed, you know, no matter what political, you know, you know, affiliation you have, everybody is on Twitter discussing, you know, whether it's a Karnataka election or a national election or any particular issue. People are all the time in different languages having Twitter discussions. So I was saying this to, Marta, I was saying that this is a huge opportunity for expansion and growth of Twitter.
But of course, you know, given that Elon has taken such fantastic steps to really pull these Twitter files out, he needs to really, you know, completely put that to an end and say that, you know, this has been come out and this is what we're ending.
I think in India, many groups, maybe there is some kind of legacy, and that's why I did this Twitter poll that you'll see on my account, that they feel that, you know, some Hindu accounts.
continuously banned, but I've spoken to many other folks on Hindu side and Congress side,
BJP side, they feel that it's moved on.
And you'll see that result on the Twitter space.
And I'll give you a very interesting just because we are talking about the future.
Probably just one push back.
Sorry.
I know many people in India on the Muslim side of things.
Lots of Muslims still feel like they're being shadow banned.
But I'm sure you've heard that as well.
Yeah, and I think this is where I always say Indian.
And what came out of Matt Tabi's report was more on Hindu accounts.
But I always say it's Indian accounts.
And that's why my narrative always says Indian.
Because for me, whether you're Hindu, Muslim or Christian,
I think Jack Dorsey and his team, and especially Twitter, India, was a complete mess.
right, they had issues with everybody
and nobody could hold them to account
and the whole arrogance you remember with the old Twitter team
they would give a shit to any questions
the fact that we had the creator of
Twitter space matter today on our space
was very interesting to see that the way
you know, Elon has changed the management and the approach, right?
So at least we can go and raise that.
I think that's something which is different.
And I was going to give you an example on just on the future or Twitter, right?
And the point that Mario, you tweeted about her statement about younger people
are driven by news.
At the same time, I think there's a huge opportunity, right?
I've been asked.
by one part of the country who I'm just doing pro bono support to them.
They're training about 10,000 young people on how do you use Twitter effectively,
safely and responsibly.
And this is very interesting because, you know, people, most of us have landed on Twitter,
Facebook and many other places and we have created our own skills.
Like Mario, what you've been doing?
You've been doing fantastic work hosting these spaces.
But how do we ensure that there are more young people?
Sorry?
I'll let you wrap up the point.
And we do have Rob back on stage.
So after you finish Ravi and stop talking, Catherine, I do want to go to Rob.
Yeah, just quickly, just to say that, you know, so there is that investment.
And I really feel the future of Twitter really will be to really bring the young generation, especially in America, which is sitting on TikTok and Insta.
And similarly, in other parts, you know, whether it's Turkey or India, where, you know, young people can really get politicized, misguided.
I think that's the opportunity.
So, Ravi, I do want to jump on a call with you.
I just reply to you on WhatsApp.
Let's jump on a call.
I want to learn more about what you're doing and understand.
understand the censorship is happening in India
and the change that has occurred post Elon.
I'm also curious to learn more,
and anyone that can give me more context,
is the pressure that Elon is facing.
So I've had people message me,
a lot of people concerned,
I'm talking about people with influence
and that could have an impact on Twitter's future.
concerned about the new CEO.
No one really, no one, I got a lot of messages
when the new CEO was appointed,
barely anyone was concerned about the censorship
in Turkey, and I'm talking about free speech absolutists.
And I think because I understand how the world works.
I do want to go to Stock Talk and Catherine.
Been waiting for a while before asking Rob a few questions.
Stock Talk, I'd love your response to what Ravi just said
and anything you wanted to add to the discussion,
especially to Slyman's rebuttal of your argument,
because I know it was weak, so maybe it's a good one to kind of smash.
I mean, look, I put this like pretty simply.
I mean...
The countries that regulate free speech, regulate it in every form of media.
Okay?
That's what it means to regulate speech, right?
And most nations on earth, actually, even a lot of nations in the EU do this regularly.
The only one that's not supposed to do it, and we know they have done it as, you know, events like the Twitter files, et cetera, and many other exposΓ©s have shown that the United States government is not supposed to do it because it's spelled into our Constitution.
All right.
And so as long as it's in his purview, whatever is in Elon's purview, we should criticize him for.
If Elon unilaterally...
move to censor an account without being prompted to by a government, by law of that government.
then you could criticize it, but that's not what's happening, right?
Twitter must operate.
Look, in these types of nations that regulate free speech,
the only uncensored media that exists is covert media.
That's a logical deduction.
That's not even really an opinion.
The only uncensored media that exists in nations that are regulating free speech is covert media.
Twitter cannot exist covertly.
It's a free publicly downloadable app.
It can't hide.
Twitter can't go in and hide in a country, right?
So by virtue of not being able to, quote, unquote, be a covert form of media.
Do you say rumble?
What do you say rumble?
Let me finish the point.
By virtue of not being able to be a covert media, Twitter has to comply with laws.
It can't just, period, end of story.
It cannot sit down and defy the law in these nations.
It's not an option.
And this is where free speech absolutism,
which by the way, in theory, I would love that for that to be the case.
But this is where free speech absolutism turns into a conflict of idealism, which
with realism because the consequence if you apply what your conclusion is which is
Twitter should just say fuck it bam the whole thing ban the thing in the whole country the whole
country the consequence of that at scale if you apply this to country after country after country
over years and Elon just goes you know what I'm standing my ground we're removed Twitter
in the whole country what you're going to end up happening is is social media or I should
say Twitter specifically because maybe the others will comply
But the social media's that don't will just cease to exist in those countries.
And so what have you done for free speech there?
What have you achieved?
That's where free speech absolutism just becomes nonsensical because in the countries that
don't want it, you can't expect corporations to take this beacon of democracy to these
countries and say, yeah, we'll do it the corporate way.
Our companies will convince you to have free speech.
That's not going to fucking work.
You think that's going to work in nations that have been ruled by Islamic law for hundreds and hundreds of years?
You think they're going to cave to Twitter or even a handful of other conglomerates?
No, they won't. They'll just be like, fuck you.
And that's exactly what's going to happen.
And moreover, we're also removing the cultural nuance from it because we're expecting that there aren't going to be cultures that for hundreds of years in the future will continue to expect certain things to not exist on social media.
So you're really advocating for social media not to exist in those countries.
And if that's your advocacy, it's a totally separate argument.
But you guys are like taking the lens and the scale out of it completely.
You're just having a conversation in a vacuum about Turkey.
I mean, think about what you're implying.
Think about what the precedent is that you're setting, right?
Then you're going to turn all of these people into just pawns of their government
with no ability to communicate with each other because everything's going to be censored
because companies won't be able to operate unless they comply with the law.
You have to comply with local regulation.
Or you cannot exist as a global company.
Period. End of story.
It's like there's no other way to deduce that.
So Stock Talk, just think about what you just said.
you're essentially saying, and you give the example of Islamic law, so let's go with that.
So essentially what you're saying is, if countries, let's say the Muslim countries,
let's say the conservative countries, they say we want all posts banned from liberal
leftist ideologies, we want any kind of leftist media banned, we want any kind of, you know,
rainbow stuff banned, we want all of it band, we don't want to see it, we don't want our people
to experience it, so that'd be cool to get banned.
It'll be somewhere, it'll be somewhere, it'll be nuanced. It'll be somewhere.
No, no. That's, that's,
No, no, no.
I'm not saying you would be.
Guys, guys, guys.
I do, I want to hear his doctor.
And I'll just add that, because guys, I'm going to come to Rob, but just before I do, and I was going to make another point.
And this is to the audience.
And by the way, I'm not asking for an absolute.
This is for the audience.
Did he say this for the, are you running for president, man?
This is for the audience.
Stop farming follows, bro.
I want you to write down in the comments.
Sorry, Mario, I'll comment here in a second.
So I want you to write down in the comments, like, what do you think Twitter should be as a platform?
Do you think it should be an absolute free speech platform?
Do you think it should be a...
platform where it's not absolute free speech
but there's some consistency and approach
or do you think it should be how Mario wants it
which is just...
Blaget as it goes
I was gonna
Or transparent
Or like what I want
If you wanted to be an absolute
Or what the Danish ones
It's just transparency
Or how about
Let me let me make
Let me act
I'm going to say man
If I want it to be
This I'm gonna pull a Slayman
Put in the comments
If you want Twitter to exist
Or no longer exist
Because it goes bankrupt
Because it follows Slayman's way
Of doing business
That's a way of slime man
I was gonna I was gonna
I was going to give you a compliment right after he spoke until he took a jab.
So I would draw my compliment.
Stock talk, I'll let you quickly respond.
And if Catherine permits, I'll go to Rob before going to Catherine.
But Stock Talk, I'll let you respond first.
This is what I'll say.
If you want Twitter to be...
Rob is going to have to wait another 20 minutes now.
If you want Twitter to be a free speech absolutist platform,
then it will only exist in countries that have...
legislation for free speech.
That's what you're saying.
But only this is, Slime, this is,
this is how you smash Slash, man.
You keep saying you smash people.
This is how you smash people.
Let's, Catherine.
I didn't, I didn't, I think, no, no, that's not true
because I'm not once advocated for
Twitter to be an absolute free speech platform.
I've said that that's what Musk has posted a number of times.
That's all I've said.
I'm saying all I want is consistency.
Musk, okay, but just to you know, Musk is not Twitter, Twitter is not Musk.
Musk is the owner of Twitter.
He can have beliefs himself, but doesn't mean Twitter has to abide by those beliefs 100%.
What do I mean by this?
Musk can say whatever he wants.
He just misphrased it.
He meant maximum.
No, no, I don't know.
I don't know what he said.
Okay, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Rob, Bob, he always says absolutely.
So, Rob, your thoughts, because I know, just give it a bit of context and correct me if I'm wrong, Rob.
But you've been on the panel before, and I appreciate you coming back.
And you were critical of Elon in a previous discussion a few weeks ago.
Now, we've had people that were also critical of Elon come on the stage today and actually
be understanding of what happened in Turkey, more understanding than people like Simon.
So I'm curious, what's your stance on this?
Do you think that was a step, a necessary step for the business to exist?
Or do you think it's hypocrisy and you're pretty concerned?
Like many people have said, it's all speculative at this point.
We don't know if Turkey was enforcing any kind of social media laws.
We don't know if he was just having a private meeting with Erdogan and decided to, you know, block his opponents.
We don't know anything right now.
So it's all speculation, but I will say this, like Twitter has never been a free speech platform.
And it certainly isn't now like.
We talked about why Alex Jones is banned, why Kanye West is banned.
It's because Elon Musk doesn't like them.
Like that's the only reason.
There's no policy.
There's no free speech one way or the other.
It's just Elon's platform.
And he's running it like a forum moderator in the early 2000s.
He's just banning who he feels like it's completely inconsistent.
Free speech doesn't apply here.
It never has.
The First Amendment protects us against the government.
It doesn't protect us against...
corporations and certainly not in Turkey. So I mean, he could have had a moment here where he stood up to Turkey. Erdogan took down Twitter and, you know, Elon remains the good guy. He could have impressed some people by sticking to his beliefs. But instead, you know, like every point in the Twitter takeover, he made the worst possible decision like with the in the moment. So I mean, that's where we are.
I think Yvonne disagree with some of the things you said, Rob.
I think you've articulated it pretty well, especially, you know, you did say one phrase,
is that he could have taken the stance that would have made everyone like him more.
You know, everyone's praising him whenever he stands up for free speech.
And that's what gets in points.
So he could have done what slam.
Even people on the left were...
Yeah, exactly, exactly, but that's not the right,
I'll finish my sentence, so I think you'll agree with me, Ian.
That would have been the decision that Slaman would have taken
because, you know, trying to get followers or it makes it seem like Slaman's trying to run for president.
Because he's saying the things that will attract people, that will make people like you.
But sometimes to run a business, you're not going to, you're going to take people.
There we go.
But sometimes when you're running your business, you might have to take decisions
that might not make you look good, that might lose you popularity.
but it's for the better of the business.
It's long term.
It's better for the business.
So to get to what Elon wants to achieve,
it will take time.
On that path,
there will be hard decisions to make it up.
Again, we don't know everything as well, Rob,
which is again the point you made.
But on that path to achieving,
you know,
as close to free speech absolutism as you can get,
there's going to be a lot of hurdles,
especially when it comes to countries
outside the Western world where free speech is expected.
So...
Understanding that is important.
Understanding we don't have the full picture is important,
but at the same time, not jumping to saying,
hey, he should have been more transparent as Danish made.
When there's been many steps towards transparency,
is also an important point to keep in mind.
I think there's points.
I feel like people need to stop acting like five-year-old, you know.
That's a better way of putting it's.
This is not some Saturday morning cartoon.
Like, everyone acts like the world is a Saturday morning cartoon that people can have ideals.
You can be better.
But hey, Ian, you did this.
Ian, let me take a jab at you.
Ian, you did the same thing.
Let me do that literally.
Let me know.
Killing people is wrong.
Let me tell me what you think.
Let me think what you think of this jab before I went back to Rob.
You did the same thing during the Twitter files.
We made it seem like Twitter was that we should have been able to.
I'm not comparing them.
I think old regime was a lot worse than the current regime,
and I think we all understand.
The whole regime did it out of, like, their own cognizance.
They wouldn't even talk.
They pushed back in many cases.
It's so hard for people to hear criticism of Elon.
You're off to push back, but there was people on board who do.
Ian, Ian, how about, do you want to criticize Elon in one way or another,
so Danish is happy that you can be objective about it?
Give us a point of criticism before going back to Rob.
Don't do it, Ian, they're trying to trap you.
Oh, okay.
You want me to criticize Elon?
No, so, Danish and Slayman are making the argument,
and they've made it multiple times,
that you're just sticking up for Elon can never be critical of him
and you're not being objective.
Don't do it, Ian, he's trapping you.
Don't attack Elon.
Ian, Mario's just trying to get a sound like.
I'm just saying that, yeah, you know, you can afford to be more transparent.
That's the one thing.
You know, that's the one criticism that I do have for him
is that he can be more transparent
so that, you know, you can tamp down all this dumb criticism.
So Ian, you just agree with me then.
No, I don't agree with you.
I don't agree with the criticism that you're making, but I do think he can be more transparent.
You literally said the exact same thing.
Yeah, but you made a whole bunch of different points, and I'm not going to agree with any of that.
I'm just agreeing to you on the point.
So do you agree that he could have been more transparent beforehand?
Before the election.
If he had that information prior to it, yeah, sure.
But I don't know if you did.
Right.
So like again, you know, you got to be fair to the guy, right?
Just like people I think got to be fair to you all over off as well, right?
I mean, a lot of people attack him.
I attack him.
I think that that guy could have been more transparent as well.
Let me, Rob, can I ask you about the new CEO?
What are your thoughts?
Because I haven't looked into it enough.
So I can't, I need to probably research it more.
I wasn't in the space we did earlier.
where everyone broke it down.
I think Kim, Slaman, Danish were running that space.
Ian was there too, Joa.
So I don't have the full picture,
but I think we are jumping to conclusions a bit too quickly.
From what I understand, we have the, you know,
we have reasons to be concerned,
but at the same time, you know,
we need to give that person a shot
and we need to see how she goes in the Twitter space
to understand her approach to censorship.
But I want to get your initial thoughts, Rob.
Do you share those same concerns?
I think...
I haven't read much about Linda Yakuino's politics.
I know there's lots of controversy,
but I will say any new CEO isn't going to make any difference when we are another
as long as Elon is the decision maker.
You know what I mean?
He's going to be the one calling the shots making, you know,
extemporaneous decisions with no foresight.
He's going to continue being chaotic,
and that's going to continue to cause Twitter to make all these insane moves,
like Twitter blue costing $8 and all these things that, you know,
he's a controversy machine.
And even if he's not CEO entitled, he's going to continue.
To pull the levers, and Twitter is going to continue to nose dive.
How's Twitter Nose dive?
Mario, one question I have.
Sorry, one follow-up I have.
We talked about this in the business one as well in general in the finance spaces,
which, by the way, are tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. Eastern.
But I was going to say that.
Yeah, so the point that I was going to ask was,
Why not make her chief operating officer, chief revenue officer, head of, you know, head of advertising?
Why CEO?
Why not? It's just a title. Who cares?
At the end of the day, he still owns a title.
Clearly a thought through.
No, no, no. He's the only thing that matters.
Let's just be honest here.
He had a poll.
The contradictory commentary.
It really doesn't matter.
Dinesh, he had a poll, right?
So he needs to put in a new CEO.
That doesn't really mean...
That she's going to be making all the decisions.
Hold on a hundred.
What was sorry, Joe, Joe, what was the, sorry, Jo, I didn't hear that argument.
Did Danish say that he did a poll?
Why are you referring to the poll?
What was said?
Please tell me.
Because they're saying she's CEO, so she needs to make all decisions.
And I'm saying it's a private company.
Like I own a company where I have a CEO of the company, but I'm still made certain decisions still go by me.
Right.
And he made, Elon made a poll where he said, set down to the CEO, whatever it was.
And people say, yeah.
You're referring to that point.
So he needs to put it in a few years.
Let me ask Slimeon a question.
And I'm curious.
That's why doesn't have this.
Guys, guys, let me ask.
Mario, Mario, I just don't make you,
Tesla doesn't have a CEO.
It has a technical king.
Okay.
All right, so just, I want to ask a question.
And Rob, I want you to go next.
So we'll go Slyman, Robin Sauer,
and anyone else who wants to answer that question.
So Slyman and others, including UE and Kim and others,
have been very critical of the establishment,
and rightly so.
And they're influenced on social media platforms.
So my question to you guys and Michael as well,
I want to get your thoughts on this point.
My question is, should the establishment have a say,
have any say in decisions being made by social media platforms?
In other words,
Should social media platforms be inclusive?
I just thought of this question out of the blue now.
Should they be inclusive where the establishment shouldn't influence decisions made,
but they should have a say.
So that means Elon should obviously stick to free speech,
what the people want, but at the same time,
Speak to the big guy.
Speak to government.
Spees to people in power
and making decisions
to try to find
some sort of middle ground.
Or should Elon take a stance
like fuck the establishment.
I stand with the people.
Vote for Slavement for president.
Slaman, do you want to go first
and we'll go to Rob, Sarah and others.
First of all,
what a brilliant line you finish with that, bro.
But in terms of what you said,
I'm not saying he shouldn't speak to people.
Of course, you should speak, you should engage,
you should find their positions.
He should give you,
given his positions about what ideas are, for sure.
But then there's a certain line you never cross.
And so that line, which is that when the establishment, as you called it,
start impeding on the social media,
start impeding on the lives of people.
And we saw that through COVID.
We saw that through various other things.
That's when we need to push.
And that's why when you allow these things,
these are their results of what could happen.
Because the next pandemic,
will be the establishment,
may not be directly from the US,
it could be from other countries
that propagate it first,
and then what,
you're going to allow that to happen,
you're going to allow the social media
to be impacted on that.
So that's the reason why
I believe my position is consistent,
whereas other people
are changing the positions
based on what the new story is.
Rob?
Well, I mean, it's his website.
He's going to run it the way he wants,
unless he runs a foul of laws,
in which case, obviously,
you have to comply.
And that's,
we were talking about anti-
anti-Nazism laws in Germany.
You know, there's things you cannot post in America,
even though we have the First Amendment.
There are still restrictions.
But ultimately, yeah, it's his company,
and he will post, he will enact, you know,
policies that he wants and people will respond.
I have a lot of friends who are leaving Twitter for Blue Sky,
which isn't great.
Blue Sky is kind of a flash on the pan, I think.
But people are leaving Twitter recently because, you know,
pictures of dead bodies are showing up, you know,
from the shooter and stuff.
It's,
It's a moderation issue.
So I think, like, it's very much, like, it's a free market.
He's going to do what he wants on this site,
and people are going to respond and leave if they don't like it.
I think the pictures of the dead bodies, though,
they're not meant to be shown.
I think they were just slipping through the cracks.
And I think what we saw earlier was the opposite slipping through the cracks,
where people are getting wrongly suspended, not intentionally,
just because moderation is a very difficult thing to achieve.
Just my two cents on that particular point.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree both with you on what you got said, you know?
Like, Mario, yeah, like the...
Obviously, people are going to post Victor's.
If you edit it slightly, it's going to go past the filters, right?
There are filters there.
It stops them from showing up.
So I agree with that.
But I also agree with Robb is that, you know, it is his social media platform at the end of the day.
So he is going to do what he is going to do.
He owns the site.
And if this means talking to the establishment, then it means talking to his establishment.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, he has to work with him.
He has to work within the boundaries of the law.
People seem to forget that.
Like, he's not...
operating as some sort of maverick outside of law.
You know, like that would make him a literally committing crime.
So he's not going to do that.
So people need to understand this, right?
He's not running some rogue operation where, you know, governments are trying to take him down.
This is not some WikiLeaks type operation, right?
Now, whether it's right for a government to go after weak leaks, obviously it's not right,
but again, it's the law.
And we need to fight that on, you know, on legal grounds.
And this is not the place to do it.
Can I put a question a different way more?
Let me go to right after Sarah.
Sarah.
Thank you.
You know, I've heard in many, many spaces people expressing these sweeping concerns about
the new CEO, but in my opinion, I don't think anything is really going to change that much.
I doubt that Elon is going to turn the reins over and give her carte blanche.
What I'm wondering is, I know she hasn't started yet as CEO, but, you know, is it possible that Elon ran by her his thoughts on the request from the Turkish government?
And I would be interested in what she thought would have been the proper course of action if she would have agreed.
I don't know. I do want to kind of point out to one thing to slam man before going to Joe
asked question. First, Sarah, to kind of add on to what you said, one thing I see, especially
hosting this show, there's something called engagement farming. And that's people, and we usually
don't invite those people. When people come on stage and they just say things that they know
will get in followers or people would like them, instead of being objective or sharing their
true opinions. And that happens a lot. You'll see that happen a lot, whether it's related
to Elon or any other decision. I lose followers, by the way. When I come on here, I lose
followers.
And there's people that are legitimate like you guys that come on and share their actual
opinions and that's why you keep getting constant invites.
So this,
I just want to make that addition to what you said,
Sarah.
Going back to Slayman's point before going to Joe,
Slayman,
look man,
I know you're on a vendetta.
I don't know if you're,
I think you're genuinely,
have a vendetta against the establishment.
And great.
And there's,
you know,
it's one of the reasons I have you as a co-host,
among many others.
But at the same time, what I want to...
Can I ask, is the world's richest man not part of the establishment?
This is like this...
But this is that this first, when people talk about the establishment,
they struggle to define it.
But I'm...
Actually, let's see Slyman define the establishment, Rob.
Let's enjoy this one because I agree there's an establishment.
I think it's more systemic rather than a bunch of people pressing buttons in the background.
But Sleman, and I know Slaman doesn't believe about people pressing buttons,
but Slaman, how would you describe in one sentence the establishment before I make my point?
Well, I can't describe it in one sentence.
But the establishment, if I was to summarize it in a very surface level point is,
Essentially, you've got the deep state, the mainstream media, and you have the military industrial complex working together to basically impact society.
That just made it more complicated.
And how would you describe the deep state, my friend?
Well, here we go.
So, for example, the deep state is a conglomerate of people, which can be that...
What can be included in there is, for example, the three-letter agencies.
You've got, for example, those who impact policy and procedures.
You have a number of NGOs are a part of that who basically impact it.
And then there's a lot more.
But I wish I don't want to.
All right.
So let me, let me, okay.
I'll describe it, Mario, in three short words.
It's a bureaucratic media complex.
Okay.
That's what it is.
Okay.
These are fair,
fair explanations.
At the point I wanted to make, before going to Joe,
as question and social truth, I'm going to mute you because there's feedback sound on your end.
The point I wanted to make a Slaman, and you probably agree with this one,
because again, you're more logical than people give you credit.
The people that you consider as part of the deep state, whether it's companies or establishments,
Unfortunately, sometimes you need to play ball.
Sometimes if you don't play ball, you end up just losing the entire fight.
So instead of just having certain values and sticking to them in a very binary way,
you have to try to achieve your goals, or just full stop, to try to achieve your goals.
And if you're going to do it the way you're describing it, you'll never get there.
So the old regime,
didn't even fight, didn't try to achieve those goals, their bias came into the way.
They had the initial values that wanted, that free speech was, the initial concept behind the internet was free speech, was decentralization, no censorship, et cetera.
And obviously that failed.
So on the other side, the Twitter that you envisage is a complete other extreme, whereas free speech and nothing else.
The reality will be somewhere in the middle.
And there's no way to avoid that.
So let me come back on that, Mario.
So first of all, the previous regime,
I completely disagree with what they did, right?
I would be banned in the previous regime for sure.
I never used to it at that time.
But let's be clear, at least we knew what was happening.
Like, we knew these, they have these...
What do you know?
What do we knew?
There was no...
No, no, we didn't know what I'm...
Let me take that back.
I misspoke.
I misspoke.
You always do.
But what I'm saying is we knew,
even though we didn't see the evidence of it,
we knew they had very draconian policies.
They were banning people left, right and center.
We knew that they had a very leftist ideology
when it came to banning people, right?
You knew that because you were seeing people getting banned, right?
We didn't know the deep state involvement,
but we knew their policy in terms of banning and stuff.
Now, the thing with Elon is...
I'm not, and you keep saying that I want absolute free speech.
I don't want, I'm not saying I want absolute free speech from Elon.
I'm saying he said it, but all I want is consistency.
So whatever policy he puts in place, but you can't have, okay, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, let me,
sorry, just one question of the consistency.
And the last thing about the, you say,
And the last thing about the establishment, Mario,
in terms of the establishment,
I know people find it hilarious when they hear these words,
but let's just take one,
and I can give you many more examples,
but quick one,
Ukraine, Russia,
you had all of the various aspects
of this establishment
who ensured that they had...
everyone agreeing to the war and anyone who dissented to a band anyone who disagreed lost their jobs and so
you had the military and digital complex who made the money from it you had the governments and the
NGOs who propagated it and then it was propagated and made policies based on it sent money to
Ukraine and then on top of that you had the military mainstream media who that propagated it and basically
made people docile and agree with it so that's a minor quick example to explain how these got how they operate
but it's obviously more
So, so Simon, just one thing,
you cannot expect Twitter to operate
by the same rules around the world.
I know it sounds great,
and I know most of us would like that,
but I don't know how much you've traveled.
It's impossible to achieve.
I do business in different countries.
All right, bro.
I do business in different countries and not to the extent of many others,
maybe on this stage and listening to this space.
You cannot operate around the world following the same rules.
Now, does that mean some countries you won't be able to operate in?
Correct.
Other countries, you might need to find some sort of middle ground.
It is what it is.
Yeah, and that's fine.
And again, you need consistency and approach.
So I used to go to Turkey regularly to present, like, academic presentations.
I was with the secularists all the time.
I was with these anti-Urdegon people all the time.
My point is, when it comes to Erdogan and what happened here,
if he's got a consistent approach, that's fine,
but to basically ban accounts,
day before the election isn't about a Turkish law,
isn't about some kind of policy and procedure.
It's just a lack of consistency to ensure that you ban someone
specifically for a specific purpose.
And again, that's where I disagree with it.
So, Rob, you wanted to add to that?
Oh, no, Joey, you had a question.
Sorry, Joey, you had a question.
Yeah, I wanted to ask either Kim or Ian, but I think they're both like, you know, anti-censorship.
No, no, Kim is pro-censorship.
I don't think you understand his argument.
So Kim thinks censorship is necessary for the world to function.
But continue.
Okay.
Okay.
What?
Making sure you're online.
This is how I check if you're online and listening.
Go ahead, Joa.
I'm listening all the time.
You know, I'm just doing other things on the side.
But what the fuck?
So, Kim, I'll ask, I'll ask you,
if China released a Biden and a Trump filter
that look like Biden, look like Trump,
with a voice modulator,
so anyone can make content that looks like Biden
or looks like Trump
Should it be censored on Twitter?
Well, first of all, you don't need China for that,
because that's already the reality.
You can use AI right now to do that and pretend to be anyone
with their exact voice being simulated.
Yeah, you need some know-how, though.
I'm saying make it super easy.
Should that content be banned?
And isn't that just an extreme form of fake news?
Impersonation is going to be one of the major...
problems for Twitter and any social media platform.
And of course, if the content is harmful, it needs to be taken down.
No question about it.
When you have the president of the United States, all of a sudden say, you know, let's kill this ethnic group, all of them.
You know, clearly there needs to be taken down.
But then if you have photos from like the Bengonji scenario and it was not the right photo,
there were old photos people were using.
So form of impersonation, then wouldn't the argument be that should be taken down as well?
I think you've made it very clear that any kind of impersonation is problematic, right?
This is weeds in the argument that really are the diversion of the real topic that we're talking about.
Great sound by, hold on, great, great sound by Derek, but maybe, do you want to get off a more context?
You're muted, Derek, bottom left corner, and your mic isn't great, just a heads up.
Yeah, go ahead.
So I'm here. I apologize for any noise.
I really appreciate you even bringing me into this form in the discussion, but I'm listening intently, but understanding that we have a...
It seems that everybody seems to avoid that there is a much more powerful force and power behind what is taking place.
So we want to put the onus on Elon because Elon's the richest man in the world.
And of course, he can do whatever he wants in our minds.
But the reality is that even Elon can be put in check.
And I believe that's what we're seeing, is that Elon realizes that he won't even be allowed to have what he has unless he complies.
So there is a certain...
I want to ask you a question just as you say this, if you don't mind.
Sorry to interrupt.
But you kind of triggered me to bring something up.
I had people, you know, I mentioned earlier, and I'll ask you that question, Derek, so I'll continue speaking.
But you know how I mentioned earlier, Simon, that I said that people were calling me concerned about the appointment of the new CEO.
I keep forgetting her name.
So the question I have for you, Derek.
The concerns were, and these are by influential people names that you would, I can even say all of you recognize, is that Elon was forced to hire this new CEO by the quote-unquote establishment and he had no choice.
There's things happening behind the scenes that kind of twisted his hand into making that decision.
I don't think this is the case, at least from the discussions that I've had.
Then again, I'm not privy to those behind, not about Elon's side as he's getting all these phone calls, messages and having these meetings.
So my question to you, Derek, do you think this is a possibility, a plausible possibility that's even worth discussing?
I really do, and here's why, because I believe that we can look back on even things that we see as scripture and recognize this type of activity in really powerful people throughout all of history.
When Paul referred to having a thorn in his side, I believe that was a Roman spear.
So he is being forced to do certain things, and he's trying to tell you that he is.
And Elon tweeted...
that believe nothing, including nothing.
And he did that before this notification.
So he's kind of giving you just what you would do or I would do if you realized that you were literally being forced into a position where you realize that it doesn't matter how much money I have.
I can't buy myself out of the cabal.
There is a much powerful center of attention on this global situation here, and that is becoming obvious in every country and every action.
So what I'm talking about might sound tinfoil, but it's really not when the evidence is before our very eyes, and you watch powerful people like Elon react in such a way and try to tell you in the best way he can while saving everything that he has because they can take it away.
When did he say...
Just real quick. That's exactly what I said before you joined, Derek.
I said that the pressure on Elon must be mounting and that he is facing a lot of...
Kim, here's my problem. Here's my problem.
Why... First of all, on the talk of free speech...
We should, the more information, the better.
It's up to each individual person to decide what they decide in themselves what to believe or not.
I mean, that's the whole point of free speech.
You decide what you want to believe or not.
Exactly.
And that's exactly what.
And so that's been lost in the whole conversation.
And my problem, my other point is, I don't,
hello, just a second.
It's really not right.
Hey, hello, can you just wait a minute, okay?
that is not at all what I'm saying.
Like I'm not questioning the value of free speech.
What I do say is that Elon must be under a lot of pressure.
You just see what's happening in terms of the ghosting from the white.
Hey, wait a minute.
I'm not done.
You see what's happening with the ghosting from the White House where, you know, Biden doesn't even invite him to the AI summit where they are talking about the security around AI or he's having all these EV companies at the White House to praise them for what they have done for the United States, bringing this new technology on the roads. And Elon isn't there. You know, it's kind of.
telling. He's been ghosted. He's a persona non grata to the current White House and to a lot of
large corporations that have stopped advertising on Twitter. So this pressure, I'm sure sooner or
later, is getting to him. And I'm sure there's also other things that we don't know about
where, you know, they are digging for dirt on him. They're trying to affect his board members to question his
validity as a CEO when he's doing all this stuff on Twitter,
there will be a lot of shit that we don't even know.
And this is why everyone is kind of on high alert right now
when he appoints Linda as CEO with her history, right?
There are some sensitivities around that.
And I'm with you and everyone on that.
But I also think, you know, we need to be realistic and wait and see what happens.
I shouldn't wait because I'm already being shadow, I'm already being ghosted
back end.
Are you sure, are you sure your content is just not rubbish?
No, what it is, no, no, what it is, is they are on the back end taking out the numbers.
How do you know that?
I get people DMing me about this every day, no joke, every day saying, Mario, please help me.
I DM'd you.
You are, okay, social truth, you are banned, you are, hold on, but I ask you have a search ban, and a search suggestion ban by the looks of it.
Which is interesting.
But he also only has 650 followers.
He's not someone who's been targeted.
I mean, come on.
I don't think he's saying, I think this is...
I comment on the most...
I comment on the most controversial conversation.
Like what? Like what?
Social truth.
Like what?
Mario, these people are just distracted.
Hold on, Derek.
This is, but this is, let's go back.
Derek, I get social, no, no, I get, I get people.
The reason I'm pushing that, yeah, I will, I will.
I'm actually asking me a question, bro.
The reason I'm bringing that up, Derek, is I get a lot of people,
and I think it's a, it's a more common concern that you think,
saying to me, hey, we're being targeted for X, Y, Z reason.
And Kim makes a point.
It's like, you know, the, they, they,
There's a lot of people on Twitter.
And for you to think you're being targeted,
some people think they're being targeted by Elon himself is far-fetched.
But let me just dig into it a bit further.
I won't go too long because I want to get back to the point.
Social truth, what are you commenting on that you think is leading to you being targeted?
You've got to unmute Social Truth.
And this is not the establishment censoring you.
Go ahead.
This is...
Listen, you know, this whole conversation, the reason I'm frustrated, okay, is...
You just pulled the Slayman, man.
I just followed you, by the way, so I appreciate it coming on.
But you just pulled a slam man.
You completely avoided the question.
But that's fine.
I do want to move on.
No, no, no, no, no, because this is the whole point of the whole conversation.
The whole point of the conversation is that each individual person, each individual person has the rights...
to decide whether they want to believe or not.
That's why with AI, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't, you know, you, you individual person, you can't let the government, you can't let anybody make your, you make your own decision.
And so you're going to, there's going to be a lot of fake.
There's going to be a lot of wrong.
But guess what?
A lot of times the people that are saying things, they end up being right.
Social, social, social.
So, you know, so the more information, the better.
But, but, but.
Social, can you not hear me?
Right?
He's choosing to ignore you.
Social, can you hear me?
No, no, because Kim was I calling him as well.
Maybe he can't hear anybody.
Social.
I don't know.
What specific, it's just you went on your life story and I'm sure it's interesting.
But my point is, look, what specific thing do you think you're being targeted for?
Just be very specific.
Don't be like Mario and tell you.
Well, okay, okay, okay.
Here's one of them.
Here's one of them.
Okay, one of them is, uh, you see, Elon, he, he, he has a misunderstanding.
Uh, he, okay, the COVID, the COVID situation, okay, is, uh, a, uh,
It was a population issue.
Okay, you can see by our economy, we're unsustainable.
Okay, we're unsustainable.
So you see how it targeted.
Can you just be...
This is...
Anyway, this is exactly...
Slaman, this is your little brother.
Your brother, you've been looking for a long time.
I'm not trying to get off.
I'm not trying to get off topic.
Talking about, bro.
This is one of your disciples, my friend.
The thing is, Elon's trying to get more population, okay?
And see, I'm talking about...
I...
You got to question the government.
And so, so because I'm talking about that, you'll see...
So look, Social, what you haven't even said because you're too scared.
You're basically saying, or the point is that, oh, where's he gone?
He jumped out.
Social, you on request again.
You dropped out.
Go ahead, Simon.
Yeah, yeah.
But he's basically saying that COVID was used to basically eradicate the population or a large part of the population because we've got too many people.
First of all, that's a very weak argument because...
Mario's, sorry, Ian's boy Elon has been arguing the opposite.
He's been saying there's going to be a population collapse.
So why would he censor you when your basically...
I think, Saman, let's move on.
But Joie, if you can invite social again,
and I think he dropped out, so if you can find his hand to invite him.
But where, yeah, Saman, you've just moved away the conversation.
You've just moved the conversation away completely, man.
Derek, yeah, Derek, can you bring it back to the topic, please?
One thing...
Mario is just one.
He's just...
So, Gary, Kim, go ahead.
And then we'll go to Sarah and Sibyla.
Go ahead, Kim.
You're muted, Kim.
Yeah, okay.
I'm here now.
So...
Let's just give Social the good news that he is no threat to anybody.
Just having listened to him for five minutes, I can't tell you.
He's no threat to anybody, neither the establishment nor the national security, you know, security state.
He doesn't have.
The population thing is apples and oranges.
The thing is Elon takes it as the information that I'm spreading, okay, is concerning the future,
making people think that we are overpopulated.
And so he's concerned with birth rates of the future while I'm talking about the past.
It's apple and oranges.
So, so that's just one example of where I'm shadow banned, okay, where I'm ghosted on the back end.
Already, this is, this.
is already the past couple of weeks.
Elon has gone woke.
Okay, Elon has gone woke.
All right.
And...
Social, social, social.
It's terrible, but it's true.
It's terrible, but it's true.
It's terrible, but it's true.
Every woke person is going crazy that Elon's going too conservative.
And then you get social coming on saying Elon's too woke.
Yeah.
Fuck, man.
This is crazy.
Look,
Elon has gone,
I'm not,
I'm not,
so many people.
Insanity.
Yeah,
so by the way,
so you know what I should have,
Joe,
you know what I should have,
so often?
You know what I should have done,
Joelle?
When social started speaking
about population control
and all that,
I should have just ended the space
and then just tweeted,
Elon ended the space on purpose
because we have controlling the narrative
and talking about population control.
Right.
Social, there's a lot of big accounts talking about the same argument, making that same silly argument.
You just wanted to give me an example.
That was just one example.
That was just one example, man.
Well, Mario, I just, you're the one that looked at me and saw that I'm shadow band.
So, you know.
Yeah, but there's a lot of people.
There's people, such.
There's people shadow band, man, on enough constantly.
Listen, nothing.
The whole point of your space, the whole point of your space is this one thing, okay?
That, that.
If you claim that you're free speech and the way that he has conversations tape all over YouTube, you can find it anywhere of him saying that the reason for free speech is the more information, okay, the better it is.
You get to decide.
Each individual person decides.
Each individual person decides what they want to believe or not.
That's not what free speech is.
Free speech is not social.
Why am I shadowed?
You're not shadow band.
You're not shadow band.
I've read through the website.
Yeah, I've checked another website as well, social.
So I haven't used social social.
Yeah, send me the screenshots.
I have screen shots, man.
I'm going to check the DMs you've sent me.
Let me just check quickly the DMs.
And I do have breaking news for you.
I can't see any DMs.
You haven't DMs.
You haven't deigned me anything unless it's glitching for me.
Well, I sent you a message.
I sent you on your message.
Okay, so let me, let me go back to the topic.
First, I do, I do have, yeah, send it to, send it to me.
I do have breaking news, I think.
Oh, this is, but from what I've seen now,
the breaking news that I have for you social is that,
your tweets seem to be pretty rubbish
because the engagement is really, really low.
And that doesn't mean you're immediately shadow banned.
and there's as people with more followers making crazier arguments than you
and they're not shadow band they're getting massive engagement if anything my
biggest he's basically making the establishment argument that there's all the
population how is he going to be how is going to be banned when literally
The entire movie industry, the entirety of the literature,
everybody's arguing his position and somehow he's banned for him.
What did you just say?
What did you just say?
The argument is that the establishment is saying,
the establishment's argument is that we're overpopulated,
and that's what the COVID was.
Yeah, yeah.
So the normal, Joe, the normal narrative has been for a decade.
that there's overpopulation
and so I actually wrote a paper on this
nearly 10 years ago to demonstrate why
that's a fallacy and when you use a second
derivative that's not going to be the case
That's true but that's not what you said though
You said the establishment
She said the establishment
No no the establishment is arguing that there's too
There's too high of a population
And COVID was used
And COVID was used to control the population
Which I know you don't believe slamming
No no I didn't say that's what social did say
That's what social truth said bro
No, no, so his argument was that because there was, so that's the two separate you put together.
So because he said that the reason why Elon banned him is.
Please, let's move on.
Okay, bro, can we move on, please?
Sully, can we move on, please?
Yeah, yeah, but that's fine.
But then don't refuel my point.
But then, don't review my point.
Thanks for smashing me.
Let's go to Sarah, then Sibyla.
Sarah, please move off to a different topic because this is getting crazy.
I, you know, I can't even remember what I was going to say anymore.
Maybe the arithmetic.
Redirect me, Mario, because I...
I'll redirect you.
We left off at Elon's Gone Woke.
Yeah, yeah, has Elon God woke?
Elon's gone woke.
Actually, I've got a question.
Let me ask you.
Let me ask you a question to the entire panel because I see a lot of hands up.
I've got a question for you.
Does anyone else think?
And that makes you.
Answer the audience in the comments.
Actually, you know what?
The audience as well, this one is a good, it's a good one because I'm, I,
My position on this topic is that Elon was not,
his arm wasn't twisted in the case of choosing the CEO,
or at least not directly,
but he's facing,
he is facing a lot of pressure from the quote-on-court establishment,
or all the people that have influence,
or whatever you want to call them.
His arm is being twisted in some extent,
and the advertisers pulling out as the most, you know,
the public example of that,
and the most obvious one.
And it's a stark reminder that,
Fighting the establishment is not a binary decision.
It's more kind of working within the system to try to achieve a certain cause.
And I know that doesn't sound as sexy is what argumentist Slaman makes, but this is a reality.
So my question to the audience, my question to the panel is,
does anyone think that Elon didn't choose the CEO based on his own will,
and he chose it out of necessity because of more sinister reasons?
I don't have that stance, but I'm curious if anyone does.
And feel free to jump in.
Rob, maybe you want to take that one first.
Yes.
I think he's just tired.
So I think,
Derek, Derek, if you're going to speak,
yeah, Derek, if you want to speak,
I think just first time on stage,
just put your hand up, Rohan,
we'll know that you want to speak.
It just makes it easier that way, Derek.
Go ahead, Rob.
I think he's just tired, he's exhausted. He's bought a company, he's losing money, hand over fist,
he's constantly being criticized, he's working long hours, he's running three companies.
I own a company, and I've hired a CEO before, and it was because I was tired. I was exhausted,
and I think that's what's going on here, and no one's forcing his hand.
No, not about Rob, yeah, yeah, no, it's not about hiring a CEO, is that the specific person he hired?
Why did he hire someone that did,
that was a proponent of censorship
that worked at the World Economic Forum
and again that's based on what people are saying
I haven't researched that person
but they've got you know
it seems to be like on the other extreme
of the fight that Elon is leading
I think it's because he wants people to like him, even people on the left.
I think that's what he's obsessed with.
He wants everyone to like him.
That's why he bought Twitter in the first place and paid too much for it and tried to back out.
He said everyone to like him.
I think he went out of his way to hire a left-leaning CEO for that reason.
He wants to say, look at me.
Like, I'm not political.
I...
I just want to run the free speech platform.
And I don't think, like I said before,
I don't think it's going to make a difference.
I don't think any CEO in the world can salvage Twitter.
It was losing money.
Before he took over, it's losing even more money now.
It doesn't seem to be.
Sorry, sorry, Rob,
but he keeps saying that it's losing more money now.
Didn't he, didn't he?
Elon has spoken.
Mario, I would like to stay where this is wrong.
It's losing, it looks like half of the advertisers.
Yeah, but they get, no, no, but yeah, Rob, Rob, before Kim jumps in, they did, a lot of these advertisers, Elon says most, if not all of them came back.
And we've seen a lot of these advertisers publicly come back to the platform.
Twitter's expenses have gone down.
The metrics of users per, what was it, total use minutes per day or something.
has increased, average users per day has increased.
So the metrics across the board have increased
and advertisers come back and costs have gone down
and we should reach profitability in three to four months
according to Elon's interview with the BBC.
Okay.
So doesn't that counter your argument?
I never have three or four months doing with it.
No, I didn't know about the four months thing.
That's news to me.
I assumed that the advertisers were giving them off the time.
Yeah, exactly.
And then you're not alone.
A lot of the investors I spoke with had that same perception.
But it seems that so I know for a fact that a lot, if not most, if not all the advertisers
to come back, I think it's most.
Elon has made that same point on this BBC interview.
And the metrics seem to be pretty impressive.
And Elon also said, and correct me if I'm wrong anyone,
before I go to Kim.
Elon did say that they're three months away
from break-even or profitability, three to four months,
which is pretty impressive.
So if you use the, but at the same time,
someone was talking about, I can't remember which security,
but something bond, I think,
if he's there, you can explain.
But based on some other metrics,
Twitter's valuation has gone down significantly
and things we don't see.
I need to bring Wahid on here.
If anyone knows what I'm taught,
what Hayd's talk.
Mario,
I put Elon's quote up in the vest from the BBC.
Yeah, Ryan,
does anyone know about the,
just Ryan, the bonds,
so Waheed has made that argument a few times,
Faith Tribe, many of you know him.
It's something to do with bonds related to Twitter
that,
determined the valuation considering that Twitter,
I'm not deep into the space, I don't understand it,
but Twitter is a private company.
So there's a certain instrument
that determines the valuation of Twitter,
and based on that instrument,
Sibyla has given me a love heart.
So can anyone tell me what that instrument is and what is showing?
Because according to Wahid,
is showing that Twitter's valuation
is a job significantly because
you know, the quote unquote establishment or large investors or people with money are either shorting it or buying power is weak.
Can anyone give me clarity if you know what I'm talking about, please?
Sibila, if you gave me a love up, maybe you can explain or anyone on this particular point.
Yeah, if there's a third-party evaluation that does Twitter is about to become profitable, I would believe it.
But if Elon said that, then I don't know.
All right, no one can give me clarity on this.
I'll try to get more clarity than...
At the third point,
Mario, I'm looking at it up right now to give you the exact number.
Oh, sick.
All right, cool.
You know what I'm talking about, Ryan, yeah?
Yeah.
Can you talk about the instrument?
Can you explain the instrument, Ryan?
Because it's important.
Yeah.
Give me two seconds to get you like...
All right, cool, cool.
I'll wait for you.
I'll wait for that.
And if I can't get it on this space,
I'll mention it in the future space,
or I'll tweet about it.
Because it's an important indicator that Wahid,
who's been on the finance spaces a few times,
has referred to multiple times,
but yet no one is talking about it.
Because that's, that speaks,
Danish is coming up, so maybe Darnish can give us more clarity
on it.
Perfect timing.
Danish, did you hear what I just said
about the instrument that determines Twitter's evaluation?
Danish.
Danish, I was connecting, hold on.
I want to wait for this.
It takes a while.
Danish, yeah, Danish, you there.
Danish?
Yeah, sorry, I can hear you now.
Did you hear what I was talking about?
Yeah, I mean, I think what you're talking about is depending on how they were provided
debt, their debt was using their stock as collateral.
But that's not exactly what, right now there's a much better valuation, which is based
on what their actual stock was priced at.
So, you know, as we know, he bought it for $54.20 per share.
But then they had, as they were getting new employees onboarded.
the new employees that were onboarded were onboarded at a $20 billion enterprise value.
So that's based on the price per share on the stock awards.
And so that's a much, much better, they don't do that without something called a 49A.
They must have done a 49A valuation, which is what, that's, I think, what Wah was referring to was a 409A.
No, so, okay, so this is backed by December.
So there's an article here by QZ that talks about it and talks about,
look, so the heading is, how to tell if Elon Musk's Twitter is winning,
watch the bonds.
Again, this is outdated, so I want to see what these bonds are doing now.
Okay.
So the answer can be found in the take-up or not of debt issued by Twitter Finance
Musk's takeover.
Okay.
So that's what you're looking at.
So the way you do it is that you can use the value of the debt, right?
Remember, the debt has to be collateralizing something.
You can use the bonds against that.
But that's public information?
Yeah, but the problem now is there's a much more public information.
As I was saying, like what I'm talking about is from March of 2023, where...
Elon Musk has put a $20 billion value on Twitter.
So this is based on the stock options.
And Elon Musk has not put that valuation.
It probably came from a 409A, 409A evaluation, which is what most companies will do before they issue new stock.
And how much it required Twitter full?
I can't remember the exact.
44 billion.
44 billion.
Yeah, so he acquired it for $44 billion at $54.
So Slyman, to go back to your whole argument, like censorship or no censorship,
does that give you an idea of how many things one needs to balance?
How difficult it is to run a business, let it won, achieve the values.
You're dropping out.
You're dropping significantly and him pivoting to a subscription-only or subscription first model.
That's...
but has led to a reduction in valuation.
The daily active users versus monthly active,
the Dow mouse have actually gone up.
The engagement has actually gone up.
So the only explanation,
the only explanation is really advertisers pulling out.
But then how did, sorry,
how did Elon say on the interview then
that most, if not all advertisers have come back
because maybe revenue,
because based on all the fundamental metrics,
hold on, based on all the fundamental metrics,
Looking at it objectively, Twitter's valuation should have gone up based on what we've seen so far.
Unless there's a concert effort to bring down the valuation.
If advert has came back for a low amount.
Good point.
Maybe the spending less.
Usually it depends on how much revenue per click they're getting.
There's a lot of other, remember that your valuation is based at this point with Twitter,
since they're not profitable, it's going to be a multiple of revenue.
And so, you know, since it's a multiple of revenue, it's not surprising that if revenue
has gone down, then the total valuation will go down.
Engagement is...
So for a very long time, a lot of social media companies could get multiples on engagement, you know, like Dow Mouse, daily active users over monthly active users.
That was a very common strategy that companies like Facebook and others were using.
That just does not work anymore.
And unfortunately, in the current environment that we're in, they want to see revenue.
But when you use that as the metric, if you use daily active user or monthly active users, he paid one of the cheapest prices I've ever seen for a social media company.
And you've made that point many times, Joe, and it's a very valid point.
And I'll let you make it again.
But as you make it, then how the fuck the devaluation dropped by half, Joe?
Mario, because the user numbers were incorrect.
If you recall, right after the acquisition was about to go through,
it came out that the Twitter reported false user numbers
and were reporting false user numbers for several quarters.
But if that's the case, then why couldn't Elon pull out of the deal
and renegotiate the deal, if that is the case, which I think it is.
I want to push back.
There was a $1 billion time bomb on the deal.
So if he pulled out of the deal,
there was some stipulation in the deal
that if he had pulled out for any reason,
that there was a $1 billion fee that he would have to pay.
That's not.
So just want to be very clear about the bot issue.
Today, post bots.
We have never seen so much engagement in Twitter ever.
So even with the whole bot issue, this is not why the valuation has gone down.
The valuation has specifically gone down because advertisers pulled out of Twitter and they were brought back at lower revenue.
That's it.
This is just a simple revenue.
The revenue thing is you're assuming or there's reports on that?
There's a lot of reports around this.
It's not just me assuming.
I don't have any personal knowledge of it, but based on what news media has reported.
And he said it himself.
But Deneff, doesn't that go to the argument of why he would get someone like Linda whose entire career?
There we go.
No, that's not the reason why he got Linda.
That's not why he got Linda.
It's very clear why he got Linda.
The reason why he got Linda was because he's building a video streaming service.
She has built it and advertised on it.
She knows how to monetize it.
That is a completely different.
Yeah, but specifically around video.
I want to be clear.
Yeah, but her whole career has been about innovating in revenue models for the advertising industry.
That's what she's been doing for 20 years, right?
So why wouldn't they bring her on for that reason?
Well, then, has he given up on the subscription model?
Sorry, go ahead, Cibula.
In economy, like what we currently are and in other different global markets that are experiencing
economy difficulties, you wouldn't want to rely on marketing and advertising because people
simply don't have money for either.
The companies don't have money to provide that marketing and advertising, and the people
don't have money to spend on marketing and advertising.
And this is why you don't want another model that doesn't work to be replicated in a new place.
And I have an idea how we can bring money and not through advertising and how we can bring engagement and innovation
and actually help with the workforce, retraining.
and bringing money from various different places that are not marketing and advertising
that need actually things done.
And he's building that platform and he can make it happen.
And if he hires the right people who are not coming from marketing and advertising,
can behavior science or...
various things that are just targeted to manipulate user behavior or purchasing behavior.
And if you hire somebody who is with technology background and education background,
who understands how and what the industry and the society currently need,
as well as the socioeconomic relationships and the various needs,
both in governments and public sector,
then he would be able to provide those type of services and gain a lot more funding than what currently he's going after.
The marketing and advertising fields are not going to be able to be rehydrated until we have innovation.
So, so...
Yeah, but recurring revenue.
Yeah, go ahead, man.
Sorry, Mario.
One thing I was going to say is the reason why subscription is interesting is because it's recurring revenue and people usually give a higher multiple on revenue with recurring revenue.
Go ahead, Marcia.
Yeah, so I just, actually, let me get some other speakers to speak.
Before, I'm just researching the, what's her name, Linda Yakarino's achievements to see if she's a good fit for Twitter.
And I think you've made a really good argument.
You and Sibyla made a really good argument because I just feel like before going to Kim and other speakers, I just feel like people that don't,
People are just criticizing it without even looking at Twitter as a business.
And they're starting to feel like Twitter is a non-for-profit organization trying to achieve a certain goals,
rather than someone trying to run a business while achieving those goals.
But before I continue making more statements on Linda's, the benefits Linda could bring to Twitter,
Kim, I'll give you the mic and we'll go to other speakers.
Well, I agree that she has the experience and the network to bring advertisers to Twitter.
I've made that point earlier, so no question about that.
And for anyone saying that Twitter is folding, is on the way out, the valuation is dropping,
they don't understand what the value of Twitter is.
You know, Twitter does have hundreds of millions of eyeballs every day,
and there are so many multiple ways to monetize that.
And I'm sure...
you know, after the few months that Twitter has been led by Elon, you know, there's a lot of things to improve, a lot of new innovation to come.
And they've rolled out subscribers for actual Twitter users, which is, you know, much better than what we had before.
So, you know, there are certainly new revenue streams that are going to open up.
My only concern is,
Is it wise to bring someone on from the WEF that Elon himself has criticized as, you know, a power broker that shouldn't be the unelected ruler of the world?
You know, and that's what the WEF is.
It's a marketplace for mass corruption where corporations and politicians are coming together to rule the world to their benefit.
right? So to bring someone on board from that organization, I question that, but I'm,
you know, I have an open mind and I want to see what Elon's reasons are. And I want to listen
to what Linda has to say in answering the questions that will be brought to her when she does
the Twitter space. Yeah, I just think we have to be careful that, you know, as you've said before,
Kim, we don't know what her role exactly was at the W.E.F and, uh,
You know, we don't know if she was in the inner circle.
We don't know if she's been involved in any other.
And also, you know, I've always believed that WF is like this big boogeyman.
And there's just not, so WF is this large, giant, bureaucratic organization where people have, you know, very different levels of affiliations.
So, Mickey, would love for you to weigh in on this, on Linda and the rest of the conversation.
Yeah, it's great conversation.
Really, really appreciate this conversation and thanks to all the.
panelists. I think there's something, I think Mario said that to keep in mind, right, this is
first and foremost a business decision on, on the part of Elon Musk, you know, just time,
think about the timing of the deal. He, he basically agreed a price on Twitter that Donish
is talking about, and then tech falls off a cliff. Not only does tech fall off a cliff,
the economy falls up a cliff.
So all the advertising business
that he was relying on
fell off a cliff at the same time.
And he agreed a deal that said
if he backed out,
he had to pay a billion dollars in cash.
So he went through with the deal.
And then, you know,
as sort of economy is slowing down,
he's seeing,
you know,
his burn rate just go through the roof
and see how he capitalized the business, right, he owes money, right?
He's got to pay debt service, and he's got to keep his shareholders happy.
And I'm sure his shareholders on the phone with him saying, like, look, Elon, I gave me this money, and I'm expecting your return.
I'm sure he gave him a horizon.
Like, in five years, we're going to go public again.
You're going to delve into money, et cetera.
But now it's very hard to make that claim because the enterprise value of Twitter has basically been cut in half.
since the acquisition, which is not something you want to see.
You want to see like a smart buy, not a buy, if you're an investor, not a buy that sees
you lose half the value in a few months.
So I think the truth of the matter is it's a business decision.
And if Elon has to, you know, hire a quote unquote deep state.
W-E-F person to keep the business running, he will do that.
He will, and to, if that, and he will play ball with Erdogan.
He will play ball with any state actor because his first and foremost obligation is to
his investors.
And the number one role of a CEO is always to increase the value of share, to increase
shareholder value and to make money for his investors.
So I think that's what we're seeing.
The promises he made earlier to get engagement from the users,
I think we'll see those promises may or may not be kept depending on what's best for the business.
And we're going to watch.
Are you saying that those promises that he made earlier were disingenuous?
They didn't mean it?
I think if he could make money and keep those promises he would.
And if he had to break those promises to keep the business afloat, he'll break them.
Right.
So this is just the, this is reality.
So to conclude, Mickey, to conclude like the entire argument being made,
There's a reason I would make Slaman my co-host but never put him in a position to run my business.
I think this is the best way to articulate the entire argument and everything we've been discussing for the past few hours.
Joa, I'm sure you agree before we go to Paul and Dave and other speakers.
Joe, don't want to attack you boy.
Joe, I doesn't want to unmute.
All right, let's go to Paul.
Paul, I'm sure you agree before we got to Dave.
No pressure, but just agree.
Well, yeah, I do agree that it was a business decision.
But I also think that there's a lot of appearances matter going into this.
And there's no way he was going to pick someone that was conservative after everyone was attacking Twitter for becoming this conservative hub.
and I think he was trying to balance that a bit up too.
Do you think actually, Paul, I've got, can ask you a question, Paul?
Yeah, go ahead.
Do you think the strategy and do you think, I, this question can go to anyone, but Paul,
I'm curious to get your thoughts on it.
Do you think your strategy of starting to engage with people more on the left, in this case,
mainly the Krasenstein's, was that a strategy well played?
I think it's always good to have people of these like wide, like, okay, let me put it to you this way.
So I've seen you have those guys on your spaces and I really don't like them at all.
They have me blocked actually and I disagree vehemently with their politics.
However, I think it's always good to have those kind of extreme voices.
in the conversation.
Oh, sorry, I just got a message, Paul, sorry.
I got a message from the Krasenstein to mute you
and remove you from stage.
Let me just remove you, sorry, man.
Krasnstein I've requested it, but you're off.
Let's go to someone more liberal
based on the request of the Krasnstein.
Go ahead, Paul, sorry, go ahead, man.
I mean, how's not been Kim's,
because it hasn't that been,
it's just so funny, Paul,
so I would get the Krasnstein's on the stage a whole time.
mainly for, like, just to get everyone on stage and they were just good speakers that had a,
they were ready to argue different positions.
And then I faced a lot of criticism, I faced a lot of criticism for bringing a lot of people on stage,
including half the panel right now.
But then Elon started responding to them.
It's good to hear stuff you don't, it's good to hear.
Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. No, no. Sorry, I interrupted you, man. Sorry, go ahead.
I was going to say it's good to hear voices you don't agree with, and especially some of the extreme ones, just because you never know.
I mean, they were commenting some stuff about this whole situation with Turkey, and I actually agreed with him.
You know, and so you'd be surprised you agree with sometimes. But what I wanted to say about this hiring is, you know, time will tell, but Elon has defended certain people that,
Soon after he's he's flipped completely and one prime example is Yol Roth
If you remember he vouched for him and he said he believed in him, etc
And then a little while after you know when he learned more and it didn't work out so you know we saw what happened
So we'll just have to see but I mean I think fundamentally this was a business decision and you know he's trying to keep this thing afloat
So we'll see how it goes so let me go to Dave Dave um
I think the main argument people have is people understand that it's a business decision.
But surely she's not the only person with that skill set to help with the video streaming aspect of it,
maybe to help with the advertisement.
But Dr. Danish said she's not there for that reason.
And yet she doesn't work for the WEF.
I think that's and she doesn't have these, some of the videos that are coming out about her in terms of her ideological positions.
What do you think, Dave?
Were there other people or do you think it just doesn't matter?
Hey, can you guys hear me?
Yep, bro.
Right on.
So, you know, I want to say hi to you guys.
Kim, what's going on?
Mario, Dinesh.
You know, I've been listening for quite some time.
I mean, months, I think it is now.
But I have to agree with Kim and Mario and Dinesh and yourself as it relates to Linda.
I'm kind of perplexed on a number of levels as it relates to her views on several things as it relates to her past.
But I have to be open in terms of the suggestions that she's going to present for Twitter
as it relates to her background or it's rooted background in her, you know, journalism
and all that other good stuff she brings to the table.
But at the end of the day, you know, I'm over here looking at Twitter,
not as the savior of humanity, but rather as an opportunity to capture
a discussion amongst people that has been suppressed by some folks.
And I would term folks and I would coin it as government.
So that's kind of trippy in my view, right?
Why would we be suppressed in terms of our discussions that we're currently having by written texts or now verbally, right?
But, yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to the outcome.
I hope it doesn't get shut down.
And at the end of the day, I'm just very grateful to be here to listen to human perspectives, right?
We're all inhabit this suspended world that we live in here in the universe, you know.
But, yeah, man.
I don't know if I can be the questions.
Yeah.
Yeah, what's up?
I appreciate that.
Oh, okay, Mickey.
Sorry, go ahead, Mickey.
I was just going to ask questions.
So basically on the conversation we've been having,
you know, most of the panel basically says,
hey, it's okay to censor as long as it's the government
and the government is acting within its own laws.
That's like basically the summary of people's opinion.
What's your, what point do you walk away?
Like, what would Elon have to do for you to shut down your Twitter account
and not use it again?
Like, how much further down the line would you have to go?
from where he is now in order for you to walk away.
Yeah, it's a fair question.
I mean, there's a great equalizer here.
You know, he came out talking about free speech the other day, and I really enjoyed that.
Bill Mahert skit.
That was pretty dope, man.
I really enjoyed that.
I enjoy free speech, right?
The impact of it.
Julian Assange from WikiLeaks, I've been a great admirer of him since 2000.
I want to say six, 2005.
A big fan of this guy, just from an academic level.
And also being that I'm an autodidatic.
I have something wrong with me.
My brain is wired differently.
I get a lot of information and I somehow, for some reason, I can remember it.
But, you know,
If indeed I can't utilize Twitter in the Middle East to discuss who my counterparts agree or disagree, I would firmly...
have to like walk away from the platform and it would hurt uh me uh personally because of what
i'm trying to develop in you know i'm trying to meet other people like minded individuals that
echo uh disagreements you know that that's what it's about uh and yeah that's a good point
dave no i yeah so you know i that's that's what it is and uh but it's important that
We as a human species are allowed to disagree and agree, however it might be, but the control aspect of social media in the way in which is being currently cited in the United States of America is.
It's kind of wild, you know?
So Dave, I don't want to ask Joe her, sorry, Dan,
she just want to ask Joe or something on that,
because I know, Joe, Joe,
you're all about the, for you, it's all about the money.
It's about the bottom line.
So, I mean, I understand that you don't,
you get the argument in terms of why she was brought in.
Could one make the argument that essentially by bringing her in your alienating,
maybe some of the people who are active users of Twitter?
I don't know what the, I don't know what the spread is between right and left,
but maybe some people on the right.
Look, to me, it's just clear as day.
I mean, there was a video of both of them talking about,
where he goes, yeah, and we want to add, like, where you click on Twitter and you shop right away, things like that.
That's actually where she innovated.
She tied e-commerce with TV.
Social commerce is, I know, because I know the person who ran it at Instagram, and now he got brought over to TikTok to do it.
It drives more revenue than advertising does.
Right? So allowing people to shop on the platform actually brings more revenue. This is exactly what she did. This is what they talked about on stage. I don't think it's about he doesn't care if it's alienating, not alienating. I think bringing someone who's liberal actually balances the platform bit, to be honest. But she's not liberal. She's a conservative. She served on Twitter. Like she served for Trump.
Um, she's not actually a liberal.
But she served with Trump on the COVID joy.
I heard this because he's an argument,
but she served with Trump on the whole COVID issue.
So again, it's not the right left issue.
It's more that people against W.EF,
they're against this whole COVID narrative.
And she represents,
and she's against a lot of these kind of ideological positions.
And she represents that.
So even as she worked for Trump,
I noticed it,
but it was more for the COVID.
It was about the pro,
Trove it.
COVID propaganda campaign
was some people would argue on the right.
She was on the fitness board.
It wasn't even the co-
And what did they do, Joe?
What did they do on the fitness board?
I don't know.
It was the COVID issue that's I'm telling you.
Okay.
But still, she still worked for him
and she's been a conservative,
although she, you can see who she follows.
She follows more conservative than the number of things.
Or she worked with Trump as well.
The fitness sport was about literally sports,
fitness, and nutrition,
according to this article that I looked up really quickly.
Yeah, she worked on that.
I don't know if that was COVID or not,
and I don't know what they did.
Let me double check, but I'm pretty sure with COVID.
Sorry, anyway, sorry, continue, Ryan.
Okay.
Go ahead, Joe.
Yeah, he's just, he's trying to fix, he lost advertisers, he's trying to fix it, bringing social commerce into Twitter, we'll save Twitter.
So Joe, can you explain for people to understand what social commerce is?
Sorry, I just want to make sure our audience understands.
Yeah, so anyone who uses Instagram, for example, it's the first, like, successful platform that's done it.
There used to be a lot more ads on Instagram.
There's a lot less now.
Why?
Because they're making more money from social commerce, which is basically you see a photo, you click on it, it shows you the items, and you buy it right through Instagram.
You don't even have to go to the e-commerce site.
What she did was when she was at NBC, she would say shop at NBC.com for everything you see on the show.
So they were getting affiliate revenue based on recommending certain products that you would then buy on that show.
Integrating that with Twitter is just like a secession of what she's done in the past.
And exactly what Elon spoke to her about on that stage when she challenged them.
So it makes complete sense that these two things are tied.
I also think that there's something special,
and especially, so social commerce is the future.
Lots of people are talking about it.
It's not just Joa and myself.
We talk about it in our finance spaces at 8 a.m. on Eastern tomorrow.
But, sorry, I had to plug it.
But I was going to say that, you know,
ultimately, not only is social commerce the future,
but in my opinion, more importantly,
you know, he brought her on because he wants to go all in on Omni-Channel.
And I think the fact is that he has made a decision that this is the super app.
I think he's made a decision that we're going to go from text to audio to video to commerce.
That is the approach.
And the whole financial platform, because that's what X's whole dream was since the beginning.
Back when he was at PayPal and why he owns X.com, it was a whole financial app.
So tie them all together.
My issue is...
My issue is that, again, I know that she was very good at social commerce at NBC,
but there are a lot of people that have done social commerce at Instagram, at Meta in general.
There are people that have done this at other organizations.
And I think that he must have known that she represented a specific...
type of person that he does want to try to court.
And look, at the end of the day, I have no problems with that.
It could be simple as well, Dr. Dan,
and she got dominated and then he wanted on that discussion.
But the issue is, I just wanted a point of clarification, right?
Because Ryan said that, you know, what I said was incorrect.
But anyway, it has been published in a number of places, including Forbes and various other places.
Right.
that her role was on the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
So her role was she was the president council on sports, fitness, and nutrition,
but then in the White House, she worked to produce the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
And hence, that's what I got from Ryan.
Does that contradict what you were saying, Ryan?
I DM'd what I had, but I'll keep looking to find what you had, too.
Yeah, so one thing I was going to say is I actually think a large part of it
And Sarah, I'll go to you with this.
I think a large part of what attracted Elon to getting Linda was that she actually pushed back,
that she didn't just kow and say whatever he wanted, that she actually challenged him.
And that's actually a good sign of a leader, in my opinion.
I think that was actually a large part of what attracted him to having her come on in leadership
is that he didn't just, you know...
He didn't just get his way.
And I think he's not, he's so many people sort of bow down to Elon.
Like, oh, Elon, you're so great, Elon.
And that's all great.
It might help you feel good.
But ultimately it doesn't make him feel good.
He wants to be around people that are intelligent that will push back.
Sarah, you know, do you agree that there's something special about Linda that maybe he's seeing that we're not?
Well, let me answer that real quick, if I may.
Yes, go ahead, Kim.
You know, that's something I'm well aware of, you know,
having been in business for such a long time and being around people
that try to make you feel,
like they go against your opinion, you know, that you can trust them for that reason.
You really underestimate Elon's intellect if you think that something like this could easily
sway his decision-making. This happens to successful people all the time.
They are surrounded by people who do want to say something opposite just to be seen as
a friend that they can trust.
This isn't going to sway what decision Elon is going to make.
You underestimate him there.
He's purely interested in what Linda can bring to the table.
And that is her advertiser relationship and her experience in monetizing content.
That's a fair point.
Sarah, what are your thoughts on that?
You know, just to go back a little bit to what Mickey,
Mickey asked someone, what would it take for them to leave Twitter?
And the honest answer for everyone, everyone in this space and everyone up on this panel is nothing.
Every person that I know that has ever left Twitter has come back.
Twitter has something that other apps just don't have.
There's knockoffs like Blue Sky.
In fact, I saw a Twitter space the other day that said,
is Blue Sky the...
taking over social audio.
That was on Twitter, spaces.
Is blue sky taking over social audio?
And I thought the irony is lost on them.
Twitter has something that's quite unique.
And I think to bring it back to social commerce,
I think if Linda can bring social commerce onto Twitter,
that could be a game changer.
I mute the Twitter ads all the time.
I see the same ones over and over.
We all do, and we're all tired of it.
I hate clicking on, say, Mario's tweet,
and right underneath it, the first thing I see is some stupid advertisement.
I get annoyed at it.
But if I go over on Instagram and I see an ad, I'm tending.
I'm clicking on them because, you know what?
I shop on Instagram.
I see...
the ads there and I'm like oh you know what I could use this and I purchase it if Twitter can
bring that it would be a game changer and get rid of all of these nonsensical ads that people
are muting or blocking I think that could make this an extremely profitable app.
Sarah do you also buy stupid shit like I do from Instagram for no reason just because the ads
good? You know what?
Because all social media spies on us and they all know that I love dogs, they market the dumbest dog stuff to me.
So I am buying the dumbest shit.
I'm not even kidding you.
Yeah, they get me every time.
They get me every time.
You know, if Twitter started advertising lip-cloths.
If they started advertising, you know, makeup and cute dog dresses, I would spend all my time and money here.
We spend a lot of time here. Twitter needs to make money off of it.
And if this Linda can bring that, then I say hooray for her.
But here's the upside. If she does a really terrible job, then all we're going to do is bitch about her on Twitter spaces and it is going to give us a lot to talk about and she won't last long.
Can I just ask them you.
On that one thing I wanted to bring up was, you know, around what you're talking about,
which was that these social apps know what you want.
One thing that Twitter has been notorious for is that the matching with the advertising has actually been crap for a very long time.
It's terrible.
You're right.
I get movie.
And so he can bring in that.
What she has done incredibly well at other organizations is the ability to tie your,
it's intent to buy.
There's something called intent to buy where you can actually find out what people want to buy
and then get them into a position where they want to buy like you would dog crap,
which is fascinating and now I know more about you.
But I was going to say that, you know, Mickey, I want to make sure that, you know,
I cut you off.
So I want to make sure to give you a chance to respond.
Yeah, thanks so much. So I want to be clear because I think I'm starting to understand like the views are kind of coalescing. So all of these free speech advocates here who have been railing about censorship and the regime and the previous regime and Hunter Biden's laptops, you're all totally fine with censorship from states and with close relationship with giant corporations so long as Twitter enterprise value goes up.
That's what I'm kind of understanding from all of you.
I think you haven't been here from the start.
I think you joined much later.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be asking that stupid question.
I was listening to the whole time and basically what I heard from you, Kim, was, hey, let's just see.
I don't think it's a fair response.
Kim, you know, to be fair, you know, the commentary that Mario has done, and Mario's, you know,
I don't want to say too much about Mario, but, you know, the commentary from Mario has been
that, well, it's a bad business decision.
Ian was like, we have to be more practical.
Well, all of that practicality was gone when Twitter files were coming out.
But somehow now we have to be more practical.
Yeah.
And by the way, Twitter files changed my view about how government works with social media.
I learned a lot.
I was one of the people that was blindsided, right?
And I know that you were not one of the people that were blindsided.
And I know that you've been talking about this for a long time.
So why is this now suddenly an okay position for us to not, you know, hold them to a higher standard?
Just because there's a law there already?
Is that why?
Let me just chime in on this because I think it's important for people to understand the motivations of some people here on the stage.
Most of us support Elon, right?
What we want not to happen is for Elon to fail.
We don't want him to lose this battle that he started for us, you know, for free speech.
And when he makes decisions that we don't understand, for example, why he would hire a CEO like this with a W.E.F. Insider background, you know, we get concerned because what we don't want is for Elon to fail, right? So we are all coming from a place of good. We all want to support what Twitter...
now is and has become and, you know, that independent journalism is possible here and that people
can monetize, you know, their content. All of this is great. These are all great developments,
but it's also still very fragile, in my opinion. You know, I think that an appointment like this
as we've already seen in the commentary,
could create bad optics for Twitter and bad optics for Elon,
and you don't know how this is all going to play out.
So my view is I would like to derisks,
you know,
you know, what Elon is doing. And there are a lot of people who are very good at monetizing content.
Why does it have to be a person that has already communicated views of censorship, has already
worked at WEF and has some baggage there, or, you know, even telling...
Elon to not tweet after 3am to me sounds ridiculous.
He can tweet whenever the fuck he wants.
I tweet at 5am, you know, fuck that shit.
But Kim, Kim, I mean, I agree with what you're saying,
and hence the arguments I was making on this,
I was making the same arguments on the same basis.
I want consistency on the approach.
Because whenever you're not, when I know,
I know you're supporting Elon.
I support what he did.
Like I said, I believe I would be banning the previous regime.
But at the same time,
You know, if Elon is wrong, or I believe that he doesn't have a consistent approach.
I want to highlight that.
And my hope is that he'll see that as he's done in the past and realign his position.
I think that's important.
But what Mickey, I believe, was talking about wasn't this appointment.
He's talking about the banning in Turkey.
And he's saying essentially that a lot of people on the stage have made the argument,
including Ian, he's not here, so it's not fair to talk about him.
But essentially saying that, look,
He can do it. The banning is fine. And what Mickey's saying is that when you're allowing one government to ban, but then we all were, and I included myself, was against the banning from the United States and their government and the things they did on Twitter through the Twitter files.
then he's saying people are being inconsistent.
So I think that's a fair argument, even if you disagree with it.
But what do you think?
Yes, I don't disagree with that.
The point is, though, that we don't know the details yet.
And Elon had announced that he is going to be transparent about it and release that information.
And until we have that...
I think it's a bit, you know, difficult to make judgment.
The space is maybe a little bit premature when it comes to that information.
Maybe we should just wait and see what he's putting out there and then we can judge.
Is there any point that you would walk away where you would say, where you would feel like the project itself is dead?
Is there a point where an agreement that would made or a person who was brought on board or something you would need to see in order to walk away from Twitter or at least to no longer support the mission?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if Twitter goes back to what it was, if, you know, Elon falls because of the pressure that is put on him and he just wants to go back to being the old, you know, Elon that isn't questioned by the establishment, isn't attacked by the mainstream media, isn't ghosted by the White House, and he just wants to have his old life back.
well, then maybe he may make compromises on Twitter and go back to a censorship regime that none of us would agree with.
I would be very disappointed if that happened.
I do not feel that that's ever going to happen.
I think Elon is someone who hates bullies.
I think he's someone who is a very pro-free speech.
He understands that the world is heading into a very dark time, unless we can turn this around.
And I do believe in him, right?
So that's why I think people like myself are a bit more critical and maybe even a little bit early on in their criticism
in order to try and help him and steer him a little bit to not make mistakes.
you know, that are unnecessary
or do things that are just going to stir, you know,
a massive response from, from haters
and people that just want Twitter to fail.
I think disappointment is something that is questionable.
I think it's bad optics.
It's bad timing.
But I do understand also just from looking at her CV
where he's coming from.
So I do want to take the opportunity that he has offered
to be in a space with Linda, ask her some tough questions, and see what she has to say.
You know, maybe this concern is all for nothing, and he's bringing her to the light side, you know, to the good side.
And we have to wait and see what happens.
I agree with you, Kim.
I do hope that he brings up people in that space who maybe are not completely Elon fans
and they maybe disagree with this appointment or have concerns about this appointment.
And then maybe we can ask questions that are more, which relay the real concerns of the people.
Ryan, go ahead.
You've had your hand up for a while.
Ryan?
Yeah.
One thing to realize is that a CEO, she was appointed as a CEO, if things go bad, she can be easily removed as well.
This isn't like a permanent position that's being etched in stone that's forever.
That's one thing that we should kind of keep...
I think that if things go wrong and if they go against the vision that Elon has for the company, the company and she makes executive decisions correct or inefficient for the company, I wouldn't be surprised if she gets removed.
But I do agree.
I think that her resume is impressive.
I'm not happy with the ones that she's made in the past.
I'm talking my impressiveness comes from her standpoint of being able to generate $100 billion in ad revenue.
These other things that everyone else has mentioned, I won't regurgitate for the thousandth.
But I do want to see where she stands on this stuff because I think that if they're against the vision of what this platform should be
I wouldn't be surprised if she gets removed by Elon or the
that are there and I do agree that
I think this was a strategic decision to bring in someone who may be from the left, whereas Elon comes from the right, so that you can have both sides of the equation.
A platform like Twitter is successful because of the debates and discussions that happen on the platform, right?
Engagement happens in discussion.
If you have someone where a platform that's just one-sided...
discussing you're going to have people post just going to be an echo chamber of people saying the same thing
but if you have people from both sides of the aisle rather you can have these discussions to go down
and people go back and forth engagement goes up which kind of helps the platform make money that's why
like you out in the past places like facebook generating
generating these bots or these bots existing on Facebook that create quarrels and raise false
engagement.
People's posts or under people's tweets sometimes.
And because we've seen that discussion is one of the biggest drivers in engagement.
So I think that maybe that would be it.
Maybe this is his olive branch to the other side to come on back.
We're going to see where we can meet in the middle.
But I do personally think that if I had to put my word on this one, would that be the
does go against the main mission of what this platform should be,
where people can speak freely,
speak within the bounds of the law,
that I wouldn't do if she gets removed.
And I do think that this is,
this has already been a very different regime.
It was in previous Twitter under,
under Jack Dorsey,
and the other gentleman that one,
his name,
with shadow bands and all this stuff.
I don't think that that stuff will be coming back.
And if it does,
I do,
I am happy that we do have Twitter spaces now to be able to criticize it.
these decisions and discuss these decisions.
And eventually I think they get back to Elon.
Like someone earlier was mentioning that Elon had heard his face about
tweeted about the same exact thing that was being discussed in this space.
So I wouldn't be surprised that these discussions that we're having are going to get back
to these higher level folks.
And it's going to help build a platform to me better.
I just think that I do.
I am speculative.
I am hesitant, but I'm also open-minded on this.
But I also know that the reason my open comes in is because I know that she could be removed
if things get wonky.
If things get too wild, I wouldn't take it out of the realm of possibility to remove her.
Thanks for that, Ryan. Sarah, you are the co-host, so you don't need to put your hand up. You got the power now.
It feels weird, so I'm always going to put my hand up.
I'm surprised that so many people,
that there is a line that they would draw in the sand in order to leave.
Where would you go?
Where is another platform such as this,
where you can reach so many people?
And Kim, you have almost, I mean, you have 1.3 million followers.
Would you really start all over
Say it, I don't know, true social.
Start all over at zero and hope to build 1.3 million followers.
Or could you just say that this is your platform and you'll stick with it no matter what?
I want to see Kim do TikToks.
I would love that.
No, I actually, you know, I'm not so much in love with my Twitter account.
I tweet primarily because I do like to share my views.
I do want to share some knowledge that I have and I enjoy it.
You know, for me, there's really not much...
value in it other than sharing what I know and helping other people to understand how the world works a little bit better.
If Twitter would go back to where it was, I wouldn't probably be allowed on the platform.
I've amped up my sharing of opinion quite a bit since Elon is here and I probably wouldn't want to go back to be a more me because of worrying about censorship.
So you would just burn it all to the ground and walk away and be like, it's all right, I'm done.
You know, life after Twitter is not that bad.
I've talked to a couple of people that left social media and they're all saying their lives are happier.
They're getting shit on much less.
And, you know, fortunately, I'm a very strong person.
So I'm not affected by people shit posting in my replies.
But, you know, there are other people that are saying, you know, like the quality of life increases significantly after you leave social media.
They're all liars.
maybe yeah can we go uh let's go to go of all right thanks for joining us uh you've been
here in the space for quite a few hours what you thought yeah something kim said got me thinking
he made the point that all of us love free speech and um truly we just want to see Elon succeed
we don't want to see him fell i think that's how
Kim put it. And when you think of Elon, when you think of the batteries, the space travel, the Starlink, I mean, solar panels and boring and Twitter, I mean, he's uniquely positioned to not only be involved with finance and social and travel and all these different things that arguably every single world government could potentially depend on his legacy.
Yeah.
So I almost feel like as much as I don't want to see the wrong people brought into leadership, I can see where if I was in his position, you might make certain caveats now until you're too big to fell.
Because if the entire world is using your systems, you know, in all those different companies, at some point, you know, it's checkmate.
You know, now granted, that might be decades down the road.
But at some point, I mean, no small government is going to be able to just say, oh, we're not going to use your systems.
Yeah, excellent point.
Off grid, same question to you.
You've been listed to space for quite a while.
What's your thoughts about the various topics we've talked about?
Oh, thanks a million for bringing me in.
No, I just, the censorship thing, like, going through the COVID,
like I was banned off everything, TikTok, you know, TikTok.
This is a problem of government overreach and the EU and the different organizations,
I suppose in the US there as well.
We've seen it with the Twitter files.
Like, this is, the West is going into a dark, dark place.
And Elon has given us a...
platform to speak on.
But at the same time,
other people have been removed,
like Mark Colette,
Tommy Robinson and different individuals
that it wasn't due to their content
that they were putting out onto Twitter.
There's worse content on Twitter.
This is political skullduggery going on in the background.
And, you know, that's my biggest worry here.
In Ireland, we've got a lot of social issues at the moment.
There's undocumented migrants.
They're coming in, like, they're setting up shanty towns in the streets of Dublin.
There's been, you know, crimes and all that comes with that.
And they're censoring speech.
They're censoring YouTube.
You can't have a platform on YouTube.
We can't talk about the elections in the US.
You can't talk about certain medical topics.
They're completely censored.
We've got some citizen journalists here in Ireland.
He's...
He was getting 2,000 on his live streams, highlighting the different issues, the different camps and what's going on.
And his arbitrarily removed from YouTube, and now he's operating here on Twitter.
And he's had some great traction there at the weekend with different protests and stuff that was going on in Dublin.
But I just, I fear the government overreach, and I think everything he said about Elon, you know, this could be tactical that, you know, bring back that avenue, the ad revenue and maybe placate the EU and all these different organizations that are throwing the arrows at them.
But I just hope he doesn't bend because, and I think things like the Twitter file is exposing this.
This needs to be exposed.
I think when he goes towards the transparency, it could be a great thing.
These deep state actors need to be exposed.
We need to fight for freedom.
Off, Greg, how would you explain the deep state?
I'm curious.
I agree with everything you said, but I'm just curious on how you'd explain it.
I want to compare how you define it to Slamman's definition.
Okay.
Well, I presume it's, I don't know, I presume the WF, to me, like they would label people like me, they call us fascists, they call us all sorts of things, anyone who speaks out to put this label on you, when actually the WF is the corporate and then merging with government is one definition of fascism, is what we're witnessing in the West.
So I just think it's people who have vested interest.
If you want to talk about what happened with the COVID,
obviously there's huge money there in these companies.
It's just big money.
You moved away from defining it.
Saman, I've got a question for somebody.
Like, Saman, why do you think everyone struggles to define this deep state?
I'm curious.
I mean, I don't think I struggled.
I think I defined it.
Yours was the worst definition about it.
Can I define it?
Can I define it?
I think I have a good definition of it.
People who have been in government for over eight years are career politicians who don't get put out no matter what president comes in or out, who just have way too much power because they've been there for way too long.
But I still think that that excludes a lot of other.
That's not a good definition of the deep state. I can give it an attempt if you like what the deep state is.
The deep state is a combination of intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex,
big farmer, big tech and big media, all working in concept to create more opportunities for them to
gain power and increase their generation of income.
That is literally what the deep state is.
It is unelected people that use their influence, money and power and control of the security state to change the world the way they wanted.
Hank and Paul, how would you define the deep state?
I think that's probably the best definition so far.
Hank?
But that's just anyone with money.
No, I would look at it.
I would look at it as I would like very,
I would simplify it because I think it varies country to country as well,
industry to industry and it's just all encompassing.
I just look at it as a,
It's just corruption.
Corruption at the top.
I know it just sounds very vague, very simple,
but I think this is what it is.
There's some people with influence that are part of the deep state.
There's some people in the military industrial complex.
Some areas are more corrupt than others.
Obviously, the military industrial complex is one example.
But I just look at it as corruption, the worst side of corruption.
Well, Mario, the deep state needs to operate maliciously because people would never agree to what they are doing if they would understand what they are doing.
For example, the military industrial complex and the security services, they all need to concentrate
create a state of chaos around the world to justify their budgets, to justify their power, and for the military industrial complex to make money with arms sales.
If there would be no chaos, if there would be no wars, if there would be no constant enemy, these people would not have money and power.
So they need to create malicious situations where they can enrich themselves and create more power for themselves.
Power that people would otherwise not agree to giving them if they wouldn't fool the world with the bullshit that they're doing with the media and, you know, with their censorship campaigns.
Does Twitter need to be embedded with the deep state in order to be a successful enterprise?
Well, that's the opposite of what Elon has done with Twitter files.
He has demonstrated how far things have already gone with the deep state.
When you see intelligence agencies colluding with the FBI, with
the White House with the media to create these false narratives, to interfere in elections,
to censor people on social media.
And what we've seen in the Twitter files applies to all other big tech companies as well.
It's basically the blueprint of how these organizations operate.
in order to have censorship and narrative control so that people remain stupid and brainwashed
and not understanding what's really going on in the world.
And that's the main thing, isn't it?
To basically make, keep, ensure that people are kept uninformed or are docile so they don't want to find the truth.
I mean, that's the main imperative of the deep state.
Not to know the truth.
Yeah, that's the main aspect of it.
Anyway, I just want to stand.
And, you know, Suleiman, what's important to understand, they have to apply these methods because people inherently want peace.
They don't want to war.
They don't want to send their sons and daughters into danger.
You know, nobody wants this kind of chaos and this kind of crisis that they keep creating.
So they have to fool the population to get their way.
I agree completely.
I'm not fooling them through propaganda and misinformation.
All right.
So let's get final quick words from Mays and Paul.
And then we wrap up the space.
Mays?
Well, I heard deep state.
So I just wanted to come up here and give, you know, my definition of that.
It's the Bank of International Settlements.
It's the Council of Foreign Relations.
It's the trilateral commission.
And they are pretty much working, you know, in tandem and funding everything through these tax-exempt foundations.
And it runs really deep. There's definitely a lot of planning and collusion going on at that level.
And then what we see with the World Economic Forum is more of the collaboration coming together.
That's where they write the policies and the white papers and hand them off to prominent officials that they've placed all over the world through the young global leaders program.
That's, I would say, a pretty solid definition.
Let's get a different take on how people define the deep state.
So Mickey and Sarah, can you give your definition as well, or Joa?
I thought it was fake.
I thought the deep state was fake.
Right?
Girl, you come into my spaces too much to think that the deep state is fake.
That's my answer.
The deep state is a tool slayman uses to get followers and clicks and engagement.
Mickey, how would you define the deep state, Mickey?
I don't know.
Somebody's talking.
I can't hear somebody.
I think I'll move down and come back up.
Mickey?
Mickey.
I mean, I have got a lot of followers, so I do appreciate everybody.
You just ask for subscribers, bro, you just tried to monitor.
You're abusing an honest cause that we have for the space to now get subscribers.
Yeah.
All right, guys, anyone that wants, anyone that wants to join the fight against the deep state,
please subscribe to Slayman, the king of grifters.
But my point is, what I want to say is, wait, before you subscribe, listen, I don't
follow any position, like I get a lot of followers, and then they realize that I smash their
ideology, their position, and then they start crying, and then I'll go to...
Do you want to be, do you want Slyman to follow you?
I probably don't hold the same view of you without everything.
Right, so if you want Slaman to follow you, all you need to do is answer every question
and you, I'll blame every single thing that happens in the world on the deep state
and answer every question, every question they ask, it's probably the deep state.
Fuck the deep state.
If you do that, Slaman's going to follow you and he'll probably subscribe back to you.
But let's get, let's get Mickey's final.
I mean, let's be clear.
Let's be clear.
When it comes to the deep state or the establishment, I like to call it,
because in reality, I wouldn't blame everything on them,
but they do have a significant impact on everything they say.
And essentially, I'm not going to backtrack and disagree with you.
to try and decrease the level of impact.
They have impact on the mainstream media.
If you don't think that's a huge impact, that's a huge impact,
and you believe that, Mario, hence why we got the twilight.
A week later.
Yeah, a huge impact through governments.
They have a huge impact through the three-letter agencies.
They have a huge impact through the military.
A week later.
I think that that impact.
isn't huge and it impacts the entire fabric of society is minimizing the impact that they have.
A week later you'll just see Sleighman's LinkedIn change to chief advisor for George Soros and suddenly the deep state no longer exists.
That would never ever happen. I would never sell my soul. I would always, I'm a man of the people and you will never ever see that happen.
I can guarantee you that guys. Mickey, final quick words on the deep state?
I think the deep state is a real thing. I think there's all these competing power groups, and I would define the deep state as the permanent, unelected people whose relationship exists between business, lobbying, and government design groups.
generally for profit.
So I think it's a real thing.
I think there's competing forces all over the world
and it's reasonably to be suspicious
of that relationship always.
Yeah, I think your definition of Kim's are too,
my favorite too.
I think Maites is pretty good as well.
And on the spectrum,
like one being Slaman's response
and 10 being Kim's response
or 10s being my definition.
I put you as a 7,
Mickey.
I put him as a...
What's your definition?
But let's end the space now.
So I appreciate you.
Let's end the sense.
I gave you...
I gave you...
I gave you this.
I gave a 10.
I gave a...
I gave a definition.
I gave a definition.
The difference between me and you is that I don't chase clicks and engagement.
I just say things as they are, even if it might not get me followers or subscribers.
But the deep set is just corruption at the top.
It comes in different forms.
It applies in different ways.
It impacts different...
different aspects of society in different ways.
Some countries more than others,
but it's just generally corruption.
I think this is it.
People at the top, people with too much influence.
Generally, but an elected official.
Who is corrupt?
Okay, so if there's somebody in your organization
that's corrupt, they're deep state.
Okay, there's just a tweet sent us by Slaman.
Sorry, I'll ask you a question in a bit.
Can you check what Vivek treated?
If this is true, I'm just gonna, let me pin it at the top.
Everyone go to Vivek's profile.
Can you have a look at it, Slamat, before we end the space?
If this is true, it's not good looking for the free speech platform.
I just told her, I'm not sure who's going in, but let me, let me, can you pin that tweet above Sleman, the one by Vivek?
I'll let you look at it.
I'll give the mic to the other person.
I think, Hank, you want to give you a final quick words, and then we'll either end the space or cover the tweet by Vak.
Yeah, look at it, Samf, so if I'm going on.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Just wanted to say something.
Hello, everyone.
This is Hank.
It's my first time on a spaces.
I'm incredibly honored to be on Mario's basis.
I just really wanted to say one thing,
bringing it back to Twitter and everything is going on.
with this whole censorship thing.
I think we're forgetting the biggest,
the most important thing here, right?
Ultimately, you know, we definitely want to be,
you know, we want to push the freedom of speech everywhere in the world.
But I think that we need to focus on the United States of America, right?
If we maintain freedom of speech here and we keep Twitter alive.
Are you running for president again with Slime Man?
It just looks like you and him speak the same way.
It's like people, deep people, we need to focus on the United States of America,
even though the whole topic here is about Turkey and censorship for Turkey.
But I'll twist what you said in a way that won't get your followers.
Essentially what you're saying, Hank, is, guys, we're focusing on Turkey,
which is a different society, different rules than the US,
and we cannot expect Elon to treat, or Twitter, not Elon,
to treat Turkey the same way that he treats the US.
And people are agreeing.
So, Hank, I think I got you a few votes by saying that.
Simon, did you look at the tweet by Vivek?
Yeah, yeah.
So basically what happened is,
Elon Musk posted and said, as soon as Linda Yak is ready, we will do a space where you can
ask her anything.
And as somebody by the name of Top Lobsters, obviously clearly he was making a joke and said,
we'd prefer you launch Linda into space and then his account was banned.
That's just ridiculous.
That's a stupidest point.
This is so fucking stupid.
You really think he got suspended because he said, let's launch Linda to space for such a joke?
That's such a ridiculous story.
No, no, that's what Vivek, so then somebody else posted and said that's the reason why he's being...
This is ridiculous.
This is so stupid.
I'm sure there's other reasons.
I'm sure they've done other things.
And I'm sure people have made much worse jokes, people with more engagement, worth...
Okay, okay, that's fine, that's fine.
And we know you've got to defend your boy.
I'm not defending.
Do you really think you're suspended?
Hold on.
Are you honestly going to fucking say...
Can I ask you a question?
Can I ask you a question?
Is this allowed?
Right?
Right.
Let's, you may be right, but let's go with the hypothetical that he did actually get banned for those comments.
Do you think that's acceptable?
Of course not. That's the stupidest reason to be banned. Of course not acceptable. You're crazy.
Any ban by Elon or anybody for personal reasons other than following the policies of an organization is never a good thing.
It's a representation of centralization of power.
But to think, to link this together, a few fucking clicks.
If this is true, let me see Vivek's tweet.
Hold on before I say I agree with Vivek.
But if this is, I'll just say this.
I know what Vivek said.
I'm just opening his tweet again.
If this is true, then yes, this is not right.
Well, Vivek is saying what you're saying.
He said, if this is true...
It's not a good look for a free speech platform.
Yeah, true, true.
Vivek is making an innocent joke about the new CEO.
Vivek is doing exactly what you want to do.
He's actually running for president.
So there's reasons for him to tweet cool, sexy things that make an interesting point,
that even though they just so far from basic logic.
And by the way, I love Vivek, not love.
I really like Vivek.
He's been on the stage a few times and I've got a lot of respect for him.
But this is just using a, this is just pure clickbait.
So you're saying it's against...
It's against basic logic, but you made the exact same argument.
What did you just, what did you just say?
Please say it again in English.
You made the exact same argument as Vivek, but then you said it's against.
No, it's against, the point that he's making is true.
But it's completely illogical to think top lobster got bad,
got, yeah, bad, because they made a joke, would prefer you launch Linda into space.
How fucking stupid is this?
So while he's making a good point, he's using a very illogical theory to make that point.
So nice try, Slayman, but that's the point I'm making.
Now that you're done putting words in my mouth.
But people get banned for that all the time.
All the time.
People, I have a friend that just got suspended for saying CNN is.
Oh, Sarah, it's you.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, shoot.
I didn't know.
I was trying to see.
Sorry, sir, go ahead.
So people get banned for this kind of stuff all the time, though.
I have a friend that's suspended currently because she said CNN hosting Trump was bullshit.
And that got her a suspension.
Yeah, so Sarah, I don't know the story of your example you're using, but all I know is that I've seen many examples of people saying they got banned because of one thing.
But then when we look into it deeper, because I looked into this because we've covered it in previous places, when we look into it deeper, we'll realize like, hold on.
The same fucking person was posting pictures of dead kids or whatever.
And then just because they posted one comment that's anti-Elon, that's why they got suspended.
It's just a, I know it happens in general, but I just genuinely think that someone criticizing, and it's not only about Elon.
I don't think Mark or the others really care about someone criticizing them, then suspending them, unless it goes too far.
Maybe it's a different story.
So you think there's a history, like somebody has a history of abuse and that's why they're
suspended.
No, not a history.
No, no.
No, no, not a history of abuse.
So maybe Top Lobster.
Again, I don't have all the facts their accounts suspended.
I don't work in Twitter headquarters.
But it's more likely that Top Lobster and nobody on Twitter that made a silly joke that
has this is such a stupid joke in terms of not having much impact and not being that bad of a thing.
Yeah.
I'm sure they've done something else,
whether they've docked someone,
which is against the policies or posted pictures
they shouldn't have posted,
or purely in errors.
People get suspended by mistake
and they're reinstated happens all the time.
This is a more logical explanation
than they got suspended because they made a joke
would prefer.
Look how extreme everyone suddenly went.
From Elon's, their fucking fighter of censorship,
fighting for free speech,
And then one thing about Turkey happens.
And suddenly now they're trying to find other things to pin on Elon and Twitter.
And I know I sound like I'm supporting Elon.
I just, I'm the one who wanted to cover this Vivek story or this Liberty lockdown story.
Iran sounds like you're supporting, you know, you are living.
all the way up in his anus right now.
No, it's just...
No, no, Kim.
This whole state is just you kissing...
Okay, okay, so hold on.
Okay, Kim.
So just make the point then.
How do you think that comment there
is a reason to be suspended?
Do you think that's a logical explanation?
No, I don't think it would be good to suspend someone for such a comment.
I agree with you, but I don't know if that actually happened.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
I don't think anyone at Twitter would do that right now because that's clearly going to be an image product.
So you just said I'm all the way up Elon's anus, but you made exactly the same point as me,
which is a great way to get your followers excited, but to make exactly the same point I made.
I'm just a little bit less lubricant induced.
Not really.
You are fully lubricated and you are slipping right in all the way to the very deep end of the anus.
Great, great. Great sound bite again, Kim.
But again, can you give me one example of something I said that you disagree with?
I mean, I agree with Kim.
Yeah, I think everyone agrees.
I'm glad.
Great sound.
Great sound by Tim.
You are deep...
Do you have an example?
Very funny, but do you have an example?
Great example.
How about another one?
Everyone...
One objective...
Give me one example.
Listen, here's your example.
Everyone listen back to this whole space and you see the lubrication level.
Okay, no example yet.
Any example from the whole space?
Can you use one example, Kim?
Wait, Kim, why don't you use him?
Hold on.
If you're both up his ass, how come you're the one?
No, no, no, Mickey, Mickey.
No, no, Kim does this all the time.
Every time he does this to criticize the space, to get his audience excited,
whenever someone on stage comes up to disagree with him,
or whenever there's a point made that he disagree with Kim.
But in this case, you haven't used one example of something objective I said
that makes it seem on being biased,
because I've talked about this being wrong if that was the case,
which is exactly, let me finish.
It's just exactly the same point you've made.
Yeah.
That's number one.
Number two, I'm the one who say big picture.
Again, again, you being vague, you're being broad.
And I've also talked about Elon's.
Let me finish and I'll let you.
I'll give you one last chance, give me one exact example
where I've been objectively up Elon's anus as the example.
You make this really funny.
I've already given the example.
No, you said, listen back.
This is this whole entire space, dude.
Yeah, absolutely.
But not one thing I said, but not one thing I've said.
And not one thing I've said, yeah, still no point.
Just again, the whole space, but not one example you can give.
Just the whole space is an ass kissing exercise by you.
And I do understand why your business depends on it.
I disagree.
Again, my business, hold on, hold on.
No, no.
So before you jump, I said, hold on.
That one thing I said.
I was the one that was criticizing Elon during the Twitter files.
I said centralization's power is never a good thing.
The only reason I...
I'm not against Elon doing it because he's aiming towards decentralization, but as long as power
is centralized, whether it's Elon or all your friends that you've praised on the space,
whoever it is, centralization of power is never a good thing. And I've been critical of this.
In this case, I've made points that the concept of absolute free speech is not logical to run a business, and I've
I've argued against the comment made that this person got suspended.
And I think both my points were relatively objective.
So to go back and end the space with a soundbite,
I've tried my best to be objective and honest about everything.
To end it with a soundbite, saying I'm all the way up Elon's anus.
Generally, I'm pretty quiet of it.
But I think you've just gone a bit too far in this one.
I must have hit a nerve because...
You did, you did.
You did.
Usually I'm pretty chill about it.
Let me give you...
Okay, let me give you a very concrete example then, quite early in the space.
you kind of defended Elon's decision on the Turkey censorship by saying,
look, this guy has a business to run.
This is business.
You know, it's probably better to bend one or two accounts and have the entire country shut down Twitter.
And that's so...
not in tune with the stuff that we have been saying on the spaces with Twitter files all the time,
that this is great, that we're welcoming free speech, that Elon is doing the right thing.
You know, you're kind of very loose with your...
description of what
idealism is. It's either free speech
or not free speech. It can't be
just free speech in the United States
and then when it happens in Turkey, we don't
give a shit. So that is what I mean.
You know, it's not really, it doesn't really make
sense.
I think that point, I respect a lot more than just saying I'm all the way up Elon's ass,
because I just found it a bit offensive.
But that is a very valid point.
I think it's a point made by Slayman and others.
One that I agree with.
I think going towards absolute free speech won't work, at least not in the short term.
It will take a while to get there.
Then again, I'm not running Twitter.
I haven't run a company the size of Twitter.
So maybe you're right.
Maybe Elon could have risen.
We don't know the full story.
Maybe Elon could have been strictly.
in the request for censorship in Turkey or maybe he was stricter and the censorship that was applied was a lot less significant than what they requested.
I don't know the full story, but that is a valid concern.
Simon, you were jumping in.
All right.
Very good.
Kim, if you're up Elon's ass to, why aren't you at least a gentleman using Loub?
Sorry, what?
You said you're up Elon's ass to, but you're not using Loub.
So my question for you is why don't you use Louvre like a gentleman?
No, I'm, I didn't say I'm up Elon's ass. That's wrong. I've never said that. But I do support Elon
when it comes to, you know, fighting for free speech and making this platform one that is without censorship.
I'm totally for that. And that has nothing to do with being up someone's ass. That's just
self-preservation. I want a good future for my kids. I don't want them to
be subjected to brainwashing in the mainstream media and they want them to have a channel where they can find the truth or at least independent voices sharing their knowledge.
right guys as much as i know everyone wants to talk about each of the asses uh it is getting quite late in the night
um you can do that off stream in private dms or whatever you want to do i appreciate everybody's time i
appreciate everybody listening um i think we did in this space uh push back quite a bit on well i know
uh quite a bit on Elon Musk and his positions and
especially the thing that happened in Turkey,
that was a major issue that we talked about
and how that was banning, you know,
basically agreeing to ban certain accounts in Turkey
were hardly problematic.
We talked about that.
Obviously, some people pushed back on it.
After that, we talked about generally speaking, Linda's appointment and whether it's good or bad for Twitter.
I think most people felt like we need to give both these things a chance and give Elon a chance to provide the names of their accounts and to see the level of impact it had on the elections and to also see what Linda does.
Yeah.
I still have my reservations about both things.
I think they're highly problematic.
But I'm open to waiting and seeing what those names are.
Early reporting seems like it's problematic.
But I'm not here to hate on Elon because I do think that as Kim said,
he has done a lot of good and so we should give him a chance.
So I completely agree with that position.
So yeah, thanks for coming.
Mario.
Yeah, cool. I think it's a great space.
And I'm not sure what we'll cover tomorrow.
I think the Twitter story, unless we get more revelations, what would be the next topic?
What's a good idea to cover tomorrow?
Is there any news that's coming out?
We were meant to do AI today.
We could do that tomorrow.
Yeah.
Because there's Google's release of Baird.
Yes, Google's released a barred.
But do let us know in the comments, what topic we should cover tomorrow.
I appreciate all the panelists coming in, especially our two special guests, Kim and Matt.
And, yeah, we'll see you all tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning, Danish is doing his finance space.
He'd hate me if I don't promote his space.
We run it from my account, but generally I'm not there.
So it's come back on my account 8 a.m. E.S.
tomorrow for a couple of hours for the daily finance space.
Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow evening.
Thanks a lot, everyone.
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