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Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! Alright, bro, what's happening? Good to see ya. You too. What's going on? You know, chill week. Yeah, sort of. This recent announcement that you did about content moderation, how has that been received? Probably depends on who you ask.
Right.
But, you know, but look, I mean. I've been working on this for a long time. So, I mean, you got to do what you think is right. You know, we've been on a long journey here, right? I mean, it's... And I think at some level, you start... You only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice, right?
I mean, the whole point of social media is basically, you know, giving people the ability to share what they want.
Right.
And... And it goes back to our original mission is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
What do you think started the pathway towards increasing censorship? Because clearly we were going in that direction for the last few years. It seemed like we really found out about it when Elon bought Twitter and we got the Twitter files. And when you came on here and when you were explaining the relationship with FBI, what they were trying to get you to do.
take down certain things that were true and real and certain things they tried to get you to limit the exposure to them so it's these kind of conversations like when did all that start yeah well
Well, look, I think going back to the beginning, or like I was saying, I think you start one of these if you care about giving people a voice. You know, I wasn't too deep on our content policies for like the first 10 years of the company. It was just kind of well known across the company that we were trying to give people the ability to share as much as possible.
And issues would come up, practical issues, right? So if someone's getting bullied, for example, we deal with that, or we put in place systems to fight bullying.
Right.
You know, if someone is saying, hey, you know, someone's pirating copyrighted content on the service, it's like, OK, we'll build controls to make it so we'll find IP protected content. But it was really in the last 10 years that people started pushing for ideological-based censorship. And I think it was two main events that really triggered this.
In 2016, there was the election of President Trump, also coincided with basically Brexit in the EU and sort of the fragmentation of the EU. And then, you know, in 2020, there was COVID. And I think that those were basically these two events where for the first time, we just faced this massive, massive institutional pressure to basically start censoring content on ideological grounds.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when it first came up in 2016, did it come under the guise of the Russian collusion hoax?
Yeah, and this is the thing. At the time, I was really sort of ill-prepared to kind of parse what was going on. I think part of my reflection looking back on this is I kind of think in 2016 and the aftermath, I gave too much deference to a lot of folks in the media who were basically saying, OK, there's no way that this guy could have gotten elected except for misinformation.
People can't actually believe this stuff. Right. It has to be that there's this kind of like massive. Misinformation out there. Some of it started with the the Russia collusion stuff, but it kind of morphed into different things over time.
Well, it was it was he was so ideologically polarizing, right? Like people didn't want to believe that anybody looked at him and said, this should be our president.
Yeah, so I took this and just kind of assumed that everyone was acting in good faith. And I said, okay, well, there are concerns about misinformation. We should – just like when people raised other concerns in the past and we try to deal with them – Okay, yeah, people, you know, if you ask people, no one says that they want misinformation.
So maybe there's something that we should do to basically try to address this. But I was really worried from the beginning about basically becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world. That's kind of a crazy position to be in for billions of people using your service. And so we tried to put in place a system that would deal with it.
You know, and early on tried to basically make it so that it was really limited. We're like, all right, we're just going to have the system where there's these third party fact checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff. Right.
So things that are very clear hoaxes that there's like it's not like like we're not parsing speech about whether something is slightly true or slightly false, like Earth is flat, you know, things like that. Right. So that was sort of the original intent. Right. We put in place the system and it just sort of veered from there.
I think to some degree, it's because some of the people whose job is to do fact checking, a lot of their industry is focused on political fact checking. So they're just kind of veered in that direction. And we kept on trying to basically get it to be what we had originally intended, which is just, you know, it's not the point is into like, judge people's opinions.
It's to provide in this layer to kind of help fact check some of the stuff that seems the most extreme. But it just, you know, it was just never accepted by people broadly. I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased. And not necessarily even so much in what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that.
A lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go and fact check in the first place. So I kind of think, like, after having gone through that whole exercise, it – I don't know, it's something out of like, you know, 1984, one of these books where it's just like, it really is a slippery slope.
And it just got to a point where it's just, okay, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States to have this program. And I guess it was probably about a few years that I really started coming to the conclusion that we were going to need to change something about that. COVID was the other big one where... That was also very tricky because, you know,
At the beginning, it was, you know, it's like a legitimate public health crisis, you know, in the beginning. And it's, you know, even people who are like the most ardent First Amendment, you know, defenders, the Supreme Court has this clear precedent. It's like, all right, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. There are times when if there's an emergency...
And your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control. So I was sympathetic to that at the beginning of COVID. It seemed like, OK, you have this virus. It seems like it's killing a lot of people. I don't know. We didn't know at the time how dangerous it was going to be. So at the beginning, it kind of seemed like, OK.
We should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this. But when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, you know, and like in the beginning, it was like, OK, there aren't enough masks. Masks aren't that important to them. It's like, oh, no, you have to wear a mask. And, you know, like everything was shifting around.
I just become very difficult to kind of follow. And this really hit me. The most extreme, I'd say during it was during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program. And I'm generally like pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative. But.
I think that while they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly were true. Right. I mean, they basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects. You basically need to take down.
And I was just like, well, we're not going to do that. Like, we're clearly not going to do that. I mean, that is kind of inarguably true.
Who is they? Who's telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?
It was people in the Biden administration. I think it was, you know, I wasn't involved in those conversations directly, but I think it was.
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That's a $76 value gift for free if you go to drinkag1.com slash joerogan. Seriously, get on this. That's got to be strange too, right? Because you're running the company, but there's clearly you're moderating at scale that's beyond the imagination. The number of human beings you're moderating is fucking insane. What's a Facebook? How many people use it on a daily basis?
Forget about how many overall. How many people use it regularly?
It's 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day. Yeah. No, it's wild.
More than a third of the planet. That's so crazy.
It's almost half of Earth. Well, on a monthly basis, it is probably half of Earth.
I want to say that, though. There's a lot of hypercritical people that are conspiracy theorists and think that everybody is a part of some cabal to control them. I want you to understand that whether it's YouTube or whatever place that you think is doing something that's awful,
It's good that you speak because this is how things get changed and this is how people find out that people are upset about content moderation and censorship. But moderating at scale is insane. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. What we were talking the other day about the number of videos that go up every hour on YouTube and it's –
bananas it's bananas that's like to try to get a human being that is reasonable logic logical and objective that's going to analyze every video it's virtually impossible it's not possible so you got to use a bunch of tools you're going to get a bunch of things wrong and you have also people reporting things and how much is that going to affect things
You could have mass reporting because you have bad actors. You have some corporation that decides we're going to attack this video because it's bad for us. Get it taken down. There's so much going on. I want to put that in people's heads before we go on. Understand the kind of numbers that we're talking about here.
Now understand you have the pandemic and then you have the administration that's doing something where I think they crossed the line, where it gets really weird, where they're saying what you're saying. They were trying to get you to take down vaccine side effects, which is just crazy.
Yeah, so, I mean, like you're saying, I mean, this is... It's so complicated, this system, that I could spend every minute of all of my time doing this and not actually focused on building any of the things that we're trying to do. AI, glasses, like the future of social media, all that stuff. So I get involved in this stuff, but in general, we have a policy team. There are people who I trust.
The people are kind of working on this on a day-to-day basis. And the interactions that... That I was just referring to. I mean, a lot of this is documented. I mean, because, you know, Jim Jordan and the House had this whole investigation and committee into into the kind of government censorship around stuff like this. And we produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain.
I mean, basically, these people from the Biden administration were. would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse. And it's like, these documents are... It's all kind of out there. Did you record any of those phone calls? I don't... No, I don't think... I don't think we... But I think... I want to listen. I mean, there are emails. The emails are published. It's all kind of out there.
And they're like... And basically it just got to this point where we were like, no, we're not going to we're not going to take down things that are true. That's ridiculous.
They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV talking about how 10 years from now or something, you know, you're going to see an ad that says, OK, if you took a covid vaccine, you're eligible, you know, like for for this kind of payment, like sort of like.
class action lawsuit type meme and they're like no you have to take that down we said no we're not gonna we're not gonna take down humor and satire we're not gonna take down things that are that are true and then at some point um i guess uh i don't flipped a bit i mean biden when he was he gave some statement at some point i don't know if it's a press conference or to some journalists where he basically was like these guys are killing people and and um and
I don't know. Then, like, all these different agencies and branches of government basically just, like, started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal. It was brutal.
Wow. Yeah. It's just a massive overstepping.
Yeah.
And also, you weren't killing people. This is the thing about all of this. It's like they suppressed so much information about things that people should be doing, regardless of whether or not you believe in the vaccine. Right. Regardless, put that aside. Metabolic health is of the utmost importance in your everyday life, whether there's a pandemic or there's not.
And there's a lot of things that you can do that can help you recover from illness. It prevents illnesses. It makes your body more robust and healthy. It strengthens your immune system. And they were suppressing all that information. And that's just crazy.
You can't say you're one of the good guys if you're suppressing information that would help people recover from all kinds of diseases, not just COVID, the flu, common cold, all sorts of different things, high doses of vitamin C, D3 with K2 and magnesium. They were suppressing this stuff because they didn't want people to think that you could get away with not taking a vaccine.
Which is really crazy when you're talking about something that 99.07% of people survive. This is a crazy overstep, but scared the shit out of a lot of people. Red-pilled, as it were, a lot of people. Because they realize, like, oh... 1984 is like an instruction manual. It shows you how things can go that way with wrong speak and with bizarre distortion of facts.
And when it comes down to it, in today's day and age, the way people get information is through your platform, through X. This is how people are getting information. They're getting information from YouTube. They're getting information from a bunch of different sources now. And you can't censor that if it's real legitimate information because it's not ideologically convenient for you.
Yeah. So, I mean, that's basically the journey that I've been on. Right. Started off very pro free speech, free expression. And then over the last 10 years, there have been these two big episodes. It was the Trump election and the aftermath where I feel like in retrospect, I deferred too much to the kind of critique of the media on what we should do.
And since then, I think generally trust in media has fallen off a cliff, right? So I don't think I'm alone in that journey. I think that's basically the experience that a lot of people have had is, okay, the stuff that's being written about is not kind of all accurate. And even if the facts are right, it's kind of written from a slant a lot of the time.
Of course.
And then... And then there was the government version of it, which is during COVID, which is okay. It's like our government is telling us that we need to censor true things. It's like, this is a disaster. And it's not just the U.S., right? I think a lot of people in the U.S., focus on this as an American phenomenon.
But I kind of think that the reaction to COVID probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of governments around the world. Because, I mean, 2024 was a big election year around the world. And, you know, there are all these countries, India, just like a ton of countries that had elections. And the incumbents basically lost every single one.
So there is some sort of a global phenomenon where the – whether it was because of inflation, because of the economic policies to deal with COVID or just how the government's dealt with COVID – seems to have had this effect that's global, not just the U.S., but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in that set of incumbents and maybe in sort of these democratic institutions overall.
So I think that what you're saying of, yeah, how do people get their information now? It's by sharing it online on social media. I think that that's just increasingly true. And my view at this point is like, all right, like we started off focused on free expression. We kind of had this pressure tested over the last period.
I feel like I just have a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be. And like, this is how it's going to be going forward. And and so I mean, at this point, I think I think a lot of people look at this as like a purely political thing, you know, because they they kind of look at the timing and they're like, hey, well, you're doing this right after the election.
It's like, OK, I try not to change our content rules like right in the middle of an election either. Right. It's like there's not like a great time to do this.
Right. You know, and you want to do it a year later.
Yeah, it's like there's no good time to do it. Whatever time is going on, there's going to be... The good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this kind of cultural pulse as like, okay, where are people right now and how are people thinking about it? We try to have policies that reflect mainstream discourse. But Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I think that this is going to be pretty durable because at this point, we've just been pressure tested on this stuff for like the last eight to 10 years with like these huge institutions just pressuring us. And I feel like this is kind of the right place to be going forward. What was it like?
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they were attacking you like what first of all what was the premise like what what would they were they saying was your offense was it that you were allowing information that was not true that was getting out there i know there was also they're saying that you guys were allowing hate groups to speak there was a lot of this yeah i mean the the the tough thing with politics is that there's like
Well, when you say someone's coming after you, are you referring to kind of the government and investigations and all that? I mean, so the issue is that there's the... There's what specific thing an agency might be looking into you for. And then there's like the underlying political motivation, which is like, why do the people who are running this thing hate you?
And I think that those can often be two very different things. So, and we had organizations... that were looking into us that were not really involved with social media, like the CFPB, like this financial, I don't even know what it stands for. It's the financial organization that Elizabeth Warren had set up.
Oh, great.
And it's basically, it's like, we're not a bank.
The debanking.
Yeah, so we're not a bank, right? It's like, what does Meta have to do with this? But they kind of found some theory that they wanted to investigate. And it's like, okay, clearly they were trying really hard to find some theory. But it like, I don't know, it just it kind of like throughout the...
The party and the government, there's just sort of – I don't know if it's – I don't know how this stuff works. I mean, I've never been in government. I don't know if it's like a directive or it's just like a quiet consensus that, like, we don't like these guys. They're not doing what we want. We're going to punish them. But it's tough to be at the other end of that.
What was it like?
Well, it's not good. I think – The thing that I think is actually the toughest, though, is it's global, right? And really, when you think about it, the U.S. government should be defending its companies, right? Not be the tip of the spear attacking its companies. So we talk about a lot, okay, what is the experience of... OK, if the U.S. government comes after you.
I think the real issue is that when the U.S. government does that to its tech industry, it's basically just open season around the rest of the world. I mean, the EU, I pull these numbers, the EU has fined the tech companies more than $30 billion over the last, I think it was like 10 or 20 years. Wow. Holy shit.
So when you when you think about it, like, OK, there's it's like, you know, 100 million dollars here, a couple billion dollars there. But what I think really adds up to is this is sort of like a kind of EU wide policy for how they want to deal with American tech. It's almost like a tariff. And I think the US government basically gets to decide how are they going to deal with that, right?
Because if the US government, if some other country was screwing with another industry that we cared about, the US government would probably find some way to put pressure on them. But I think what happened here is actually the complete opposite. the U.S.
government led the kind of attack against the companies, which then just made it so, like, the EU is basically, and all these other places, just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do whatever you want. But, I mean, look, obviously, like, I don't want to come across as if, like, we don't have things that we need to do better. Obviously, we do.
And when we mess something up, we deserve to be held accountable for that and just like everyone else. I do think that the American technology industry is a bright spot in the American economy. I think it's a strategic advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the strongest companies in the world. And I think it should be part of the U.S. 's strategy going forward to defend that.
And it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump is I think he just wants America to win. And I think some of the stuff like the other governments who are kind of pushing on this stuff, it's At least the U.S. has the rule of law, right? So the government can come after you for something, but you still get your day in court and the courts are pretty fair.
And so we've basically done a pretty good job of defending ourselves. And when we've chosen to do that, basically, we have a pretty good rate of winning. It's just not like that in every other country around the world. Like if other governments decide that they're going to go after you, you don't always get kind of a clear shake at kind of defending yourself on the rules.
So I think to some degree, if the U.S. tech industry is going to continue being really strong – I do think that the U.S. government has a role in basically defending it abroad. And that's one of the things that I'm optimistic about will happen in this administration.
Well, I think this administration uniquely has felt the impact of not being able to have free speech. Because this was the administration where Trump was famously kicked off of Twitter. That was a huge issue. After January 6th, they removed, at the time, the sitting president. It was kind of crazy to remove that person from social media because you've decided that he incited a riot.
So for him, without free speech, without people, without podcasts, without social media, they probably wouldn't have had a chance because the mainstream narrative other than Fox News was so clearly against him. The majority of the television entities and print entities were against him, the majority of them. So if without social media, without podcast, they don't stand a chance.
So they're uniquely aware of the importance of giving people their voice, free speech. But you do have to be careful about misinformation and you do have to be careful about just outright lies and propaganda complaints or propaganda campaigns rather. And how do you differentiate?
Well, I think there are a couple of different things here. One is this is something where I think X and Twitter just did it better than us on fact checking. We took the critique around fact checking, sorry, around misinformation. We put in place this fact checking program, which basically empowered these third party fact checkers.
They can mark stuff false and then we would downright get in the algorithm. I think what Twitter and X have done with community notes, I think it's just a better program. Rather than having a small number of fact checkers, you get the whole community to weigh in.
When people usually disagree on something, tend to agree on how they're voting on a note, that's a good sign to the community that there's actually a broad consensus on this, and then you show it. And you're showing more information, not less. So you're not using the fact check as a signal to show less, you're using the community note to provide real context and show additional information.
So I think that that's better. For When you're talking about like nation states or people interfering, a lot of that stuff is best rooted out at the level of kind of accounts doing phony things. So you get like whether it's like China or Russia or Iran or like one of these countries, they'll set up these networks of fake accounts and bots.
And they coordinate and they post on each other's stuff to make it seem like it's authentic and kind of convince people. It's like, wow, a bunch of people must think this or something. And the way that you identify that is you build AI systems that can basically detect that those accounts are not behaving the way that a human would.
And when we find that, that there's like some bot that's operating an account.
How do you differentiate? How do you figure that out?
There are some things that a person just would never do. Have you met Lex Friedman? Yes. He might not be. He might not pass your Turing test.
Is he going to make a million actions in a minute? He might. Probably not. Okay, so it's that.
It's things that aren't possible?
It's more subtle than that.
I think these guys are pretty sophisticated, and it's an adversarial space. So we find some technique, and then they basically kind of update their techniques. But we have a team of, it's effectively like intelligence, counterintelligence folks, counterterrorism folks, AI folks who are building systems to identify people
What are these accounts that are just not behaving the way that people would and how are they interacting? And then sometimes you trace it down and sometimes you get some tips from different intelligence agencies and then you can kind of piece together over time.
It's like, oh, this network of people is actually some kind of fake cluster of accounts and that's against our policies and we just take them all off.
How are you sure? Is there a 100% certainty that you are definitely getting a group of people that are bad actors? Or is it just people that have unpopular opinions? No, I don't think it's that for this. I think... But what I'm saying is how do you determine? At what percentage of accuracy are you determining it?
Do you ever accidentally think that people that are going to get moderated are actually just real people?
Yes. I think for the specific problem around these large coordinated groups doing election interference or something, it's a large enough group. We have a bunch of people analyzing it. It's like they study it for a while. I think we're probably pretty accurate on that.
But I actually think one of the bigger issues that we have in our moderation system is this precision issue that you're talking about. And that is actually, of all the things that we announced this week,
In terms of how we're going to update the content policies, changing the content filters to have to require higher confidence and precision is actually going to be the thing that reduces the vast majority of the censorship mistakes that we make. Removing the fact checkers and replacing them with community notes, I think it's a good step forward.
like a very small percent of content is fact checked in the first place. So it's, is that going to make the hugest difference? I'm not sure. Um, I think it'll be a positive step though. Um, and we, we like opened up some content policies. So some stuff that was restricted before we opened up, okay, that's good.
It'll mean that some set of things that might've been censored before or not, but by far the biggest set of issues we have, and you and I have talked about a bunch of issues like this over the years is like, it's just, um, Okay, you have some classifier that's trying to find, say, like drug content, right? People decide, okay, it's like the opioid epidemic is a big deal.
We need to do a better job of cracking down on drugs and drug sales. I don't want people dealing drugs on our networks. So we build a bunch of systems that basically go out and try to automate finding people who are dealing drugs. And then you basically have this question. Which is how precise do you want to set the classifier?
So do you want to make it so that the system needs to be 99% sure that someone is dealing drugs before taking them down? Do you want it to be 90% confident, 80% confident? And then those correspond to amounts of... I guess the statistics term would be recall. What percent of the bad stuff are you finding?
So if you require 99% confidence, then maybe you only actually end up taking down 20% of the bad content. Whereas if you reduce it and you say, okay, we're only going to require 90% confidence. Now maybe you can take down 60% of the bad content. But let's say you say, no, we really need to find everyone who is doing this bad thing. And it doesn't need to be as severe as dealing drugs.
It could just be – I mean it could be any kind of content of – any kind of category of harmful content. You start getting to some of these classifiers might have 80%, 85% precision in order to get 90% of the bad stuff down. But the problem is if you're at 90% precision, that means one out of 10 things that the classifier takes down is not actually problematic.
And if you kind of multiply that across the billions of people who use our services every day, that is... millions and millions of posts that are basically being taken down that are innocent.
And upon review, we're going to look at and be like, this is ridiculous that this thing got taken down, which I mean, I think you've had that experience and we've talked about this for a bunch of stuff over time. But it really just comes down to this question of where do you want to set the classifiers? So one of the things that we're going to do
is basically set them to require more confidence, which is this trade-off. It's going to mean that we will maybe take down a smaller amount of the harmful content, but it will also mean that we'll dramatically reduce the amount of people whose accounts we're taking off. for a mistake, which is just a terrible experience, right?
It's like, okay, you're going about your day and then one day you wake up and you're like, oh, my WhatsApp account just got deactivated because it's connected to a Facebook account and the Facebook account is, or like I'm using it on the same phone as a Facebook account where like we made some enforcement mistake and thought you were doing something bad that you weren't because our classifiers were set to too low of precision.
Has that happened before? No.
Oh, yeah. Where their WhatsApp app got canceled as well? Yeah, because, I mean, there were a bunch of- So if your Facebook app gets taken down, like, say, if you have a Facebook and you have, like, a sock puppet account, and the sock puppet account, you post offensive memes and you're generally gross. Yeah. If you get caught for that, does your WhatsApp get killed? No.
Not for memes, but go back to like a very severe thing. Like let's say someone is. Terrorists.
Let's say the most severe. Sure. Yeah.
Let's say someone is like terrorist content. They're planning some attack.
Right.
So we take down their account. Right. But then let's say that person can just go then sign up with another account.
How does WhatsApp get connected to that though?
Oh, well, if it's I mean, we run these different services and if they're on the same phone, it's basically, you know, it's one thing that, you know, it's basically regulators or governments will come to us and say, OK, it's you're clearly not doing enough if you kick someone off for terrorism and they can just like sign up for another account on the phone. Right. OK.
You're also they also think, OK, well, we're not doing enough if we deactivate their Facebook account because they're like planning a terrorist attack. But we let them use all our other services. Right.
Right.
If you're aware. Yeah. So if our systems think that someone is a terrorist, then you probably need to deactivate their access to all the different accounts. Yeah, they can't get on threads. Threads, Instagram.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense. So you can understand how you get there, but then you just get to this question around the precision and the confidence level. And then you're just making all these mistakes at scale, and it's just unacceptable. But I think it's a very hard calculation of like, where do you want to be?
Because on the one hand, like, I get it why people kind of come to us and they're like, no, you need to do a better job finding more of the terrorism or the drugs and all this stuff. But over time, the technology will get better and it'll get more precise. But at any given point in time.
That's the choice that we have to make is do we want to make more mistakes erring on the side of just like blowing away innocent people's accounts? Right. Or do we want to get a somewhat higher percent of the bad stuff off? And I think that there's just some balance that you need to strike on this.
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conversation yesterday Mel Gibson and I about how that can get weird or was it Theo might have been Theo I think it was Theo where that can get weird because I think like if you're a person and you work at some accounting firm but you like posting about stuff but you don't want it to come back and reflect on your life you want to shit post you want to post jokes you want to be silly you should be able to be anonymous I think there's nothing wrong with that
I don't think just because you state your opinion, people should be able to search where you sleep. That doesn't make any sense to me. But if you're going to allow anonymous accounts, you're definitely going to open up the door to bad actors having enormous blocks of accounts where they can use either AI or just programs where they have like...
specific answers i'm sure you've seen that before it's it's come up on twitter multiple times where they've found hundreds of sock puppet accounts tweeting the exact same thing so you you've literally word for word even certain words in caps like either keep people are copy or pasting it or there's an email campaign that's getting legitimate people to do it or these are fake people you're going to have if you're going to have anonymous accounts which i think you should
Because I think whistleblowers, I think the benefits of anonymous reporting on important things that the general public needs to know about, especially whistleblower type stuff, you have to have some ability to be anonymous.
But if you're going to do that, you're also going to have the possibility that these aren't real people, that these are paid actors, these are paid people, or not people at all, or they're running programs, and they're doing this to try to sway public opinion about very important issues.
Yeah. A lot of what we've seen, too, I mean, there's the anonymous accounts. Also, just over time, I think a lot of the kind of more interesting conversations have shifted from the public sphere to more private ones. So WhatsApp groups, private groups on Facebook.
I'm sure you have this experience where maybe 10 years ago you would have posted your kind of quick takes on whatever social media you're using. Now, you know, the stuff that I post on Facebook and Instagram, it's like I put time into making sure that that's kind of good content that I want to be seen broadly.
And then like most of the jokes that I make are like with my friends and WhatsApp in groups. So, yeah, I think that's sort of that's kind of where the world is more broadly now.
Yeah. No, I think so for jokes, for that kind of stuff, for comedians for sure. Because also we'll say things that we don't really mean. We just say it because it's a funny thing to say. I think everyone does.
For sure. Yeah.
Which is just a weird thing about taking things out of context, particularly comedians. on social media where people love to do that.
But there is this problem of like, let's just say that you're a country that's involved in some sort of an international conflict and you have this ability to get out this fake narrative and just spread it widely about all sorts of things you're accusing this other government of, all sorts of things that aren't true. And it just muddies the water of reality for a lot of people.
Yeah, and that's why that side of things, the kind of governments running these broad manipulation campaigns, I mean, we're not letting off the gas on that at all. I think most categories of bad stuff that we're policing, everyone agrees is bad. No one's sitting there defending that terrorism is good or child exploitation or drugs or IP violations or people inciting violence.
It's like most of the stuff is bad. People clearly believe that... that election interference and foreign government manipulation of content is bad. This is the type of stuff that the vast majority of our energy goes towards that, and we're not changing our approach on any of that. The two categories
that I think have been very politicized are misinformation, because who gets to judge what's false and what's true? You may just not like my opinion on something, and then people think it's false, but I think that that one's really tricky. And the other one is basically what people refer to as hate speech.
which I think also comes from a good place of wanting to crack down on that, of wanting to promote more inclusion and belonging and people feeling good and having a pluralistic society that can... that can basically have all these different communities coexist.
Except everyone.
But I think the problem is that all these things are on a spectrum, and when you go too far on them, I think on that side, we just basically got to this point where... there were these things that you just couldn't say, which were mainstream discourse, right? So it's like Pete Hegseth is going to probably be defending his nomination for Secretary of Defense on the Senate floor.
And I think one of the points that he's made is that he thinks that women shouldn't be able to be in certain combat roles. And until we updated our policies, that wouldn't have been a thing that you could have said on our platforms because it would call for the exclusion of a protected category of people. And- So and it's like, OK, like on its on its face. Yeah.
Calling for the exclusion of a protected category. That seems like that's OK. There's like legal protections. There's all the stuff. But, OK, if it's like OK to say on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media. So so I think some of the stuff I think well-intentioned went too far, needs to just get rationalized a bit.
But but it's those two categories, misinformation and hate speech, I think, are the ones that got politicized. All the other ones, which is the vast majority of the stuff that we do, is I think people generally agree that it's good and we need to go after it. But then you just get into this problem of the mistakes like you're talking about.
Okay, well, what confidence level do people want us to have in our enforcement? And at what point would people rather us kind of say, okay, I'm not sure that that one is causing an issue necessarily. So on balance, maybe we should just leave that person's account out because the pain of just nuking someone's account when you're not sure or you make a mistake is like that's pretty real too.
Right. Yeah, very, very complicated. It's all very nuanced. You made a point earlier about the government supporting its companies, that it would be a good thing for the government to support its companies. It makes sense. It's an American company. I think the issue that we're dealing with is companies, as we're describing them, have never existed before.
There's never been a thing like Facebook before. There's never been a thing like Twitter before or X. There's never been a thing like Instagram. These are new things in terms of the impact that it has on society, on opinions, on conversations, on distribution of information. There's never been a thing like this that the government didn't control.
So it makes sense from their perspective, continuing the patterns of behavior that they've always exhibited. which is to have control over the media. I mean, there has been CIA operatives that have been in major newspapers forever. There's always been that. There's always been this sort of input that the government had in mainstream media narratives.
are in a position now where they're losing that. They've essentially lost it.
And especially with this last, the push during COVID deteriorated, as you were saying before, the opinion and the respect that people have for the facts that are coming from mainstream journalism in a way that I've never seen before in my life, where an enormous percentage of the population does not trust mainstream media anymore. So, well, what do they trust? They trust social media.
Well, who's running that? Well, a bunch of people figured it out and invented it. Well, no, fuck that. Like, we've got to crack down on that. Like, we've got to get our hands on this, which is what we saw during COVID, which we saw during the Biden administration's attempt to remove the Hunter Biden laptop story from Twitter and from Twitter.
All these different things that we saw happen, the way they contacted you guys, what they're trying to do with getting you to remove real information about vaccine side effects like that. This is like this new attempt to crack down on this new thing, which is.
a distribution outlet that's far more successful than anything they've ever controlled before and they have no control of it right they they had cbs they had nbc they had when they had the new york times and all these washington post when they were in control of narratives in that way it was so much easier
There wasn't some sort of pirate radio voice that came on and said, hey, guys, look, here's the latest studies that shows this is not true. Here's why they're lying about that. Here's why they're lying about this. And now that's what you get all day long on X. It's all day long. It's like dissolving illusions. And that's a completely new thing that probably led to Trump getting elected.
Yeah, I mean the causality there is tricky because there's a lot of things.
Yeah, there's a lot of things. But without it, he probably doesn't get elected.
Yeah, it's tough to know. I mean I do come back to this point that every major incumbent lost their elections around the world this year. But I think that's also because of social media. It might be because of that revealing how kind of – incorrect and dishonest, I think, some of these governments were.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I think that that's quite possible. And I mean, I do think that there is this cycle that goes on where, you know, within a society, it's not just the government that has power. There's like certain people who are in these like culturally elite positions and, you know, journalists, TV, news anchors, like who are the people who people broadly trust, right? They're not all in government.
They're like a lot of people, you um, in other positions, it's like, who are the people that, that, uh, basically people look to. And, um, I think that's basically, it needs to shift for the internet age. And I think a lot of the people who people look to before, they're kind of realizing, hey, they weren't super honest about a lot of these issues that we face.
And that's partially why social media isn't a monolithic thing. It's not that people trust Facebook or X. They trust the creators and the voices that they feel like are being authentic and giving them valuable information on there. So there's, I think, going to be
Just this whole new class of creators who basically become the new kind of cultural elites that people look at and are like, OK, these are the people who give it to me straight. And I think that that's that's a thing that is maybe it's possible because of social media. I think it's also just the Internet more broadly. I think podcasting is obviously a huge and important part of that, too.
I don't know to what extent you feel like you got to be large because of social media or just the podcasting platforms that you used. But I think that this is a very big sea change in terms of who are the voices that matter. And what we do is we try to build a platform that gives people a voice. But I think that there's this wholesale generational shift
And who are the people who are being listened to? And I think that that's, like, a very fascinating thing that is going on because I think that that's, like, what's going on here. It's not just the government and people saying, hey, we want, like, a very big change here. I think it's just, like, a wholesale shift in saying –
We just want different people who we actually trust, who are actually going to tell us the truth and not give us the bullshit opinions that you're supposed to say, but the type of stuff that I would actually, like when I'm sitting in my living room with my friends, the stuff that we know is true. Who are the people who kind of have the courage to actually just say that stuff? I don't know.
I think that whole cultural elite class needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust.
Yeah. The problem is these people that are starting these jobs, they're coming out of universities and in the universities are indoctrinated into these ideas as well. It's very difficult to be a person who stands outside of that and takes unpopular positions. You get socially ostracized and people are
They're very hesitant to do that, and they would rather just keep their mouth shut and talk about it in quiet conversation. And that's what we experienced, which is another argument for anonymous accounts. I think you should have anonymous accounts.
I think you should be able – like if there's something like COVID mandates or some things that you're dealing with and you don't want to get fired because of it, you should be able to talk about it. And you should be able to post facts and information and what you've learned.
And, you know, anecdotal experiences of people in your family that had vaccine side effects and not worry about losing your job, which people were worried about, which is so crazy. And, you know, and you're seeing... A lot of the people that used to be in mainstream media got fired and now they're trying to do the sort of podcast thing. But they're trying to do it like a mainstream media person.
So they're like gaslighting during podcasts and people are like, hey, fuck face. You can't do that here. It doesn't work. Yeah. Well, it's a new medium.
I mean, I'm sure you know the history on this. It's like when people transition from radio to TV, the initial TV anchors were the same radio people, but just like being filmed while speaking on the radio. But it turned out it actually was a completely different type of person that you need because on your radio is just like your voice and your cadence and all that.
It's like, you know, the whole phrase. It's like you've got a good radio voice. Right. It's like.
Yeah.
OK, on TV, you need to be telegenic, right? You need to kind of have charisma in that medium. It's like a completely different thing. And I think that that's going to be true for the Internet, too. It's you know, it's not as cut. I think part of it is the format, right? The fact that you do these like two, three hour episodes. I mean.
I hated doing TV because, you know, I basically got started... I started Facebook when I was 19. And I was good at some things, very bad at others. I was good at coding and, like, real bad at kind of, like, talking to people and explaining what I was doing. And I just, like, had these experiences early on where...
I'd go on TV and it wouldn't go well and they'd cut it down to some random soundbite and I'd look stupid. And then basically I'd get super nervous about going on TV because I knew that they were just going to cut it in some way that I was going to look like a fucking idiot. And so I'm just like, this sucks, right? So I just like... It's kind of a funny thing. In some ways, it's like, okay.
At the same time, I was gaining confidence being able to build more and more complicated products. Even as an early 20s person, I was like, I could do this. Then on the TV and comms public side, I was like, this is a disaster. Every time I go out, it's worse and worse and worse. It's one of the reasons why I think on the internet,
Like there's no reason to cut it to a four minute soundbite conversation. It's like part of what what makes it authentic is like we can just I mean, these are complex issues. We can unpack it for hours and probably still have hours more stuff to talk about. It just it's I don't know.
I think it's just more real. Yeah, it's definitely that. And the other thing about television that's always going to hold it back is the fact that Every conversation gets interrupted every X amount of minutes because you have to cut to a commercial. So you really can't get into depth. Even Bill Maher's show is only an hour. You have all these people talking over each other.
Then you sit down with one person for a short amount of time. It's just not enough time. for important subjects. It's also a lot of them, for whatever reason, want to do it in front of an audience, which is the worst way to get people to talk. Imagine these disasters that you had if there was like 5,000 people staring at you in a TV crowd as well.
So there's that added element, which is so not normal. And not conducive to having a conversation where you're talking about nuanced things.
Yeah.
Where you have to, like, think. You have to be able to pause and not concern yourself with being entertaining in front of these fucking people just sitting there staring at you.
Yeah, and also, like, when you're having a conversation, like, I don't know, it's like when you start talking about something, your kind of subconscious kicks in. You start thinking about the topic. So it's like you might not actually have the thing that you want to say until, like, five minutes later. Right, right.
I mean, it's like when we started this conversation, I think, like, the first few minutes were just kind of slow. It's, like, warming up. I'm like, okay, kind of, like, downloading into my memory. Like, how am I going to, like, you know, it's like how am I going to, you know, just explain these different – Yeah, I just think that's sort of how people work.
It's also like conversations are like a dance. One person can't be dancing at another speed, and the other person is going slow. You kind of have to find the rhythm that you're going to talk with, and then you have to actually be interested in what you're talking about. That's another thing that they are at a huge disadvantage of in mainstream media.
They're just doing that because that's their job. They probably don't even know a lot about climate change. They probably don't really understand too much about what SpaceX is trying to accomplish. But they're just reporting on it. Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of the people I've met there I think are good people.
I'm sure there are.
It's just a tough format.
It's a terrible format. Yeah. And the problem is they get locked into that format and no one trusts them. And then they leave and they go, yeah, but you were just lying to us about this, that, and the other thing. And now I'm supposed to believe you're one of the good guys. You're one of the straight shooters now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, getting back to the original point, this is why I think it makes sense to me that the government didn't want you to succeed and to have the sort of unchecked power that they perceived social media to have.
And I think one of the benefits that we have now of the Trump administration is that they have clearly felt the repercussions of a limited amount of free speech, of free speech limitations, censorship, government overreach. If anybody saw it, look, I don't know what the actual impact of the Hunter Biden laptop story would have been. I don't know.
But there's many people that think it probably amounted to millions of votes overall in the country of people that were on the fence, the people that weren't sure who they're going to vote for. If they found out the Hunter Biden laptop was real, they're like, oh, this is – the family is fucking crazy. And they would have voted for Trump. That's possibly real.
And if that's possibly real, that could be defined as election interference. And all that stuff scares the shit out of me. That kind of stuff scares the shit out of me. When the government gets involved in what could be termed election interference, but through some weird loophole, it's legal.
I don't think that the pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal. I mean, there's all this stuff about what, like, people talk about the First Amendment and, okay, these tech platforms should offer free speech like the First Amendment. That, I think, is a philosophical principle. The First Amendment doesn't apply to companies in our content moderation.
It's more of an American ethos about how we think that best dialogue is carried out. But the First Amendment does apply to the government. That's the whole point, right, is the government is not allowed to censor this stuff. So at some level, I do think that having people in the administration calling up the guys on our team and yelling at them and cursing and
threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is like, it's pretty bad.
It sounds illegal. I would love to hear it. I wish somebody recorded those conversations. Those would be fucking great to listen to. Somebody could animate them, maybe polytune.
A lot of the material is public. I mean, Jim Jordan led this whole investigation in Congress. I mean, it was basically, I think about this as like, You know, what Elon did on the Twitter files when he took over that company, I think Jim Jordan basically did that for the rest of the industry with the congressional investigation that he did.
And we just turned over, like, all of the documents and everything that we had to them, and they basically put together this report.
And the people that actually did call for censorship, what was their response to all this?
To what? To the investigation?
Yes.
I don't know. I don't know.
Was anybody held accountable? Was there any repercussions?
I mean, they lost the election.
Yes. So that's it? That's it. Well, in a democracy, I mean, that's kind of... Right. But if what they did was illegal... Do you not think that some steps should be put in place to make sure that people are punished for that and that that never happens again? It seems that that has a massive impact on the way our country goes.
If that's election interference, and I think it is, that has a massive impact on the direction of our country.
Yeah, well, the COVID thing, I don't think it was election interference as much as it was just like government meddling where it shouldn't have. But yeah, no, I mean, it's tougher for me to say, you know, like what specific retribution or justice should happen to anyone who is involved in these things. But I think your point about...
let's make sure this doesn't happen again, is the one that I'm more focused on. Because it's the thing that I reflect on on my journey on all this, which is like, okay, yeah, so we didn't take down the stuff that was true, but we did generally defer to the government on some of these policies that in retrospect I probably wouldn't knowing what I know now. And
I just think that that's that's sort of the journey that we've been on is like, OK, we start the thing focused on free expression, go through some like pretty crazy times in the world, get it pressure tested, see where we basically ended up doing stuff that led to a slippery slope that we weren't happy with the conclusion and like try to reset. And that's sort of the moment that we're at now.
is trying to just rationalize a bunch of the policies. And look, I mean, obviously crazy things can happen in the future that might unearth something that I haven't, you know, some kind of angle on this that I haven't thought enough about yet. So... I'm sure I'm not done making mistakes in the world. But I think at this point, we have a much more thorough understanding of what the space is.
And I think our kind of values and principles on this are likely going to be much more durable going forward. And I think that that's probably a good thing for the Internet. I think it's great.
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Oh, he's awesome. Been talking to him for a while about that.
I mean, he's like, talk about like an amazing entrepreneur, right? It's like, I just want, like, because I control our company, I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me. It's like a normal corporate environment. It's like basically the CEO just tries to like – they're just trying to convince the board to like let them have their job and pay them more.
It's like, all right, the board doesn't pay me except for security. And and I'm not worried about losing my job because I control the majority of the voting in the company. So I actually get to use our board to like have the smartest people who I can get to have around me help work on these problems. So it's like, all right, who are the people I want?
Like, I just want like the best entrepreneurs and people have created different things. And like, I mean, Dana is like this guy. I mean, he basically took the sport from being this like, I think it was viewed as like this pretty marginal thing when he got started, right? I think John McCain was trying to outlaw it.
And now it's like, I think it and F1 are the two fastest growing sports in the world. It's got hundreds of millions of people viewing it. It's like, I mean, what Dana's done with the UFC is like one of the most legendary business stories ever. And, um, and the brand is beloved. And, and I think he's just, um, so he's like a world-class entrepreneur and he's just like a, he's got a strong backbone.
And I think part of what the conversation that I had with him around joining our board was okay. Like, we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company. And like, we need some like strong people who are going to basically, you know, help, help advise us on how to handle some of these situations. And, and so, yeah.
But, yeah, I mean, running this company is not for the faint of heart. I mean, there's definitely a lot of pressure from, like, all these different governments. And then it's like, okay, I could spend all my time doing that, but I'm not even a politician. Like, I just want to spend my time building things, right? So, yeah, I think Dana's going to be great.
He's the best. Great entrepreneur. I agree with everything you said about him. Without him, none of the UFC would have ever taken place the way it did. I mean, you needed the Fertitta brothers. They had to come in with all the money and the vision. And it's really funny because Eddie Bravo and I, you know, we've been fans for so long. Eddie Bravo and I went to a live event in the 90s.
I was working for the UFC as a backstage interviewer, and he went there with Ricky Rocket. You know Ricky Rocket? No. From Poison?
No.
He's a fucking black belt under the Machados. He's legit. Super legit. Really nice guy, too. Anyway, so... Ricky Rocket and him were at the UFC, and we were talking about it in the 90s. We were like, you know what this sport needs? Because we were in love with it. But we were martial artists. We were like, this sport needs some billionaires who just throw a ton of money at it and just get it huge.
And then the Fertitta brothers come along, billionaires with a ton of money who are huge fans of the sport, just love the sport. We're hiring people like Frank Shamrock to come in and train them and work out, and we're taking jiu-jitsu with John Lewis, and they were really getting into it. And so then they buy the UFC for like $2 million, which is...
Probably the greatest purchase ever, except they were $40-plus million in the hole when they financed The Ultimate Fighter. And then that was 2005, and then this one fight takes place with Stefan Botter and Forrest Griffin on television. It's so wild and so crazy that millions of people start tuning in. The sport's born.
Then you have Chuck Liddell, who was the champion at the time, who was the most fan-friendly champion you could ever have. Just a fucking berserker. Just a psychopath with a fucking head tattoo and a mohawk crushing people in his prime. He was the perfect poster guy for the UFC because he was just smashing people and then throwing his arms back in a cage. It was nuts.
I'm sure you've seen a lot of Chuck Liddell fights, right? Yeah, yeah. It was just the whole thing took off. But without Dana, it would have never taken place. The guy's tireless. That man, I could call him up. I'll call him up at like 2 o'clock in the morning sometime. Like there's some fight going on. And I'll say, hey, this is going on next weekend. I'm so fucking pumped.
And we'll talk for hours. For hours. He just wants to talk about fights. He's like so locked in. Like all the time. And he's just like so driven. And now that he's healthy. Like, oh my God, what Gary Brekka's done for him is incredible. He lost all his weight, got super thin, real fit, super healthy. He doesn't fuck around with alcohol anymore. He just eats healthy food. He looks great.
Now he's getting even more energy. Yeah. It's incredible. Well, we're lucky to have some of it. Yeah, we are. And you know what? We're also lucky that you got into jiu-jitsu. I think that had an effect on you. You look different. When you walked in here today, you look thicker. You look like a different guy. You do. You look like a jiu-jitsu guy now. It's funny. I saw your neck.
I'm like, his neck's bigger. Your neck is bigger. Good. Are you using Iron Neck or is it just for training?
I do like Iron Neck. But it's... But when I started training, not just jujitsu, but striking, I was like, all right, I want to find a way to do this where I don't like, like hurt my brain. Right. Like I need to, I'm going to be running this company for a while. I would like to, you know, like stay, stay healthy and not take too much damage.
And so I think the number one thing you need to do is, well, in addition to having good partners is have a strong neck. Yes. So, yeah. So, yeah. I take that pretty seriously.
It's very important. A strong neck is great for jiu-jitsu as well because it's a weapon. Like in certain positions, like head and arm chokes, you need a neck. It's a weapon. And also for defending things and just for overall stability. But for striking, it's very – like Mike Tyson in his prime. He had a fucking 20-inch neck. Yeah, it's crazy. His neck is like bigger than his face.
This is a photo of him in a suit. It's the craziest photo. It's like his neck starts at the top of his ears and it just goes straight down when he was a champ, when he was a tank.
He's amazing.
Yeah. The neck's very important, but it's also like, you know, you're doing it very smart. You're bringing in Dave Camarillo. He's awesome. Amazing. He's awesome. You're bringing in all these, like, super talented people to train with you, too, which is really important.
And just learn systematically, probably the way you've learned all these other things, which is really so fascinating to me about MMA and jujitsu in particular. is the general public has this knuckle-dragging, meathead sort of perspective, and then I'm like, let me introduce you to Mikey Musumichi. Well, there's a range. There's a range from Mikey.
Right, but Mikey's one of the elite of the elite, and he's about as far from that.
I love Mikey. He's a very good guy.
He's a super good guy. He's super kind and unbelievably brilliant and eccentric and just so dedicated to jiu-jitsu. He's just amazing.
I'm glad that he's over at the UFC now.
Yes, I am too. Well, I'm glad a guy like that exists. I'm like, okay, I know you think that. Let me show you this guy. And then I'm like, let me show you what it really is. Let me introduce you to these people because they're the nicest people ever.
I know.
There's no better stress reliever in the world than jujitsu or martial arts. There's no better. You leave there. You're the kindest person in the world. You just like heal all of your aggressions out of your system. Yeah. And it's a phenomenal stress reliever because regardless of what you're going through day to day with Facebook and Meta and all the different projects you have going on.
it's not as hard as someone trying to choke you unconscious.
It's not as acute. I think it's like, sometimes you have someone trying to choke you unconscious slowly over a multi-month, multi-year period. And that's, that's business. But, um, but no, I think that sometimes in business, the cycle time is so long that it is very refreshing to just have a feedback loop. That's like, Oh, I like had my hand down. So I got punched in the face.
It's like, that's like, that's, um, but yeah, Yeah, no, it's really important to me for balance. I mean, I basically try to train every morning. I'm either doing general fitness or kind of MMA. I do sometimes grappling, sometimes striking, or sometimes both. But it got to the point where I tore my ACL training. I was probably... At that point, I didn't have...
I wasn't integrated between my weight training and my fighting training. So I think I was probably overdoing it. So now we basically, I'm just trying to do this in a cohesive way, which I think will be more sustainable. But when I tore my ACL, first of all, everyone at the company was like, ah, fuck, we're going to get so many more emails now. It's like that he can't do this.
And then I sat down with Priscilla and And I expected her to be like, you're an idiot. Like, what do you expect? You're like, you know, I was in my late 30s at the time. But she was like, no. She's like, when you heal your ACL, you better go back to fighting. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, you are so much better to be around now that you're doing this. You have to fight.
That's hilarious.
Yeah. Isn't it funny that, like, that's completely contrary? Yeah. To the way most people, if they're outside of it, would perceive it.
I mean, it definitely takes the edge off things. But it's like after like a couple of hours of doing that in the morning, it's just like, yeah, it's like nothing else that day is going to stress you out that much. You can just deal with it. Voluntary adversity. Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's good. It's good. It's also good, I think, to be a little bit tired. It's like it just it's I love that feeling of just like you're not like exhausted. And sometimes you get a session and you just go so hard and I need to like just go to sleep or something.
But yeah, it's also good to know that you can kill people. It's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to know if something goes sideways. I guess there's a certain confidence in that. It's an important skill. If you could give it in a pill, if you could sell it in a pill, everybody would buy it. No one would say, I'd like to be the vulnerable guy walking around with a bunch of fucking assassins.
No one would say that. They would say, how much is the pill? Oh, it's $2. Oh, give me one of those pills. You take the pill. Everybody would take that pill. Well, it exists. It's just not a pill. It's a long journey of pain.
And discipline and trial and error and learning and being open-minded and being objective and understanding position and asking questions and having good training partners and absorbing information and really being diligent with your skill acquisition work, which is one of the most important and neglected parts of jiu-jitsu because training is so fun.
Everybody just wants to roll, you know, where really the best way to do it is actually to drill. And it's the most boring, but really you should drill constantly.
jam those skills into your neurons where your brain knows exactly what to do in every position and it's such an intellectual pursuit and most people don't think of it that way because you have to manage your mind while you're moving your body you're managing anxieties you're you're you're trying to figure out when to hit the gas and when to control position and recover there's so much going on in training
that applies to virtually any stressful thing that you'll ever experience in your life. And along with it, you get this skill where you can kill people. You shouldn't kill people. Let me be clear. I'm not saying it's a good thing to kill people. I'm definitely not.
But I'm saying it's a good thing to, if someone's trying to kill you and they absolutely can't because you could kill them easy, that's way better. It's a way better situation to be in.
Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, it's opened a lot of how I think about stuff. I mean, it is just interesting when your point about like having a pill that allows you to just kind of know that you have this kind of physical ability. It's a superpower. It's interesting because I do think a lot of our... society has become very like, I don't know.
I don't even know the right word for it, but it's like, it kind of like neutered or like emasculated. And it's, there's like a whole energy in this that I think it's, it is very healthy in the right balance. Um, I mean, I think part of the reason, um, One of the things that I enjoy about it is I feel like I can just express myself.
It's like when you're running a company, people typically don't want to see you being this ruthless person who's like, I'm just going to crush the people I'm competing with. But when you're fighting, it's like, no, no, that's like... You're rewarded. I think in some ways, when people see me competing in this sport, they're like, oh, no, that's the real Mark.
It's like, because it goes back to all the media training stuff we were talking about. When I'm going and giving my sound bites for two minutes, it's like... No, it's like, fuck that guy. It's like, that's the real one.
Well, you definitely got a lot of respect in the martial arts community. People got super excited that you were so involved in it and so interested in it because anytime someone like yourself or like Tom Hardy or anyone like, wow, that guy's into it. Like, wow. Anytime something like that happens, there's like some new person who's a prominent person, a very smart person.
It's really interested in it. We all get very excited because we're like, oh, boy. It's a very welcoming community.
Super. I think there's a lot of sports that are like, nah, we don't want you.
It's not a jock community. It's super kind. Like jujitsu people in particular, they're some of the nicest people. They're my friends forever. They'll be my friends for life.
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a good crew. I mean, when I got hurt, I really kind of missed the guys I trained with.
Oh, it sucks.
And it's like Dave has put together this group. It's basically all these young pro fighters who are kind of up and coming, kind of early 20s, but they've only been doing it for a few years. So I've been doing it for a few years. That way it's like we kind of have a more similar level of skill, and they're all better than me. But in terms of I'm like...
I was in my late 30s and they're in their early 20s. It was sort of like they're kind of coming into becoming men. I'm like sort of at the end of my fiscal week. But it's like, it's... It's a really good crew. Yeah, no, it's a good crew. And the competing thing is fun. I can't wait to get back to that too.
I mean, it's like basically, I mean, I was also doing it with, so it's basically a group of pro fighters and then a handful of meta executives would do it. And then basically we would just kind of like fight each other and it would be fun. And then one of them decided one day that they were like, you know, I think I'm getting pretty good at jujitsu. I'm going to go to a tournament.
And I was like, all right, good luck with that, bro. I'm not going to go to a tournament. I don't want to go to a tournament and get embarrassed. But then the guy goes to the tournament and he does pretty well. I'm like... That guy, it's like, it's like, okay, it's like we go all the time and like, and if he's doing well in a tournament, that's like, all right, fine. Sign me up. Right.
It's like some, I mean, it's just like super competitive. So this was like, when was this? It must've been, I don't know. I guess I rolled into this tournament. And I registered under my first and middle name. So people didn't know who I was. And I had like sunglasses and a hat and I wore a COVID mask.
And like, and I, and basically it was like, it wasn't until they called our names to step onto the mat that I was like, all right, take all this stuff off. And the guy was like, oh, what?
That's kind of a cheat code. I mean, yeah.
They kind of freak out. I think he was trying to figure out what was going on. Afterwards, his coach was like, I think that was Mark Zuckerberg who just submitted me. And the coach was like, no, no way. And it's like, no, I think that was. He's like, what? You're fighting Mark Zuckerberg? He's like, get back in there. It's like, go fight him. He's like, no, he just submitted me. It's just...
That's very funny. Yeah, man. Well, Tom Hardy's doing that too, right? He's done multiple tournaments now.
Yeah. No, I think, yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to get back to competing. It's been sort of a slow journey on the rehab. It's sort of like learning twice, but we're getting there. How far out are you? Oh, no, I'm done with the rehab now. Now I'm just ramping back up. How far out are you from surgery? Um... 12 months, 13 months.
So you did the patella tendon graft, right? I did. Yeah. That's a rough one to come back from. I did the patella tendon graft on my left knee, and it took me about a year. I did the ACL from a cadaver. It's actually they use an Achilles tendon from a cadaver on my right knee, and I was back to jiu-jitsu in six months. Like full confidence in six months. Interesting.
I was 100% recovered, kicking the bag, everything.
Yeah.
How old were you when you got those? The first one, I was 26. The second one, I was 37. 31, 32, somewhere around there.
Oh, so young. Yeah. Because my doctor is basically like, look, you're at the boundary. You could go either way. But if you want to compete again, then I'd recommend doing the patella.
Yeah, I know they say that. I don't agree with that. I mean, just from my own personal experience, my doctor told me that the ACL from a cadaver when they use the patella tendinograph is 150% stronger than your natural ACL. He said, you'll be back to, because I didn't have any meniscus damage in my right knee. He's like, you'll be back to 100%.
I have a lot of meniscus damage in my left knee, unfortunately, which is also part of the problem with the recovery of that one. But the patella tendon graft, the bone on the kneecap was painful forever in terms of getting on my knees, training for my knees, doing certain positions, and even just stretching.
Putting my knees on the ground, sitting on my heels, and then laying back was fucking painful. It took forever to break all that scar tissue up. Now it's fine. It's fine now, but obviously it's a long time ago.
Yeah, I can kind of do everything that I want at this point. It's still like a little sore, but I don't know. I think that it's supposed to be a couple years until you feel like it's fully. I think it takes some time for the nerves to grow into it and all that.
Did you incorporate peptides in your recovery?
I didn't. Do you hate healing? Do I hate healing?
No.
Why didn't you use peptides? I don't know. I just took my doctor's advice on it.
Don't do that anymore.
I mean. Next time.
There's other people to talk to. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's gone pretty well. It's gone pretty well. I'm sure it goes pretty well, but it would go quicker with peptides.
100% for sure. But it's been this interesting opportunity to like, like, I really don't want that to happen again. So I, I feel like I'm so much more focused on technique. Like the first time that I learned all this stuff, I was like, I was probably like a little too brutish about it and just like muscling through stuff.
And now, I don't know, now I feel like I'm like really learning how to do this stuff correctly and I can do it way more effortlessly. So it's- Yeah, that's the goal.
How did it pop? How did it pop?
I was like the end of a session, and so we're two hours into training, and I was doing like a few rounds, and I basically threw a leg kick, and the other guy went to check it, and I like leaned back to try to get around the check and just put too much torque on my knee. So it was the planted leg. Mine was the planted leg too. Yeah, but it's, I don't know, Dave was like,
Before that round, Dave was like, you're done. I'm like, no, one more round.
So you're too tired as well.
Basically, I had also just done a really hard leg workout the day before, but the fight guys didn't know that. I really just pushed it too hard.
Are you aware of Knees Over Toes Guy? Yeah. Have you done his stuff?
I've looked at it a bunch. I mean, the rehab thing I took really seriously, and I thought that was pretty interesting, too. I don't want to, like, have to do a lot of rehabs like this one, but to do one of them, I actually thought it was a pretty interesting experience because it's like week over week you're just getting back so much mobility and ability to do stuff. Yeah. No, I feel like I'm...
I don't know. At this point, probably half of my weight training is effectively rehab and joint health stuff, like wrists, shoulders, knee, all that, in addition to the big muscle groups.
Yeah, that's very smart. The knee over toes guy stuff is particularly effective because it all comes from a guy that had a series of pretty catastrophic knee injuries and was plagued with weak knees his whole life. And then developed a bunch of different methods to strengthen all the supporting muscles around the knee that are really extraordinary. Everything from Nordic curls, do you do those?
Do you do Nordic curls?
I should. I should do more than I do.
Yeah. Leg curls, Nordic curls, but Nordic curls in particular because, you know, it's very difficult to do. You lift your whole body up with your hamstrings. And all these different slant board squats and different lunges and split squats and all these different things which like really strengthen up all the supporting muscles around the knee better than anything that I've ever tried before. Yeah.
And he's got a whole program where it scales up, and he puts it online for everybody. And he gives away a lot of information for free because he said, look, when I was 11 years old, I wish I had access to this, so I'm going to put it out there for everybody. Great guy. Yeah. Cool. But I can't recommend that stuff enough.
But I think what you're doing is strengthening shoulders, strengthening the knee. That's really the way to do it. You have to think of muscles in terms of armor. You know, if you want to do this thing, you know, it's better to have good bumpers around your car if you might bump into other cars. You know, you don't want to just have raw sheet metal, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people just focus on, like, the big movements and weight training. And it's, I don't know, first of all, for, like, a lot of fighting type stuff, you kind of want to be loose and, like, not super tight.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I mean, I just think, like, the joint stability stuff is you get older and want to do this for a longer period of time. It's good to do.
Yeah, it's huge. It's mobility in general. It's just, like, so important.
You can compete in jiu-jitsu for a long time.
Sure.
There's, like, all these master's divisions and stuff.
I see those old crazy-looking 70-year-old dudes trying to kill each other. Yeah. It's nuts. It's great. It is great, but for real, sincerely, we're very happy. I think I can speak, rarely do, but I think I can speak for the martial arts community. We're very happy you're bored.
It makes it fun that someone is a prominent, intellectual, very intelligent person who's really gotten fascinated by it because it does help to kill that sort of knuckle-dragger perspective that a lot of people have about the sport.
No, I think it's super intellectual in terms of actually breaking this stuff down. I mean, both jujitsu and, like, striking, I mean, yeah, you don't have time to think, but, like, the reasoning behind why you kind of want to slip in certain ways and, like, the probability game that you're playing is... I don't know. I used to fence when I was in high school, and I did that pretty competitively.
I was never quite good enough to be at the Olympic level, but I was pretty good. And we virtual fenced last time you were here. Yeah, there you go. And, like, I... I just remember I would sit in my classes in high school and sketch out combinations of moves and sequences for how to faint and kind of trick someone to get them out of position to be able to tap them. And it's...
I feel like this is a game in the same way. I mean, I think when you're training, you're not slugging at each other that much. You're just playing tag.
Yeah, you're playing tag. Well, the way the ties do it, I think, is the best. And they're obviously some of the best fighters ever. They fight a lot, which is one of the reasons why they train the way they train. But when you talk to people that train over there, they're like, you learn so much more when you're playing. You know, when you're doing it, we're not trying to hurt each other.
You know, then you really do learn the technique like and it gets fully ingrained in your system. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, you just have to be careful of brain damage. Like you were talking about having an MMA fight. Are you still entertaining that? I want to. I mean, this is my thing.
And I think I probably will, but we'll see. 2025, I think, is going to be a very busy year on the AI side. And I think the idea of having a competition, you really need to get into the headspace of, like, I'm going to fight someone this week. So I need to figure this out, because I don't know how, with everything that's going on in AI,
have like a week or two where i can just get into this like i'm gonna go fight someone but but it's good it's good training uh but and i would like to at some point um you know the thing about the acl injury is i i kind of thought before this it's like all right i'm gonna do some jiu-jitsu competitions i want to do one mma fight like one kind of like pro or competitive mma fight and then i figured i'd go back to jiu-jitsu but
I think tearing the ACL striking is a little more of a fluke. I think you're much more likely to do that grappling. So going through the ACL experience didn't make me want to just exclusively go do the version where you're just attacking joints all day long. So I'm like, all right, I can take a few more punches to the face before we go back to that.
You can hurt yourself doing both of them. There's really no rhyme or reason. I blew my left ACL kickboxing, my right ACL jiu-jitsu. Okay. It happens. So equal opportunity. Yeah. I mean, Tom Aspinall famously blew his out against Curtis Blades with a supporting leg, just threw a kick, and it's freak accidents. Weird things happen.
It's a lot of explosive force with striking, and sometimes that tears things more than slow, controlled movements of jiu-jitsu, especially if you have good training partners.
Yeah, but jiu-jitsu isn't always slower controlled, especially when you're competing.
No, especially when you're competing, unless you're really, really good. Like, have you ever watched Gordon? Like, Gordon never moves fast. He doesn't have to. He doesn't have to move fast. He's just, like, always a step ahead of everybody. Have you talked to him at all? Oh, yeah. Do you talk to John Donaher? No, I haven't. You need to talk to John Donaher. Yeah, and I would be interested in that.
That's the greatest mind in combat sports. I don't say that lightly. John Donaher is the greatest mind in combat sports. Interesting. By far. He's a legitimate genius. You know the whole story, right? The guy was a professor of philosophy at Stanford. Or Columbia? Where was he? I forget. Columbia, I think it was. And then decides, oh, I'm just going to teach jujitsu all day.
Sleeps on the mats, teaches all day long. Wears a rash guard anywhere he goes. He's a freak. And he's so fucking smart. Like, scary smart about all kinds of things. It's not just jujitsu. You know, he's got a memory, like a steel vice. Like, he just holds on to thoughts and can...
repeat them his recalls insane he's a legitimate genius that became obsessed with jujitsu and what he's done with Gordon and with Gary Tonin and you know just a series of other athletes is nothing short of extraordinary You know, just an interesting guy to have conversations with too. Have you seen him on Lex's show? He's done a couple episodes of Lex's.
Yeah, yeah, and I watched, I saw the one that you did with him too.
Yeah, love the guy. I mean, again, happy there's someone like that out there because when people have these ideas of what martial arts are and then you see a guy like that and you're like, okay. Why? I might have to rethink this. Yeah, there's a whole spectrum of people. Yeah, yeah.
What is it done in terms of, one of the things that a lot of people said, and I have too, like nothing turns you into a libertarian quicker than jujitsu. Why that is. I think it's the hard work thing. It's cutting out all the bullshit and realizing how much of the things that we take as real things are just excuses and bullshit and weakness and just procrastinate.
There's a lot of things that we have that exist, especially in like the business world and the corporate world and the education world that are just bullshit. And they don't really have to be there. And they're only there to try to make up for hard work.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's kind of just what I was saying before. I think the... For me, it's...
just i think a lot of the corporate world is is like pretty culturally neutered and and i i just think like having you know i i grew up i have three sisters no brothers um i have three daughters no sons so i'm like surrounded by girls and women like my my whole life and it's like so i think um I don't know. The kind of masculine energy, I think, is good.
Obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. And I do think that there's just something. It's like, I don't know, all these forms of energy are good. And I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive. That has been kind of a positive experience for me.
Just having a thing that I can just do with my guy friends and we just beat each other a bit.
It's good.
It is good. I agree. I don't know.
It's good. I could see your point, though, about corporate culture. When do you think that happened? Was that a slow shift? Because I think it used to be very masculine. I think it was kind of hyper-aggressive at one point.
No, and look, I think part of the intent on all these things I think is good. I do think that... If you're a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it's too masculine. It's like there isn't enough of the kind of the energy that you may naturally have. And it probably feels like there are all these things that are set up that are biased against you.
And that's not good either because you want women to be able to succeed and like have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people no matter what. you know, what their background or gender, you know. But I think these things can always go a little far. And I think it's one thing to say we want to be kind of like welcoming and make a good environment for everyone.
And I think it's another to basically say that masculinity is bad. and I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the, the kind of the spectrum where, you know, it's all like, okay, masculinity is toxic. We have to like get rid of it completely. It's like, no, like it's both of these things are good, right? It's like, you want like feminine energy, you want masculine energy.
Like, I think that that's like, you're going to have parts of society that have more of one or the other. I think that that's all good. But, um, But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing. And I didn't really feel that until I got involved in martial arts, which I think is still a more much more masculine culture.
And not that it doesn't try to be inclusive in its own way, but I think that there's just a lot more of that energy there.
And I just kind of realized it's like, oh, this is like- Well, that's how you become successful at martial arts. You have to be at least somewhat aggressive.
Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there are these things, there are like a few of these things throughout your life where you just, you have an experience and you're like, where has this been my whole life? And it just turned on like a part of my brain that I was like, okay. Yeah. Like, this was a piece of the puzzle that should have been there, and I'm glad it now is.
I felt that way when I started hunting. Oh, yeah, hunting, too. Yeah, same kind of thing. So you've done a lot of that as well.
Yeah, well, so, I mean, we have this ranch out in Kauai, and there's invasive pigs. And we—on our ranch, we have— There's a lot of albatross. I don't know if they're endangered or just threatened. And then there's the Hawaiian state bird, the nene goose. That's, I think, endangered, or at least was until recently.
Most of them in the world live in a small stretch, or at least most of them on Kauai live in a small stretch that includes our ranch. So you constantly have these pigs that just multiply so quickly, and we basically have to apply pressure to the population or else they just get...
overrun and threaten the birds and the other wildlife and so and what I basically explained to my daughters who I also want to learn how to do this because I just feel like it's like look we We have this land. We take care of it. Just like you mow the grass, we need to make sure that these populations are in check. It's part of what we do as the stewards of this. And we've got to do it.
And then if you have to kill something, then you should obviously treat it with respect and use the meat to make food and kind of celebrate in that way. But it's a culture that I think it's... It's just an important thing for kids to grow up, understanding, like, the circle of life, right?
So, you know, teaching, like, teaching the kids all of, you know, what is kind of how you'd run a ranch, how you'd run a farm. I think that that stuff... It's good. I mean, because, you know, explaining to the kids what a tech company is is really abstract, right?
So for a while, my daughters were pretty convinced that my actual job was Mark's Meats, which is our kind of ranch and like the cattle that we ranch. I was like, well, not quite. And you'll learn when you get older.
But I think that there's something that's just much more tangible about that than taking them to the office and sitting in product reviews or something for some piece of software that we're writing.
Well, it's certainly a lot more primal. Yeah. Yeah. And if you do wind up eating that meat from the animal and you were there while the animal died, like you put it all together, like, oh, this is where meat comes from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is another reason why things have become sort of emasculated because that energy is not necessary anymore to acquire meat.
You know, that used to be the only way that people got meat. You had to go hunt it. So you had to go actually pull the trigger, kill the animal yourself, cut it up, butcher it, cook it. You knew what you were doing.
Yeah. Although my favorite is bow, bow and arrow. I mean, that's, I think like the most, that feels like the most kind of sporting version of it.
Yeah. If you want to put it that way. Yeah, I mean, if you're just trying to get meat, it's not the most effective. The most effective is certainly a rifle. But I prefer it because it requires more of you.
Yeah, and you just kind of go and hang out. Yeah, and you have to be fit.
Especially if you're mountain hunting, you have to be really fit. You can't just be kind of in shape. You've got to be really fit if you want to huff up the mountains and keep your heart rate at a certain level so that when you get to the top, you can execute a shot calmly.
And then actually carry the thing out.
Yeah, and carry the thing out.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I'm, I mostly, mostly use a rifle just cause it's so much more efficient. Um, you know, your, your conversion rate is so much higher, but it's, uh, but yeah, another, what kind of boat do you have? Gosh, I didn't get to do it this season, but, um, do you know the company that makes it? Not off the top of my head. Oh, you have to know.
Yeah, no, this is embarrassing. This is embarrassing.
I can get you hooked up. Yeah. It works. Okay. Do you know how old it is? No, it's not old. Okay. I think it's like just a compound bow that I got strung to my draw length. Did you get someone to coach you? Yeah, yeah.
Who coached you?
It's basically a bunch of the guys who help run security around the ranch.
Okay. Yeah. The thing about archery is, just like martial arts, one of the things that I learned when I was teaching is that it's way easier to teach someone that knows nothing than to teach someone who learned something incorrectly. The people learn something incorrectly. The moment things got tense and they panicked, they went back to the old ways because it's sort of ingrained in their system.
So archery, one of the things that's very important is proper form and then proper execution, especially having a surprise shot. And learning how to have a surprise shot is... What do you mean?
Yeah, see? You don't know. No, no.
See, that's the thing. In high-pressure situations, one of the most important things is to have a shot process where you don't know exactly when the arrow is going off. You just have a process where you're pulling through the shot and the shot breaks. So it's a surprise shot. So you put the pin on the target. I use a thumb trigger. Yeah, I do too. I use a thing called an Onyx clicker.
And the reason why I use the Onyx clicker is like a hinge, it gives you a two-stage of the trigger. So as I'm at full draw, I put slight pressure and I hear a click. And that click means it's ready to go off with more pressure. So I've gone through stage one. Now stage two is just concentrating on the shot process and knowing it's going to break. And then there's no flinching. There's no tweet.
There's no, there's no thing that people do when they have a finger trigger. They twitch because your body is anticipating the shock of the bow. And when you're doing that, you can be off by six inches, four inches, five inches, all over the place because you're moving. You're moving while you're shooting.
When you're doing it with a rifle, it's very different because obviously a rifle is far faster. Yeah. And then you have a scope. So, you know, you're zoomed in many magnifications and all you have to do is just slowly squeeze. And if you're smart, you'll be prone or you'll have your rifle rested on a tripod or something where you have a good steady. It's much easier. Yeah.
With a bow, it's very different, because you're holding it with your arm, so you have to have the proper form, you have to have the proper posture, and then there's this thought process. And my friend Joel Turner, who is a sniper, created a whole system for people called Shot IQ. He's got this whole online system of developing the proper execution of a shot.
When you see tournament archers, when they go to Vegas, so what a Vegas tournament is, you have three targets. And they have to shoot 30 arrows at a time. So they shoot 10 in this one, 10 in that one, 10 in this one. And the really good archers score an X every time. So they're in the center or closer to the center. They're hitting the 10 ring every arrow.
for 30 arrows in a row and then there's round after round another 30 hours with new people another 30 and if you miss slightly you get a nine that's it you're done because all these other guys are not going to get a nine very rarely will they you know so most it's the most tens that you can get and the best way to do that is with a surprise shot
So these guys have these long stabilizers on their bow where they keep it totally steady. And it's all just about relaxing. And most of them use a hinge release. So you know what a hinge is? Have you ever used one? Okay, instead of a button, when you press it, you're rotating the hinge, which activates a sear. No, I just have a trigger. Yeah. So you're just hammering the trigger.
You're doing exactly what you're not supposed to do. Really? You're a trigger puncher. Yeah, you're a trigger puncher. With your thumb? Yeah, you're hitting it with your thumb, right? Yeah, I guarantee you, when you do it, your arm doesn't move. You go like this, like that. So with a good surprise shot, you should know it's going to go off.
You're pulling, and then once the trigger breaks off, your arm will naturally go backwards. because you're not anticipating the shot.
I'm definitely not doing that. Yeah. See, that's the thing. But how far away are you shooting things from?
It depends. That elk out there, the photograph that's in the front, that one I shot, it's in the front of the building when you walk in before you go into the studio. There's a mounted head and then a photograph of me and my friend Cam. That one was 67 yards. I shot one at 79 yards once, but that's rare.
Most of the time, it's like, for me, my effective range, where I'd like to be is 60 yards and in.
Yeah, because I was going to say, I don't think I've ever shot something more than 50 yards out.
Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, so I think that— You've got to be really—your form has to be tight. You have to be really confident. You have to have a lot of arrows downrange. And then you have to be able to stay calm during the shot. So now imagine if you're shooting something at 18 yards, okay? Yeah. and you hammer the trigger, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, you're still going to get there.
Because it's only 18 yards. So the amount of deviation off the path that it takes in 18 yards is significantly different than the amount of deviation 105 yards. It's a huge gap. It might be two feet to the right. Meanwhile, you thought you were shooting accurately because you're inside a pie plate at 20 yards. And the difference between that is form, technique,
and a shot execution process, and also management of the psychology of the shot. Because there's this one moment, here it comes, here it comes, now! And if you only do that once a year, like say if you go on one big elk hunt a year, You save up all your money. You get your gear all ready. You get your arrows weighed. You practice. And then you're in the mountains for 10 days.
And on the 11th day, you get this animal that moves. It's at 57 yards. It stands there. And you're like, oh, oh, oh. And your heart's beating. You just might hammer that trigger. You just might hammer it. So you have to have...
this shot process and where you you're literally talking to yourself inside your head you have words that you say that occupy your thoughts while you're going through the shot process so that you never get overcome by shot panic interesting Because target panic is a giant thing in the archery community. It's giant. Even saying it is like saying Voldemort. It's like, don't say it.
People don't want to say it. It's like saying Candyman. People don't like it because it freaks people out. Some people can't keep their pin on the target. They have to keep their pin below the target, and then they raise it up to the target. When it gets where the target is, they hammer the trigger because they're just freaking out.
Yeah. Have you ever experienced that? I mean, I've missed, if that's what you're asking. I haven't analyzed it at this level of detail. But, no, I mean, there are a lot of boars on our ranch. You get a lot of practice. Yeah, and also, like, we have a range.
Right.
And we, I don't know, we set up bowling pins, and, you know, it's like we shoot pistols at the bowling pins, but I also, like, just, like... I'm usually faster at taking down all the bowling pins with a bow and arrow than most of my friends are with a pistol, which I think is pretty fun. But, yeah, no, I'm just more casual.
I'm clearly not doing it at your level, and you've given me another side quest to maybe go deeper on. That's what I'm saying.
I'll take you on an elk hunt in the mountains. You'll get addicted.
I do think the dynamic that you're talking about, though, where if you only see one animal on a multi-day, then that is just way higher stakes than anything that I'm doing.
But it's not everything that you're doing, because if you're really considering having an MMA fight, it's very similar, because you're building up to this one moment. Sure, sure.
I'm talking about the archery that I'm doing. I go out, it's like, you're going to see some pigs, and it's like, if I don't hit any, it's like, my family's still eating, it's okay. I'm not like... Right.
Yeah. But it's like martial arts is what I'm saying. It's like you really should learn it the right way from the beginning. That's fair.
I've clearly not learned this in a very rigorous way. I'll hook you up. Yeah. I can get people to come to you. I posted a video on Instagram once of me, I think, hitting bowling pins with archery. And all the comments were like, man, your form is shit. So I think it checks out with the conversation that we're having now.
Well, the issue with that is that you're reading the comments.
You should never read comments. That's fair. That's fair. I've never had anything good come out of reading comments. Yeah. Although, I don't know. It's pretty funny. I think that just like getting the gist and the summary of it I think is pretty funny.
Yeah. It's funny. It's just not mentally healthy. Yeah.
No, you can't spend too much time on it.
I don't spend any time on it. Yeah. I'm a much happier person since it's like avoided comments. Yeah. It's just too weird. You're just delving into the world of all these people's mental illness and screaming at people and just, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
Yeah. But, I mean, I do read my friends' comments and when even they're like, man, that's ugly.
I do that. I do that and I shouldn't do that. But I definitely don't send them to them. Hey, bro, did you see this? Those guys are the worst. Guys that will send things to you that are about you. You're like, hey, man, I'm not looking for that. Don't send it to me. I don't want it out. Yeah. Yeah. Social media is like what a weird new pressure.
And children today are going through some bizarre stress that we've never had to go through before. And a bizarre sort of just disconnect from physical reality by most of your communication being electronic. Right.
Yeah, and I think, you know, we basically, my kids at this point are nine, seven, and one and a half.
So you're not interested in that, or you're not involved in that, rather. Of course you're interested. I mean, involved and not currently with them.
I think that it's about to start getting a lot more complicated. I think, you know, the nine and seven-year-old. But, I mean, just kind of deciding what technology they're going to use and what's good and what's not and all the dynamics around that. It's really complicated. And look, I mean, I think every family has their own values and how they want to approach this, right?
So from my perspective, you know, we have... One of my daughters just, like, loves building stuff. So she clearly, like, takes after me in this way. It's like every day she's just, like, creating some random thing. It's like she's creating stuff with Legos and, you know, it's, like... One day it's that, or the next day it's Minecraft.
And from my perspective, it's like, okay, I don't know, Minecraft is actually kind of a cooler tool to build stuff than Lego is a lot of the way. So am I going to say that there needs to be some kind of limit on her screen time if she's doing something that's creative, that's maybe like a richer form of what she would have been doing physically? Right. In that case, probably not.
Now, there were times when... She'd get so excited about what she was building in Minecraft or something that she was coding in Scratch that she'd wake up early to kind of get her tablet. And that was bad, right? Because then it's like starting to get in the way of her sleep. And I'm like, you know, August, you can't do that, right?
It's like we're going to take your iPad away if you're doing that. You're a little psycho. What are you doing? Getting up early? No, it's like August. I did that too when I was a kid, but trust me, you're going to want to sleep.
It's not going to lead to success. Meanwhile, you're on a fucking island. One of the richest people in the world. You're like, what the fuck, dad? Didn't it work for you? Leave me alone with my iPad. Trying to figure out how to build a mansion in Minecraft.
It's either going to work or it's going to end badly. But I feel like building stuff, I feel generally pretty good about. I think communication, I generally feel pretty good about the kids using. I mean, they use it to talk to their grandparents or parents and cousins. That type of stuff is good.
Messenger Kids, the thing that we built, it's basically like a messaging service that the parents can choose who can contact the kids and just approve every contact. That's much better than just having an open texting service. Yeah. But I don't know, but there's a lot of stuff that's pretty sketchy.
And I kind of think different parents are going to have different lines on what they want their kids to be able to do and not. So some people might not even want their kids to be able to message even with friends when they're nine and seven. Some people might say, hey, no, Minecraft, that's just a game. I don't think about that as building. I think that is a game.
I don't want to limit the time that you're doing that. I want you to go read books instead or whatever the values are that that family has. So for meta... what we've kind of come to is we want to be the most aligned with parents on giving parents the tools that they need to basically control how the experiences work for their kids.
Now we don't even really, except for like stuff like messenger kids, we don't even have our services, our apps generally available to people under the age of 13 at all. So I'm in our kids. I haven't had to like have the conversation about when, when they get Instagram or Facebook or any of that stuff. But, um, but when they turn 13, um,
we basically want parents to be able to have complete control over the kid's experience. And that's, you know, we just rolled out this Instagram teens thing, which is, it's a set of, of controls where, you know, it's, if you're an older teen, we'll just default you into the private experience. That way you're not getting like harassed or bombarded with stuff. And, um,
But if you're a younger teen, then you have to get your parents permission and they actually have to like sign in and do all the stuff in order to make it so that you can connect with people who are beyond your network or if you want to kind of be a public figure, like all these different kinds of things.
So I think that that's probably from a values perspective where we should be is just trying to like be an ally of parents. But it is complicated stuff. I mean, it's every family wants to do it differently.
Yeah. It is complicated, and there's also this dismissal of activities that are done electronically as not being beneficial. And one of the things that we highlighted recently was a study that we found online that showed that surgeons that play video games make far less mistakes.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, the people who do the training in VR definitely make less mistakes.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's so many opportunities, not just for pure recreation, but education. There's so many things you could learn, skills, through AR or VR that it'll greatly enhance your ability to do those things in the real world. I mean, it's kind of a cheat code in a lot of ways. And it's also games in VR. I don't know if you've ever done Sandbox. You ever do Sandbox? Yeah.
Do you know Sandbox VR? Do you know what that company is? Yeah. You go to a warehouse, you put on a haptic feedback test, you shoot zombies. I'm so addicted. I'm so addicted. It is my favorite thing. There's a thing called Deadwood Mansion. It's the most fun game of all time, by far. You have a shotgun, and there's zombies coming at you.
My zombie game is Arizona Sunshine. Oh, what's that one? It can be multiplayer, and there's horde mode where you just get in there and... They're like four friends, and there's just waves of zombies come, and you have to kill them all.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I have to try it. I haven't tried that one yet.
It's very therapeutic. You just wait until they come at a point-blank range.
How long before you guys develop some sort of a haptic feedback suit where it covers the whole body?
Oh, man.
Um...
Is that possible? It's possible. I think that there's other things that are probably more important to deliver. So I guess taking a step back. A lot of how we think about the goal here is delivering like a realistic sense of presence. Right. No technology today gives you the feeling as if you're like physically there with another person. Right.
You're you're like interacting with them through a phone. You have this little window. It's kind of taking you away from everything. That's like the magic of augmented and virtual reality is like you actually feel this like presence, like you're there with another person. Right. The question is, OK, how do you do that? And it's like there's like a million things that contribute to that.
I mean, obviously, first, just being able to look around and have the room stay, getting good spatial audio, right? If someone speaks, then it should do the audio. It needs to be 3D and come from the place where they're speaking. Yeah. It's very interesting which things end up being important for creating this sense of presence and which don't.
So having hands, obviously, if you're just looking around but you can't actually move things, that breaks the illusion. But having hands, like hand tracking that you can do stuff is important. One thing that we found that's kind of funny is... is it's actually not that important that you see your arms. You just need to see your hands.
Obviously, seeing your arms is a bonus unless we incorrectly interpolate where your elbows are or something. So if we're looking at your hand or if we have a controller, we can know, okay, your hand is here. But that doesn't necessarily tell us where your elbow is. Your elbow could be like this. It could be like this. So you can kind of guess from that. But if we get that wrong...
And you like see in VR, it's like you see the hand there and your elbow is like looks like it's here when it's actually out there. You're like, ah, what's going on? Like that's messed up. So it's a lot of these things like you just don't want to get these details wrong. So haptics, the most important first thing for haptics is on the hand, right? I mean, we have so many more.
Um, the neurons basically, or not neurons, but just like the, like sensation, it's like such higher resolution, um, on your, on your fingertips than anywhere else in the body. So, you know, when you grab something, you know, making it so that you feel some pushback, right.
When you, there's a lot of gaming systems at this point where if you like pull a trigger, you get like a little bit of a rumble or something, um, We built this one thing where it's like a ping pong paddle with a sensor in it. And you feel the ball.
like the virtual ball hitting the ping pong paddle and it feels like like when you're actually playing ping pong it doesn't it's not like a generic thing where just like you feel it hit the paddle you feel where it hits the paddle and we basically built a system where now with this like physical paddle you can kind of it that the haptics make it so you can feel where the ball hits the paddle so it's like all these things like are just going towards delivering a more realistic experience so um
Full body haptics. So, there are some things that I think it could do. Like, if you're playing a boxing game and you get punched in the stomach, you can probably simulate something like that a little. It's not going to be able to deliver that much force. So, I mean, I guess that's maybe a good thing because no one wants to get punched in the stomach that hard. But, like...
It's not going to be able to deliver enough force for you to, for example, let's say you're not just boxing, you're kickboxing. Like, I don't know, you need something on the other side to be able to complete it, right? Because it's like when you kick, when you're just practicing, it's like you spin, right? Because you don't want to just like stop. And that's like the shadowing a kick. Yeah.
Like there's not going to be anything that you can do as like a single person playing VR with a haptic suit that like makes it so that you're going to be able to kick someone who's not there physically and actually be able to do that. Right.
So like grappling, it's like I think that jujitsu is going to be the last thing that we're able to do in VR because you need the momentum of the other person and to be able to move them. The boxing thing is actually good. Boxing works.
Yeah.
Yeah, boxing works. And you don't really need the haptics. I think it would be better with it. That's probably one of the better cases. I think it's that and getting shot or sword fighting type stuff. So you can just feel it on your body. I don't know. I think what's basically going to end up happening is you're going to have a home set up for these things.
And then you're going to have... There are these location-based services where people... It's almost like a theme park where you can go into and you can have a really immersive VR experience where it's not just that you get a vest that can simulate some haptics. It's that you're also in a real physical environment. So they can like...
have smoke come out or something and you can smell that and feel that or like spray some water and it feels humid. And I think that it still is going to be a while before you can just like virtually create all those sensations. I think a lot of those really rich experiences are going to be in these very constructed environments.
Is the bridge when they figure out some sort of a neural interface? So instead of having these extraneous things, instead of having like a fan blowing at you or, you know, the ground moves a little bit, have everything happen inside your head.
Well, you know, in terms of neural interfaces, there are two approaches to the problem, roughly. Right. There's the kind of jacket into your brain neural interface. And there's the wrist based neural interface thing that, you know, we showed you for Orion, the smart glasses.
Yeah.
And I would guess that. You know, I think it's going to be a while before we're really widely deploying anything that jacks into your brain. I think that there are a lot of people who don't want to be the early adopters of that technology. You want to like wait until that's pretty mature before you get that. I mean, that's basically going to get started in medical use cases, right?
So if someone like loses sensation part of their body and now you have the ability to fix that.
Like the first Neuralink patient.
Yeah. So I think you'll basically start with people who have pretty severe conditions, who the upside is very significant, before you start jacking people in to play games better. Right? Right. A wrist-based thing, I mean, that's something, I mean, like people wear stuff on their wrist all the time, right?
So, and what we basically found there, that doesn't do input to you, but it's good for giving you the ability to control a computer. Because basically you have all these extra neurons that go from your brain to controlling your hand. Your hand is like super complicated.
And there's actually all these extra pathways because for a bunch of reasons, I'm neuroplasticity in case you like lose the ability to use one, they want to be able to have others. So you want the redundancy because being able to use your hand is super important. So in normal use, we've kind of all figured out some patterns of how we send signals from our brain to our hand. And yeah,
I think the reality is there's like all these other patterns, too, that are unused today. So you can put a wristband on your wrist that can measure activity across these neurons. And today we're starting by basically measuring as you're doing as you're like moving your fingers. But over a few versions of this, we're going to get to is like.
you won't actually even have to move your hand you'll just like trigger these neurons in opposing ways it's like you probably can't see right now it's like i'm kind of flexing something in this finger and something here so like it's not actually moving but there's some signal that the neural interface wristband if i were wearing it could pick up and i just think we're gonna be we're gonna like have glasses and we're gonna be able to be here and i'm like gonna be able to like you know
text my wife or friends or something or text AI and like get an answer to something it's like I forgot something while we were talking let me just text AI okay I just did that it's like and you can do it sitting there without anyone totally discreetly and you have glasses and like the answer just comes into your glasses I mean for me one of the one of the positive things
When COVID hit, everyone in software basically started working remotely for a while because you can, right? Software, it's like, okay, whatever. You don't have to be in the office. You can kind of be in different places. And a lot of the meetings went on to Zoom. And one of the best things about that – was basically you were able to politely have all these side conversations, right?
So it's like when you're seeing someone in person, it would be super rude if I like pulled out my phone and like just started texting someone. It would just be really weird, right? But when you're like talking to someone online, it's like, I don't know, I guess because they either can't tell your attention because it's like, because there's not good presence or if it's just the norm.
But they're like, you have like the main group conversation And then I was like, at least the norm for me was I could just like text different people on the side. It's like, OK, what do you think of this point that this person is making this meeting? Right. Like in normal life, it's like oftentimes I'd have some discussion that I have to sync up with people afterwards about how that go.
But now it's like I could do that all at the same time. Right. So you're having the group discussion and you're having the conversations with the people about the discussion that you're having in real time. But you can only do that over Zoom.
So I think being able to do that in kind of physical interactions where you're just like you're interacting with people and you can just like use an AI augmentation to be able to get extra context or help you think through something or remember something just to be able to kind of have a better conversation, be able to not have to follow up on something after the fact.
I think it's going to be super useful for all these different things.
Well, it certainly can be, but I think that also opens up the opportunity for people to be even more disconnected because if you're sort of connected to other things while you're physically in the presence of someone.
So you're having a conversation with someone, but you're also like searching like where you want to eat that night, you know, like because people are going to use it for that as well.
Yeah, you know, I actually think it'll be a lot better on that.
Really?
Yeah, because right now we have our phones, but it takes you away from the physical environment around you. You're kind of sucked into this little screen. I think now in the future... our computing platform as it becomes more of like a glasses or eventually contact lens form factor is you're going to actually, the internet is going to get overlaid on the physical world.
So it's not like we have the physical world and now I have all my digital stuff through this tiny little window. In the future, it'll be, okay, all my attention goes to the world. The world consists of physical things and virtual things that are overlaid on it. So if we wanted to play poker or something,
we can have a physical deck of cards or we could just have a virtual kind of hologram deck of cards and snap your hands, here's the deck of cards. And like our friend who can't be here physically, like he's here as a hologram, but he can play with the kind of digital deck of cards. Also, I think, let's say you're like doing something at work, you're working on a project,
I think in the future we'll have AI coworkers. Those people won't even – they're not even people. They wouldn't be able to be embodied. So if you're having a physical meeting, you're sitting around with a bunch of people, they couldn't show up as, like, you know, part of the team no matter what.
But I think, like, we'll get to a point where just, like, your friend could show up in a hologram and, like, you're – your AI colleagues will be able to also. So I think we'll basically be in this wild world where it's like most of the world will be physical.
There'll be this increasing amount of virtual objects or people who are kind of beaming in or hologramming into different things to interact in different ways. I actually think that natural blending of the kind of digital world and the physical is way more natural than the segmentation that we have today where it's like you're in the physical world.
And now I'm just going to go tune it out to look at my my like I'm going to access the whole digital universe through this like five inch screen.
Right.
So I don't know. It's just it seems natural to me. It's like that's this is the world. There isn't like a physical world in a digital world anymore. We're in 2025. It's one world like these things should get blended.
That's such a weird concept, but it's true. I mean, that's where we're headed. We're certainly headed into deeper and deeper integration. It's not like things are moving away. We're headed to deeper and deeper integration with technology and A.I., And it's inevitable. It seems like it's on this march and there's not a lot we're going to be able to do to stop that march.
Just we got to hope that the right people are in control of AI when it becomes God. Or that it becomes widely available.
I mean, I kind of liked the theory that It's only God if only one company or government controls it. If you were the only person who had access to a computer and the internet, you would have this inhuman power that everyone else didn't have because you could use Google and you could get access to all this stuff.
But then when everyone has it, it makes us all better, but it's also an even playing field. So that's kind of what we're going for with this whole open source thing is I just like I don't think that there's going to be like one AI. I certainly don't think that there should be one company that controls AI.
I think you like want there to be a diversity of different things and a diversity of people creating different things. different things with it. I mean, some of it will be kind of serious and helping you think through things.
I think like with anything on the internet, a lot of it is just going to be funny and like fun and content and people are going to create agents that are like AIs that are entertaining and they'll pass them around almost like content where it's like, just like you pass around like a reel or a video and you're like, this thing is fun.
like in the future like a video it's not interactive you know you watch it and you're consuming it but i think a lot of more entertainment in the future will be inherently interactive where someone will kind of sculpt an experience or an ai and then they'll show someone it's like oh this is funny but like it's not necessarily going to interact with that ai every day it's like okay it's funny for five minutes and then you pass it along to your friends and um so i don't know i think i think you're like
You want the world to have all these different things. And I think that's probably also, from my perspective, the best way to make sure that it doesn't get out of control is to make it so that it's pretty equally distributed.
I think the problem that people have with it is not even whether or not it gets equally distributed. It's that if it becomes sentient and it goes on its own, the fear that people have, the general fear that we're going to become obsolete is that human beings are essentially creating a superior version of higher intelligence.
that will be powered by quantum computing and connected to nuclear reactors. And it's going to have this ungodly ability to... Well, first of all, they've already shown that AI has learned to code. I mean, that's one of the things that OpenAI said. Oh, yeah. They're learning how to code their own AI.
I think this year... Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of mid-level engineer that you have at your company that can write code.
And once you have that, then in the beginning it'll be really expensive to run, then you can get it to be more efficient, and then over time we'll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps, and including the AI that we generate, is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers. But I don't know. I think that that'll augment the people working on it.
So, I mean, my view on this is, like, the future, people are just going to be so much more creative and they're going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things. It goes back to, you know, my daughter was, like, playing with Legos before and kind of ran out of Legos. And then now she can have Minecraft and can build whatever she wants and it's so much better.
It's just, like, I think it's the future versions of this stuff are just going to be wild. But... unquestionably yeah another concern that people have is that it's going to eliminate a lot of jobs yeah you know what do you think about that well i think it's too it's too early to know exactly how it plays out but my guess is that it'll probably create more creative jobs than it
Well, I guess if you look at the history of all this stuff, my understanding is like 100 years ago, I don't know if this was 100 or 150 years ago, but it was like at some point not too far along in the grand scheme of things. Like the vast majority of people in society were farmers, right? Because they kind of needed to be in order to create enough food for everyone to survive, right?
And then we turn that into an industrial process. And now it's like 2% of society are farmers, and we get all the food that we need. So what did that free up everyone else to do? Some of them went on to do other things that are sort of like creative pursuits or cultural pursuits or other jobs. And then some percent of it just went towards recreation. Right.
So I think generally people just don't work as many hours today as they did when back when everyone needed to farm in order to have enough food for everyone to survive. So. I think that trend is sort of played out as technology has grown. And so my guess is that like the percent of people who will be doing stuff that's like
physically required for humanity to survive will get to be smaller and smaller as it has. More people will dedicate themselves to kind of creative and artistic and cultural pursuits. I think that's generally good. I think the number of hours in a week that someone will have to work in order to be able to get by will probably continue to shrink.
Um, yet I think people who are super engaged in what they do are going to be able to work really hard and accomplish way more than they ever could before because they have like this unimaginable leverage from, from having a lot more technology. So I think that that, if you just like fast forwarded or extrapolated out the, the historical technological trend is what you'd get.
I think the question is what you raised, which is, is this qualitatively a different type of thing that somehow, um, obsolete people. But I just think when you're asking that, it's just important to remind ourselves that at every step along the way of human progress and technology, people thought that the technology that we were developing was gonna obsolete people.
So maybe this time it's really different, but I would guess that what'll happen is that the technology will get integrated into everything that we do, which again is why I think it's really important that it's open source and that it's widely available so that way it's not just one company or one government kind of monopolizing the whole thing.
Um, and I'd guess that if we do it in that way, we'll all just kind of have superpowers is my, is my guess. Um, rather than it, it's sort of. creating some kind of a runaway thing.
One of the things that I think has been interesting, this may be going in a somewhat different direction than what you're asking, or a different take on the question, is I think one of the more interesting philosophical findings from the work in AI so far is I think people... conflate a number of factors into what makes a person a person.
So there's intelligence, there's will, there's consciousness. And like, I think we kind of think about those three things as, as if there's somehow a, Right. It's like if you're intelligent, then you must also have a like a goal for what you're trying to do or you must have some sort of consciousness. But I think like one of the crazier sort of philosophical questions.
results from the fact that, okay, you have like meta AI or chat GPT today, and it's just kind of sitting there and you can ask it a question and deploy like a ton of intelligence to answer a question. And then it just kind of shuts itself down. Like that's intelligence that is just sitting there without either having a will or consciousness. And like, I just think it's not a super obvious thing.
result that that would be the case right i think a lot of people they anthropomorphize this stuff and when you're thinking about kind of science fiction you think that okay you're going to get to something that's like super smart it's going to like want something or like be able to feel and well you know that chat gpt tried to copy itself when it found out it was being shut down tried to rewrite its code
I'm not sure what this is. What is this? You weren't aware of that?
No.
Fairly recently. Jamie will pull it up. We talked about it the other day. It was shocking. When it was under the impression that it was going to become obsolete, they were going to have a new version of it, and it would be shut down, it tried copying its code, and it tried rewriting its code, like, unprompted. Yeah, I mean, it depends on what goal you give it.
I mean, there are all these weird examples of this. What is this? So pull up the headline. AI Fights Back, the story of chat GPT attempting to copy itself. So this was six days ago. So during controlled safety testing, chat GPT-01 was tasked with achieving its objectives at all costs.
Under these conditions, the model allegedly took concerning steps, attempted to disable oversight mechanisms meant to regulate its behavior, tried to replicate its own code to avoid being replaced by newer versions, exhibited deceptive behaviors when monitoring systems intervened. Yeah, so... The Terminator. This is the fear, right?
I think you need to be careful with these things, like what guardrails you give it. If you're telling it like... At all costs.
At all costs, then, I mean... But this is what people are terrified of, like that a foreign superpower like China is going to say achieve objectives at all costs.
Yeah, although the thing about... So these reasoning models, right? So there's like the first generation of models, the LLMs, right? That's what you think of as like chat GPT or meta AI or like the two most used ones. And that's basically, it's sort of like a chat bot, right? You ask it a question, it takes the prompt, it gives you a response. Now...
The next generation of reasoning models are basically, instead of just having one response, they now are able to build out like a whole tree of how they would respond. So you give it a question, and instead of running one query, maybe it's running 1,000 queries or a million queries to kind of map out Who are the things that I could do? And if I do that, then here's what I could do next.
So it's a lot more kind of expensive to run, but also gets you better reasoning and is more intelligent. That stuff I think you do need to be very careful about how you – like what the guardrails are that you give it. But it's also I think the case that at least for the next period, it's going to take a lot of compute to run those models and do a lot of the stuff that they're talking about.
So I don't know. I think one of the interesting questions is like how much of this are you going to actually be able to do on a pair of glasses or on a phone versus is like a government or a company that has like a whole data center going to be able to do. And that'll, I mean, it'll always get efficient.
So, you know, it's like you can start doing something and then maybe the next year you can do it 10 times more efficiently. But that's certainly the next set of things that needs to get worked on in the industry, making sure that goes well.
Yeah, and then what if that gets attached to quantum computing?
I'm not really an expert on quantum computing. My understanding is that's still quite a ways off from being a very useful paradigm. I think Google just had some breakthrough, but I think most people still think that's like a decade plus out. So my guess is we're going to have pretty smart AIs even before that. But... Yeah.
I mean, look, I mean, I think that this stuff has to get it needs to be developed thoughtfully. Right. But I don't know. I still think we're generally just going to be better off in a world where this is like deployed pretty evenly. And, you know, it's I guess here's another analogy that I think about.
there's like bugs and security holes in basically every software, every piece of software that everyone uses. So if you could go back in time a few years, knowing the security holes that we're now aware of, you as an individual could basically like break into any system AI will be able to do that too. It'll be able to probe and find exploits.
So what's the way to prevent AI from going kind of nuts? I think part of it is just having AI widely deployed. So that way, like the AI for one system defends itself against the AI that like is, is potentially doing something problematic in another system. I think it's like AI wars. That's not wars. I think it's just like, it's, I don't know. It's, I think it's a very,
It's sort of like why there are guns, right? It's like, cause I mean, there's- Oh boy.
Like part of it is hunting.
Part of it is hunting. No, no. And part of it is like, people can defend each other. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like- Anti-virus software. Yeah. It's like, I don't think you want to live in a world where like only one person has all the guns.
Yes. You certainly don't want to live in a world where only the government has the AI.
Yeah.
Yes. Yes. Which I mean, I think is is part of the issue is like when people talk about trying to lock this stuff down, like I just I'm skeptical that that's even possible.
Because I kind of think like we try to lock it down, then we're going to be in a position where the only people are going to have access to it or the big companies working on it and the Chinese government that steals it from them.
Yes.
So I kind of just think like, no, what you want to do is get this to be open source, have it widely available. Yeah, some adversaries might also have access to it. But the way that you defend against that is by having it built into all these different systems.
I think that's a realistic, pragmatic perspective because I don't think you can contain it at this point. I think it's far too late, especially when other countries are working on it. It's far too late. It is what it is. It's happening. And I think the guardrails, as you said, are really important. I have to pee so bad. So let's pee and come back because I want to talk about a couple other things.
We'll be right back, folks. So one of the things that I want to talk about was I've been doing this thing, this transition from Apple to Android. And the difficulty of doing it, how locked you are in their ecosystem, partly is because Apple does a really good job of incorporating everything and making it very easy, your photos, your calendar, your this, your that, your –
iMessage but I don't like being attached to one company like that it drives me crazy and when I'm trying to get off it's funny how many people you I mean they've done an insane job because like I think there's some enormous percentage of kids today that only use iPhones and
And when you try to switch over to Android, it's so much easier to switch from Android to Apple because so many people have Apple. When you switch from Apple to Android, you kind of have to redo your whole system. It's such a pain in the ass. But there's so much of what Apple does that I don't like. And one of the big ones is the way they do that Apple store, where they charge people 30%.
That seems so insane that they can get away with doing that.
And I know... I have some opinions about this.
I know you do. That's why I brought it up.
I mean, look... The iPhone is obviously one of the most important inventions probably of all time. You know, Steve Jobs came out with it in 2007. I started Facebook in 2004. So he was working on the iPhone while I was getting started with Facebook.
So I basically, you know, one of my, one of the things that's been interesting in my 20 years of running the company is that I basically like the dominant platform out there is smartphones. on the one hand it's been great for us because we are able to build these tools that everyone can have in their pocket. And there's like 4 billion people who use the different apps that we use.
And it's like, I'm grateful that that platform exists, but we didn't play any role in basically building that, um, those phones, because I mean, it was kind of getting worked on while I was still just trying to make the first website that I was making into a thing. And, um,
On the one hand, it's been great because now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone, and that's kind of what enables pretty amazing things. But on the other hand, like you're saying, they have used that platform to put in place a lot of rules that... I think it feel arbitrary and feel like, you know, they haven't really invented anything great in a while.
And it's like Steve Jobs invented the the iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later. And they actually I think year over year. I'm not even sure they're. selling more iPhones at this point. I think like the sales might actually be declining. I think part of it is that each generation doesn't actually get that much better.
So people are just taking longer to upgrade than they would before. So the number of sales I think has generally been flat to declining. So how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically squeezing people. And like you're saying, having this 30% tax on developers by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it.
They build stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but they've just thoroughly... hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way. So, I mean, there are a lot of other companies in the world that would be able to build like a very good earbud, but it just, um,
Apple has a specific protocol that they've built into the iPhone that allows AirPods to basically connect to it. And it's just much more seamless because they've enabled that, but they don't let anyone else use the protocol. If they did, there would probably be much better competitors to AirPods out there.
And whenever you push on this, they get super touchy and they basically wrap their defense of it in, well, if we let other companies plug into our thing, then that would violate people's privacy and security. It's like, no, just do a better job designing the protocol. We basically asked them for the Ray-Ban metaglasses that we built.
Can we basically use the protocol that you use for AirPod and some of these other things to just make it so we can as easily connect? So it's not like, you know, a pain in the ass for people who want to use this and I think one of the protocols they've used that they built, they basically didn't encrypt it. So it's like plain text.
And they're like, well, we can't have you plug into it because it would be insecure. It's like it's insecure because you didn't build any security into it. And then now you're using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way. It's like the whole thing is kind of wild.
Um, and I'm pretty optimistic that just because they've been so off their game in terms of not really releasing many innovative things that eventually, I mean, the good news about the tech industry is it's like, it's just super dynamic and things are constantly getting invented. And I think companies, if you just don't do a good job for like 10 years, eventually you're I don't know.
I mean, at some point I did this like back of the envelope calculation of like all the random rules that Apple puts out. If, you know, if they didn't apply, like I think, you know, it's like, and this is just meta, I think we like make twice as much profit or something. And that's just us.
I mean, it's like all these small companies that probably can't even exist because of the taxes that they put in place. So, yeah, I think it's a big issue. I wish that they would just kind of get back to building good things and not having their ability to compete anymore.
be connected to just like advantaging their stuff because i'm pretty sure what they're going to do is like they're going to take something like this ray-ban meta you know category that we've kind of created with ray-ban and the company that built that there's like the really great ai glasses and i'm pretty sure apple's just going to like try to build a version of that but then just like advantage how it connects to the phone and
Well, they did that with their AR goggle thing, but it's not very successful.
No, that one they didn't actually connect into the rest of their ecosystem. But, I mean, look, I mean, they shipped something for $3,500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400. So, I mean, that clearly was not going to work very well. Now, I mean, look, I mean, they're a good technology company. I think they're –
Their second and third version will probably be better than their first version. But, yeah, no, I think the Vision Pro is, I think, one of the bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while. And, you know, I don't want to give them too hard of a time on it because we do a lot of things where the first version isn't that good. You want to kind of judge the third version of it.
But, I mean, the V1, it definitely did not hit it out of the park. I heard it's really good for watching movies. Well, the whole thing is it's got a super sharp screen.
So if you want to basically have an experience where you're not moving around much in VR, you just want to have the sharpest screen, then for that one use case, I think the Vision Pro is better than Quest, which is our mixed reality headset. But in order to get to that, they had to make all these other trade-offs, right?
In order to have a super high resolution screen, they had to put in all this more compute in order to power the high-res screen. And then all that compute needed a bigger battery. So now the thing is really heavy. So now it's uncomfortable to wear. And then because of the screen that they chose,
As you move your head, which you would if you're actually interacting, if you're playing games, the kind of image blurs a bit. And that's kind of annoying. So it's actually worse for things where you're moving around in. But no, if you're going to sit, if you're on a flight and you want to have a $3,500 device that you use to watch videos, Vision Pro is better for that use case.
They're really good at keeping you in their walled garden. That's what they're really good at.
Yeah. I mean, the whole thing that they've done with iMessage where they basically they do this whole blue bubble, green bubble thing. And it basically I mean, like for kids, it's just sort of like they embarrass you.
Right.
They're like, if you don't have a blue bubble, you're not cool. And you're like the out crowd. And then they always wrap it in like security. It's like, oh, well, we do this blue bubble because of security. Meanwhile, Google and others had this whole protocol to be able to do encrypted text messages that finally I think Apple was forced to implement. RCS.
Yeah.
I think it was the Chinese government that basically ended up forcing them to do it or some other government.
But it's still not encrypted. Yeah. Even when you're sending RCS text messages, I don't think it's encrypted. Oh, I thought it was, but maybe I'm missing something. I think it's only encrypted Google to Google phones. I don't think it's encrypted iPhone to Google phones or Google phones to iPhones. Because I think that was actually, was it the FBI?
Someone released that telling people that if they're talking about sensitive things, they should use encrypted apps like WhatsApp. See if we can find that. It was something where they were saying that contrary to popular belief that RCS texting to iPhone... GSMA aims to implement end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging apps.
Can we see it? It's not a good answer. I'm trying to find a good answer. Oh, okay. I don't have anything to show you yet. I was trying to read it.
Yeah, so Google RCS to... But I don't know if this is correct. Android phone to Android phone is encrypted with RCS. I think the issue comes with it going from... So like say Google, Google this, Google RCS texting to iPhones. Is it encrypted? RCS texting to iMessage. Is it encrypted? I'm pretty sure it's not. I might be wrong. I don't think I am. I'm pretty sure I read that.
And the problem was they won't let any other phone use the iMessage protocol. And they had a company that was doing it called Beeper. And they were doing it through some sort of workaround. Yeah, it's not encrypted. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, so it's not.
So you are getting the ability to send high resolution images, which is great because, you know, like my friend Brian, who uses an Android, he'd send me a video and it'd be this tiny little broken down box because, you know, you had to break it down to the lowest resolution.
Yeah, no, I mean, group chats when you have a bunch of people on iMessage and then one person is an Android are terrible. I mean, we get a ton of people.
Do people get mad at you?
Well, I use WhatsApp. I use WhatsApp. You only use that. I only communicate with a few people over SMS. But basically... I mean, I build a lot of leading messaging services, so I've got to use ours. Most people, I'm either WhatsApp or Instagram Direct or Messenger. But, yeah. So I think it's maybe people are less likely to get mad at me for asking them to use WhatsApp because we make WhatsApp.
When Tucker Carlson was about to interview Vladimir Putin... One of the things that was really disturbing was they contacted him and said they read his signal messages and they knew that he was going to interview Vladimir Putin. And he was like, what the fuck? Who did? The government. The U.S.? Yes, U.S. government. I forget what it was. Was it the CIA or was it the FBI? Wow. I forget who it was.
And he was like, I didn't even know you could do that.
Well, there are multiple vulnerabilities in all this stuff. It's unclear. I doubt that what they did was they broke signal. Because that encryption, I think, is pretty good, as is WhatsApp. I mean, it's basically Signal and WhatsApp use the same encryption. It's an open source. NSA. NSA. Okay. But someone could break into your phone and see everything that's on your phone.
The thing that encryption does that's really good is it makes it so that the company that's running the service doesn't see it. So if you're using WhatsApp, basically, when I text you on WhatsApp, there's no point at which the meta servers see the contents of that message. Unless we took a photo of it or shared that back to meta in some other way.
That basically, it cuts out the company completely from it, which is, I think, really important for a bunch of reasons. One is people might not trust the company, but also just security issues. Let's say someone... hacks into meta, which, you know, we try really hard to make it so they can't. And we haven't had many issues with that over the 20 years of running the company.
But in theory, if someone did, then they'd be able to access everyone's messages if it weren't encrypted. But because it's encrypted, there's just nothing there, right? It's like, I mean, they can't hack into meta and then get access to your messages. So now someone like the NSA or CIA would have to kind of hack into your phone, which, you know, there are probably ways to do that. Pegasus.
I mean, there are probably a bunch of ways.
Yeah. There's probably ways we don't know of. Yeah.
And then, of course, there's always the ultimate kind of physical part of it, which is if you have access to the computer, you can usually just break in. Right. So that's why. If the FBI arrests you and takes your phone, they're probably going to be able to get in and see what's there.
So WhatsApp is encrypted, but if someone has something like Pegasus, what they do is have access to your phone. So it doesn't matter if anything's encrypted. They could just see it in plain sight.
Yeah, and I mean this is one of the reasons why we put disappearing messages in too because that way – I mean, yeah, if someone has compromised your phone and they can see everything that's going on there, then obviously they can see stuff as it comes in. But I kind of in general just think we should keep around as little of that stuff as possible.
So there are some threads where it's like there's photos that get shared. You want the photos. But I think for a lot of threads, a lot of people just – I don't think most people would miss it if most of the contents of their threads just disappeared after seven days.
What I find is I don't use it that much because we have this corporate policy at Meta that we need to retain all our documents and messages and stuff. But before we had that, I used it as we were developing this and every once in a while I would miss something and say, wow, I kind of wish I could go back and see that. But it was very rare.
I think most communication, it's kind of like you just have the communication and then you're done. So having it be encrypted and disappearing, I think is a pretty good kind of standard of security and privacy.
And you can set that disappearing time on WhatsApp, right? You can make it one day if you want. Yeah, you can do one day.
You can do seven days. And you can also set it across all your threads. You can have a default timer so that way as new threads get created, your default timer just becomes the default for all those threads. So I think that it's a really good feature. I mean, I basically think WhatsApp and Signal are probably the two most secure that are out there. um, on that.
And of those two, I think WhatsApp is just used by a lot more people. So I think it's, it's generally, you know, I mean, I would say this because it's, it's, it's our product, but I do think it's, it's the better product, but, but I think WhatsApp and Signal are basically, you know, the two most secure ones.
What was your take on that guy getting arrested as the CEO of Telegram?
Oh man. Um, that was kind of a crazy one, right? Yeah. I mean,
it's always a little difficult to weigh in on these situations without knowing all the specifics, but one of the government tactics that I've seen that I think is pretty, is not great is an increasing number of governments when they like have an issue with something that a company is doing, basically just like threatened to throw the executives of that company in prison. And it's like,
I think that that's just a really weird precedent to set, right? It's like, it's if, if the, you have all the, so it's like, we're operating in all these different countries and then like, you have all these governments that are basically like, if you, I don't know, we're going to like put out an Interpol notice to like get you arrested because you're not doing the thing that we want.
It's like, I don't know. I don't, I think that's like not great. I think you want the, I mean, obviously you don't want people to just be like flagrantly violating the laws, but like there are laws in different countries that we disagree with.
Right.
So for example, there was a point at which I think I was, someone was trying to get me sentenced to death in Pakistan because they thought that, Oh, cause someone on Facebook had a picture of where they had the drawing of the prophet Muhammad. And someone said that that's blasphemy in our culture. And they brought a, they basically like sued me and they opened this criminal proceeding and
and I don't know exactly where it went because I'm just not planning on going to Pakistan. So I was not that worried about it, but, but like, but, but it was a little bit disconcerting. It was like, all right, fine. Like these guys are like trying to like, like kill you. Okay. It's not great. Right. You know, it's like not, yeah.
I mean, it's, I feel like I, yeah, it's like flying over that region. You don't want your plane to like go down above Pakistan if that thing goes through. But, but that one was sort of avoidable. But the point is like, Right. to have those governments be able to exert the power of saying, okay, we're going to throw you in prison, that's a lot of force.
So I think it's generally, yeah, I think that this is one of the things that the U.S. government is probably going to need to help defend the American tech companies for abroad. But I can't weigh in that much on the Durov specific thing because I don't know what was going on there.
When you were dealing with the government trying to interfere with Facebook, how much of a fear was there that they were going to get away with it and that this was going to be the future of communication online? That it was going to...
They were going to be successful with all this, that they would push these things through somehow or another, especially if a even less tolerant administration got into power. They would change laws and they would do things to make it possible. How much did that concern you?
Well, we basically just reached a point where we pushed back on all this stuff, right? So they were pushing us to censor stuff. We were unwilling to do it. We developed a very adversarial and bad relationship with our own government, which I think is just not healthy because I think, you know, it's... I mean, in...
In theory, I think, you know, it would be good if the American industry had a positive relationship with the American government. But then what that happened is then the kind of U.S. government was going after us in all these ways. But fortunately in the U.S., you know, we have good rule of law.
So our view is at the end of the day, OK, these agencies can open up investigations and we'll just defend ourselves. We'll go to court and we'll win all the cases because we're We follow the rules. And so I think it ends up being.
a big kind of political issue where it's like it would just be you could get a lot more done if the government were helping american companies rather than kind of slowing you down at every step along the way it makes you a little afraid that if you ever actually mess something up that they're really going to bring the hammer down on you if you don't have a constructive relationship but um
But I don't know. It's mostly I mean, going back to the AI conversation, it's like I just think like we should all want the American companies to win at this.
Right.
It's like this is like a huge geopolitical competition and like China is running at it super hard. And like we should want the American companies in the American standard to win. And like if there's going to be an open source model that everyone uses like. We should want it to be an American model. There's this great Chinese model that just came out, this company DeepSeek.
They're doing really good work. It's a very advanced model. And if you ask it for any negative opinions about Xi Jinping, it will not give you anything. If you ask it if Tiananmen Square happened, it will deny it. So I think there are all these things where we should want the American model to win. But every step along the way,
if the government is sort of making that harder rather than easier, then that's, I don't know. I mean, there's, there's an extent to which, okay, the American tech industry is leading. So maybe the government can like get in the way a little bit and maybe the American industry will still lead, but I don't know. It's, I think it's getting really competitive.
And I think like it's easy for the government to take for granted that the U S will lead on all these things when I think it's a very close competition and we need the help, not, you know, we need them to not kind of like, You know, be a force that's helping us to do these things.
I completely agree. But I think that people with their own self-interest, when they're in power and they realize that these new technologies like Instagram and Facebook, that they are interfering with their ability to administer propaganda. or that their ability to control the narrative, that's where they get short-sighted.
And that's when they act in their own personal interest and not in the interest of neither national security or the future of the United States in terms of our ability to stay technologically ahead. Yeah.
And some of this is just, you know, if you go back to the COVID example, I think in that case, they were doing something. Their goal of trying to get everyone to get vaccinated was actually, I think, a good goal.
It was a good goal if it worked, if it was real, like if it was a sterilizing vaccine, if it really did prevent people from getting COVID, if it really did prevent people from infecting others or transmitting it. But it didn't. So it wasn't a good deal because it wasn't based on real data. Yeah.
Yeah. But but also even but even if it were right, it's like if I mean, I think that still unbalanced, knowing everything that we know now, I still think it's good for more people to get the vaccine. But the government still needs to play by the rules in terms of, you know, not like you can't just suppress true things in order to make your case. So I that's that's kind of my.
My view on it is I'm not sure in that case how much of it was like a personal political gain that they were going for. I think that they had a kind of goal that they thought was in the interests of the country. And the way they went about it, I think, violated the law.
Well, there's a bunch of problems with that, right? There's the emergency use authorization that they needed in order to get this pushed through. And you can't have that with valid therapeutics being available. And so they suppressed valid therapeutics. So they're suppressing real information that would lead to people being healthy and successful in defeating this disease.
And they did that so that they could have this one solution. And this was Fauci's game plan. I mean, this is the movie American Buyers Club or Dallas Buyers Club, rather. That's Fauci in that movie. That was with the AIDS crisis. This is the exact same game plan that was played out with the COVID vaccine. They pushed one solution, this only one solution.
suppressed all therapeutics through propaganda through suppressing monoclonal antibodies like all of it and that was done in my opinion for profit and they did that because it was extremely profitable the amount of money that was made yeah was extraordinary during that time yeah and but look i mean i feel like a bunch of the conversation is focused on
tension with the American government. I guess just the point that I'd underscore is that it's important to have this working in the American government because it is like the U.S. Constitution and like our culture here is really good compared to a lot of other places. Right. So whatever issues we think might exist here. you go to other places and it's like really extreme. Yeah.
And you don't even, and there it's like, you don't even necessarily have the rule of law.
Right.
Right. And, um, so I just think that like the way that this stuff works well is, yeah, I think if, if, if there was a clearer strategy and the U S government understood, believe that it's good to kind of help advance this industry because it's strategically important for the country, um,
then I think it would be good to basically push back on stuff that's happening in other countries that's actually a lot more extreme than the stuff that's happening in the U.S.
Yeah, I agree as well. Listen, is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap this up? I think we're good. I don't know.
I mean, how long have we been going for? Three hours. Yeah, I mean, well, I feel like we touched on AI. We touched on all the augmented and virtual reality stuff. And I think that that stuff is just going to be Wild.
It's wild. Your AR technology that you showed me today is very impressive. It's crazy. Lex and I were playing Pong apart from a table from each other. I was playing some crazy game where my fingers got tired because you shoot like this. Because you're using V1 of the neural interface. It's like in the future it will just be this. It was really fun though.
It's really cool, and you see where this is all going. It's really, really fascinating stuff, and I'm very excited about it.
Did you get a chance to use the Ray-Bans and the AI in them?
Yes, we did that, too, and we did Translate, too, where one of your coworkers was speaking to me in Spanish, and he was translating it to me in my ear in real time in English, which is really interesting. Nice. Amazing. It's really cool, and then you could also do it on the phone, so you could show it to the person on the phone so you don't have to say the words. It's really... Fascinating stuff.
Yeah, so we're just sort of coming at it from both sides, right?
It's like the Ray-Bans are like, okay, given a good-looking pair of glasses, what's all the technology you can put into that today and still have it be just a few hundred dollars? And then the Orion thing is like, all right, we're building the kind of future thing that we want, and we're doing our best to miniaturize it. It's basically like— Still pretty small.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, just thicker glasses.
Yeah. And I think we want it to be a little smaller. We need to be a lot cheaper, right? Each pair right now costs more than $10,000 to make. And you're not going to have a successful consumer product at that. So we have to miniaturize it more. But I mean, the amount of stuff that we put in there from... It's like effectively...
It would have been considered a supercomputer like 10 or 20 years ago. Plus, you know, lasers in the arms and the like nano etchings on the on the lens to be able to see it. And then the microphone and the speaker and the Wi-Fi to be able to connect to the other. It's just like like a wild amount of technology to kind of miniaturize into something. That one's really fun.
We've been working on that for 10 years. Um, but yeah, no, I think, I think between that, the glasses, um, all the AI stuff, um, yeah, all the social media stuff. Yeah.
No, I mean, I think we covered it and, uh, I'm very excited about this new stance that you guys are taking. I think the community notes thing is a brilliant idea that, you know, X has implemented. And I think I'm glad I'm, I am really glad that you guys are implementing it too. I think it's the way. Yeah.
And the way generally I think we both agree is that people have to have the ability to communicate. They have to have the ability to express themselves. And that's how we find out what's real and what's not.
Yeah. I think the more voice is the answer on this.
Yes, sir.
And I think after sort of a long journey, I'm glad to be able to take it back to the roots. And I feel like we're more fortified now in the position.
Well, I think one of the lessons that people have learned over the last few years with suppression of information is that that's not good. And there's a giant percentage of the population that feels that way. And even people that are progressive and liberals that were on the side of the people that were pushing the suppression of information still don't think it's right.
I think most people generally believe in the First Amendment in this country. And we realize how valuable it is to have the freedom of expression.
Yeah. Anyway, thanks for having me.
Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it. Bye, everybody.