Joe Rogan Experience #1258 — Jack Dorsey, Vijaya Gadde & Tim Pool Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Five, four, three, dos, uno. Vijay, what is it? And your position at Twitter is? It feels all of a sudden there's tension in the room. One, that the Cash App is one of the sponsors of the podcast. I don't, that's, I mean, it's easy for someone to say It is. But there was a lot of people that were upset So we got on the phone and we talked Yep. Today, do you know who Sean Baker is?

3:02 and it's known to cure a lot of autoimmune away. Now, whose decision is something like that? Like who decides to lock a guy's account out Absolutely. It's more about violence towards humans, unless it was some sort of cruelty depicting animals or something like that. platform at scale. And this, I don't, I don't know what happened in this case. So it's hard

6:00 It happens across the spectrum. They're going to target him to try and get him removed by exploiting the system that you guys have. because you might see something awful, And if it is, what is Twitter's responsibility in controlling That is not a violation of Twitter's rules. No. we have a little bit more freedom to show more of the spectrum of any one particular issue

8:54 It's kind of a different thing. In your rules, Tim, what do you mean by that? and purpose behind that i don't mean to interrupt but in the interest of clarity i want to explain is correct, right? Generally. So we can just get into all of the big examples. And I want them to be able to use it online. threatened by high profile individual, 10,000 people tweeting at me because they were encouraged to. When I was in Venezuela, I was physically threatened by a high-profile individual,

12:40 And you will always be able to find those examples. threatening the lives of kids? Absolutely not. So again, we have, and I'm happy to talk about on posting private information, which we don't consider names to be private. We consider your which it probably was, then we should be taking a more expansive view of that policy and including that type of content. Especially considering the fact they're minors. I mean, I would think that

14:57 Tim's or others where we clearly may have made an error. that we want to focus on as number one is physical safety. And this leads you immediately to the most important thing, which is someone's physical safety. Once we learn from that, but we have to prioritize that queue even coming in so if someone threatened the lives of someone Let's pull that up, Jamie.

17:56 He's got something like 20,000 followers. And it was highlighted by numerous conservative media But that's basically the conversation that was had. I just have to wonder. with one violation because we want people to learn. We want people to understand what they to acknowledge that their tweet violated our rules, I'm totally a mom, exactly. But we did take action on those tweets.

20:35 I understand the context issue. So here we have someone with over 20,000 followers. one at a time let's start with milo so what was the details of milo so milo had a number of tweets Potentially, but our parody rules are very specific, He posted private information about an individual. can debate them and then the last one we found um a bunch of things that he posted that we viewed as

23:12 And then the second one said, was saying towards leslie jones on twitter i and my team felt that this was taken death of a child who's wearing a maga hat and throw him into a wood shepherd the fact that that A hundred percent. Chuck Johnson said that he was preparing something to take out deray mckesson and in the in a journalistic context people take

26:29 think, Joe, just to say, I do think we've failed in a couple of ways. And I want to admit that. So people really understand what the rules are in the first place. The other thing we have to do to address these I appreciate that your particular thoughts, though, on those examples that he described, I can't remember. Preparing to take him out. I can understand

28:11 I just don't have all the Chuck Johnson. Conservatives do not agree with you on the definition of misgendering. I mean, what he's talking about, I mean, in terms of generalities, Well, people harass and abuse me all day and night. And Twitter told me after review, it was not a violation of their policy. If someone acts in that manner and threatens to hurt you, that's a violation of our rules.

30:38 You want to get into that? to get rid of him. I think if you look at the PR that Twitter went through in that incident, it wouldn't be that we looked good in it. and we looked at the reports on their service, we did not find anything in violation of our rules. to us by different users. There was a video that was uploaded that showed a child being freaking bets like all these other assholes do and let's go let's do it so people need to have

33:45 So if he only tweeted the incitement to violence, he would have been fined? And depicting violence against a child is not something that we would allow on the platform, violent things i've ever seen this giant man punched this 11 year old girl in the face and enough really that's hilarious pattern in practice but it was a verbal altercation that was posted

36:14 that you made the right decision. Well, I'm giving you as much facts as I can give you here. And I kind of for fun and then all of a sudden it becomes the premier platform for free speech I'm going to do air quotes because I think to an extent he is allowed to cover these stories. But you have a journalist who recently went on TV and said CPAC is a bunch of gullible

38:45 because they like playing off them, and the left is targeting them. So you end up having Our platform promotes speech unless people violate our rules. It's not about one particular thing. targeting specific individuals because your rules support this perspective. No, I don't agree with So now you actually have in your policies a rule against the conservative perspective.

40:42 We have a bunch of people all around the world who give us context on the types of behavior they're seeing, how that translates into real world harm. what that was happening. And a lot of it was not just violence towards those individuals, And are they viewing it that way and reporting it to us so that we take action? have ben shapiro who did his research and doesn't believe it yeah and i relied on the american

43:16 I would agree. at odds with conservatives period well i think i think that you're you're generalizing but i think it's because of bullying whether it's because of this awful feeling of being born in the wrong Repeatedly. Martina Navatarova, Anyway, tremendous amount of harassment because i stood up when there was a woman who was a trans woman I don't want to harass them.

47:15 whether or not they should be allowed in sports or in biologically female spaces and she refuses enforces only one side of the ideology and you've banned only one of those people we have a rule pronouns but biologically this is not accurate. What if it's in the context of the conversation? And that was actually the second, actually. I don't know. she's saying that a man is never a woman though that is not in that context harassment that is a very specific opinion

51:21 Well, no, it wouldn't be. rules on that. There are people who have actually amputated their own arms. You don't have rules on And I hear your point of view, and it's something that I'll definitely discuss with my team. They can protest any of them. are, in fact, on the left. And this is one example of that. So you have a protected class and a lockout had to delete the tweet because the individual using a cartoon avatar with the

54:33 I said, guys, but I included you. That seems like she should be allowed to express herself. have a lot of protected classes gender race nationality like if you have what is racism is is racism only i mean It's a fact. And so you didn't enforce the old tweets. Yeah, so our hateful conduct policy, Joe, just to be clear, is across the board. Like, those are the laws, right?

57:39 So, just white people in general. And our rules in this area came into effect in 2015, Sure, sure. slurs against white people black people latinos and i found copious just just tons and tons of You're not going to sit there and report every tweet. at identifying when this is happening is a danger of the algorithm is missing context and that's why we we really want to go carefully

1:01:06 like what are we dealing with like how many posts do you guys get a day uh hundreds of millions of That's crazy, though, but stop and think about that. Well, the reason we don't give out specific numbers is we need to scale these dynamically. And they have the ability to go down that enforcement spectrum that Vijay talked about. recognize restrictions on hate speech. It's considered free speech. So if you want to stand

1:03:33 are trying to manipulate people using this platform. So there's a few things I want to ask So even if you are saying, well, hate speech is our rule and a lot of people agree with it, So we're global. conservatives in India recently. There was a report on that, as well as you held up a sign So my concern, I guess, is I recognize you're a company that serves the world, but as an American, I have a concern that the democracy I live in, the Democratic Republic, I'm sorry, and the democratic functions are healthy. One of the biggest threats is, you know,

1:06:35 You've now got a platform that is so powerful in our American discourse that foreign governments are using it as weapons against us, so long as they play by your rules. Let's say in protest, an individual repeatedly says, no, I refuse to use your pronouns in not limited to our platform, nor is it limited to social media. but he uses twitter almost exclusively and what i'm trying to bring up is that if twitter refuses

1:08:33 they said hate speech is not a violation. That means your platform is so powerful, it's being used to manipulate elections, and you And this is an extremely complicated issue, You don't allow hate speech, so free speech is not on your platform. I said enable everyone, create the opportunity for everyone to speak on our service. Let's separate the first.

1:11:27 The issue I'm pointing out is that we know Twitter is becoming extremely important in how our public discourse is occurring, how our culture is developing, and who even gets elected. allowed as opposed to what you allow so foreign governments can can absolutely keep making new as part of my role, had a public policy, spent a lot of time in D.C. I want to say that

1:13:50 whether it's the American law or the rules of Twitter or the rules of Facebook or rules of You don't need to be the most important. It's just that you are extremely important. are you suggesting that we don't have any policies around abuse and harassment on the platform When I see the flow of One Direction and then what I see are Republican politicians who, in my opinion, are just too ignorant to understand what the hell is going on around them. And I see people burning signs that say free speech. I see you openly saying we recognize the power of our platform and we're not going to abide by American norms.

1:16:14 platform that that's your position well that's that's that's uh that's extremely reductive i I say, well, that's really weird. There are people who know that they can tweet a single letter, They get suspended for that? campaign, which is why I said let's talk And so you read their direct message that they send to you? So if Tim writes an N and I write an I and Jamie writes a G, can you go into our direct messages and say, hey, let's fuck with Jack and we're going to write this stuff out and we're going to do it and let's see if they ban us.

1:19:07 screenshots can be fake i recognize that but i i have seen people actually tweet and then i've seen So there was a situation, with this either learn to code or things like day of the rope and other coded language were actually ban evasion accounts. to Code at the Daily Show. Can we clarify? hundreds of tweets. are losing their jobs like coal miners and truck drivers and things like that could learn to code

1:22:17 who's in their 50s, who should learn some new form of vocation, and then someone says learn to code. with how BuzzFeed this is a meme I'm still getting messages from people with screenshots saying, So is it just something that got stuck in an algorithm? campaign. And so we were trying to understand the context of what was to them because of what we viewed as coordinated attempt

1:25:28 Because learn to code in itself is very small. Well, the first articles you can take a 50-year-old man The hashtag, the idea of learn to code, condenses this idea, and it's easy to communicate, especially when you only have 280 characters, that there is a class of individual in this country. What you were talking about earlier, that there's these bubbles.

1:26:56 who works for NBC News. And while 4chan was doing threads about it, you can't accuse 4chan simply for talking about it because Reddit was talking about it too, as was Twitter. Oh, there are for sure probably mistakes in there. So this is- So you'll see people say things like, you know, are gullible eating red meat from grifters, among other things, disparaging comments about the right.

1:29:52 and they get a suspension. We see people say the editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller may be the Tech tends to lean left. those lines sometimes slowly yeah admittedly yeah admittedly but they want they just want an open I don't know, because we don't ask people what their idea is. Yes. looking and reviewing at cases. Your rules are based on your bubble in San Francisco or whatever city.

1:33:35 They may not agree with me on that, But I wanted to focus on individuals and increasing the absolute number of people based on the actual data that we see of people leaving the platform It doesn't stop. And to your credit, I really do appreciate the fact that you're very open about that This is not a small thing. simply because you're sitting here right now

1:36:22 I don't say it's angry. And, you know, there's some benefit to that. We need to have these conversations so we can learn. You can say that everything on the internet lives forever, but that's not, That's what we want to do. Your definition of what is or isn't healthy, right? and and we want that to be public like we want that we're going we we a healthy conversation. You want to maximize the amount of people. That means you got to cut off

1:40:20 is going on? Because more shared attention will lead to healthier conversation. Third is receptivity. that's being talked about? And these are not meant to be taken as individual parts, but in unison, for where you want to get with those metrics. So what confuses me then, when we talk about You had both of your guests who started talking over each other. You pause the conversation. You

1:43:45 the company was too large. So we have to prioritize our efforts. And I don't know any other way to do Twitter has been replicated numerous times in different ways. They fall into that. Can we find a path for people to get back to the platform? making you know posts about the news and breaking information they do it on twitter they came in through our terms of service, right? Whether you agree with them or not,

1:47:02 I'm sure they do. Oh, for sure. I'm going to say something nice. life uh right now that's the only option that we've built into our rules but we have every But at least simplifying it and educating people We have to do it, and we're going to figure it out. Periscope does this? it's actually driving the outcomes that we think are useful. And Periscope is a good playground for us across many regards.

1:50:57 But at a certain point – Like he was saying, some platforms, Twitter has no real competition. I understand that. to do is not just in being here and talking to you guys, How do we give power back to the people using our service so that they can see what they want to see and they can in all the variables that are associated with it, that every single person and do everything in my power

1:54:14 now with the trump administration iran it's my understanding it's still punishable by death i I guess the question I'm asking is, in Pakistan, it's very clearly a different culture. Confusing. I'm like, that's a really good thing. I would want to know if Pakistan wanted to kill me. reason we tell users or tell people that that's happened is because a lot of them may want to

1:56:15 The main point I was trying to get to is your policies support a community, Doesn't the UN declaration guarantee the right of all people through any medium to express their We've had a number of pauses. I'm sure we have many more things to talk about don't worry i don't want to just i'm just saying this i've got a bunch of other things uh that you know because here's a

1:58:14 Appreciate it. Who is Jacob Wall? And so when we saw that report, our team looked at his account, we noticed there were multiple accounts tied to his account. So fake accounts that he had created that were discussing political issue. And those are exactly the types of things that we saw the Russians do, for example, in the 2016 election. So it was that playbook and that

2:00:27 So one of the issues that I think is really important to get to is you should know who he is. We ban him. his direct connection to the accounts that were created to manipulate the election. There are certainly sophisticated ways that people can do things and USA Today. We took the action. I was on Twitter. A bunch of people pointed me at this particular case, sent some of those tweets to her, what's going on.

2:02:52 Because what we were able to do in the Jacob Wall situation was actually tie those accounts in our own systems. No, no, no, no. With new knowledge, you said you did take those accounts down. Would you have to contact him and get some sort of a statement from him in order to So he's given kind of, in my opinion, duplicitous, like, you know, not straightforward.

2:04:54 Ban them. It's been like two months since the story broke. But we have to consider like where the actions are taking place. We're looking at what we're seeing, the signals we can see. And it was because Vigia said, you know, we're permanently banning this account. is the news system is, like you pointed out, although it's changed, They only cover the same stories. So if, you know um we hear about jesse smollett we hear

2:07:54 I hear you. So we actually want to show whether a comment was moderated and then actually allow people to see those comments. Not that I'm aware. the leaders of that organization And they went into detail about how this thing became from a joke and saying that you could join the Proud Boys, and everyone was like being silly to people joining it. I was like, this is not just irresponsible, but foolish and short-sighted and just a dumb way to talk.

2:11:57 and i mean you're tagged in a million times i know you probably can't see it but you can actually see So the Proud Boys all get purged. just like libertarians and conservatives. Antifa shows up with crowbars, bats, and there was a rally where conservatives were planning on putting on a rally. It was literally just like libertarians and conservatives.

2:13:27 I'm sorry. Homeland Security in New Jersey has listed them under domestic terrorism. up to a rally wearing a black hoodie and sunglasses who are you going to ban but there are groups that I mean, there's a video of some guy in all black cracking someone on the back who's on the ground looking like they're unconscious. there are you know the difference i guess is while you look at the proud boys it's straight

2:16:01 Proud Boys, which was a centralized, leadership-based documentation of what they stand for. it completely got out of hand he doesn't want to have anything to do with it yeah and i think this this sort of innocent fun thing to be a part of and then other people got involved in it and then Uh-huh, yep, he did. and I don't want to misstate things. point out, there's one particular user who has repeatedly made fake videos attacking one of your

2:18:44 that. or not well it's also when when things are out of context you still have video of the person saying that i agree that it's out of context and it's disingenuous but it's still the person saying And they take that and they snip it I think both of you could probably shed I can see. Want Jack to say it? Die. he's joking around there. Possibly. to make them angry.

2:21:17 or carl um let's see um there was the use of a jewish slur. How do you use it? like he's making a joke you know i understand in context it sounds like the other one like in were like egregious violations of the rules because you know plain and simple i didn't bring And I've criticized him for being overly mean in the past. He's less likely to insult someone directly.

2:23:39 But they pulled a clip from an hour and a half or whatever into a two-hour live stream on a small channel that only had 2,000 views, sent it to Patreon, and then Patreon said, yep, that's a violation and banned him outright without warning, which, again, I understand is different from what you guys do. So, you know, blocking and even leaving Twitter

2:24:46 works, which is just the inverse of that. of what action you as something like making mute much stronger. I mean, look, I'm sure you get it way worse than I do, They're still going to. We're trying to figure out what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. that's a good point to argue against banning people and to uh cease enforcing hate speech I don't want to name him.

2:28:24 platforms. I could not prove to this man in that country in that in the uk that this man could use So you've got all these restrictions, But if they were high profile saying their things, you'd be like, that's the guy I don't like. trying to find this right balance and i hear you like you may not think we're drawing the that. We hide it behind an interstitial to protect the original tweeter and also folks who don't want

2:31:15 I hear you. I don't believe a permanent ban promotes health. She's amazing. So I'll just ask you this. Is there a timeline that we can, so, so look, you know, a lot of- saying why they don't think they did if you need permanent bans about the things you go through, Well, but no, but think about it this way is it better that they're permanently We have those levels in place today, but you don't really see them.

2:34:38 I don't even know it's there. You can imagine physical safety like doxing. Right, but there's so many examples of what you specifically around anything that impacts physical safety, like doxing. right now right yeah i mean i i went on the sean hannity show i you know we we how was that we My mom was a Democrat. This is what we're trying to protect, and we're going to make some mistakes along the way. And we're going to admit

2:37:23 conversation with Kara Swisher. Wow. Wrong person, but someone just got a shout out. And I see that the left goes at you in the opposite direction. They want more. They want more banning. They want more restrictions. And then the right is saying less. she wanted me to be a lot more specific. And to us, that means being a whole lot more proactive around things like doxing.

2:38:50 And what does learn to code mean? Now, I hear your point about who trains them and the materials they have and all that. So when people say, you know, what did Alex Jones really do? And so high profile cases, cases people ask us about, like to actually publish this so that we can go through, you know, tweet by tweet just like this. Ultimately my main criticism stands and I don't see a solution to in that twitter is an unelected, you know

2:40:43 and that's going to terrify people and it's going to make violence happen. I, We see a continually disenfranchised large faction of individuals in this country. We then see only one of those today will certainly evolve. But like that, that is what we are trying to base our rules and That there are American citizens abiding by the law who have a right to speak and be involved

2:42:59 because that's got to be understanding. Right. And these people are blocked. As they say on the internet, welcome to the internet. And here's the other thing that's really disconcerting. activists who will lie explain what you're talking about so there have been a series of individuals last name tario or something and so it was really white oh no he's a he's afro-cuban i know that's what's

2:46:39 And they're growing because there's this idea that you can control this, and you can't. lot of people who are concerned about the free trade agreements, sending jobs overseas. So they Well, there's a part of the problem of calling for censorship and banning people in that it is sometimes effective of where this is all going you want healthier conversation so you're willing to get rid of

2:49:28 and and right yes and you can't stop them anymore and it develops hate for the opposing viewpoint but a group called Data and Society published what's entirely fake report labeling 81 alt-right So, you know, I guess to drive the point home, the snowflake won't blame itself for the avalanche. We've seen people Breitbart has a list of 640 instances of Trump supporters being physically attacked

2:52:24 a desire let me be clear that we have a desire to promote health in in public conversation and like companies like ours who might work with a regulator to protect our own interest, that I think is incorrect. Not necessarily. This is where technology is going. So are you familiar, and I could be wrong on this because it's been like 15 years since I've done this.

2:55:02 Started on fire. And they asked about Russia and stuff. So they have no idea what's going on. But there'll come You're regulating someone to invent technology. Fairness in what? leading researchers in the industry to do that because the reality is a lot of this human to cars and whatnot, there's no ability right now for that algorithm to actually go through and

2:58:50 i imagine that you know with donald trump i i you know he talked about an executive order for free but I think that doesn't matter. and they said MasterCard instructed us to ban him. Maybe there's something we don't know. So I see these big tech monopolies. you know gavin was saying punch people when you punch people it doesn't end there oh yeah Gab, a study was done, I talked about this last time where they found five

3:01:54 and he's being he was arrested i'm i thank god every day we have the first amendment in this who we take advice from. There's other groups like Hope Not Hate in the UK, and now they're all going to point Didn't they lose a big lawsuit around this as well? because they said the narrative is real, right? One journalist in particular said that he had We're saying why we're doing what we're doing.

3:05:03 you hold a vastly different ideology than I do So I'm sitting here like just a little American, they don't at least have some influence but but regardless and and unlike the internet within a who claim to be supporting liberal ideology burning signs that say free speech threatening You see how they call Jordan Peterson all day and night alt-right. talking about millions and millions of people who's who are these people that are still citing

3:07:38 And I did a comparison like, subscribers are up, views are up. tell you one thing that is true though we don't trend like alex jones was saying like uh the video against swearing and you know extreme topics and subjects I don't think that's true because you've had like late-night TV hosts talk about really messed up like at least one emergency like food supply it's like you never use band-aids why do you have them

3:09:52 different international security experts who said based on what the platforms are doing based on how It's an information war tactic. I don't think she said that I should be banned. People need to learn to be reasonable. Nobody had to pee. Honestly, I don't think we've solved anything. a lot of doors the information because there's a problem. I mean, there was an early phrase in the internet

3:12:53 sure that people know where we stand and where we're trying to go and what bridges we might need Like we're testing it in Periscope and I don't have a reason, a compelling reason, And doxing is a perfect example that has patterns that are recognizable and that we can move on. who are probably think, you know, I'll say this too. And I'm looking at what Twitter is doing as very wrong, and it's oppressive and ideologically driven.

3:15:36 Twitter is... When you're talking about the internet, yeah you know it's a terrible idea but so but you know and i i think Right. 100% the problem with most of these platforms, including YouTube. Advertisers can choose the rules. Advertisers pulled off the platform and youtube didn't realize saying if you put a youtube video on you have a bunch of people that say a bunch of racist things in your youtube comments you could

3:18:36 they're desperate. They're laying people off, they're dying, and they will do whatever it juicy story where they can accuse you of wrongdoing because it'll get them clicks they'll make money No, for sure. and so the restrictions are going to come from whether or not you can make money doing it. Sure, sure. Listen, there's stuff like that on Netflix specials that are out right now.

3:21:01 Or 15 years ago or 20 years. Right. The vast majority of the population and not even dictating things they're just making a lot of noise and that noise is having an effect that are inaccurate and conversations like this. so I can travel around I'm going to have a computer I want to see the blockchain a lot today. Thank you. I really appreciate you guys.

3:23:51 I'll follow you. and I can't learn from that unless you.