E157: Epic legal win, OpenAI's news deal, FCC targets Elon, the limits of free speech & more

1. 0:00 – 2:56

   Bestie intros: Mullets!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      We're going mullet this week in honor of your, you're closest to mullet right now, Sacks. I see you trying to tuck the lettuce in.

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:08

      (laughs)

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:08

      It's not gonna work. We see it back there.

   4. DSDavid Sacks0:10

      Well, I need the ponytail.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:11

      Whoa, you went full knot?

   6. DSDavid Sacks0:13

      Where is this photo from?

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:14

      Founding Father does this.

   8. DSDavid Sacks0:14

      Do you have like a secret camera in his room? What is this? No, my- my kids took it.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg0:19

      (laughs) Oh my.

   10. JCJason Calacanis0:20

       Are you really doing a douche knot?

   11. DSDavid Sacks0:22

       One of my daughters was playing with my hair, she wants to see if she can make a ponytail with it.

   12. JCJason Calacanis0:25

       Uh-huh.

   13. DSDavid Sacks0:25

       So she made a ponytail and then took a photo.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg0:28

       (sighs) That's an elite-

   15. DSDavid Sacks0:28

       So we fed it into ChatGPT to ask who it looked like and it said Thomas Jefferson.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg0:32

       (laughs)

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:32

       Just a serious question, did you do a fit check with, with Tucker on that? Did you send him that and say, "Fit check?"

   18. DSDavid Sacks0:37

       You know, not everything has to do with Tucker, J-Cal. The jokes gonna hold.

   19. JCJason Calacanis0:40

       Well, look at the smile. (laughs) If you guys don't know what a fit check is, ask your daughters.

   20. DSDavid Sacks0:44

       Oh, wait. What, what check?

   21. JCJason Calacanis0:45

       A fit check. A fit check-

   22. DSDavid Sacks0:46

       What is that?

   23. JCJason Calacanis0:47

       ... y- you take a picture of yourself, you send it to your friends and you say, "Fit check," and then they tell you if you look good for the day.

   24. DSDavid Sacks0:52

       Oh, okay. It's kinda like, it's kinda like a wellness check, but-

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:54

       But for fashion.

   26. DSDavid Sacks0:55

       ... for how you look? For fashion?

   27. JCJason Calacanis0:56

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. DSDavid Sacks0:56

       Oh, okay.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg0:56

       The wea- wear outfits-

   30. JCJason Calacanis0:57

       Yeah, it's like when Friedberg sends you on, have anxiety about this.
2. 2:56 – 9:29

   Recapping Friedberg's holiday party

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:56

   2. JCJason Calacanis2:56

      With me again today here on the All-In Podcast, the King of (beep) . We have retired queen of quinoa because David Friedberg is CEO of a (beep) startup. He can still be the queen of (beep) .

   3. DSDavid Sacks3:06

      Is (beep) the main product, Friedberg?

   4. JCJason Calacanis3:08

      No, it's (beep) . So he's the king of beep.

   5. DSDavid Sacks3:11

      He's the king of vegetables.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg3:12

      Off the record.

   7. DSDavid Sacks3:13

      Wait, wait, wait. It's classified what crop you're working on?

   8. DFDavid Friedberg3:15

      Yeah.

   9. JCJason Calacanis3:16

      Absolutely.

   10. DSDavid Sacks3:16

       Wow. Okay.

   11. JCJason Calacanis3:17

       Absolutely. It's a SaaS comp- like a SaaS company wants to keep it on the DL which vertical they're going after, finance or sales-

   12. DSDavid Sacks3:23

       (laughs)

   13. JCJason Calacanis3:23

       ... whatever. He's gotta keep those v- it could be carrots, you never know.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg3:27

       (laughs)

   15. JCJason Calacanis3:27

       He could be Captain Carrots, you never know.

   16. DSDavid Sacks3:28

       Just not beets, okay, Friedberg? We don't need more beets in the world.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg3:31

       (laughs)

   18. JCJason Calacanis3:32

       Yeah, I'm gonna say no fennel.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg3:33

       What do you... Dude, beets are delicious.

   20. JCJason Calacanis3:34

       No fennel.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg3:34

       Beets are delicious.

   22. DSDavid Sacks3:36

       (laughs) Yeah, you're right.

   23. DFDavid Friedberg3:36

       No more beets. (laughs)

   24. JCJason Calacanis3:37

       Beets with some feta cheese, delicious.

   25. DSDavid Sacks3:39

       Yeah, you're right. We need more beets.

   26. JCJason Calacanis3:40

       All right, I'll go with that. Goat cheese.

   27. DSDavid Sacks3:41

       We need more, um, brussels sprouts can be very good, you know, if you char them.

   28. JCJason Calacanis3:44

       If you char them.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg3:44

       More okra.

   30. DSDavid Sacks3:44

       Saute them. Look, you caramelize the-
3. 9:29 – 23:21

   Jury rules in favor of Epic Games over Google: How to handle the app store duopoly?

   1. JCJason Calacanis9:29

      All right, everybody, Epic, the makers of Fortnite, just won a huge case with Google over the Play App Store on Android phones. For those of you who don't know, app stores have become an absolutely huge business for Apple and Google. Google App Store generates $50 billion of revenue a year now. That's about 17% of Google's total revenue. Apple's app store and services, 85 billion in annual revenue. These are on top of their franchises of hardware and search. A jury in San Francisco unanimously found that Google violated California's federal antitrust laws through sweetheart deals and annoying workarounds that stifled competition. For example, Google got spooked that other game developers would follow Epic's lead and launch their own app stores or route people directly to their websites to avoid the 30% take rate. Some might call it a tax. Google calculated they would lose two billion to three point five billion in revenue annually if the other major game developers followed Epic, so they created a program, code named Project Hug, where they basically paid out bribes or incentives to discourage large developers from building their own competitive app stores. They also gave Spotify a sweetheart deal of 0%, and Google paid Activision $360 million to keep them in the Play Store. And the discovery in this case was absolutely wild. According to testimony in the trial, Google had deleted some employee's chat logs, and the judge told the jury to assume that the deleted information wouldn't have been favorable to Google. Jury only deliberated a few hours, and Google plans to appeal the verdict, obviously. Epic isn't seeking damages. They just want Google to change their practices. They want to basically let people plug in their own billing system to avoid the 30% tax. We'll see what happens next. Freiberg, these stores clearly have monopolistic characteristics, but... And Google actually allows for third-party app stores. Maybe you can explain why you think Apple won their case against Epic, but Google lost.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg11:38

      These are pretty different cases. The Apple case was a judge. This one was a, a jury of citizens in federal court. I think it's worth just backing up a minute and talking about the history of, like, apps on phones and how Android came to be. Prior to Google acquiring Android, you guys may remember there were a few companies that were the dominant OS providers, operating system providers, to mobile phones. There was Nokia, there was Microsoft.... there was Apple, and there was also BlackBerry. And at the time, a lot of the telcos, the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world, prior to this, were trying to make money by charging for people to install apps on phones. So that was the first business model in the mobile internet was the telco would make money, and everyone fought against it. All the open internet providers said, "This is ridiculous," and it was clear that that was not gonna be allowed. So ultimately, these operating systems became the play, and which operating system was on which mobile phone, and what did that operating system then allow to control what apps were allowed and so on. So the reason Google bought Android is they wanted to make an open-source alternative to all of these closed app and closed systems. So Google bought Android in 2005, made a huge investment in growing the team, and allowed anyone to use the Android OS, fork it, make their own versions of it, install it on their own hardware, run it however they wanted. Meanwhile, Google made an internal version of Android that could be used on any mobile handset company's phone as a preinstalled OS. Now, why did Google wanna do this? They wanted to do this, number one, to make sure that the internet was still open and it wasn't gonna end up being closed from a user's perspective, and number two, so that anyone could install any app they wanted. And the commercial interest for Google, which is number three, is so that Google could make search, Google Search the default search engine on that phone, and, uh, have YouTube installed and all these other tools that Google makes money on, including their own app store. Now in Android, anyone can install any app they want on the phone, and so there's no restrictions, unlike in Apple. In, in the iOS, if you try and download an app off the internet and install it, it has to go through the App Store. It has to be Apple-verified in order to be allowed on the phone. So the whole point of Android was that it could be open, anyone could install anything. What Epic claimed in this case was that Google's Android OS gave people security warnings. So if you ever have tried this, you download an app from a website on Android, it says, "Warning, warning. This may cause a virus on your phone. Are you sure you wanna do this? This app hasn't been verified by Google," et cetera, et cetera. So it gives these warnings that scare consumers off of doing that. So Epic can in- you can install Fortnite direct on your Android phone today, and you can do it by downloading it from Epic's website, and you don't have to go through the Google Play Store. And you can enter your credit card, and you can pay for stuff. So th- it is, it is an open system that allows that. What these guys are claiming is that because Google can default the Google Play Store on the phone, it's basically what most consumers are gonna use anyway, and so they're saying it's not fair. And because they also have influence over the OS and they're putting these security warnings, it's inappropriate, because now it's scaring people from downloading stuff off the internet. So that's the big claim Epic's making. So Google has already said they're gonna appeal this case, because fundamentally, again, if this were really true and there really was deep antitrust issues with this, you would likely have seen a federal agency come after Google, not a private company suing them in a civil case. This would've been a much more significant action if there really was antitrust behavior. But it's a lot easier to win a jury trial, party-to-party, where Epic can go to a court and say, "Hey, let's go after Google. They're awful. We make Fortnite," and all this sort of stuff. So they do have a bias in that sense of being able to do this. Google's going to appeal. They feel very strongly they'll win on appeal, and the markets obviously did a, you know, voted with the fact that Google stock didn't really move anywhere, and the market said, "Hey, this is a, this is a nothing burger." Google's 40 billion in annual Play Store revenue, worst-case scenario, like you said, if it gets impacted by $2 billion, that's two billion out of 300 overall, doesn't really matter, and likely they're gonna win on appeal anyway. So, you know, I think the saga will continue, um, but I think Google's got a pretty strong case on appeal, and it seems like, you know, there- it's gonna be very hard to kinda see a massive change in app store behavior as a result of this case, even though it's been hyped up to be that. That's my take on it.

   3. JCJason Calacanis15:49

      Yeah, yeah, great take. Chamath, what do you think about this jury shopping, and maybe the fact that this isn't Lina Khan, this isn't the FTC? You know, as company to company, do you think that the claims here were valid? Do you think the jury shopping i-impacted this in a significant way?

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:05

      Probably. I guess the simple thought exercise is what do we think the outcome would've been had this trial happened in Dallas, Texas? Probably different. And so I think Friedberg's right. What does it materially prove? Nothing with respect to the body of law. It just goes to show that if you pick the right place to convene these trials in the right format, you can give yourself a slightly better probability of winning. But the question is, what will you win? It's not clear to me what happens now. Is there going to be a damages portion now of this trial? Is that what happens next?

   5. JCJason Calacanis16:42

      They're not seeking damages. They want changes to how they operate, and they're trying to-

   6. DFDavid Friedberg16:45

      They're trying to get a settlement, and they want Google-

   7. JCJason Calacanis16:47

      Yeah.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg16:47

      ... to settle out with changes to the app store policies. That's what they're asking for.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:51

      And then what about the Epic versus Apple lawsuit? Is it being done in the same way?

   10. JCJason Calacanis16:56

       No, they lost.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg16:57

       They lost-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya16:57

       Yeah.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg16:57

       ... and they appealed, and there's one element that's being appealed to the Supreme Court now, but basically they lost, and that's over.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya17:03

       And that, was that convened in California in a jury trial as well in San Francisco?

   15. DFDavid Friedberg17:07

       No, that, that was not a jury trial. It was a judge, and-

   16. JCJason Calacanis17:12

       But it was California, yeah.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg17:13

       It was a bench trial in California.

   18. JCJason Calacanis17:14

       Yeah, yeah.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg17:15

       Yeah, it was also in, uh, Cal- northern California. That's right, yeah.

   20. JCJason Calacanis17:18

       So Sacks, let me bring you in on this. Do you think that these stores are monopolies, and do you think if they change their behavior, especially Apple, you know, allow other third-party stores, what impact that would that have on the startup ecosystem? Because the 30% tax is significant-

   21. DSDavid Sacks17:33

       Yeah.

   22. JCJason Calacanis17:33

       ... and we see that every day with our startups. I mean, if you have to give away 30% of your revenue (laughs) to Google-

   23. DSDavid Sacks17:39

       Yeah.

   24. JCJason Calacanis17:39

       ... and Apple, it's brutal. And then you're advertising on Apple and Google and Facebook. That's another 30% of your revenue or 50% of your revenue.

   25. DSDavid Sacks17:48

       Yeah, no, I agree with that. So first of all, these app stores are absolute monopolies within their ecosystem, and Apple and Google Android are absolutely a duopoly within the mobile space. My experience with these types of monopolies or gatekeepers is that they exercise more and more control and extract more and more of the value over time. It's an iterative process in which they just keep...... you know, extracting, keep taxing, keep, keep imposing more rules on the ecosystem for their benefit and to the detriment of innovators. And so I do think they have to be controlled, and I think Epic is doing the ecosystem a favor. For example, on this 30% rake that you're talking about, J Cal, that level of rake might have been appropriate for certain types of apps, like a hobbyist app, where it's literally 100% margin. Okay, you pay 30% to the App Store. It doesn't work for SaaS companies. I mean, I can tell you that. I mean, this would be like half of their gross margin or something like that. It doesn't work for a lot of companies that spend a lot of money on content creation, like Epic, which spends a lot of money in R&D to create a game like Fortnite.

   26. JCJason Calacanis18:54

       Netflix, Spotify.

   27. DSDavid Sacks18:55

       Netflix, exactly.

   28. JCJason Calacanis18:56

       It would break their models immediately.

   29. DSDavid Sacks18:57

       Or Amazon with Kindle. And so what happened is, it used to be the case that Amazon could have a link in their app, at least directing the user to go to the amazon.com website, and you could buy the book there, and you could circumvent the, the, the rake in the app. And it was inconvenient for the user, but at least there was a way around it. Then Apple banned those links. Then they banned the ability for the app to even message to the user what was happening. So if, for example, if you use the Kindle app on iOS, which I do all the time, you can't buy a book in it. And the reason why is because Amazon doesn't want to pay the 30% rake, but they can't even tell you that.

   30. JCJason Calacanis19:35

       Yeah.
4. 23:21 – 35:02

   OpenAI inks deal with Axel Springer

   1. JCJason Calacanis23:21

      So in other news, OpenAI is starting to cut licensing deals. If you remember, we had a big debate about this back on episode 115 in February. And I was saying, "Hey, this content is owned and, and the opportunity to create LLMs or derivative products, you know, is the right of the, the people who make that content." Saks, you told me I was gonna get rolled over, but here we are.

   2. DSDavid Sacks23:46

      I wouldn't say, I said you were gonna get rolled over. What I said is the ecosystem's gonna figure this out.

   3. JCJason Calacanis23:50

      Okay. Let's play the tape. If ChatGPT takes a Yelp review and a, you know, a, a Conde Nast Traveler review and they represent it based on the best content that's ou- out, that's out there, that they've already ranked 'cause they have that algorithm with PageRank or Bing's ranking engine, and then they republish it and then that jeopardizes those businesses, that is profoundly unfair and not what we want for society. And they are interfering with their ability to leverage their own content. It is profoundly unfair and those magazines-

   4. DSDavid Sacks24:19

      You're gonna get steamrolled is my prediction, J Cal.

   5. JCJason Calacanis24:20

      ... need to ... What's that?

   6. DSDavid Sacks24:21

      You're gonna get steamrolled. (screen whooshes)

   7. JCJason Calacanis24:23

      (laughs) Okay.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg24:23

      Look at that hair.

   9. JCJason Calacanis24:24

      There it is.

   10. DSDavid Sacks24:25

       Man, is my hair worse now or then? Yeah.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg24:27

       Then.

   12. JCJason Calacanis24:28

       Your hair was-

   13. DFDavid Friedberg24:28

       I think it was bad cut back then. I think you were like post-COVID back then.

   14. JCJason Calacanis24:31

       Yeah. This was in between.

   15. DSDavid Sacks24:31

       I think he looks much better right now. Yeah, I think that's the question.

   16. JCJason Calacanis24:34

       That looks like a toupee.

   17. DSDavid Sacks24:35

       (laughs)

   18. JCJason Calacanis24:35

       Nick, can you, can you just show us a picture of that?

   19. DFDavid Friedberg24:37

       'Cause that looks like a toupee.

   20. DSDavid Sacks24:38

       Can I get a pause on that?

   21. DFDavid Friedberg24:39

       You're in the, you're in the common era. That was like a, like an early AD. This is like the common era now.

   22. JCJason Calacanis24:43

       You know what you got there.

   23. DFDavid Friedberg24:44

       Yeah, that's a toupee. That's a toupee.

   24. DSDavid Sacks24:45

       That's a toupee. (laughs)

   25. JCJason Calacanis24:46

       It does look like a tube.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg24:47

       (laughs)

   27. JCJason Calacanis24:48

       It looks like a raccoon.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg24:49

       Okay, J Cal, I, I got some comments on this 'cause I think your-

   29. JCJason Calacanis24:52

       All right.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg24:52

       ... your fluffer has, has fluffed too much on the upper parts and, and unfluffed the bottom parts, which I think happens once.
5. 35:02 – 58:25

   FCC cancels Starlink subsidy, dissenting FCC Commissioner says federal agencies are targeting Elon Musk on Biden's orders

   1. JCJason Calacanis35:02

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:02

      Great transition.

   3. JCJason Calacanis35:02

      Great transition. Here we go. Elon versus the FCC. Another government agency is now targeting Elon. This is a little bit complicated, but let me explain. On Tuesday, the FCC rejected Starlink's application for 900 million in subsidies for rural broadband. Starlink originally won these back in 2020 when they agreed to provide high speed internet to 640,000 rural homes across 35 states. Funding would have come from the RDOF, Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. I guess the government is paying for expanding broadband services in rural areas. Uh, and Starlink, obviously, is perfect for that. It's actually the only solution for this, really. Because you can't run fiber to these locations. So, the FCC found that Starlink, quote, "Had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to those funds." And here's the quote, "FCC has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds, meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet basic program requirements." Brendan Carr, one of the FCC's commissioners dissented from the agency's decision and he did not hold back. "Last year," this is a quote, "after Elon acquired Twitter, President Biden gave federal agencies a green light to go after him. Today's decision certainly fits the Biden administration's pattern of regulatory harassment. This is a decision that cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts or policy," Carr went on to explain, uh, how his decision was made and why it's unprecedented. "Instead of applying the traditional FCC standards to the..."... record evidence which would have compelled the agency to confirm Starlink's $885 million award. The FCC denied it on the grounds that Starlink is not providing high speed internet service to all these locations today. As noted, the FCC's milestone does not kick in until 2025. Let me toss to you, Sax. Thoughts on the Biden hit squad going after E?

   4. DSDavid Sacks36:57

      I mean, I can't remember anything quite like this. This is absolutely extraordinary. I mean, you have a sitting member of the FCC telling us that the FCC is engaging in political retaliation. He sits on the board of the five commissioners of the FCC. They just canceled an $885 million contract to Starlink. What was that contract for? To provide rural internet service. Starlink is the only company that has that capability today, and it's the only one that has that capability if you look forward a few years. It is by far the best at providing broadband from space, which is the best way to get into these rural areas. So, what did the commission do? Well, they cherry-picked. They took speed test snapshots from two cherry-picked moments in time. And so even that probably was not an accurate reflection of where Starlink is today. But they then said, based on those snapshots, that Starlink would not be able to meet the standards in three years. So remember, the requirements that they're saying that Starlink violated don't even have to be met for three years. So somehow they're saying that Starlink will not get there in three years. They're preemptively judging the service to meet a standard that it's not even required to meet today, and nobody else is even close to meeting this standard. So Elon's response was, "Guys, okay, if you're gonna cancel the contract for us, like, just save the money, because the competitors that you're giving it to have even less of a service than we do."

   5. JCJason Calacanis38:21

      Yeah.

   6. DSDavid Sacks38:21

      "So just, like, save the taxpayer the money." But they're not doing that. So this is really remarkable. And what Carr said here is that, "The Biden administration is choosing to prioritize its political and ideological goals at the expense of connecting Americans. We can and should reverse course." This is now part of a pattern of the federal government harassing Elon and his companies, and it all stems from Biden at that press conference saying, "We gotta look at this guy." You know, like Tony Soprano. "Yeah, we gotta look at this guy," you know? Whatever.

   7. JCJason Calacanis38:53

      (laughs)

   8. DSDavid Sacks38:53

      Um, I mean, it was like... And so since then-

   9. JCJason Calacanis38:56

      That's a nice restaurant you got there. It'd be terrible if anything ever happened to it.

   10. DSDavid Sacks38:59

       Yeah. J Cal, you do the impression.

   11. JCJason Calacanis38:59

       It's got beautiful windows.

   12. DSDavid Sacks39:00

       I can't do it.

   13. JCJason Calacanis39:01

       (laughs)

   14. DSDavid Sacks39:02

       Any event, so Biden says at this press conference, "We gotta look at this guy," and since then, they've investigated Tesla for supposedly building a glass house, which I didn't know was a crime. That's amazing.

   15. JCJason Calacanis39:13

       Yeah.

   16. DSDavid Sacks39:14

       SpaceX, which is partially a defense contractor, was sued by the DOJ because they were hiring too many Americans and didn't, they weren't hiring enough refugees into sensitive national security roles that they would surely be sued for doing if they went the other way.

   17. JCJason Calacanis39:30

       That was confounding, yeah.

   18. DSDavid Sacks39:31

       And now they're, they've canceled a contract for SpaceX, having the best service in the space, but somehow missing a goal that they're not required to meet for three years. This is harassment.

   19. JCJason Calacanis39:42

       Yeah, it's harassment.

   20. DSDavid Sacks39:42

       It's transparent.

   21. JCJason Calacanis39:43

       Yeah.

   22. DSDavid Sacks39:44

       And the question I have is do we want to live in a country where the government can engage in this kind of naked political retaliation against its critics? And I have to say, you know, there was a, there was a time in America where, you know, Nixon was roundly attacked for having this quote unquote enemies list, where supposedly, you know, he had made a list of all his enemies and the IRS was auditing them. Okay? We are so far beyond that point, and the media isn't interested at all. And no one's really interested unless you like what Elon's doing, but if you don't, you know, if you're on the opposite side of the political spectrum as Elon, you don't care. And there's nobody who's willing to say in a neutral way that political retaliation should not be part of our system.

   23. JCJason Calacanis40:27

       I mean-

   24. DSDavid Sacks40:27

       It's very sad.

   25. JCJason Calacanis40:28

       ... (laughs) we, we have a presidential candidate running specifically saying, "I am your retribution." I mean, this is something that has to stop across all of politics. Nobody should be using their political power to do any retribution against anybody. They should be operating the government efficiently and in the best interest of all Americans. Tremont?

   26. DSDavid Sacks40:44

       Well, but, I mean, to be honest... Okay, so maybe, I don't like that rhetoric from Trump. I don't think it's helpful, but what did Trump ever do that's in this league? I mean, everything they accused Trump of doing, the fascism, the retribution, all that kind of stuff seems to me the Biden administration is doing here.

   27. JCJason Calacanis41:00

       Yeah. Well, I mean, he says he's gonna do it. He says that the first thing he's gonna do is go after journalists and-

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:03

       Do you think Trump did no retribution when he was in office?

   29. JCJason Calacanis41:07

       I mean, we- have to look through every single issue he's ever done.

   30. DSDavid Sacks41:11

       Yeah, you can't name one.
6. 58:25 – 1:22:59

   Alex Jones reinstated on X

   1. JCJason Calacanis58:25

      Alex Jones, the controversial conspiracy commentator of InfoWars fame is back on Twitter after Elon did a poll, he got two million people to respond asking if he should be reinstated, 70% said yes. Of course, Jones encouraged (laughs) his fans to vote in this poll, so I'm not sure how scientific it is. For background, Twitter permanently banned Jones in 2018 after accusing him of posting direct threats of violence and hate speech. He had already received bans from Apple, Facebook and YouTube, is pretty much the, the number one person to be deplatformed. As you know, Jones was ordered to pay $1.5 billion of the families of eight Sandy Hook victims. This is across two cases in Texas and Connecticut. And here is Jones in his own words on the Sandy Hook parents.

   2. AJAlex Jones59:11

      Sandy Hook, it's got inside job written all over it. Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first... The Newtown kids, uh-huh. They take 'em, put 'em in our face, tell us their names, who they were. I heard an ad this m- morning on the radio, Bloomberg paid for locally, going, "I dropped Billy off and watched him go around the corner and he never came back, all because of the guns. Won't you just turn your guns in for my son? Why'd you do it to him, gun owners?"

   3. DFDavid Friedberg59:48

      Forgive my language, but (beep) that guy.

   4. JCJason Calacanis59:51

      Okay, there it is folks.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg59:53

      (beep) that guy.

   6. JCJason Calacanis59:53

      We have a (beep) that guy. But let me, uh-

   7. DSDavid Sacks59:55

      Does that mean censor him?

   8. DFDavid Friedberg59:56

      Unfortunately not, but I absolutely cannot stand that g- that is just like heart-wrenching, like evil, awful (beep) spewing out of his mouth. And he still, you know, should have a right to speak, but man, (beep) that guy.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:00:11

      I was never a big crier. Part of it was just my defense mechanism. And I remember Sandy Hook because I had just become a parent, I had, I think two kids by that point, and I was uncontrollably crying when that happened. And it was the first time I realized how you change as a parent and you just develop this empathy and then you realize how precious kids' lives are. And I've become more and more of a crier as my kids have grown older. And I really appreciate that, what my kids have done for me. So when I hear him talk like that...

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:54

       I... Yes, he has a right to say what he wants, but he is a complete piece of (beep) .

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:01:00

       Yeah. Okay. So let's get into this very difficult question. And Sacks, I don't want to force you to defend, you know, one of those horrible humans. (laughs) I think we can all agree.

   12. DSDavid Sacks1:01:10

       Well, my, my position is pretty similar to what the other guys have said, which is what he said was odious. However, that doesn't necessarily mean he should be censored. We have standards. Uh, we have First Amendment standards around this stuff.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg1:01:21

       I agree with that. I agree with that.

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:01:21

       So first of all, let me back up. I mean, I didn't even really know who Alex Jones was. I mean, I only knew him because of the controversy. I've never actually listened to his show. I'm not really interested in what he has to say. I do think that if you're gonna play this clip of his mistake going back many years, you should supplement it by playing a clip of what he says now, and what he says now is he's apologized, he's admitted he made a mistake. He basically bought into a conspiracy theory by... It wasn't just him saying it. Apparently, he had some people on the show who, I don't know if they were purported experts or what, but they were making a case that the whole Sandy Hook thing was a hoax and it was being done to basically, you know, get people's guns. I mean, look, it's nutty stuff. I'm not defending it in any way, but he explained that he bought into that mis- into that theory or hoax or whatever, and he thinks it's a terrible mistake and he's apologized for it. And the question is, are you going to have a lifetime ban on somebody for saying things that were wrong and odious when they have now apologized? And for me, it's not about Alex Jones. It's about censorship. Remember, when this case happened way back in 2018, it was really hard to defend keeping this guy on the platform in light of what he had said and done because everyone's reacting very emotionally to it. And it was people, like defenders of free speech like Glenn Greenwald, who said that, "Listen, if you take Alex Jones out now, if you have a permanent ban, it will basically be a slippery slope, and it will create a precedent, and other people will get banned." And sure enough, just two years later, Twitter was banning people like Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford doctor, for saying dissident things about COVID that turned out to be completely correct. Remember, he authored the Great Barrington Declaration talking about how lockdowns wouldn't work and, and so on. And so even within two years of this decision around Alex Jones, the censorship was totally out of control. And so I think the people who warned us that Alex Jones would become a slippery slope ended up being completely correct. To me, that's the symbolism of the restoration of Alex Jones's account. It's not endorsing what he did. It's not saying that what he said wasn't odious. I mean, look, again, I have zero interest even listening to the guy, but the point is that free speech does require us to put up with people who are wrong, people who are even hateful sometimes.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg1:03:53

       And stating misinformation.

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:03:54

       People who put out inf- misinformation. That's what free speech requires us to do. And if you want a different standard, it's going to become a precedent for a lot of censorship that you don't like.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg1:04:05

       I agree with Sacks. The on- the only place where I disagree with Sacks is on Twitter not having a right to do this as a private enterprise. I think Twitter had a decision to make on what kind of editorialization they wanted to do with the content on their platform, on their product, and they made a choice. I don't think that... I think it was the wrong choice personally. And we've talked about this in the past. I think, uh, you know, it's, it's great that Elon's making a different choice and create- catering to a, you know, a different audience perhaps with a different product that has more open speech. But that's not, you know, a government free speech mandate. That's a private enterprise mandate, and I do believe in the right to free speech. I think it's a little bit ironic to say that it's inappropriate when someone says something that is misinformation because it's incorrect or unprovable when we have an entire group of people that believe in something called religion. And much of religion is based on this concept of faith and belief without necessarily hard proof or evidence, and we allow religion- religious speech, you know, in, in many forums without saying, "Hey, that's misinformation," or, "Hey, it's not true," or, "Hey, it doesn't meet the standards of X or Y or Z's scientific assessment or understanding." And so I think it's just worth acknowledging that this whole concept that someone has to ultimately be the police of the truth and the police of fact and the police of information is gonna lead to a, a bad place, and I'd rather have more free speech with people saying misinformation and saying awful, putrid things than one where a few people get to decide what everyone gets to hear. So, as much as I absolutely despise this guy, yeah.

   18. DSDavid Sacks1:05:42

       Kreiber, you, you may be right that Twitter as a private company had the, the right, as our laws currently exist, to decide who they were going to suspend and ban from the site. However, once that censorship power was created, it attracted powerful entities-

   19. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:59

       Yeah.

   20. DSDavid Sacks1:05:59

       ... from our government who wanted to co-opt and use that power. That's what we saw in the Twitter files-

   21. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:03

       Right.

   22. DSDavid Sacks1:06:03

       ... with the 80 FBI agents sending takedown requests. That's what happens is when you create this censorship power...

   23. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:09

       People will abuse it.

   24. DSDavid Sacks1:06:11

       It... People will abuse it, but, but more to the point, it's such a tempting power to use by people in authority, right? It's like the ring of power. Those tools that Twitter created, it's like they released a pheromone or something that attracted all these powerful shadowy actors from the federal government and the FBI and all these agencies. And so that, that is why I think it's just very dangerous for even private companies to create these censorship regimes is that they can be co-opted and, and abused.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:42

       Being co-opted and abused is the issue. I don't think that the issue is their choice in what kind of content they want to put out. You can go to the Netflix Kids version of Netflix, and kids... They, they control what content is on Netflix, and they provide a different version than what they provide to adults. And I think, like, editorializing the content platform that you're making available, whether it's user-generated...... or paid for, or whatever, is a totally reasonable, like, approach to running a business, a content business. The, the point you're making is the right one, which is the point at which you allow government agencies to intervene and, and have control and manipulation over private citizens' user-generated content is where I think it crossed the line. So, I, I don't disagree with you on that point.

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:07:23

       May I ask two que-

   27. DSDavid Sacks1:07:24

       Yeah.

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:07:24

       ... clarifying questions here? 'Cause I'm, I'm curious how you would handle this. If you were the CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, would you have reinstated Alex Jones, yes or no? And then number two, if Alex Jones then, as a new member of the community who's been reinstated and forgiven, 'cause he apologized, and then he did this again, this exact same thing again, with a- another school shooting with parents, would you remove him from the platform?

   29. DSDavid Sacks1:07:50

       I don't know that these are yes or no questions. What I would say is that I've written what I think should be a speech policy for social media platforms in a blog post I did several years ago. And what I said is that I would take First Amendment case law and operationalize it for social media platforms. There are nine categories of speech that the Supreme Court has said are not protected speech because they're dangerous in some way. So for example, incitement to violence is one of them. You know, harassment is one of them. So I would use-

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:08:23

       Well, this clearly falls under those two.

Episode duration: 1:39:25