E17: Big Tech bans Trump, ramifications for the First Amendment & the open Internet

David Sacks 0:00 Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone.

Jason Calacanis 0:01 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:01 Welcome to the All-In Pod.

Jason Calacanis 0:05 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:06 Your illustrious-

Jason Calacanis 0:07 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:08 Your illustrious moderator, Jason Calacanis has been purged.

Jason Calacanis 0:12 (laughs) Canceled.

David Sacks 0:14 He's been canceled. We canceled him-

Jason Calacanis 0:16 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:16 ... for his constant interruptions and-

Jason Calacanis 0:19 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:20 ... low IQ comments.

Jason Calacanis 0:21 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:22 We decided that the minimal IQ required to be on this pod is, you know, 140, 150. He did not make the cut.

Jason Calacanis 0:30 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:30 And so now, it is just me, Chamath, and Freeberg.

Jason Calacanis 0:35 (laughs) He is, uh, Jason is away. He is actively implementing our jerk off to win strategy to solve the pandemic and free speech.

Narrator 0:46 I'm going all in. Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sachs. I'm going all in. And I said, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you Betsy. Queen of Quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 1:05 Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It is an emergency podcast, episode 16. Hit number two in the, uh, rankings on the, uh, Apple iTunes podcasting store. Clearly, we hit a nerve. It's been an insane week and the dictator dictated that he was not satisfied with doing our podcast once every two weeks. And so, here we are on a Sunday, the Queen of Quinoa, Rain Man himself, David Sachs, and the dictator, chopping it up for you, the loyal, confused, angry, infuriated audience of All-In. It's-

David Sacks 1:44 Jason, ple-

Jason Calacanis 1:44 ... it's the craziest week of our lives.

David Sacks 1:46 Jason, plea- please don't ascribe to the audience the characteristics that describe yourself.

Jason Calacanis 1:52 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:53 Okay. This has been a crazy 72 hours. Can anybody remember a s- a week that has been more crazy in their life, with the exception of, I guess, 9/11, the financial crisis? I'm trying to think of this level of crazy, uh, uh, uh,

Jason Calacanis 2:08 I don't even really-

David Friedberg 2:08 Jason, I think, I think we should start with what happened after the last All-In podcast between you and Sachs over text. We should get it all out there. We should share it publicly. And I think it would make-

Jason Calacanis 2:19 No. (laughs)

David Sacks 2:20 No, no, no.

David Friedberg 2:20 No, I think-

Jason Calacanis 2:20 Yes.

David Friedberg 2:20 I think, I think it's-

Jason Calacanis 2:21 No, we should.

David Friedberg 2:22 I think it's worth doing. To, we, we talked about this before you joined us.

Jason Calacanis 2:25 Oh, shit. (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:26 And, uh, and, and we're, Chamath and I are having an intervention. And, uh, you know, I, I, I'm gonna say something real quick. I think it's worth highlighting that one of the things that I think we have the opportunity to do as a group is to kind of elevate the conversation a bit and not frame things as being black and white, and not frame them as being one or zero, or partisan, or left or right. And everyone on this, uh, in this conversation has nuanced opinions about a lot of different topics. And when you sum up all those opinions, it doesn't define a left or right person, or Democrat or Republican. I think that's what makes us, you know, a, a compelling and interesting group to talk to. Sachs has been characterized as the Trump guy. He took offense to that. Um, and in particular, the heated conversation you guys had last time. And I do think it's worth kind of sharing that with everyone and letting you guys reconcile publicly.

David Sacks 3:15 Yeah.

David Friedberg 3:15 Have a, have a group hug-

David Sacks 3:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh.

David Friedberg 3:17 And, and, and re- reframe kind of how we talk about each other, and how, uh, so that we can kind of set a bit of an example on, on how to do this well.

Jason Calacanis 3:24 Uh, I can start or you can start, David.

David Sacks 3:26 I'll, I'll, I'll start because-

Jason Calacanis 3:27 Okay.

David Sacks 3:27 ... I'm the one who had the objection.

Jason Calacanis 3:30 You're the aggrieved?

David Sacks 3:31 Yeah. I mean, so, so look, I, I think that, that J Cow does an amazing job moderating the pod and it's a difficult job. Um, and, you know, the, the, the, the, so I, so I don't want to, um, you know, this is not something I'm trying to blame him for. But I do have an objection to being labeled in a certain way. I think anybody would. You know, we, we don't want to be misconstrued and, and we want to be able to characterize our own views. We don't want to be labeled in a certain way. Now, I think Jason has sort of branded me as the Trump guy because frankly it's amusing to him. Um, I think he's mainly trolling me. And, but the audience doesn't necessarily understand that. I mean, if you go back and look at my Twitter feed or my blogs, I haven't written about Trump for years. I mean, I, I haven't said anything really about it. That's not my agenda. Um, you know, and I think it, it, I, I don't have a pro-Trump agenda, but I also don't have a pro-resistance agenda. I've described my position as anti-hysteria. Sometimes that means criticizing Trump like I did in the last pod. Sometimes it means criticizing the resistance. So, I just don't like being labeled a certain way, and I think Jason and I sort of, you know, kind of resolve this. Um, you know, if I were to label my politics, just, you know, Jason calls me the conservative. I think that's more accurate, but the question is, you know, what am I conserving exactly? And I would describe myself more as like a 1960s style liberal. You know, I'm a believer in free speech, you know, ACLU style. I'm a believer in King's dream of a colorblind society. You know, if, you know, I'm against all these, you know, foreign wars and interventions. If I had been around the 1960s, I would have been protesting Vietnam. That's kind of more where I'm coming from. And I guess the reason I'm a conservative now is because the political debate has moved so far away from that. But if I'm trying to conserve anything, it's really the liberal victories of the 1960s. So, in any event, um, I, I don't think that qualifies me in any way as a, as a, as a Trumper per se. And, um, I just don't want, you know, Jason making jokes to somehow, um, have the audience get the wrong idea, because I want to be heard, and I know Trump's an extremely polarizing figure. And the second you tell somebody you're frankly pro or con Trump, the other half just doesn't even stop, doesn't even want to listen to you. Um, and so my, my views are more complicated than that.

Jason Calacanis 5:51 Okay.

David Friedberg 5:52 (laughs)

David Sacks 5:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:52 Well, thanks to everybody for tuning in to the all in podcast. (laughs)

David Sacks 5:56 (laughs)

David Friedberg 5:56 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:56 It's been an amazing, episode 17.

David Sacks 5:58 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:58 Your emergency pod thanks to our sponsors.Um, listen. Uh, I think what makes this podcast great is, uh, the diversity of opinion and the respect, uh, that we show for each other. If my breaking chops, uh, which is, as everybody knows here, uh, my superpower in life, (laughs) uh, and talk- a- along with talking, uh, has pigeonholed you into being something you're not, or if you felt I've taken a cheap shot at you in any way, uh, I apologize and it was not my intent. My intent is to keep the conversation flowing, to entertain the audience certainly, but not at anybody's expense, David, and certainly not yours, because I do consider you one of the best friends I've had in my life and one of the most supportive people in my life. And, and I think we all feel that way about each other, that we go to bat for each other and support each other. I do think that this highlights and dovetails with what we... And I've given it a lot of thought, actually. I've really spent, since the last podcast, a lot of time thinking about your position, David, uh, and where you're coming from. And then also where the people who maybe, you know, you maybe agreed with some of, uh, Trump's victories, and certainly you are a conservative. I don't know if you voted for him or not or if you're willing to say if you did. Uh, I'll put that aside for a moment. But I do think that we're all seeing in our families, in our lives, and now as a nation, what is the off-ramp here to the people who supported Trump up until this coup attempt, uh, and this ugliness, and then how do we reconcile it, right? That is... The grand reconciliation here is the thing that has me very concerned because we're a microcosm, David. You and I are, you know, u- unbelievably close friends, uh, for a very long period of time, and we struggle with, uh, I think, uh, Trump. Trump is l- as I was saying in our group chat earlier, it's like the trolley car problem. Like, people will be pulling up, how do you deal with Trump as the example of, you know, what do you do if the trolley car, you know, it's gonna kill one person or five and do you, you know, the brake's broken kind of situation. It, it's... And I think Jack and the platforms also have a difficult task. Do you leave this person up after what we saw on Wednesday? And a lot has changed-

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:29 Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Jason Calacanis 8:29 ... since Wednesday.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:30 Can I, can I just say something?

Jason Calacanis 8:31 And so I'll, I'll leave it at that and then, uh, I'll throw it to Chamath. I don't wanna monopolize this, but-

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:34 No, Jason, here's the thing. I think that, um, we all have views and I think the thing that I respect the most about Sax is that his views are independent of the candidate du jour. And I think his views, quite honestly, are in many cases the most well-reasoned and well-thought-out because he's frankly, you know, one of the smartest people in our friend group, if not probably the smartest. So I, I think what it speaks to is the fact that you can have these momentary sort of pauses where you have these people that are so polarizing that you forget that there are legitimate views on both sides. I mean, I would characterize my political views as, in some cases, like deeply conservative, meaning get the government out of the way, they're a bunch of incompetent fucking buffoons. And on the other side, on some issues, I think that they should be extremely interventional, um, like in healthcare or in climate change, because it's just so dire and there needs to be a public mandate in order to drive change. I don't know where I fit anymore, especially because it's harder to be nuanced, as Friedberg said at the beginning, without sounding like a complete crazy person, because one word triggers the other side against you. So I think the thing that I just want all the listeners to appreciate, not just amongst the four of us but also amongst their own friends, is having a little patience and tolerance here is really important, because we cannot become the worst of ourselves, especially because of a single person who will be rendered with an enormous asterisk beside his name, and by him I mean Trump, for the rest of our natural lives. And so let's just not allow what one person has been able to do to malign all of our, like, natural ability to just not be completely stupid, quite honestly. So, um, I just think it's important to realize that we all have completely, completely nuanced perspectives, they're all worth listening to. And I would just tell people, don't fall for the simple easy out to assume that, you know, being a conservative means you're a Trump supporter or being a liberal means you're not a Trump supporter, 'cause I think that there's issues in which, you know, frankly... Look, let's be honest, the, the Wall Street Journal opinion by, uh, was it Lisa Lasser, what was her name? Lisa La- uh, Amy Lasell, somebody, um, Sky posted it in the group chat. Nick, can you find it? I can't remember it. Sassell or Lasell is her last name. Anyways... Oh, Kim Strassel. Kim Strassel. Yeah. Yeah. In the Wall Street Journal, yeah. She, she had a paragraph intro where... And again, I wasn't a Trump supporter, have never been a Trump supporter. I do have, though, some sympathy to some of the things he did, and the way that she described his four years, although s- you know, she was selective, it was impressive, actually. You know, meaning getting the rhetoric right on China, getting the rhetoric on trade right, um, the deregulation that he's created in some ways. So there, there is very much a reasonable narrative up until the Capitol storming where the glass was definitely half full, and it could have legitimately been viewed half full and it was just a matter of opinion because he was just such a crazy person and his style was so shitty. I think the thing, and David said this on the last pod, after storming the Capitol, it is very clear, 100% categorically, this guy is just a complete piece of shit.And so now the people that stand with him are extremely isolated. And so I just want us to remember that there, there is probably something to learn from everybody. He actually did some reasonable things intelligently well, until he fucking self-immolated himself. Um, and so let's just not give in to our basic instincts here. And I think there's a lot to learn from, uh, everybody.

Jason Calacanis 12:25 Uh, I think the frustration of a lot of people is, some people saw this coming and some people, you know, when Peter Thiel said things like, "Hey, you know, don't take Trump literally," and all this kind of stuff, some of us were taking him literally. Uh, and some of us were very concerned and people were saying, "Oh, you're being hyperbolic. He's not Hitler. He's, he's not dangerous." You know what? Uh, bullshit. He is dangerous and you should take him literally. And I think a lot of the folks who enabled him and who thought it was funny, um, who weren't on the other side of his vindictiveness, his dog whistling, uh, and the anger and the violence he put out into the world. And he consistently did this, you know. He, he, he started by saying, you know, "Get that person the hell out of here." Like I would... In the old days, the cops were throwing them down the stairs kind of thing. He, he is like Tony Soprano or any other mob boss who knows how to incite people to do dangerous things without having the culpability himself. As you pointed out, Chamath, he, he might be the one who gets off scot-free while they're rounding up all these people. And, and you got the prediction right, Chamath.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:35 He's not going to... This is... Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 13:35 Like, he, these people are going to go to jail for... There's multiple felonies.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:39 He's not going to get off scot-free. He's not going to get off scot-free.

Jason Calacanis 13:41 Well, I mean, do you think he's going to jail? And do you think the people-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:43 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 13:43 ... who broke into the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:44 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 13:44 You think s- you think Trump's going to jail?

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:46 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 13:47 Oh my Lord.

David Sacks 13:48 I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not sure about that. But I, I, I, I do think that, you know, like I said last time, uh, Trump is now the first, uh, sitting president to cost his party the presidency, the House and the Senate since Herbert Hoover. Uh, Jason, if you're right th- uh, about Trump, I mean, the voters have certainly been able to see that, and they've punished him, uh, and his party at the polls. I do think that whatever you do to Trump individually at this point is sort of redundant with that. Um, you know, he has now cost his party, uh, any share of the power-

Jason Calacanis 14:23 Everything.

David Sacks 14:24 ... everything, a- any share of the power in Washington.

Jason Calacanis 14:26 So can I ask you a question, David? Whe- when I made that point about Peter Thiel and the people who supported him early, do you have any regrets in your own thinking about being supportive of Trump in his early years?

David Sacks 14:44 You're, you're coming at this from a, a place I've never even come at it from, which is, I'm not like a partisan person.

Jason Calacanis 14:51 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 14:51 Uh, when Trump won the election in 2016, my first reaction was not, "Is this, you know, har- right or wrong? I don't... It's... You know, what side am I on?" My, my first reaction was, "Why did this happen?" You know, I tried to understand it. You know, I read-

Jason Calacanis 15:08 Hmm.

David Sacks 15:08 ... you know, the, the Hillbilly Elegy author. Um, you know, I was sur-... You know, my, my, my surprise at, at that happening caused me to ask questions. And, you know, what I think became really clear is that Trump won despite his manifest, you know, flaws because of a, uh, because of the failure of the elites. I mean, he, he was, you know... He's this sort of outsider populist and the country was trying to send the elites... Uh, bipartisan, I should say. Bipartisan elites message.

Jason Calacanis 15:42 Yeah, everybody wanted a change, I guess.

David Sacks 15:43 And, and what, and what was that message? That, to Chamath's points, for the last 20 years, uh, the bipartisan consensus, uh, in Washington has been to feed this Chinese, uh, tiger until it was an agonist. Now potentially on the cusp of s- of supplanting us as the sort of richest, uh, economy in the world. We have, uh, mired ourselves in these forever wars in the Middle East. I mean, again, these were things that both Democrats and Republicans got us into. So my reaction, you know, was first and foremost to try and understand it. And then once he was in the presidency, you know, I didn't see my job as being, uh, to be part of some crazy resistance. I mean, there needed to be a rational opposition to Trump and there was never a rational opposition. Um, people would basically object to anything he said just because he said it.

Jason Calacanis 16:36 Which then made your side, and I, and I'm gonna say your side, the conservative side. I wouldn't say your side. The conservative side dug in because they were like, "Well, the left's being hysterical. We're going to dig in."

David Sacks 16:46 No, not really. No, not really. I mean, if you, if you've been reading National Review for the last few years, and especially the last two months, there's been plenty of criticism of Trump.

Jason Calacanis 16:55 Well, I was thinking more Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham. All these people who said-

David Sacks 16:59 They're, they're politicians.

Jason Calacanis 16:59 ... they would be never Trumpers became right in line Trump supporters.

David Sacks 17:03 And, and they're, and they're partisan. They're, they're, they're politicians. They're part of the, the party. For people who care about ideas, what I would say is, I didn't change my ideas one way or another because Trump might happen to agree with one of them.

Jason Calacanis 17:17 Friedberg, what's your take?

David Friedberg 17:21 I don't like talking about Trump.

Jason Calacanis 17:24 Well, that, that is kind of, I think where, wh- where we're getting to. This is the-

David Friedberg 17:28 I mean, look, I-

Jason Calacanis 17:29 What's the off-ramp here, Friedberg?

David Friedberg 17:31 Um...

Jason Calacanis 17:33 What's the end game?

David Friedberg 17:34 You guys remember how the emperor came to power in Star Wars? (laughs) It was Palpatine turned the republic against itself and then he...

Jason Calacanis 17:44 Emergency powers.

David Friedberg 17:45 Emergency powers. Um, look, I, I... What I... To Sachs' point, like, I care, um, more deeply... Um, I care very little about Trump the person, um, and I care more deeply about the motivations of people that, that want a person like that, um, in power. And I care more deeply about the way the dialogue is happening.... um, to resolve ideas and to resolve the decisions in this country right now. Um, that is why I think that, you know, my vote last year, in our last two podcasts ago, which seems like 10 years ago, was that, um, the biggest political failure of 2020 is the institute of American democracy. Um, and it's only gotten worse in the last two weeks. (sniffs) Um, and I think that the mechanism by which we have debate, um, is lost. It's, uh, from everyone from the Republican to the Democratic leadership, uh, it is attacking and finger-pointing and there is no, um, resolve for forgiveness. Um, there is no res- everything is all about justice and winning, and there is no resolve for objectivity and discovering the truth, um, and, and doing the best thing for people, not the best thing for party. Um, and doing the best thing for country. Um, and that's really easy to say, and really, really hard to do as I think everyone is realizing. Because as soon as you say, "Let's bring the country together," half the country raises their hand and says, "But I want justice, and we can't come together until we have justice." And so at what point do you break the cycle? You know, uh, revenge, uh, never ends until someone steps down first and says, "You know what? I give up. I'm not gonna ... I, I'm gonna end up in the losing position." But at that point, maybe reconciliation can begin. Um, and I, I'm more concerned about the, the, the heat, the temperature, and everyone says turn it down, but no one's actually turning it down. Um, and so, you know, uh, the, the legacy of Trump, I, I, I, I honestly care less about. I care much more about going forward, how do we resolve the decisions that aren't all about the Democrats overrunning and, uh ... You know, I was, I was actually upset about Georgia, because I do think it's a problem if you have a one-party state and we don't have balance and we don't have a forum for conversation and we don't have a forum, uh, you know, for, for, for coming to, uh, to kind of, you know, objective sentiment that, that's best for the people. Um, and so, uh, you know, I'm much more interested in, in flipping the conversation away from Trump and trying to think about, you know, going forward, what are the things, what are the forums, what are the mechanisms that we can have to, to create equity, uh, in the country, to create reconciliation, to create balance in decision-making, and to turn down the temperature so that Chancellor Palpatine doesn't become the evil emperor. Um, and that we don't lose to China, and, you know, all the things that are kind of emerging as, as being the-

Jason Calacanis 20:38 Yeah. We have-

David Friedberg 20:38 ... unfortunate outcomes. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 20:39 We have three or four major wars we need to solve; the pandemic, China, wealth inequality, global warming. Chamath, uh, do you think at this point in the podcast we should walk through what's happened since Wednesday vis-a-vis, you know, Trump being deplatformed? Or do you think we should, uh, talk a little bit about ... and skip to reconciliation? I think we have a fork in the road here. As the moderator, I'll just ask Chamath, maybe you could pick which direction we go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:09 Well, I think it's important to talk about what happened, um, and I'll frame this in the, in the context of Peter Thiel. He has a philosopher that he's talked a lot about, Rene Girard. And, um, you know, basically the, the Girardian philosophy is essentially that, you know, people come into conflict because they're extremely similar and, you know, they effectively want the same things and they're competing for the same sort of essentially scarce resources. And the way that you resolve that is through some sort of cathartic sacrifice, right? Meaning like there needs to be a grand crime, a grand act. And I think that we're at this point, to Friedberg's sort of earlier statement, where you got a choice which is you either throw democracy under the bus or you ac- you throw DJT under the bus. And you don't have a choice and that, and that ha- and, and sort of like ... It's not just even the United States. It's almost like sort of democracy as an institution's hand was forced, um, this past week. And so it is probably important to look at what's happened in the last few days through that lens, which is, you know, it's, it's almost like people first were shocked and then now we're in the midst of that reflexive reaction to what is a simple choice, which is you can basically forgive the guy or you can reaffirm the institution, which means to sacrifice the guy. And I think that's the thing that's happening in real time and it's going to be, I think, over the next few weeks a super messy conversation because you're gonna have a bunch of dumb decisions, you're gonna have a bunch of over-reaching, you know, you're gonna have a bunch of, um, dramatic sort of bellyaching on both sides. You know, there was this thing today where Devin Nunes was like screaming about how he had lost his 3,000 followers on Parler, 3 million followers on Parler, but he was saying it on Fox News-

Jason Calacanis 23:08 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:08 ... (laughs) which is distribution to millions of people. (laughs) And so-

Jason Calacanis 23:11 Can I ask a, a question about this reality now we're all facing? Do w- 'cause the event that occurred on Wednesday, we are all still trying to process and new information is coming in. As we, you know, the ... as people get the videos and, and as we let the dust settle, the dust is settling, I'm curious, Alex, do ... How do you look at what happened on Wednesday? Do you view it as a coup? Do you v- because some of the information that's come out about they were trying to get to Pence and that they wanted to kidnap people and then you ... That dovetails with the kidnapping schemes that were going on, uh, and there were pipe bombs and a police officer was beaten to death with a pipe and his skull was crushed or something. We don't have all the details yet but-

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:56 Fire extinguisher. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 23:58 A fire extinguisher. He's beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Some of the videos I've seen of police being dragged, um, you know, that counteract the selfie police, you know, y- y- so many different things occurred on Wednesday. I think we all have to just think about what happened on Wednesday? How do we each feel about what happened on Wednesday? I'll, I'll go to you first, Alex.

David Sacks 24:19 Well, I mean, I think-

Jason Calacanis 24:19 And not because I'm framing you as anything. Just because you haven't talked yet. (laughs)

David Sacks 24:22 Yeah, no, I mean, I already said... I, I, I already gave my thoughts in the last pod, that it was outrageous. It was a travesty. Um. It was a rally that turned into a riot, that turned into, you know, some sort of insurrection, I guess you could call it. It was a... It was a rebellion against authority. Um, I think coup is, is potentially a strong word, uh, because it, it, i- i- it wasn't... It... Nobody ever had their hands on the levers of power. I mean, the, the fate of the republic was never in question. I know there were even, you know, people tweeting about how the, uh, the, the, these, um, marauders, whatever you want to call them, almost got their hands on the, uh, electors' ballots. I mean, yeah, but we all know how they're voting. Even if they had gotten them, uh, we would just have gotten new ones. I mean, that was sort of a ceremonial thing. But look, it was, it was an absolute outrage. But I do think that there is, um, a thing happening now, uh, called threat inflation, where, you know, using language like, you know, going from riot to, uh, insurrection, to now coup, it... there is a, a, a type of inflation happening that is then used to justify the reaction by the other side to it, which is now, you know, the... basically the ending of freedom of speech, um, which is really, I think, the big thing that's happened since the last pod. It's really the... It's the reason why we are having this emergency pod, I think, is because of what's happened there. Um-

Jason Calacanis 25:51 I think the emergency pod was just to make sure that the pod wasn't ending (laughs) because of you not getting in a big fight. I think that was people's concern-

David Sacks 25:58 No, I mean, look. Yeah, we'll just keep it-

Jason Calacanis 25:58 ... was that The Beatles were breaking up. (laughs)

David Sacks 26:01 Yeah, yeah. Well, that's true. Look, uh, just keeping the pod together, you know, with, with four big egos on it, you're right, it's hard. It is like The Beatles, you know?

Jason Calacanis 26:07 (laughs)

David Sacks 26:07 One day it's gonna break up, but, but not, but not yet, not yet. Uh, but, but I, but I wanna t- I wanna tie in this issue with you said, uh, what you said about the off-ramp, okay? Which is, you know, what is the off-ramp from this? You look, everybody understands, I think, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you're on, that we are caught in a cycle of insane hyper-partisan warfare and tit-for-tat retaliation, and that is the thing that we need to, uh... That, that is the ledge we need to walk back from, okay? But the problem that everybody has is that they can only see the other side doing it, you know? They can't see themselves doing it. This is a two-way street. Both sides are doing it. And, um-

Jason Calacanis 26:49 And that's how deescalation works, is both sides-

David Sacks 26:51 Yes, and unless, and-

Jason Calacanis 26:51 ... have to concede something-

David Sacks 26:53 Yes, and unless you can see when your side is doing it, we're never gonna break the cycle. Now, the thing that is happening right now, and I... What Trump did was absolutely outrageous, and I think it, it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics. He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law, okay? But now what has happened is the next step in the tit-for-tat retaliation. Wha- the, the storming of the Capitol has now been used to im- implement a sweeping attack on free speech. You know, the, the Twitter employees who sent that letter to Jack, who've been demanding this for years, have finally gotten their way, and there is a widespread purge going on. And not just of Trump, not just a permanent ban on, o- on Trump and then a whole bunch of other people, you know, conservatives. There are now liberal accounts. There's an account that I wasn't even aware of called Red Scare. They're basically, you know, pretty, pretty much on the left. No one can say exactly what it was that got them banned. I guess they had Steve Bannon on their podcast. They are suddenly banned from Twitter. Nobody knows why. Um, they said-

Jason Calacanis 27:59 Oh, I, I subscribe to the Red Scare podcast. It's actually, uh... It's, it's called The Dirtbag Left. They're kind of like socialists, um, intelle- trying to be public intellectuals, and it's, it's oddly compelling. I'll leave it at that. Um-

David Sacks 28:12 But they are now banned from, from Twitter. They somehow got together-

Jason Calacanis 28:14 L- Let's pause for a second on DJT getting banned from Twitter. This is close to 100 million followers. It's a billion dollars in value. He just had the PGA say they'll never u- do a Trump golf course again. So the ramifi- the real-world ramifications for Trump are he, his, his businesses are gonna be devastated. His platform is gone. But... And I, and I was very pro-Trump staying on Twitter. I thought it was insane to think that the President of the United States would have their Twitter handle removed. That seemed crazy to me. However-

David Sacks 28:51 Crazy.

Jason Calacanis 28:52 I- i- it's a crazy concept. That being said-

David Sacks 28:54 Crazy.

Jason Calacanis 28:55 ... Trump knows how to dance right up to the line on the terms of service, and I think-

David Sacks 28:59 But here's the thing, here's the thing-

Jason Calacanis 29:01 I think there's imminent danger, and I think what we don't know is what is concerning to me. The fact that all of these services have turned him off I believe is indicative of Wednesday was under-hyped, and that they really did intend to kidnap, uh, folks and blow off bombs, and the Proud Boys, uh, founder w- was arrested days before with, you know, selling large magazine weapons. I, I think that they wanted to kill and kidnap people, um, and perhaps even, like, hang the vice president.

David Sacks 29:36 Honestly-

Jason Calacanis 29:36 I know that sounds crazy, but th- th- that's-

David Sacks 29:38 Honestly, honestly, Jason, I don't think we-

Jason Calacanis 29:39 That's what I think is going on with Twitter. I think they told-

David Sacks 29:41 Okay, I-

Jason Calacanis 29:41 I think they showed them the receipts.

David Sacks 29:43 I don't... Jason, stop. I, I, honestly, like, let's not fucking fearmonger. Like, we're, we're no better than anybody else with that bullshit. We don't know any of that crap. And the reality is that if they were doing that, they, they are not stupid enough to do it on a platform where you basically follow anybody you want. Okay? Like, I mean, if that were the case, then fucking, uh, ISIS would be using Twitter. They don't use Twitter. They use Telegram, and everybody's known it.

Jason Calacanis 30:05 Jamal, they, they live-streamed storming of the Capitol. (laughs) These people are not smart. We've established that.

David Sacks 30:09 Okay. I, I, I, I... Anyways, I... L- c- can we just... Let's just, like... Let's not do the left version of QAnon, okay? Let's not have now the left's version of the crazy conspiracy theories. Here's, here's, I think, what is worth talking about. We really reflexively, all of a sudden-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:28 ... um, started to push back on free speech in a way that doesn't make any sense. Meaning, I really was surprised, like, why are these Silicon Valley companies reacting now? Like, if you had a reason to do it, uh, it had been building for years and years and years, and in many ways, it was kind of like this random moment. Uh, and I, and I, and I mean random because I just don't think that, you know, everything up until that point was not equally sort of vile and disgusting under the same lens that that moment was. And so, had you had a reason to ban him, you would have banned him already. But then doing it in the way you did, and then having this cascading effect on folks on the left and the right just getting basically pushed out the door, to me was just completely reactive and not rooted in anything. It didn't, to me, it didn't make any sense. It, it, it's, it's, I don't know. I was, I was very frustrated and, and a little taken aback.

David Sacks 31:26 Well, can I, can I, can I jump in?

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:27 You let-

David Sacks 31:27 Can I jump on-

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:28 They let-

David Sacks 31:28 ... in on that? Because-

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:29 Yeah, and, and, wait, and-

David Sacks 31:30 ... I've been tweeting a lot about this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:30 And, and then the last thing is, like, they let Donald Trump hit a one-outer. Like, he was painted in a quarter to be a complete demagogue, and instead now it has been wrapped in a free speech issue, where now more people are talking about free speech than what a scumbag he is. How did we let that happen?

David Sacks 31:51 Big, big, big tech blundered into it again. I mean, we had a unanimity across the political spectrum that what happened at the Capitol was wrong, and Donald Trump was responsible for it. And Chamath, exactly like you said, the topic has now changed to censorship by big tech, which is a real issue. I mean, look, our freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. It's the first fucking one, okay? It's the one the framers of the Constitution cared about the most. Because free speech is not just, uh, necessary and important for democracy. It's the reason why we have our freedom, is so that we can think and speak and worship as we please, and that is legitimately under threat. Um, you know, what, what big tech, and it, and, and by the way, it's not just the permanent ban on Trump. You had simultaneous to that. It was, it, it wasn't just the banning of all these accounts. You also had the deplatforming of Parler, which is sort of the Twitter alternative, by Google and Apple at the same time, and, and Amazon. And so you're, you're talking about really deplatforming not just Trump, but millions of people. And so the, the amazing thing is that we've had this sweeping appropriation of power by, you know, half a dozen oligarchs who now have the right to determine what we see and read, and people are cheering because they hate Trump so much, they can't see that the biggest power grab in history has happened.

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:24 Has happened. Can I ask you, Byron?

David Friedberg 33:25 Okay, hold on. I want to, I want to say something on this 'cause, uh, I'm not sure I really, uh, fully agree. I, I think that the point that Sax is making, um, about freedom of speech, uh, applies to what you're legally allowed to say. Sax, uh, we're talking about private services that, um, you know, a user chooses to use and the service provider chooses to make available to that user in a market, um, space. And i- in that context, it feels to me like everyone has a choice of where to go and what services to use. And frankly, if there aren't good services to use, so- and there's a lot of people that want to use one, the free market will resolve to create one. And we're already seeing that with Signal being the number one app on the App Store today, that emerging new platforms will win in a marketplace where old service providers are no longer catering to the market demands for a service. Um, I'll also say that-

David Sacks 34:18 Okay, wait, wait, can, can I, can I respond to that one?

David Friedberg 34:20 Yeah.

David Sacks 34:20 And then come back to you? Okay.

David Friedberg 34:20 And then, and then I'll make one more point, but go ahead. Yeah.

David Sacks 34:23 Okay. So, uh, I understand the First Amendment only applies to, to government, okay? It doesn't apply to private companies. But, but here's, here's the, the thing, is that when the, the framers of the Constitution wrote that, freedom of speech was something that took place in the, in the town square, right? You would go to the courthouse steps and put down your soapbox. You could speak to people, gather a crowd. That is why the right to assemble is part of the First Amendment, is because assembling is tantamount to free speech. Where do people assemble today online? On these monopoly network services, like a Facebook, like Twitter. And again, it's not, and, and, and, and to your point, couldn't they go to some other site? Well, they did. They went to Parler. Guess what happened? The operating systems just banned Parler. And so, you know, I hear this, this argument-

David Friedberg 35:10 There's an open, there's an open web, Sax. You know, you don't need to go to Apple's App Store or Google's Google Play. You can put an app on Android. You just don't need to do it through Google Play. And if you don't want to use Apple's E- you know, OS-

David Sacks 35:21 Right.

David Friedberg 35:21 ... you can use another phone.

David Sacks 35:22 And you can-

David Friedberg 35:23 And by the way, and everyone can access the internet. The internet is free and open, and anyone can create a new network node on the internet, and anyone can put any information they want on that node, provided it's within the, the, the, the boundaries and constraints of the law, and they can make it available to anyone else.

David Sacks 35:37 For, for, maybe f- for, for now, but you can't use AWS, and Google might not make you show up in search results, so how-

David Friedberg 35:43 You could turn your iMac, you could turn your iMac at home into a, into a web server, and you could make it available on the internet.

David Sacks 35:48 How is it... I- i- if Google and Amazon and Apple have censored you at the operating system level and removed you from Google search results, how in the world is anybody supposed to find you?

David Friedberg 35:58 Yeah, you're gonna have- How many people have been removed from Google search results? I think it's- So let me, let me just... I, I think it's important-

David Sacks 36:02 The App Stores.

David Friedberg 36:03 So, so I do think that there's still an open market and there's an open internet that people can access information freely and use the internet freely without being dependent on a handful of, you're right, high s- highly scaled services and highly scaled platforms. But there's certainly a marketplace and an opportunity for, for innovation there. I'll also say that the, um, the platforms that made these decisions to ban these accounts and, and kick people off, um, are not doing so-... uh, uh, under the demand of law. And I think that, that is a really... A- and so I think to some extent, I, you know, I'm probably on, on your side in this context, but, um, the standard is not a legal standard. The standard is a judgment. It is an... It is a, it is a moral or, or some principled standard that is sitting above and beyond the legal standard that they're required to comply with. Uh...

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:52 This is the point.

David Friedberg 36:54 And this is really scary, right, because at that point it becomes a subjective decision about who you kick off, based on your interpretation of what they said and what they intended when they said it. And that leads to the infinite slippery slope and it's sheer...

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:07 You-

David Friedberg 37:07 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:08 You nailed it one fucking thousand percent. That is the exact issue. It's not necessarily about free speech. It is that they... When you have accumulated power and you effectively have a quasi-governmental organization that gets to operate in the free market when it wants to, but then operate like a quasi-governmental monopoly when it wants to, all of a sudden, the power becomes in the shadows. Right? There is a random VP some place who actually controls this decision. And the problem is, today, if a politician does something or a political body or a government body does something, you have redress. Right? You can sue that entity. You know who it is. There's a pathway through the courts, through the law, through the Constitution. The problem with this is all of a sudden it becomes murky, and look, you flip a coin, 50% of the time, guys, you're gonna get your way. The other 50% of the time, who the fuck knows what'll happen and you may be completely on the wrong side of it. And this is, I think the problem. Let me... I just want to read you guys something. There was a... There was this manifesto or memo. This woman who was a former Facebook data scientist, Sophie Zhang, she wrote. I'm just, I'm just gonna read this, 'cause I think it's, uh, it's really interesting here. The 6600-word memo written by former Facebook data scientist, Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Hon- Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them. She said, "In the three years I've spent at Facebook, I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry and cause international news on multiple occasions." Now, let me just stop there. Replace your United States with all those countries and we care. But there are people in all of those countries where, you know, those countries mean more to them than what's happening in the United States.

David Friedberg 39:10 That's right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:11 And that represents the problem. That's what we're dealing with.

David Friedberg 39:14 And the social... The, the social suasion that is influencing the leaders of the tech companies are largely their Democrat employees that live in the Bay Area. And, um, that's a big part of why the decisions are being made in the way that they're being made and the priorities are being set, is because, as you pointed out, I think it was Saka put it on Twitter, and, and Jason you've talked about this, but talent is everything in Silicon Valley. And if your employees tell you they're gonna quit, um, working for you or they're not gonna do their jobs, um, you're gonna take that, uh, to heart. And there's not a lot of influence or suasion that, you know, citizens of Bolivia and, you know, Uruguay can have with executives at Facebook and Twitter. But people in the Bay Area do have a lot of suasion.

Chamath Palihapitiya 39:56 Do any of us have a fucking clue about the politics in Azerbaijan or Bolivia?

David Friedberg 40:00 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:00 Does any one of us have a point of view?

David Friedberg 40:03 And, and I think, that's, that's, that's the point is like, is like as soon as you add judgment to the equation, um, you know, you're gonna be wrong for some people and you're gonna be right with some people, versus using an absolute standard. And if the issue is that the law... That the law doesn't define the absolute standard, then you need to go and change the law. And...

Jason Calacanis 40:21 I, I think there's gonna be a couple of free market solutions that come here, because you... Even as difficult as this decision can be, you layer it onto it, somebody who is completely insincere and manipulating the system, um, on purpose, and to your point, David, in the last podcast, is sitting in the President of United States' seat. You know, it carries different weight. And if you look at the words that Trump used or Rudy used, you know, "We want to have, uh, combat, uh, trial by combat." You know, is that... Somebody's got to make a judgment call. Is that an incitement to violence? Or do you just look at what occurred after they said the words? It's a very difficult thing to do. There are free market solutions that will emerge. Bitcoin is something we've talked about, it's had an incredible run. Nobody's controlling that. There is Masterdon and plenty of other peer-to-peer software that will be deployed, I predict, and that will put up, uh, competition now for these services. And it will be impossible to ban those peer-to-peer, uh, uh, platforms. And so we'll have some products emerge.

David Friedberg 41:24 One universal truth is information wants to be free. So if there is an opinion, if there is a voice, if there is information out there...

Jason Calacanis 41:29 Yeah. So there, there'll be a free market response to Parler being shut down. I, I sincerely believe that a lot of these decisions are being made, not just at the behest of the employees. I do agree they have tremendous power, uh, and, and I've said that obviously many times. I think what's going on here is people believe that Trump and we... And you said it yourself, David, you... There's gonna be a white knuckle 10 days. Uh, and I don't know if you still believe that there's a chance on the 17th or 19th or whatever, that there could be more unrest. I actually think a lot of people woke up and said, "I don't know if I want to give this guy the ability to say the next three or four crazy things that make people show up, um, at, uh, a person's home." Or, you know, uh, uh, the dog whistling and, y- you know, if, if, if Trump's comments on Wednesday at that rally and Rudy Giuliani's and Donald Trump Jr.'s, the people who really incited this, uh, and, and they're gonna face some amount of civil and, and, and criminal charges, I believe. Um-... i- if they did that on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Periscope, or whatever it happens to be, and then this happened, would those platforms have some liability? Especially after, you know, what's happened? I think that they're just, um, part of this is covering their asses. I think they should've just done a 30-day ban, not a permanent ban, so at least they would have the cover of saying, "Listen, this is too heated. We're gonna pause for the 30 days, and then we'll reassess it February 1st or February

Jason Calacanis 43:01 15th."

David Sacks 43:01 Right. Well, but, so, so part of the problem here is that there is no policy, right? The policy is public outcry. And if there's enough public outcry and there's enough pressure or letter writing from the employees, or there's enough, um, saber-rattling by the people who are gonna run the Senate Judiciary Committee next year-

Jason Calacanis 43:21 Or the language was so clear...

David Sacks 43:23 It's, th- there is ... So, so three months ago, I wrote a blog post, um, about the so- the policy that I thought the social media companies should take. I said for moderation. And what I said is, there actually is a moderation policy consistent with the First Amendment that could be implemented, because the First Amendment does not protect many categories of basically dangerous speech. Uh, there's like nine major categories. It includes incitement of violence. It includes, you know, trying to, uh, you know, it, uh, uh, uh, uh, pro- uh, trying to provoke a crime. It, uh, it includes fraud. It includes defamation. There are many categories of speech that aren't protected by the First Amendment and social media companies could have said, "Listen, this is our policy, is we're gonna try and be broadly consistent with the First Amendment, but if somebody goes outside of those lines, then we'll remove it." So there was a way to your, to your point, Jason, I think there was a way to remove some of Trump's treat-, uh, tweets for incitement, consistent with the First Amendment. But that's not what they did. You know, that, that ... And, and maybe that would, i- i- instead what they did is a lifetime ban combined with rounding up, you know, twice the usual number of suspects, combined with a de-platforming, not at the account level, but at, now at the application level by Google, Apple, and Amazon. And none of this has been explained. There is no policy. What it is, is a-

Jason Calacanis 44:49 No. I mean there is a-

David Sacks 44:50 ... appropriation. Hold on. What it is, is an appropriation-

Jason Calacanis 44:52 There is a policy.

David Sacks 44:53 ... of power by oligarchs.

Jason Calacanis 44:54 No, no. There is a policy. The problem is, as we've just discussed, it's an interpretation that must occur. And the interpretation of Wednesday's comments on a tweet might be, okay, yeah, they're borderline, but not enough to shut his account down. And the, and these folks know how to do it. When, when Rudy Giuliani says, "I want a trial by combat," or, you know, if Trump says, "You're not gonna have a country unless you fight, and you have to fight, and we're never gonna accept these results," is that inciting or not?

David Sacks 45:22 So, so the policy-

Jason Calacanis 45:22 Well, he did incite people.

David Sacks 45:24 ... the poli- the policy that, that, that I want is something broadly consistent with the First Amendment, uh, because that is-

Jason Calacanis 45:30 But in those, in those phrases I just told you, is the ... Are those inciting or are those on the borderline if you were making the decision?

David Sacks 45:38 Well ... Right. So the, you know, putting my lawyer hat on for a second, there's questions of law and questions of fact, okay? And we can-

Jason Calacanis 45:44 Okay.

David Sacks 45:44 ... debate ... What you're describing are questions of fact. What I'm trying to say is, what, what is the law? What is the policy that we're trying to implement?

Jason Calacanis 45:50 Well, the law would say those were not direct incitement.

David Sacks 45:53 No. Well, th- there is no policy. These social media companies don't have any policy. They're making it up as they go along based on the pressure they get.

Jason Calacanis 45:58 What would you do, David? What would you do with Trump's comments from Wednesday if they were in tweets?

David Sacks 46:03 Yeah. I'll tell you. So first of all, I would have implemented a, a moderation policy broadly consistent with the First Amendment and then certain tweets that were inciting violence while there was rioting on the Capitol, I would've been okay taking those down. I would've taken those down. Where I think ... And I, and, and I think even doing something until the inauguration, if you think that Trump poses a threat-

Jason Calacanis 46:27 He does.

David Sacks 46:27 Uh, I think, I think that's okay. I think that's okay. But-

Jason Calacanis 46:29 So you would've been fine-

David Sacks 46:30 And, and I think-

Jason Calacanis 46:30 ... with a 30-day ban or something?

David Sacks 46:32 Well, like a 10-day ban or whatever. But a lifetime ban, that like ... On what basis, on what constitutional grounds do you justify that? And look, I know it's a private company, but my point is, this idea ... Our free speech rights got privatized, okay? The town square got digitized and centralized. We used to have thousands ... We used to have town squares where people could convene all over this country. We had a multiplicity of newspapers. All that got replaced by a handful of tech monopolists. Our free speech rights got digitized. If they take away our ability to speak, we don't have free speech rights. Who do we appeal to when we get canceled by a Google or Apple? What court can we go to?

Jason Calacanis 47:15 There is none.

David Sacks 47:16 Right.

Jason Calacanis 47:16 You have to create it

David Friedberg 47:16 I, I, I ...

David Sacks 47:16 ... competing products.

David Friedberg 47:17 By the way, I think this is the best argument for having an internet court. And, um, if you think about the standards that are being applied, they're being applied haphazardly, randomly, um, by gov- by, by these companies in response to, to, to near term market forces, you know. What are, what is everyone saying they have to do, um, or what are their employees rallying-

Jason Calacanis 47:36 They're, uh-

David Friedberg 47:36 ... for them to do?

Jason Calacanis 47:37 Securities law.

David Friedberg 47:39 Well, there's, there's, there's a, there's privacy laws that say what you, you know, that companies, that digital companies cannot take certain types of data and, you know, why not have, um, laws around-

Jason Calacanis 47:48 There are hate speech laws out there as well.

David Friedberg 47:50 ... what you ... And, and why not be more specific and then let an internet court adjudicate and make the decision about what to take down and what not to take down. They are as ... They are very responsive to warrants when there is a criminal act underway. And so why not let an internet court be responsive to take down requests or to, um-

David Sacks 48:05 What do you think, Chamath? Uh, World Internet Court?

David Friedberg 48:06 ... or some other sort of-

David Sacks 48:07 Good idea.

Jason Calacanis 48:08 No, it, it, it's, it's mandatory. And again, it, and this goes back to-

David Friedberg 48:11 And it centralizes, it centralizes the standards, right? So you don't have to have ad hoc random decisions. And let ... If, if what Sax is saying is true, it creates a standard that everyone has to abide by and that every consumer can trust them to abide by.

David Sacks 48:24 Fir- fir- first, first we need a Bill of Rights, right? First, we need to say that we as citizens have rights that the court can defend, can defend.

Jason Calacanis 48:34 That is the problem. We don't have any rights. These companies are acting willy-nilly.

David Sacks 48:41 ... de- cancelling people, depriving them of their speech rights, and don't tell me that you can still speak, you know, somewhere if you get, if you get canceled.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:50 Here's the thought exercise, and I want everybody listening who's on the left to think about this exact issue. Your favorite social media company is trying to get a really, really big deal closed, and they, you know, are trying to curry favor with, uh, a bunch of brands and a bunch of governments. And, uh, those governments and brands, let's just say it's in India, right? Huge market, 1.2 billion people. They say, "You know what? We're, um, a little tepid on abortion." And so the deal is you need to dial down any ad from Planned Parenthood. You need to prevent Planned Parenthood groups from amplifying, from being able to fundraise. Think about that exact issue now and ask yourself, is it okay? Because there's a lot of people that are, you know, pro-choice that listen to this and they, and you- I'm sure right now your blood is fucking boiling. But there is no distinction between that decision and what happened over the last few days. There's none. It's arbitrary, it's random, it doesn't necessarily make any sense. There is no way to readdress it, and that's the biggest problem with all of these things. It just creates-

Jason Calacanis 50:06 There's a concept that, uh, newspapers used to have an ombudsman and the New York Times had one up until, I think, 2017 and then they got rid of it 'cause I think it was causing too much headaches. But it's a person who sits... who works for the organization but has complete independence and sits outside of it to comment on these kind of situations and I think that's what these companies should do is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:25 No, th- these, Th- jason, they have these things but those are fig leaves and those are just meant to basically be dis-

Jason Calacanis 50:29 No, no, they don't, they don't have it in the sense of an ombudsman-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:30 ... distract dumb politicians.

Jason Calacanis 50:31 ... because it's not, it's not, um-

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:33 Jason, they have a fucking counsel. Facebook has a counsel with all these-

Jason Calacanis 50:36 It's not transparent. They don't say, "Here's our decision-making," and talk to the public directly about it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:40 I think that you can look to securities law. There's some examples in securities law which I think are really interesting, which is that, um, a CFO and a CEO has to certify quarterly results, right? Meaning, for people who have issues with a company and with the statement of their earnings, which is the sort of atomic unit of value creation in financial reporting, they have a mechanism to redress it because you're certifying that something is true. Right? You're certifying a set of decisions that have been made, an audit has been done, you know, the software works, you know, the blah, blah, blah. What is the version of that for all of this other stuff, which is that, you know, where, where are the people? Who are they actually that make the decisions? You can't point to Jack and Zuck and say, "Those guys are the decision-makers." I think in these examples, what you have to point to is there was a petition of potentially several hundred or a few thousand engineers, and depending on how important they were, they may have gotten their way. That's crazy, guys.

Jason Calacanis 51:37 Well, and Trump served it up to them. I mean (laughs) if you, if you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:41 No, and then the worst part is... No, but the worst part is, these people who are probably very left of center completely fucked the left and then they basically let Donald Trump off the hook because now we're gonna completely be talking about free speech. Whereas the odds that Donald Trump would have gone to jail and been prosecuted was basically, in my opinion, a fucking stone-cold lock. And then now after this happened, there's a bunch of those people who are gonna basically, like, him and Haw, and now they're not gonna necessarily go along with it.

David Sacks 52:09 Exactly. 100%, and, and, and Jason, you're right-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:12 So good fucking job, guys.

Jason Calacanis 52:15 (laughs) Yeah, exactly. It's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:15 You got the exact opposite of what you wanted.

David Sacks 52:18 Exactly. And here, here's the thing, Jason. You're right. Trump's outrage gave the censors the excuse to impose this. That's the way that censorship always works. If you were censoring somebody popular, it would never happen. Censorship always starts by censoring some outrage that everybody agrees should be censored and no one even notices that what's happening is you're handing power to a group of people that they can now use against you in the future. Censorship always starts as something you like and it ends as something you don't like when it finally gets turned against you. What is the policy of the people who are now canceling willy-nilly? It's cancel culture.

Jason Calacanis 53:01 By the way-

David Sacks 53:01 Okay? It's not the First Amendment.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:02 Well, I, I think you gotta not say "willy-nilly" after Trump incited riots.

David Sacks 53:07 If there's enough, if there's enough public outcry, you get, you get canceled.

Jason Calacanis 53:08 It might have been overreaction, but I think it's the proper reaction. You agree, it's the proper reaction.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:12 No, no, no. Hold on. Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Jason Calacanis 53:13 Just so people understand clearly, it's a proper reaction to maybe do a 30-day suspension, but maybe not indefinitely on all platforms.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:19 Forget about Trump for a second. There are all these, like, random, fucking useless accounts with 60,000 people that were basically suspended.

Jason Calacanis 53:26 Well, a lot of them were bots, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:28 60,000 followers is like, I mean like wh- it doesn't... Like, what's going on? It makes no sense.

David Sacks 53:35 Jason, I mean, you used to be a member of the press. No one believed in the First Amendment more than you, and you're letting your outrage-

Jason Calacanis 53:41 I, I still do. I, I don't have full information. All right, here we go, David.

David Sacks 53:44 ... you still do, but you're letting your outrages, you're letting your outrage at Trump-

Jason Calacanis 53:47 No.

David Sacks 53:47 ... cause you to pull your punches on these, on censorship.

Jason Calacanis 53:49 No, no, I, I, I'll be totally clear. I think they should have an ombudsman. I think they should lean towards allowing speech. I was anti-kicking-Trump-off-the-platform when the entire left was asking for it to be, and you can look at the receipts. I've been saying for four years, it's insane to take POTUS off. I actually, in my heart of hearts, believe that there is imminent risk in keeping him able to communicate with this group of people and there should have been a 30-day timeout for him. And I don't think it should have been indefinite, it should have been a 30-day timeout, and I think we should do what folks said, uh, I don't know who said it on the last pod or if I heard it somewhere else. Like actually, if we actually were to audit some of these claims and create an independent counsel to audit the election, that might be a way to heal things. And I think giving Trump a-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:32 Free- Freeburg said that.

Jason Calacanis 54:33 Who sai- Freeburg said it? Yeah. So I think that's like a power move as well. Um, but I, I, I'm still pro-freedom of speech. I think there's imminent danger, and I don't think it's willy-nilly. This is where I think sometimes you get...... you, you misin- you, uh, misrepresent yourself, David. Um, and we started this off with me misrepresenting you, but when you say it's willy-nilly, it's not willy-nilly. We just had this act of, you know, treason, uh, and this violence, uh, at the Capitol. It is not a willy-nilly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:01 It's not, Jason. Jason, Jason, you have to admit-

Jason Calacanis 55:02 It is an overreaction, I agree-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:03 Jason-

Jason Calacanis 55:03 ... but it's not willy-nilly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:04 Jason, you have to admit though, the entire world had Donald Trump in a corner, dead to rights, and he hit a one-outer.

Jason Calacanis 55:12 It's a bad strategy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:12 And he hit a one-outer.

Jason Calacanis 55:14 I agree. It's, it's a bad strategy to de-platform him to this level. I agree. And then, then to include... The reason they're going after Parler, by the way, is that this guy, Lin Wood, threatened... He said that they should take Vice President Pence out and shoot him. And I think that actually-

David Sacks 55:29 Lin Wood's insane.

Jason Calacanis 55:30 What? Lin Wood's insane?

David Sacks 55:30 Lin Wood's insane.

Jason Calacanis 55:30 But they literally didn't take it down.

David Sacks 55:33 That was, that was incitement to violence and under the First Amendment, you can clearly prohibit that. I would have taken it down.

Jason Calacanis 55:38 And Parler didn't take it down. They dragged their feet taking it down.

David Sacks 55:42 Okay, but they're-

Jason Calacanis 55:42 And he said it's a metaphor to go take Pence out and shoot him. And this is Donald Trump's lawyer, or one of his lawyers, previous lawyers.

David Sacks 55:49 That, in my view, that doesn't, doesn't justify what's happened. What I mean by willy-nilly is why isn't Red Scare been taken down? It's a left-wing site.

Jason Calacanis 55:56 I don't know.

David Sacks 55:57 Why, why has Dan Bongino been taken down? He's like a Fox commentator. I've heard him. I mean, he's sort of, you know... I don't know what... He's kind of a pretty middle of the road, Fox-type guy. Um, I don't really know what he did. We have no transparency into why people are being taken down. Um, I can't go evaluate for myself what they said to see if it, you know, if it warranted censorship. And that's part of the problem. We, we-

Jason Calacanis 56:22 A cynic might say that this overreaction was playing into the hands of the-

David Sacks 56:26 Jase- Jason, what happens if-

Jason Calacanis 56:28 ... Left-controlled Senate, Congress.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:30 Jason, what happens if like a big pharma company who wants to do a big ad buy on Facebook says, "Hey guys, you got to really dial down anti-vax content." Now, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but do I, at some level believe in their right to talk about being an anti-vaxxer? Absolutely. I think it's insane. But should they have a right to do it? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jason Calacanis 56:52 Yeah, I'm a fan of the labeling. I thought the labeling was the right direction to go in, where if... But, but Sacks, you did talk about how for the last 60 days, Trump fermented this insane conspiracy theory. So I guess the question is, do you think that insane conspiracy theory or the question we have to ask all of ourselves... I'm not pinning it on you, and you know, I'm sensitive to you being pinned as the president of the United States for all of Trump's bad behavior. But we... You did say, and you just said, this is a two-month process of indoctrinating people into thinking this was all stolen, and then they put labels on it, and then the Capitol gets stormed. So I think these companies are being put in a very uncomfortable position, which is, at what point do you stop this maniac if he's lying constantly?

David Sacks 57:36 We were talking about these challenges on the pod for the last couple of months, and we were laughing. I mean, we were laughing at how ridiculous they were and how ridiculous the things that Rudy was doing. And, you know, it was crazy. So look-

Jason Calacanis 57:51 But not to his supporters.

David Sacks 57:53 Well, but here, here's the thing-

Jason Calacanis 57:55 One of which is dead or four of which are dead.

David Sacks 57:58 I understand. And here's the thing, democracy takes work. I mean, we have to... You know, we have to spend the time to actually dispel these views. And, you know, it would be nice to be able to wave a magic wand and just censor the things that we don't like. But here's the thing, none of us has a monopoly on the truth. And, you know, we knew what the truth was in this particular instance, but there are other cases where we don't. And the question is really who has the power to decide? So I'll tell you just a real quick story. You know, when I went to law school all those years ago, the very first class that, you know, that, that I had in law school, it's this very arcane class called Civil Procedure, which is about what court you take a case to, okay? And, you know, I was kind of wondering, well, why is this like the first thing we learn in law school? And I'll tell you the reason why is because the first question in the law is who decides? It's jurisdiction. Who has the power to decide an issue? And here's the thing, I would love for Lin Wood to be canceled and to not be able to spout these insane theories. But who are we going to give the power to, to make those decisions? And what we've done this week by... We had this feel-good moment, you know, at least in the tech community, of being able to say, "Donald Trump banned for life and all these other people we hate." But we have now handed this enormous power to this big tech cartel, and it's not going to end here. This is not the end.

David Friedberg 59:30 By the way-

David Sacks 59:30 This is the beginning.

David Friedberg 59:31 Look,

David Friedberg 59:32 I, I don't think that the leadership at Big Tech want to be in this position. Um, you know, I think it's easy to blame the individuals, Zuck, uh, Jack, Susan, um, Sundar, whomever. Um, you know, I worked at Google when it was a small... When it was a private company. Um, you know, Chamath knows... worked with Zuck. I think we've all had experience with these individuals. And I think one thing, having spent time with all of them, I can tell you, is that, um, I believe that all of them want information to be freely available and accessible. Um, and that's a really core principle. And the challenge that they're facing is that there is, um, you know, as we talked about, this social pressure to move away from that core principle, because there is always an argument to be made. Um, and there is no universal or unifying kind of court of law that says this is the way things should, um, should be done by law. And as a result, the pressure is what changes the behavior. Um, and that pressure will change, the tides will shift. And, um, and it's a very kind of ugly circumstance, but, you know, I think characterizing the individuals as being in charge of this, Sacks, or...

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:48 ... you know, trying to, um, to handcuff- to- to- to make them feel like they should be handcuffed in some way, um, is, uh, you know, is- is a- is a bit of a mischaracterization and we saw that even, um, in- in the Congressional hearings last July. Uh, just what an absolute joke it was to see Congress try and question these folks because the answers they have, I think, were reasonable and rational. And as we all know as technologists, like, Congress doesn't understand this stuff. The biggest observation to me is that l- the law hasn't kept up with the internet. And, um, you know, if you look at how the- the DMCA was written, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, shortly after it was written, YouTube, uh, with all this user-generated content, saw a lot of copyright content show up. And they would get a take-down notice, which is the legal process by which you remove copyright content, and then as soon as they took it down, someone else would post the same content, and then someone else would post the same content. And then suddenly, you know, Viacom sued Google because they were like, "Look, our copyrighted content is being continuously displayed on your site, on your platform," and that's because the mechanism defined in the DMCA did not keep up with the law. The biggest issue I- I think is- is- is a legal one which is, you know, how do we create laws and how do we create a- a private industry meets government court, uh, body, uh, governing principles that, you know, allows these organizations-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:03 Arbitrations-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:04 ... to operate?

David Sacks 1:02:05 No- no- no-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:05 Can I say something-

David Sacks 1:02:06 ... apply... Well, just one sentence. I mean, apply First Amendment obligations to these, um, monopolists. That's what my blog post was about.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:15 I'll- I'll tell you where this could go in a bad direction is if you look at... If you think about what social media has become, I would put it on the top of the list that includes other critical national resources that any country has. So for example, if you look at, uh, in Bolivia. You know, as it turns out, Bolivia has incredible access to lithium, right?

Jason Calacanis 1:02:38 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:39 Uh, and lithium is like an incredible-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:41 Wait- wait- wait, we all knew that. We want to medicate Trump with lithium? Is that what you're saying?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:46 No, lithium the-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:47 (laughs) I'm joking.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:47 ... the- the- the- the input into- into lithium-ion batteries. Um, but it also turns out that at every step along the way, Bolivia's basically nationalized every single private investment of a lithium mine. Um, in countries all around the world, there's, you know, numerous examples of this privatization turning into nationalization when something becomes important enough. And-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:11 Norway.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:12 ... part of, I think, what we're struggling with here is, you know, there's gonna be this crazy push-pull in- in- in social media. What do you think happens if, you know, uh, India actually says, "Hey, you know what? Hmm, you're gonna have to nationalize the rails of WhatsApp or the rails of Facebook if you wanna be in my country." Why- why is that so inconceivable?

David Sacks 1:03:33 Well- well, yeah, I- I- I think you're right that that's- that- that is a second order- th- that is a second order consequence of censorship that nobody even thinks about. You have the leaders of many countries across the world using Twitter as a- as a channel. Do you think they are now gonna wanna rely on that given that Twitter can censor them at any time? They're gonna hand that lever of national power to Jack Dorsey? No way. They're gonna look at this, I mean, the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:59 Not even Jack Dorsey, David. Somebody in like the bowels of the user, you know, user- user access group. Some-

David Sacks 1:04:06 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:06 ... people- some rando VP some place is gonna stop the president or the prime minister of a country in communicating to their people. It's not possible.

David Sacks 1:04:12 Exactly. Exactly. And- and- and this is the- exactly the kind of second order consequence that the people who- who, I think, engaged in this feel-good moment of censoring Trump didn't even think through.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:22 Didn't even think through. This is exactly why the best solution would have been a temporary pause on these accounts to let the dust settle.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:31 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:31 But any of these completely fundamental decisions that you can't go back from, what is the technical difference between saying it's banned forever and it's banned for 10 days today? Technically it's the same decision-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:45 No technical difference. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:45 ... but exactly what David said, you feed into this emotion just like the people that stormed the Capitol fed into their emotion, and then you wake up the next day with this hangover and you realize to yourself, "What the fuck did I just do?" And I think that's- that's what we're gonna have to sort out now is you cannot unscramble this fucking egg. Because e- irrespective of whatever happens in the United States, there are two to three billion monthly active users, daily active users on these products. They all report to different people, and none of those people that they report to are Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. They are the presidents and prime ministers, dually elected individuals of these countries. And so you're not gonna allow these two private citizens to disrupt power.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:29 Uh, we- we- we have so much information we don't know about what occurred this past week. I think it's- it's all gonna get investigated. It's- it's gonna be like a 9/11 commission all over again or Ukraine, et cetera. Um, and- and I think that's why a pause would be really good to find out exactly... You know, Trump's been telling people to come to this rally, it's gonna be a hell of a show and it's gonna be incredible and you gotta be there on the 6th, it's gonna be out of control. You know, how- how- how much did they know, right? Like, that's what I really want to know is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:58 By the way, I- I- I-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:59 How much did they know about what was gonna go down and why are these people carrying zip ties and pipe bombs? You know, like this could've been a lot worse. I think that's why people are responding, uh, this way. And- and I saw something today that I thought was- Sorry about that. I'll- I'll let you pick it up- Go ahead. ... from me, Freeberg. But I saw something today that I thought was, uh, particularly interesting and- and dovetails with reconciliation, which is what the country's gotta do in 2021 and '22, is we gotta reconcile this shit because there's bigger fish to fry like, you know, China and the pandemic and global warming. Uh, one of these people at the airport who was coming home from the rally is now on the do f- do not fly list. They're taking this group of domestic terrorists, uh, is how they're putting these American citizens who got whipped up into a frenzy by Trump and Giuliani, they're calling them domestic terrorists now. Uh, some of them maybe, maybe some of them are just, you know, got caught up in the wrong mob. They're on the do not fly list. This guy couldn't get home and he's freaking out. And then, I don't know if you saw, Lindsey Graham, uh...... with 20 of, uh, the people who were going home from the rallies, chanting at him that this is never gonna end. And, an- and that seemed like a very volatile situation. And, and so, the escalation continues. Go ahead, Freeberg.

David Friedberg 1:07:12 I'll tell you, like, it feels to me like this past week has been, um, uh, nothing but fuel for, for both sides, because there isn't a black and white, um, circumstance here, and there isn't a black and white, um, objective truth about, uh, you know, what took place and what motivations were, and, and what the connections were. When I was 16 years old, I went to a rave in downtown LA and-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:36 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:07:36 ... for New Year's Eve-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:37 You did?

David Friedberg 1:07:38 ... and, and right before-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:39 How old were you? (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:07:39 Uh, 16. And, um, and the rave got shut down half an hour before midnight because there was some illegal drug being widely circulated for free. So you guys can watch videos of this on YouTube. It's called Circa 1996. And we, and everyone, uh, the cops came in and they shut down the rave. It was outdoors in downtown LA. And we rioted. And so everyone-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:59 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:07:59 ... left the rave and, like, I, I wa- I participated. I think I'm past the, uh, the period where they can prosecute me.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:05 Oh my God, 7,000?

David Friedberg 1:08:08 But I... Yeah, I participated in the (beep) .

Jason Calacanis 1:08:12 No, no, don't say that. Don't say that on the show. You, you were, you witnessed.

David Friedberg 1:08:16 I witnessed, um, participated in the sense-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:18 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:18 ... that I was there and, um-

David Sacks 1:08:19 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:19 ... and I saw all this, all this activity, but when you're standing next to these people, there was absolutely no thought around what to do and when and what the next step was. And I think if you watch-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:29 Mom and pop.

David Friedberg 1:08:29 ... the videos... Yeah, if you watch the videos of the Capitol, y- there's a lot of videos on YouTube that you can watch now, and you can watch the interviews of people coming out of the Capitol Building. It's like, "What were you doing in there?" "We were fighting for, you know, to, to... It's a revolution, right? I mean, we're taking back the country." And then some people were saying, "Well, we're trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden," and other people were saying, "We're taking over the Capitol." There was no uniform sense of what the objective of the mission was. And there was many interpretations. If you look at all the Parler messages that have been copied and published now online, there were many interpretations about Trump's words and Rudy Giuliani's words.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:01 Parler takes?

David Friedberg 1:09:01 Yeah, Parler. And, and so everyone has a different point of view. And I think that's the biggest challenge we're gonna have, is we're all gonna try and, you know, get to the truth and everyone's gonna cast this as a different point. They're gonna take what happened, they're gonna take some set of events that happened, and they're gonna highlight that this is what the connections were and this is the reason why it happened. Um, and this just creates fuel. It doesn't create, um... You know, there, there is not gonna be some objective outcome here where we're all gonna feel better. No one's gonna feel better at the end of the day. Um, and, and w- we've basically just thrown a whole bunch of gas on, on a fire that was already burning.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:32 W- what do you think, um, Sachs about the-

David Friedberg 1:09:34 Tha- that was my point, was just, like, it's all-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:35 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:09:35 It's all grace. It's all grace.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:36 No, mod behavior.

David Friedberg 1:09:36 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Sacks 1:09:36 I mean, it's crazy. Um, burned whatever photos you took. Um, (laughs) uh,

David Sacks 1:09:42 Sachs, what do you think of this VP, you know, Pence and Trump and their relationship vis-a-vis pardons in this end game here? Because it does seem like Pence was upset, uh, obviously at what occurred, and that Trump didn't even call to check on him (laughs) what was going on. And then a number of these people, 'cause there are QAnon people there, there are, you know, I'm sure Antifa people there, but it was mainly Trump folks. Um, they wanted to capture the VP. That was, for some of them, the explicit purpose of this was to get the vice president and to hold him accountable and, you know, s- there was some speculation to, to do bodily harm to him. What are your thoughts on that? I think one of the most insane aspects of what Trump did was the way (laughs) that he denounced, uh, Pence, who has been the model of a loyal VP. I mean, certainly the other side has, uh, criticized hi- him for that, uh, for being sort of almost a toady. Uh, no one could have been more loyal than Pence w- to Trump the last four years, and Pence simply told him, "Look, I don't have the power to cancel this vote of the electors." You know? And for that fa- you know, just for speaking truth about that, Trump denounced him in front of this, this mob and, and made him a target. And that is one of the more insane aspects of what Trump did. And, uh, you know, I, uh, truck no sympathy f- for that. Um, again, this was an act of, of demagoguery and, uh, this is an ignominious end for, for Trump's presidency. Uh, but e- but in terms of like... You know, I wanna go back to, to what Freeberg just said about how he got kind of caught up in this, i- in, in that mob. I think that that was true, I think, for 90-something percent of the people who were there, is they went to this Trump rally and protest and it turned into a riot and they got caught up in it. Um, and then, in addition to that, there were, I think, hidden in that crowd, some serious agitators who were there to carry out violence and mayhem and had crazy plans. You know, hanging Mike Pence, shooting Pelosi. I mean, there really were, you know, a small number of those people. I don't know what the percentage is, probably one or 2%. It's not-

Jason Calacanis 1:11:57 What do you think-

David Sacks 1:11:57 It's not, it's not the majority.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:58 Sachs, what do you-

David Sacks 1:11:59 But, but, but, but-

Jason Calacanis 1:11:59 ... or Chamath, what do you think will happen if they actually did shoot Pelosi or they did hang Pence?

David Sacks 1:12:03 No, no, I don't, I don't-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:04 It is a possibility.

David Sacks 1:12:06 But see, no, but see, that's threat inflation, what you're doing right there, Jason. It's-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:09 Exactly.

David Sacks 1:12:09 What you're, what, what you're doing is-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:10 No, I think it's a actual, could have happened.

David Sacks 1:12:12 It, it- Five other people died, what if one of the people who died was a senator? Yes, it, it could have happened, but here's the problem. People are acting as if everything that could have happened but didn't, actually happened, or may still happen at a later date. That, that is what I call threat inflation and it's the biggest tool the censors have for seizing power. Because it, it, it convinces people they-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:34 But you yourself said that these people had those plans, so we, we do have to think about it. I mean, the first time we tried-

David Sacks 1:12:39 We have to think about it.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:39 ... to blow up the World Trade Center, it didn't come down, David.

David Sacks 1:12:41 But, but, but-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:42 The second time, it did come down.

David Sacks 1:12:44 I, I understand, but by constantly beating the drum of this threat-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:47 We needed to inflate that threat, didn't we?

David Sacks 1:12:49 But, but by constantly beating the drum of these threats, it's encouraging people- No, no, no, wait a minute, stop. ... to give up... Stop. No. We, we did not need to do anything. There was a national security apparatus who needed to do it. Their job isn't to inflate threats. Their job is to investigate apolitically, get to the bottom of shit and fix it. They fucking failed on 9/11. Okay?

Jason Calacanis 1:13:10 Yes.

David Sacks 1:13:11 We know that conclusively. So talking about it and amping people up, Jason, doesn't do anything.Yeah, and- and I- I'm saying, a better example-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:17 I'm not done with amping people up. I'm saying we need to call it-

David Sacks 1:13:20 A better example of...

Jason Calacanis 1:13:20 ... what it was.

David Sacks 1:13:21 A better e- better example of threat inflation would be the Iraq War. Remember that? We got to go-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:26 Absolutely.

David Sacks 1:13:26 ... stop Saddam-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:26 Yeah, bad data.

David Sacks 1:13:27 ... because of WMD. That was threat inflation. Threat that... Whipping people up, uh, you know, and making them-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:34 I- I- I'm-

David Sacks 1:13:34 ... worse, to fear about-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:34 I'm just talking to three of my besties and asking you what you think about what would have happened if a senator died. I think it's a valid... It- it came close-

David Sacks 1:13:41 It didn't happen though.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:42 ... to happening.

David Sacks 1:13:42 It didn't happen though.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:42 But it came close.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:44 It didn't come close.

David Sacks 1:13:45 But th- this, th- this, this is the thing that is, is convincing people, helping to convince people to give up liberties that they should want to hold on to-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:53 I'm just asking you.

David Sacks 1:13:54 ... that they should be guarding jealously.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:54 I'm not a- I'm not saying everybody... I'm not... And I'm not saying we need to be on edge that this is going to happen every day of our lives. We can't live in fear like that. But that's almost what happened. There were people who went there with that intent.

David Sacks 1:14:08 What, where I think we should-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:09 Actually, we don't, we don't, we don't know any of this. Now, we're, now, we're no better than anybody else.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:14 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:14:15 You had, you had maniac who was a vessel. He basically spilled over. There was a small fraction of the people that probably came to that thing with ill intent, and then there was a large number of people that got pulled into the undertow. All of their lives will be ruined because of one individual, okay? And at the end of the day, there was, in my opinion, one singular person to blame, Donald Trump, and then a handful of people who were his accomplices. Uh, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani. We know who all of these characters are in this terrible play. And then there were all these people that were caught in the undertow. And I would rather just deal with it that way, because it actually allows us to have some sympathy-

Jason Calacanis 1:15:03 I- I-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:04 ... for-

Jason Calacanis 1:15:04 ... felt sympathy today-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:04 ... a person who struck away.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:05 ... when I saw that video. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:08 So all, all I'm saying is let's just get back to the core issue at hand. Something bad happened, and then something really, really stupid that is actually even worse also happened.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:18 A- and by that, you mean the banning of Trump on all platforms for all time.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:21 No, that, that there is a f- there, there was a- an arbitrariness to the decision-making around free speech. And