E50: Crypto investing deep dive, Facebook's whistleblower fallout, Chappelle's new special & more

1. 0:00 – 2:01

   Mercury is in retrograde & impacting the besties

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:00

      Our daughter's head is dropped because the, our doctor, she- she felt the head and she was like, "Yep, it's- it's-"

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:06

      Hey, Chamath, whose head has gotten bigger? Uh, yours or your daughter's? (rimshot)

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:12

      (laughs)

   4. DFDavid Friedberg0:13

      (laughs)

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:13

      What do you mean?

   6. JCJason Calacanis0:14

      Don't quit your day job, Sacks.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg0:16

      Yeah, Sacks.

   8. DSDavid Sacks0:17

      That didn't quite land.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg0:18

      That didn't land.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:18

       We need to get more respect here on the show.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg0:21

       He's trying out material.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:22

       Nah.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg0:22

       Total flop.

   14. DSDavid Sacks0:23

       (laughs)

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:23

       We are not in rhythm. You know why? It's Mercury retrograde. Our 50th episode is gonna suck (censored) because of this.

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:30

       Here we go. Three, two...

   17. DFDavid Friedberg0:33

       What your winners ride.

   18. JCJason Calacanis0:36

       Rain Man, David Sacks.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg0:38

       I'm going all in. As I said, we open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

   20. JCJason Calacanis0:44

       Love you Betsy.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg0:45

       Queen of Quinoa. I'm going all in.

   22. JCJason Calacanis0:49

       All right. The Facebook whistleblower hearings occurred and Facebook, um, gave a-

   23. DFDavid Friedberg0:54

       No, but wait, wait. Where's your, "Hey everybody, hey everybody, hey everybody."

   24. JCJason Calacanis0:56

       Hi everybody. Three, two ... Hey, everybody.

   25. DSDavid Sacks0:58

       (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis0:58

       Welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast, Episode 50. We made it to 50.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04

       Cinquanta.

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:05

       Cinquanta. Nobody expected us to make it. Here we are, we've made it, and everybody is, uh, thrilled, uh, to be here with you. And thank you for the support over the first 50 episodes.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:15

       One episode closer to getting canceled.

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:17

       One episode closer. Man, how great would it be to be canceled and never have to work again? Oh, that'd be wonderful. Okay, so, uh, Frances Haugen, uh, revealed herself on Sunday night on 60 Minutes, and then appeared before the Senate on Tuesday.
2. 2:01 – 26:23

   Sacks on Solana, sophisticated crypto strategies, crypto deep dive

   1. JCJason Calacanis2:01

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:01

      Sacks, I gotta say, I think, I think your AUM is positively correlated with the bags under your eyes.

   3. JCJason Calacanis2:06

      (laughs)

   4. DFDavid Friedberg2:07

      (laughs)

   5. DSDavid Sacks2:09

      (laughs) If you mean it's getting bigger, you're correct.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:11

      I mean, fuck. They're hi- they're heavy.

   7. JCJason Calacanis2:13

      Good Lord.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:14

      They're heavy, dragging you down.

   9. JCJason Calacanis2:16

      That's where you're hiding all that Solana, in your fucking, under your eyes.

   10. DSDavid Sacks2:19

       Jesus Christ.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg2:19

       (laughs)

   12. JCJason Calacanis2:20

       Come on. You better clear that Solana position. What's your lockup, 24 months?

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:24

       Fuck, no. He's trying to sell it to me in text message.

   14. DSDavid Sacks2:26

       (laughs)

   15. JCJason Calacanis2:26

       Yeah, of course he is.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:28

       We're negotiat- we're negotiating discounts.

   17. JCJason Calacanis2:29

       I just had the fact of-

   18. DSDavid Sacks2:30

       Hey, you're fucking the whole thing up.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:32

       Bro, you don't, you don't think to-

   20. JCJason Calacanis2:34

       The whole Ponzi scheme? (laughs)

   21. DSDavid Sacks2:34

       I'm HODLing. I'm HODLing.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:36

       You think I buy hundreds of millions of dollars-

   23. JCJason Calacanis2:38

       You're not HODLing. You're ch-

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:38

       ... of anything without a discount? Everything is a discount.

   25. JCJason Calacanis2:41

       Everything's discounted. You wanna clear that position in an LLC.

   26. DSDavid Sacks2:44

       Are you saying I got a billion dollars of Solana?

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:46

       Woo.

   28. JCJason Calacanis2:46

       Ooh.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:46

       No, bro, I'm saying I have one, but you know, I bought it at a discount.

   30. DSDavid Sacks2:49

       But you're holding, correct?
3. 26:23 – 40:59

   Building regulatory framework for utility tokens, institutional money in crypto

   1. JCJason Calacanis26:23

      So here's a, here's, um, you know, uh, another question with this. If the majority of people, Sacks, um, just put your legal hat on for a second. If the majority of people who bought a token in a, a project, we'll call it the, you know, Acme Crypto Project, they buy Acme coins. If they're buying them and they have absolutely no interest in using them for the utility and they say, "I bought these as a speculative device," and the founder says they're utility tokens, but let's say 70% of the people who bought them said, "I didn't buy them for that reason." They just came out, right, and said, "I bought this to speculate on the price." What should the government do? Should they deem them a security or should they deem them a, a utility token?

   2. DSDavid Sacks27:05

      I think that's a, a complicated question, but I, I think that there should be an opportunity for these cryptocurrencies to establish themselves as utility tokens because they are... They do serve a purpose. It... They are designed to be part of a system, right? They, they, they're not just objects of speculation. And by the way, even if they were, we don't, we don't treat baseball cards as, you know, as, as sort of a security. So it wouldn't necessarily make them a security just because they're speculated on. They actually do serve a function in a designed computer system. So I think what's important here is that there's a safe harbor where these crypto companies know what the rules are and if they, if they can basically, um, meet the criteria, such as by paying corporate income tax when they sell the tokens and other things like that, that they won't later be deemed to be engaged in an unlawful sale of securities. I think the impor- I think the important thing is just that entrepreneurs, founders know what the rules are so they can abide by them and not be surprised-

   3. JCJason Calacanis28:03

      And they don't right now. Yeah.

   4. DSDavid Sacks28:04

      Well, and so they don't get surprised later, they don't get whammied but-

   5. JCJason Calacanis28:08

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DSDavid Sacks28:08

      ... with basically... You know, because th- they are building something legitimate here, you know?

   7. JCJason Calacanis28:12

      Right. But it would seem to the sniff test if the people buying the tokens have no idea, have never written a line of code, have no use for them, uh, that-

   8. DSDavid Sacks28:23

      I don't see why that's relevant. I don't see why that's relevant.

   9. JCJason Calacanis28:26

      Well, because they're profiting off of them as if they're shares. And unlike baseball cards, which you can't sell 1,000 baseball cards for an increasingly, uh, you know, in, uh, y- you know, in a, in a very instantaneous way. You would have to put them in an auction with-

   10. DSDavid Sacks28:40

       You kinda can't. You could still-

   11. JCJason Calacanis28:40

       There'd be a lot of friction. There'd be a lot of friction.

   12. DSDavid Sacks28:42

       You could sell physical coins.

   13. JCJason Calacanis28:43

       You can't trade it certainly like... Yeah. Uh, Friedberg, what do you think? If the majority of people buying a token are doing it to speculate, can the founder say it's a utility token, and then those people who are trading it, like, either baseball cards, minted coins, wha- whatever analogy shares you want to use, are in it for the increase in the value, should it be a security and should they have to play by the rules we play at, in the traditional venture startup game?

   14. GUGuest29:08

       I mean, the question is, what's the utility? So I mean, if you can demonstrate some utility, then maybe that's the, uh, the, the... And this will probably be litigated at some point, right? Um, I'm sure there'll be enough capital sloshing around here that someone will say, "You know what? We believe strongly." We're seeing this happen with Ripple already. But, um, someone will litigate this and we'll get some clear definition on, you know, what statutes are going to be referenced and what those statutes might say with respect to the... how this ties to the definition of utility and, and that'll become, hopefully a standard that, that people can kind of look to, to guide them in the future. But it's definitely the Wild West right now. And everyone's going to try-

   15. JCJason Calacanis29:50

       Yeah. And the reason I bring it up is because Gensler was sort of, uh, floating this argument. Chamath, what do you think?

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya29:57

       I think that, um, you can't wipe $3 trillion of value out of the world.

   17. JCJason Calacanis30:03

       Okay.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:03

       And so, um-

   19. JCJason Calacanis30:04

       So pragmatically hard to do, got it.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:05

       So it's here to stay and it's too institutionalized now. So, you know, there's just way too many organized pools of capital that are now speculating inside of this entire ecosystem. You know, I saw a tweet today, there was a... there's a firm, I think like called Jump Trading or something. It's like a high speed frequency trading organization and they tweeted out some pictures where, you know, they're, they're, uh... They hired a bunch of folks to start at Jump and they did a coding bootcamp on Solana. That was their onboarding, as an example. So when you have people in high finance, you know, really vested in this thing-... uh, and you have $3 trillion of value that will go to six trillion and then go to 10 trillion. This can't go away. So, uh, that's why I think Powell and Gensler had to say s- some version of that on the record, which is, you know, "We're not going to ban this stuff," because they know it's not possible. So I think David's right. You have to create some rules, make folks and let folks pay their taxes. You know, I remember, for example, like I did this Bitcoin transaction in 2014 or something. I bought some land, I used BitPay, I transferred some Bitcoin-

   21. JCJason Calacanis31:12

       Oops.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:12

       ... bought the land, blah, blah, blah. Ah, it was like a, you know, whatever. But then-

   23. JCJason Calacanis31:16

       (laughs) Whatever?

   24. DSDavid Sacks31:18

       (laughs)

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:18

       I mean, I mean, I, I, I left ... I mean, I, I owned a lot at the time, so it wasn't that big of a deal. But my point is, finding a way for me to pay my taxes was a huge deal, I remember. And, you know, we filed the tax return, and we tried to make sure that we paid our taxes. These are very complicated. Even if you want to be conformant to the government, it's impossible right now. So they just need to create some rules where folks can say, "Here's what I own. Here's what it's worth. Tell me how much I owe you." And we're all willing to pay, or not maybe we're all not... I'm, I am. 'Cause I just think it's like make sure that we can, we can trade around it, hedge it, structure it, do the things that we would normally do with any other risk assets. Right now, that's very hard. And when you own lots of this stuff, it sits in your balance sheet, and you just take these enormous swings, and you're just like, "God, you can't do anything around this stuff." And that's not a, a viable financial market. That doesn't-

   26. JCJason Calacanis32:10

       Yeah. To, to, to be specific about what Gensler said, I just looked it up here. You know, he, he compared utility tokens with, you know, laundromat tokens or tickets to the opera, and he said entrepreneurs are choosing to perceive their tokens as utility to sidestep regulation, um, and that... Here's the quote, "They are highly speculative investment tokens for people who are trying to save or speculate for the fut- their future, and that's why I think it's appropriate to bring them inside the investor protection perimeter." I agree with him. I also agree with you, Chamath, that this is a can of worms that I don't know how you put the genie back in the bottle.

   27. DSDavid Sacks32:44

       Well, but, but, no, but he's, he's partially right. I mean, he is partially right on some tokens, but he's not completely accurate on some other tokens. I think it's on a case-by-case basis-

   28. JCJason Calacanis32:52

       Yes.

   29. DSDavid Sacks32:52

       ... and it depends. Listen, I think anybody who is buying these tokens right now knows that they're engaged in, in financial speculation. This idea that people in middle, middle America are gonna blow their retirement savings on crypto, I don't... I just don't really buy it.

   30. JCJason Calacanis33:06

       Well, no, but if they know... If they're doing speculation, then it should be a security.
4. 40:59 – 57:10

   Facebook whistleblower, potential ramifications & regulation

   1. GUGuest40:59

   2. JCJason Calacanis40:59

      I'm sure everybody by now has seen, uh, Frances Haugen, uh, on 60 Minutes and testifying. Uh, she seemed incredibly credible, um, well-spoken, and had very common, uh, sense, non-extreme views about what should be happen, what should happen with the research that Facebook has been funding. Um, that shows, like other media forms, uh, Instagram and Facebook have a, a really terrible effect on young people, specifically young girls and, uh, body dysmorphia, uh, which seems to be the one thing that is landing, uh, pretty well. Her suggestions were not to break up Facebook. Hers was to have a regulatory body and to do soft interventions. If you don't know what soft interventions-

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:41

      It's worse. Her, her suggestions were worse than breaking up Facebook.

   4. JCJason Calacanis41:43

      Well, soft interventions, let's get to that. Uh, include things like, "Hey, in order to retweet the story on Twitter, you probably should read it first." She thinks she wants to reform or she's an advocate for reforming Section 230 in relation, I think, to the algorithms. Uh, and the idea here would be that the algorithms are making, uh, an actual editorial decision, uh, which is something that I remember in the YouTube early days. They said, "We will not feature your videos, uh, that you're making, but we will have the algorithm pick them because that keeps our safe harbor." Uh, Zuckerberg came back and, uh, wrote a, uh, spirited defense, uh, basically saying, "Why would we do this research if we didn't care? The people at this company care, uh, a ton." Sachs and the, uh, entire Peter Thiel cobble of, you know, acolytes and friends are coming on strong as, uh, pro-Facebook. I'll have him, uh, talk about that. He thinks it's, uh, Facebook, uh, it's, uh, laughable that people are-... addicted to Facebook, yada yada. So, uh, who wants to go first? You, Chamath, or Sax?

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya42:52

      Well, look, here, let me, let me say a couple of things. I think that, um, I think Zuck's, the title of Zuck's, uh, internal, uh, company post could have been titled "Nuh-uh," uh, which basically is (laughs) was his way of saying th- that this is ridiculous and I don't believe it. The, the thing that she asks for in substance is a little different than what the DOJ did with Microsoft in 2000 but in form, is actually quite similar, which basically is like gumming up how the internal product development would work inside the company. And, you know, the most damaging thing you already saw, which is that they had a bunch of planned product releases, and then they put them on ice. And I think this is really where, unfortunately, the most damage gets done because engineers won't really tolerate that for some amount of time, right? They'll put with it initially, but, you know, you've had, uh, I don't know, I think like a 20% reduction in stock price, so you had, you know, you lost $200 billion of market cap. There's probably gonna be more turbulence in the company. You can sustain and get through all of it as long as the engineers hold the line. But if you basically slow down and put a pin in their ability to generate code and to put out features, on the margins enough people, I think, will get frustrated and leave. And I think the way that she, you know, what she is asking for was tantamount to that, and I think that's the really destructive part of, um, of what could go on here. So they need to get this pinned down quickly, get in front of regulators, get some laws passed, whether it's Section 230 or whatever. That's the path to salvation for Facebook.

   6. JCJason Calacanis44:37

      Sax, what do you, what do you think? I see you-

   7. DSDavid Sacks44:38

      All right.

   8. JCJason Calacanis44:39

      ... are basically saying this is, like, ridiculous and silly on Twitter. Mike Solana's saying that. Uh, obviously Peter Thiel's on the board of, uh, Facebook and a major influence-

   9. DSDavid Sacks44:47

      You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to give me time to unpack this, JCal-

   10. JCJason Calacanis44:50

       Yes.

   11. DSDavid Sacks44:50

       ... without getting hysterical because there is, there's a lot to go over here.

   12. JCJason Calacanis44:53

       No, no hysterical. I want- I'm ge- I'm literally-

   13. DSDavid Sacks44:54

       Okay, so first of all-

   14. JCJason Calacanis44:54

       ... throwing it to you in a non-hysterical way. You think that this is... There's nothing to this-

   15. DSDavid Sacks44:58

       First of all, let's-

   16. JCJason Calacanis44:59

       ... and you think it's ridiculous. Yeah.

   17. DSDavid Sacks45:00

       ... let's understand what this really was, okay? You have this so-called whistleblower who is working with the staff at the Senate Judiciary Committee, giving documents to the Wall Street Journal, and then appears on 60 Minutes and this great unveiling. 36 hours later, she's testifying on Capitol Hill. That does not happen. The Senate committees do not operate that fast. This was coordinated. She's got a Democra- a well-known Democratic operative named Bill Burton working for her. She's got a team of lawyers. She's got a PR team. This whole thing-

   18. JCJason Calacanis45:29

       Coordinated by who?

   19. DSDavid Sacks45:30

       This is a coordinated hit, okay, by anti-Facebook forces starting with the Senate Judiciary Committee, who want to regulate-

   20. JCJason Calacanis45:39

       Who?

   21. DSDavid Sacks45:40

       She's working with the staff, JCal.

   22. JCJason Calacanis45:41

       Hold on, Jason. Jason, stop. Just let-

   23. DSDavid Sacks45:42

       You're already interrupting.

   24. JCJason Calacanis45:43

       Jason, stop. No, I'm asking you who. You said she's working with somebody else.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:46

       No, I know, but-

   26. JCJason Calacanis45:46

       I don't know who it is.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:46

       ... I told you.

   28. JCJason Calacanis45:46

       Just let him make this argument and then just stop. Let h- I wanna hear what he has to say.

   29. DSDavid Sacks45:51

       Okay. What is the purpose of this testimony? First of all, we can go over the details of what she said. I don't think there was anything new here. This was all the same arguments we've been hearing from these s- same sort of forces who want to regulate Facebook, whether it's the, um, whether it's the senators on the committee who have hauled up Zuckerberg no fewer than four times to lecture him about the need for more censorship, uh, or it's these forces in the media who basically want Facebook t- It's all about, you know, having more censorship. Uh, but in any event, there was nothing really new there. Um, what this really was, was corroboration and, uh, of, of, of these same talking points we've been hearing for years. And where, and what it's all leading up to is there's a very important part of her testimony, which is, this is really the crux of it, is that they, that she proposed, and what Blumenthal wants, he's the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a dedicated oversight body, this is in this clip, okay, with the power to oversee social media platforms. So, what we have here is the government is now gonna have a new agency, they're saying like the FTC, then she said, "A regulatory home where somebody like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like this." And, and Haugen said, "Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what's happening inside of Facebook, are people who grew up inside of Facebook or Pinterest or another social media company," basically people with her experience. I mean, I have to admire the chutzpah. I mean, she's basically proposing that she be made Zuckerberg's boss, okay? That a new oversight board be created by the government, which she would be appointed to, which she presumably would run, and this board is now gonna, uh, prescribe regulations and rules for social networks in terms of how their newsfeed is gonna run. That is what was proposed on Capitol Hill. That is what this operation is all about.

   30. JCJason Calacanis47:38

       So, it's about her getting a job and being, uh, lording over Facebook, is your claim?
5. 57:10 – 1:02:34

   Comparing potential Facebook regulation to Microsoft regulation in the 1990s

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:10

      what's happening practically on the ground right now is, that is a company who has to now slow way down. And what I'm saying is, that's not dissimilar to what Microsoft had to do, which was, there was this 10-year period at Microsoft where they really couldn't innovate. And that's really how the government solved the Microsoft problem.

   2. JCJason Calacanis57:29

      Yeah. They, they made them less aggressive, right?

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:31

      They gummed up the internal machinery so that Microsoft couldn't really be there for the next few major ... So for example, so we just spent, we just spent 40 minutes talking about crypto. What do you think the chances are that, you know, Facebook now can land a really compelling crypto project?

   4. JCJason Calacanis57:47

      Right, they got, they got-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:47

      In my opinion, zero.

   6. JCJason Calacanis57:48

      ... totally shut down with Libra, right?

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:49

      Zero.

   8. JCJason Calacanis57:49

      I mean, they went after it and the regulators-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:51

      It's been neutered.

   10. JCJason Calacanis57:52

       ... stepped in and-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:52

       It's been neutered.

   12. JCJason Calacanis57:53

       It's too bold for them to launch that after what happened-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:55

       It's, it's zero.

   14. JCJason Calacanis57:56

       ... you know, with their behavior in other a- arenas.

   15. DSDavid Sacks57:59

       I think that like Microsoft, uh, back in the, the late '90s, I think there are, are real and legitimate concerns about the power of these big tech companies, about how, uh, power- how big and powerful they've become, about their ability to crush competitors. I think they're, those are all legitimate. And in a weird way, if this government scrutiny slows th- those companies down, that's not an altogether bad thing. But I am concerned about the, I'd say, separately, just because these companies do deserve to be scrutinized more, I do think that we have to see that the people who are engaged in this really coordinated hit campaign against Facebook, they have other ag- they have another agenda, and that is to control the flow of information online, it is to control online discourse. It's already been happening over the past year-

   16. JCJason Calacanis58:44

       Mm-hmm.

   17. DSDavid Sacks58:44

       ... with censorship on the supply side of the news feed, and now they're trying to control the demand side. I think we have to be extremely wary about this.

   18. JCJason Calacanis58:50

       Well, D- David, isn't, you- you've been on the other side of this, 'cause on previous podcasts you've talked about Facebook being too influential, having too many users, and now you're saying, well, these tiny little news networks that get a couple of low millions-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya59:04

       No, he has a, he has an issue, Jason, with the way in which they're going after Facebook.

   20. JCJason Calacanis59:09

       Okay, I get that. He thinks it's a coordinated hit. Fine. But you also have had an issue with Facebook having too much power to take somebody off the platform or to promote certain ideas.

   21. DSDavid Sacks59:21

       Yeah.

   22. JCJason Calacanis59:22

       So which is it? It seems like you're a, a little bit, um ... Both can be true.

   23. DSDavid Sacks59:26

       No, it's perfectly, it's- it's per- it's, no, it's perfectly consistent. I've expressed concerns about the way in which Facebook is, is deplatforming people, it's summar- summarily silencing them and ghosting them, it's- it's engaged in censorship. I've expressed concern about that. But we should understand that the people on the Senate Judiciary Committee who hauled up, who had this hearing, who featured and spotlighted Haugen and turned her into this great hero, their agenda is even more censorship. They (laughs) , the- they- they are complaining about the fact that Facebook is not censoring enough, and that is what their real agenda is.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:00:00

       I- I do think it should have been disclosed that Haugen does stand to gain financially from whatever happens here.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:00:06

       I, you know, I don't know that that's been confirmed that there is a whistleblower reward here, so we'll have to wait and see about that. I haven't heard-

   26. DSDavid Sacks1:00:13

       There's no reward until there's a fine. But Chamath-

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:00:15

       Correct.

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:00:16

       ... is right that she qualify, if she's a whistleblower, she qualifies for, what, a 30%-

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:00:21

       Half the fine, yeah.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:00:21

       ... portion of, or some very large percentage of any fines?
6. 1:02:34 – 1:09:09

   Is decentralization a solution for social media?

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:02:34

      and just simply not true?

   2. GUGuest1:02:35

      We've talked a lot about this notion of, like, decentralized social networks. I mean, we haven't talked a lot. We've talked a little bit about it, but, um, i- if you end up putting a regulatory hammer down on Facebook and Twitter and telling them what consumers... And remember, these guys aren't media creators. They're platforms effectively for search, discovery, and access. So you, as an individual, can discover third-party content on their platform. If they start putting the regulatory hammer down on these quote unquote platforms, telling them what they can and cannot make available to their users, there will be another platform that will emerge, and that platform may end up being in this kind of decentralized model. And in that decentralized model, you're not gonna have the same degree of regulatory oversight, and that system will end up solving the same use case. Eventually, consumers will get what they want, which is, you know, what Chamath calls kind of this emotional response, this... eliciting this emotional reaction. They will consume it until they, you know, achieve one of their kind of seven deadly sins (laughs) objective, which is what's driving the emotion, underscoring their decisions on what to watch, what to consume, and, uh, and there will be an alternative. So, you know, go ahead and play Whac-A-Mole. You'll play Whac-A-Mole for a few years, maybe a few decades, but at the end of the day, digital technology and the connected world will drive consumers to exactly where they will naturally find themselves, which is consuming evermore of the things that create this emotional response in them. The consequences are unfortunate. Um, you know, I don't know what the right solution is. You know, we've, we've, we've to some degree put a regulatory hammer down on things like, uh, smoking and, uh, uh, in some places, things like sugar, things that have kind of a, a, you know, a, an obvious effect on our physical, uh, health. Uh, these other things that we're seeing now are having an effect on our mental health, and, uh, I think that there may be kind of an emerging regulatory, uh, regime around mental health standards and how much of things can be consumed. And I think what we're seeing is the leading indicator of this is what's gone on in China. Because China is the nation that I would say is probably at the forefront of research and understanding of what the consequences are of consuming more, uh, more of media and content that causes an emotional response to you and what happens down the road, isolation, loneliness, suicide rates go up, unhappiness, et cetera. It certainly is a consequence. But it's not a function of any individual companies', um, mis-conveyance of content to consumers. It's just a function of where these systems end up going because of the way humans are biologically wired. Um, and so I guess my, my first concern is maybe we end up in a decentralized system that ends up replacing all of these tools and this just doesn't end, or you end up having-

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:05:15

      Could be worse. Yeah, I mean-

   4. GUGuest1:05:16

      ... or you en-... and it could be worse, or you end up having these kind of regulatory regimes emerge-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:18

      No, it'll be-

   6. GUGuest1:05:19

      ... to, to address these kinds of things.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:19

      That, that would be better. A decentralized solution is actually-

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:05:22

      No.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:22

      ... better in one... No, it's better in one key way, which is that it's fundamentally harder to create the exact same network effect and density that you can have with one monolithic closed system. So you, you're much more likely to actually have a very fragmented ecosystem of hundreds of different solutions depending on what of the sins you wanna feed or, you know, what of the feelings you wanna feel at any one time.

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:05:46

       I think it's a big assumption that it would be a fragmented network. If you did replicate Facebook on a decentralized platform and then some piece of misinformation came out and it trended all the way to number one, like say the January 6th insurrection, and people brought-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:59

       No, no, no. There's not gonna be-

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:06:00

       ... guns to that. What if, like-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:06:01

       There's not one network. There's not one network.

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:06:02

       I, I understand that, but if one net-

   15. DSDavid Sacks1:06:04

       Uh, uh-

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:06:04

       Hold on, hold on. Let me finish my point. If the, if one network became so large and there was nobody who could turn off something, what if people said, "Hey, there's a riot going on at the Capitol," and more people showed up with more guns, right? (laughs) You have nobody to sit there and say, "Hey, don't go to the Capitol. Turn those trending posts off." Go ahead, Sax.

   17. DSDavid Sacks1:06:20

       Okay, so let's, let's talk about this problem of misinformation. Okay? I think there's an old Mark Twain quote saying that the... a lie can travel around the world faster than the-

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:06:30

       Yeah.

   19. DSDavid Sacks1:06:30

       ... truth can put on its shoes. Okay?

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:06:31

       Correct.

   21. DSDavid Sacks1:06:33

       There is a problem of falsehoods spreading online. I agree with you there. The question is what you do about it, and the problem we have right now is that, is that truth is in the eye, eye of the beholder. There is no, uh, truth API. And so at the end of the day, it's the people in power who get to decide what is true and what is false if you give them the power to censor misinformation. Example, we just saw, we talked about on this program, the Rolling Stone ivermectin hoax. Provably false story, and yet Rachel Maddow still had it up on her post. She was not sanctioned by MSNBC. Twitter never told her to take it down, and she was not fact-checked. However, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal or story which came out in the New York Post a couple weeks before the election turned out to be a provably true story, and yet it was taken down by Facebook and Twitter.At the end of the day, this term of misinformation is just another vector for partisan attack and it will be used by whoever we give the power to, to decide what misinformation is. So, what is the answer then to this point of s- falsehoods spreading online? Well, at the end of the day, the answer to bad speech is more speech. You try to create a free marketplace of ideas to let, to let the good speech ultimately, uh, drive out the bad speech or prove that it's wrong. That's the best you can do. That's the best you can do in a free society.

   22. JCJason Calacanis1:07:53

       Yes. But, uh, we've ... This is the first time a free society has had social networks that can reach a billion people instantly in, in, you know, an hour. So I think there's one differentiator there that we must think of.

   23. DSDavid Sacks1:08:05

       If somebody defames you on a social network, they are absolutely liable. I mean, you can sue them. Okay? But I think it ... and you should. And I think we can-

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:08:11

       But we've talked about-

   25. DSDavid Sacks1:08:12

       And I-

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:08:12

       ... cancel culture, people are destroyed before they even get their day in court.

   27. DSDavid Sacks1:08:16

       Well, I think, I think that's being destroyed for something different. I think if somebody-

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:08:19

       But it's because it trends. If it didn't, if it couldn't trend to so many people, it wouldn't leave, lead to the cancellation and destruction of somebody's life. You've talked about that many times yourself.

   29. DSDavid Sacks1:08:29

       If, if somebody libels you, I think they should be ... you, you should be able to sue them and I think we could actually ... we could have a libel regime more like the UK, where it's easier to prove these cases in court and, uh, people are much more careful about defaming other people. I would be very much in favor of that. Okay? Because defamation is not free speech. But the question really is about, really we're talking about non-defamatory statements that somebody in a position of power has decided is not true. Many of these statements are subjective. Dave Portnoy got labeled for his subjective opinion about AOC's dress. Why did that happen? And why is that kind of labeling only used to protect one side of the political spectrum? So, I mean, that, that, that's what's

7. 1:09:09 – 1:11:02

   Chappelle's controversial new special, All-In summit & more

   1. DSDavid Sacks1:09:09

      really going on here.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:09

      Let's end with this. Uh, has anybody watched Chappelle's The Closer?

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:09:13

      I did. Incredible.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:15

      I, I, I watched it.

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:09:16

      Pretty incredible. I mean, fearless. Fearless is a word.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:20

      I was really, um ... I think that he slightly missed it, because I think he could've really actually called out cancel culture and wokeism more. I think he kind of left it a little bit to me, where I was like a little ... I don't know. I just, I just didn't think they were as good as his other ones and I felt like he didn't really make the point he wanted to make.

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:09:42

      It was a little convoluted.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:44

      We, we need somebody who can actually stand up and, uh, and, and actually s- you know, be more satirical and tell the story of why all this cancel culture and defamatory statements and judging people doesn't make sense, but then-

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:09:56

      Did he seem-

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:57

       He didn't, he didn't get the job done, I felt like.

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:09:59

       Well, did ... Uh, let me ask you this about the performance. Did he seem qualitatively different than you in that the other times he seemed very light on his feet, you know, having a good time, being a comedian. And this time, it felt like-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:10

       It wasn't-

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:10:10

       ... he was personally hurt or he was-

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:12

       It wasn't comedy.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:10:13

       It was less-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:13

       And it wasn't comedy.

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:10:14

       It felt less comedic, I agree. It felt like he had an agenda, he was hurt, he wanted to get some stuff off his chest, and there were some jokes in between, which is very different. Like, the percentage of jokes in this is like 20% and the, like heavy-

   18. DSDavid Sacks1:10:27

       Max.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:10:28

       ... max. And then the other ones were 80% jokes, 20% social commentary. This felt like he, um, he was actually really hurt and, like, I, I don't wanna say bitter, but just fed up maybe, frustrated. He, he had a chip, which made it interesting to me.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:43

       You know, in the, in the early 2000s, Chappelle, for me, was really important because he was an advocate for minorities and I felt seen and protected by Chappelle. And, uh, and I thought that was really important. And then his, his comedy was just so sharp.

Episode duration: 1:23:11