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

Joe Rogan 0:00 Five, four, three, dos, uno. Come on, TriCaster.

Jack Dorsey 0:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:12 Live?

Jack Dorsey 0:13 Yes. So-

Joe Rogan 0:13 All right. We're live, ladies and gentlemen. To my left, uh, Tim, Tim Pool.

Tim Pool 0:18 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 0:18 Everybody knows and loves him. Vijaya, what is it, how do you, how do I pronounce your last name?

Tim Pool 0:22 Vijaya.

Vijaya Gadde 0:23 Vijaya Gadde.

Joe Rogan 0:23 Vijaya, not Vijaya, Vijaya.

Vijaya Gadde 0:24 Yes.

Joe Rogan 0:24 Vijaya...

Vijaya Gadde 0:26 Gadde.

Joe Rogan 0:26 Gadde. And your position at Twitter is?

Vijaya Gadde 0:29 I lead trust and safety, legal, and public policy.

Joe Rogan 0:32 That's a lot. That's a lot. And Jack Dorsey, ladies and gentlemen. Um, first of all, thank you everybody for doing this. Appreciate it.

Tim Pool 0:40 Thank you.

Vijaya Gadde 0:41 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:41 Feels, th- there feels-

Tim Pool 0:42 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 0:42 ... all of a sudden there's tension in the room.

Tim Pool 0:43 (laughs)

Jack Dorsey 0:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:44 We were all loose, we were all loosey-goosey just a few minutes ago.

Jack Dorsey 0:47 There's no tension. There's no tension.

Joe Rogan 0:47 And everyone's like, "Uh-oh, this is really happening." Here we go. Um, before we get started, we should say, because there were some, uh, things that people wanted to, uh, have us talk about. Um, one, that the Cash App is one of the sponsors of the podcast. It's been a sponsor for a long time and also a giant supporter of my good friend, Justin Wren's, Fight for the Forgotten Charity, building wells for the Pygmies in the Congo. This is very important to me and I'm very happy that you guys are a part of that, and you are connected to that. I don't, uh, that's, I mean, it's easy for someone to say that doesn't have an influence on the way we discuss things, but it doesn't. So, if it does, I don't know what to tell you. Um...

Tim Pool 1:25 I'm gonna mention too, just 'cause I don't want people to come out and freak out later, I actually have like 80 shares in Square, which isn't really that much, and you know, but...

Joe Rogan 1:33 But it's something.

Tim Pool 1:34 It is, it is. So I don't want people to think, you know, whatever, you, you're the CEO of Square, I think, right?

Joe Rogan 1:38 Yep.

Tim Pool 1:39 Yeah, there you go.

Joe Rogan 1:39 Okay. Yeah.

Jack Dorsey 1:39 Yeah, we own-

Joe Rogan 1:40 There you go.

Tim Pool 1:40 Okay.

Jack Dorsey 1:40 We own the Cash App too.

Joe Rogan 1:42 And the reason why we decided to come together is, um, we had a, I thought, a great conversation last time. But there's a lot of people that were upset that there were some issues that we didn't discuss, or didn't discuss in depth enough, or they felt that I didn't press you enough. I talked to Tim because, uh, you know, Tim and I have talked before and he-

Tim Pool 1:59 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:59 ... made a video about it, and I felt like his criticism was very valid. So we got on the phone and we talked about it, and I knew immediately within the first few minutes of the conversation that he was far more educated about this than I was. So I said, "Would you be willing to do a podcast, and perhaps do a podcast with Jack?" And he said, "Absolutely." So we did a podcast toge- together. It was really well received. People felt like we covered a lot of the issues that, um, they felt like I didn't bring up. And so then Jack and I discussed it and we said, "Well, let's bring Tim on and then have Vijaya on as well." I said that right?

Vijaya Gadde 2:32 Yep, no problem.

Joe Rogan 2:32 It's a hard one, sorry. I'll get it right, I promise. Uh, but, so we're here. We're here.

Jack Dorsey 2:37 Sure, right here.

Joe Rogan 2:38 Um, today, uh, you know, do you know who Shawn Baker is? He's a doctor who's a prominent proponent of the carnivore diet. His post was, his- his account was frozen today. I just sent it to you, Jamie.

Speaker 2:52 It's just a screenshot. Um...

Joe Rogan 2:53 Yeah. His account was frozen today because of an image that he had, 'cause he's a- a proponent of the carnivore diet. There's a lot of people that believe that this elimination diet is very healthy for you-

Jack Dorsey 3:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:03 ... and it's known to cure a lot of autoimmune issues with certain people. But some people ideologically oppose it because they think it's bad for the environment, or you shouldn't eat meat, or whatever the reasons are.

Jack Dorsey 3:13 This is huge in the- the Bitcoin community, I think.

Joe Rogan 3:15 Yes.

Jack Dorsey 3:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:16 Yeah. Well, it's, for a lot of people that have autoimmune issues, with particularly psoriasis and arthritis, it is a lifesaver. It's crazy. It's essentially, uh- uh- uh, it's an autoimmune issue. So, because he has a photo of a lion in a header eating a- a, looks like a wildebeest or something like that, his account was locked for violating these rules, rules against graphic violence or adult content in profile images. That seems a little silly. And I- I wanted to just mention that right away. Now, whose decision is something like that? Like who decides to lock a guy's account out because it has a nature image of, you know, natural predatory behavior?

Vijaya Gadde 3:57 On this particular case, it's probably an algorithm that detected it and made some sort of an assessment. But as a general rule, how we operate as a company is we rely on people to report information to us. So if you look at any tweet, you can kind of pull down on the caret on the right, and you can say report the tweet, and then you have a bunch of categories you can choose from-

Joe Rogan 4:15 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 4:15 ... of what you wanna report. Um, I think this one in particular, though, is probably an algorithm.

Tim Pool 4:20 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 4:20 So how does- does- does he have the option to protest that or to ask someone to review it?

Vijaya Gadde 4:27 Absolutely, and I- I'm guessing that people are already reviewing it, but there's a choice to appeal any action, and that would go to a human to make sure that it is actually a violation of the rules, or in this case, if it's not, then it would be removed.

Joe Rogan 4:40 Is that a violation of the rules?

Vijaya Gadde 4:41 I-

Joe Rogan 4:41 That image?

Vijaya Gadde 4:42 I don't think so. I don't think that that would be what we're trying to capture in terms of graphic images in an avatar. It's more about violence towards, uh, humans, unless it was some sort of cruelty depicting animals-

Joe Rogan 4:53 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 4:53 ... or something like that. But this seems not the intention of the rule.

Joe Rogan 4:57 Does this hi- this is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this up immediately, does this highlight a flaw in the system in that people can target, uh, an individual? 'Cause with him, he's a, he, like I said, he's a doctor and a proponent of this carnivore diet, but he's also, he's ruthless in his condemnation and mocking of vegans. He does it all the time. And so then they get, uh, upset at him-

Tim Pool 5:19 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 5:19 ... and they can target posts and just report them en masse. And when they do that, then this becomes an issue.

Vijaya Gadde 5:26 I think this does reveal part of, um, you know, the challenges that we face as a global, uh, platform at scale. In this par- I don't- I don't know what happened in this case, so I-

Joe Rogan 5:36 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 5:36 ... it's hard for me to talk about it. But what I would say is that it doesn't really matter if, uh, one person reports it or 10,000 people report it. Like we're gonna review the reports and we're gonna make an assessment. And we're never gonna, you know, kick someone off the platform finally and forever without a- a person taking a look and making sure that it's an actual violation of the rules.

Joe Rogan 5:55 Right. Okay. So-

Jack Dorsey 5:57 But, but the- but the mob reporting behavior does happen.

Joe Rogan 5:59 Yeah, it does.

Jack Dorsey 6:00 It happens across the spectrum.

Tim Pool 6:02 I'd have to assume it's gonna be one direction. I- I can't imagine he would target vegans, but vegans would target him.... right?

Jack Dorsey 6:08 Well, he might. I mean, he doesn't-

Tim Pool 6:09 But, but, but is he the kinda guy who's gonna wanna report vegans and get them banned from Twitter?

Jack Dorsey 6:13 No.

Tim Pool 6:13 Or is he gonna wanna make fun of them?

Jack Dorsey 6:14 He's gonna make fun of them. Yeah.

Tim Pool 6:15 They're gonna target him to try and get him removed by exploiting the system that you guys have.

Vijaya Gadde 6:19 Yeah. It may not be him, though. It could also be his followers. It, it's a really complicated-

Jack Dorsey 6:22 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 6:22 ... world out there, so-

Jack Dorsey 6:23 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 6:24 You don't want-

Jack Dorsey 6:24 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 6:24 ... the motivations of why people m- mob report are different and y- it's not always s- under someone's control.

Jack Dorsey 6:30 It could even, even be other carnivore diet proponents who are just jerks that don't like him because he's getting all the love. People are weird.

Tim Pool 6:38 Yeah, that's true.

Jack Dorsey 6:38 You know? But it's just the, uh, the idea though is that it, uh, it does k- kind of highlight a bit of a flaw in that it's good that someone could... Like, 'cause you might see something awful, someone doxing someone or something like that, and then you can take that and report it and then people can see it and get rid of it and, and minimize the damage that's done.

Tim Pool 6:56 Well, there, there's another big problem here and that is the carnivore diet legitimately healthy? Is it a threat to your health? And if it is, is... What is Twitter's responsibility in controlling that information? Right. So just to clarify, my, my, my opinion is, if he wants t- be a proponent for the carnivore diet, let him, but you've got people on YouTube who are being deranked for certain beliefs about certain health issues-

Jack Dorsey 7:17 Mm-hmm.

Tim Pool 7:17 ... that I don't agree with, and so one of the risks then is, you know, we're, we're coming towards a position where people think some ideas are better than others, therefore, as a company, we're gonna restrict access to certain information.

Jack Dorsey 7:27 You mean like anti-vax people?

Tim Pool 7:29 Exactly, right.

Jack Dorsey 7:30 Yeah.

Tim Pool 7:30 So, so I'm, I guess what I'm trying to say is at what poi- would you guys restrict someone from sharing infr- like false information about vaccines that could get someone hurt?

Vijaya Gadde 7:39 That is not a violation of Twitter's rules, no.

Jack Dorsey 7:42 I, I, I think... (clears throat) I mean, I'd be interested to hear your ideas around this, but our, our perspective right now is, um, around this concept of variety of perspective. Like are we, are we encouraging more echo chambers and filter bubbles or are we at least showing people other information that might be counter to what they see? And there's, there's a bunch of research that would suggest that further emboldens their views. There's also research that would suggest that it at least gives them a consideration about-

Tim Pool 8:10 Yeah.

Jack Dorsey 8:10 ... what they're, what they currently believe. So-

Tim Pool 8:12 Well, you guys... Oh, go ahead.

Jack Dorsey 8:13 Sorry. Given the dynamics of our network being completely public, we're not organized around communities, we're not organized around topics, um, we have a little bit more freedom to show more of the spectrum of any one particular issue, and I think that's how we would, we would approach it from the start. That said, we haven't really dealt much with misinformation more broadly across like these sorts of topics. We've, we've focused our efforts on elections and, um, well, mainly elections right now.

Tim Pool 8:47 Yeah, so-

Jack Dorsey 8:47 You know, YouTube is a different animal, you know?

Tim Pool 8:48 It is, it is.

Jack Dorsey 8:49 YouTube, someone can really convince you that the Earth is flat if you're gullible and you watch a 45-minute YouTube video.

Tim Pool 8:54 Right.

Jack Dorsey 8:54 You know? It's, it's kind of a different thing.

Tim Pool 8:56 But I wanna, I wanted to just kinda, uh, get into that statement you made about misinformation and whether or not you'll police it. So I-

Vijaya Gadde 9:02 I think, I think the, the tough part of this is really... And love to have a discussion about this, is do you really want corporations to police what's true and not true?

Tim Pool 9:10 Absolutely not.

Vijaya Gadde 9:10 That's a really, really-

Jack Dorsey 9:12 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 9:12 ... tough position to

Speaker 9:12 But you guys do that.

Vijaya Gadde 9:13 We try not to do that. We don't wanna do that. The places-

Speaker 9:16 But you do in your rules.

Vijaya Gadde 9:17 But the places that we focus on is where we think that people are gonna be harmed by this in a direct and tangible way that we feel a responsibility to correct.

Jack Dorsey 9:26 When you say-

Vijaya Gadde 9:26 Not correct ourselves.

Jack Dorsey 9:26 ... in, in your rules, Tim, what do you mean by that? Like in-

Tim Pool 9:28 Oh, deadnaming and misgendering.

Jack Dorsey 9:29 ... what specifically? Deadnaming and misgendering, yeah.

Tim Pool 9:31 Yeah, that's a specific ideology that's unique to a very small faction of people in this world that you guys actually ban people for.

Vijaya Gadde 9:37 So the way I think of it is it's behavior-based, and I know you think of it as content, and we can, we can disagree on this point. But this is about why are you doing this to a trans person? Why are you calling them by this name when they've chosen to go by a different name? Or why are you outing them in some way?

Tim Pool 9:52 In the-

Vijaya Gadde 9:52 Like what is your intent and purpose behind that?

Tim Pool 9:55 So, so, so-

Jack Dorsey 9:55 I don't mean, I don't mean to interrupt, but in the interest of clarity, I, I wanna j- just explain what deadnaming means.

Tim Pool 10:00 Right, right.

Jack Dorsey 10:01 So why don't you go ahead.

Tim Pool 10:02 Uh, dea- so, uh, a transgender individual changes their name when they transition. A deadname would be their birth name or the name they went by before the transition.

Jack Dorsey 10:09 Yeah, okay.

Tim Pool 10:10 So, uh-

Jack Dorsey 10:11 'Cause my mom's probably going, "What?"

Tim Pool 10:12 And, and, and-

Jack Dorsey 10:13 I'm ready for the text. "What's a deadname?"

Tim Pool 10:15 And I will clarify too, your rules specifically say targeted misgendering and deadnaming, I believe is, is correct, right?

Vijaya Gadde 10:20 So years ago, we, we passed a, a policy that we call our hateful conduct policy, and that prohibits targeting or attacking someone based on their belonging in a, in any number of groups, whether it's because of their religion or their race or their gender, their sexual orientation, their gender identity. So it was something that's broad-based is that you, you can't choose to attack people because of these characteristics.

Tim Pool 10:41 But you do have limits on what characteristics you police, right? So you're not, you're not, uh, banning people for, for targeted transpacing others, right?

Vijaya Gadde 10:48 Uh, well, we, we have also general abuse and harassment rules, right? Which says you can't engage in abuse and harassment on the platform.

Jack Dorsey 10:54 Right. But you ca- but you can't detonate someone but you can call them stupid.

Vijaya Gadde 10:58 Uh, generally. I mean, if you created an account that, uh, only was there to call the same person stupid 5,000 times, we'd probably view that as a, you know-

Jack Dorsey 11:07 Targeted harassment.

Vijaya Gadde 11:08 ... targeted harassment.

Jack Dorsey 11:09 Right.

Tim Pool 11:09 So-

Vijaya Gadde 11:09 So- It, it's a function of the b- it's a function of behavior.

Tim Pool 11:12 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 11:12 Like, because people with our system can do this in massive velocity-

Tim Pool 11:15 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 11:16 ... which would ultimately silence you from the platform or just say like, "I give up. I don't wanna deal with this thing. I'm, I'm out."

Tim Pool 11:22 Mm-hmm. So there's... So, uh, we can just get into all of the big examples. I mean, uh, starting with me.

Vijaya Gadde 11:27 I'd, I'd love to, Tim, but can we just take a step back and, and try to level set what we're trying to do with our policies?

Jack Dorsey 11:32 Okay, sure.

Vijaya Gadde 11:32 Because I think it's worth doing.

Tim Pool 11:33 Please, yes, yes.

Vijaya Gadde 11:34 So as, as a, as a high level, I personally, and this isn't my job to run the policy team, I believe that everyone has a voice and should be able to use it, and I want them to be able to use it online. Now, where we draw a line is when people use their voice and use their platform to abuse and harass other people to silence them. Because I think that that's what we've seen over the years is a number of people who have been silenced online because of the abuse and harassment they've received, and they either stop talking or they leave the platform in its entirety. If you look at free expression and free speech laws around the world, they're not absolute. They're not absolute. There's always limitations on what you can say, and it's when you're starting to endanger other people.

Tim Pool 12:12 So, so, so my question then is-... when I was physically threatened on Twitter, y- you guys refused to take down the tweet. And I showed up in Berkeley and someone physically threatened me because they were encouraged to. When I was in Venezuela, I was physically threatened by a high-profile individual, 10,000 people tweeting at me, you guys do nothing. Right? So, I, I guess-

Vijaya Gadde 12:30 Yes.

Tim Pool 12:30 ... there's the obvious question of why does it always feel like your policies are going one direction politically? You say it's about behavior, and you've said it several times already, but I've already, I've got tons of examples of that not being the case.

Vijaya Gadde 12:40 And you will always be able to find those examples, because-

Tim Pool 12:42 Yeah, examples where you guys were alerted multiple times and did nothing, like when ANTIFA doxed a bunch of law enforcement agents, some of the tweets were removed, but since September, this tweet is still live with a list of private phone numbers, addresses. Yet, Kathy Griffin, she's fine. The guy who threatened the lives of these kids in Covington and said, "Lock 'em in the school and burn it down," you did nothing. I mean, he got suspended, you had to take his tweets down. Was he banned for threatening the lives of kids? Absolutely not.

Vijaya Gadde 13:09 So again, we have... and I'm, I'm happy to talk about all these details. We have our policies that are meant to protect people, and they're meant to enable for expression as long as you're not trying to silence somebody else. Now, we take a variety of different enforcement mechanisms around that. Sometimes you get warned, sometimes-

Tim Pool 13:25 (laughs)

Vijaya Gadde 13:26 ... where your tweet is forced to be deleted. It's a very rare occasion where we will outright suspend someone without any sort of warning or any sort of, um, ability to understand what happened.

Joe Rogan 13:36 What did you guys do with Kathy Griffin when she was saying she wanted the names of those young kids w- wearing the MAGA hats at the Covington High School kids?

Vijaya Gadde 13:43 Yeah, that's a, that's a great example, Joe. So in that particular case, you know, our doxing policy really focuses on, uh, posting private information, which we don't consider names to be private. We consider your home address, your home ph- your home phone number, your mobile phone number, those types of things to be private. So in that particular case, we took what I th- think now is probably a very literal interpretation of our policy and said that that was not, uh, a doxing incident.

Joe Rogan 14:07 Do you think that was an error?

Vijaya Gadde 14:08 I think that it was shortsighted, and given the context of what was going on there, that, um, if I was doing this all over again, I would probably ask my team to look at that through the lens of, what was the purpose behind that tweet? And if the purpose was, in fact, to identify these kids to either dox them or abuse and harass them, which it probably was, then we should be taking a more expansive view of, of that policy and including that type of content.

Joe Rogan 14:30 Especially considering the fact they're minors. I mean-

Vijaya Gadde 14:32 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 14:32 ... I would think that right away that would be-

Vijaya Gadde 14:34 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 14:34 ... the approach. So this is a trial and error sort of learn and g- and move on with new information sort of a deal.

Vijaya Gadde 14:41 Absolutely. We're gonna learn. We're gonna make a ton of mistakes. We're trying to do this, uh, with hundreds of millions of accounts all around the world, numerous languages. We're gonna make mistakes. Even if we get better, there will always be mistakes. But we're hoping to learn from those and to make ourselves better and to catch cases like Tim's or others where we clearly may have made an error. And I'm open to, to having those discussions. I'm not f- I'm sorry, Tim, familiar with your specific cases, but I'd love to follow up with you and really try and understand.

Tim Pool 15:09 Do you wanna, do you wanna pull it up?

Joe Rogan 15:09 But I think-

Vijaya Gadde 15:09 Do you wanna see the tweet?

Joe Rogan 15:10 ... we, we definitely-

Tim Pool 15:10 Uh-

Joe Rogan 15:10 ... need to pull that up.

Tim Pool 15:11 ... so it's, uh, B-I-T.L-Y/antifatweet, all lowercase.

Jack Dorsey 15:16 The, this is also an evolution in prioritization as well. One o- one of the things we've come to recently is we do, we do need to, we do need to prioritize these efforts both in terms of policy, enforcement, um, how we're thinking about evolving them. Um, one of the things that we wanna focus on as number one is physical safety. And this leads you immediately to something like doxing. And right now, the only way we take action on, uh, a doxing case is if it's reported or not. What we wanna move to is to be able to recognize those in real time, at least in the English language, recognize those in real time through our machine learning algorithms and take the action before it has to be reported. So we're focused purely right now on going after, uh, doxing cases with our algorithms so that we can be proactive. That also requires a much more rigorous appeals process to correct us when we're wrong. But we think it's tightly scoped enough, it impacts the most important thing, which is someone's physical safety. Once we learn from that, we can really look at... The, the biggest issue with our system right now is all the burden is placed upon the victim, so we only act based on reports. We, we don't have-

Tim Pool 16:26 So-

Jack Dorsey 16:26 ... a lot of enforcement, um, e- especially with, with more of the, more of th- more of the takedowns that are run through machine learning algo- uh, um, deep learning algorithms.

Tim Pool 16:36 But if, if something is reported, a human does review it eventually, or are there a series of reports that you never get to?

Jack Dorsey 16:42 There's, there's probably reports we don't. I mean, we, we prioritize a queue based on severity, and the thi- the thing that we'll mark severity is something like physical safety or private information or whatnot. So generally, we try to get through everything, but we have to prioritize that queue even coming in.

Tim Pool 16:57 So-

Joe Rogan 16:57 W-

Tim Pool 16:57 ... if, if someone threatened the lives of someone else, you would, would you ban that account? Would you tell them like... like let's say someone tweeted three times, "Kill these people, I want them dead," three times. Is that-

Vijaya Gadde 17:09 Yes, that's a violation-

Tim Pool 17:10 You didn't-

Vijaya Gadde 17:10 ... of our rules.

Tim Pool 17:10 ... you didn't ban him though.

Vijaya Gadde 17:11 And I, I don't know why that is.

Joe Rogan 17:12 Well, let's, let's pull that up, Jamie.

Tim Pool 17:13 That's, uh ... I, I don't know if, I don't, I don't necessarily wanna give out s- specific usernames because then, uh, people just point the finger at me and say, "I'm getting these people banned." But-

Jack Dorsey 17:21 Yeah.

Tim Pool 17:21 ... you know, during Covington, this guy said multiple times to, he wanted his followers to go and kill these kids.

Jack Dorsey 17:26 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 17:27 And-

Jack Dorsey 17:27 And, and we have to look at that, but we also have to look in the context 'cause we also have, I think we talked about this a little bit in the last podcast, but we, we have gamers on the platform who are saying exactly that to their friends that they're going to meet at the game, in the game tonight. And without the context of that relationship, without the context of the conversation that we're having, we would take the exact same action on, on them incorrectly.

Tim Pool 17:48 Yeah, absolutely. That I, that I understand. I think in the case of Covington though, this user was so high profile. He's a verified user, he's got something like 20,000 followers, and it was highlighted by numerous conservative media outlets saying, "Wow, this guy's..." it's screenshotted, it's being shared. I mean, you had a Disney producer in, like saying, a picture of a wood chipper with a body being thrown in it saying that's what he wanted to happen.You know, I- so I- I do know that some of these accounts got locked.

Joe Rogan 18:12 A Disney producer was doing that?

Tim Pool 18:14 That, well, I'll- I'll clarify. Fact check me on that, but that's the- basically the conversation that was had. There was a guy at Disney, was- he posted a picture from Fargo of someone being tossed in a wood chipper and he says, "I want all these MAGA kids," you know, "done like this." You had another guy who specifically said, "Lock them in the school, burn it down." Said a bunch of disparaging things, and then said, "If you see them, fire on them." And he tweeted that more than once.

Vijaya Gadde 18:35 And that- those accounts-

Joe Rogan 18:36 Hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 18:36 ... were, those tweets were taken down. Those were violations of our rules.

Tim Pool 18:39 That's- I'm pretty sure it's actually illegal to do that, right? It's- to- to- to tell- to tell your- any individual to commit a- a felony is a crime. Like, right?

Joe Rogan 18:48 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 18:48 Well, incitement of violence is certainly-

Tim Pool 18:49 Yeah, yeah. So what I, I-

Vijaya Gadde 18:50 ... a crime in many places.

Tim Pool 18:51 I- I just have to wonder how would- how would ... like I understand the context issue, but this what- this is what I talk- what other-

Jack Dorsey 18:57 Well, there's context and scale too, though. Right?

Vijaya Gadde 18:59 But- but Tim, those accounts were actioned. They may not have been actioned the way you wanted them to, but the- the tweets were forced to be deleted, and the account is-

Tim Pool 19:06 Sure, sure. I- I- I-

Vijaya Gadde 19:07 ... took a penalty for that, so.

Tim Pool 19:09 I- I- I understand that, but-

Joe Rogan 19:09 Penalt- what kind of a penalty?

Vijaya Gadde 19:10 Well, a- again, as I said earlier, Joe, we don't, uh, usually, uh, automatically suspend accounts with one violation because we want people to learn.

Joe Rogan 19:18 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 19:18 We want people to understand what they did wrong and give them an opportunity not to do it again.

Joe Rogan 19:22 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 19:22 And it's- it's a big thing to kick someone off the platform, and I take that very, very seriously.

Joe Rogan 19:26 So-

Vijaya Gadde 19:27 So I want to make sure that when someone cr- uh, violates our rules, they understand what happened and they are given an opportunity to n- you know, get back on the platform and change their behavior. And so in many of these cases what happens is we will force someone to acknowledge that their tweet violated our rules, force them to delete that tweet before they can get back on the platform. And in- in many cases if they do it again, we give them a time-out which is like seven days and we say, "Look, you've done it again."

Jack Dorsey 19:52 Temporary suspension.

Vijaya Gadde 19:53 "It's a temporary suspension. If you do it again-"

Joe Rogan 19:54 Time out. You're a mom. (laughs)

Vijaya Gadde 19:56 I'm totally a mom, exactly. And, um-

Jack Dorsey 19:58 (laughs) So ... A new mom too.

Vijaya Gadde 19:59 And if you do it again, then you're done.

Joe Rogan 20:01 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 20:01 So it's kind of like, you know-

Jack Dorsey 20:03 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 20:03 ... three strikes.

Jack Dorsey 20:03 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 20:03 Sort of like baseball. And so in some of these cases that Tim is referencing, I have to imagine, 'cause these tweets were deleted, they are violations of our rules, people are upset that the account came back again and was allowed to say other things-

Tim Pool 20:15 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 20:15 ... but we did take action on those tweets. They were violations of our rules.

Tim Pool 20:18 And- and then you have people like Milo, who was mean to a person, and you delete- you banned him permanently.

Joe Rogan 20:23 There's a little more to that.

Vijaya Gadde 20:24 Stripped of his-

Joe Rogan 20:24 There's a little more to that one.

Vijaya Gadde 20:25 Actually, Tim, let's talk about it.

Joe Rogan 20:25 Yeah.

Tim Pool 20:26 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 20:26 I'm- I'm happy to talk about Milo, and I actually brought, um, the tweets because-

Tim Pool 20:29 Well so- so let's- let's preface that by saying the point I want to make sure is clear is that you had somebody who actively called for the death of people. I understand the context issue. Maybe he's talking about video games, but-

Jack Dorsey 20:38 Context and scale.

Tim Pool 20:39 And scale. So this is a verified user who's-

Jack Dorsey 20:41 And- and that's just the complexity in- in acting.

Tim Pool 20:43 So- so-

Jack Dorsey 20:43 It's- it's not- not an excuse for why we didn't do it in a particular time, but-

Tim Pool 20:47 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 20:47 Mm-hmm.

Jack Dorsey 20:47 ... and then when you-

Tim Pool 20:48 And- and there- there are a lot of other examples too-

Jack Dorsey 20:49 Right.

Tim Pool 20:49 ... that get into more egregious areas that-

Joe Rogan 20:51 Mm-hmm.

Tim Pool 20:51 ... that I've- I've prepared. So here we have someone with over 20,000 followers, he's verified, numerous times call- incites his followers to commit a- a crime against these kids. The action taken against him is delete the tweets, you get a suspension, you get a time out. Then you have people like Alex Jones who berated a CNN reporter, permanently banned. You get Milo Yiannopoulos, he was mean, permanently banned.

Vijaya Gadde 21:10 But- but that's your impression. That's not what happened.

Joe Rogan 21:12 Okay. Well let's- let's-

Vijaya Gadde 21:13 And I'm here to talk about the details if you want to.

Tim Pool 21:15 Yep. Let's- let's- yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:15 Let's- yeah, let's ple- let's do this one at a time.

Vijaya Gadde 21:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:17 Let's start with Milo.

Vijaya Gadde 21:18 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 21:18 So what was the details with Milo?

Vijaya Gadde 21:20 So Milo had a number of tweets that violated our rules going back to 2014, but I'm gonna talk about the final three in this three strikes concept.

Joe Rogan 21:28 Yes, please.

Vijaya Gadde 21:29 Um, he claimed to be a BuzzFeed reporter in his bio, um, and he's a verified account, so that is impersonation. I'm not sure why he did that. He did do that.

Joe Rogan 21:39 Well, BuzzFeed's a left-wing thing, so he was doing parody.

Vijaya Gadde 21:42 Uh, potentially, but our parody rules are very specific that if you have an account that's me- being, uh, a- is a parody account, you need to say that it is a parody account so you don't confuse people.

Joe Rogan 21:50 Right, but he- but everybody who knows Milo would know that he's not a BuzzFeed reporter.

Vijaya Gadde 21:54 But people who don't know Milo-

Joe Rogan 21:56 Okay. I see. Fair enough.

Vijaya Gadde 21:56 ... will look at that verified account and say, "Hey."

Joe Rogan 21:59 Right, I see what you're saying. But he wasn't verified after a while. You removed his verification.

Vijaya Gadde 22:01 Because he violated our rules around verification.

Joe Rogan 22:03 So- so the viol- vi- the verification was removed because of the BuzzFeed thing?

Vijaya Gadde 22:08 I believe so.

Joe Rogan 22:09 Okay.

Vijaya Gadde 22:09 I can- I can confirm that, but I believe so.

Joe Rogan 22:11 Okay.

Vijaya Gadde 22:11 He also, uh, doxed someone. He posted, um, private information about an individual, so that was the second one.

Joe Rogan 22:18 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 22:19 He tweeted to somebody else, um, "If you were my child, I'd have doxed your head on a rock and tried again," which we viewed as a threat.

Joe Rogan 22:28 Really?

Vijaya Gadde 22:28 Mm-hmm. That's- I'm- I'm telling you-

Joe Rogan 22:30 That seems like he's saying like your mom shoulda swallowed you. You know? It's like ... you know what I'm saying? He's like, "You're- you're a mistake."

Vijaya Gadde 22:38 Oh- oh, totally.

Joe Rogan 22:38 I don't think that's a threat.

Vijaya Gadde 22:39 I understand why reasonable people would have different impressions of this.

Joe Rogan 22:43 Okay. I understand.

Vijaya Gadde 22:43 I'm just going through and telling you what they are-

Joe Rogan 22:44 Okay.

Vijaya Gadde 22:44 ... just so we can have all the facts on the table and then we can debate them.

Joe Rogan 22:47 Right. I get it.

Vijaya Gadde 22:48 And then the last one we found, um, a bunch of things that he posted that we viewed as incitement of, uh, abuse against Leslie Jones. So there's a bunch of them, but the one that I like to, uh, look at which really convinced me is he posted two doctored tweets that were supposedly by Leslie Jones. They were fake tweets. Um, the first one said, "White people are getting on my nerves, like how can you call yourself human?" And then the second one said, um, "The goddamn," uh, slur for a Jewish person, "@Sony ain't paid me yet, damn Bix nude better pay up." And then-

Joe Rogan 23:25 So this was just a fake tweet that someone had photoshopped? Two fake- two fake tweets.

Vijaya Gadde 23:29 There were two- two fake tweets. And we know they were faked because we could still tell from the- the- the software-

Joe Rogan 23:35 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 23:35 ... that they were faked.

Joe Rogan 23:36 Is it-

Vijaya Gadde 23:36 You can't always tell.

Joe Rogan 23:37 So is- is- it is possible that he didn't know they were faked?

Vijaya Gadde 23:41 It's possible.

Joe Rogan 23:42 That someone sent it to him and he didn't do his due diligence in looking it up and-

Vijaya Gadde 23:46 It is possible, but it was pointed out to him that they were fake because-

Joe Rogan 23:49 And he left it on?

Vijaya Gadde 23:50 And not only did he leave it on, he said, "Don't tell me some mischievous internet rascal made them up!" So this in the context of a bunch of other things he was saying towards Leslie Jones on Twitter, I and my team felt that this was taken as a whole, incitement of harassment against her.

Joe Rogan 24:09 Wasn't there another issue with multiple accounts that were connected to him?

Vijaya Gadde 24:14 Uh, there were a bunch of other issues on the background, but these are the three primary things that we looked at in terms of-

Joe Rogan 24:21 But the other things that were in the background, weren't they multiple accounts that were connected to him? Like...

Vijaya Gadde 24:28 I think that ... Um, I'm not sure about that, uh, Joe. I think that it was more that we found him to be engaging in coordinated behavior and inciting people to, to attack Leslie Jones.

Joe Rogan 24:38 Now with a case li- like him, no, I'm just gonna be honest, when I'm listening to those, or listening to you read those tweets out, they don't sound that bad, and they certainly don't sound as bad as calling for the death of a child who's wearing a MAGA hat and throw him into a wood chipper, the fact that that guy's still out there tweeting-

Vijaya Gadde 24:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 24:54 ... and yet Milo's not, Milo's initial ... The whole thing k- stemmed from, other than the BuzzFeed thing, stemmed from his legitimate criticism of a film, and he's, you know, he's a, a satirist.

Vijaya Gadde 25:07 The, the-

Joe Rogan 25:07 He was mocking this film.

Vijaya Gadde 25:08 The doxing incident wasn't related to the film.

Joe Rogan 25:10 The doxing incident, right.

Tim Pool 25:10 Well, w- why don't we, why don't we look at the Leslie Jones stuff?

Vijaya Gadde 25:13 And, and I ho- I hope we all agree that doxing is something that Twitter should take action on.

Joe Rogan 25:17 Yes. 100%. Right, yes.

Vijaya Gadde 25:17 When it can threaten people in real life, and I take an enormous amount of, uh, responsibility for that because I fear daily for the things that are happening on the platform that are translating into the real world.

Tim Pool 25:28 So, uh-

Joe Rogan 25:29 Thank you.

Tim Pool 25:29 Mi- Milo is a contentious figure and there's certainly things you can pull up that I wouldn't agree with anything he did there. I, I think those are horrible. I think Joe brought up some really good points, but what about Chuck Johnson? Why was Chuck Johnson banned?

Vijaya Gadde 25:42 I don't have those details in front of me, Tim.

Tim Pool 25:43 Chuck Johnson said that he was preparing something to take out DeRay McKesson and in the jor- in a journalistic context, people take this to mean he was gonna do a, a dossier or some kind of hit piece on DeRay. He was permanently banned. In my understanding, and it's been a long time since I've read this, there was some leaked emails I think from Dick Costolo where he said ... Uh, maybe it wasn't Dick. I don't wanna drag Dick. I don't know who it was exactly. They said, "I don't care, just get rid of him." And he was (clicks tongue) off. So you have ... A- and again, maybe there's some hidden context there. I don't know, but on the surface, we have-

Joe Rogan 26:10 The, the concern is that this is always leaning towards the left.

Tim Pool 26:15 Oh, it absolutely is, and I'm, I'm, I'm not even getting started.

Joe Rogan 26:18 Yeah.

Vijaya Gadde 26:19 I can understand why you feel that way. I don't think that's true. I think we look at each individual instance of violations of our rules and try to make the best case that we can.

Joe Rogan 26:27 Right, but just-

Vijaya Gadde 26:27 And I'm not trying ... And I, I do think, Joe, just to, just to say, I do think we've failed in a couple of ways.

Joe Rogan 26:33 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 26:33 And I, I want to admit that.

Joe Rogan 26:34 Okay.

Vijaya Gadde 26:35 Number one, we haven't done enough education about what our rules are, 'cause a lot of people violate our rules and they don't even know it. Like, some of the statistics that we've looked at, like for a lot of first-time users of the platform, if they violate the rule once, almost two-thirds of them never violate the rules again. So we're not talking about, like, a bunch of people accidentally. Like, if they know what the rules are, most people can avoid it.

Joe Rogan 26:54 And most people, when they feel the sting of a violation, they go, "Okay, I don't wanna lose my rights to post. Let me correct this."

Vijaya Gadde 27:00 Exactly, and they're, and they're able to do it.

Joe Rogan 27:01 Okay.

Vijaya Gadde 27:01 So we have a lot of work to do on education so people really understand what the rules are in the first place. The other thing we have to do to address these allegations that we're doing this from a biased perspective is to be really clear about what types of behavior are caught by our rules and what types are not and to be transparent within the product. So when a particular tweet is, uh, found to be in violation of our rules, being very, very clear, like, "This tweet was found to be in violation of this particular rule," and that's all work that we're doing. 'Cause we think the combination of education and transparency is really important, particularly for an open platform like Twitter. It's, it's just part of who we are and we have to build it into the product.

Tim Pool 27:37 So-

Joe Rogan 27:37 I appreciate that. Your particular thoughts, though, on those examples that he described, when you're talking about someone saying they should throw these children into a wood chipper versus Chuck Johnson saying he should take this guy ... He wants to prepare a dossier to take this guy out, or how did he say it? I wanna-

Tim Pool 27:53 He said, he said something like, "I'm gonna take out DeRay McKesson with ..." He said, "I'm preparing to take out DeRay ..." Something like that. I can't remember.

Joe Rogan 27:58 Preparing to take him out.

Tim Pool 27:59 I, I can, I can understand how-

Joe Rogan 28:00 So it could be misconstrued as he was trying to assassinate him.

Tim Pool 28:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 28:03 You could, you could misconstrue it that.

Tim Pool 28:04 But not a direct threat.

Joe Rogan 28:05 But, but the other one's a direct threat. One guy is banned for life, the other guy is still posting.

Vijaya Gadde 28:09 But again ... And we can ... I'm happy to follow up. I obviously don't have all the Chuck Johnson ... It's not about one thing, as I said.

Joe Rogan 28:14 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 28:14 It's about a pattern and practice of violating our rules.

Joe Rogan 28:17 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 28:17 And we, we don't wanna kick someone off for one thing. But if there's a pattern and practice, like there was for Milo, we are gonna have to take action at some point because we can't sit back and let people be abused and harassed and silenced on the platform.

Tim Pool 28:28 Well, so, so one really important thing that needs to be stated is that Twitter, by definition, is a biased platform in favor of the left, period. It's not, it's not a question. I understand you might have your own inter- interpretation, but it's very simple. Conservatives do not agree with you on the definition of misgendering. If you have a, a rule in place that specifically adheres to the left ideology, you, by default, are enforcing rules from a biased perspective.

Vijaya Gadde 28:50 Well, Tim, there are a lot of people on the left who don't agree with how we're doing our job either.

Tim Pool 28:53 For sure.

Vijaya Gadde 28:54 And those people think that we don't take enough action on abuse and harassment-

Tim Pool 28:57 Absolutely.

Vijaya Gadde 28:57 ... and we let far too much behavior go. And I think that Twitter-

Joe Rogan 28:59 Well, but that's a radical example, though. I mean, what he's talking about, I mean, in terms of generalities, the, the, in general, things lean far more left. Would you agree to that?

Vijaya Gadde 29:08 I don't know what that means.

Jack Dorsey 29:09 But in this particular case, it's how the speech is being used. Th- this is a new vector of attack that people have felt that, "I don't wanna be on this platform anymore because I'm being harassed and abused and I need to get the hell out."

Tim Pool 29:21 Well, people harass and abuse me all day and night. You don't do anything about that. I, I, my, my, my notification's permanently locked at 99. You have it worse than I do. I mean, you got substantially more followers. And I don't click Notification tab anymore because it's basically just harassment. And I ... Even when ... So this is a really funny anecdote. I, I was, uh, covering a story in Berkeley and someone said, "If you see him, attack him." Like, it, it was, it was ... I'm paraphrasing. They said basically to swing at me, take my stuff, steal from me. And Twitter told me after review it was not a violation of their policy. Somebody made an allusion to me being a homosexual and I reported that. Instantly gone. So when I sh- so, so for me, I'm looking, I'm like, "Well, of course. Of course Twitter is going to enforce the social justice aspect of their policy immediately," in my opinion probably because you guys have, uh, PR constraints and you're probably nervous about that. But when someone actually threatens me with a crime and incites their followers to do it, nothing got done.

Vijaya Gadde 30:14 Well, that-

Tim Pool 30:14 And I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Vijaya Gadde 30:15 Well, Tim, that's a mistake. If someone ...... acts in that manner and threatens to hurt you, that's a violation of our rules.

Tim Pool 30:22 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 30:22 Maybe there was a mistake there and I'm happy to go and correct that, and we can do it offline so we don't fear any sort of reprisal against you, but that's a mistake. That's not an agenda on my part or on the team's part.

Joe Rogan 30:32 Would this be a manual-

Jack Dorsey 30:33 And we don't, we don't have any PR constraints.

Joe Rogan 30:35 Would-

Jack Dorsey 30:36 Th- that is not how we-

Tim Pool 30:36 So why did you ban Alex Jones?

Jack Dorsey 30:38 We can get into that.

Vijaya Gadde 30:39 You wanna get into that?

Joe Rogan 30:40 Yes.

Tim Pool 30:40 Absolutely.

Vijaya Gadde 30:40 Are you ready for Alex Jones?

Joe Rogan 30:41 Sure. (laughs)

Tim Pool 30:42 (laughs)

Vijaya Gadde 30:42 All right.

Joe Rogan 30:42 Oh, I've been ready for Alex Jones.

Vijaya Gadde 30:43 Let me pull this up.

Joe Rogan 30:44 (laughs)

Vijaya Gadde 30:46 Um-

Tim Pool 30:47 Well, le- let, lemme say this, the reason I bring him up-

Joe Rogan 30:48 Okay.

Tim Pool 30:48 ... is that Oliver Darcy, one of the lead reporters covering Alex Jones and his content, said on CNN that it was only after media pressure did these social networks take action. So that's why I bring him up specifically, 'cause it, it, it sort of implies you were under PR constraints to get rid of him.

Vijaya Gadde 31:03 I think if you look at the PR that Twitter went through in that incident, it wouldn't be that we looked good in it.

Joe Rogan 31:08 You, you have to-

Vijaya Gadde 31:08 And that's not at all why we took action on this. (laughs)

Jack Dorsey 31:10 Sorry, but-

Vijaya Gadde 31:11 Yeah.

Jack Dorsey 31:11 ... you have to look at the, the full context on this spectrum here, because one of the things that happened over a weekend is what Alex mentioned on your, on your podcast with him. He was removed from the iTunes podcast directory. That was the, that was the linchpin for him, because it, it, it drove all the traffic to, what he said, basically zero. Immediately after that, we saw our peer companies, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, also take action. We did not. We did not because we, when we looked at our service and we looked at the reports on their service, we did not find anything in violation of our rules. Then we got into a situation where suddenly a bunch of people were reporting content on our platform, including CNN, who wrote an article about all the things that might violate our rooms, rules that we looked into, and we gave him one of the, of the warnings. And then we can get into the, the actual details, but-

Tim Pool 32:14 Yeah.

Jack Dorsey 32:15 ... we did not follow ... We, we resisted just being like a domino with our peers because it wasn't consistent with our rules and the contract we put in ... before our customers.

Joe Rogan 32:26 So what was it that made you ban him?

Vijaya Gadde 32:29 So there were three separate incidents that came to our attention after the fact, uh, that were reported to us by, by different users. Uh, there was, uh, a video that was uploaded that showed a child being violently thrown to the ground and crying, so that was the first one. Um, the second one was a video, uh, that we viewed, um, as incitement of violence. I can read it to you. It's a-

Joe Rogan 32:49 Sure.

Vijaya Gadde 32:50 ... it's a little, it's a little bit of a transcript, but, um, "But now it's time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag. I know the Justice Department's crippled a bunch of followers and cowards, but there's groups, there's grand juries. There's ... You called for it. It's time politically, economically, and judiciously, and legally, and criminally to move against these people. It's got to be done now. Get together the people you know aren't traitors, aren't cowards, aren't helping their fricking bets, hedging their fricking bets like all these other assholes do and let's go, let's do it. So people need to have their ..." And then there's a bunch of other stuff, but at the end, "So people need to have their battle rifles ready and everything ready at their bedsides, and you've got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception."

Joe Rogan 33:27 So this is ... You're, you're saying that this is a call to violence against the media?

Vijaya Gadde 33:32 That's what it sounded like to us at the time. And there have been a number of incidents of violence against the media, and again, I take my responsibility for what happens on the platform and how that translates off-platform very seriously, and that felt like it was an incitement to violence.

Tim Pool 33:45 So if he only tweeted the incitement to violence, he would've been fined?

Vijaya Gadde 33:49 If he only tweeted-

Tim Pool 33:49 If he only tweeted that trans- uh, posted that transcript saying, "Get your battle fi- ri- rifles ready," you wouldn't have deleted his account?

Vijaya Gadde 33:55 I ... Again, context matters to him.

Joe Rogan 33:56 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 33:56 It's not about one thing.

Joe Rogan 33:58 No.

Vijaya Gadde 33:58 So we'd have to look at the entire context of what's going on.

Tim Pool 34:00 So I'm asking was that, was that egregious enough for you to say, "That alone gets him banned."

Joe Rogan 34:03 That wasn't wha- that wasn't the final-

Jack Dorsey 34:05 No, no, no. That was just number two.

Tim Pool 34:06 Right, right. So then I guess the question is what was the video context of the kid being thrown to the ground? Was it newsworthy? Is there-

Vijaya Gadde 34:11 We, we obviously didn't think so, and depicting violence against a child is not something that we would allow on the platform.

Tim Pool 34:16 Even if it's news content?

Vijaya Gadde 34:18 Um, if it was ... Uh, there are certain types of situations where if you were reporting on, um, you know, war zone and, and things that might be happening, we would put a interstitial on that type of content that's graphic or violent, but we didn't feel that that was the context here.

Tim Pool 34:31 So I-

Joe Rogan 34:31 Well, the ... there's a video that's been going around, that was going around a few m- uh, f- four or five weeks ago, the one where the, the girls were yelling at that big giant guy and the guy punched that girl in the face, and she was like 11 years old. I saw that multiple times on Twitter. That was one of the most violent things I've ever seen is a g- giant man punch this 11-year-old girl in the face.

Vijaya Gadde 34:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 34:50 And that was ... Was that removed from Twitter?

Vijaya Gadde 34:53 I don't know. I, I would have to go see if anyone reported it to us.

Tim Pool 34:56 Mm-hmm. I think m- one of the issues here is too is, you know, you've, you've-

Vijaya Gadde 34:59 Do you want me to get to the third one?

Joe Rogan 35:00 Yeah, please do.

Tim Pool 35:01 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:01 Yeah. Sure.

Vijaya Gadde 35:02 Oh, yeah. So the third strike, um, that we, we looked at was a verbal altercation that Alex got into with a journalist, and in that altercation there were ... which was uploaded to Twitter, um, there were mi- a number of statements using "Eyes of the rat," "Even more evil looking person," "He is just scum," "You're a virus to America and freedom," "Smelling like a possum that climbed out of the rear end of a dead cow."

Joe Rogan 35:24 (laughs)

Vijaya Gadde 35:24 "You look like a possum that got caught doing some really, really nasty stuff," in my view. So it was a bunch of verbal-

Joe Rogan 35:29 That's enough.

Jack Dorsey 35:30 Really?

Joe Rogan 35:31 That's hilarious.

Vijaya Gadde 35:31 ... s- pattern and practice-

Joe Rogan 35:32 I understand.

Vijaya Gadde 35:32 ... but it was a verbal altercation that was posted on our platform.

Joe Rogan 35:35 Right. So, so- (laughs)

Vijaya Gadde 35:36 So we took the totality of this-

Joe Rogan 35:38 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 35:38 ... having been warned that we have r- rules against abuse and harassment of individuals, we saw this pattern in practice. One strike, two strike, three strikes, and we made a decision to permanently suspend him.

Joe Rogan 35:48 And so that last one was on Periscope, is that what it was that he, uh, broadcast through?

Vijaya Gadde 35:53 Um, I think it was, uh, originally on Periscope, but it was also reposted from multiple related accounts onto Twitter.

Tim Pool 36:01 So we can, we can agree with you when you say these things like, you know, "Alex said this, it sounds like a threat. He was berating this person saying awful things." But ultimately your judgment is the context. You say we have to pay attention to the context. We're just trusting that you made the right decision.

Vijaya Gadde 36:16 Well, I'm giving you as much facts as I can give you here, and I think that this is a real, um, hard part of content moderation at scale on global platforms. It's not easy, and I don't think Jack or I would tell you that it's easy. It's-

Joe Rogan 36:28 It's a preposterous volume that you guys have to deal with.

Vijaya Gadde 36:31 It's, it's not po-

Joe Rogan 36:31 And that's one of the things that I wanted to get into with Jack when I first had him on, because when my thought ... And, um, I wasn't as concerned about the censorship as many people were. My main concern was, what is it like to start this thing that's kind of for fun, and then all of a sudden it becomes the premier platform for free speech on the planet Earth?

Tim Pool 36:52 So let, let's-

Vijaya Gadde 36:54 It, it is that, but it's also a platform that's used to abuse and harass a lot of people.

Joe Rogan 36:58 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 36:58 And used in ways that none of us want it to be used-

Joe Rogan 37:01 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 37:01 ... but nonetheless, it happens.

Joe Rogan 37:02 So, so let-

Vijaya Gadde 37:02 And I think that's an enormously complicated challenge, uh, for any company to do content moderation at scale, and that's something that we are sitting down, thinking about, "How do we take this forward into the future?"

Tim Pool 37:13 It doesn't scale.

Vijaya Gadde 37:13 Because this is ... Yeah.

Tim Pool 37:15 So, so, but, so let's take the other context now. We've heard what you said, why what Alex Jones did was bad, and now we can look at it this way. Oliver Darcy, who has on numerous occasions insulted conservatives, recently on CNN called them, "Gullible, being sold red meat by grifters," repeatedly covers a story. I'm gonna do air quotes because I think to an extent he is allowed to cover these stories. He keeps going after Alex Jones. He keeps digging through his history. Then he goes on TV and says, "We got him banned." Then Alex Jones confronts him in a very aggressive and mean way, and that's your justification for, for ... Or I should say, I, I, uh, inverted the timeline. Basically you have someone who's relentlessly digging through your stuff, insulting you, you know, calling you names, p- uh, sifting through your history trying to find anything they can to get you terminated, going on TV even, writing numerous stories. You confront them and say, "You're evil," and you say a bunch of really awful, mean things, and then you, you ban him, right? So-

Vijaya Gadde 38:04 And then you post that information all over the internet.

Tim Pool 38:07 Right, but you have a journalist who recently went on TV and said, "CPAC is a bunch of gullible conservatives being fed red meat by grifters." You can tell this guy's not got honest, an honest agenda. So what you have, to me it looks like the conservatives, to an extent, probably will try and mass flag people on the left, but from an ideological standpoint, you have the actual, you know, whatever people want to call it, sect of identitarian left that believe free speech is a problem, that have literally shown up in Berkeley burning free speech signs, and then you have conservatives who are tweeting mean things. And the conservatives are less likely ... And I think it's fair to point out, less likely to try and get someone else banned because they like playing off them, and the left is, is targeting them, so you end up having disproportionate-

Vijaya Gadde 38:50 I feel like there are a lot of assumptions in what you're saying, and I don't know what basis you're saying those things.

Tim Pool 38:54 The, I mean, you have conservatives demanding free speech, and you have liberals ... Uh, I shouldn't say liberals. You have w- what people refer to as the regressive left calling for the restrictions on speech. You have these-

Vijaya Gadde 39:04 I don't, I don't know what those terms mean, to be honest with you. We have people on all sides of the spectrum who believe in free speech, and I, I, I believe that to be the case.

Tim Pool 39:11 So your platform restricts speech.

Vijaya Gadde 39:15 Our platform promotes speech unless people violate our rules.

Tim Pool 39:19 And in a specific direction.

Vijaya Gadde 39:21 In any direction.

Tim Pool 39:22 But Uncle ... Oh, I don't want to say his name. The guy who calls for death gets a suspension. The guy who insinuates death gets a permanent ban.

Vijaya Gadde 39:28 But Tim, you're misinterpreting what I'm saying, and I feel like you're doing it deliberately. It's not about one particular thing. It's about a pattern and practice of violating our rules.

Tim Pool 39:35 And you have a pattern and practice of banning only one faction of people.

Vijaya Gadde 39:38 I don't agree with that.

Tim Pool 39:39 Quillette recently published an article where they looked at 22 high-profile bannings from 2015 and found 21 of them were only on one side of the cultural debate.

Vijaya Gadde 39:47 But I don't look at the political spectrum of people when I'm looking at their tweets.

Tim Pool 39:50 Right. You have a bias.

Vijaya Gadde 39:51 I don't know who they are.

Tim Pool 39:52 You're biased, and you are, you're targeting specific individuals because your rules support this perspective.

Vijaya Gadde 39:57 No. I don't agree with that.

Tim Pool 39:58 It, it ... Well, so- Can you be clear though in, in like what rules support that perspective? Specifically the, the easiest one is misgendering, right? Because that's so clearly ideological. If you ask a conservative, "What is misgendering?" they'll say if someone is biologically male and you call them, you know, "she"- Or he. Uh, biologically a male and you call them a she, that's misgendering. That's a conservative view. Okay. The, the, the progressive view is invert it. So now you actually have in your policies a, a rule against the conservative perspective.

Vijaya Gadde 40:26 I have a rule against the abuse and harassment of trans people on our platform. That's what my rules against.

Tim Pool 40:31 Can we just give context in the background as to why that is?

Vijaya Gadde 40:33 Yeah, and, and the why that is. And I brought some, some research. So we obviously received a l- a lot of, uh, feedback. So we don't make these rules in a vacuum, just to be clear. We have a, a bunch of people all around the world who give us context on the types of behavior they're seeing, how that translates into real-world harm, and, uh, they give us feedback. And they tell us, like, "You should consider different types of rules, different types of, uh, perspectives, different ... Like, for example, when we try to enforce hateful conduct in a ... our hateful conduct policy in a particular country, we are not gonna know all the slur words that are used to target people of a particular race or a particular, uh, religion. So we're gonna rely on a building out a, a team of experts all around the world who are gonna help us enforce our rules. So in the particular case of, um, misgendering, I'm just trying to pull up, um, some of the studies that we looked at, but we looked at, um, the American Association of Pediatrics and looked at the number of transgender youths that were committing suicide. It's an astronomical, and I'm sorry I can't find it right now in front of me. It's a really, really high statistic that's like 10 times what the normal suicide rate is of normal teenagers. And we looked at the causes of what that was happening, and a lot of it was, was not just violence towards those individuals, but it was bullying behavior, and what was, what were those bullying behaviors that were contributing to that? And that's why we made this rule, because we thought and we believe that those types of behaviors were happening on our platform and we wanted to stop it. Now, there are exceptions to this rule. We don't ... And this is all, this isn't about like public figures, and there's always gonna be public figures that you're gonna wanna talk about, and that's, that's fine, but this is about are you doing something with the intention of abusing and harassing a trans person on the platform, and are they viewing it that way and reporting it to us so that we take action?

Tim Pool 42:17 So, so I, I will just state, I actually agree with the rule.... on, from, you know, my point of view, I, I agree that bullying and harassing trans people is en- enti- uh, entirely wrong. I disagree with it. But I just wanna make sure it's clear to everybody who's listening, my point is simply that, you know, Ben Shapiro went on a talk show and absolutely refused, and that's his shtick, you know? And he's one of the biggest podcasts in, in the world. So if you have all of his millions upon millions of followers who are looking at this rule saying, "This goes against my view of the world," and it's, it's literally 60-plus million in this country, you do have a rule that's ideologically bent. And, and it's, it's true, you re- you did the research, you believe this. Well, then you have Ben Shapiro, who did his re- research and doesn't believe it.

Vijaya Gadde 42:56 Yeah.

Tim Pool 42:56 And you-

Vijaya Gadde 42:57 And I relied on the American Association of Pediatrics and, uh, you know, Human Rights Council, and other-

Tim Pool 43:02 And I'm sure he has his sources too for when he gives his statements. The point is-

Joe Rogan 43:05 I, but, but I just wonder if they have that context.

Tim Pool 43:08 ... you have equally... I mean-

Joe Rogan 43:09 And, and that's, and that's where we have also failed-

Tim Pool 43:11 It's, it's, it's-

Joe Rogan 43:12 ... as well as just explaining the why behind a lot of our-

Tim Pool 43:14 I, I, I-

Joe Rogan 43:14 ... our policy and reasons.

Tim Pool 43:16 I, I would agree, and I think it's fine. You did research and you found this to be true, but we can't simply say, "Maybe Ben Shapiro and the other conservatives who feel this way don't know." We have to, we h- w- we can't, you know... The point I'm trying to make is, is, it's simply whether you believe it. Wh- whether you justify it or not is not the point. The point is, you do. You do have this rule. That rule is at odds with conservatives, period.

Vijaya Gadde 43:35 Well, I think, I, I think that you're, you're generalizing, but I think it is really important, as Jack said, to, the why behind these things. The why is to protect people from abuse and harassment on our platform.

Joe Rogan 43:46 No, I understand, but you essentially created a protected class if this is the case, because despite these studies and what, you know, these studies are showing, there's a gigantic suicide rate amongst trans people, period. It's, uh, 40%. It's, it's, uh, outrageously large. Now whether that is because of gender dysphoria, whether that is because of the complications from sexual surgery, sexual transition surgery, whether it's because of bullying, whether it's because of this awful feeling of being born in the wrong gender, whether... That, all that is yet to be determined.

Vijaya Gadde 44:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:20 The fact that they've shown that there's a, a large amount of trans people that are committing suicide, I don't necessarily think that that makes th- makes sense in terms of people from someone's perspective, like a Ben Shapiro, saying that if you are biologically female, if you were born with a double X chromosome, you will never be XY. If he says that, that's, that's a violation of your policy. And this is, you're creating a protected class. You're-

Tim Pool 44:52 To, to be, to be fair, targeted.

Joe Rogan 44:54 Yes. Yes. Whether it's saying-

Vijaya Gadde 44:54 If, if it's targeted at-

Joe Rogan 44:55 ... it or, or targeting.

Vijaya Gadde 44:56 Yes.

Tim Pool 44:56 Right, so-

Vijaya Gadde 44:57 If he wants to express that opinion-

Joe Rogan 44:59 So if he said-

Vijaya Gadde 44:59 ... he is fully entitled to express that opinion.

Tim Pool 45:01 Well-

Vijaya Gadde 45:01 If he's doing it in a manner that's targeted at an individual-

Tim Pool 45:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:04 Repeatedly.

Vijaya Gadde 45:04 ... repeatedly-

Joe Rogan 45:05 Repeatedly.

Vijaya Gadde 45:06 ... and saying that-

Joe Rogan 45:07 Okay, but what about-

Tim Pool 45:07 So-

Joe Rogan 45:07 What about sp- like-

Vijaya Gadde 45:08 ... that's where the intent and the behavior comes in.

Joe Rogan 45:08 You know what's going on with Martina Navratilova right now? Martina Navatrilova. Why, why can't I say her last name?

Tim Pool 45:14 Nava- Yeah, I don't know. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:15 Navatril- t- I don't think I've ever said it. Martina Navatil- tilova. Is it Tilova, Trelova?

Vijaya Gadde 45:21 That doesn't sound right.

Joe Rogan 45:21 Anyway, epic world-class l- legend tennis player, right? Who happens to be a lesbian. Is, um, being harassed because she says that she doesn't believe that trans women, meaning someone who is biologically male who transitions to a female, should be able to compete in sports against biological females. This is something that I agree with. This is something I have personally experienced a tremendous amount of harassment because I stood up when there was a woman who was a trans woman who was fighting biological females in mixed martial arts fights and destroying these women. And I was saying, "Well, you, you just watch this and tell me this doesn't look crazy to you." Um-

Tim Pool 46:00 Well, I-

Joe Rogan 46:01 Go ahead.

Tim Pool 46:02 Go, go ahead.

Joe Rogan 46:03 Well, my point is, you should be able to express yourself. And if you say that you believe someone is biologically male even though they identify as a female, that's a perspective that should be valid. I mean, that, this is someone's, someone's... This is a... First of all, it's biologically correct, so we have a problem in that if your standards and your policies are not biologically accurate, then you're dealing with an ideological ide- you know, an ideological policy. And just because, I mean, I don't, I don't wanna target trans people. I don't wanna harass them. I cert- I, I'll call anybody whatever they want. I mean, if you wanna change your name to a woman's name and identify as a woman, I am 100% cool with that. But by saying I don't think that you should be able to compete as a woman, this opens me up for harassment. And I never-

Tim Pool 46:59 Will-

Joe Rogan 46:59 ... reported any of it, I just don't pay attention to it. But, but go ahead.

Tim Pool 47:01 But in, in going into like Meghan Murphy, for instance, right? You can call that targeted harassment if Meghan Murphy, who is, uh, for those that are don't, don't know, she's a-

Joe Rogan 47:08 Mm-hmm.

Tim Pool 47:08 ... radical feminist who refuses to, uh, use the transgender pronouns. If she's in an argument with a trans person over whether or not they should be allowed in sports or in biologically female spaces and she refuses to use their pronoun because of her ideology, you'll ban them.

Vijaya Gadde 47:24 Again, it depends on the context on the platform, and it's also, uh, wa- not banned permanently. Like you get warnings.

Joe Rogan 47:31 Well, she was banned permanently, but let's be clear-

Tim Pool 47:33 Like she was warned, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:33 ... about what happened.

Vijaya Gadde 47:35 But she was warned multiple times.

Joe Rogan 47:35 Would you please explain, 'cause you explained it to me, wh- wh- what did she actually do?

Vijaya Gadde 47:39 My understanding, and I don't have the tweet-by-tweet the way that I did for the others, but my understanding is that she was warned multiple times for, um, misgendering an individual that she was in an argument with. And this individual's actually bringing a lawsuit against her in Canada as well. So it is-

Tim Pool 47:55 So you have an argument between two people-

Vijaya Gadde 47:58 Again, that's-

Tim Pool 47:58 ... and you have a rule that enforces only one side of the ideology, and you've banned only one of those people.

Vijaya Gadde 48:02 We have a, a rule that attempts to address what we have perceived to be instances of abuse and harassment.

Tim Pool 48:09 I, I, I completely agree, it's your ideology.

Joe Rogan 48:11 But she was saying-

Vijaya Gadde 48:11 And, e- e-

Joe Rogan 48:11 Right, but it is an ideology, right? If she's saying a man is never a woman, if that's what she's saying, and then biologically she's correct, we obviously have a debate here.

Vijaya Gadde 48:19 Oh.

Joe Rogan 48:19 This is not a clear-cut... This is not something like when you'd say water is wet, you know, this is dry. It's, this is not like something you can prove. This is something where you, you have to acknowledge that there is a, an understanding that if someone is a trans person, we all agree to consider them a woman and to think of them as a woman, to, to-... talk to them and address them with their, uh, preferred name and their preferred pronouns. But biologically, this is not accurate. So we have, we have a divide here. We have a divide between the conservative estimation of what's happening and then the definition that's the liberal definition of it.

Vijaya Gadde 48:55 I think that's right, Joe. And I think what I'm trying to say is that it's not that you can't have those viewpoints, it's that if you're taking those viewpoints and you're targeting at the... at a specific person in a way that reflects your intent to abuse and harass them-

Joe Rogan 49:07 But what if it's in the context of the conversation? What if she's saying that, "I don't think that trans women should be allowed in these female spaces to make decisions for women." And then this person's arguing and she says, "A woman is biologically female."

Tim Pool 49:20 Well, she-

Joe Rogan 49:20 "You are never going to be a woman."

Tim Pool 49:21 She responded with, "Men aren't women though." And that was her first... in, in the series of events, that's what got her the suspension and the warning.

Vijaya Gadde 49:28 Um, that was one of many tweets that was-

Joe Rogan 49:30 Right, right, right.

Vijaya Gadde 49:31 ... part of providing context, and that was actually the second, second actually strike is my understanding, but-

Tim Pool 49:36 But why is that a strike?

Joe Rogan 49:36 Yeah, why is that a strike?

Vijaya Gadde 49:37 But, but the... but again, like, it's the context of... I don't, I don't have all the tweets in front of me, there were, like, 10 or 12 tweets going back and forth.

Tim Pool 49:44 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 49:44 And my understanding is that in that context of all of those, she was misgendering a particular person, not that she was holding a belief or statement-

Tim Pool 49:52 It was a public figure though, wasn't it?

Vijaya Gadde 49:52 I don't know.

Tim Pool 49:53 It was. So-

Vijaya Gadde 49:55 I don't know.

Tim Pool 49:55 ... you're, you're having... you're having an individual who is debating a high profile individual in her community, and she's expressing her, her ideology of versus hers, and you have opted to ban one of those ideologies. That's weird.

Joe Rogan 50:04 And it's within the context of this conversation.

Vijaya Gadde 50:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:07 This is, this is what is being debated, whether or not someone is in fact a woman when they were born a male.

Vijaya Gadde 50:13 I understand that this is controversial. I, I do. I-

Joe Rogan 50:16 Especially to a radical feminist, someone who-

Tim Pool 50:18 Well-

Vijaya Gadde 50:18 I, I understand why, why people would not agree with the rule. But that being said, it is a rule on our platform, and once you're warned about the rule, to repeatedly post the same content is also gonna be a violation of our rules.

Joe Rogan 50:30 Right, but the rule, it's... this seems like a good example of an ideologically based rule. If, if you're... if she's saying that a man is never a woman though, that is not, in that context, harassment. That is a very specific opinion that she has that happens to be biologically accurate. Now, I don't, you know, I don't agree with targeting harassment on anybody. And I, I, I... t- targeted harassment on trans people or, or straight people or whatever. I don't, I don't agree with it. I don't think you should do it, it's just... it's not something I wanna do. But in this context, what she's saying is not just her, her expression, but it's accurate.

Tim Pool 51:11 I, I, I think an, an important point is, if I tweeted to you, Joe, "Joe, you are not a hamster," that's clearly not a violation of the rules. However, there are-

Joe Rogan 51:20 What if I identify as a hamster?

Tim Pool 51:21 Well, no, uh, it, it wouldn't be clear 'cause I know, uh, I know people who have specifically begun using insults of animals to avoid getting kicked off the platform for breaking the rules. Certain individuals who have been suspended now use certain small woodland creatures in place of slurs so they're not really insulting you, and it's fine. But there are people who consider themselves trans species. Now, I'm not trying to belittle the trans community, by no means. I'm just trying to point out that you have a specific rule for one set of people and there are, there are... so there are people who have general body dysphoria. You don't have rules on that. There are people who have actually amputated their own arms. You don't have rules on that. You have a very specific rule set. And in, m- more importantly, in the context of a targeted, uh, conversation, I can say a whole bunch of things that would never be considered a rule break, but that one is, which is ideologically driven.

Vijaya Gadde 52:08 Yeah. Thank you for the feedback. I mean, we're, we're, again, always learning and, um, trying to understand different people's perspectives. And, uh, uh, all I'll say is that our intent is not to police ideology, our intent is to police behaviors that we view as abuse, harassment, and I hear your point of view, and-

Tim Pool 52:25 I-

Vijaya Gadde 52:25 ... it's something that I'll definitely discuss with my team.

Jack Dorsey 52:27 And, and even in this case, it wasn't just, um, a... you know, going against this particular rule, but also things that were more ban evasive as well, including taking a screenshot of the original tweet, reposting it, which is against our, our terms of service as well.

Tim Pool 52:44 Well, that sounds like protest.

Jack Dorsey 52:44 So it's more the actions.

Tim Pool 52:45 It sounded like a protest against your rule.

Vijaya Gadde 52:47 But, but p-

Tim Pool 52:47 I understand you could ban them for it.

Vijaya Gadde 52:49 But people can protest any one of our rules. We can't, we can't, like, let them do that.

Tim Pool 52:53 No, no, no. I, I, I agree.

Vijaya Gadde 52:53 They can protest any of them and they disagree.

Tim Pool 52:54 I'm not, I'm not disagreeing. I, I understand what you're saying, but I just wanna make sure-

Joe Rogan 52:56 Yeah.

Tim Pool 52:56 ... I point out she was clearly doing it as an effort to push back on what she viewed as an ideologically driven rule.

Joe Rogan 53:01 Well, this is... the problem is this is a real debate in the LGBT community. This is a debate where there is a division, and there's a division between people that think that trans women are invading biological female spaces and making decisions that don't benefit these biological females, cisgender, whatever you wanna call them. This is an actual debate, and it's a deba- a debate amongst progressive people, amongst left-wing people. I mean, it's a debate amongst liberals. This is... I mean, uh, I would imagine the vast majority of people in the LBGT community are in fact on the left, and this is one example of that. So you have a protected class that's having an argument with, uh, a woman who feels like there's, uh, an ideological bent to this conversation that is not, not only not accurate, but not fair, and she feels like it's not fair for biological women, the same as Martina.

Tim Pool 53:56 Well, I'll, I'll, uh, take this to its logical conclusion. I got sent a screenshot from somebody, and maybe it's faked, I, I think it was real, they were having an argument with someone on Twitter and responded with, "Dude, you don't know..." blah, blah, blah. And they got a suspension and a lockout, had to delete the tweet because the individual using a cartoon avatar with a, a... with... their name, uh, apparently was Sam, reported it and said that, "I'm transgender and he's calling me dude," and the du... and the, and the Twitter user actually got a suspension for it. So I can understand mistakes happen, but when you have a rule that's like that, there's colloquial terms that are like, "Man, come on. Don't say that." You know, dude-

Joe Rogan 54:28 Well, yeah, dude is like we say... like, like I asked you guys when you were... we're gonna take a photo in front of this thing, I said, "Guys," but I included you. I mean-

Vijaya Gadde 54:36 And I didn't... I wasn't offended.

Joe Rogan 54:37 Thank you for not being offended.

Vijaya Gadde 54:38 And I wouldn't have reported you for it.

Tim Pool 54:40 (laughs) Thank you.

Joe Rogan 54:41 Yeah, it's, it's tricky but in th- this case of Meghan Murphy, that's her name right?

Tim Pool 54:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:47 Yeah, I d- that doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like she should be allowed to express herself in, in-

Tim Pool 54:51 Let's-

Joe Rogan 54:52 ... this is, this is not being m- she's not being mean by saying a man is never a woman. This is a perspective that sh- that is scientifically accurate. And that's-

Tim Pool 55:02 Well, it's, it's-

Joe Rogan 55:02 ... that's part of the problem.

Tim Pool 55:03 I th- I, I, I, I just don't want her to run into beating a dead horse, so I think I wanna, we wanna move on to-

Joe Rogan 55:07 Well, it's a, it's a really important thing to go over all the nuances of this particular subject because I think that one in particular highlights this idea of w- where the problems lie in having a protected class. And-

Vijaya Gadde 55:21 But Joe, we have a, we have a lot of-

Joe Rogan 55:21 ... I think there should be compassionate-

Vijaya Gadde 55:22 We have a lot of protected classes, gender, race, nationality, like these are the protected classes.

Joe Rogan 55:27 But it's not for white people. Y- when you say gender or race when, when it's not-

Vijaya Gadde 55:33 It, it protects all protected categories, so you can't attack someone for their belonging to a particular race or a particular religion.

Joe Rogan 55:39 But you can mock white people ad nauseum and it's not a problem. It doesn't get, it doesn't get removed.

Vijaya Gadde 55:44 I'm not talking about mocking, I'm talking about abusing and harassing somebody.

Joe Rogan 55:47 But I mean if you mock a black person in the same way, it would be considered targeted racism.

Vijaya Gadde 55:54 Um, again, it's about targeted harassment on the platform.

Tim Pool 55:57 But well, I mean-

Vijaya Gadde 55:58 But my only-

Joe Rogan 55:58 Okay, but what is targeted harassment? I mean but when you're... Okay. Look, if you ha... What is racism? R- is, is racism onl- I mean there's this progressive p- perspective of racism that it's only possible if you're from a more powerful class, it's only punching down, that's the only racism. I don't think that makes any sense. I think racism is looking at someone that is from whatever, whatever race and deciding that they are in fact less or less worthy or less valuable, whatever it is. And that, that takes place across the platform against white people. Now I'm not saying white people need to be protected, I know it's easier being a white person in America, it's a fact. But it's hypocritical to have a policy that only distinguishes you can make fun of white people all day long, but if you decide to make fun of Asian folks or, you know, fill in the blank, that is racist, but making fun of white people isn't and it doesn't get removed. There are tons of... Like how about Sarah Jeong from the New York Times that's, uh, uh, uh-

Tim Pool 56:58 Well I can actually explain that one.

Joe Rogan 56:59 Please do. There's-

Tim Pool 57:00 That was th- uh, I, my understanding is that you guys started banning people officially under these policies around 2015 and mo- all the tweets she made was prior to that, and so you didn't enforce the old tweets.

Vijaya Gadde 57:08 Yeah, so our hateful conduct policy, Joe, just to be clear, is, is across the board, meaning like it doesn't just protect women, it protects men and women, it protects all races, it doesn't matter. And this is how the law is set up in the United States, right? You can't discriminate against white men, you can't discriminate against black men. Like, those are the laws, right? Like that's the structure it is, it doesn't in- it doesn't take into consideration power dynamics.

Joe Rogan 57:30 So if someone says something about white people and mocks white people on Twitter, what do you do about that?

Vijaya Gadde 57:37 If it's targeted harassment-

Joe Rogan 57:38 Targeted.

Vijaya Gadde 57:39 ... at a person and-

Joe Rogan 57:39 So just white people in general, if you say something about white people in general it's not an issue?

Vijaya Gadde 57:43 That, well, I mean we focus on targeted harassment which is behavior that is targeted against an individual who belongs to that class.

Joe Rogan 57:49 Okay.

Vijaya Gadde 57:49 Because if you try to police every opinion that people have about different races or religions-

Joe Rogan 57:54 Mm-hmm.

Vijaya Gadde 57:54 ... like obviously that's a very different story. So this is about if you target that to somebody who belongs to that class and that's reported to us, that is a violation of our rules.

Tim Pool 58:03 And-

Vijaya Gadde 58:03 And so in this Sarah Jeong case, a lot... We, we did see many tweets, uh, of that nature that were focused on, uh, people who are white or men and our rules, uh, in this area came into effect in 2015, which was our hateful conduct policy, and, uh, a lot of those tweets were from a time period where those rules weren't in effect.

Joe Rogan 58:23 And in her defense, she was actually, uh, supposedly responding to people that have... You don't believe that?

Tim Pool 58:29 Oh, come on. Over three years?

Joe Rogan 58:31 Well-

Tim Pool 58:31 And she's tweeting blanket statements-

Joe Rogan 58:32 She's, she holds a grudge.

Tim Pool 58:32 ... about white people. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:33 She holds a grudge.

Tim Pool 58:33 Sure, sure. But...

Joe Rogan 58:34 (laughs)

Tim Pool 58:34 So, so I will say too, obviously I've done it-

Vijaya Gadde 58:36 Can I just-

Tim Pool 58:37 ... a ton.

Joe Rogan 58:37 Yeah, please.

Vijaya Gadde 58:37 ... finish on, on my one point? So in, in that case there were tweets from before the rules went into effect and tweets from after the rules went into effect, and we did take action on the tweets from after the rules went into effect.

Tim Pool 58:47 I-

Joe Rogan 58:47 She's also f- pretty young, right? And-

Tim Pool 58:49 But even so, uh, I, I want to point, uh, yeah, she's in her 20s. But I want-

Joe Rogan 58:52 Yeah, and so we're talking about something that might have happened eight years ago, right?

Vijaya Gadde 58:56 Uh-

Tim Pool 58:56 Right. It's, uh, 20... It was like 2011 to '13.

Joe Rogan 58:58 Yeah.

Tim Pool 58:59 But I, but I do want to point this out, um, before coming on I've obviously did a t- I did a decent amount of research. I searched for slurs against white people, black people, Latinos, and I found copious, just, just tons and tons of them. Now, uh, they don't go back... Most of what I found didn't go back too far 'cause it does seem like you guys are doing your best, but there is a lot and it targets white people, black people, Jewish people. It's everywhere.

Joe Rogan 59:19 It's everybody.

Tim Pool 59:19 And I, and I can, I can, I can understand that you guys, you got hundreds of millions, but, uh, let's, let's, let's, let's try another, uh, subject.

Vijaya Gadde 59:25 Just, just to-

Joe Rogan 59:26 Please.

Vijaya Gadde 59:26 ... address that point, um, and I think Jack talked about this a little bit. Like this is where right now we have a system that relies on people to report it to us, which is a huge burden on people. And especially if you're a, happen to be a high profile person and, Tim, you would, you would understand this, you're not gonna sit there and report every tweet. And Joe, you'll understand this. This is-

Tim Pool 59:44 I ignore it.

Vijaya Gadde 59:44 Like it's not worth your time, you're not gonna go through tweet by tweet as people respond to you and report it. Uh, uh, people tell us this all the time. So this is where we have to start getting better at identifying when this is happening and taking action on it without waiting for somebody to tell us it's happening.

Joe Rogan 59:57 But using an algorithm though, do you not miss context? I mean, it seems to me that there's a lot of-

Jack Dorsey 1:00:03 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:03 ... people that say things in humor-

Jack Dorsey 1:00:05 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:00:05 ... you know, they, they-

Jack Dorsey 1:00:05 Or, or, or slurs within particular communities which is perfectly reasonable in our case.

Joe Rogan 1:00:09 Right, right. So-

Jack Dorsey 1:00:10 So yes, there is a danger of the algorithms missing context and that's why we, we really want to go carefully into this and this is why we've scoped it down first and foremost to doxing, which is at least... First, it hits our number one goal of protecting physical safety, like making sure that nothing done online will impact someone's physical safety on- offline on our platform in, in this case. The second is that there are patterns around doxing that are much easier to, uh, see without having the context. There are, there are, um, exceptions-

Joe Rogan 1:00:42 But-

Jack Dorsey 1:00:42 ... of course 'cause you could dox, um, someone's public, you know, uh, a representative's public, uh, office phone number and email address and the algorithm might catch that, not have the context that this is a US representative and this information is already public.

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 So essentially this just, it highlights how insanely difficult it is to monitor all of these posts. And then what, what is the volume? Like what, what are we dealing with? Like how many posts do you guys get a day?

Vijaya Gadde 1:01:09 Uh, hundreds of millions of posts a day.

Joe Rogan 1:01:12 And how many human beings are manually reviewing any of these things?

Vijaya Gadde 1:01:17 I don't have that, that number. A lot.

Joe Rogan 1:01:19 A lot. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? How many employees do you guys have?

Vijaya Gadde 1:01:22 We have, uh, 4,000 employees around the world.

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 That's it?

Vijaya Gadde 1:01:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:26 (laughs)

Jack Dorsey 1:01:26 We have, we have, we have 4,000 employees. The, the reason-

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 That's crazy though, but stop and think about that. 4,000 people that are monitoring hundreds of millions-

Jack Dorsey 1:01:33 No, no, no, no, no.

Joe Rogan 1:01:34 ... of tweets?

Jack Dorsey 1:01:34 No, no, no. We, we have a, we have a, we have a small team who's monitoring, uh, tweets and some of them are employed by us, some of them are contractors throughout, throughout the world.

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 So 4,000 employees total.

Jack Dorsey 1:01:44 4,000 employees who are engineers, who are designers-

Joe Rogan 1:01:47 Okay.

Jack Dorsey 1:01:47 ... who are lawyers, policy experts.

Joe Rogan 1:01:48 So the number of people m- actually monitoring tweets is probably less than 1,000?

Jack Dorsey 1:01:52 Uh, well, the reason we don't give out specific numbers-

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 Okay, I understand.

Jack Dorsey 1:01:56 ... is we need to scale these dynamically, right? If we see a particular event within a, within a country, we might hire 100 more people on contract to deal with it.

Joe Rogan 1:02:06 Right.

Jack Dorsey 1:02:06 Whereas they may not be full-time and, and, and with us the entire time, but-

Joe Rogan 1:02:09 And would they, they have the ability to take down tweets?

Jack Dorsey 1:02:12 Uh, they have, they have the ... So as we get reports, it goes into a queue and those are ranked by severity, and then we have people who look at our rules and look at the, look at the tweets and look at the behavior and the context around it. And they have the ability to go down that enforcement spectrum that Vidhya talked about. One, make people log in, read why it's a violation over a tweet and delete it. Two, temporary suspensions. And finally, a permanent suspension, which is the absolute last resort, which we ultimately do not want to do. We want to make sure that our rules are also guided towards incentivizing more healthy conversation and, and more, more participation.

Tim Pool 1:02:51 So, so let, so let, let me ask you, um, the rules you have are not based in US law, right? US law doesn't recognize restrictions on hate speech. It's considered free speech. So if you wanna stand on a street corner and yell the craziest things in the world, you're allowed to. On your platform, Twitter, you're not allowed to. So even in that sense alone, your rules do have an ideology behind them. I don't completely disagree. I think, you know, I don't want harassment. Um, but the reason I bring this up is getting into the discussion about democratic health of a nation. So I think it's, uh, it can't be disputed at this point that Twitter is extremely powerful in influencing elections. You know, I, I'm pretty sure you guys published recently a bunch of tweets from foreign actors that were trying to meddle in elections.

Jack Dorsey 1:03:30 Mm-hmm.

Tim Pool 1:03:31 So even you as a company recognize that foreign entities are trying to manipulate people using this platform.

Jack Dorsey 1:03:35 Mm-hmm.

Tim Pool 1:03:35 So I, I, I... There's, there's a few things I wanna ask beyond this, but if... Wouldn't it be important then to just as, uh... At a certain point, Twitter becomes so powerful in influencing elections and giving access to even the president's tweets, that you should allow people to use the platform based under the norms of US law. First Amendment, free speech, right to expression on the platform. This is becoming too much of, uh, of, uh... It's becoming too powerful in how our elections are, are taking place. So even if you are saying, "Well, hate speech is our rule," and a lot of people agree with it, if at any point one person disagrees, they're still an American who has a right to this, you know, to access to the public discourse, and you've essentially monopolized that. And, uh, and not completely, but for the most part. So isn't there some responsibility on you to guarantee at, at a certain extent less regulation happen, right? Like, look, if you, if you recognize foreign governments are manipulating elec- our elections, then shouldn't you guarantee the right to an American to access this platform to be involved in the electoral process?

Vijaya Gadde 1:04:35 I'm not sure I see the, the, the tie between those things, but I will address one of your points, which was, uh, we're not... We're a platform that serves the world. So we're a global. Uh, 75% of the users of Twitter are outside of the United States.

Tim Pool 1:04:49 Oh, right. Right, right.

Vijaya Gadde 1:04:49 So we don't, uh, apply laws of just one country when we're thinking about it. We think about, um, how do you have a global standard that can meet the threshold of as many countries as possible? Because we want all the people in the world to be able to participate in this conversation.

Tim Pool 1:05:06 I, I, and so-

Jack Dorsey 1:05:06 And, and also meet elections like the Indian election coming up as well.

Tim Pool 1:05:08 Right.

Vijaya Gadde 1:05:09 Yeah.

Tim Pool 1:05:09 And I'm, I'm, I... My, my understanding is you were also accused of being biased against conservatives in India recently. There was a report on that, as well as you held up a sign that said something offensive about the Brahmin.

Jack Dorsey 1:05:19 Mm-hmm.

Tim Pool 1:05:20 Yeah. So in that sense, even in other countries, you're accused of the same things that you're being accused of by American conservatives.

Vijaya Gadde 1:05:28 I think that the situations are very, very different. Um, and I don't think that, that the ideologies in play are the same at all.

Tim Pool 1:05:36 Well, so the, the reason I bring the-

Joe Rogan 1:05:37 Could you, could we clarify that? Can... 'Cause I'm not aware of the case.

Vijaya Gadde 1:05:39 Well, I just ... I, I, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but we, we did have our, uh, vice president of public policy testify in front of Indian parliament, uh, a couple weeks ago, and he was... They were really focused on election integrity and safety and abuse and harassment, um, of women and political figures and the likes.

Tim Pool 1:05:55 So, so my, my, my concern, I guess, is I, I recognize