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

1. 0:00 – 2:38

   Roundtable setup, conflicts disclosure, and why Twitter is back on the show

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      Five, four, three, dos, uno. Come on, TriCaster.

   2. JDJack Dorsey0:12

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Live?

   4. JDJack Dorsey0:13

      Yes. So-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      All right. We're live, ladies and gentlemen. To my left, uh, Tim, Tim Pool.

   6. TPTim Pool0:18

      (clears throat)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:18

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

   8. TPTim Pool0:22

      Vijaya.

   9. VGVijaya Gadde0:23

      Vijaya Gadde.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:23

       Vijaya, not Vijaya, Vijaya.

   11. VGVijaya Gadde0:24

       Yes.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:24

       Vijaya...

   13. VGVijaya Gadde0:26

       Gadde.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:26

       Gadde. And your position at Twitter is?

   15. VGVijaya Gadde0:29

       I lead trust and safety, legal, and public policy.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       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.

   17. TPTim Pool0:40

       Thank you.

   18. VGVijaya Gadde0:41

       Thank you.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Feels, th- there feels-

   20. TPTim Pool0:42

       (clears throat)

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       ... all of a sudden there's tension in the room.

   22. TPTim Pool0:43

       (laughs)

   23. JDJack Dorsey0:44

       (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       We were all loose, we were all loosey-goosey just a few minutes ago.

   25. JDJack Dorsey0:47

       There's no tension. There's no tension.

   26. JRJoe Rogan0:47

       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...

   27. TPTim Pool1:25

       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...

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:33

       But it's something.

   29. TPTim Pool1:34

       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?

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       Yep.
2. 2:38 – 6:56

   Account locks and automated enforcement: the “lion eating prey” header image case

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:38

      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.

   2. SPSpeaker2:52

      It's just a screenshot. Um...

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:53

      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-

   4. JDJack Dorsey3:02

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:03

      ... 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.

   6. JDJack Dorsey3:13

      This is huge in the- the Bitcoin community, I think.

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:15

      Yes.

   8. JDJack Dorsey3:16

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:16

      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?

   10. VGVijaya Gadde3:57

       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-

   11. JRJoe Rogan4:15

       Mm-hmm.

   12. VGVijaya Gadde4:15

       ... of what you wanna report. Um, I think this one in particular, though, is probably an algorithm.

   13. TPTim Pool4:20

       (clears throat)

   14. JRJoe Rogan4:20

       So how does- does- does he have the option to protest that or to ask someone to review it?

   15. VGVijaya Gadde4:27

       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.

   16. JRJoe Rogan4:40

       Is that a violation of the rules?

   17. VGVijaya Gadde4:41

       I-

   18. JRJoe Rogan4:41

       That image?

   19. VGVijaya Gadde4:42

       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-

   20. JRJoe Rogan4:53

       Right.

   21. VGVijaya Gadde4:53

       ... or something like that. But this seems not the intention of the rule.

   22. JRJoe Rogan4:57

       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-

   23. TPTim Pool5:19

       (clears throat)

   24. JRJoe Rogan5:19

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

   25. VGVijaya Gadde5:26

       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-

   26. JRJoe Rogan5:36

       Mm-hmm.

   27. VGVijaya Gadde5:36

       ... 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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan5:55

       Right. Okay. So-

   29. JDJack Dorsey5:57

       But, but the- but the mob reporting behavior does happen.

   30. JRJoe Rogan5:59

       Yeah, it does.
3. 6:56 – 9:28

   Misinformation vs moderation: where Twitter draws the line (vaccines, health claims)

   1. TPTim Pool6:56

      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-

   2. JDJack Dorsey7:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TPTim Pool7:17

      ... 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.

   4. JDJack Dorsey7:27

      You mean like anti-vax people?

   5. TPTim Pool7:29

      Exactly, right.

   6. JDJack Dorsey7:30

      Yeah.

   7. TPTim Pool7:30

      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?

   8. VGVijaya Gadde7:39

      That is not a violation of Twitter's rules, no.

   9. JDJack Dorsey7:42

      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-

   10. TPTim Pool8:10

       Yeah.

   11. JDJack Dorsey8:10

       ... what they're, what they currently believe. So-

   12. TPTim Pool8:12

       Well, you guys... Oh, go ahead.

   13. JDJack Dorsey8:13

       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.

   14. TPTim Pool8:47

       Yeah, so-

   15. JDJack Dorsey8:47

       You know, YouTube is a different animal, you know?

   16. TPTim Pool8:48

       It is, it is.

   17. JDJack Dorsey8:49

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

   18. TPTim Pool8:54

       Right.

   19. JDJack Dorsey8:54

       You know? It's, it's kind of a different thing.

   20. TPTim Pool8:56

       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-

   21. VGVijaya Gadde9:02

       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?

   22. TPTim Pool9:10

       Absolutely not.

   23. VGVijaya Gadde9:10

       That's a really, really-

   24. JDJack Dorsey9:12

       Yeah.

   25. VGVijaya Gadde9:12

       ... tough position to

   26. SPSpeaker9:12

       But you guys do that.

   27. VGVijaya Gadde9:13

       We try not to do that. We don't wanna do that. The places-

   28. SPSpeaker9:16

       But you do in your rules.

   29. VGVijaya Gadde9:17

       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.

   30. JDJack Dorsey9:26

       When you say-
4. 9:28 – 12:12

   Deadnaming/misgendering: ideology vs behavior and Twitter’s harassment framework

   1. TPTim Pool9:28

      Oh, deadnaming and misgendering.

   2. JDJack Dorsey9:29

      ... what specifically? Deadnaming and misgendering, yeah.

   3. TPTim Pool9:31

      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.

   4. VGVijaya Gadde9:37

      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?

   5. TPTim Pool9:52

      In the-

   6. VGVijaya Gadde9:52

      Like what is your intent and purpose behind that?

   7. TPTim Pool9:55

      So, so, so-

   8. JDJack Dorsey9:55

      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.

   9. TPTim Pool10:00

      Right, right.

   10. JDJack Dorsey10:01

       So why don't you go ahead.

   11. TPTim Pool10:02

       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.

   12. JDJack Dorsey10:09

       Yeah, okay.

   13. TPTim Pool10:10

       So, uh-

   14. JDJack Dorsey10:11

       'Cause my mom's probably going, "What?"

   15. TPTim Pool10:12

       And, and, and-

   16. JDJack Dorsey10:13

       I'm ready for the text. "What's a deadname?"

   17. TPTim Pool10:15

       And I will clarify too, your rules specifically say targeted misgendering and deadnaming, I believe is, is correct, right?

   18. VGVijaya Gadde10:20

       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.

   19. TPTim Pool10:41

       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?

   20. VGVijaya Gadde10:48

       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.

   21. JDJack Dorsey10:54

       Right. But you ca- but you can't detonate someone but you can call them stupid.

   22. VGVijaya Gadde10:58

       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-

   23. JDJack Dorsey11:07

       Targeted harassment.

   24. VGVijaya Gadde11:08

       ... targeted harassment.

   25. JDJack Dorsey11:09

       Right.

   26. TPTim Pool11:09

       So-

   27. VGVijaya Gadde11:09

       So- It, it's a function of the b- it's a function of behavior.

   28. TPTim Pool11:12

       Mm-hmm.

   29. VGVijaya Gadde11:12

       Like, because people with our system can do this in massive velocity-

   30. TPTim Pool11:15

       Mm-hmm.
5. 12:12 – 20:18

   Doxing, threats, and “three strikes”: Covington and inconsistent penalties

   1. TPTim Pool12:12

      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-

   2. VGVijaya Gadde12:30

      Yes.

   3. TPTim Pool12:30

      ... 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.

   4. VGVijaya Gadde12:40

      And you will always be able to find those examples, because-

   5. TPTim Pool12:42

      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.

   6. VGVijaya Gadde13:09

      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-

   7. TPTim Pool13:25

      (laughs)

   8. VGVijaya Gadde13:26

      ... 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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan13:36

      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?

   10. VGVijaya Gadde13:43

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan14:07

       Do you think that was an error?

   12. VGVijaya Gadde14:08

       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.

   13. JRJoe Rogan14:30

       Especially considering the fact they're minors. I mean-

   14. VGVijaya Gadde14:32

       Exactly.

   15. JRJoe Rogan14:32

       ... I would think that right away that would be-

   16. VGVijaya Gadde14:34

       Exactly.

   17. JRJoe Rogan14:34

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

   18. VGVijaya Gadde14:41

       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.

   19. TPTim Pool15:09

       Do you wanna, do you wanna pull it up?

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:09

       But I think-

   21. VGVijaya Gadde15:09

       Do you wanna see the tweet?

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:10

       ... we, we definitely-

   23. TPTim Pool15:10

       Uh-

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:10

       ... need to pull that up.

   25. TPTim Pool15:11

       ... so it's, uh, B-I-T.L-Y/antifatweet, all lowercase.

   26. JDJack Dorsey15:16

       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-

   27. TPTim Pool16:26

       So-

   28. JDJack Dorsey16:26

       ... 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.

   29. TPTim Pool16:36

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

   30. JDJack Dorsey16:42

       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.
6. 20:18 – 30:36

   Milo Yiannopoulos case study: impersonation, doxing, threats, and inciting harassment

   1. TPTim Pool20:18

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

   2. JRJoe Rogan20:23

      There's a little more to that.

   3. VGVijaya Gadde20:24

      Stripped of his-

   4. JRJoe Rogan20:24

      There's a little more to that one.

   5. VGVijaya Gadde20:25

      Actually, Tim, let's talk about it.

   6. JRJoe Rogan20:25

      Yeah.

   7. TPTim Pool20:26

      Yeah.

   8. VGVijaya Gadde20:26

      I'm- I'm happy to talk about Milo, and I actually brought, um, the tweets because-

   9. TPTim Pool20:29

      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-

   10. JDJack Dorsey20:38

       Context and scale.

   11. TPTim Pool20:39

       And scale. So this is a verified user who's-

   12. JDJack Dorsey20:41

       And- and that's just the complexity in- in acting.

   13. TPTim Pool20:43

       So- so-

   14. JDJack Dorsey20:43

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

   15. TPTim Pool20:47

       Right, right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan20:47

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JDJack Dorsey20:47

       ... and then when you-

   18. TPTim Pool20:48

       And- and there- there are a lot of other examples too-

   19. JDJack Dorsey20:49

       Right.

   20. TPTim Pool20:49

       ... that get into more egregious areas that-

   21. JRJoe Rogan20:51

       Mm-hmm.

   22. TPTim Pool20:51

       ... 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.

   23. VGVijaya Gadde21:10

       But- but that's your impression. That's not what happened.

   24. JRJoe Rogan21:12

       Okay. Well let's- let's-

   25. VGVijaya Gadde21:13

       And I'm here to talk about the details if you want to.

   26. TPTim Pool21:15

       Yep. Let's- let's- yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan21:15

       Let's- yeah, let's ple- let's do this one at a time.

   28. VGVijaya Gadde21:17

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan21:17

       Let's start with Milo.

   30. VGVijaya Gadde21:18

       Absolutely.
7. 30:36 – 45:08

   Why Alex Jones was banned: three incidents, context, and platform-wide pressure narratives

   1. TPTim Pool30:36

      So why did you ban Alex Jones?

   2. JDJack Dorsey30:38

      We can get into that.

   3. VGVijaya Gadde30:39

      You wanna get into that?

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:40

      Yes.

   5. TPTim Pool30:40

      Absolutely.

   6. VGVijaya Gadde30:40

      Are you ready for Alex Jones?

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:41

      Sure. (laughs)

   8. TPTim Pool30:42

      (laughs)

   9. VGVijaya Gadde30:42

      All right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:42

       Oh, I've been ready for Alex Jones.

   11. VGVijaya Gadde30:43

       Let me pull this up.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       (laughs)

   13. VGVijaya Gadde30:46

       Um-

   14. TPTim Pool30:47

       Well, le- let, lemme say this, the reason I bring him up-

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       Okay.

   16. TPTim Pool30:48

       ... 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.

   17. VGVijaya Gadde31:03

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:08

       You, you have to-

   19. VGVijaya Gadde31:08

       And that's not at all why we took action on this. (laughs)

   20. JDJack Dorsey31:10

       Sorry, but-

   21. VGVijaya Gadde31:11

       Yeah.

   22. JDJack Dorsey31:11

       ... 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-

   23. TPTim Pool32:14

       Yeah.

   24. JDJack Dorsey32:15

       ... 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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:26

       So what was it that made you ban him?

   26. VGVijaya Gadde32:29

       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-

   27. JRJoe Rogan32:49

       Sure.

   28. VGVijaya Gadde32:50

       ... 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."

   29. JRJoe Rogan33:27

       So this is ... You're, you're saying that this is a call to violence against the media?

   30. VGVijaya Gadde33:32

       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.
8. 45:08 – 55:21

   Trans policy flashpoint: Meghan Murphy, debate vs harassment, and “protected class” concerns

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:08

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

   2. TPTim Pool45:14

      Nava- Yeah, I don't know. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:15

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

   4. VGVijaya Gadde45:21

      That doesn't sound right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      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-

   6. TPTim Pool46:00

      Well, I-

   7. JRJoe Rogan46:01

      Go ahead.

   8. TPTim Pool46:02

      Go, go ahead.

   9. JRJoe Rogan46:03

      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-

   10. TPTim Pool46:59

       Will-

   11. JRJoe Rogan46:59

       ... reported any of it, I just don't pay attention to it. But, but go ahead.

   12. TPTim Pool47:01

       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-

   13. JRJoe Rogan47:08

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TPTim Pool47:08

       ... 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.

   15. VGVijaya Gadde47:24

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

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:31

       Well, she was banned permanently, but let's be clear-

   17. TPTim Pool47:33

       Like she was warned, yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       ... about what happened.

   19. VGVijaya Gadde47:35

       But she was warned multiple times.

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:35

       Would you please explain, 'cause you explained it to me, wh- wh- what did she actually do?

   21. VGVijaya Gadde47:39

       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-

   22. TPTim Pool47:55

       So you have an argument between two people-

   23. VGVijaya Gadde47:58

       Again, that's-

   24. TPTim Pool47:58

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

   25. VGVijaya Gadde48:02

       We have a, a rule that attempts to address what we have perceived to be instances of abuse and harassment.

   26. TPTim Pool48:09

       I, I, I completely agree, it's your ideology.

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:11

       But she was saying-

   28. VGVijaya Gadde48:11

       And, e- e-

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:11

       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.

   30. VGVijaya Gadde48:19

       Oh.
9. 55:21 – 59:57

   Race, hate speech, and enforcement symmetry: ‘mocking white people’ and Sarah Jeong

   1. VGVijaya Gadde55:21

      But Joe, we have a, we have a lot of-

   2. JRJoe Rogan55:21

      ... I think there should be compassionate-

   3. VGVijaya Gadde55:22

      We have a lot of protected classes, gender, race, nationality, like these are the protected classes.

   4. JRJoe Rogan55:27

      But it's not for white people. Y- when you say gender or race when, when it's not-

   5. VGVijaya Gadde55:33

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

   6. JRJoe Rogan55:39

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

   7. VGVijaya Gadde55:44

      I'm not talking about mocking, I'm talking about abusing and harassing somebody.

   8. JRJoe Rogan55:47

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

   9. VGVijaya Gadde55:54

      Um, again, it's about targeted harassment on the platform.

   10. TPTim Pool55:57

       But well, I mean-

   11. VGVijaya Gadde55:58

       But my only-

   12. JRJoe Rogan55:58

       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-

   13. TPTim Pool56:58

       Well I can actually explain that one.

   14. JRJoe Rogan56:59

       Please do. There's-

   15. TPTim Pool57:00

       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.

   16. VGVijaya Gadde57:08

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan57:30

       So if someone says something about white people and mocks white people on Twitter, what do you do about that?

   18. VGVijaya Gadde57:37

       If it's targeted harassment-

   19. JRJoe Rogan57:38

       Targeted.

   20. VGVijaya Gadde57:39

       ... at a person and-

   21. JRJoe Rogan57:39

       So just white people in general, if you say something about white people in general it's not an issue?

   22. VGVijaya Gadde57:43

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

   23. JRJoe Rogan57:49

       Okay.

   24. VGVijaya Gadde57:49

       Because if you try to police every opinion that people have about different races or religions-

   25. JRJoe Rogan57:54

       Mm-hmm.

   26. VGVijaya Gadde57:54

       ... 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.

   27. TPTim Pool58:03

       And-

   28. VGVijaya Gadde58:03

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan58:23

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

   30. TPTim Pool58:29

       Oh, come on. Over three years?
10. 59:57 – 1:02:51

    Scale realities and automation: reports queues, ML limits, and why doxing is the first proactive target

    1. JRJoe Rogan59:57

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

    2. JDJack Dorsey1:00:03

       Yes.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:03

       ... people that say things in humor-

    4. JDJack Dorsey1:00:05

       (clears throat)

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:05

       ... you know, they, they-

    6. JDJack Dorsey1:00:05

       Or, or, or slurs within particular communities which is perfectly reasonable in our case.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

       Right, right. So-

    8. JDJack Dorsey1:00:10

       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-

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:42

       But-

    10. JDJack Dorsey1:00:42

        ... 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.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:57

        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?

    12. VGVijaya Gadde1:01:09

        Uh, hundreds of millions of posts a day.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:12

        And how many human beings are manually reviewing any of these things?

    14. VGVijaya Gadde1:01:17

        I don't have that, that number. A lot.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:19

        A lot. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? How many employees do you guys have?

    16. VGVijaya Gadde1:01:22

        We have, uh, 4,000 employees around the world.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

        That's it?

    18. VGVijaya Gadde1:01:26

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:26

        (laughs)

    20. JDJack Dorsey1:01:26

        We have, we have, we have 4,000 employees. The, the reason-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:29

        That's crazy though, but stop and think about that. 4,000 people that are monitoring hundreds of millions-

    22. JDJack Dorsey1:01:33

        No, no, no, no, no.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:34

        ... of tweets?

    24. JDJack Dorsey1:01:34

        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.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:42

        So 4,000 employees total.

    26. JDJack Dorsey1:01:44

        4,000 employees who are engineers, who are designers-

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:47

        Okay.

    28. JDJack Dorsey1:01:47

        ... who are lawyers, policy experts.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:48

        So the number of people m- actually monitoring tweets is probably less than 1,000?

    30. JDJack Dorsey1:01:52

        Uh, well, the reason we don't give out specific numbers-
11. 1:02:51 – 1:19:22

    Platform power, elections, and regulation: US law vs global rules and ‘monopoly’ debates

    1. TPTim Pool1:02:51

       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.

    2. JDJack Dorsey1:03:30

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TPTim Pool1:03:31

       So even you as a company recognize that foreign entities are trying to manipulate people using this platform.

    4. JDJack Dorsey1:03:35

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TPTim Pool1:03:35

       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?

    6. VGVijaya Gadde1:04:35

       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.

    7. TPTim Pool1:04:49

       Oh, right. Right, right.

    8. VGVijaya Gadde1:04:49

       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.

    9. TPTim Pool1:05:06

       I, I, and so-

    10. JDJack Dorsey1:05:06

        And, and also meet elections like the Indian election coming up as well.

    11. TPTim Pool1:05:08

        Right.

    12. VGVijaya Gadde1:05:09

        Yeah.

    13. TPTim Pool1:05:09

        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.

    14. JDJack Dorsey1:05:19

        Mm-hmm.

    15. TPTim Pool1:05:20

        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.

    16. VGVijaya Gadde1:05:28

        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.

    17. TPTim Pool1:05:36

        Well, so the, the reason I bring the-

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:05:37

        Could you, could we clarify that? Can... 'Cause I'm not aware of the case.

    19. VGVijaya Gadde1:05:39

        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.

    20. TPTim Pool1:05:55

        So, so my, my, my concern, I guess, is I, I recognize you're a globe- you're a company that serves the world, but as an American, I have a concern that the democracy I live in, the democratic republic, I'm sorry, and the democratic functions are healthy. One of the biggest threats is, you know, Russia and Iran, uh, Russia, Iran, China. They're trying to meddle in our elections using your platform and it's effective, so much so that you've actually come out and removed many people. You know, Covington was apparently started by an account based in Brazil. You know, the Covington scandal where this fake news goes viral was reported by CNN that it was a f- it was a dummy account, they were trying to prop it up, and they were pushing out this out-of-context information. So they do this. They use your platform to do it. You, you've now got a, a platform that is so powerful in our American discourse that foreign governments are using it as weapons against us, and you've taken a stance against the, the laws of the United States. I don't mean like against like you're breaking the law. I mean you, you have rules that go beyond the scope of the US which will restrict American citizens from being able to participate. Meanwhile, foreign actors are free to do so, so long as they play by your rules. So our elections are being threatened.... by the fact that if there's an American citizen who says, "I do not believe in your mis-gendering policy," and you ban them, that person has been removed from public discourse on Twitter.

Episode duration: 3:25:10