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

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Five, four, three, dos,…

   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. 15:00 – 30:00

   Do you wanna, do…

   1. VGVijaya Gadde15:00

      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.

   2. TPTim Pool15:09

      Do you wanna, do you wanna pull it up?

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:09

      But I think-

   4. VGVijaya Gadde15:09

      Do you wanna see the tweet?

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      ... we, we definitely-

   6. TPTim Pool15:10

      Uh-

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      ... need to pull that up.

   8. TPTim Pool15:11

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

   9. 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-

   10. TPTim Pool16:26

       So-

   11. 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.

   12. 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?

   13. 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.

   14. TPTim Pool16:57

       So-

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:57

       W-

   16. TPTim Pool16:57

       ... 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-

   17. VGVijaya Gadde17:09

       Yes, that's a violation-

   18. TPTim Pool17:10

       You didn't-

   19. VGVijaya Gadde17:10

       ... of our rules.

   20. TPTim Pool17:10

       ... you didn't ban him though.

   21. VGVijaya Gadde17:11

       And I, I don't know why that is.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:12

       Well, let's, let's pull that up, Jamie.

   23. TPTim Pool17:13

       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-

   24. JDJack Dorsey17:21

       Yeah.

   25. TPTim Pool17:21

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

   26. JDJack Dorsey17:26

       Yeah.

   27. VGVijaya Gadde17:27

       And-

   28. JDJack Dorsey17:27

       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.

   29. TPTim Pool17:48

       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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:12

       A Disney producer was doing that?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Well, that- …

   1. TPTim Pool30:00

      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.

   2. VGVijaya Gadde30:14

      Well, that-

   3. TPTim Pool30:14

      And I'm not the only one who feels that way.

   4. VGVijaya Gadde30:15

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

   5. TPTim Pool30:22

      Right.

   6. VGVijaya Gadde30:22

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:32

      Would this be a manual-

   8. JDJack Dorsey30:33

      And we don't, we don't have any PR constraints.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:35

      Would-

   10. JDJack Dorsey30:36

       Th- that is not how we-

   11. TPTim Pool30:36

       So why did you ban Alex Jones?

   12. JDJack Dorsey30:38

       We can get into that.

   13. VGVijaya Gadde30:39

       You wanna get into that?

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:40

       Yes.

   15. TPTim Pool30:40

       Absolutely.

   16. VGVijaya Gadde30:40

       Are you ready for Alex Jones?

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:41

       Sure. (laughs)

   18. TPTim Pool30:42

       (laughs)

   19. VGVijaya Gadde30:42

       All right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan30:42

       Oh, I've been ready for Alex Jones.

   21. VGVijaya Gadde30:43

       Let me pull this up.

   22. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       (laughs)

   23. VGVijaya Gadde30:46

       Um-

   24. TPTim Pool30:47

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

   25. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       Okay.

   26. 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.

   27. 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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:08

       You, you have to-

   29. VGVijaya Gadde31:08

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

   30. JDJack Dorsey31:10

       Sorry, but-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Well- …

   1. VGVijaya Gadde45:00

      to express that opinion.

   2. TPTim Pool45:01

      Well-

   3. VGVijaya Gadde45:01

      If he's doing it in a manner that's targeted at an individual-

   4. TPTim Pool45:04

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:04

      Repeatedly.

   6. VGVijaya Gadde45:04

      ... repeatedly-

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:05

      Repeatedly.

   8. VGVijaya Gadde45:06

      ... and saying that-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:07

      Okay, but what about-

   10. TPTim Pool45:07

       So-

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:07

       What about sp- like-

   12. VGVijaya Gadde45:08

       ... that's where the intent and the behavior comes in.

   13. 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?

   14. TPTim Pool45:14

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

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:15

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

   16. VGVijaya Gadde45:21

       That doesn't sound right.

   17. 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-

   18. TPTim Pool46:00

       Well, I-

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:01

       Go ahead.

   20. TPTim Pool46:02

       Go, go ahead.

   21. 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-

   22. TPTim Pool46:59

       Will-

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:59

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

   24. 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-

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:08

       Mm-hmm.

   26. 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.

   27. 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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:31

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

   29. TPTim Pool47:33

       Like she was warned, yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       ... about what happened.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:07:04

   Yes. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      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-

Episode duration: 3:25:10