Joe Rogan Experience #1792 - Daryl Davis & Bill Ottman

Narrator 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night! All day. (instrumental music plays) And we're up.

Joe Rogan 0:13 Gentlemen, what's happening? Good to see you.

Daryl Davis 0:14 Hey, you're happening, man. Good to see you again.

Joe Rogan 0:16 Good to see you.

Daryl Davis 0:16 Thank you for having me back.

Joe Rogan 0:17 You have a beautiful purple shirt, I love it.

Bill Ottman 0:18 Uh, thanks for having us.

Joe Rogan 0:19 And, um, thank you. And Bill, tell... So, first of all, tell me what's going on with Minds. Minds is one of the first, that I was aware of, like alternative social media networks that was committed to free speech.

Bill Ottman 0:32 Yep.

Joe Rogan 0:32 What, how- how's it going?

Bill Ottman 0:34 It's going. I mean, there's sort of a whole landscape of alternative networks emerging. And so you've got this spectrum of apps where you've s-... Like, I think of... I put everything through a litmus test when I'm thinking of an alternative network. Basically, is it transparent? Does it publish their source code? Most of these alternative apps, I don't need to name names, but I could, they're, they don't publish their source code, so you can't look at the algorithms to see what's happening. You can't see if there's spyware in there, if they have Google Analytics little nasty-

Joe Rogan 1:06 Right.

Bill Ottman 1:06 ... stuff that's, that-

Joe Rogan 1:07 So you're talking about Gettr.

Bill Ottman 1:08 Gettr.

Joe Rogan 1:09 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 1:09 Um...

Joe Rogan 1:10 Uh, 'cause I found out that, like-

Bill Ottman 1:12 Parler, Rumble and now, and now, I'm not-

Joe Rogan 1:15 All of them?

Bill Ottman 1:15 I'm not trying to trash these people. I think that the free speech stuff is good, like the more... But some of their terms aren't even free speech. So, you know, free speech policy is essential. So I absolutely respect any network that is putting forward a free speech policy. But if, you can't have free speech policy with sketchy algorithms-

Joe Rogan 1:37 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 1:37 ... and closed source code, because then we don't know if you're soft, uh, censoring, shadow banning. We don't know what's happening in the news feed behind the scenes.

Joe Rogan 1:47 Right. Which we definitely know Facebook does, Instagram does, Twitter does, that's all real.

Bill Ottman 1:52 Right. So then you've got, are they privacy focused? End-to-end encrypted? Do they have access to the content of your messages?

Joe Rogan 1:59 Mm.

Bill Ottman 1:59 Um, like, so we use a end-to-end encrypted messenger protocol called Matrix, so that we don't even have access to people's conversations. Like, I don't want access.

Joe Rogan 2:09 Right.

Bill Ottman 2:09 And then you've also got, um, you know, do they pay creators fairly? So you've got these check marks that you go through with e-... But open source is key. The future, there is nothing without open source. Any app, if they're claiming to be an alternative and they're not open source, they're not in the same conversation. It's a completely different animal, and they should not be taken seriously, because they're not being transparent with the world. So, and then you get into decentralization and actually building an app that... So, Google says, "Don't be evil." But it's really, "Can't be evil." Make it, we wanna make it impossible for us to even take down our network at all, and that's why the, like immutable distributed systems, like blockchains and, uh, you know, Tor and all of the... IPFS, all of these different decentralized systems are emerging, and we're inter- we're interacting with them. We're not fully decentralized yet, so... But that's, there- there's like a progression that a lot of apps in the Web3/decentralized web space are moving towards. So... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:16 Okay.

Bill Ottman 3:17 End. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:17 And so, Daryl, to fill people in on you, you've been on the podcast before and you have an incredible history, you're a brilliant musician, and you have p- personally converted... What's the number now, it's more than 200 Ku Klux Klan members-

Daryl Davis 3:32 Most of them. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:32 ... neo-Nazis, I mean, we talked about, uh, these guys giving you their, their Klan outfits and retiring because they met you.

Bill Ottman 3:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:41 And just because you had reasonable conversations with them made them realize how stupid these ideologies that they had somehow or another been captivated by.

Daryl Davis 3:52 I mean, at the end of the day, you know, a missed opportunity for dialogue is a missed opportunity for conflict resolution. It's as simple as that. But it's not just having a dialogue or a conversation or debate, it's the way that we have it, how we communicate, you know, that makes it effective. Like, for example, you know, I've been to 61 countries on six continents. I've played in all 50 states. So all that is to say that I've been exposed to a multitude of skin colors, ethnicities, religions, cultures, ideologies, etc., and all of that has shaped who I've become. Now, all that travel does not make me a better human being than somebody else, it just gives me a- a better perspective of mass humanity.

Joe Rogan 4:32 Mm.

Daryl Davis 4:32 And what I've learned is that no matter how far I've gone from our own country, right next door to Canada or Mexico or halfway around the globe, no matter how different the people I encounter may be, they don't look like me, they don't speak my language, they don't worship as I do or whatever, I always conclude at the end of the day that we all are human beings. And as such, we all want these same five core values in our lives. Everybody wants to be loved, everybody wants to be respected, everybody wants to be heard. We all wanna be treated fairly, and we all basically want the same things for our family as anybody else wants for their family. And if we learn to apply those five core values when we find ourselves in an, uh, an adversarial situation or a culture or society in which we're unfamiliar, I can guarantee that the navigation will be a lot more smoother. And essentially, that's what's happening here at Minds, we're allowing people to be heard, we're showing them that kind of respect. We don't have to respect what they're saying, but respect their right to say it, and we provide that platform, because, you know, when you, when you don't do that, you're driving people to a platform that will embrace them, and then it becomes a- an echo chamber and essentially it could become a- a breeding ground for a cesspool of- of nefarious activities, whether it's extremism or violence or conspiracy theories or what have you.

Joe Rogan 5:51 So, it seems like there's an issue with many social media companies where they want to censor bad ideas. And it seems to me that part of that is because the work involved in taking a person who's a neo-Nazi or Ku Klux Klan member and showing them the error of their ways, l- allowing them to spread their nonsense, and then slowly but surely introducing them to better ideas, it's...... exhausting. And-

Bill Ottman 6:20 They're not willing to do the work.

Joe Rogan 6:21 Ri- exactly.

Bill Ottman 6:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:22 So, what Twitter does is, like, "Fuck you. Get out of here."

Bill Ottman 6:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:24 What... Instagram does the same thing with all these people. But the problem with that is then it goes further, and further, and further, and further down where you're getting rid of people for just not agreeing with you.

Bill Ottman 6:34 So, this is empirical now. So- so Daryl and I just wrote this paper called The Censorship Effect, along with Jesse Morton, um, j- uh, Justin Lane, LeRon Schultz, and, uh, my brother Jack. And th- multiple PhDs, like, serious research has gone into this, even the left out of outlets like Vox are now admitting that deplatforming causes more severe radicalization. This is being admitted across the board. So, the fact that big tech apps are not looking at this data and applying it to their policy, it makes, it makes you almost have to speculate that they're intentionally causing it. I mean, because they- th- these are very smart people that work at big tech sites. They know about data science. They know the spread of- of information. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:29 I don't think they're intentionally causing it. I think there... First of all, there's an ideology that is attached to all the big tech companies, whether it's Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, you have to be what they think is woke, right? You have to- you have to subscribe to a certain line of thinking. And anybody that deviates from that line of thinking should be suppressed, minimized, or banned. And-

Bill Ottman 7:54 So, how is that not intentional?

Joe Rogan 7:55 But it's not intentional, meaning they don't tr- they're not trying to radicalize people. That's not what they're trying to do.

Bill Ottman 8:00 No, but they... I don't... And- so, fir-

Joe Rogan 8:02 They're just foolish in their approach.

Bill Ottman 8:04 I think some of their data science researchers do know.

Joe Rogan 8:08 Yeah. But they're not getting to the people-

Bill Ottman 8:10 No.

Joe Rogan 8:10 ...that are the CEOs.

Bill Ottman 8:10 No, they're not.

Joe Rogan 8:11 The CEOs have to virtue signal.

Bill Ottman 8:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:12 All the people that are executives have to virtue signal. And they have to say, "We are doing our best to stop harmful talk and harm..." But- but what they call harmful, like, a lot of it is, like, disagreeing with pharmaceutical companies, which is just fucking crazy. Like, these are the lying-est liars that ever lied.

Bill Ottman 8:30 Did you see Zuck on Lex's show?

Joe Rogan 8:32 Yes, I did.

Bill Ottman 8:34 What did you think?

Joe Rogan 8:34 Well, e- you know, it's hard. It's hard because, like, that guy has an enormous responsibility. He has- he's the- the head of this insanely huge platform that covers the entire planet Earth, and everything he says has to be measured. It's like, you ever see him drink water? He drinks water like this. Like a weird way of drinking water. He doesn't fucking drink the water. He, like, sips it. It touches his lips, and then he's done. He's like, everything is, like, measured, measured. Like, I can't imagine trying to speak freely when you're the CEO of Facebook. I think it's almost, like, pointless to talk to him in that sort of circumstance.

Daryl Davis 9:09 Well, you know, to- to your point about, you know, people doing this, and- and defending it, and so forth and so on, I mean, I think the quote by Upton Sinclair comes into play. I think he said something to the effect of, "It's difficult for- for a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:27 Yes. Yes, yes, yeah. And if you live in that world, if you live in that tech world, and I have many friends who have- you know, they're executives at these places, that is just the fucking doctrine. You have to fu- like, you have so many employees that they have these, like, radical ideas about what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do-

Daryl Davis 9:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:46 ... and what you're supposed to platform and not platform. And this idea of platforming people, you know, like- l- I have people on this podcast all the time that I don't agree with at all. And I have them on, or I agree with them very little, and I want to see what's going on in their head. And I'll get that, like, "You're platforming these people."

Daryl Davis 10:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 10:03 "You're platforming a bad person." Like, I don't think they're bad people. I just don't agree with them. I- and they have a- a right-wing, uh, ideology that I don't think should be suppressed. I think you should try to pick it apart.

Bill Ottman 10:15 You cannot change someone's mind if you do not platform them.

Joe Rogan 10:19 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 10:19 It is impossible for someone with horrible ideology-

Joe Rogan 10:23 Yes.

Bill Ottman 10:23 ... to change. And so- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:24 And I- and it's by- I should say, not just a right-wing idea. There's a- there's a lot of people with left-wing ideologies that I think are ridiculous.

Bill Ottman 10:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:31 And I want to pick those apart too. I want to have conversations with people. And this idea that you're only supposed to have conversations with people that you absolutely agree with, and that what you're doing is just broadcasting these ideas to better humanity. Like, if you want a better humanity, have fucking conversations with people.

Bill Ottman 10:46 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 10:46 And look, you know, this goes all the way back, I mean, centuries, even- even back to BC, as in before Christ, right? I mean, let's- let- we- we can go back as far, let's just say Copernicus, the- the astronomer-

Joe Rogan 10:58 Yes. Yes.

Daryl Davis 10:58 ... who passed away in 1543. Okay. He s- u- up until then, the belief was that we are a geocentric model universe, meaning-

Bill Ottman 11:09 Disinfo.

Daryl Davis 11:10 Huh?

Bill Ottman 11:11 Sorry. No, I was- I was saying that it would have been called disinfo.

Daryl Davis 11:14 Okay. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, even the Catholic Church endorsed that we are a geocentric, uh, model universe, meaning that the Earth is the center of the universe and everything revolves around us, right? And Copernicus said, "No, we're just another planet." The sun is the ce- is the center of the universe and- and everything revolves around the sun, which makes it a heliocentric, uh, model. And, uh, everybody scorned him, ridiculed him. A hundred years later, uh, Galileo came along and built upon Copernicus's, uh, theory and developed it even further and said, "Yes, you know, we- we are a, uh, heliocentric, uh, model." And he got- he got arrested, arrested for heresy against the Catholic Church. All right? But guess what? He was right. He was right.... so, you know, sometimes, you know, we have to stand up to the masses, not just join in because everybody else thinks this way.

Joe Rogan 12:09 And it's also the problem with the walled garden, right? There's a lot of people that are- that get booted from these social media platforms, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, and then they look at that, and they look at those people with further and further disdain, and it separates them from whoever's there. And we're not even just talking about radical people. Like, one of the things that, that really alerted me to how crazy the censorship shit was, was Bret Weinstein had a, uh, a group that he put together called Unity 2020. And the idea was to bring people that were from the left that were really reasonable and from the right that were really reasonable, that weren't captured by corporate greed, and to have them as an alternative candidate. Like, instead of saying, like, you have to be a Republican or you have to be a Democrat, let's say you get reasonable left wing and right wing people that can agree on a lot of stuff and have them work together, and maybe have a candidate that's w- like, a vice president and president, one's right wing, one-

Daryl Davis 13:04 Colleague.

Joe Rogan 13:04 Yeah. Like, it'd be a great way to sort of, like, come together in the middle. Twitter banned the account. Twitter banned an alternative account. Like, the i- and there was nothing unreasonable about what they were saying. It was all just conversations with people that are brilliant that happen to be left wing and brilliant that happen to be right wing. Let's get them together and see if we can lead this country in a better direction than having this polarization of right versus left where people get super tribal about it. Like, this would be a great way to meet in the middle, and Twitter was like, "Fuck you," and they banned the account.

Bill Ottman 13:37 They, they had such good intentions.

Joe Rogan 13:39 Yes.

Bill Ottman 13:39 And still do, and-

Joe Rogan 13:39 But then the idea that you can get banned for trying to come up with another political party, are you saying that this-

Bill Ottman 13:46 Unity ca-

Joe Rogan 13:46 ... system is infallible, this right versus left system of blue and red is infallible? That's so crazy. We, we are here because someone didn't like what was going on in Europe in the 1700s, and they took a chance on starting a new system, a system of self-government that was a complete experiment, and it had never been done before in the world, and that created the United States. And the idea that you, the fucking tech dorks, are gonna step in and say, "No, this is dangerous thinking."

Bill Ottman 14:17 Yeah, they ... Oh, the battle-tested First Amendment, hundreds of years-

Joe Rogan 14:21 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 14:21 ... of precedent, legal precedent. We ... Like, talk about a good content policy, the First Amendment. I mean-

Joe Rogan 14:27 But it doesn't apply. They say it doesn't apply because this is a private company.

Bill Ottman 14:30 They think that their lawyers are better at drafting healthy conversation than the First Amendment, and that's just not, that's not true.

Joe Rogan 14:37 I think, um, you know, there was a real concern in the early days of Twitter and of social media, where a lot of these people that were, like, outrageous right wing people, were starting to get a lot of attention, like Milo Yiannopoulos was a big one, Gavin McInnes-

Bill Ottman 14:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:55 ... and a lot of these guys, they were getting a lot of attention, and the response from the left was like, "No, no, no, no, silence them." Like, I, I heard this one woman talking about her kid is listening to Ben Shapiro, and I would love to get Ben Shapiro removed from all platforms. Like-

Bill Ottman 15:10 Oh, Kara Swisher.

Joe Rogan 15:12 Yeah, that's her.

Bill Ottman 15:12 I think, I think that's who it was. She's the Vox reporter.

Joe Rogan 15:14 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 15:14 And Vox is interesting 'cause they're, like, smart people-

Joe Rogan 15:17 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 15:17 ... but they're also, you know, they sort of embody this ... But, uh, th- their recent article, I don't know, Jamie, if you could, you could find it. Um, it's like, Does Deplatforming Work? Out of Vox, and they, they w-

Joe Rogan 15:27 We don't need to find that. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 15:29 Well, I'm just saying that ... No, no, no, no, but the reason I was so happy was because they're referencing similar studies that we reference in our paper. They're starting to be forced to acknowledge that what, that, that the censorship is having serious negative consequences.

Joe Rogan 15:43 It polarizes this country.

Bill Ottman 15:45 And, and the ... So, what you were saying before about, you know, people s- their beliefs being re- reinforced after they get banned. You know, they're victims now.

Joe Rogan 15:52 Yes.

Bill Ottman 15:52 They, now they believe the thing that they were ranting about. It's called ... So in this, in the literature, it's, it's called certainty, level of certainty. That's what's measured, and, and there's, it's, it's clearly shown that certainty accelerates with deplatforming based on whatever you were thinking before.

Joe Rogan 16:10 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 16:10 So isolation and certainty have, um, an overlap.

Joe Rogan 16:14 Yeah, so if you have an idea, like, especially if it's something as innocuous as Unity 2020, or beneficial ... The idea of unity, I mean, c- come on. It's, like, literally in the title. That's what we're all hoping for. We're u- united as a community, the United States of America, all these different ideas. Let's work together. No, fuck you. You're not a right wing, you're not a left wing. You can't be a part of the problem 'cause you're gonna draw votes away from the people that we think it's imperative that they win. So it, it, it ch- it changes the whole idea of what democracy is, 'cause they're kind of admitting that they have an influence on the way our elections go.

Daryl Davis 16:49 You know, I mean, and speaking of unity, then you got those people who are out protesting every day, you know, to, to help change and bring people together. But a lot of them are the very ones who will not sit down and talk with the person-

Joe Rogan 17:02 Yes.

Daryl Davis 17:02 ... that they're protesting against.

Joe Rogan 17:04 Yes.

Daryl Davis 17:04 You know?

Joe Rogan 17:05 Yes.

Daryl Davis 17:05 So, how, how badly do they really want unity?

Bill Ottman 17:08 Well, this happened to us personally.

Daryl Davis 17:09 Exac- precisely.

Joe Rogan 17:10 Well, it's happened in universities. That's where it happened first. I started seeing it, I mean, uh, I guess it was like a couple of decades ago. You started to see when someone was a controversial speaker, they would come to a university, and instead of someone debating that person or someone, you know, listening to that person's ideas and picking them apart, instead they were, like, pulling fire alarms and, and shouting people down and screaming at the top of their head in the middle of the auditorium. You're, you'll, they're silencing people's ideas because they feel that their ideas are better, which is-... exactly the opposite of what the Founding Fathers were trying to s- sort of manage when they came up with the First Amendment.

Bill Ottman 17:50 I mean, we're- I- We're really trying to make this less of an emotional debate, because I think the censorship and speech stuff is v- it's obviously very emotional. You know, people ... We're talking about hate speech. We're talking about a lot of horrible stuff that hurts people personally. And so, you know, the big tech strategy is, "Oh, you know, we- we care about people's feelings, and we wanna hide this information because-"

Joe Rogan 18:09 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 18:09 "... it's offensive." But- but we need to remove the emotion and look at this empirically, in terms of what is actually making society more healthy, and what is actually preventing radicalization and violent extremism. There's a difference between radicalization and violent extremism. So if we can prove to big tech that de-platform ... We want them to adopt a free speech policy. I think that's the goal here. We don't expect that Facebook and Google are going away. It's not gonna happen. There's g- gonna be no MySpace of Facebook and Google. They are embedded in the infrastructure of the planet. So they need to change their policy. They need to start open sourcing more code, and w- they need to start adopting more open policies because they ... When they ban, it's all network topology and Whac-A-Mole. You know, you ban it from Facebook, and then it pops up over here, and it's just this whole little interconnected matrix of stuff.

Joe Rogan 19:02 Let me ask you this. Like, for Minds, like say if someone starts, like, a neo-Nazi group-

Bill Ottman 19:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:08 ... and they start posting on Minds, and they start talking about the master race and eliminating Jews-

Bill Ottman 19:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:14 ... and cr- crazy, Nazi-type shit-

Bill Ottman 19:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:16 ... what do you do?

Bill Ottman 19:17 Oh, I mean, as long as it's not calling for violence or cre- having true threats of violence, then it will be go ... It will go under an NSFW filter. So it will go under sort of a ... You know, it'll have a sensitive kind of click-through, so you'll be warned before you're seeing that.

Joe Rogan 19:33 So it's like one of those Instagram videos. Like, if you see a car accident or something like that, there's Instagram videos-

Bill Ottman 19:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:38 ... you- you have to, like, say that you're willing to see this offensive thing.

Bill Ottman 19:43 Exactly. So- so, you know, we have tags so that people ... We don't want anyone to see stuff they don't wanna see.

Joe Rogan 19:48 So how ... But what if someone doesn't use the tags? Like, so what if someone just-

Bill Ottman 19:51 Then it'll get reported and get tagged.

Joe Rogan 19:53 Okay.

Bill Ottman 19:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:53 So it's like if someone starts posting Nazi propaganda, they just immediately ... Like, someone reports it?

Bill Ottman 20:00 Yep. Yeah, and we also have a jury system. So we're- we're rolling out this system where the community can sort of help create consensus around tags on different content, and you know, if we make a mistake, it can get appealed. And the community actually votes, not us.

Joe Rogan 20:14 And Daryl, your- your take on this is like ... H- how do you think that a social media company like Twitter, something that's really huge, can pivot from the model that they have now where they just ban people?

Daryl Davis 20:29 Because, you know, y- y- ... That- that points to them assuming that the majority of people out here are stupid, and that these companies need to tell you what to believe.

Joe Rogan 20:40 Right, right.

Daryl Davis 20:40 Okay? Which, to me, is offensive.

Joe Rogan 20:42 It is offensive.

Daryl Davis 20:43 You know?

Joe Rogan 20:43 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 20:43 So I believe, you know, yes, there's a lot of bad information out there, and you know, the more liberal you make your- your platform, allowing anybody and everybody to come in, yeah, you're gonna have some bad actors, sure. But the way you address it is you- you combat bad information by providing more good information.

Joe Rogan 21:01 Mm. Yeah, well, that's the age-old idea.

Bill Ottman 21:04 So Clarence Thomas, uh, Supreme Court Justice, came out and he said that he thinks networks above a certain size should be considered common carriers.

Joe Rogan 21:14 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 21:14 Now common carriers ... So there's this whole debate about Section 230 and, you know, whether networks have a right to take things down. It's- it's pretty definitive that big social networks, private companies do have the right to moderate. That's a fact. Section 230 doesn't say you have to keep up everything. But the common carrier, like a phone company, can't ban you for your views. And th- so they're common carriers, and that's-

Joe Rogan 21:35 Right.

Bill Ottman 21:35 ... that's a, that's an important distinction. I think that's a rational suggestion from Thomas, that, you know, once you reach a certain size, you cannot just be going and playing favorites.

Joe Rogan 21:44 Yeah. Yeah, I know Jack Dorsey had an idea of two versions of Twitter, a curated, moderated version of Twitter and then a Wild West version. And he was trying to pitch that, and I think they shot him down. But his idea was like, we should have some Twitter that's like got some sort of decentralized control where it's not up to the moderators to decide what's on it, and people can just put on whatever they want.

Bill Ottman 22:11 Yeah. He r- he launched a project called Bluesky, which is sort of a research initiative into decentralized social media, kind of very much in our- in our space.

Joe Rogan 22:19 Is it before or after he left?

Bill Ottman 22:20 Before he left, and then he left un- Uh, like two days after he left, there was this huge censorship issue where they said, "Oh, you can ... If it's a private image, it can get taken down on Twitter." So like-

Joe Rogan 22:30 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 22:30 ... any private image of anybody, and he-

Joe Rogan 22:32 Oh, after they left, after he left, rather, they ramped up censorship-

Bill Ottman 22:35 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:35 ... in a big way.

Bill Ottman 22:36 Yeah, and it seems like ... I mean, it's- it's a hard position to be in because, you know, it's like your baby. He's, uh, it's- it's a company he's been working on forever, and he doesn't want to badmouth it. But I would not be at all surprised if there were some internal wars happening about ... I mean, there- there's a huge Wired piece about internal free speech wars at- in Twitter management. So the ... It's a fact that it's not- it's not, um, you know, one single ideology in these companies. There's definitely overwhelming ideology, but I think that there is starting to be pushback. So that's positive.

Joe Rogan 23:06 Yeah, there's some intelligent people that-

Bill Ottman 23:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:07 ... realize the error of their ways-

Bill Ottman 23:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:08 ... and that this- this whole thing is going in a- a negative direction. And Daryl, how did you get involved with- with Bill and Minds and like what ... What was your idea going into this?

Daryl Davis 23:18 Well, uh, Bill had contacted me after seeing me on some interview or reading about me or something to participate in a- in a- an event he was originally gonna have in New Jersey. Then it got moved to Philadelphia.

Joe Rogan 23:29 How long ago was this?

Daryl Davis 23:30 Oh, about- about five, six years ago maybe?

Bill Ottman 23:31 Three- I think now like 2019.

Daryl Davis 23:34 That was around?

Bill Ottman 23:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:35 Before the pandemic?

Daryl Davis 23:36 Oh, it was before that pandemic?

Bill Ottman 23:36 Before pandemic, yeah.

Daryl Davis 23:37 Yeah, pre-pandemic, so 2019. Um, and I- I liked what he was talking about, all different people from different political backgrounds, you know, stations in life, whatever, coming together-And, uh, so I said, "Yeah, I," you know, "count me in." And, um, and I went and did it, and he had everybody there from all different walks of life. We all got along. We had different views. We talked together. Uh, we listened to each other's presentations, and then we had an after-party together, where everybody just kind of let their hair down, all that kind of stuff. The only people who were not supportive were the protestors across the street, uh, some who, of whom called me a white supremacist.

Joe Rogan 24:15 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 24:17 Yeah, I think, uh, Melissa Chen talked about this on your show a while back, but-

Joe Rogan 24:21 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 24:21 ... basically, ANTIFA was, like, protesting the event. You know, we had all these big YouTubers, uh, Tim, and, uh, you know, people on the left, right, uh, ƒe-

Daryl Davis 24:30 Andy was there, right?

Bill Ottman 24:30 Andy was there, yeah. And th- there were, there were some progressives-

Joe Rogan 24:33 And who were ... Tim and Andy? Is ... s- say their last names.

Bill Ottman 24:35 Andy, sorry. Andy, no. Tim Pool.

Joe Rogan 24:36 Okay.

Bill Ottman 24:37 But we also had, um, some... Th- there were some leftists there as well. And we really were ... did our best to make it as balanced as possible and, and, you know, communists and capitalists and d-

Joe Rogan 24:50 And the protestors were like, "You shouldn't-"

Bill Ottman 24:52 They don't care.

Joe Rogan 24:52 "... be communicating with each other."

Bill Ottman 24:54 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:54 But the, uh, the ANTIFA proto- ... I mean, it's like, are they even real people? It's like, I guess they are. I'm, and I'm joking. But it's like, what are we doing when you're allowing these people to dictate? They're so crazy.

Bill Ottman 25:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:07 And they're ... We're allowing them to dictate what is and isn't said based on the threats of violence and lighting buildings on fire and shit?

Bill Ottman 25:15 They got us de-platformt from, from the original theater that we were gonna have it in, so we had to move to Philly.

Joe Rogan 25:20 How is that possible?

Bill Ottman 25:21 We sold out ... It was, you know, it was so-

Joe Rogan 25:23 Fear.

Daryl Davis 25:23 Fear.

Joe Rogan 25:24 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 25:24 Fear, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:24 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 25:24 So-

Joe Rogan 25:24 Fear of repercussions.

Daryl Davis 25:26 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 25:26 Um, I do, I do need to say one thing that ... So I, I mentioned Jesse, uh, Morton, who is one of the co-authors of the paper, but so he actually ... A, a good friend of Gerald's and mine recently passed away. Um, he's a former extremist, and he is w- you know, leading in the de-radicalization space. He, he actually was an Al-Qaeda propaganda lead, so he ran a, a propaganda site for Al-Qaeda. He went to Columbia. He was doing this in New York City, so he's from the US.

Joe Rogan 25:53 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 25:54 And h- you know, he ... Daryl, maybe you can ex- expand.

Joe Rogan 25:56 Oh, I know who that gentleman is.

Bill Ottman 25:57 You do? Okay.

Joe Rogan 25:58 Yeah. I was looking to have him on my podcast, and, uh, he passed away.

Bill Ottman 26:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:03 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 26:03 This was, this was one of his last big projects. Daryl's actually out in Portland right now, uh a-

Joe Rogan 26:08 I'm sure you guys know about Maajid, right?

Bill Ottman 26:10 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:10 Maajid Nawaz?

Bill Ottman 26:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:11 Who's one of the best examples of that, like someone who was, like, radicalized, like his, his ... And even the name of his podcast is Radical. His book's Radical. That's ... You know-

Bill Ottman 26:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:20 He was a guy who was deeply embedded in, in this sort of Is- Islamic group, and then went to jail, and realized while he was in jail, started reading, started like ... And sort of examining this thought process, and came out of it this, like, sort of brilliant mind to analyze, like, what is, uh, what, what's the process where people get radicalized? How does this happen? And he could say it from ... He's, first of all, he's incredibly articulate, so he can say it from this way. He's coming from this place of, "I was this guy," instead of, like, "I know what's wrong with these people." Like, "I was these people."

Bill Ottman 26:55 I am evidence.

Joe Rogan 26:56 Yes.

Daryl Davis 26:57 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 26:57 Yes.

Daryl Davis 26:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:58 Exactly.

Daryl Davis 26:58 And that's what, you know ... And that's what Minds has in terms of doing the research. You know, we've done like a, a polymath, a 360, digging from all different genres, psychologists, uh, former extremists, trolls, all kinds of people, people like myself with boots on the ground dealing with, with, uh, current extremists and things like that. So, all of that comes, you know, into the conclusion of this paper. Unlike, you know, a lot of other papers, they talk about, you know, why people do this. Others talk about, uh, the effect of what they've done. Some talk about the cause and the effect, but we have the cause, the effect, and the solution.

Joe Rogan 27:35 It's just hard to get people to jump onto a new social media network. That seems to be a real issue because-

Daryl Davis 27:41 Human beings are creatures of, uh, of habit-

Joe Rogan 27:43 Yes.

Daryl Davis 27:43 ... not change.

Joe Rogan 27:44 Yes. And you get ... If you're used to checking Facebook, "Oh, let's see what Grandma posted," that you're used to doing that, and this is your go-to thing, and you only have so much time in the world, it's hard to get someone to, like, deviate from that, right?

Bill Ottman 27:55 There's no rush. Like, we're not ... We're gr- we're seeing huge growth, just naturally-

Joe Rogan 27:59 How many people do you have?

Bill Ottman 28:00 Uh, more than 5 million.

Joe Rogan 28:02 5 million?

Bill Ottman 28:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:02 Wow.

Bill Ottman 28:03 And it's, uh ... Maajid's on there actually, minds- minds.com/maajidnawaz.

Daryl Davis 28:06 Of course he is.

Bill Ottman 28:07 Yeah, he just ... He signed up. Uh, and so, you know, it's all just longterm, like, thinking where are we actually headed? Where are we gonna be in 10, 20 years? Like, i- you don't c- y- y- ... And also, it makes it harder to grow for what you said, people are just stuck in their ways, but also Facebook and Google use the dirtiest tricks in the book to grow. I mean, they literally latched their tentacles into everybody's phones, grabbed all their contacts, like, y- you know, followed you and your browser history. Like, every surveillance tactic they could get to grow-

Joe Rogan 28:40 Let's ex- explain that. What do you mean?

Bill Ottman 28:42 So, there are these sort of dark growth-hacking tricks that a lot of apps will use to increase their user base, and it's ver- basically, like, manipulative growth techniques to get people to give you ... give them more information than you otherwise would.

Joe Rogan 28:59 So, say l- let's, let's just say I'm a person who's never used Facebook before, and, uh, I just got a new phone, and I said, "You know what? I'm gonna download Facebook." What happens?

Bill Ottman 29:09 Oh, you know, they take you through their nice onboarding flow, s- super slick UX because they have brilliant designers there.

Joe Rogan 29:14 What's UX?

Bill Ottman 29:15 User experience.

Joe Rogan 29:16 Okay.

Bill Ottman 29:16 So, you know, you just keep lis- pressing that, pressing that big blue button. Yep-

Joe Rogan 29:20 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 29:21 ... yep, yep, yep. (laughs) Oh, yeah. Agreed to terms, yep. (laughs) And so, they just put it ... You know, they make it very subtle, what you're doing, and there are benefits, and-

Joe Rogan 29:33 But what is happening?

Bill Ottman 29:34 They're grabbing your ... all of your contact book. They're, they're grabbing your location.

Joe Rogan 29:38 The gr- so they grab all your phone numbers?

Bill Ottman 29:40 All your phone numbers.

Joe Rogan 29:41 So, when you sign up for Facebook, it has access to all of the ph-

Bill Ottman 29:44 Your entire ... Yes.

Joe Rogan 29:45 Like, Mom-

Bill Ottman 29:45 If you give it to them. If you-

Joe Rogan 29:47 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 29:47 ... give it to them. You can say no. Twitter is doing the s- they, they won't, you know-... stop it. Like, y- you say no, and then, you know, it shows up in your feed, another prompt to, to do it.

Joe Rogan 29:56 So are they getting the full contact with the names and everything-

Bill Ottman 30:00 I... It really depends.

Joe Rogan 30:01 ... or are they just getting the phone numbers?

Bill Ottman 30:02 It depends on the specific app. And they all kind of have different, uh, you know, kind of levels of invasiveness.

Daryl Davis 30:09 And how many people read the entire policy agreement?

Joe Rogan 30:11 Mm-hmm. How about zero? Right?

Daryl Davis 30:12 Exactly.

Bill Ottman 30:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:12 Who the fuck's reading that?

Bill Ottman 30:13 No.

Joe Rogan 30:14 So, like, if I have you on my phone, and I sign up for Facebook, does it get Bill Ottman plus your phone number, and then they could target you?

Bill Ottman 30:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:23 So they could just send you a text message or-

Bill Ottman 30:25 They could.

Joe Rogan 30:26 ... or they can sync up to your Facebook that you have-

Bill Ottman 30:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:30 ... 'cause your app, they're, they're aware that we're communicating with each other, 'cause we both have each other's phone number.

Daryl Davis 30:36 Well, it's like, you know, you go on Facebook and there's some sponsored ad there. And it, and it has a list of your friends that like this ad.

Joe Rogan 30:43 Right. Yeah.

Daryl Davis 30:44 It's like, "I didn't know she liked that."

Joe Rogan 30:46 Yes.

Daryl Davis 30:47 "Well, how, how do they know she liked it?" And how do they know that, that you might like it because so-and-so liked it?

Joe Rogan 30:53 Yes. D- Let me ask you this, 'cause this is a big one that everybody always wants to know.

Bill Ottman 30:56 All right.

Joe Rogan 30:56 Sometimes we're talking about stuff, and then I'll, I'll hear an ad.

Daryl Davis 30:59 Boom. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:00 See an ad for the thing we're talking about.

Bill Ottman 31:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:02 Like, Jamie and I have talked about this many times, where it's like, there is no way this a- this random ad would have popped up just on its own. It seems like it has to ... They have to be listening.

Bill Ottman 31:13 So, I wish Lex had asked Zuck this question, because this is a key question that, honestly, I'm not gonna claim to know. I mean, we don't have access to their source code, so we do not know, and they've denied it repeatedly. Um, I think that the geo can trick you a lot of time into thinking that they're listening, and, you know, different associations they're able to make in the back end. But I, I don't know the answer, but I, I know thousands of stories like what you're saying, and I feel like they're just skirting around it, and I would not at all be surprised. But again, if we can't see the source code, we do not know.

Joe Rogan 31:52 So, no one has definitively proven that they're actually listening to you?

Bill Ottman 31:57 Well, they are listening, 'cause you could say, "Okay, Google."

Joe Rogan 32:00 Yes.

Bill Ottman 32:00 How does it know that you're ... that you said, "Okay, Google"?

Joe Rogan 32:03 Right.

Bill Ottman 32:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:03 Or, "Hey, Siri." Yeah.

Bill Ottman 32:04 Yeah, so it's definitely listening for certain cues. And we don't know the breadth of that.

Joe Rogan 32:11 So, it could be that it picks up certain words that would indicate products that maybe you'd be interested in buying, and they show you those ads.

Bill Ottman 32:17 I was looking in my Google, uh, data history, like a couple weeks ago, and I had ... Uh, you know, I have a bunch of different phones, actually, which I wanna show you later, some, like, new open source stuff. Um, but-

Joe Rogan 32:30 Show me now.

Bill Ottman 32:31 Okay. In ... Just give me a sec. So-

Joe Rogan 32:32 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 32:33 ... the ... In my Google data history, it showed when I said certain words, like, that triggered it. Like, there was all these different words that are sort of, uh, commands for, uh, Assistant, Google Assistant I think it's called. And I had turned Google Assistant off, and yet it still had ... It was like on June ... Or, "On June 18th, you said, uh, you know, 'Hello,'" or whatever it was. And it was just this whole history, and I just deleted it all and, like, turned it all off. And it's, um ... They're definitely listening for cues.

Joe Rogan 33:00 So, even if you say no, you opt out, it's still listening.

Bill Ottman 33:03 Y- Yeah, I turned it off. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:04 Wow.

Bill Ottman 33:05 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 33:05 Now, as he points out, a lot of them are closed source codes.

Joe Rogan 33:09 Mm-hmm.

Daryl Davis 33:09 Uh, Mines is open source code. You can get on, you can see it, and take our code and use it. And we want you to. It's available.

Joe Rogan 33:17 Mm-hmm. Yeah, and Mines-

Daryl Davis 33:19 Transparency.

Joe Rogan 33:20 The way Mines ... I've never actually used Mines. I know I have an account over there, right?

Bill Ottman 33:25 You got it.

Joe Rogan 33:26 But, but Mines-

Bill Ottman 33:26 We'll get you set up again.

Joe Rogan 33:27 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 33:27 We'll make it easy so you don't have to do anything.

Joe Rogan 33:29 I don't even ...

Daryl Davis 33:29 We're listening.

Bill Ottman 33:29 See-

Daryl Davis 33:30 (laughing)

Joe Rogan 33:31 (laughing)

Bill Ottman 33:31 It's all about making it easy, so you ... 'Cause everyone's so busy. It's just like-

Joe Rogan 33:34 But I don't go on any social media anymore. I, I, I post, and then I get the fuck out of there. Like, I don't-

Bill Ottman 33:40 Yeah, you're an Instagram boy.

Joe Rogan 33:41 Yeah. Well, I use Twitter and Facebook too, but I don't use them very much. I use Twitter to see how crazy people are, like, how crazy are people today? Let me just look through my feed and see who's fucking screaming at everybody.

Daryl Davis 33:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:52 What's going on in Russia, and who, who believes this is all conspiracy? And, you know, where, where's the Tin Foil Hat Brigade on this one? And just to get a kind of finger on the pulse.

Bill Ottman 34:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:02 And then with Instagram, I just post. And then when ... On Facebook, like, Facebook is nonsense for me. I just-

Bill Ottman 34:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:08 I go there for just nonsense. I go there for, like, videos and stuff, and I'm, I'm not even remotely looking to en- engage with people. So, I don't ... I feel like the engagement with people for m- ... For a person with a profile as big as mine, it's too much work. It's like it's too har- ... Like, the interaction with people, it's too toxic.

Bill Ottman 34:27 Yep.

Joe Rogan 34:27 So many people are mad for whatever fucking reason, and it's a lot of bad faith conversations. Like, I just ... For my own mental health, I opt out.

Bill Ottman 34:35 I think of it as, like, extra distribution outlets. So, like, someone like you, you know, you got a million things going on. You ... It's just literally impossible to post to multiple places. You don't have time.

Joe Rogan 34:44 Is there an app that allows you to d- do ... to post something to, like, a shitload of places?

Bill Ottman 34:49 We have ... Well, we have import- ... Auto-importing from YouTube and Twitter.

Joe Rogan 34:52 Oh.

Bill Ottman 34:52 So you can pull your stuff in and just post on your own. So, we can maybe get that set up.

Joe Rogan 34:55 YouTube as well?

Bill Ottman 34:56 Yeah, YouTube.

Joe Rogan 34:56 So you have a video aspect of Mines?

Bill Ottman 34:58 Yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, we support video. We support all multimedia, blogs, Messenger.

Joe Rogan 35:02 Do you host that video?

Bill Ottman 35:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:04 So what, uh, what are the implications? Like, what if someone posts something illegal?

Bill Ottman 35:07 Yeah, that gets taken down.

Joe Rogan 35:08 Okay.

Bill Ottman 35:09 Yeah. So we definitely are, like, US law, First Amendment based.

Joe Rogan 35:12 Right, right.

Bill Ottman 35:13 Yeah. Um, so just quickly to show you. Uh, so these-

Joe Rogan 35:16 So you got phones?

Bill Ottman 35:16 So, these are ... This is called a Librem. This is made in the US. So this is, like, trying to get rid of conflict minerals. And, um-

Joe Rogan 35:23 Really?

Bill Ottman 35:23 It's very heavy.

Joe Rogan 35:24 Is it good?

Bill Ottman 35:24 It's, it's a tank. Um ...

Joe Rogan 35:26 Does it suck?

Bill Ottman 35:27 It-

Joe Rogan 35:27 Don't lie.

Bill Ottman 35:27 ... kind of sucks.

Joe Rogan 35:28 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 35:28 Uh, no, no. It's, it ... They're, they're a great team, honestly. It's, it's n- not an easy project. It's, it's amazing for, uh, how hard of a project it is. It does not suck. It's, it's, it's, it's a legitimate effort. This is called a Pinephone.

Joe Rogan 35:41 What are all these things on the back, these, like, switches?

Bill Ottman 35:44 Yeah, don't switch those, 'cause I don't know what they do yet. (laughs)

Daryl Davis 35:48 They listen. They listen in.

Bill Ottman 35:48 I just got, I just got it, like, two days ago. (laughs) Um ...

Joe Rogan 35:51 Does it charge? Is it charged up?

Bill Ottman 35:52 It's not ... Uh, yeah, I'll have to charge it later.

Joe Rogan 35:54 Okay, that's the Librem 5.

Bill Ottman 35:55 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:56 Security and privacy focused phone.

Bill Ottman 35:58 Go ... You gotta go to the USA one. Um, because the ... I think the important ... Made in the USA does matter, 'cause y- you know, you talk a lot about the conflict mineral situation with phones.

Joe Rogan 36:07 Yeah, it's, it's an issue.

Bill Ottman 36:07 And I've seen you bring up other phones. There was, like, the Fairphone. There was, like, some other attempts at it.

Joe Rogan 36:11 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 36:11 And, um, I think-

Joe Rogan 36:12 What happened, Jamie?

Daryl Davis 36:13 I was going with the US version of the website.

Bill Ottman 36:15 Um, so this one ... Oh.

Narrator 36:16 What is this one?

Joe Rogan 36:17 Let me see that one.

Bill Ottman 36:18 That one's called the PinePhone.

Joe Rogan 36:19 Yeah, I've heard of this one as well.

Bill Ottman 36:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:20 This one-

Bill Ottman 36:20 So that's much cheaper. Uh, that, this one's like 2K.

Joe Rogan 36:24 Really?

Bill Ottman 36:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:24 Why is it so expensive?

Bill Ottman 36:25 Uh, because it's not, uh, it, it's a beastly machine. This is a computer.

Joe Rogan 36:30 Right.

Bill Ottman 36:30 So you can run this on, you can hook this up to a monitor, this is a Linux OS. So you can-

Joe Rogan 36:35 Yeah, it's got kill switches. That's what those buttons are.

Bill Ottman 36:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:38 "Physically disconnect the components." And the CIA's like, "Yeah, yeah, go ahead. That works."

Narrator 36:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:42 Yeah. (laughs) "Use our unique hardwick- hardware kill switches to physically disconnect wifi, Bluetooth, cellular signal, microphone, and camera with kill switches."

Bill Ottman 36:53 Yeah, because a lot of it has to do with the chain of custody of these products, because s- proprietary surveillance chips will get added to the phone in its lifecycle throughout the factories globally.

Joe Rogan 37:04 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 37:04 So, they're saying, "Look, we need to make s- sure to be able to commit to our customers that there's no sketchy chips on this thing that's-"

Joe Rogan 37:11 Right.

Bill Ottman 37:11 "... feeding data s- to some, some place we don't know about."

Joe Rogan 37:14 Right, and that was the big thing with Huawei, right? They were, one of the things about banning Huawei in the United States was they had proven that some of their, uh, routers were allowing access from third parties to, uh, access the information as it's distributed between the two parties.

Narrator 37:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:30 So a third party could come in, scoop up all the, you know, um, intellectual property, and just use it.

Narrator 37:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:37 And, you know, sometimes some of these companies, they work both sides, you know? So the ones that, that create the device to prevent something is the same company that creates the device to take something. Like, like in the Washington, DC area, for example, um, a few years back, uh, DC was being sued for the, for the cameras, the red light cameras. You know, you run a red light, you get a ticket. Right. Well, Lockheed Martin had created those cameras, and they were shortening the length of the yellow light so that, so you, you got a, a, a bigger chance of running the red light.

Bill Ottman 38:10 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 38:10 All right? So for every ticket that was written, Lockheed Martin was getting $1, and the rest would go to the DC Police Department, right? So-

Bill Ottman 38:17 So dirty.

Joe Rogan 38:18 Uh, but, uh, Hewlett-Packard, you know, the, the same ones who make the, uh, the radar gun that they, you know, that you get caught on are the same ones who make the radar detector that we use.

Bill Ottman 38:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:29 So they get money from both ends.

Narrator 38:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:30 You know?

Narrator 38:30 Well, it's good business. Um, this one, is this as good, the PinePhone?

Bill Ottman 38:35 I honestly n- it's all very early. Yeah, sorry that it's not charged. Uh-

Joe Rogan 38:38 Have you used any of these?

Bill Ottman 38:39 I just, so, um, I just picked up these from the-

Joe Rogan 38:43 'Cause if you just use a iPhone, we got a fucking problem. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 38:46 No, no, I do. I do. I'm, I'm, I'm using ... I got this because the cool thing about the Librem is that you can plug this into a monitor with a keyboard, and this is a computer.

Joe Rogan 38:56 Can we- do you have a USB-C charger?

Bill Ottman 38:59 Yeah, you could m-

Joe Rogan 38:59 You do?

Narrator 38:59 I have one.

Joe Rogan 39:00 You do?

Narrator 39:00 My charger? Yeah. I've got a charge-

Bill Ottman 39:01 Yeah, if Jamie wants to pla- if he g- he can plug this in.

Narrator 39:03 ... I'll, I'd like to see what that thing's all about. Something like this?

Joe Rogan 39:05 'Cause one ... Yes, perfect.

Narrator 39:07 Okay.

Joe Rogan 39:07 The other, um, thing is, uh, do you know Adam Curry, right?

Bill Ottman 39:13 I've seen, yeah, I've seen him.

Joe Rogan 39:13 Yeah. Adam Curry, who is the original podfather. He's like, he is literally the man who created the original podcast. His, uh, under your leg there's a ... You're wrapped up, though.

Narrator 39:24 It's all right.

Joe Rogan 39:24 You're wrapped up.

Narrator 39:25 I am wrapped up.

Joe Rogan 39:26 Yeah. Um, there's a ... See it under the table?

Narrator 39:30 Oh, yeah, got it.

Joe Rogan 39:31 Yes. It's connect- actually connected to the table.

Narrator 39:34 All right. Yeah.

Bill Ottman 39:34 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 39:34 Um.

Narrator 39:35 Give it a feel.

Joe Rogan 39:35 Adam has this No Agenda podcast, and they have a No Agenda Phone, and it's essentially a de-Googled Android phone.

Narrator 39:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:42 And it removes all of the tracing stuff, all the stuff where, you know, but, but you can't use navigation on it. You can't ... There's a lot of shit you can't use on it.

Bill Ottman 39:50 Right. I it, is it ca- based on graphene? Uh-

Joe Rogan 39:52 I do not know. I think it is? I'm not sure.

Bill Ottman 39:53 Jamie, check out, uh, gr-

Joe Rogan 39:54 It's got a No Agenda Phone.

Bill Ottman 39:55 Okay.

Joe Rogan 39:57 Sorry. Um, this thing, does this get ... Does this have the navigation?

Bill Ottman 40:00 This is not really usable. Like, it's n- it's not really replaceable for your, for your standard ... This is not Android-based. So, so the Pineph- and neither is PinePhone actually. Um-

Joe Rogan 40:11 So this is a No Agenda Phone. Small batch, artisan, secure, private. So this is from-

Bill Ottman 40:15 Is it open source? Go to the footer. Go all the way down to the footer.

Joe Rogan 40:20 Oh.

Bill Ottman 40:21 So, typically ... Scroll up. It looks like it's not ... Are they publishing their code? Keep going up. Uh-

Joe Rogan 40:27 Uh, so it is graphene.

Bill Ottman 40:28 It's graphene. Well, that's good.

Joe Rogan 40:29 Yes.

Bill Ottman 40:29 Good. All right. Great.

Joe Rogan 40:31 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 40:31 Yeah, graph-

Joe Rogan 40:31 So, this OS, is, uh, said is essentially a raw AOSP, Android Open Source Project-

Bill Ottman 40:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:38 ... some custom bits. "If you choose a phone that is supported directly by Lineage and not some random developer on XDA, it is as secure as the G variant. If you choose to build..." Well, I don't know what they're saying here.

Narrator 40:49 Uh, well, 3OS is, I think, is a raw alcohol.

Bill Ottman 40:52 All right.

Joe Rogan 40:53 Oh, I see.

Bill Ottman 40:53 That's legit.

Joe Rogan 40:53 So, "Graphene OS is the most secure option, endorsed by Edward Snowden, entirely funded by donations and a guy."

Narrator 41:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:02 What does that mean? What does that mean?

Narrator 41:03 Don't wanna know. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:04 How fucking, how fucking random is that? "A guy."

Narrator 41:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:08 "The OS is updated and patched more often than G does, with every conceivable method of hardening possible. The only downside is casual adopters. It is a relatively limited co- compatibility layer for apps and access services, similar to those provided by G." G must be Google. This-

Narrator 41:24 So would it be less effective if it wa- if it was, uh, entirely funded by, by donations and a gal?

Joe Rogan 41:30 (laughs) Yeah, or a they.

Narrator 41:33 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 41:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:33 Yeah, it says, uh, so look, Edward Snowden, uh, speaks on it at the bottom. It says that, "Software is equally important. The, uh, iOS and Android operating systems that run on nearly every smartphone conceal unaccountable, uncountable numbers of programming flaws known as security vulnerabilities. That means common apps like iMessage or web browsers become dangerous. You can be hacked." Um, so he uses the graphene network, uh, as his base operating system for-

Bill Ottman 42:00 Yeah, I, I, I think that's a legit project, for sure. Gra- graphene seems like a stripped-down version of Android, which Google created Android, so there-

Joe Rogan 42:08 But there's a lot of stuff that you can't use, right? Like v- like navigation, that's a big one for me.

Bill Ottman 42:14 Yeah, you can ... No, I think you can get probably like open street maps and have some, some very simple navigation.

Joe Rogan 42:20 Then you're gonna be lost as fuck.

Bill Ottman 42:20 (laughs)

Narrator 42:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:20 If you got a friend in the country, you're not gonna find 'em. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 42:24 Yeah, I mean, look, it comes down to, like, are people willing ... What sacrifices are people willing to- to- to make?

Joe Rogan 42:30 Yes.

Bill Ottman 42:30 And- and can we have a reasonable conversation with these companies to find a co- a middle ground?

Daryl Davis 42:35 Well, the key would be then to have, uh, that graphene phone, right, with kill switches.

Bill Ottman 42:41 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 42:41 So you- you use the navigation when you need it and then kill it.

Joe Rogan 42:44 Yeah, I found out that, like, Find My iPhone, doesn't that work even if your phone is off?

Guest (brief interjection) 42:51 Y- yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:51 How the fuck does that-

Daryl Davis 42:52 Uh, Androids don't do that.

Guest (brief interjection) 42:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:53 No?

Daryl Davis 42:54 I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 42:55 Is ... You think Android's better?

Daryl Davis 42:56 Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a qu- quick experience, right?

Joe Rogan 42:59 Okay.

Daryl Davis 43:00 Um, I was flying with ... Won't- won't name the airlines. And, um, I got off the plane, went to turn on my phone, it wasn't there. So I tried to get back on the plane because I figured it fell down the seat. "Oh, you can't get back, you know, get back on the plane, sir. What seat were you in? We'll go look for your phone." Gave them the seat number, they come back five minutes later. "We checked between the seats, under the seat, in the pocket, no phone." You know, "Call customer serv-" or "Email customer service and give them a description and they'll look for it for 30 days." So I go through all of that, and every couple of days, they would, uh, contact me. Now, I called Verizon and, uh, you know, "Ha- has my phone," you know, uh, "Can- can you track my phone?" "Well, we can't track your phone if it's turned off."

Joe Rogan 43:41 Hmm.

Daryl Davis 43:41 That's what he told me. I have an Android. Okay, so I kept calling to see if anybody used it. Right? And I kept calling my phone and stuff, nothing. So every couple of days, they, you know, they would let me know, "We're looking for your phone. We're looking, you know, we haven't found anything yet." And then in 30 days, they will stop, uh, the search, but if anybody turns it in or whatever, they'll let me know. So on the 40th day ... Well, they gave me a- an email on the 30th day saying, um, you know, "We're sorry, we have not located your lost item. However, if anybody turns it in, we'll let you know." On the 40th day, I got an email from them saying, "Your lost item has been found. Uh, it's in the lost ..." Now, I, uh, I, um, I left it in the seat in DC when I was flying-

Joe Rogan 44:22 Hmm.

Daryl Davis 44:22 ... somewhere. And, um, they found the phone, um, and it's in the lost and found at the Houston Airport. Now, that plane flies around the country 10 times a day, gets cleaned 10 times a day every time people deboard, right? And so, people were cleaning that plane for 40 days and nobody found that phone. It was found in be- deep in between the seats. It had fallen off my hip, right? So the moral of the story is, you know, the best clean planes leave out of Houston. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 44:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:56 (laughs) So you couldn't find it, like, the way you find an iPhone? So iPhones, apparently there's, like, some signal-

Daryl Davis 45:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:02 ... that's being sent with Find My-

Daryl Davis 45:04 Constant chip.

Joe Rogan 45:04 Yeah. So that alone is a little bit of a red flag, right?

Bill Ottman 45:10 Yeah, I mean, Apple is- is ... They try to have this privacy argument, and it's so shocking to me that they try to push that. Like, "Oh, you know, we're not gonna let the FBI in. Like, trust us." And look, Apple makes beautiful products. Everybody knows it. They're the best designers in the world.

Joe Rogan 45:23 What do you use?

Bill Ottman 45:24 I- I use stripped Android.

Daryl Davis 45:26 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 45:26 And I'm gonna start using this because I can ... This can be my computer as well. So I'll ... But I'll, you know, I'll use both, but I- I'm- I'm playing with all the options right now. But, like, I li- I like to use Linux as my desktop computer.

Joe Rogan 45:39 Can I see what you use?

Bill Ottman 45:41 Um.

Joe Rogan 45:42 That's your phone?

Bill Ottman 45:43 This is, this is my phone. This- this is a ... Well, this is just Android.

Joe Rogan 45:48 That's just regular Android? It's not even stripped?

Bill Ottman 45:51 This is an un- non-stripped version.

Joe Rogan 45:52 So when a privacy guy is having a phone that's tracking him everywhere he goes-

Bill Ottman 45:56 I have, dude, every ... We're all in the midst of this world. I have fi- ... Look at me.

Joe Rogan 46:02 Yeah, you got-

Bill Ottman 46:02 I mean, come on, you gotta give me credit-

Joe Rogan 46:04 ... multiple phones.

Bill Ottman 46:04 ... for having five different phones.

Joe Rogan 46:05 Do- do you have different phones because you have to check how mines is on different operating systems?

Bill Ottman 46:10 Dif- ... I'm not doing m- the ... I mean, I'm not doing all of our QA. But, like, I have Linux devices, Windows devices, Apple devices. I defini- ... I use it all. So-

Joe Rogan 46:20 But you use an Android as your main phone?

Bill Ottman 46:23 Yes.

Joe Rogan 46:23 Why do you do that?

Bill Ottman 46:24 I do that because Android is a- is at least open source in its base function, so I will ... Uh, as ... Over Apple, I will choose Android because, like we see with graphene, you can fork Android and create a stripped down version. Now, it is absolutely imperative to ... I need to get a graphene, pure graphene version. That's on my list of things to do. I've got, you know, there's a ClearOS here, which is, uh-

Joe Rogan 46:50 What's that?

Bill Ottman 46:51 That's, uh ...

Joe Rogan 46:53 What is ClearOS?

Bill Ottman 46:53 That's, uh, another open source Android.

Joe Rogan 46:57 Does this ... Ooh, that's pretty.

Bill Ottman 46:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:59 Does this have a, some sort of UP- GPS system?

Bill Ottman 47:04 I think it does, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:07 You want to open that so I can check it out?

Bill Ottman 47:09 I mean ...

Joe Rogan 47:11 So, uh, what- what people are concerned with is obviously someone being able to access their information, someone tracking them.

Bill Ottman 47:21 I think people are concerned and, like ... All right, so look at me, for exa- example. Like, I'm sort of in this privacy world, but I'm also not, like, a privacy ... I'm- I'm a privacy maximalist for what I want to be private. I'm not saying, like, I'm never gonna use any big tech app ever.

Joe Rogan 47:40 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 47:40 It's just an irrational, impossible mission. I'll- I've driven myself crazy, like, thinking that I should do that.

Joe Rogan 47:46 Hmm.

Daryl Davis 47:47 You have to go off the grid then.

Bill Ottman 47:47 Y- you gotta go off the ... Like, I'm gonna be a human, okay? (laughs) And I'm gonna explore all the different options and hopefully transition. So, like, I have gotten rid of most b- ... I- I don't use big tech nearly as much as I used to, probably, like, 10% of what I used to. I deleted u- most of my accounts. I'll check in sometimes because I like to see what's going on and to understand the market, but, you know, I- it's ... I'm not gonna ...... I need to get around too, with maps. And so I'm gonna... As soon as we have an alternative, I will do it. I'll be the first one in line when someone can put something in. I'm trying to get all these options in front of me.

Joe Rogan 48:24 But it seems like-

Daryl Davis 48:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:25 ... uh, operating systems and applications, they're, the trend is for them to get more intrusive, right? Like, TikTok is supposedly, they back engineered it and said it is the absolute worst software that they've ever examined, in terms of, like, violating your privacy.

Bill Ottman 48:43 Yeah. Let me, uh, let me just go through... Uh, so on my actual phone, I'll just name a few apps which I think are a huge part of, like, privacy future, 'cause, like, it's not all about... M- you know, mines is a part of a bigger network. It's, like, the, uh, the ultimate place where things are going is not, there's not gonna be some new replacement that, for Google, that's centralized. It's gonna be protocols that apps are all inter-operating on, so, like, Briar is this amazing app that's currently going viral in Ukraine, um, and Julian Assange actually posted about this app from prison. He was able to communicate to his people. So Briar is fully decentralized. It runs over Tor and it can even run offline, so you can... I, we could chat over Bluetooth. I could be in a burning building and you're across the street. In Ukraine, we're getting bombed, internet is down and we're chatting. Like, unbelievable mesh networking technology.

Joe Rogan 49:35 Is Briar like B-R-I-A-R?

Bill Ottman 49:37 B-R-I-A-R.

Joe Rogan 49:38 Okay.

Bill Ottman 49:38 Yeah. So the, it's, it's been a long time coming for them. We're looking at integrating with, uh, the Bramble protocol, which is kinda the base protocol of Briar, but, you know, there are a handful of fully decentralized options also. Uh, Secure Scuttlebutt and, and, and some others, but it's, it's really cool. I, I, I recommend checking it out. And I think that off-grid technology that's not reliant on internet service providers is just a... I mean, that's crazy. The fact that that's even possible?

Joe Rogan 50:12 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 50:12 (laughs) To, to chat with no internet?

Joe Rogan 50:14 Yeah, it is crazy.

Bill Ottman 50:15 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 50:15 So- And then, you know, and sometimes, you know, when you go to a different country with your phone, you know, you are... You have to be compliant with that country's internet laws. I mean, they can get into your phone, where maybe the US can't.

Joe Rogan 50:27 Right. Do you think, like, uh, in terms of privacy, would you recommend Google or Apple? 'Cause like when you-

Bill Ottman 50:33 I would... That, that's a, that question is not a question. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:36 Really?

Bill Ottman 50:37 No.

Joe Rogan 50:37 It doesn't matter? But isn't, doesn't Apple at least give you the option to block advertisers from, uh, being access, access your information, block cross-platform or cross-application-

Bill Ottman 50:52 Yes.

Joe Rogan 50:52 ... sharing of data?

Bill Ottman 50:53 They've been locking down their app store, which has taken, like, billions of dollars away from Google and Facebook advertising, because they don't allow apps to do what they used to be able to do.

Joe Rogan 51:01 Right. Isn't that good?

Bill Ottman 51:02 That is good. That is good.

Joe Rogan 51:03 So would... So Apple would be a better choice?

Bill Ottman 51:05 I don't-

Daryl Davis 51:06 No?

Bill Ottman 51:06 ... know. I think that, yes, that is a good thing, in sort of cost-benefit. So... But Apple is the mother of closed systems. I mean, Steve Jobs literally said-

Daryl Davis 51:18 Privacy.

Bill Ottman 51:18 ... propriety. It's like, we have a closed walled garden.

Joe Rogan 51:22 Yes.

Bill Ottman 51:22 And that was his whole thing. Like, "We do not want anyone seeing what we're doing." Hyper competitive. Apple does very, you know, relatively little open source, compared to a lot of other companies and-

Joe Rogan 51:33 Well, I remember the days of clones, where you could buy a fake Apple machine that runs MacOS and they shut them all down.

Bill Ottman 51:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:42 Because you could buy, like, a bomber machine that has, like, crazy power and gigantic hard drives and way, like multiple hard drives. Like, way more potent than anything that Apple was selling, like in the '90s.

Bill Ottman 51:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:54 And they banned all that stuff.

Daryl Davis 51:55 Is that for gaming and stuff? Or...

Joe Rogan 51:57 Yeah, for gaming and just for people who do, like, video editing-

Daryl Davis 52:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:01 ... and just pe- people that wanted, like, some crazy, ultra-hyped up machine and it would still run the iOS. And this was the early iOS. You know, this was before OSX 10, which was the Unix-based, uh, operating system.

Bill Ottman 52:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:15 That was back when, you know, Apple's operating system was a little janky. It was kinda sketchy, crash a lot.

Bill Ottman 52:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:22 You know, no multi, no preemptive multitasking. There was, like, no memory protection. It would crash. Like, people were, like, really devoted to it, but that shit would crash a lot, until OSX came along.

Bill Ottman 52:34 Do you feel like you're at all willing to sacrifice any convenience in your technology?

Joe Rogan 52:40 Yes. Yeah, I'm willing to sacrifice some.

Bill Ottman 52:42 Mm-hmm. What, like, what would be something that you would be willing-

Joe Rogan 52:46 That's a good question.

Bill Ottman 52:46 ... to, to ask? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:47 I've, I ask myself that all the time.

Daryl Davis 52:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:48 'Cause, uh, I'm fucking sure the government's paying attention to my phone.

Bill Ottman 52:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:52 You know, so it's like, uh, what, you know, what am I willing to sacrifice? You know. Right now, I just, I treat all interactions as if the government's watching.

Bill Ottman 53:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:00 That's what I do.

Bill Ottman 53:01 Mm-hmm. Yeah, like there's a-

Daryl Davis 53:03 (laughs)

Bill Ottman 53:03 ... there's a Android app store called F-Droid.

Joe Rogan 53:06 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 53:06 Which is, you know, like a non-Google Play app store, so you can actually get apps off of Google Play. On iOS, you can only get apps on the a- on the, uh, App Store.

Joe Rogan 53:16 But, uh, how do you know if you go to this, uh, F store... Is that what it's called?

Bill Ottman 53:20 F-Droid.

Joe Rogan 53:21 F-Droid? How do you know, if you go to this F-Droid, whether or not this is spyware?

Bill Ottman 53:26 Uh, I mean, the s-

Joe Rogan 53:26 It's embedded?

Bill Ottman 53:27 Well, how do you... Uh, there's spyware all, half the apps on, 90% of the apps on Google Play are spyware. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:32 Really?

Bill Ottman 53:33 Yes. (laughs) I mean, every app you install is, like, infecting your system, most of them, 'cause most apps are proprietary. And, and-

Joe Rogan 53:40 But Google's worse for that, isn't it? Android-

Bill Ottman 53:43 I mean, every app is different. Every app has different permissions that they're giving and, you know, different security implications, so I don't think that there's a... I, I think that the people at F-Droid and in the open source community, as a general trend, just care about these things more. So they're not gonna... You know. But there still can be malicious stuff in the open source realm.

Joe Rogan 54:03 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 54:03 Um, but, you know, you gotta kind of understand the scene and, and-

Joe Rogan 54:09 That's a lot of work though.

Bill Ottman 54:10 It is a lot of work, but-

Joe Rogan 54:11 Understanding the scene?

Bill Ottman 54:12 Do you... But do you research the food that you eat?

Joe Rogan 54:14 Well, it's pretty simple.

Bill Ottman 54:15 Is it?

Joe Rogan 54:16 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 54:17 ... it's a pretty big education. I think there's a lot of people who don't, who don't know.

Joe Rogan 54:21 Yes. But I've already had that education.

Bill Ottman 54:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:24 So-

Bill Ottman 54:24 It's the same way with tech.

Joe Rogan 54:25 Yeah. No, I'm sure.

Bill Ottman 54:26 It, it's a, there, there's a learning curve and-

Joe Rogan 54:28 But it seems like people are making new things. Like, they're not really making new food, real food. Like, real food's kind of been established-

Bill Ottman 54:36 Impossible burgers. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:36 Yeah, that's not food. (laughs) That shit's terrible for you.

Bill Ottman 54:39 Have you had one? Daryl, have you had one?

Daryl Davis 54:40 I have not. I've seen, I've seen them, but I, I've not had one.

Bill Ottman 54:43 Have you...

Joe Rogan 54:43 No.

Bill Ottman 54:44 Really?

Joe Rogan 54:45 Yeah. No, actually, I, I have to lie. I did. Um, um, it's a lie, rather. I did.

Bill Ottman 54:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:49 Um, we were... We did a show once at Stubbs and, uh, my friend CK brought a bunch of burgers from a bunch of different places.

Bill Ottman 54:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:54 And some of them were plant-based. So I took a bite.

Bill Ottman 54:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:57 And just like, it's like a bland burger.

Bill Ottman 54:59 Yeah. I actually switched from, uh, vegan.

Joe Rogan 55:02 To what?

Daryl Davis 55:03 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 55:03 To what? I was vegan for like four years.

Joe Rogan 55:04 Which, to what?

Bill Ottman 55:05 And switched, switched back. Um-

Joe Rogan 55:07 Switched back? Meaning you eat meat?

Bill Ottman 55:08 Yeah, I switched back. I wa- I was a meat eater. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:10 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 55:10 Well, my wife actually, uh, so has a, uh, autoimmune issue. Uh, not to (laughs) overshare.

Joe Rogan 55:19 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 55:19 But, uh, so she... When we were vegan together. Have you heard of Weston Price?

Joe Rogan 55:23 No.

Bill Ottman 55:24 He's a really famous, uh, nutritionist and, uh, has this diet. Very, like, heavy into organ meats.

Joe Rogan 55:30 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 55:31 And, uh-

Joe Rogan 55:31 Nose to tail, that kind of thing.

Bill Ottman 55:33 Yeah. Fermented foods.

Joe Rogan 55:34 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 55:35 And probiotics and stuff. And so she was being told by her doctor that, "You have to go on this drug called REMICADE every six weeks IV for the rest of your life."

Joe Rogan 55:46 And what is it for?

Bill Ottman 55:47 It's for Crohn's.

Joe Rogan 55:48 Okay.

Bill Ottman 55:49 And sh- she was like, "What? Life? Like, every six weeks? You're kidding me." And so she was just like, "No, I'm not. I'm, I..."

Joe Rogan 56:00 Okay, so she switched her diet?

Bill Ottman 56:02 So she switched her diet and is in remission.

Joe Rogan 56:05 Really?

Bill Ottman 56:05 And she... And, and like, there-

Joe Rogan 56:06 And what... And her diet consists of what now?

Bill Ottman 56:08 Um, it's pretty m- much, uh, I mean, if you look up Weston Price, but, you know, meats, uh, fermented foods, um...

Joe Rogan 56:15 Just avoiding bread, sugar-

Bill Ottman 56:17 Salmon, yeah. Yeah, avoiding. Yeah. And she... So there's been studies done on cabbage juice. This is a big thing for people with ulcers. There have actually been studies that f- uh, hardcore cabbage juice for like six weeks can reverse ulcers. And there have been studies on this. And her, her regular gastro doctor didn't even know about that, and that she credits a huge transformation from the cabbage juice regimen. Anyway, not to get, go off on a tangent.

Joe Rogan 56:42 Well, just we are on a tangent.

Bill Ottman 56:44 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:44 But your own personal experience, like, what was the difference between going from vegan to eating meat again?

Bill Ottman 56:48 I mean, I respect vegans. I really do, especially the ones who aren't annoying. Um, the w- the, the ones-

Joe Rogan 56:55 There's like five of them. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 56:57 (laughs) There are, there are five of them. You know, there's this guy, uh, Ed, uh, Earthling Ed, who's r- a- he- he's very honest and not preachy.

Joe Rogan 57:06 Okay.

Bill Ottman 57:06 And has good information. But anyway, like, I feel, I feel better. I love eggs and meat and, and all that stuff, but... And I, I, I do feel, like, healthier, but I, I think I was healthy vegan. And you can be healthy vegan. And I wouldn't be surprised if in a thousand years humans are not eating nearly as much meat.

Daryl Davis 57:25 Well, why, why did you decide, did, to go back?

Bill Ottman 57:27 Because I wanted to... You know. I didn't need that much of a reason, you know, doing it with my family. Uh, and also, it's just, you know, I want... I- I'm, I'm, I'm not ideological about stuff. I don't, I don't wanna get stuck in ideology about food or whatever.

Joe Rogan 57:45 This is why I wanted you to talk about this. Because this is exactly the kind of conversation that some people would like to suppress.

Bill Ottman 57:51 Exactly. That's why I said-

Joe Rogan 57:51 Because there are people that say that eating meat is bad for the environment. And I've had a bunch of people on to try to discuss that, pro and con. The latest is, uh, what is it? Diane's last name? It was Robb Wolf and...

Narrator 58:06 Diana Rodgers.

Joe Rogan 58:07 Diana Rodgers. They wrote a book called Sacred Cow, and we were talking about regenerative farming with them. But there are people that think that those conversations should be suppressed. And that when you have these kind of conversations y- they should be flagged, you should be shadow banned. It, it, there's a lot of people that promote the carnivore diet on Instagram that find themselves shadow banned, and they have like real issues.

Bill Ottman 58:26 Wow.

Joe Rogan 58:27 Uh, Paul Saladino, Carnivore MD. I think they took his account down and he had-

Bill Ottman 58:31 As misinfo?

Joe Rogan 58:32 I don't know what the fucking excuse was. I think some wacky vegan activist who works for the company can just decide that they're gonna take your account down.

Bill Ottman 58:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:40 I think there's a certain amount of control that the people that work there have, where it's very subjective.

Bill Ottman 58:47 So imagine... So Facebook spends tens of billions on moderation and they... Or they have. And so our vision... Imagine if rather than tens of thousands of censors who are just going like, "Down, down, down. Take it down. Hate speech. Misinformation."

Joe Rogan 59:05 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 59:05 Um, "Conspiracy theory." What if you had tens of thousands of mental health professionals and positive intervention people, and just like people engaging in dialogue who can provide mental health re- resources to users who need it, to share information? Like, I'm not saying you need no mo- moderation. You definitely do need a certain level. But that's so much money and human energy. I mean, you've seen the PTSD studies of these content moderators at Facebook who are... These people get depressed, they're suicidal, 'cause it, it's j-

Joe Rogan 59:37 They're just seeing Al-Qaeda videos all day.

Bill Ottman 59:39 Yeah, they're just watching crazy stuff.

Joe Rogan 59:40 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 59:40 And that's a, that's a, that's a real thing, but that, you know, is unavoidable to a certain degree. But I mean, to, to bring in experts in dialogue to engage... Imagine if Facebook spent billions of dollars on that, mental health resources for the community.

Joe Rogan 59:57 Would, would that be effective?

Daryl Davis 59:59 Well, yeah, because I mean, look, look at it this way. Say 25, 30 years ago, uh, insurance companies were not paying for acupuncture. "Oh, that's, you know, nonsense. It's, uh, what do you call it, a placebo or something."

Joe Rogan 1:00:12 Right.

Daryl Davis 1:00:13 Uh, now they do. A- and now they see value in it. Well, Chinese people have been using that for 2,000 years. Would they still be using it 2,000 years later if it wasn't working? So now, now we're accepting, you know, some Eastern culture. Now we're, you know... W- when our doctor does not give us what we, uh, hope w- will cure us for our cancer, our diabetes, our whatever, we go the holistic.... route. And we've found some, some pretty amazing results. And that's what, you know, Minds is doing, the holistic, uh, r- you know, um, approach, by giving everybody a platform to, to, to, to share their information, like you just shared about the cabbage juice. You know, somebody hears this podcast and goes out and tries cabbage juice and it clears up their wife's, uh, ailment or something like that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 And this is a good, uh, subject to talk about now, because we just got through the pandemic, and that was one of the things that was suppressed, was information about methods of treating COVID. I mean, there was... It was a giant issue, where if you talked about whether it was hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or whatever you would talk about, even vitamins. We're talking about, like, the difference between the COVID results of people that were vitamin D insufficient versus people that had sufficient levels. It's a giant difference.

Daryl Davis 1:01:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:24 But if you talked about that, you would get in trouble for disinformation or misinformation, and you would get e- either shadow banned or outrightly banned. I mean, there were people that were banned from social networks for suggesting that people who are vaccinated can still spread COVID. That turns out to be an absolute fact now.

Daryl Davis 1:01:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 But if you said that eight months ago, nine months ago, instead of having this conversation and having medical experts debate it, and people that understand it and don't understand it, so ask questions, and the people t- who are f- following the, the standard narrative, um, uh, th- they express themselves, and then people that have alternative ideas express themselves, and we find out what's right and what's wrong.

Daryl Davis 1:02:04 Uh, somebody expressed th- that, uh, it could be treated with bleach, right?

Joe Rogan 1:02:08 W- wasn't that Trump?

Daryl Davis 1:02:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:10 Yeah, he said, like-

Daryl Davis 1:02:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 ... uh, the... Yeah, like an infusion of bleach. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 1:02:12 Yeah, I mean, there shou- there should be warnings. And, you know, um, but imagine if rather than a fact-check warning, like, you know, "These three think tanks said that this is false," it... What, what if you could actually see a visualization of the debate that showed both sides and gave you, like, a probability score or something on the piece of content, as opposed to saying, like, black or white...

Joe Rogan 1:02:33 Well, who checks the fact-checkers?

Bill Ottman 1:02:34 Yeah, that- that's what you need.

Joe Rogan 1:02:35 That's, that's, the problem. There's, there's a lot of fact-checkers that are just full of shit. Like, there's a lot of things that are, like, mostly true or mostly false, and you look into it and you're like, "Fuck you, this is not mostly false." You guys are just mad.

Daryl Davis 1:02:47 It's either false or true.

Joe Rogan 1:02:48 Yeah, yeah.

Daryl Davis 1:02:48 It can't be mostly.

Bill Ottman 1:02:49 Well...

Daryl Davis 1:02:49 It's like, it's like, you know, a multiple statement.

Joe Rogan 1:02:51 Well, that's debatable.

Daryl Davis 1:02:51 Somebody who's been sort of pregnant.

Joe Rogan 1:02:53 Right. (laughs)

Daryl Davis 1:02:53 I mean, either you're pregnant or you're not, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:02:54 But if someone is... If there's multiple statements about an issue and some of them are correct and some of them are not-

Bill Ottman 1:02:59 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 ... then it would be, like, mostly true.

Bill Ottman 1:03:00 We'll take a piece of COVID, you know, content like you were, you were talking about. And, you know, there's gonna be studies on one side and another.

Joe Rogan 1:03:06 What do you do on Minds for that stuff?

Bill Ottman 1:03:08 Well, we're, we're building out a sort of citation tool to kind of show the citations on both sides of various arguments and, you know, have more crowdsourced... Uh, this really gets into the realm of decentralized identity and where we're moving in terms of, like, reputation and credibility on the internet. And, like, right now, you've got all these different logins, what we, what we were talking about. Where things are going with, with crypto and with, like, the web standards, there's... Really, we're moving towards a place where you have these credentials associated with your core identity, which can be generated from, like, a crypto wallet or something like that. And you'll have all these badges that you're earning everywhere you go, and you can decide to s- disclose those or not disclose those, like NFTs. I mean, right now, a-

Joe Rogan 1:03:55 W- I'm confused.

Bill Ottman 1:03:56 Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:57 What are you earning badges for? Can we see the interface? Would you pull up Mines so we can see the interface?

Bill Ottman 1:04:02 Yeah. So, um, ultimately, credibility on the internet, it's like, how do you measure that? How do you trust-

Joe Rogan 1:04:09 I try to go-

Bill Ottman 1:04:09 ... users? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:10 So, it's like if, if I say, "Oh, Bill is, uh, a very good guy. He says a lot of true things. He's very reasonable." So, you get a badge for that?

Bill Ottman 1:04:19 There could be any infinite number of, you know, badges that you could potentially earn. But, like, you could be trusted by... Say someone in martial arts trusts you and they gi- they give you a, a sig- signal of trust-

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 1:04:35 ... then that would add to your credibility in martial arts in your decentralized identity on the internet, which would be interoperable between social networks.

Joe Rogan 1:04:44 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 1:04:45 So, that there's sort of this w- this web of-

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 Oh, look, I got a page.

Bill Ottman 1:04:48 (laughs) You got a page.

Daryl Davis 1:04:49 Who put my picture up there?

Bill Ottman 1:04:50 Your YouTube, your YouTube. You took over the account. You just asked me for the, the creds.

Daryl Davis 1:04:54 I know.

Bill Ottman 1:04:54 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 1:04:54 I mean, I'm just saying, who put, who took my picture up there?

Bill Ottman 1:04:56 I don't know. Some fan or something.

Daryl Davis 1:04:57 I don't know who put my picture there. Someone... Fan can just put my picture up there?

Bill Ottman 1:05:00 I don't know someone-

Daryl Davis 1:05:01 Maybe I did.

Bill Ottman 1:05:01 I mean, people create fan pages and-

Daryl Davis 1:05:03 Okay, so, like, in 2020-

Bill Ottman 1:05:05 So-

Daryl Davis 1:05:05 ... I posted something, it says. (laughs)

Bill Ottman 1:05:08 (laughs)

Daryl Davis 1:05:08 And it got 31,000 views. Wow, look at that.

Bill Ottman 1:05:10 Huberman, that episode's down, let's go back.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Okay, so what is making these things post?

Bill Ottman 1:05:15 Uh, I don't know. That, they must've... Just someone must've just posted them.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 Well, how come they posted under my name?

Daryl Davis 1:05:20 This might've been l- uh, just linked from YouTube 'cause these are just YouTube posts.

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 Right, but how were they linked in my name? I didn't do that.

Bill Ottman 1:05:29 Um, I don't know. Maybe-

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 I have 118,000 subscribers?

Bill Ottman 1:05:33 Dude, you probably have a bunch of tokens too.

Joe Rogan 1:05:36 Oh, I have tokens? (laughs)

Bill Ottman 1:05:36 So, you should... We'll, we'll figure it out. We'll, we'll figure it out.

Joe Rogan 1:05:39 But that's... So, this is two years ago. Uh, this is August 13th, so this is during the pandemic. I 100% didn't post that.

Bill Ottman 1:05:47 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:05:48 So, someone is posting that in my name. Did my account get hacked?

Bill Ottman 1:05:53 I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:05:53 Son of a bitch. Imagine my account at Mines got hacked and some dude is just posting, pretending he's me.

Bill Ottman 1:05:58 Well, let's... I mean, I sent you the password. Did you change it?

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 I don't know.

Bill Ottman 1:06:01 We'll, w- we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll fi- we'll figure it out.

Daryl Davis 1:06:04 (laughs) Okay, we'll figure it out.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 But someone's posting as me, and I have 118,000 subscribers. I should probably get on that.

Bill Ottman 1:06:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:12 So, you said I-

Daryl Davis 1:06:13 Listen, now, you own joerogan.com though, right?

Bill Ottman 1:06:14 It was... I think it was... I think it was... I thought... I, I think it was connected. I think it was connected to... It was, it was pulling in your YouTube and, you know, so-

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 Hmm.

Bill Ottman 1:06:20 ... something might've gotten... I don't know.

Daryl Davis 1:06:22 Okay.

Bill Ottman 1:06:22 We'll, we'll fix it.

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 Fuckery. Just doesn't seem good, Jamie. Uh, there's nothing... Uh, there's nothing on it. It's just YouTube posts. Right.

Bill Ottman 1:06:28 It's just a link to your YouTube link.

Joe Rogan 1:06:30 And yours, this all was your Twitter picture at some point. But some of them are missing, some of the YouTube videos are missing. Well, that's 'cause they're missing YouTube. We don't have everything up on YouTube. Right. Oh, that's right. When we changed over to Spotify- Yeah. ... we removed some of the stuff. Where, you know, Spotify only allows us to keep 100, uh, full-length episodes on, uh, YouTube at a time. Most of it has to be... You know, since they were trying to channel

Bill Ottman 1:06:49 Here, go to, um, go to minds.com/change-So, this is, um, this is a link to-

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 So this is the stuff that you guys are doing. This is Change Minds.

Bill Ottman 1:07:04 Yeah. This is the link to the paper and-

Joe Rogan 1:07:06 This is the censorship effect.

Bill Ottman 1:07:07 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 1:07:08 And so, when Vox and l- who are, like, very str- strongly left-leaning, when they have, uh, a piece that they write saying that there, there are harmful effects of censorship, that it actually pushes people towards more radical ideas, like, what are th- what are they suggesting? Are they suggesting that places like social media, sites like Twitter back off of censorship and maybe choose an alternative?

Bill Ottman 1:07:34 They're not-

Joe Rogan 1:07:34 No.

Bill Ottman 1:07:34 ... going that far, but I think it's a step in the right direction. Um, they also talk about the, the reach. You know, a lot of their question is what is the reach of content like... Alex Jones, for instance, we did a empirical analysis of his reach after he got banned and it actually went up, um, globally. So, in terms of all of the, the, um, views on-

Joe Rogan 1:07:59 Right. But let me-

Bill Ottman 1:07:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:59 ... stop you right there. Wouldn't it keep going up if he wasn't banned? Like, 'cause everybody goes up. Like my shit goes up every month, right? So when you say his went up, does that mean it went up at a proportionate level that it- the same as it would if he stayed on Twitter? Or did it go up just based on the baseline of when he got banned?

Bill Ottman 1:08:18 Y- yeah. I mean, that's sort of an impossible thing to know because you can't really know what the world will be.

Joe Rogan 1:08:22 But you could follow the... You could track.

Bill Ottman 1:08:23 You could follow a trend line.

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 Yeah. You could track the trend.

Bill Ottman 1:08:25 I mean, I think that what Vox is saying is it depends if y- like, you know, Alex has a platform, so he's- he was gonna grow huge kind of either- in either direction, I would imagine. But small people, when they get banned, you know, that kinda gets buried.

Joe Rogan 1:08:39 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 1:08:39 You know, no one's-

Joe Rogan 1:08:40 Right.

Bill Ottman 1:08:40 ... no one's complaining-

Joe Rogan 1:08:41 Right.

Bill Ottman 1:08:41 ... when some random person posting a COVID, uh, post gets banned from Twitter. They're just lost.

Joe Rogan 1:08:47 Right.

Bill Ottman 1:08:47 There's millions of people who just get lost from that.

Joe Rogan 1:08:50 Mm-hmm.

Bill Ottman 1:08:50 And so, you know... Anyway, in the, in the analysis that we saw, the total views of Alex's content went up significantly, but I think that it's- there- you know, it's called the Streisand effect. But it's also this variation on that and I think it is definitely... Censorship also works, like, in an isolated system. So if you're on-

Joe Rogan 1:09:10 On Twitter.

Bill Ottman 1:09:10 ... Google or Facebook, like, or Twitter, like, yeah, you can silence certain words-

Joe Rogan 1:09:14 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 1:09:14 ... or cont- or, or topics. But you- when you're thinking of the internet as a whole, then, um, you know, the, the total reach is not necessarily going down 'cause... And we need to start thinking about the internet as a whole, not just isolated networks. Like, you can't claim that censorship of COVID misinfo workeded when you just ban it from Google and it just went up. Like, what about th- global numbers? We need-

Joe Rogan 1:09:41 Right.

Bill Ottman 1:09:41 That's what we need to be looking at.

Joe Rogan 1:09:43 So, when you guys got together... How long have you guys been working together?

Daryl Davis 1:09:49 About four years.

Bill Ottman 1:09:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:51 And w- e- and, and-

Daryl Davis 1:09:52 Y- you know, and when I first, uh, you know, joined on, uh, he was just approaching two million members and now, it's over five million.

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 So it is growing.

Daryl Davis 1:10:02 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:02 And Minds is growing. It's like, well hopefully you get a lot more after this one. Um, but it's... The, the difference between that and Facebook. Like, what is Facebook?

Bill Ottman 1:10:12 Oh, God. Billions.

Joe Rogan 1:10:13 And Twitter.

Bill Ottman 1:10:14 Hundreds of millions.

Joe Rogan 1:10:16 If not billions.

Bill Ottman 1:10:17 I don't-

Joe Rogan 1:10:17 Right?

Bill Ottman 1:10:17 Yeah. Probably close.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 Yeah.

Bill Ottman 1:10:19 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:10:19 So there's, there's a giant difference in terms of the user experience.

Bill Ottman 1:10:23 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:23 The interactions.

Bill Ottman 1:10:23 But here's the, here's the crazy thing, like, in... You can actually get more reach on Minds than Facebook or Twitter if you're a small creator. 'Cause small creators, like, getting out of the void on social is so hard. They... We have this reward mechanism where you can earn tokens and boost your content and, you know, we, we also just rolled out this build-your-algorithm feature where you can actually opt in to see p- people who are different from you or similar for you... from... for you. Or you can opt in to increase the level of tolerance that you have to ideas that you disagree with. So-

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 How do you adjust that?

Bill Ottman 1:10:58 Um, there's a... there's these, uh, toggles where-

Joe Rogan 1:11:02 So if, like, say if you're a vegan and you're like, "Maybe..." You know, like, you're starting to feel a little sick, like, "Maybe I should pay attention to some of these carnivore people."

Bill Ottman 1:11:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:10 You could let a little of that in?

Bill Ottman 1:11:12 Yes. Yes. Exactly. Open up your recommendations to not just stuff that's gonna bring you down your own echo chamber, but expand it.

Joe Rogan 1:11:20 Now, Daryl, I wanna talk to you about your personal experience on Minds with this, uh, with what your... what you do. What you're known for. Have you had interactions with people on Minds that have been favorable, that have... You've kind of pushed people into a m-

Bill Ottman 1:11:34 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 1:11:34 I've had... Yeah. I've had a few and I've had, you know, my, my share of detractors. Some people think, you know, what I'm doing is totally wrong and don't get me or whatever. But yeah, I've had a... I've had interactions with some people.

Joe Rogan 1:11:44 When s- when you say, like, people have said it's totally wrong, like, what, uh... what, uh... what kind of criticisms do they have for that?

Daryl Davis 1:11:50 Uh, it depends upon where they're coming from. Um, some people think, "It's not my job to teach white people how to treat us," us meaning Black people.

Joe Rogan 1:11:58 Mm-hmm.

Daryl Davis 1:11:59 Uh, others think it's ridiculous to sit down with a white supremacist. "Why? You know, why wou- why would you waste your time? Uh, you know, those people can't change. They hate you."

Joe Rogan 1:12:06 But would you point to your success ratio? 'Cause it's pretty amazing.

Daryl Davis 1:12:09 Oh, yeah. I, I point to that. You know, but a lot of people, you know, they don't see that because they don't ha... The- they would not tolerate the time to sit down-

Joe Rogan 1:12:15 Right.

Daryl Davis 1:12:16 ... and have somebody tell them some nonsense that Jews are the childs of the devil or-

Joe Rogan 1:12:19 Mm-hmm.

Daryl Davis 1:12:20 ... you know, some crazy-

Joe Rogan 1:12:21 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 1:12:21 ... things like that. Uh, I will sit and listen to that, and I will put up with it, uh, because in order for me to, uh, h- speak, speak my mind, I have to listen to somebody else's.

Joe Rogan 1:12:33 Yes.

Daryl Davis 1:12:33 Right? So, they're not willing to, to put in that time. I am.

Joe Rogan 1:12:37 Yeah. And so when... how do you have the time to do this?

Daryl Davis 1:12:42 This is what I do-

Joe Rogan 1:12:43 Yeah.

Daryl Davis 1:12:43 ... you know, in between my music gigs. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:12:44 Yeah. But I mean, like, that's... What kind of commitment are you talking about? Like how much time do you spend doing this?

Daryl Davis 1:12:50 A lot. I mean, it's my life now.

Bill Ottman 1:12:52 How many, like, email, dialogues-

Daryl Davis 1:12:55 Oh, God.

Bill Ottman 1:12:55 ... something li-

Daryl Davis 1:12:55 I get, I get emails all the time. I get e- emails from people I don't even know. I e- I even get emails from people who've seen me on podcasts or on TV shows, these white supremacists, Klansmen, whatever, and say, "You know, you made some sense in there. Would you like my robe?" I've even gotten robes-

Joe Rogan 1:13:10 Really?

Daryl Davis 1:13:10 ... and hoods in the mail-... from people I don't even know. Yes. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:14 I think there's a lot of sad people that just need a group of people to belong to, and they'll decide that what these people are saying makes sense because at least they'll be a part of it