The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1792 - Daryl Davis & Bill Ottman
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,003 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Gentlemen, what's happening? Good to see you.
- DDDaryl Davis
Hey, you're happening, man. Good to see you again.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you.
- DDDaryl Davis
Thank you for having me back.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have a beautiful purple shirt, I love it.
- BOBill Ottman
Uh, thanks for having us.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- BOBill Ottman
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, how- how's it going?
- BOBill Ottman
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
... stuff that's, that-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're talking about Gettr.
- BOBill Ottman
Gettr.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
Um...
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, 'cause I found out that, like-
- BOBill Ottman
Parler, Rumble and now, and now, I'm not-
- JRJoe Rogan
All of them?
- BOBill Ottman
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Which we definitely know Facebook does, Instagram does, Twitter does, that's all real.
- BOBill Ottman
Right. So then you've got, are they privacy focused? End-to-end encrypted? Do they have access to the content of your messages?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
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)
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Oh, Kara Swisher. …
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- BOBill Ottman
Oh, Kara Swisher.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's her.
- BOBill Ottman
I think, I think that's who it was. She's the Vox reporter.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
And Vox is interesting 'cause they're, like, smart people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
... 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-
- JRJoe Rogan
We don't need to find that. (laughs)
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
It polarizes this country.
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
So isolation and certainty have, um, an overlap.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- DDDaryl Davis
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DDDaryl Davis
... that they're protesting against.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DDDaryl Davis
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DDDaryl Davis
So, how, how badly do they really want unity?
- BOBill Ottman
Well, this happened to us personally.
- DDDaryl Davis
Exac- precisely.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- BOBill Ottman
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-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
"... 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.
- 30:00 – 45:00
I... It really depends.…
- JRJoe Rogan
and everything-
- BOBill Ottman
I... It really depends.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or are they just getting the phone numbers?
- BOBill Ottman
It depends on the specific app. And they all kind of have different, uh, you know, kind of levels of invasiveness.
- DDDaryl Davis
And how many people read the entire policy agreement?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. How about zero? Right?
- DDDaryl Davis
Exactly.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Who the fuck's reading that?
- BOBill Ottman
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they could just send you a text message or-
- BOBill Ottman
They could.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or they can sync up to your Facebook that you have-
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause your app, they're, they're aware that we're communicating with each other, 'cause we both have each other's phone number.
- DDDaryl Davis
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Yeah.
- DDDaryl Davis
It's like, "I didn't know she liked that."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DDDaryl Davis
"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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. D- Let me ask you this, 'cause this is a big one that everybody always wants to know.
- BOBill Ottman
All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sometimes we're talking about stuff, and then I'll, I'll hear an ad.
- DDDaryl Davis
Boom. Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
See an ad for the thing we're talking about.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. …
- JRJoe Rogan
iPhones, apparently there's, like, some signal-
- DDDaryl Davis
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that's being sent with Find My-
- DDDaryl Davis
Constant chip.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So that alone is a little bit of a red flag, right?
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you use?
- BOBill Ottman
I- I use stripped Android.
- DDDaryl Davis
(laughs)
- BOBill Ottman
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I see what you use?
- BOBill Ottman
Um.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's your phone?
- BOBill Ottman
This is, this is my phone. This- this is a ... Well, this is just Android.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's just regular Android? It's not even stripped?
- BOBill Ottman
This is an un- non-stripped version.
- JRJoe Rogan
So when a privacy guy is having a phone that's tracking him everywhere he goes-
- BOBill Ottman
I have, dude, every ... We're all in the midst of this world. I have fi- ... Look at me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you got-
- BOBill Ottman
I mean, come on, you gotta give me credit-
- JRJoe Rogan
... multiple phones.
- BOBill Ottman
... for having five different phones.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do- do you have different phones because you have to check how mines is on different operating systems?
- BOBill Ottman
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
But you use an Android as your main phone?
- BOBill Ottman
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why do you do that?
- BOBill Ottman
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
What's that?
- BOBill Ottman
That's, uh ...
- 1:00:00 – 1:13:24
Right. …
- DDDaryl Davis
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DDDaryl Davis
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- DDDaryl Davis
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- DDDaryl Davis
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- DDDaryl Davis
Uh, somebody expressed th- that, uh, it could be treated with bleach, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
W- wasn't that Trump?
- DDDaryl Davis
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, he said, like-
- DDDaryl Davis
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... uh, the... Yeah, like an infusion of bleach. (laughs)
- BOBill Ottman
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...
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, who checks the fact-checkers?
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, that- that's what you need.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- DDDaryl Davis
It's either false or true.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah.
- DDDaryl Davis
It can't be mostly.
- BOBill Ottman
Well...
- DDDaryl Davis
It's like, it's like, you know, a multiple statement.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's debatable.
- DDDaryl Davis
Somebody who's been sort of pregnant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. (laughs)
- DDDaryl Davis
I mean, either you're pregnant or you're not, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
But if someone is... If there's multiple statements about an issue and some of them are correct and some of them are not-
- BOBill Ottman
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
... then it would be, like, mostly true.
Episode duration: 1:54:14
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