EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,037 words- 0:00 – 2:56
Minds.com and the pivot toward decentralization via Nostr
- NANarrator
(drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)
- JRJoe Rogan
And we're up. Hello, Bill.
- BOBill Ottman
Hey, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you, buddy. What's going on?
- BOBill Ottman
Good to see you. We're here, man. (sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You are here.
- BOBill Ottman
Everything's going wild.
- JRJoe Rogan
How was your, uh, site going?
- BOBill Ottman
It's going. We're decentralizing as fast as possible, getting it out of our hands so that... We need to protect ourselves from ourselves.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. How do you do that? Tell everybody, it's Maps.
- BOBill Ottman
Minds.
- JRJoe Rogan
Minds, rather. Sorry.
- BOBill Ottman
Minds.com, M-I-N-D-S.com.
- JRJoe Rogan
I just had, uh, Rick Doblin on-
- BOBill Ottman
R- Rick, no, I- w- yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... psychedelics on the brain.
- BOBill Ottman
I sense kinship with Maps.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, Minds and Maps, the- the two of them should go together perfectly.
- BOBill Ottman
They probably should work together.
- JRJoe Rogan
Seamlessly.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. So, basically there's protocols and there's platforms. So, you know, Twitter, Minds, um, other social networks, these are platforms. They're kind of built in the traditional social media style, which is on servers that are, you know, live in huge cloud centers. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
And, but, there's also protocols. The one that we're working with now is called Nostr, which stands for Notes and Other Stuff transmitted by Relay. So, there's no company owns this protocol. The founder is anonymous. Sort of similar to Bitcoin. And what it is, is it's all about crypto key pairs and signing stuff. So, with Nostr, it- this is all happening in the background on Minds. Every user has a cryptographic key pair, which you can download in your settings. You're the only one who gets the private key. That's your identity. Your content, your followers, all that is tied to your identity. So, when you post something, when you follow somebody, that is creating a signature on this decentralized network of relay nodes. So, we run a relay, thousands of other people run relays. Snowden's on Nostr now. He, it- it's like getting serious endorsement. And it's ama- because it doesn't have a company, you know, e- 'cause companies are choke points.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
That can, you know, we saw what happened with Napster, for instance.
- JRJoe Rogan
What happened with Napster?
- 2:56 – 3:57
Copyright, torrents, and the limits of takedowns in decentralized networks
- JRJoe Rogan
What is your opinion when it comes to copyright protection and stuff like that? Well, like if someone has copyrighted material, like say if like NBC has a show and then someone uploads it.
- BOBill Ottman
I mean, that's illegal (laughs) . So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but if it's on torrents, it's like how do you get it down?
- BOBill Ottman
You don't.
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't.
- BOBill Ottman
You don't.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, it's just, even though it's illegal-
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
... there's no recourse.
- BOBill Ottman
... and that- that- that's why like, so we have moderation. I mean, if- if a copyrighted video gets reported on Minds then, you know, we will take it down from our interface.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it can't-
- BOBill Ottman
But it still exists on-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
... the decentralized network.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, you really can't stop people from sharing it?
- BOBill Ottman
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- BOBill Ottman
No. So, you know, I think, I- I kind of have a nuanced view on copyright. Like, I think that people's work should be protected and, you know, not stolen and monetized. But at the same time, it's just like the nature of information-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
... is not compatible with copyright, really.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
Just because information wants to do what it wants to do.
- 3:57 – 11:28
Privacy, quantum fears, and how tools like Pegasus really compromise security
- JRJoe Rogan
That's one of the weirder things about what's happening with the internet, is that e- essentially, as time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult to control what- what's- what's just ones and zeros, right? As they're out there, the bottlenecks between people and information, they're getting broader. It's getting more and more difficult to stop things. And I think, as time goes on, it'll be impossible. I don't think there'll be any sto- I think, uh, in the future, like anything... I have a feeling that we'll- we'll have zero privacy in the future. I have a feeling that all of this encryption and all the stuff, I- I think it's all gonna be invalid once quantum computing is ubiquitous. I think, I just have a feeling that there's no way you can stop information when- when technology, uh, moves past where it is now to some place where basically anybody could get access to anything at any time. And then, the problem becomes, how do you control money when that happens? 'Cause money, in a lot of, I mean, a lot of it is just ones and zeros, and the only thing that stops you from being able to steal it or transfer it is encryption. When- when you don't have any more encryption and anyone kind of has access to anything that's online...
- BOBill Ottman
So, yeah, I hear you. It does seem like, over time, technology is working against privacy and it's just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
... it's- it's- it's evolving.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the best w- that's a better way to put it.
- BOBill Ottman
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
But, you know, encryption hasn't been bro- uh, uh, some encryption has been broken, but g- encryption is still good. It still works.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- BOBill Ottman
And as- as quantum computing advances, encryption protocols will advance too. So, it is, it's a race, um, and there are people trying to- trying to break it. But I- I- I heard the other day, you were mentioning the whole thing with, uh, Signal and Tucker.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
And so, I- uh, yeah, to clarify that, so f-... based on my understanding, Signal has not been compromised. Um, the Pegasus program that you were referring to does have the ability to hack people and get into their device, but once you get into the, someone's de- It's actually easier to get into someone's machine or phone than it is to hack the encryption protocol. So, if you can get into someone's phone, then you can, you probably can get into their messages.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's what they did.
- BOBill Ottman
So, that's different.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
That's different than Signal being irrelevant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not that Signal's irrelevant, it's just that the government right now has the ability to get into things no matter what. All you n- According to Gavin de Becker, who's a securities expert, he said, "All they need is your phone number."
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Signal one wa- or excuse me, um, Pegasus one was you needed a link, so someone would have to... That's the whole Jeff Bezos story. Someone-
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... sent him a link on WhatsApp, he clicked on that link. Bang, all of a sudden, they have access to his phone.
- BOBill Ottman
Right. And you have to be super sophisticated to lock yourself down-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
... to avoid that. Like, I'm sure that there are people who... Well, I know there are people who are probably less victim to something like Pegasus, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Probably less victim, but I mean, I guess with a guy like Jeff Bezos, he probably has someone scan his phone all the time, but I wonder if they could even detect Pegasus at this point.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- 11:28 – 16:46
Secret-keeping culture, classified info sprawl, and the RESTRICT Act backlash
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. I just feel like we're living in sort of a, uh, Petri dish a little bit. I, I just... Like, the type of information, like, the level of discourse on this planet right now is very, like, tampered down compared to what's really going... I mean, that's just an undeniable fact. We-
- JRJoe Rogan
Tampered down?
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. I mean, there's, uh, and this is, this is, um, verified. I, I actually... I'm a fucking dork. I read the whole Wikipedia article, but just about top secret information and, like, all the levels, and the US government produces more classified information than non-classified information.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) So even if, like, there's an audit, they could redact everything.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. And it's just all these different, uh, divisions and departments, and they all have their own protocols. So just getting a handle on it is... I mean, that's the first thing that has to get done. We have to... But no- not that we're even gonna get the real information from there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
But, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
But then there's also the national security aspect of it. It's like, you know, you have to have some things redacted because, you know, of China and Russia. Like, they can just say that and then...
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, that is the phrase that gets used.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- BOBill Ottman
It's so sad.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause they have a full, like, clampdown on their population. I mean, they, they limit the access to the internet. Their, their internet is essentially, like, China-based. Like, you... VPNs are illegal. It's like- And they're trying to do that here in America.
- BOBill Ottman
It's all backwards, yeah, with the RESTRICT Act.
- JRJoe Rogan
That is wild.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, it's getting, it's getting nasty.
- JRJoe Rogan
20 years if you use a VPN, which is hilarious.
- BOBill Ottman
And it's, it's managed by the Commerce Department. Unelected bureaucrats-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
... are the ones... See, TikTok's actually not named in that act.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
They're just letting the Secretary of Commerce decide which apps.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
That's insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's insane.
- BOBill Ottman
So, um, yeah. It, it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Dan Crenshaw posted about it. Uh, he, he, uh, he thinks it's not that big a deal, because he thinks that, you know, there's a lot of, uh, acts that get pushed and then they never get passed through. But what's disturbing is just the idea, the desire to do this, and the fact that i- uh, imagine if it did get passed. I mean, it's a, just a, a fucking full-on assault on free speech.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. I mean, it seems to be getting a toxic stigma connected to it. Did you see Jesse Watters grill Li- Lindsey Graham about it?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I didn't.
- BOBill Ottman
Oh. He didn't read it, but he endorsed it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- 16:46 – 18:51
Decentralized UX problems: Mastodon federation vs Nostr identity portability
- JRJoe Rogan
I think one of the problems that people have with, uh, whether any kind of decentralized, um, uh, app like yours or any other de- decentralized, uh, social media network is that people immediately go, "Oh, what do, what do I have to do to do this?" Like Mastodon. When people started using Mastodon-
- BOBill Ottman
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you get on it, and you're like, "What is this? There's so many servers, and how do I know what to join, and what, what, what's going on here?" Like...
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. So, well, Mines is different. Mines is actually not fully decentralized. We're a hybrid. So we run a centralized infrastructure, but we interface through delegation, delegated cryptographic event signing. We, we... That's happening in the background, but like, our app feels like a normal social media app. It's different. Mastodon, the way that that works is federated instances. So there's all of these different instances with different URLs, and there's like 20 people on each one, and you know. But there is sort of some interoperability between the instances, because the, y- you can subscribe to somebody on another instance from your instance. But it's not fully decentralized, it's federated. And the problem is that you don't own your identity. So if, if, if one of those instances goes down, you're screwed. Your, your stuff is, is gone. With... In, in Nostr, which is like an architecturally different setup, and there's other protocols similar to Nostr, but...... it doesn't matter if, if the website goes down. You just pop over to another one, upload your, your key and all your stuff is there. So, a- and that's why we like it, because it keeps us in check, because our users could, can now basically, if we fuck around, they'll bounce and they can take their stuff. And that's, you know, the... Because the fu- the social graph specifically is the key, because you spend a decade buil- you know, getting all these followers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
It's your life. People spend their lives doing this, and then to be able to just get taken out by YouTube is so devastating and unethical. It's ridiculous.
- 18:51 – 21:23
Censorship, bans, and Twitter under Elon: progress, chaos, and inconsistent reinstatements
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's really creepy too, because many of the things they took people out for have turned out to be true. Like, there was a lot of things that they were labeling as disinformation or misinformation, which are 100% proven fact now, and people lost their accounts and there's no recourse. They're not gonna reinstate you, and that was a problem also with Twitter, that for the longest time, if you said anything that was contrary to whatever the narrative was, wha- whether the government was pushing it or the CDC was pushing it, like anything contrary to that narrative, you would get fucked.
- BOBill Ottman
(laughs) Yeah. And those people are not-
- JRJoe Rogan
And those narratives were also-
- BOBill Ottman
... they're not back though. I will... I think Twitter's making way more progress than everyone else. And I'm, look, I'm ultimately an Elon fan, I'm rooting for him. I think it's vastly improved, but there's chaos currently underway at Twitter.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, sure.
- BOBill Ottman
The, uh, and, and those people have not all been let back on, and I, I don't really understand why.
- JRJoe Rogan
So who hasn't been let back on?
- BOBill Ottman
The people that we don't know. The people who's random Joe Schmoe posting a COVID study, like has he been let back on? All the thousands of people that got banned, like, it seems-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think he essentially let back on everyone who didn't do anything illegal. So-
- BOBill Ottman
Not, not Alex.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not Alex. Yeah, that's true.
- BOBill Ottman
Why?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, well, that's a personal opinion of Elon's, which I don't agree with at all.
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because they let Andrew Tate on.
- BOBill Ottman
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? It's like-
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, it doesn't mean that he's endorsing Alex to let him back on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. It doesn't. I mean, because there's a lot of people that are back on that are, you know, they didn't make that one specific mistake that Alex made, but they've said some horrific shit.
- BOBill Ottman
But the mistake that a-... The reason Alex was banned was because he confront... It was actually for something he did off Twitter. So he confronted this journalist, Oliver Darcy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
... in a line at some event. And he was, you know, being Alex Jones, sort of ranting at him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
And then Twitter said, "Oh, you're bullying this guy and this is, like, not acceptable behavior, so you-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
"... so you're gonna leave." But then when, I remember, you know, the exchange with Elon and whoever it was that was asking, asking, it was that he hadn't been let on because of the Sandy Hook stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
Which is not the same. That's not even why he was banned.
- 21:23 – 24:32
BBC interview, hate-speech metrics, and why ‘ban hate’ is the wrong framework
- BOBill Ottman
And, and did you see this crazy clip of, uh, of Elon and the BBC guy?
- JRJoe Rogan
I did. I posted it today on Twitter.
- BOBill Ottman
Oh, you did?
- JRJoe Rogan
It was amazing.
- BOBill Ottman
Amazing.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was amazing.
- BOBill Ottman
It was amazing, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause the guy kept trying to change subjects and, "Let's move on." Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, what the fuck are you talking about? He go-... Because that guy thought he could just say the narrative without specific examples. Like give me an example, and the guy had no examples.
- BOBill Ottman
That's most people who are-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
... concerned about this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, this is like a lot of people that I know that are famous that, like, publicly announced they were leaving Twitter and, you know, one of them I really love and I was like, "Why are you doing this?" I didn't even say anything to her, but I'm like, "Why are you doing this?"
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is so dumb. Like, you're, you're just doing this because this is the thing that everyone feels like they're supposed to do. "Hey, well, Twitter's kind of fucked now, so bye." No, it was fuck before. It's less fucked now. Yeah, there, are, there are people that are gonna say things like what I showed you earlier today, which is hilarious, that someone posted to Kamala Harris, like-
- BOBill Ottman
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... after she said something about the assault ban. That shit's important. It's important to have people mock people.
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, I'm sorry if it hurts someone's feelings, but that shit's important.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, and I, I, I think the way that Elon handled that was great, because obviously you need a specific example to back up an argument.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
However, I sort of think the whole premise of the conversation is wrong. This idea that... This war that Twitter is at with all the think tanks, and I think it was the Institute for Strategic Discourse that had actually compiled the information that the BBC guy was talking about. And there is information though, there is data showing, you know, hate speech XYZ has, has increased. However, this is the wrong conversation. It's not... The existence or even rise of hate in the, the presence of that content on an app is not... You're not just trying to ban hate. Banning hate does not stop hate, and this is what the peer-reviewed research shows. So, so trying to bully Elon and Twitter for... Look, even if there was a bump of hate speech since it became a little bit more free, I mean, it seems like that's a, a potentially understandable intermediary effect to happen while things reorient.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
Like we open up free speech, we'll open up the valve a little bit, okay? Because we think that this is gonna be healthy for society long term. So let it bump a little bit. We need that. We need to see what we hate or what other people hate. You need to... Like, what is it? Um, free speech let us, lets us know who the idiots are.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
Like, you, you need to identify them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, the, the best response to whatever it is, bad speech, is better speech, is better arguments. And that's... You, you literally have a debate platform, which is what Twitter essentially is.
- 24:32 – 28:44
Minds sues California (AB 587): mandated moderation categories and political definitions
- BOBill Ottman
That's- that's okay. And so, actually, so, um, we're at- we're suing California. We just filed this law 'cause the, uh, this, uh, complaint. They are trying to pass this social media law called AB 587, which requires... It's a censorship law. They're- they're- they require these policies on disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, and then they use- u- undefined. Use the words extremism and radicalization. There's no definitions, they don't require you to have a- a- a child exploitation material policy. But they do require you to have a policy on hate, which isn't defined.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
And so we're suing them with, um, with The Babylon Bee and- and Tim Pool.
- JRJoe Rogan
When did they start this, uh, when- when did they start trying to pass this?
- BOBill Ottman
It just went into effect in January.
- JRJoe Rogan
So it's now?
- BOBill Ottman
It's now. It's in.
- JRJoe Rogan
So if you live in California, what's the repercussions?
- BOBill Ottman
So it is... It's- it's targeted at social media companies.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BOBill Ottman
So basically mandating that social media companies, um, have the- submit these policies, so we would have to- we would- they would force us to write a policy on hate speech and submit it to them, and then additionally, we- we would have to, on like a biannual basis, submit analytics about all of our moderation data, which honestly, we're already transparent about our moderation data, so that's- that's largely public anyway. We have a jury system, um, and- and we have in-house moderators. But the- the- it's- it's just- it's a huge burden. Like it's crazy that they would expect companies to submit all that and then have ar- these arbitrarily... Well, actually not arbitrarily, specifically chosen categories for policies that are clearly politically charged. And Newsom, like when he came out and announced this law, it was very, you know, "We have to stop hate on social media, and misinformation, and disinformation. Protect society. Protect democracy." No. You know, you're not protecting democracy by stopping free speech.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
That is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because there's no- there's no checks and balances in place if something turns out to be accurate. Where then whoever put out that disinformation initially, y- like if someone, like if someone posts something like say masks don't work and they get banned off of Twitter, and say, "Oh, this is in response to the CDC's r-" But if it turns out that masks actually don't work, the CDC doesn't get punished, which is kind of fucking crazy. Because if they're the ones that are setting these guidelines and these guidelines turn out to be inaccurate and people get banned off of social media for arguing with these out- these- these guidelines, there's no repercussions. There's nothing... You know, they just... These people are fucked and there's no recourse.
- BOBill Ottman
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's nothing to do.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. Actually that's the policy that we do need. We need the policy for social- social networks and media companies to apologize and (laughs) -
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
... and fix their wrongs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, and also like why wouldn't the CDC be punished then? Or shouldn't they be banned?
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or shouldn't they be, like have a strike against them? But they're not. It's like (sighs) ... It's- it's really frustrating because you're dealing with narratives that are oftentimes 100% propaganda and they're not backed by science, they're not back- it's just like some things that people say. Like when Rachel Maddow was on- on television telling everybody that this vaccine stops the virus in its tracks. If you get vaccinated, the virus can no longer affect you, it can't affect anyone else. It stops and we can get out of this thing. Well, that's not fucking true at all. And that person s- there was no repercussion, other than public mockery, which continues to this day where, you know, whenever she posts something, people post that video, "What about this stupid?" And, you know, there's nothing other than that.
- BOBill Ottman
I know. They're not even inviting, um, the other side on to correct the issues. They're- they're certainly not, you know, correcting their errors and, you know. It's just not that hard to have- to admit you're wrong. I don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
Maybe it is hard for... But people get into their own egos and they just can't handle it.
- 28:44 – 30:40
Community Notes, algorithm transparency, and the Substack-link controversy
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's people that are beyond reproach and that's the problem or organizations that, you know... Like one of the things that's fascinating about Twitter now is they fact checked the Biden administration. So the Biden administration put out some tweets that were 100% horse shit and then underneath it, Twitter fact checked them, so they deleted the tweets. Which is glorious.
- BOBill Ottman
It is.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like that- that's amazing and that's never happened before.
- BOBill Ottman
Yep. Community Notes is my favorite feature on Twitter by far. It keeps everybody in check, it ha- it has a process for kind of vetting information, surfacing it to the top, you know, showing the better idea to the bad idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
And actually their, uh, their Community Notes stuff is all open source. It was a little bit disappointing though when they open sourced the algorithm the other day. Open source the algorithm, um, which step in the right direction. I'm not trying to, um, not trying to attack, but, you know, what we learned basically is that it's not the live algorithm. It's an algorithm.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you mean?
- BOBill Ottman
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
What does that mean?
- BOBill Ottman
So it's not the production algorithm, at least from what we can tell because you saw what happened with Substack.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Has- has that been reversed?
- BOBill Ottman
Um, I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it has.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, I- I don't... I would need to confirm. I- I think that the- the ability to engage with those posts got changed back, but then like Taibbi's post, you can even search them, and... But the point being is that... And I submitted a comment on their GitHub where this algorithm exists. It's like well, if this is the algorithm, why wasn't the Substack blocking showing up in the algorithm the other day?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't there. So clearly there's some sort of a link blacklist, um. And, you know, Twitter did say that this isn't the whole algorithm and they're going to be releasing more over time. But the problem is we should have seen something change-... in that, when all the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
... Substack blocking went down.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
So, yeah.
- 30:40 – 43:58
How Minds makes money: subscriptions, expensive video hosting, and revenue sharing with users
- JRJoe Rogan
How many users does Minds have now?
- BOBill Ottman
(laughs) Um, we are five million.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, that's great.
- BOBill Ottman
We actually had to take a little haircut because we, um, you know, and we're trying to be as honest as possible, because, o- basically, we had been counting that people who, you know, fail... Data is hard, and so people who had, like, tried to sign up were, in our data, showing as signed up, so, you know, back, backed it up a little bit. But the point being, we don't use any closed-source proprietary analytics tools. So, like, the temptation, when you're s- running a startup, trying to create an app, is to just go to the, you know, Silicon Valley display case of Google Analytics and Customer.io and all of these surveillance tool, uh, th- they're, and analytics tools that are very powerful and can give you very precise data about what's going on. But y- but we have refused to use any of those tools because you, when you u- put Google Analytics on your website, you are becoming Google. You are now part of Google's tentacles. And you're basically handing over all your, th- that user data to Google. And we just, like, our whole foundation has been fully open source, and just don't take shortcuts. And so, we're g- like, our growth path is, is healthy. It's happening. We're continually growing, but we're n- I'm not gonna, I, I don't care about the pace of growth as much as the quality. And so, you know, we built a whole da- Like, we do machine learning. We, we're, we're starting to do AI, but we're doing it in an open source way. So, like, in the AI wars right now, you have, like, open, quote unquote, "OpenAI," which isn't, you know, it's barely open. They don't share much of what's going on, and they shroud that in some sort of, like, "Oh, we're, you know, we need to protect you, and we need to not let this get out of control." Which maybe there's an el- element of truth to that. But then, there's a whole other part of the AI world, like with Stable Diffusion and, and Stability and, we're, all, it's all open source, and it's being done in the open, and everybody has access because, you know... Do you, as you see all this AI stuff coming about you, do you think that you should... How, how do you feel about that? Do, do you think that you should be compensated in a way? Do you, do you have any, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- BOBill Ottman
... you mentioned copyright.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, no.
- BOBill Ottman
Do you have any issues with it?
- JRJoe Rogan
No. I mean, it, it is what it is. It, there's no stopping that.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, um, I saw it a long time ago because, uh, w- this company from Canada was the first one to take, uh, all of, um, I mean, they, they essentially got a database of all my, uh, audio recordings, which is fucking thousands of them. So, there's so many hours of me talking that they could easily have me saying a bunch of things. And so, they, uh, put together, like, um, this, this recording of me saying a bunch of things that I've never said, and me talking about some subjects and doing these things, and it was a conversation that I never had.
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, they did one with me doing a podcast with Steve Jobs, which was wild, and then now, there's a new one with me doing a podcast with Sam Altman, and, uh, it's a full podcast.
- BOBill Ottman
I listened to the beginning of that one, and I think they did it tastefully 'cause they made it very clear-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
... that it's not you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a proof of concept.
- BOBill Ottman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like they're showing that this is something that can be done, and there's no flavor to it, which is interesting. Like, there's no, like, if you and I are having a conversation, it's, there's f- fun. There's, like, there's laughing, there's d- d-, you know, there's, like, there's human interaction. This was just like, question, answer-
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, and then it'd be like-
- JRJoe Rogan
... question, answer.
- BOBill Ottman
... and, and you would be like, "Oh, well, that's interesting."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
I, i- and that just kept happening. You can tell.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. You can kinda tell, but for now, for now, I mean, they'll be able to sort of code your personality in the future and sort of gauge yours and maybe even have some, you know, some w- weird interactions that are just silly that you could s- sort of program in that make it look like personality and make it look like-
- BOBill Ottman
And you can do that now. You can, uh, prompt more, like, casual attitudes-
- 43:58 – 49:23
Open-source as trust infrastructure: licensing strategies and why big tech keeps core apps closed
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Yeah. What... (sighs) what oth- what other things could be done to sort of level the playing field?
- BOBill Ottman
(sniffs) I mean, open sourcing is foundation, number one. Like, everyone's afraid... y- you know, look, there... (sighs) companies will say, "Oh, we couldn't share our secret, our secret sauce. You know, that's what- that's what makes us competitive."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
But you... i- it's just- it's- it's just really not true. Like, you can use software licenses as well that restrict people, so you can still be transparent. Like, for instance, there's this- there's this really cool app called Uniswap, which is a decentralized, uh, protocol for crypto, so you can swap tokens with the... and there's no intermediary. And they used a time-delayed GPL. G- GPL is General Public License. It's one of the most famous, um, free software licenses, but they basically said, "Look, we want... we need to be transparent. No one takes anything in crypto seriously unless it's transparent and audited. Um, so we're gonna make it so that we're showing you all the code. You can make sure we're not spying on you, doing anything sketchy, but if you're a commercial entity, you cannot fork our code and compete with us for the next two years." So, they basically were giving themselves a head start. The license that we use is the, (smacks lips) GPL V3, which says that anyone can do whatever they- they can... and people do. Peo- there are other versions of Mines around the world, people running it and having a- their own social network. But if they make changes, they have to share those changes with the world. So, it's referred to as copyleft in kind of the copyright world. It's basically that... yeah, we're... y- you have to... it's sort of a pay it forward.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
I borrowed from you. I'm gonna use that to build my business. Yeah, I'm gonna sell it. I'm gonna make a ton of money, but, you know, the development that I did, I also have to share. And there's many others. I mean, there's even licenses that are way more restrictive, but still provide the transparency. There's ones that are just read-only. Like, "Listen, you can read- read this and see it, but you cannot touch it." You know, that would be a h- a step in the right direction for Facebook, but... and the thing is that they know about this power dynamic, because they do create tons of open source tools, like React. Angu- Ang-... Facebook created React, which is, like, one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks. And, you know, Angular was made by Google, and tons of databases and backend tools. These big tech companies do contribute a ton to open source, but they only do it on the stuff that, you know, are developer tools, 'cause they know that the developers will only use their stuff if it's open source. Developers are ne- are never gonna use something that they don't have control over. So, it's like this very intentional game that they're playing. Their main apps, they do not... they're not transparent about at all, but they know that they need the developer energy. (sniffs) So, you know, I think that they should just do it, and the- the- the great thing... even though the Twitter algorithm's not, (smacks lips) you know, there yet, I think that Elon is... when I saw that happening, I was just like, (sighs) "Finally." You know? It's like, one of the big guys dipped their toe in the water.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it really has to be someone like Elon, who's eccentric and i- i- insanely wealthy, who's willing to go out on a limb for $44 billion and overpay for a company, and then sort of, like, fucking throw it upside down.
- BOBill Ottman
But it's... y- you know, it's- it's working.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's working-
- BOBill Ottman
Yes, it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and it's... you know, besides all the people that, like, publicly decried that they were done, like, that's not real. Like, the- the reality is, like, they're- that's not really that important. The real important stuff is the mass amounts of humans that are constantly sharing information, and that seems to have gone up.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, I- I think that Elon also just changed the way that the billionaires act. Like, before him, you know, who's another billionaire that shit-posts memes?
- JRJoe Rogan
Nobody.
- BOBill Ottman
I mean, just... but that ha- don't underestimate, and I kn- you don't, but the fact that he did that, I- I think it sort of paves the way for other people up on his level to start being more real.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think so?
- BOBill Ottman
I hope so. I- I th-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think most of them are cowards, and they just don't have the courage to, like, be that wild.... and just really post things they think are funny. Like, when he pu- for me, my favorite one ever was the Bill Gates one, when he posted the photo of Bill Gates next to a pregnant man emoji, and it's like, "If you ever want to lose a boner real fast..."
- BOBill Ottman
And he has a specific, uh, beef with Bill Gates because he's shorting Tesla stock.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BOBill Ottman
Um, but yeah, exactly. I mean, y- they should. It's good for, uh, people like real things. People don't like fake things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
Like, they should... Even if they were being, uh, sketchy and, like, manipulative about it, like, they should be acting real-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
... because that's what people like. I saw Bezos, uh, tweeting. Bezos, I- I- I think he wants to come out of his shell. He was tweeting some s- like, a Barry Weiss article, which was weird.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- 49:23 – 51:52
Cloud censorship and platform dependencies: leaving AWS, Parler precedent, and ‘free speech’ platform tradeoffs
- BOBill Ottman
You know? Because Amazon, we j- we just ditched Amazon. We moved our whole operation over to Oracle because they're more committed to free speech.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
Um, and, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Does Amazon censor?
- BOBill Ottman
I mean, they banned Parler.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, did they?
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah, and they have much worse terms, which, like, kind of-
- JRJoe Rogan
W-
- BOBill Ottman
... spell out-
- JRJoe Rogan
What was their justification for banning Parler? Did they make a statement?
- BOBill Ottman
It was all around the Jan6 stuff-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
... and, you know, uh, extremism-type reasons. And meanwhile, all that content is on Facebook, and on other, certainly on other platforms that were on AWS.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, do you think that that's just, uh, sort of, uh, like a PR move to ban Parler?
- BOBill Ottman
(sighs) Partially. I don't know all the specifics of, you know, the back and forth between them, and I, you know, it's... I don't, I don't know if they were war- given warning or the ability-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
But the thing is, even if they were, it's like, what Amazon would have been a- you know, "Take down this content, or you're gonna, or you're gonna have to leave." Um, you know, that would be violating what they were trying to do with-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
... free speech, which, you know, 'cause there's a, there's group of companies now that are, like, pro-free speech platforms, which is, are gaining dominance. It's awesome. You know, you got Rumble, you've got, um, Parler, you've got, um, Minds, you've got... You know, there's, there's a bunch of 'em. And... But unfortunately, the, the waters get muddied because, you know, Rumble uses Google Analytics. They are totally closed source. They don't... So, so they're, they're doing the s- some, some of the speech stuff right, which is absolutely essential, and so again, it's a huge step in the right direction. I actually had a back and forth with, um, with Chris, the- the- their CEO, and he said that he would be open to some, some open source stuff, except he's been icing me on a couple emails recently, so... Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's probably busy, though, no?
- BOBill Ottman
Oh, he's very busy. Um, but I think that this open source issue c- like, needs to be honed on. We can't, we can't just let the next wave of free speech companies be doing all the same shit that big tech was doing on the technological end. We can't just let them keep doing the surveillance, keep doing the secrecy. It's not... We're not moving forward if that is where we ultimately end up. So... But what I'm hoping...
- 51:52 – 1:28:12
Protocol integration pitch: giving users an ‘escape hatch’ without abandoning centralized functionality
- BOBill Ottman
So, we're, we're core developers at, uh... Well, we contributed a, a, a, um, what's called a NIP, which is a Nostr improvement proposal, which is the framework which could enable a site like Twitter or Rumble or any of them to integrate Nostr like we do. So, you don't have to be fully decentralized, but you can imp- you can integrate NIP-26, which is delegated event signing, so that your users have an escape hatch, and that, that's really all people want. People are gonna keep using Twitter. Just because a fully decentralized option exists doesn't mean people are gonna stop using Twitter, and I feel like that's kind of what Elon has in his head, 'cause he even... Nostr was on the l- Remember when, um, a f- like, a couple months ago, Twitter came out with this policy, like, "We're banning links to Instagram, Facebook, um, and Mastodon," and then they, they rolled it back? Do you remember that?
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't.
- BOBill Ottman
So, they did do that, um, and people were bugging out, like, "Don't-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- BOBill Ottman
And, and so they, they rolled back the policy. They said, "Okay, we're not gonna do that." Nostr was actually on that list, so, so they're aware of, of this system. But I think that they're, they're thinking about it the wrong way, because the fully dec- like, there's a, um, a fully pure Nostr client called Domus, which is super nice, um, and it is, it's a great option. But, you know, fully decentralized options don't have a ton of functionality, you know? They don't have the notifications. They don't have a lot of the discoverability of stuff. There's, there's serious limitations with fully decentralized stuff that's never going to be able to compete with more of, like, a centralized option, where you can do all this fancy, uh, data processing and whatnot. So, I think that this i- like, this idea that we need to push out d- d- decentralized competitors is really just, like, the wrong state. Like, if... Elon repeatedly says, like, "We need to maximize public trust," and I do believe that he believes that and wants that, and that's why he's trying to be more transparent. But maximizing public trust is about, you know, give people their own keys, and then, you know, that's gonna hold the company accountable, and then if, you know, Twitter messes around, they can go pop over to someone else, but they don't lose all their stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
But how would you possibly move Twitter's stuff to some other network, though?
- BOBill Ottman
Because if they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, if you-
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't... Like, say, let's, let's say if someone did something like that-
- BOBill Ottman
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you had all your posts on Twitter-
- BOBill Ottman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You've been on Twitter since 2009, and, you know, Minds, uh, gives you the ability to port your shit over to there. How the fuck would you ever wind up doing that?
- BOBill Ottman
I mean, if, if it gets integrated, then all the posts can just be...... signed, and then-
- JRJoe Rogan
If it gets integrated.
- BOBill Ottman
... it gets inte-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but that seems like that would be very beneficial to Minds, but not very beneficial to Twitter, because at the end of the day, Twitter is still a company.
- BOBill Ottman
But th- but think about the- we're a company. I mean, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BOBill Ottman
... but it builds-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it would be beneficial to you, you're far smaller.
- BOBill Ottman
Right, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like how many users does Twitter have?
- BOBill Ottman
Oh, of course. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hundreds of millions, right?
- BOBill Ottman
Right. But we- actually, there were people on our team who asked the same question to our team. Why would we, um, give people the abili- you know, uh, why, why would we let people... You know, they're just gonna go take their Minds stuff and go somewhere else.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BOBill Ottman
So it's not, like, just us. It's not-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
Episode duration: 2:52:49
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Transcript of episode AEOWKY0MCR4
