Joe Rogan Experience #2255 - Mark Zuckerberg

1. 0:00 – 1:45

   Why Meta is changing course on content moderation

   1. MZMark Zuckerberg0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) All right, we're up. What's happening? Good to see you.

   3. MZMark Zuckerberg0:14

      You too.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      What's going on?

   5. MZMark Zuckerberg0:17

      You know, chill week.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Yeah. (laughs)

   7. MZMark Zuckerberg0:19

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Sorta. Um, this, uh, recent announcement that you did about, uh, content moderation, how has that been received?

   9. MZMark Zuckerberg0:28

      Um, probably depends on who you ask.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       Right. (laughs)

   11. MZMark Zuckerberg0:31

       But, but, you know ... But look, I mean, I've been working on this for a long time, so, I mean, you gotta do what you think is, is right. You know, we- we've been on a long, a long journey here.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MZMark Zuckerberg0:41

       Right? I mean, it's, um ... And I think at some level, you, you start, you only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice. Right? I mean, I mean, the whole point of social media is basically, you know, giving people the ability to share, uh, what they want.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       Right.

   15. MZMark Zuckerberg0:58

       And, um, and, you know, it goes back to, you know, our original mission, is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       What do you think started the pathway towards increasing censorship? Because clearly we were going in that direction for the last few years. It seemed like, uh, we really found out about it when Elon bought Twitter and we got the Twitter files, and when-

   17. MZMark Zuckerberg1:28

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:28

       ... you came on here, and when you were explaining the relationship with FBI, where they were trying to get you to take down certain things that were true and real, and certain things they tried to get you to limit the exposure to them. So, it's these kind of conversations. Like, when did all that start?

2. 1:45 – 4:12

   From practical safety rules to ideology-driven censorship pressures (2016 & 2020)

   1. MZMark Zuckerberg1:45

      Yeah, well, well, look, I, I think going back to the beginning, or like I was saying, I think you, you start one of these if you care about, about giving people a voice. You know, I di- ... I wasn't too deep on our content policies for, like, the first 10 years of the company. It was just kinda well-known across the company that, um, we were trying to give people the ability to share as much as possible, and issues would come up, practical issues, right? So, if someone's getting bullied, for example, we'd deal with that, or we'd put in place systems to, to fight bullying. Um ...

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:13

      Right.

   3. MZMark Zuckerberg2:13

      You know, if someone is saying, "Hey," um, you know, someone's pirating copyrighted content on, on the service, it's like, "Okay, we'll build controls to make it so we'll find IP-protected content." But it was really in the last 10 years that people started pushing for, like, ideological-based censorship, and I think it was two main events that really triggered this. In 2016, there was the election of President Trump, um, also coincided with, uh, basically Brexit in the EU and, and sort of the fragmentation of the EU. And then, you know, in 2020, uh, there was COVID, and I, I think that those were basically these two events where, for the first time, um, we just placed ... we just faced this massive, massive institutional pressure to, uh, to basically start censoring content on ideological grounds. And-

   4. JRJoe Rogan3:12

      And when- Uh, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when-

   5. MZMark Zuckerberg3:14

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan3:14

      ... it first came up in 2016, did it come under the guise of the Russian collusion hoax?

   7. MZMark Zuckerberg3:20

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan3:20

      Was that-

   9. MZMark Zuckerberg3:20

      And this is the thing, I ... At the time, I was really sort of ill-prepared to, to kind of parse what was going on. Right? It's, um, you know, I, I, I think part of my reflection looking back on this is I, I kind of think in 2016, in the aftermath, I gave too much deference to, um, a lot of folks in the media who were basically saying, "Okay, there's no way that this guy could've gotten elected except for misinformation. People can't actually believe this stuff." Right? "It has to be that there's this kind of, like, massive misinformation out there." Um, some of it started with the, the Russia collusion stuff, um, but it kinda morphed into different things over time. And-

   10. JRJoe Rogan4:03

       Well, was, like- It was- He was so ideologically polarizing, right? Like, people-

   11. MZMark Zuckerberg4:07

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:07

       ... didn't want to believe that anybody looked at him and said, "This should be our president."

3. 4:12 – 6:29

   Fact-checkers, bias, and the slippery slope problem

   1. MZMark Zuckerberg4:12

      Yeah, so, so I took this i- i- in, and just kind of assumed that everyone was acting in good faith, and I said, "Okay, well, there's like- There are concerns about misinformation. We should ... Just like when people raised other concerns in the past and we tried to deal with them, okay, yeah, people p- ... N- You know, if you ask people, no one says that they want misinformation, so maybe there's something that we should do to, uh, to basically try to address this." But I was really worried from the beginning about basically becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world. Right?

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:47

      Right.

   3. MZMark Zuckerberg4:47

      That's, like, kind of a crazy position to be in for billions of people using your service, and, um, so we tried to put in place a cer- ... A- you know, a system that would deal with it, um, you know, and early on tried to basically make it so that, um ... It was really limited. We were like, "All right, we're just gonna have this system where there's these third-party fact-checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff." Right? So, um, things that are very clear hoaxes, that there's, like ... It's not, like ... Like, we're not parsing speech about whether something is slightly true or slightly false, like Earth is flat, um, you know, things like that, right? And so, so that was sort of the original intent. We put in place the system and it just sort of veered from there. I, I think to some degree it's because some of the people whose job it is to do fact-checking, a lot of their industry is focused on political fact-checking, so they just kind of veered in that direction, and we kept on trying to, to basically get it to, to be what we had originally intended, which is just, you know, it's not ... The point isn't to, like, judge people's opinions, it's to, to provide, you know, this layer to, to, to kind of help fact-check some of the stuff that seems the most extreme. But, um, it just ... You know, it was, it was just never accepted by, by people broadly. I think people just felt like the fact-checkers were too biased.

   4. JRJoe Rogan6:02

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MZMark Zuckerberg6:03

      Um, eh, not necessarily even so much an-... what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that. A lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go and fact check in the first ti- in the first place. So, I, I kind of think, like, after having gone through that whole exercise, it, um ... I don't know. It's something out of, like, you know, 1984 or one of these, uh, books where it's just, like, it really is a slippery slope.

4. 6:29 – 10:13

   COVID-era censorship demands and retaliation from the Biden administration

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:29

      Yeah.

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg6:29

      And it just got to a point where it's just, okay, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program. Um, and I guess it was probably about a few years that I really started coming to the conclusion that we were gonna need to, to change something about that. Um, COVID was the other big one, where ... That was, that was also very tricky because, you know, i- at the beginning it was, you know, it, it's like a legitimate public health crisis, you know, in the, in the beginning. And it's, um, you know, even people who are, like, the most ardent First Amendment, um, you know, defenders, the, the, the Supreme Court has this clear precedent that's like, all right, you, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. There are times when, if there's an emergency, um, your, your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control, so I was sympathetic to that at the beginning of COVID. It seemed like, okay, you have this virus. It seems like it's killing a lot of people. I don't know. Like, we didn't know at the time how dangerous it was gonna be. So, at the beginning, it kind of seemed like, okay, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this. But when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, um, you know, and like in the beginning of the cycle, okay, there aren't enough masks, masks aren't that important, to then it's like, oh no, you have to wear a mask and, you know, all the, like, everything was shifting around, I, it just became very difficult to kind of follow. And, and this really hit the most extreme, I'd say, during, it was during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out, um, the vaccine program. And now, I'm generally, like, pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative. But I think that while they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard, um, to take down things that were honestly, were true, right? I mean, they, they basically pushed us and, and said, "You know, anything that, um, says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down." And I was just like, "Well, w- we're not gonna do that." Like, w- we're clearly not gonna do that. I mean, that, that, that is kind of-

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:59

      Who is-

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg8:59

      ... inarguably true.

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:00

      ... who is they? Or who's telling you to take down things that have-

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg9:03

      Yeah, it was, it was people-

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:04

      ... that talk about vaccine side effects?

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg9:06

      It was people in the, um, in the Biden administration. I think it was, um, you know, I wasn't involved in those conversations directly, but I think it was-

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:12

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5. 10:13 – 26:10

   Moderation at planetary scale: why mistakes are inevitable (and what Meta will change)

   1. JRJoe Rogan10:13

      with your first purchase at drinkag1.com/jorogan. That's a $76 value gift for free if you go to drinkag1.com/jorogan. Seriously, get on this. That's gotta be strange too, right? Because you're running the company, but there's clearly, you're moderating at scale that's beyond the imagination. The number of human beings you're moderating is fucking insane. Like, what is-

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg10:40

      It's wild.

   3. JRJoe Rogan10:40

      ... what's a Facebook, what a, how many people use it on a daily basis? Forget about l- how many overall. Like, how many people use it regularly?

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg10:47

      It's, uh, 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day.

   5. JRJoe Rogan10:51

      That's-

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg10:52

      Yeah, (laughs) it's, no, it's wild. So yeah-

   7. JRJoe Rogan10:54

      More than a third-

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg10:54

      Yes, yes.

   9. JRJoe Rogan10:54

      ... of the planet.

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg10:55

       Yes, yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan10:55

       That's so crazy.

   12. MZMark Zuckerberg10:56

       And it's, and it's, uh-

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:57

       That's almost half of Earth.

   14. MZMark Zuckerberg10:58

       Well, on a monthly basis it is probably half of Earth.

   15. JRJoe Rogan11:00

       Ugh. So just-

   16. MZMark Zuckerberg11:02

       But, um-

   17. JRJoe Rogan11:02

       I wanna, I wanna say that though, for ... There's a lot of, like, hypercritical people that are conspiracy theorists and think that everybody is a part of some cabal to control them. I want you to understand that whether it's YouTube or all these, eh, whatever place that you think is doing something that's awful, it's good that you speak because this is how things get changed and this is how people find out that people are upset about content moderation and, and censorship. But moderating at scale is insane.

   18. MZMark Zuckerberg11:29

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan11:30

       It's insane.

   20. MZMark Zuckerberg11:30

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan11:31

       The, what we were talking the other day about the number of videos that go up every hour on YouTube, and it's bananas.

   22. MZMark Zuckerberg11:37

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan11:37

       It's bananas. The, it's like, to try to get a human being that is reasonable, logic, logical, and objective that's gonna analyze every video, it's virtually impossible. It's not possible. So you gotta use a bunch of tools. You gotta-

   24. MZMark Zuckerberg11:52

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan11:52

       ... get a bunch of things wrong.

   26. MZMark Zuckerberg11:54

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan11:54

       And then you have also people reporting things and how, how much is that gonna affect things? There's, you could have mass reporting because you have bad actors. You have some corporation that decides, "We're gonna attack this video 'cause it's bad for us."

   28. MZMark Zuckerberg12:04

       Yep.

   29. JRJoe Rogan12:04

       "Get it taken down."

   30. MZMark Zuckerberg12:05

       Mm-hmm.
6. 26:10 – 35:59

   Community Notes vs fact-checkers, bots, and foreign influence operations

   1. MZMark Zuckerberg26:10

      Well, I, I think that there are a couple of different things here. One is, this is something where I think X and Twitter just did it better than us on, on fact-checking. We took the critique around fact-checking, sorry, around misinformation. We put in place this fact-checking program, um, which basically empowered these third-party fact checkers. They can mark stuff false, and then we would down rank it in the algorithm. I think what, what Twitter and X have done with community notes, I think is just a better program. Um, rather than having a small number of fact checkers, you get the whole community to weigh in. When people who usually disagree on something tend to agree on how they're voting on, on a, on a note, that's a good sign to the community that this is- there's actually like a broad consensus on this, and then you show it. And you're showing more information, not less, right? So you're not using the fact check as a signal to show less. You're using the community note to provide real context, um, and, and show additional information. So I think that that's better. Um, for- when you're talking about like nation states, um, or people interfering, a lot of that stuff is best rooted out at the level of kind of accounts doing phony things. So you get like, whether it's like China or Russia or Iran or like one of these countries, they'll set up these networks of, of fake accounts and bots, and they coordinate and they post on each other's stuff to make it seem like it's authentic and kind of convince people. It's like, "Wow, a bunch of people must think this or something." And the way that you identify that is you build AI systems that can basically detect that those accounts are not behaving the way that a human would. And when we find that, that there's like some bot that's operating, uh, an account-

   2. JRJoe Rogan27:52

      How, how do you differentiate? How do you figure that out?

   3. MZMark Zuckerberg27:54

      It just, I mean, there's some things that a person just would never do.

   4. JRJoe Rogan27:58

      Right.

   5. MZMark Zuckerberg27:58

      So, um-

   6. JRJoe Rogan27:59

      Have you met Lex Fridman?

   7. MZMark Zuckerberg28:01

      Yes. (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan28:02

      You have, right?

   9. MZMark Zuckerberg28:02

      Yeah, yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan28:03

       He might not be-

   11. MZMark Zuckerberg28:04

       Well-

   12. JRJoe Rogan28:04

       (laughs) You might not pass your Turing test.

   13. MZMark Zuckerberg28:05

       But is he gonna take- Yeah, but is he gonna take a-

   14. JRJoe Rogan28:07

       (laughs)

   15. MZMark Zuckerberg28:07

       Is he gonna make a million actions in a minute?

   16. JRJoe Rogan28:09

       (laughs) He might.

   17. MZMark Zuckerberg28:09

       It's like yeah, yeah, probably not.

   18. JRJoe Rogan28:11

       Okay, so it's that.

   19. MZMark Zuckerberg28:12

       Um-

   20. JRJoe Rogan28:12

       It's-

   21. MZMark Zuckerberg28:12

       Well, I mean, it's-

   22. JRJoe Rogan28:12

       ... things that aren't possible?

   23. MZMark Zuckerberg28:13

       ... it's more subtle than that.

   24. JRJoe Rogan28:13

       Okay.

   25. MZMark Zuckerberg28:13

       I think like these guys are pretty sophisticated and it's an adversarial space. So-

   26. JRJoe Rogan28:17

       Mm-hmm.

   27. MZMark Zuckerberg28:18

       Um, so we find some technique and then they, um, they basically kind of update their, their techniques. But, but we have a team of their- it's effectively like intelligence, uh, counterintelligence folks, counterterrorism folks, AI folks who are building systems to identify, um, what are these accounts, uh, that are just not behaving the way that people would and how are they interacting? And, and then sometimes you, you, you trace it down and, um, and sometimes you get some tips from different intelligence, uh, agencies and then you can kind of piece together over time. It's like, "Oh, this network of people is actually some kind of fake cluster of accounts and that's against our policies and we just take them all off." Um, but-

   28. JRJoe Rogan29:02

       But how do you-

   29. MZMark Zuckerberg29:03

       ... it's-

   30. JRJoe Rogan29:03

       How are you sure? Like is there a 100% certainty?
7. 35:59 – 42:26

   Anonymity, private groups, and the migration from public posts to private chats

   1. JRJoe Rogan35:59

      We were having a conversation yesterday, Mel Gibson and I, about how that can get weird. Or was it Theo? Might have been Theo. I think it was Theo. Where that can get weird because I think, like, if you're a person and you work at some accounting firm, but you like posting about stuff, but you don't want it to come back and reflect on your life. You want to shit post, you want to post jokes, you wanna be silly. You should be able to be anonymous. I th- I think there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think just because you state your opinion, people should be able to search where you sleep. Th- that doesn't make any sense to me. But ...If you're gonna allow anonymous accounts, you are definitely gonna open up the door to bad actors having enormous blocks of accounts where they can use either AI or just programs where they have, like, specific answers. I'm sure you've seen that before. It's g- it's come up on Twitter multiple times, where they've found hundreds of sock puppet accounts tweeting the exact same thing. So, you- you've literally, word for word-

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg36:58

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan36:58

      ... even certain words in caps. Like, either keep, people are copy or pasting it, or there's an email campaign that's getting legitimate people to do it, or these are fake people. You're going to have... If you're gonna have anonymous accounts, which I think you should, because I think whistleblowers, I think the- the benefits of anonymous reporting on important things that the general public needs to know about, especially whistleblower type stuff, you have to have some ability to be anonymous. But you are all, if you're gonna do that, you're also gonna have the possibility that these aren't real people, that these are paid actors, these are paid people, or not people at all, or they're running programs, and they're doing this to try to sway public opinion about very important issues.

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg37:40

      Yeah. Um, a lot of what we've seen too, I mean, so there's the anonymous accounts. Also, just over time, I think a lot of the kind of more interesting conversations have shifted from the public sphere to more private ones. So, WhatsApp groups. Um-

   5. JRJoe Rogan37:56

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg37:56

      Private groups on, on Facebook. Um, I'm sure you have this experience where like-

   7. JRJoe Rogan38:00

      Oh, yeah.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg38:00

      ... maybe 10 years ago you would have posted your kind of quick takes on, on whatever social media you were using. Now, you know, the stuff that I post on, on Facebook and Instagram, it's like I put time into, into making sure that that's kind of good content that, that I wanna be seen broadly.

   9. JRJoe Rogan38:15

      Yes.

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg38:16

       And then, like, most of the jokes that I make are, like, with my friends in WhatsApp, right-

   11. JRJoe Rogan38:19

       Exactly, yeah.

   12. MZMark Zuckerberg38:19

       ... in, in groups. Um, so yeah, I, I think that that's sort of, that's kind of where the world is more broadly now.

   13. JRJoe Rogan38:25

       Yeah.

   14. MZMark Zuckerberg38:26

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan38:26

       No, I think so for jokes, for that kind of stuff, with, for comedians for sure. Because also, we'll say things that we don't really mean. We just say it because it's a funny thing to say. Like-

   16. MZMark Zuckerberg38:36

       I think everyone does.

   17. JRJoe Rogan38:37

       Y- for sure.

   18. MZMark Zuckerberg38:38

       Yeah, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan38:38

       Which is just a weird thing about taking things out of context, particularly on social media where people love to do that. But, there is this problem of like, let's just say that you're a country that's involved in some sort of an international conflict, and you have this ability to get out this fake narrative and just spread it widely about all sorts of things you're accusing this other government of, all sorts of things that aren't true.

   20. MZMark Zuckerberg39:07

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan39:07

       And it just muddies the water of reality for a lot of people.

   22. MZMark Zuckerberg39:12

       Yeah, and that's why that side of things, the kind of governments running these broad manipulation campaigns, I mean, we're not letting off the gas on that at all. I think every, like most- most categories of bad stuff that we're policing everyone agrees are, is bad, right? No one's sitting there defending that terrorism is good, right?

   23. JRJoe Rogan39:31

       Right.

   24. MZMark Zuckerberg39:31

       Or child exploitation or drugs or IP violations or people-

   25. JRJoe Rogan39:35

       Right.

   26. MZMark Zuckerberg39:35

       ... inciting violence or... You know, it's like most of this stuff is bad. People clearly believe that, um, that, um, you know, election interference and foreign government manipulation of content is bad. So, we- we have, this is the type of stuff that the vast majority of our energy goes towards that, and we're not changing our approach on any of that. The two categories that I think have been very politicized are misinformation, because who gets to judge, right, what's false and what's true? Um, you may just not like my opinion on something and then, you know, people think it's false, but it, but it's, uh... But I think that that one's really tricky. And the other one is, um, is basically what, you know, what people refer to as hate speech, which is, I think also comes from a good place of, you know, wanting to crack down on that, of, um, of wanting to promote more inclusion and- and- and belonging and people feeling, um, feeling good and like having a- a pluralistic society that can, um, that can basically have all these different communities coexist, but-

   27. JRJoe Rogan40:37

       Accept everyone, yeah.

   28. MZMark Zuckerberg40:38

       But I think the problem is, is that, you know, you just, all these things are on a spectrum and when you go too far on them, um, you know, I think on- on that side, we just basically got to this point where there were these things that you just like couldn't say which were mainstream discourse, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan40:53

       Yeah.

   30. MZMark Zuckerberg40:53

       So, you know, it's like Pete Hegseth is going to, um, you know, probably be defending his nomination for Secretary of Defense on, on the, uh, Senate floor. And I think one of the points that he's made is that he thinks that women shouldn't be able to be in certain combat roles. And until we updated our policies, that wouldn't have been a thing that you could have said on our platforms because it would call for the exclusion of a protected category of people.
8. 42:26 – 59:35

   Government narrative control, collapsing trust in media, and new ‘cultural elites’ online

   1. JRJoe Rogan42:26

      It's- it's all very nuanced and w- you know, you made a point earlier about the- the government...... supporting its companies, that it would be a good thing for the government to support its companies. It makes sense. It's an American company. I think the issue that we're dealing with is companies, as we're describing them, have never existed before, right? There's never been a thing like Facebook before. There's never been a thing like Twitter before, or X. There's never been a thing like Instagram. These are new things. In terms of the impact that it has on society, on opinions, on conversations, on distribution of information, there's never been a thing like this that the government didn't control. So it makes sense from their perspective, continuing the patterns of behavior that they've always exhibited, which is to have control over the media. I mean, there has been CIA operatives that have been in major newspapers forever. There's always been that. There's always been this sort of input that the government had in mainstream media narratives. They are in a position now where they're losing that. There's, uh, they've essentially lost it, and especially with this last... The push during COVID deteriorated, as you were saying before, the opinion and the respect that people have for the facts that are coming from mainstream journalism in a way that I've never seen before in my life, where a d- an enormous percentage of the population does not trust mainstream media anymore. So, well, what do they trust? They trust social media. Well, who's running that? Well, the- a bunch of people figured it out and invented it. Well, no. Fuck that. Like, we gotta crack down on that.

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg44:03

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan44:03

      Like, we've gotta get our hands on this, which is what we saw during COVID, which we saw during the Biden administration's attempt to remove the Hunter Biden laptop story from Twitter and from, um, all these different things that we saw happen, the way they contacted you guys, what they're trying to do with getting you to remove real information about vaccine side effects. Like, that- this is, like, this new attempt to crack down on this new thing, which is a distribution outlet that's far more successful than anything they've ever controlled before. And they have no control of it, right? They, they had CBS. They had NBC.

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg44:40

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan44:40

      They had, uh- when they had the New York Times and all these, Washington Post, when they were in control of narratives in that way, it was so much easier. There, there wasn't some sort of pirate radio voice that came on and said, "Hey guys, like, here's the latest studies that show this is not true. Here's why they're lying about that. Here's why they're lying about this." And now, that's what you get all day long on X. It's all day long, is like, dissolving illusions.

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg45:08

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:08

      And that's a completely new thing that probably led to Trump getting elected.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg45:15

      Yeah, I mean, the causality there is tricky. But, um, 'cause there's a lot of things. I mean, it's like-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:18

      Yeah, there's a lot of things.

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg45:19

       I mean, it's, um, I-

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:20

       But without it, he probably doesn't get elected.

   12. MZMark Zuckerberg45:23

       Um... It's, yeah, it's tough to know. I mean, it, I- I do come back to this point that there were- every major incumbent lost their elections around the world this year.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:33

       But I think that's also because of social media.

   14. MZMark Zuckerberg45:34

       But it might, it might, it might, it might be- it might be because of that revealing-

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:38

       Yeah.

   16. MZMark Zuckerberg45:38

       ... how, how it kind of... Incorrect and, and dishonest, I think, some of these governments were.

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:44

       Yes. Yeah.

   18. MZMark Zuckerberg45:45

       Yeah. So, I think that that's, that's quite possible. And I mean, I, I do think that there is this cycle that goes on where, you know, within a society, it's not just the government that has power. There's, like, certain people who are in these, like, culturally elite positions. And, you know, journalists, um, TV news anchors. Like, who are the people who people broadly trust, right? They're, they're not all in government. They're, like, um, a lot o- a lot of people, um, in other positions. It's like, who are the people that, that, uh, basically people look to? And, um, I think that's basically... It needs to shift for the internet age. And I think a lot of the people who, um, you know, people looked to before, they're kind of realizing, hey, they weren't super honest about a lot of these issues that we, that we face. And I think that that's partially why, you know, social media isn't a monolithic thing. It's not that people trust Facebook or X. They trust the creators and the voices that, that they feel like are being authentic and giving them valuable information on there. So there's, I think, gonna be just this whole new class of creators who basically become the new kind of cultural elites that people look at and are like, "Okay, these are the people who give it to me straight." And I think that that's, that's a thing that is, maybe it's, it's possible because of social media. Um, I, I think it's also just the internet more broadly. I mean, I think podcasting is obviously a huge and important part of that, too. Um, I mean, I, I don't know to what extent you feel like you kind of got to be large, uh, uh, like, because of social media or just it's- or just the podcasting platforms that you used. But, um, but I think that this is, like, a very big sea change in terms of, like, who are the voices that matter? And, you know, what we do is we, we try to build a platform that gives people a voice. But I think that there's this wholesale generational shift in who are the people who are being listened to. And I think that that's, like, a very fascinating thing that is going on, because I, I, I think that that's, like, what is- what's going on here. It's not- it's- it's not just the government, um, and people saying, "Hey, we want, like, a very big change here." I think it's just, like, a wholesale shift in saying, "We just want different people who we actually trust."

   19. JRJoe Rogan47:57

       Right.

   20. MZMark Zuckerberg47:57

       Um, who, who are actually gonna, like, tell us the truth, and like, and not give us, like, the bullshit opinions that you're supposed to say, but like, the type of stuff that I would actually- Like, when I'm sitting with my- in my living room with my friends, like, the stuff that we know is true.

   21. JRJoe Rogan48:11

       Right.

   22. MZMark Zuckerberg48:11

       Like, who are the people who kind of have the courage to actually just say that stuff? Um, I don't know. I think that that whole, like, cultural elite class needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust.

   23. JRJoe Rogan48:21

       Yeah. Um, the problem is, these people that are starting these jobs, they're coming out of universities, and- and the universities are indoctrinated into these ideas as well. It's- it's very difficult to be a person who stands outside of that and takes unpopular positions. You get socially ostracized, and people are very- they're very hesitant to do that. And they would rather just keep their mouth shut and talk about it in quiet conversation. And that's what we experienced, which is another...... another argument for anonymous accounts. I think you should have anonymous accounts. That's, I think you should be able, like if there's something like COVID mandates or some things that you're dealing with, and you don't want to get fired because of it, you should be able to talk about it.

   24. MZMark Zuckerberg49:03

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JRJoe Rogan49:03

       And you should be able to post facts and information and what you've learned. And, uh, you know, a p- anecdotal experiences of people in your family that had ba- vaccine side effects, and not worry about losing your job, which people were worried about, which is so crazy. And, you know, and you're seeing, uh, a lot of the people that used to be in mainstream media got fired, and now they're trying to do the sort of podcast thing.

   26. MZMark Zuckerberg49:28

       Hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan49:28

       But they're trying to do it like a mainstream media person-

   28. MZMark Zuckerberg49:31

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JRJoe Rogan49:31

       ... so they're like-

   30. MZMark Zuckerberg49:32

       Yeah.
9. 59:35 – 1:04:25

   Meta governance and Dana White joining the board

   1. JRJoe Rogan59:35

      I think it's a great thing for the internet. I- I was very happy with your announcement. I'm very happy that you took those steps. I'm very happy you brought Dana White aboard.

   2. MZMark Zuckerberg59:42

      Oh, he's awesome.

   3. JRJoe Rogan59:43

      (laughs)

   4. MZMark Zuckerberg59:43

      Been talking to him for a while about that.

   5. JRJoe Rogan59:44

      He's the best.

   6. MZMark Zuckerberg59:44

      I mean, he's like, talk about like an amazing entrepreneur.

   7. JRJoe Rogan59:47

      Yeah.

   8. MZMark Zuckerberg59:47

      Right? It's like, I just want... Like, because I control our company, I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me. Right? It's like in a normal corporate environment, it's like basically the CEO just tries to like, you know, they're just trying to convince the board to like let them have their job and pay them more. It's like, all right, the board, uh, doesn't pay me except for security. And, um, and I- I'm not worried about losing my job 'cause I control the majority of the voting in- in the company. So, I actually get to use our board to like have the smartest people who I can get to have around me help work on these problems. So, it's like, all right, who are the people I want? Like, I- I just want like the best entrepreneurs and people who have created different things. And like, I mean, Dana is like this guy who, I mean, he basically took the sport from being this like... I think it was viewed as like this pretty marginal thing when he got started, right?

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:36

      Oh, yeah.

   10. MZMark Zuckerberg1:00:36

       I mean, John McCain was trying to outlaw it, and-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:39

       Yeah.

   12. MZMark Zuckerberg1:00:39

       ... um, and, you know, now it's like, and I think it and F1 are the two fastest growing sports in the world. It's got hundreds of millions of people viewing it. It's like, I mean, what Dana's done with the UFC is like one of the most legendary business stories. And, um-... and the brand is beloved. And, and I think he's just, um ... So he's like a world-class entrepreneur, and he's just like a, he's got a strong backbone. And I think part of what the conversation that I had with him around joining our board was, "Okay, like, we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company. And, like, we need some, like, strong people who are gonna basically, you know, help, help advise us on how to handle some of these situations." And, um, and so, yeah. That's, uh ... But, but yeah. I mean, this is ... Running this company is not for the faint of heart. I mean, you definitely, there's definitely a lot of pressure from, from, like, all these different governments. And, and then, then it's like, "Okay, I could spend all my time doing that, but I'm not even a politician."

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:38

       Right. (laughs)

   14. MZMark Zuckerberg1:01:38

       Like, I wanna, I just wanna spend my time building things, right?

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:40

       Right.

   16. MZMark Zuckerberg1:01:40

       So, so it's, um ... So yeah. I, I think Dana's gonna be great. He's-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:44

       He's the best.

   18. MZMark Zuckerberg1:01:44

       ... a great entrepreneur.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:46

       I agree with everything you said about him. Without him, none of the UFC would've ever taken place the way it did. I mean, you needed the Fertitta brothers, they had to come in with all the money and the vision. And it's really funny because Eddie Bravo and I, you know, we've been fans for so long. Eddie Bravo and I went to a live event in the '90s. I was working for the UFC as a backstage interviewer, and he went there with Rikki Rockett. You know Rikki Rockett-

   20. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:08

       No.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:02:08

       ... from Poison?

   22. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:09

       No.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:02:09

       He's a fucking black belt-

   24. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:10

       Huh.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:02:10

       ... under the Machados.

   26. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:11

       Huh.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:12

       He's legit. Super legit. Really nice guy, too. Anyway, so Rikki Rockett and him were at the, uh, UFC, and we were talking about it in the '90s. We're like, "You know what this sport needs?" Because we were in love with it. We were like, "This s-" But we were martial artists. We were like, "The sport needs some billionaires who just throw a ton of money at it, and just get it huge." And then the Fertitta brothers come along-

   28. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:34

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:35

       ... billionaires with a ton of money, who are f- huge fans of the sport.

   30. MZMark Zuckerberg1:02:39

       Mm-hmm.
10. 1:04:25 – 1:32:33

    Zuckerberg’s combat sports path: training, ACL injury, rehab, and competing

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:04:25

       Yeah, we are. And you know what? We're also lucky that you got into jujitsu.

    2. MZMark Zuckerberg1:04:29

       (laughs)

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:04:29

       (laughs) 'Cause I think, I think that had an effect on you. You look different. When you walked in here today, you looked thicker. You look like a different guy. You do. You look like a jujitsu guy now. It's funny. I saw your neck, I'm like, "His neck's bigger."

    4. MZMark Zuckerberg1:04:43

       (laughs)

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:04:43

       Your neck is bigger.

    6. MZMark Zuckerberg1:04:44

       Good.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:04:44

       Are you using iron neck, or is it just from training?

    8. MZMark Zuckerberg1:04:46

       I, I do like, I do like iron neck.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:04:48

       Yeah. (laughs)

    10. MZMark Zuckerberg1:04:49

        But, but it's, um ... But when I started training not just jujitsu, but striking, I was like, "All right. I wanna find a way to do this where I don't, like, like, hurt my brain," right?

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:05:00

        Right.

    12. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:00

        It's like, "All right. Like, I need to ..."

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:05:01

        Yeah.

    14. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:01

        "I'm gonna be running this company for a while. I would like to-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:05:03

        Yeah.

    16. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:04

        ... you know, like, stay, stay healthy and not take too much damage." And so I think the number one thing you need to do is, well, in addition to having good partners, is, um, have a strong neck.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:05:14

        Yes.

    18. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:15

        So, yeah. So, yeah. No, I, I take that, I take that pretty seriously.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:05:18

        It's very important.

    20. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:19

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:05:19

        A strong neck is great for jujitsu as well, 'cause it's a weapon.

    22. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:23

        Yeah, yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:05:23

        Like in certain positions-

    24. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:24

        Head and arm?

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:05:25

        ... like head and arm chokes.

    26. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:25

        Yeah, head and arm. Yeah.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:05:25

        Oh, that's ... You need a neck.

    28. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:27

        Yeah.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:05:27

        Yeah, it's a weapon.

    30. MZMark Zuckerberg1:05:28

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:50:35