Ryan Schiller: Librex and the Free Exchange of Ideas on College Campuses | Lex Fridman Podcast #172

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Ryan Schiller, creator of Librex, an anonymous discussion feed for college communities, starting at first with Yale, then the Ivy Leagues, and now adding Stanford and MIT. Their mission is to give students a place to explore ideas and issues in a positive way, but with much more personal and intellectual freedom than has defined college campuses in recent history. I think this is a very difficult, but worthy project. Quick thank you to our sponsors, Allform, Magic Spoon, BetterHelp, and Brave. Click their links to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that Ryan, the young entrepreneur and genuine human being who quickly won me over, he's inspiring in many ways, both in the struggle he had to overcome in his personal life, but also in the fact that he did not know how to code, but saw a problem in this world and his community that he cared about, and for that, he learned to code and built a solution in the best way he knew how. That's an important reminder for us humans. Let us not only complain about the problems in the world, let us fix them. I also have to say that there's passion in Ryan's eyes for really wanting to make a difference in the world. His story, his effort gives me hope for the future. There is hate in this world, but I believe there's much more love, and I believe it's possible to build online platforms that connect us through our common humanity as we explore difficult, personal, even painful ideas together. This is the Lex Fridman podcast, and here is my conversation with Ryan Schiller.

Lex Fridman 1:48 Let's start with the basics. What is Librex? What are its founding story and founding principles, and looking to the future, what do you hope to achieve with Librex?

Ryan Schiller 1:59 Sure. Let me break that down. So what is Librex? Librex is an anonymous discussion feed for college campuses. It's a place where people can have important and unfettered discussions and open discourse about topics they care about, ideas that matter, and they can do all of that completely anonymously, with verified members of their college community. And we exist both on, uh, each Ivy League campus, and we have an inter-Ivy community, and actually this week, we just opened to MIT and Stanford. So now we have-

Lex Fridman 2:31 No, really? MIT? Yes.

Ryan Schiller 2:33 And Stanford. So we have MIT and Stanford communities, and I expect you to-

Lex Fridman 2:37 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 2:37 ... sign up for your MIT account-

Lex Fridman 2:38 That's great.

Ryan Schiller 2:38 ... and start posting.

Lex Fridman 2:40 What are, for people who are not familiar, like me actually, which are the Ivy Leagues?

Ryan Schiller 2:45 Sure. So we started at Yale, which is my, I don't know, can you call it alma mater?

Lex Fridman 2:50 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 2:50 Because I haven't technically graduated.

Lex Fridman 2:52 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 2:53 Um, my home base.

Lex Fridman 2:53 What's that called when you're actually still there? My university?

Ryan Schiller 2:57 Uh, yeah, I guess ver- I guess we'll just-

Lex Fridman 2:58 Home.

Ryan Schiller 2:59 ... call it home. It's my home.

Lex Fridman 3:00 Educational home.

Ryan Schiller 3:01 Started at my educational home of Yale, and then we moved to, um... And we could get into the story of this eventually if you'd like.

Lex Fridman 3:08 Sure.

Ryan Schiller 3:09 And then we went to Dartmouth, and then quarantine hit. We opened to the rest of the Ivy League, and now we have... And the Ivy League, um, for those who don't know is Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Penn. Whew. I got it all in one-

Lex Fridman 3:26 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 3:26 ... breath.

Lex Fridman 3:27 What's the youngest Ivy League? Penn? No. Columbia?

Ryan Schiller 3:31 I can't say. I-

Lex Fridman 3:31 Okay. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 3:32 Not, not on camera. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 3:33 We'll edit it in post. I don't know.

Ryan Schiller 3:35 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 3:35 (laughs) Okay.

Ryan Schiller 3:35 I'll just say each of all- all- all eight of them, and then you can just, like (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 3:39 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 3:39 ... cut it in.

Lex Fridman 3:40 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 3:40 I'll be like, "Penn,

Ryan Schiller 3:41 Harvard."

Lex Fridman 3:41 There's actually a really nice, uh, software that people should check out, like a service, uh, which is using machine learning really nicely for podcast editing-

Ryan Schiller 3:49 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 3:49 ... where you can y- it learns the voice of the speaker, and it can change the words you said.

Ryan Schiller 3:57 It's like some deepfake stuff.

Lex Fridman 3:58 It's deepfake, but for positive applications. It's very interesting. It's like the only deepfake positive applications (laughs) I see.

Ryan Schiller 4:05 I have a friend who's obsessed with deepfakes.

Lex Fridman 4:06 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 4:07 What's great about, I think, deepfakes is that it's gonna do the opposite of sort of what's happening with our culture-

Lex Fridman 4:13 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 4:13 ... where everyone will have plausible deniability.

Lex Fridman 4:15 Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that- that's the hope for me, is there are so many fake things out there, that we're going to actually be much more skeptical and, and think and take in multiple sources and actually, like, reason, like use common sense and use more, like, deep thinking to understand, like, what is true and what is not because, uh, you know, we used to have, like, traditional sources like The New York Times and all these kinds of publications that had a reputation. They are these institutions and they're the source of truth. And when you no longer can trust anything as a source of truth, you start to think on your own. That gives power to the individual. That goes, that takes us way back to, like, where I came from, the Soviet Union, where you can't really trust any one source of news. You have to think on your own. You have to talk to your friends.

Ryan Schiller 5:03 It's a tremendous amount of intellectual autonomy-

Lex Fridman 5:06 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 5:06 ... don't you think? It... Think about the societal consequences.

Lex Fridman 5:09 Absolutely. I mean, we see so much decentralization in all aspects of our digital lives now, but this is like the decentralization of thought.

Ryan Schiller 5:19 Yes.

Lex Fridman 5:20 You could say it's sadly, or I don't think it's sad, it's decentralization of truth, where, like, truth is a clustering thing. We have these, like, this point cloud of people just swimming around, like billions of them, and they all have certain ideas. And what's thought of as truth is almost like a clustering algorithm when you just get a bunch of people that believe the same thing, that's truth. But there's also another truth, and there might be, like, multiple truths, and it's almost w- would be like a battle of truths. Maybe even the idea of truth will, like, lessen its power in society, that there is such a thing as the truth, 'cause, like, the downside of saying something is true is...... is, uh, it's a- always the, the downside of what people, like religious people, call scientism, which is like once science has declared something as true, you can't... No longer question it. But the reality is science is a moving mechanism.

Ryan Schiller 6:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 6:21 You're constantly questioning. You're constantly questioning. And then maybe truth should be renamed as, uh, as a process, not a, not a final destination. The whole point is to keep questioning, keep questioning, keep discovering.

Ryan Schiller 6:36 Kind of like we're going backwards in time to, like, back when, back when people were sort of finding their identities and we were less, um, globalized, right? Like people would, would get together, and they'd get together around a common value system, common morals, and a common place, and those would be s- sort of these clusters of their truth, right? And so we have all these different, like, civilizations and societies across, across the world that created their own truths, you know. We talk about the Jews and the Talmud and Torah. We can look at Buddhist texts. We can look at all sorts of different truths and how many of them get at the same things but many of them have different ideas or different articulations.

Lex Fridman 7:14 Yeah. Harari and Sapiens rewinds that even farther back into, like, caveman times. That's the thing that made us humans special is we can develop these clusters of ideas, hold them in our minds through stories, pass them on to each other, and it grows and grows, and finally we have Bitcoin. So... (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 7:31 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 7:31 Uh, which money is another belief system that, um, that, uh, that has power only because we believe in it. And is that truth? I don't know, but it has power, and it

Lex Fridman 7:53 g-... uh, I'm willing to take heat for this, is they really are criticizing the administration, not the faculty, because the faculty oftentimes are the most brilliant, the b- the boldest thinkers that you th- Whenever you talk about, "We need, like, the truth to be spoken," the faculty are often the ones who are in the possession of the deepest truths in their mind in th- in that sense, and they also have the capacity to truly educate in the way that you're- you're saying. And so it's not broken, like, fundamentally, but there's stuff that, like, needs- that's not working that well and needs to be fixed.

Ryan Schiller 12:43 You kinda took my, you kinda took my words. That's what I, that's what... I thought you were gonna ask me if I think the Ivy League is broken.

Lex Fridman 12:46 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 12:47 That's totally... That's exactly it.

Lex Fridman 12:49 So you don't think... Yeah. So on the question, do you think the Ivy League is broken, like what... How do you think about it? Uh, the academia in general, I suppose, but Ivy League, still I think it represents some of the best qualities of academia.

Ryan Schiller 13:01 Yeah, what more is there to say there? I think the Ivy League is tr- producing tremendous thinkers to this day. I think the culture has a lot that can be improved. But I have a lot of faith in the people who are in these institutions. I think, like you said, the administration, and I- I have to be a little careful because, um, you know, I've been in some of these committees, um, and I- I- I have talked to the administration about these sorts of things. Um, I think they have a lot of stakeholders, and unfortunately, it makes it difficult for them to always serve these brilliant faculty and the students in the way that they would probably like to.

Lex Fridman 13:35 Yeah. I mean, okay, so this is me speaking, right? The administration, I know the people, and they're oftentimes the faculty holding positions in these committees, right?

Ryan Schiller 13:44 Yes.

Lex Fridman 13:44 But it's in- in the role of, quote-unquote, "service," they, uh, they're trying to do well, they're trying to do good, but I think you could say it's- the mechanism is not working, but I could also say, my personal opinion is, uh, they lack courage, and one, courage, and two, grace when they walk through the fire. So courage is stepping into the fire, and grace, when you walk through the fire, is, like, maintaining that, like- like, as opposed to being rude and insensitive to the lived, quote-unquote, "experience" of others, or, like, you know, just not eloquent at all, like, as you step in and take the courageous step of talking- saying the difficult thing, doing it well, like doing it skillfully. So both of those are important, the courage and the skill to communicate difficult ideas. And they often lack them because they weren't trained for it, I think. So you can blame the mechanisms that don't- that allow 19-, 20-year-old students to have more power than the entire faculty.

Ryan Schiller 15:00 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 15:00 Or you could just say that the faculty need to step up and grow some guts and- and skill of graceful communication.

Ryan Schiller 15:07 And really, the administration.

Lex Fridman 15:09 Well, the-... Yeah, and the administration. Th- that's right, that's- the administration. -

Ryan Schiller 15:13 'Cause the faculty are sometimes m- some of the most brave, outspoken people-

Lex Fridman 15:17 Yes.

Ryan Schiller 15:18 ... within the bounds of their career.

Lex Fridman 15:21 Yeah. So, uh, so that- that takes a- that's like the founding kind of spark of a fire that, uh, led you to then say, "Okay, so how can I help?"

Ryan Schiller 15:33 Yeah, and I explored a lot. I explored a lot of options. I wrote many articles to my friends, talked to them, and I realized it sort of needed to be a cultural change, sort of needed to be bottom-up, grassroots. Um, something... I knew the energy was there, because you just look at the most recent institutional assessment from Yale, this was basically the number one thing that students, faculty, and alumni all pointed to, to the administration, was cultivating more conversations on campus and more difficult conversations on campus. So the people on campus know it. Um, and you look at, like, a Gallup poll, 61% of students are, um, on Ivy League campuses, afraid to speak their minds because of the campus culture. Um, th- the campus culture is causing a sort of freezing effect on discourse.

Lex Fridman 16:27 Can you pause on that again?

Ryan Schiller 16:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:28 So what percentage of students feel afraid to speak their mind?

Ryan Schiller 16:31 61% nationally. And you're talking about, you know, places nothing like, uh, the Ivy League, where I'd say I'd imagine it would be even worse, because of just the way that these communities kind of come about, and the sorts of people who are attracted or are invited to these sorts of communities. Um, that's nationwide that college students... And- and it's going up, that college students are afraid to say what they believe because of their campus climate. So it's a majority. It's not- it's not a conservative thing, it's not a liberal thing, it's a group thing. We're all feeling it. The majority of us are feeling it.

Lex Fridman 17:08 And basically just- it doesn't even- you don't even necessarily need to have anything to say, you just have a fear. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 17:17 That's right.

Lex Fridman 17:17 So when you're, like, teaching, you know, metaphor is a really powerful thing to explain, you know, and there's j- just a caution that you feel that's just horrible for humor. Now comedians have the freedom to just talk shit, which is why I really appreciate, uh, s- somebody who's been a friend recently, Tim Dillon, who has- who gives zero, uh, pardon my French, fucks (laughs) about anything, which is very liberating, very important person to just tear down the powerful. But, you know, inside the- the academia, as a- as an educator, as a teacher, as a professor, you don't have the same freedom. So that fear is felt, I guess, by (laughs) a majority of students. It's, um, upsetting.

Ryan Schiller 17:58 And you were getting at something there, too, which is that, um, if you're afraid to speak- metaphorically, if you're sp- afraid to speak imprecisely...... it can be very difficult to actually think at all and to think to the extremities of what you're capable of, because these are the th- these are the mechanisms we use when we don't have quite the precise ma- mathematical language to quite pinpoint what we're talking about yet. This is the beginning. This is the creative step that leads to new knowledge. And so that really scares me, is that if I'm not allowed to sort of excavate these things, these ideas with people in the sort of messy, sloppy way that we do as humans when we're first being creative, are we h- are we going to be able to continue to innovate? Are we gonna continue to be able to learn? And that's what really starts to scare me.

Lex Fridman 18:43 So you've explored a bunch of different ideas. You wrote a bunch of different stuff. Uh, how did Leadbrix come about?

Ryan Schiller 18:49 It basically came to me that it had to be kind of a grassroots movement, and it had to be something that changed culturally, and it had to be relatively personal, people meeting people, people finding out that, no, I'm not the only one on campus who feels this way. I, I feel alone, and there are a lot of other people who feel alone. I, I, I believe this thing, and it's not as unpopular as I thought, you know, the- basically creating heterodoxy of thought. And it's creating that moment where you realize that your politics are personal and that your politics are shared by a lot of people on campus. And so I just started coding it. I, uh, I, I didn't have much coding experience but, uh, (laughs) went headfirst in and, uh, figured how hard could it be. You know?

Lex Fridman 19:35 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 19:36 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 19:36 (laughs) I mean, this is really fascinating. So I, I talk to a lot of software engineers, AI people. Obviously, that's where my passion, my, uh, like interests are. Uh, my focus has been throughout my life. The fascinating thing about your story, I think it should be truly inspiring to, like, people that wanna change the world is that you don't have a background in programming. You don't have even, uh, maybe a technical background. So you saw a problem. You explored different ideas, and then you just decided you're gonna learn how to build an app, like without a technical background. Like, you didn't try to... (laughs) I mean, that, that's so bold. That is so beautiful, man. Um, can you take me through the journey of, of deciding to do that, of like learning to program without a programming background-

Ryan Schiller 20:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:30 ... and building the app? Like detail, like what do you actually... Like, how do you start? (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 20:34 Sure. I mean, you want to, uh, you wanna buy a Mac. I learned, and you had to buy a Ma- I, I'm just gonna go step by step, right?

Lex Fridman 20:41 Okay.

Ryan Schiller 20:41 I'll be as dumb as possible-

Lex Fridman 20:43 Okay.

Ryan Schiller 20:43 ... because it was, it was truly, it was truly, you know-

Lex Fridman 20:46 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 20:46 ... like leading by your feet.

Lex Fridman 20:48 So you needed a computer for this?

Ryan Schiller 20:49 Well, yeah. I had a PC at the time, uh, and I was Android at the time, and I realized, you know, I, I realized it should be like an iOS app. And so, um, yeah, that was a decision. But, you know, I knew kids these days, they're always on their phone, and, you know, I wanted you to be able to say a passing thought, you know, in class, make a passing... Like, you're walking around and you have a thought, and you can express it. Or you're in the dining hall and you have your phone out, you can express it. So it was clear to me it should be an iOS app.

Lex Fridman 21:15 By the way-

Ryan Schiller 21:15 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:16 ... Android is great.

Ryan Schiller 21:17 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 21:17 You should definitely check out our-

Ryan Schiller 21:18 We also are now available on Android.

Lex Fridman 21:20 Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Schiller 21:20 But we'll get there, um, for the new Android users from MIT, Stanford, or the Ivy League. So back to how it happened. So I realized I needed a Mac, so went out and got-

Lex Fridman 21:30 Okay.

Ryan Schiller 21:32 ... a Mac. Um, and I realized I needed an iPhone for testing eventually, got an iPhone. Um, so those were the real roadbo- blocks to start with. Um, from there, I mean, there's, there's almost too much information out there about programming. The question is like, what, where do you start, and what's gonna be useful to you? And I, I... My first thought was I should look at some Yale classes, but it became very clear very quickly that that was not the right place to start.

Lex Fridman 21:56 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 21:57 Um, that would probably be the right place to start if I wanted to get a job at Amazon, but-

Lex Fridman 22:01 Right.

Ryan Schiller 22:02 ... my goal was slightly different.

Lex Fridman 22:03 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 22:03 And I, I, I definitely had it in mind that what I was trying to make was, I'm trying to prove out an idea. I'm not trying to make a finished product. I'm just trying to get to the first step, 'cause I figured if I keep, if I keep getting to the next step, at least I won't die now. You know?

Lex Fridman 22:21 Okay.

Ryan Schiller 22:21 Like, at least things will move forward. I'll learn new things. Maybe I'll meet new people. I'll show a degree of seriousness about what I'm doing, and things will come together. And that is, as you'll see, what ends up happening. Um, so I start with Swift, right? And I find this video from this Stanford professor that had like a million views that was like, how to make basically Swift apps, like perfect.

Lex Fridman 22:42 And you just like, uh... So you got this Mac and you, what, like go to google.com, and you type in-

Ryan Schiller 22:48 Download Xcode, and then-

Lex Fridman 22:49 Xcode?

Ryan Schiller 22:50 Yeah. And then I typed in on YouTube, like, "Stanford iOS Swift," enter. (laughs) First YouTube video, has a million views. I'm like, "It has to be good at Stanford, has a million views."

Lex Fridman 23:01 (laughs) Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 23:02 Uh, I got lucky. He, he's... I mean, that turned out to be a very good video.

Lex Fridman 23:06 It was basically like an introductory course to Swift?

Ryan Schiller 23:09 Yeah. I mean, you say introductory. I think most of the people in that class, um, probably had a much better background than I did and-

Lex Fridman 23:15 They're software developers probably.

Ryan Schiller 23:17 Yes.

Lex Fridman 23:17 They're not computer scientists.

Ryan Schiller 23:18 And it was slow for me. Um, I, I don't think I realized it fully at the time just how far behind I was from the rest of the class, 'cause I was like, "Wow, seems like people are picking this up really quickly."

Lex Fridman 23:29 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 23:29 Um, so it took a little longer, and you know, a lot of time on Stack Overflow. But eventually, I made a truly minimal viable product, the most minimal. Like we're talking, you know, put text on screen, add text to screen, comment on top of text, you know, make a post-

Lex Fridman 23:45 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 23:46 ... uh, make a response. And anyone with a Yale email can do this. And you plug it into a ser- an, a cloud server, and you verify people's accounts, and you, you're off. You have-

Lex Fridman 23:59 So you had to figure out how to... like the whole idea of like having an account, so there's a permanence. Like you can create an account-... with an email.

Ryan Schiller 24:08 Verify it?

Lex Fridman 24:09 Verify it. Okay. So that, that's not, you know ...

Ryan Schiller 24:12 And that's literally how I thought about it, right? Like, "So what do I need to do?" And I'm like, "Well, first thing I need is a login page."

Lex Fridman 24:18 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 24:18 And I'm like, "How to make a login page in Swift." I mean, it's that easy. If someone ... This has been done before. Of course, I-

Lex Fridman 24:24 And then the first page that pops up is probably a pretty damn good page when you Google it.

Ryan Schiller 24:28 It wasn't that bad. It wasn't perfect, but like maybe it got me 80% of the way there.

Lex Fridman 24:32 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 24:33 And then I came into some bugs. And then, you know, I asked Stack Overflow a few questions. And then I got a little further, and then I found some more bugs. And then I'm like, "Maybe this isn't the right way to do it. Maybe I should do it this way." And-

Lex Fridman 24:44 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 24:44 ... I'm sure my code isn't great, but the goal isn't to make great code. The great wasn't, the goal wasn't to make scalable code. It was to understand, is this something my friends will use? Like, what is the reaction gonna be if I put it in their hands? And am I capable of making this thing? And ...

Lex Fridman 24:59 That's awesome. And so you're just focusing on the, uh, the experience, like actually just really driving towards that first step, figuring out the first step and really driving towards it. Of course, you have to also figure out, like, c- concept of, like, storage, like database.

Ryan Schiller 25:13 You know something funny?

Lex Fridman 25:14 What's that?

Ryan Schiller 25:15 I just made the database structure with no knowledge of databases whatsoever. And I start showing it to my friends who have an experience in CS, and they're like, "You used a heap. That's so interesting."

Lex Fridman 25:25 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 25:25 They're like-

Lex Fridman 25:26 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 25:26 ... "Why did you decide to store it in this way?" I'm like, "Bro, I don't even know what a heap is."

Lex Fridman 25:30 Yeah. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 25:31 (laughs) I just did it 'cause it works. Like, I'm tryna make calls and stuff. And they're like, uh, yeah, they're like, "The hierarchy is really like..." And I'm like, "What?" (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:40 Well, th- there's a deep profound lesson in there that, uh, I don't know how much you've interacted with computer science people since, but they tend to optimize and have these kinda discussions. And what leads, what results is over-optimization. It's like worrying, "Is this really the right way to do it?" And then you go ... As opposed to doing the first thing on Stack Overflow, you go down this, like, rabbit hole of what's the actual proper way to do it, and then you're like, you wake up five years later working at Amaz- uh, working at Amazon-

Ryan Schiller 26:09 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 26:09 ... because you've never finished the login page. Like, it's kinda hilarious. But that- that's a really deep lesson. Like, just get it done. And, and there's (laughs) like, "What- what's a heap, bro?" is- is the right ... That should be a T-shirt. Uh, that- that's really the right approach to building something that ultimately creates an experience, and then you iterate, uh, eventually. That's how the great, some of the greatest software products in this world have been built, is you create it quickly and then just iterate. What was, by the way, in your mind the thing that you were chasing as a prototype? Like, what, what was the first step that it feels like something is working? Like, did you interacting with another friend?

Ryan Schiller 26:56 Yeah. I think the first step was like ... It's one thing to tell someone about an idea, but it's another thing to put it in their hands and kinda see, like, the way their l- their eyes kind of look.

Lex Fridman 27:07 Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Schiller 27:07 Um, and when I'd go ... I'd, I'd walk around across campus, which is part of Yale, and I'd literally just go up to people and run up to them and be like, "Try this, try this. You gotta try this." This is, this is pre-quarantine, by the way, of course.

Lex Fridman 27:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 27:18 This would never be the same post-quarantine, but like, "You gotta try this, you gotta try this." Like, "What is it?" And I'd be like ... And I'd explain, "It's like an anonymous discussion feed for the, for our Yale campus."

Lex Fridman 27:27 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 27:27 And you'd see their gears turning, and they just ... Some people would be like, "Not interested."

Lex Fridman 27:32 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 27:32 I'm like, "Fine. Not your target demographic. I get it. You'll come eventually." Um, but some people, like you could see it, they got it. They're like, "Yes." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 27:42 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 27:42 And that's when I was like, "Okay, okay." There is ... And you don't need, I mean, you don't need 50% of people to like it.

Lex Fridman 27:50 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 27:50 You need what, 5%, 10% to love it, and then they'll tell 5%, 10%.

Lex Fridman 27:55 Yeah, word of mouth. Yup.

Ryan Schiller 27:56 And you're good. Um, of course, the first version was very, very crappy, but seeing people trying despite all the crappiness wasn't, it was sort of enough to be the first step. And, you know, since, since then, all of my code's been stripped out. I now, um, have friends who basically have told me, "Don't bother with the coding part."

Lex Fridman 28:16 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 28:16 "You do, you do the rest. You just make sure that we can code," because they wanna code. Uh, great.

Lex Fridman 28:20 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 28:20 I mean, I'm not an engineer.

Lex Fridman 28:21 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 28:21 I never intended to be an engineer, and there's a lot to do that's not engineering.

Lex Fridman 28:24 Yes.

Ryan Schiller 28:25 But the point was just to validate the idea, so to speak.

Lex Fridman 28:30 When was the moment that you felt like, "We've created something special"? Maybe a moment where you're proud of, that this is a ... This is, this has the potential to actually be the very, uh, implementation of the idea that I initially had.

Ryan Schiller 28:49 Ooh, there's so many, there's so many little moments. It's like ... And I bet there'll still be moments l- in the, in the future that make, that make it hard to, like, totally say, like-

Lex Fridman 28:59 Yeah, we should say this is the v- this is still very early days of Librex.

Ryan Schiller 29:02 It's been a year. Yeah. It's literally only-

Lex Fridman 29:04 It's only, it's only been a year?

Ryan Schiller 29:05 Since we've had, like, actual, like, a lot of people on the app, yeah, about a year.

Lex Fridman 29:09 Oh, wow. Okay.

Ryan Schiller 29:10 I mean, there are some crazy moments I could talk about sort of going to Dartmouth, 'cause it's one thing to, like, get some traction at your school.

Lex Fridman 29:17 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 29:17 People know you, and you know, it's, it's your school, you know. It's another thing to go to another school and s- where no one knows you and sign up 90% of the campus overnight.

Lex Fridman 29:28 Wow. So tell me that story. You're invading another territory.

Ryan Schiller 29:31 It was literally like that. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 29:33 Did you buy, like, a Dartmouth sweatshirt? (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 29:36 Uh, purposefully ... I didn't want to defraud any- defraud anyone-

Lex Fridman 29:39 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 29:39 ... but I was purposefully nondescript in my clothing.

Lex Fridman 29:42 Okay. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 29:42 Yeah. No Yale stuff, no Dartmouth stuff. Um, just blend in. Um, I'll, yeah, I'll, I'll go back there. So what happened was ... This was like March of last year, um, so almost, almost a year ago today. And I really wanted to see if we could go from sort of one campus to two campuses. So I didn't know anyone at Dartmouth's campus, but I kind of ...... had some cold emails, some warm-ish emails. Um, and I went to people and I was like, basically, "Can I sleep on your floor for two days? During finals period."

Lex Fridman 30:19 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 30:19 (laughs) I had a lot of people who said, "This is crazy." Like, "No one's gonna ... No one wants to download an app during finals period, a social app-"

Lex Fridman 30:25 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 30:25 "... during finals period." But I emailed a few people and I was like, you know, "Can I sleep on your floor?" And one of them was crazy enough to say, "Sure, come to my, come to my dorm!"

Lex Fridman 30:34 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 30:34 "I'll ... I have a nice floor."

Lex Fridman 30:36 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 30:36 Um, and he ended up ... Today, he's still really close, (laughs) he's a really close friend. But, anyway. I take a train knowing nothing about this guy, besides his first and last name. And I arrive, and Dartmouth is really, really remote. Way more remote than you think. To the point where I'm like, "It's f-" He's like, h- he warned me. He's a really hospitable guy. He warned me, like, "It's gonna be hard to get to campus from the train station because it's really remote." And I'm like, "I'm sure it's fine, I'll just get an Uber."

Lex Fridman 31:06 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 31:06 There are no Ubers in Hanover.

Lex Fridman 31:08 (laughs) .

Ryan Schiller 31:09 (laughs) What do you think this is, New York?

Lex Fridman 31:10 This is New Hampshire. So, uh, Connecticut ... I mean, uh, Yale is pretty remote as well, no?

Ryan Schiller 31:16 Yeah. Yale is, um ... Well, I mean, Yale's in New Haven, which is a real city. It has-

Lex Fridman 31:20 A city.

Ryan Schiller 31:20 ... Ubers, it has food, it has culture.

Lex Fridman 31:23 (laughs) So good.

Ryan Schiller 31:23 It has a nightclub even.

Lex Fridman 31:24 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 31:25 Like, we're talking about a real city. Like-

Lex Fridman 31:26 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 31:26 ... it's not New York, it's not Philadelphia where I'm from, but it's a city. Uh, New Hampshire is something very different.

Lex Fridman 31:33 Yeah. Beautiful campus, I'm sure.

Ryan Schiller 31:35 Beautiful. Oh my gosh. I could tell, I could talk so much about ... I was blown away by Dartmouth. I, I started wondering, like, why I didn't apply.

Lex Fridman 31:43 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 31:43 (laughs) Legitimately. Um, between the people and the culture, it was, it was a bea- it was a beautiful vacation. So I arrive there, no Uber, but eventually I call this guy who's like the only guy who can get you to Dartmouth, and it takes a couple of hours, but we get there. I sleep on this guy's floor. I wake up, I ask him if there's any printing. He's like, "Oh, Dartmouth happens to have free printing in the copy room." Um, I print out, like, 2000 posters.

Lex Fridman 32:07 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 32:08 Until the guy in the copy room literally goes to me, he's like, "Kid, I don't know what you're doing, but you need to get outta here."

Lex Fridman 32:13 (laughs) Yes.

Ryan Schiller 32:14 I'm like, "All right. I'm go- I'm going, I'm going." Um, I just-

Lex Fridman 32:17 Found the limits.

Ryan Schiller 32:17 I know- Yeah. I found the limit. Um, and I think a lot of startups is about find- finding the limits.

Lex Fridman 32:22 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 32:22 Maybe that's a little piece of advice.

Lex Fridman 32:24 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 32:24 Um, socially.

Lex Fridman 32:25 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 32:25 He's like, "You gotta get outta here." And I, um, I then go to every single dorm door. I put a poster under every single dorm tour advertising the app with the, with the QR code.

Lex Fridman 32:36 Yeah. Awesome.

Ryan Schiller 32:38 I walk around campus saying hi to everyone and telling them about the app. I go from table to table in the cafeteria, introduce myself, say hi, and tell them to download the app. It's an exhausting day, so many steps, so many crouching down to slip the poster under the dorm door. My legs were burning. Um, but by the end of it, you know, 24 hours later, I'm sitting on a ... I'm sitting in a bus and I'm just pressing the refresh button on the account creation panel. It's like going up by hundreds.

Lex Fridman 33:06 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 33:06 And I'm like, "Oh my gosh. (laughs) There's something-"

Lex Fridman 33:09 The word of mouth is working, in a sense. I mean, certainly your, like, uh, initial seed is, uh, is powerful.

Ryan Schiller 33:14 Just, just a piece.

Lex Fridman 33:15 Yeah, but then the word of mouth is what, uh, carries it forward. And w- and what was the explanation you gave to the app? It's, uh ... Is anonymity a fundamental part of it? Like, saying, "This is a chance for you to speak your mind about your experiences on campus"?

Ryan Schiller 33:32 Yeah. I think people get it. You don't need to ... Y- what I've realized is you don't need to tell people why to try it.

Lex Fridman 33:38 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 33:38 They know.

Lex Fridman 33:39 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 33:40 It, it, y- they-

Lex Fridman 33:41 There's a hunger for this. Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 33:42 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 33:43 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 33:43 Y- so I, all I do is I'm very factual, I said. And this is where I kind of ended up coining the, kind of, the line that I now use to say it, because I said it so many times (laughs) in those 24 hours. I just said, "It's an anonymous discussion feed for Dartmouth." And they're like, "Yes." (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 34:02 (laughs) .

Ryan Schiller 34:02 Like they've been waiting for it. You know, some people are more skeptical-

Lex Fridman 34:05 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 34:05 ... but a lot of people were like, "Great, I'm excited to try this. I'm excited to meet people and connect and ..." I mean, the way Dartmouth's taken to it is incredible. Everything from (laughs) pro- professors writing poems during finals period to be like, um, "Good luck in finals period. You're gonna rise like a phoenix," or whatever, to like ... Yeah, it's crazy. To ... I heard about, uh, two women meeting on Librex and starting a finance club, um, at Dartmouth. Two significant others, um, meeting. Uh, there's an article recently written up at Yale as well about two queer women who met on Librex and started a relationship, which was pretty ... It was pretty interesting to s- see. People throwing parties pre-COVID.

Lex Fridman 34:47 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 34:47 Um, yeah, it was just amazing to see how when you allow people to be vulnerable and social, they connect. They ... People have this natural desire to connect.

Lex Fridman 34:55 Yeah. When y- when you have ... When they have a natural desire to have a voice, and then when that voice is, is uh, paired with freedom, then you could truly express yourself and there's something re- liberating about that. And in that sense, uh, you're like, you're connecting as your true self, whatever that is. What are the most powerful conversation you've seen on the app? You mentioned like people connecting.

Ryan Schiller 35:21 The hard part about that is the sorting, you know? Figuring out which one-

Lex Fridman 35:24 Sorting. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 35:24 ... which one am I gonna put at the top.

Lex Fridman 35:25 Um, mental sorting out. Uh, just something that stands out to you. Sorry, I don't mean to do like the top 10 conversations ever of all time ever on the app. I just mean like stuff that you remember that stands out to you.

Ryan Schiller 35:35 I remember this one really amazing com- comment from this ... He was a Mexican international student who spoke out and he ... This, this, this post was super edgy, but yet it got hundreds and hundreds of upvotes within the Yale community. It was a Yale community specific post. And we should point out that there's a school specific community now, and there's an all Ivy community.

Lex Fridman 35:59 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 36:00 Um, so this was specifically in the Yale community. And this was a little while ago, but it stuck with me. This Mexican, um, international student comes to Yale.... and he starts talking about his experience in the, um, La Casa, which is the Mexican, Latinx as they would say, Cultural Center at Yale, and how he doesn't feel welcome there because he's Roman Catholic basically, and international, and how he doesn't feel like he fits with their agenda, and as a result, this place that's supposed to be home for him, he feels outcasted and feels more alone than he does anywhere else on campus.

Lex Fridman 36:37 That's powerful. Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 36:38 That was powerful to me. Yeah. It's hearing someone, someone who should be feeling supported by this culture say, "Actually, this is not doing anything for me." Like, "This is not helping me."

Lex Fridman 36:51 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 36:51 "This is n- th- this is not where I feel at home."

Lex Fridman 36:55 So (sighs) what do you make of anonymity? 'Cause it seems to be a fundamental aspect of the power of the app, right? But at the same time, anonymity on the internet, uh, so it protects us, right? It gives us freedom to have a voice, but it can also bring out the dark sides of human nature, like trolls or people who want to be malicious, want to hurt others f- purely for the joy of hurting others, being cruel for fun and going to the dark places. So like what do you make of anonymity as a fundamental feature of social interaction, like the pros and the cons?

Ryan Schiller 37:37 Yeah. Just to break that down a bit, I would say a lot of those same things about a place like Twitter where people are very u- un-anonymous.

Lex Fridman 37:43 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 37:43 Um, having said that, of course there's a different sort of capacity people have when they're anonymous, right? Well, in all- in all different sorts of ways. So what do I make of anonymity? I think it can be incredibly liberating and allow people to be incredibly vulnerable and to connect in different ways, both on politics, and there was a lot to talk about this year regarding politics.

Lex Fridman 38:04 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 38:05 And, you know, personally, vulnera- being vulnerable, talking about relationships and mental health. I think it allows people to have a community that's not performative. And of course there's this other side where, you know, people can sometimes break rules or say things that they wouldn't otherwise say that people don't always agree with or that people might find repugnant. And to an extent, these can facilitate great conversations, and on the other hand, we have to have moderation in place and we have to have community guidelines to make sure that the anonymity doesn't overwhelm the purpose, which is-

Lex Fridman 38:40 Right.

Ryan Schiller 38:40 ... that anonymity... First of all, anonymity is a tool f- in LibreX. It was not the purpose of LibreX. It is a way that we get towards these authentic conversations given our campus climate. And second of all-

Lex Fridman 38:54 So how-

Ryan Schiller 38:54 ... I would say it's a spectrum. It's not just, it's not just LibreX is anonymous, right? Um, because LibreX isn't totally anonymous. Everyone's a verified Ivy League student.

Lex Fridman 39:07 Right.

Ryan Schiller 39:07 You know exactly what school everyone goes to. You only have one account per person at Yale, meaning if, um, meaning that, I mean, what that amounts to is people have more of an ownership in the community and people know that they're connected and they have a common vernacular. So the anonymity is a scale and it's a tool.

Lex Fridman 39:25 But you can also trust... I mean, this is the difference between Reddit anonymity where you can easily create multiple accounts. When you have only one account per person, or at least it's very difficult to create multiple accounts, then you can trust that the anonymous person you're talking to is a human being.

Ryan Schiller 39:45 Not a

Ryan Schiller 39:46 bot.

Lex Fridman 39:46 I try to be completely un-anonymous, uh, now in my all public interactions. I try to be as real in every way possible, like zero gap between private me and public me.

Ryan Schiller 39:59 Why, why exactly did you... It seems like this is a intentional mission. What made you want to sort of bridge that gap between the private sphere and public sphere? 'Cause that's, that's unique. I know a lot of intellectuals who would make a different decision.

Lex Fridman 40:13 Yeah. Interesting. I had a d- a discussion about, with Naval about this actually, with, with a- with a few others that have a very clear distinction between public and private.

Ryan Schiller 40:24 Something I'm struggling with, by the way, personally, and thinking about.

Lex Fridman 40:32 So one on the very basic surface level is, uh, if you carry with yourself lies, small lies or big lies, it's extra mental effort to remember what you, uh, like t- t- to remember what you're supposed to say and not supposed to say. So that's on a very surface level of like, it's just easier to live life when you are, have, th- the smaller the gap between the private you and the public you. And the second is, I think for me from an engineering perspective, like if I'm dishonest with others, I will too quickly become dishonest with myself. And in so doing, I will not truly be able to think deeply about the world and come up and build revolutionary ideas. There's something about honesty that feels like it's that first principle's thinking that's almost like overused as a term, but it feels like that requires radical honesty, not radical asshole-lishness, but radical honesty with yourself. With yourself. And I, feels like it's difficult to be radically honest with yourself when you're being dishonest with the public. And also, I have a nice feature, honestly, that, um, in this current social context, so we can talk about race and gender and, uh, what, what are the other topics that are touchy?

Ryan Schiller 42:00 Ethnicity and, um, nationality.

Lex Fridman 42:03 All those things. I mean, like-

Ryan Schiller 42:05 Family structure.

Lex Fridman 42:06 I, maybe I'm ineloquent in the way I speak about them, but I honestly, when I look in the mirror-... like, I'm not deeply hateful of a particular race, or even just hateful of a particular race. Um, I'm sure I'm biased and I've tried to, like, think about those biases and so on. And also, I don't have any creepy shit in my closet about women.

Ryan Schiller 42:27 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:27 Like, I haven't done... It seems like everybody, uh, I, it seems like a lot of people got, like, did a lot of creepy stuff in their life. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 42:36 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:36 And I, I just feel like that's, uh, really nice and liberating. And especially now, you know, it's funny because I've gotten a bit of a platform, and, uh, I think it all started when I went... Uh, there's a, a fame- com- female comedian, Whitney Cummings, and, you know, I've, I've gotten a lot of amazing women writing me throughout.

Ryan Schiller 42:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 42:57 But when, when I went on Whitney, it was like the number of DMs I get on Instagram-

Ryan Schiller 43:03 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 43:04 ... from women is just ridiculous. And, uh, I think that was a really important s- moment for me is like, I, I speak and I feel, you know, I really value love, longterm monogamy with, like, one person. And it's like, I could see where a lot of guys would now continue that message in public, and in private just start sleeping around. And so, like, that's an important statement for me mentally is like, nope. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 43:33 The straight and narrow?

Lex Fridman 43:34 Just, just go straight and... And not out of fear, but out of, like, principle, and just, like, live life honestly. And I just, uh, I feel like that's truly liberating, uh, as a human being. Forget public, all of that, because then I feel like I'm on sturdy ground when I say, uh, difficult things, and at the same time, this is... Sorry, I'm b- I'm ranting on this. I apologize.

Ryan Schiller 43:57 I'm interested personally.

Lex Fridman 43:58 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 43:59 So keep going.

Lex Fridman 44:00 (laughs) I, I honestly believe in the internet, in, in people on the internet, that when they hear me speak, they can see if I'm full of shit or not. Like, I won't be able to fake it.

Ryan Schiller 44:16 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:16 Like, they'll see it through. Uh, yeah, I... (laughs) So like, uh, d- I feel like if you're not lying about stuff, you have the freedom to truly be yourself, and the, and the internet will figure it out, like will figure who you are, uh-

Ryan Schiller 44:32 And people have a natural tendency to be able to just tell bullshit, and it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, right?

Lex Fridman 44:37 Exactly.

Ryan Schiller 44:38 Like, why, why wouldn't, why... Like, of all the things that we could evolve to be good at, being able to detect honesty seems like one that would be particularly valuable, especially in the sorts of societies we developed into.

Lex Fridman 44:52 And then also from a selfish perspective, like a success perspective, I think there's a lot of folks that have inspired me, uh, like d- Elon is one of them, that shows that there's a hunger for genuineness. Like, you can build a business as a CEO and be genuine and, like, real, and do stupid shit every once in a while, as long as it's coming from the same place of who you truly are. Like, Elon's inspirational with that. And then there's a lot of other people I admire that are counter inspirations in the sense, like, they're very formal. They hold back, uh, a lot of themselves, and it's like, I know how brilliant those people are, and I think they're not being as effective of leaders, public faces of companies, m- uh, as they could be. I mean, to be honest, like, not to throw shade, but I will. It's like Mark Zuckerberg is an example of that. Uh, uh, Jack Dorsey's also a bit of an example of that. I like Jack a lot. I've talked to him a lot. I will talk to him more. I think he's a much more amazing pe- person than he conveys through his public presentation. I think a lot of that has to do with PR and marketing people having an effect. Listen, it's difficult. I think it's really difficult. It's probably s- many of the same difficulties you will face, is the pressures. Um, but it's, it's hard to know what to do, but I think as much as possible as an individual, you should try to be honest in the face of the world and the company that wants you to be more polished, and that being more polished turns you into a politician, and a politician eventually turns you into being dishonest, dishonest with the world and dishonest with yourself.

Ryan Schiller 46:39 Something I noticed, which was the peop- of the people you mentioned, those things have had ra- ramifications in terms of letting things go too far, get out of hand.

Lex Fridman 46:48 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 46:48 And you wonder, like, it's an aspect of lying, right? You say one lie, goes to another lie. You push it down, does- doesn't matter. You can talk, figure, figure it out later. You can figure it out later. Pretty soon, you've dug a pretty big h- hole.

Lex Fridman 47:03 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 47:03 And I think if we look at Twitter and we look at Facebook, I think it goes without saying what sorts of holes have been dug because of, perhaps because of a lack of honesty that goes all the way up to the leaders.

Lex Fridman 47:15 So yeah, there's two problems. Within the company, it d- it doesn't make you as effective of an, a leader, I think. That's one. And two, for social media companies, I think people need to trust... Like, it doesn't have to be the CEO, but it has to be one... Uh, like, this is how humans work. We wanna look to somebody where, like, I trust you. (laughs) If you're going to use a so- social media platform, I think you have to trust s- the set of individuals working at the top-

Ryan Schiller 47:47 Worked for it.

Lex Fridman 47:47 ... of that social n- uh, social-

Ryan Schiller 47:48 100%. Uh, something I realized really quickly, one of the lessons, uh, throughout the startup was that people don't totally connect to products as much as they connect to people.

Lex Fridman 47:57 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 47:58 And-

Lex Fridman 47:59 Beautifully put.

Ryan Schiller 48:00 I mean, I, I don't know if you've, how much you spent on Lebrex. You've only been here the last couple wee- well, like la- last week, but I mean, I love the product, and one of the, uh, one of the aspects of me loving the product is that I was super active, and I've been super active-

Lex Fridman 48:15 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 48:15 ... throughout the entire time.

Lex Fridman 48:17 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 48:17 And the amount of support I've received has made that very easy to do-

Lex Fridman 48:21 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 48:21 ... um, from the community and the fact that I could...... I mean, so I came to Boston for this interview, right?

Lex Fridman 48:26 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 48:27 I came to Boston. I got off the train.

Lex Fridman 48:30 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 48:30 It was around 5:30 PM. I check Librex. Someone is writing, "Hey, I'm in Boston. Does anyone want to get dinner?"

Lex Fridman 48:37 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 48:37 30 minutes later-

Lex Fridman 48:38 Bam.

Ryan Schiller 48:38 ... we're, I'm getting dinner with them.

Lex Fridman 48:39 That's amazing.

Ryan Schiller 48:40 And I mean, it, it's incredible. First of all, as an entrepreneur, the amount of stuff I learn from these people and the, and wha- and when they reiterate and I hear that they got the message through the pro- I mean, that's incredibly validating. But also, I mean, I think it's just important to be able to put a face to a brand, and especially a brand that's built on trust.

Lex Fridman 49:02 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 49:03 Um, because fundamentally, these are s- are trusting us with some really important discussions and some really, um ... and a movement, to some degree. It's a community

Ryan Schiller 49:13 and a movement.

Lex Fridman 49:14 I, I'll tell you actually why I didn't use the app very much, uh, so far, is, uh, th- there's something really powerful about the way it's constructed, which I felt like a bit of an outsider 'cause I don't know the communities. It felt like, it's like, it's a really strong community around each of these places.

Ryan Schiller 49:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 49:34 And so I felt like I was st- I ... It made me really wish there was an MIT one. (laughs) And so there's both discussions about the deep, like, community issues within Columbia or Yale or so on, uh, Dartmouth, and there's also the broader community of the Ivy Leagues that people are discussing. But I could see that actually expanding more and more and more. But which is a, it's a powerful coupling, just the feeling of, like, this little village, this little community we're building together, but also the broader issues.

Ryan Schiller 50:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 50:07 And so you could do both discussions.

Ryan Schiller 50:09 One thing that was important to me is talking about social media as concept, right?

Lex Fridman 50:14 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 50:16 I think the way people socialize is very much context dependent. So we're ta- we're talking about people understanding each other through language, through English.

Lex Fridman 50:26 Yes.

Ryan Schiller 50:26 And these languages are constructed ver- in a very nuanced way, in a very, sort of temperamental way, right? And you kind of need a similar context to be able to have productive conversations.

Lex Fridman 50:41 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 50:42 So to me, it's really important that these, these groups, they share peop- something in common, a really big lived experience, the Ivy League or their school community, and they have a similar vocabulary. They have a similar background. They know what's happening in their community. And so having social media that is community connected, to me, was fundamental. Like you talk about anonymity. To me, community is the, is the thing that I, when I think about Librex, I think what makes it different. It's the fact that everyone, everyone knows what's going on. Everyone comes from a similar context, and people can socialize in a way where they're, they understand each other because they're been through, you used the word lived experience, they've been through so many of the sim- same lived experiences.

Lex Fridman 51:25 Uh, one, like, clarification. Is there an easy way, if you choose, to then connect in f- in meet space, in physical space?

Ryan Schiller 51:35 So the, I guess, the sort of magic of it, and I was talking to a bunch of Harvard Librexers who I met off the app while I was in Boston, and, um, every time they told me, this is the fa- they're my favorite part of the app. This is what I love about the app. We have this matching system, which is an anonymous direct message that you can send to any poster. So s- like, I was talking to this guy who, um, he was really into coin collection, and he met other people who were really into coin collection through a post, and what they ... He would make a post about coin collection.

Lex Fridman 52:07 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 52:08 Um, and then someone would come to him, and they'd be li- and, and they, they could direct message him anonymously, and it would just show them the, his, it would just show him th- their school.

Lex Fridman 52:16 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 52:17 And then they could just text chat, totally anonymously, direct message, if he accepted the anonymous request.

Lex Fridman 52:23 Do they see the usernames, right?

Ryan Schiller 52:25 Um, there are no usernames on Librex. It's all just schools' names. So he made this post about coin collection, and he got a-

Lex Fridman 52:34 Really?

Ryan Schiller 52:34 ... direct message.

Lex Fridman 52:34 Yeah, I guess so, right?

Ryan Schiller 52:36 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 52:36 (laughs) I didn't ...

Ryan Schiller 52:38 No usernames.

Lex Fridman 52:39 'Cause I was just looking at the text.

Ryan Schiller 52:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:41 That's interesting. That's right.

Ryan Schiller 52:43 And I can tell you, I can go into why. Um ...

Lex Fridman 52:46 That's really interesting.

Ryan Schiller 52:47 Yeah. I can go into it.

Lex Fridman 52:48 So it truly is anonymous.

Ryan Schiller 52:49 It's ... Well, I mean, but it's not-

Lex Fridman 52:51 Depends on what you mean by anonymous-

Ryan Schiller 52:52 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 52:52 ... but front-end wise- It's a very different kind of-

Ryan Schiller 52:55 Yes.

Lex Fridman 52:55 ... anonymous.

Ryan Schiller 52:56 And the reason, the reason that we made that decision-

Lex Fridman 52:59 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 52:59 ... is because we want people to connect to ideas.

Lex Fridman 53:02 Yes.

Ryan Schiller 53:02 We want people to connect to things in the moment. We don't want people to go, "Oh, I know this guy. He said this other thing." And we didn't want people to feel like they were at risk of being doxed, so. And so these are small communities, right?

Lex Fridman 53:14 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 53:14 We talked about this. Everyone knows someone who knows you.

Lex Fridman 53:16 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 53:17 And, um, in 2021, it would not take much to be able to figure out who someone might be just through a couple of posts. Um, so it was both safety and about the ideas, in terms of not adding usernames. Anyway, we have this anonymous direct message system where you can direct message the original poster of any post, the OP, if you're a Redditor, um, of any post, and you, that, that makes it really easy to meet up, because once you guys are one-on-one, you can exchange a number. You can exchange a Snapchat. You can exchange a email. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 53:51 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 53:51 That's probably not very often, but-

Lex Fridman 53:52 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 53:52 ... you could. And then that's how people meet up, matching.

Lex Fridman 53:56 And then a lot of people connect in this way. Uh, let me, let me step, take a small step into the technical. I, I read somewhere, I don't know if it's true, that, uh, one of the reasons you were rejected from YC, Y Combinator, in the final rounds, is because of one of the principles is to refuse to sell user data. Uh, can you speak to that? What's, uh, what ... why do you think it's important not to sell user data, and sort of which draws a clear contrast between other, basically any other service (laughs) on the internet?

Ryan Schiller 54:31 I mean-To be honest, it's quite simple. I mean, we talk about this platform, people are talking about their most intimate secrets, their political opinions, you know, what, how, how are they feeling about what's going on in their city, you know, during the summer, um, how, how are they feeling about, um, the, the political cycle and also their mental health, their relationships. These are some of the, like, most intimate thoughts that people were having. Point blank, I don't think it was ethical to pawn them off for a profit. I didn't think it was moral. I don't think (laughs) I could sleep at night if, if that was what I was doing, is turning these people's most intimate beliefs and secrets into a currency that I bought and sold. There's something very off about that. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 55:22 Yeah. I tend to believe that there is, uh, some room ... So like, like Facebook would just take that data and sell it, right? But there's some room in transparency and giving people the choice on which parts they can s- I wouldn't even see it as sell, uh, but, like, share with advertisers.

Ryan Schiller 55:42 Are you gonna give them a profit? Um-

Lex Fridman 55:44 So, right, so you have to monetize, you have to create an entire system, you have to rethink this whole thing, right? But if- as long as you b- give people control and are transparent and make it easy. Like, I think it's really difficult to delete a Facebook account or, like, delete all your data. It's-

Ryan Schiller 55:59 I've tried.

Lex Fridman 55:59 Or to download-

Ryan Schiller 56:00 It's very difficult. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:02 (laughs) So, like, just make it easy and trust in that if you create a great product, people are not going to do it. And if, if they do it, then they're not actually-

Ryan Schiller 56:12 I'll tell you something about

Narrator 56:12 What...

Lex Fridman 56:12 ... a deep loving member of the community. What's that? (laughs) .

Ryan Schiller 56:16 Um, so we very quickly realized that user privacy was something that, um, was not only a core value, but was something that users really cared about.

Lex Fridman 56:25 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 56:25 And we added, we added this functionality. It's just a button that says, "Forget me."

Lex Fridman 56:30 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 56:30 Um, you press it-

Lex Fridman 56:32 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 56:32 ... like two clicks. Um, it's not that hard.

Lex Fridman 56:34 I love that.

Ryan Schiller 56:34 We just remove your email from the database.

Lex Fridman 56:37 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 56:37 Um, (smacks hands) , yeah, you're good.

Lex Fridman 56:40 Beautiful. I think Facebook should have that. I, I honestly ... So call me crazy, but maybe you can actually speak to this, but I don't think Facebook ... Well, now they would, but if they did it earlier, they would lose that much money. If they allow- like transparently tell people, "You could just delete everything." They also explain that, like, in ways that's going to potentially, like, lessen your experience in the short term. Like e- explain that. But then there shouldn't be, like, multiple clicks of a button that don't make any sense. Uh, (sighs) I, I'm, uh, trying to hold back from ranting about Facebook-

Ryan Schiller 57:23 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 57:23 ... and Instagram because ... Let me just say real quick 'cause I've, I've been locked out of Instagram for a month. Uh, and there's a whole group inside Facebook that are, like, supporters of, like, "Lex fre- help Lex."

Ryan Schiller 57:35 Free Lex?

Lex Fridman 57:36 Free Lex. Uh, I wasn't blocked, it was just, like, a bug in the system. Somebody was hammering the API with my account.

Ryan Schiller 57:42 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:42 And so they kept thinking I'm a bot. Anyway, it's a bug, it happens to a lot of people. But, like, first of all, I appreciate the love from all the amazing engineers in Instagram and Facebook. Love those folks. The entire mechanism, though, is somehow broken. I mean, tha- I, I put that on the leadership. But it's also difficult to operate a large company once it scales, all those kinds of things. But it should not be that difficult to do some basic, basic things that you want to do, which is, um, in the case of Facebook, that's verify your identity to the app. Uh, and also in the case of Facebook, in the case of LibreX, like, bec- like disappear if, if you, if you choose. There's downsides to disappearing, but it should not be a difficult process. And, um, yeah, I think, I think people are waking up to that. I think there's a lot of room for an app, an app like LibreX with its, the, with, with its foundational ideas to redefine what social media should look like. You know, and like you said, I think beautifully, anonymity is not the core value. It's just a tool you use. And who knows? Maybe anonymity will not always be the tool you use, like if you give people the choice, who knows what this involves (laughs) from the login page that you initially created. The key thing is the founding principles. And again, who knows? If you give people a really nice way to monetize their data, maybe there'll no longer be a thing that, uh, you say, "Do not sell user data." Yeah, all those kinds of things. But the, the, the basic principles should be there. And also a good, simple interface design, um, (laughs) is, goes, goes a really long way. Like simplicity and elegance, which L- LibreX currently is. Clubhouse is another app.

Ryan Schiller 59:33 It's gotten a lot better, by the way.

Lex Fridman 59:34 It's gotten-

Ryan Schiller 59:34 I don't, I don't mean to, uh, I, I don't mean to go too deep into the history, but the, um-

Lex Fridman 59:39 It was bad?

Ryan Schiller 59:40 It was-

Lex Fridman 59:40 I didn't look at the early pictures.

Ryan Schiller 59:41 Oh. (laughs) Thank goodness.

Lex Fridman 59:43 I, I, I read somewhere that it was, like, a white screen, like, with black-

Ryan Schiller 59:48 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:48 ... (laughs) like, just HTML basic.

Ryan Schiller 59:49 There ... The up vote and down vote buttons were, like, these big, these big fricking boxes and, like, I don't, I don't ... I, I could go on, but, um, it was my, it was my genius design skills, um (smacks lips) , I almost-

Lex Fridman 1:00:02 Minimalism.

Ryan Schiller 1:00:02 ... failed art class when I was, like, in first grade, and I think, uh, I still have similar skills to my first grade self. But, uh, it's gotten a lot better. And thanks to a lot of my friends who have, you know, sort of chipped in here and there. (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:00:14 Oh, I love the idea of a button that just, like, forget me, um.

Ryan Schiller 1:00:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:19 I don't know. That's, that's really moving actually. That, uh, that's actually all people want is they, they want ... I think ... Uh, okay, I'll speak to my experience. Like, I would give so much more, uh, if I could just, like, disappear if I needed to. And I trusted the, the community, I trusted, like-

Ryan Schiller 1:00:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:39 ... the founders and the principles. That's really, that's really powerful, man. The, like, trust and ease of escape.

Lex Fridman 1:00:47 Yeah.... uh, you- you've also kind of mentioned moderation, which is really interesting. So with this anonymity and this community, I don't know if you've heard of the internet, but there's trolls on the internet.

Ryan Schiller 1:01:01 So I've heard. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:01:02 (laughs) And, uh, even if they go to Yale and Dartmouth, uh, they, there's still people that probably enjoy, uh, the- the sort of being the- the guerrilla warfare counterrevolutionary and just, like-

Ryan Schiller 1:01:18 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:01:18 ... creating chaos in a place of, uh, love. So how do you prevent chaos from, and hatred, uh, breaking out in Librex?

Ryan Schiller 1:01:28 So the way I think about it is we have these principles. Um, they're pretty simple, and they're pretty easy to enforce. And then beyond the principles, we have a set of moderators, a moderator from every single Ivy League school, team of diverse moderators who enforce these principles, but not only enforce the principles, but kind of clue us in to what's happening in their community and how the real life context of their community translates to the Librex context of their community. And beyond that, we have conversation with them about the standards of the community, and we're constantly talking about what needs to be further elucidated and what needs to be tweaked, and we're in constant communication with the community. Now, if you want me to get into the principles that underlie Librex's moderation policy.

Lex Fridman 1:02:15 Yeah, please, maybe you can explain that there's moderators. What does that mean? How are they chosen, and what are the principles under which they operate?

Ryan Schiller 1:02:22 Sure. So how are the moderators chosen? The moderators are all volunteers. They're Librexers who reach out to me and respond to the o- opportunity to become a moderator. And the way they're chosen, um, is basically we want to make sure that they're in tune with their community. We want to make sure they come from diverse backgrounds, and we want to make sure that they're ... they sort of understand what the community is about. And then we ma- ask them some questions about how they would deal with certain scenarios, ones that we've had in the past and we feel strongly about, and then also ones that are a little more murky, where we want to see that they're sort of thinking about these things in a critical way.

Lex Fridman 1:03:00 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:03:00 Um, and from there, we choose a set, and, uh, they have the power to, um, take down posts. Of course, everything, at the end of the day, depends my review, but they can take them down, and we can reinstate them if it's a- if it's a problem. But they can take down posts, and they can advocate for, you know, different moderation standards and different moderation policies.

Lex Fridman 1:03:23 So for now, you're the Linus Torvalds of this community, and (laughs) uh, so meaning, like, you're able to ... Like, people are actually able to, like, email you or, like, uh-

Ryan Schiller 1:03:35 Text me.

Lex Fridman 1:03:36 ... con- text you, contact you, and get a response. Like, you respond to basically everybody, and then you're- you're like really, you know, you're f- you're living that live-on-people's-floor life currently. That's not necessarily ... This is the early days, folks.

Ryan Schiller 1:03:52 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:03:53 I knew Ryan-

Ryan Schiller 1:03:54 Isn't it lovely?

Lex Fridman 1:03:54 ... before he was a billionaire and he was cool, and then he was in a mansion, uh, making, uh, meats on his barbecue. No. Okay. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:04:03 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 1:04:04 But, you know, how does it scale? Um, like what ... I- I suppose how does- how does it scale is the question. I mean, with Linus, uh, I don't- I don't know if you're familiar with the Linux open source community, but he still stayed at the top for a while. It was really important. Like, leadership there was really important to drive that large-scale, really productive open source community. What do you see your- r- your role as Librex grows, and, um, in general, what are the mechanisms of scaling here for moderation?

Ryan Schiller 1:04:36 The way I see it, open discourse is fundamental to the purpose of the app, right? So as the, I guess you could say founder, CEO, what have you, um, part of my purpose has to be to enforce the vision, right? And part of the vision is open discourse, and that does come down in part to reasonable moderation and community-guided reasonable moderation. So I imagine that will always be something that I'm intimately involved with to some degree. Now, the degree to which, the way in which that manifests, I imagine, will have to change, right?

Lex Fridman 1:05:13 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:05:13 Um, and hopefully, I'll be able to, just like you can hire a CTO, hopefully I'll be able to be in- integrated in hiring people who are, who understand the- the way that we are sort of operating and the- and the reasonable standards of moderation. And there can be a sort of hierarchical structure.

Lex Fridman 1:05:33 Mm.

Ryan Schiller 1:05:33 But I think when you have a product whose key purpose is to allow people to have these difficult conversations on campus that need to be had-

Lex Fridman 1:05:42 Yeah, that- moderation's-

Ryan Schiller 1:05:42 ... I can never-

Lex Fridman 1:05:43 ... core to that, yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:05:44 I can never fully ... I don't think I can fully ever abdicate that responsibility. I think it, that would be like, I mean, that would be like Bezos abdicating e-commerce, right? (laughs) Right? Like, that is-

Lex Fridman 1:05:56 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:05:57 ... that's part of the job.

Lex Fridman 1:05:58 Yeah. Of course, you can run companies in different ways. I think the, 'cause he might have abdicated quite a bit of- of-

Ryan Schiller 1:06:04 Possible.

Lex Fridman 1:06:04 ... the details there.

Ryan Schiller 1:06:05 It's hard for me to say, and ...

Lex Fridman 1:06:06 Because the- Amazon does so many things. I think the, probably the better example is, like, Elon with Rocket. He's still at the core-

Ryan Schiller 1:06:13 Of the engineering.

Lex Fridman 1:06:14 He- he's at the core of the engineering. There's some fundamental questions of what ... He probably does way too much of the engineering. Like, he's, like, the lowest level detail. But you're saying, like, the core things that are, that make the app work is- is the moderation of difficult conversations.

Ryan Schiller 1:06:30 And by the way, I'm 21 years old. Let's-

Lex Fridman 1:06:33 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:06:33 ... let's remind us, everyone of that. Um, if this thing does scale-

Lex Fridman 1:06:38 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 1:06:38 ... and if this thing continues to be a positive force in a lot of people's lives, who knows what will- what- what will happen in the next, what I'll learn. Um, I'm still growing definitely as a leader, still growing as a thinker, still growing as a person.... I don't, I, I can't pretend that I know how to run a business that is worth, you know, umpteen billion dollars, whatever.

Lex Fridman 1:07:02 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:07:02 I can't pretend that I know how to run a business that's, you know, going to have millions and millions of users. I, I expect that there are going to be a lot of amazing people who will teach me, and that a lot of people who have already kind of stepped into my life and helped me out and taught me things, and I imagine that I'll learn so much more. I just know that moderation's always going to be important to me, because I don't think LibreX is LibreX unless we have open discourse and moderation, reasonable, open, light-touch moderation is at the heart of creating that, right?

Lex Fridman 1:07:36 So as a creator of this kinda community and place with anonymity and difficult conversations, what, uh, what do you think about this touchy three words that people have been tossing around and politicizing, I would say, but is at the core of the founding of this country, which is the freedom of speech? How do you think about the freedom of speech, this particular kind of freedom of expression, and, uh, do you think it's a fundamental human right? How do you define it to yourself when you, when you're thinking about it? I've, uh, I went down, especially preparing for this conversation, down a rabbit hole of, like, just how unclear it is, (laughs) wh- philosophically, what is meant by this kind of freedom. Uh, it's not as easy as people think, but it's interesting, pragmatically speaking, to hear what, how you think about it in the context of LibreX.

Ryan Schiller 1:08:31 Yeah. It's a tough one, right? There's a lot there. So I come from the background of being a math major.

Lex Fridman 1:08:38 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:08:39 Maybe it's important to start with that.

Lex Fridman 1:08:40 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:08:41 And I have found myself, um, in the middle of this question of freedom of speech.

Lex Fridman 1:08:46 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:08:46 One, uh, one of the wonderful things is that, uh, the LibreX community is filled with PhDs and governance majors who have taught me a ton about this star- sorta thing, and I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I'm still probably going to lo- um, modify my perspective to some degree. Hopefully, (laughs) don't worry. Uh, I, I imagine I'll always, um, support free discourse.

Lex Fridman 1:09:10 Like, learning-

Ryan Schiller 1:09:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:12 ... how to speak about stuff is, is, uh, is critical here, because it's like, I'm, I'm learning that this, this is like a minefield of conversations, 'cause the moment you say, like, even saying freedom of speech is a complicated concept, people will be like, "Oh, we spotted a Communist." (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:09:31 Yep.

Lex Fridman 1:09:32 Like, they, they'll say, "There's nothing complicated about freedom. Freedom is freedom, bro." Eh, it's, it, it is complicated with, first of all, if you talk about there's, there's different definitions of freedom of speech. Uh, if you, if you wanna go Constitution, if you wanna talk about the United States specifically and what's legal, it's actually not as exciting and not as, uh, uh, beautiful as people think of. It's-

Ryan Schiller 1:09:54 Complicated.

Lex Fridman 1:09:54 ... it's, (laughs) it's complicated. I think there's ideals behind it that we wanna see h- what does that actually materialize itself in a digital world, where we're trying to communicate in ways that, uh, allows for difficult conversations and also, at the same time, doesn't result in the silencing of voices, not through, like, censorship, but through, like, just assholes being rude.

Ryan Schiller 1:10:24 Spam.

Lex Fridman 1:10:24 Spam, like, so it could be just bots.

Ryan Schiller 1:10:27 Racism.

Lex Fridman 1:10:28 Uh, racism.

Ryan Schiller 1:10:29 Go- going back to the name of the app, LibreX.

Lex Fridman 1:10:32 Yes.

Ryan Schiller 1:10:33 Libre, free, um, X was s- portmanteau for free exchange, and the free exchange of what? My purpose was to create as many, as much intercommunication of ideas, be them repugnant or otherwise, as possible, and of course, to do that within legal bounds, and to do that without causing anyone to be harassed or doxed, so to keep things focused on the ideas, not the people, and then no BS crap, you know, stuff. And so, to me, the easiest way to moderate around that, because as you said, figuring out what is hateful and what is hate speech is really hard, was to say, "No sweeping statements against core identity groups." And that seems to work, on the whole, pretty well, to be pretty light touch, and, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:11:26 It's hard to do, though.

Ryan Schiller 1:11:27 ... it's, it's difficult.

Lex Fridman 1:11:27 'Cause we like to generalize, we humans.

Ryan Schiller 1:11:30 It's difficult, but what it comes down to is, be specific.

Lex Fridman 1:11:34 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:11:34 Um, and when you think about what are sweeping statements against core identity groups, right, oftentimes, these are, these are sort of hackneyed subjects. These are things that have been broached, and we've heard them before. They don't really lead anywhere productive.

Lex Fridman 1:11:48 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 1:11:48 So we, uh, so it goes under this principle of be specific in the ideas you're discussing.

Lex Fridman 1:11:53 So even for, like, positive and humorous stuff, you try to avoid generalizations.

Ryan Schiller 1:11:59 Against core identity groups.

Lex Fridman 1:12:00 Core identity groups. Sorry, what are core identity groups?

Ryan Schiller 1:12:03 We're talking-

Lex Fridman 1:12:04 Um-

Ryan Schiller 1:12:04 ... you know, race, religion.

Lex Fridman 1:12:06 Okay. Got it. (sighs) Even positive stuff?

Ryan Schiller 1:12:11 Well, against, negative.

Lex Fridman 1:12:13 Oh, against, sorry, against, against, okay.

Ryan Schiller 1:12:17 Very, very, we've learned to be very specific. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:12:20 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:12:20 Very few words, but the community gets it, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:12:23 Yeah, they get it. I mean, this is the thing. They, they, um, the, the, the trouble with rules is, uh, as the community grows, they'll figure out ways to manipulate the rules.

Ryan Schiller 1:12:34 Absolutely. It's human nature. It's creativity.

Lex Fridman 1:12:36 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:12:37 Something beautiful about it, of course.

Lex Fridman 1:12:39 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:12:39 Unlike in-

Lex Fridman 1:12:40 From an evolutionary perspective, yes. (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:12:42 Yeah, the fact that people are so creative and so looking to, and because people are genuinely interested in figuring out these things about social media, and so they'll 100%, like, see, like, where's the edge and...... I mean, part of that's maintaining some level of vagueness in your rule set.

Lex Fridman 1:12:58 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:12:58 Which has its own set of questions and something we could think about. And I'm not implying I have all the answers, but there is something really interesting about people being so engaged that they're looking to figure out, where are those edges and what does that mean? What does that edge mean? You know?

Lex Fridman 1:13:14 Well, so one of the things I'm kind of thinking about, like from an individual user of LibreX or an individual user of the internet, I think about, like, that one person that on- is on Reddit saying hateful stuff or positive stuff, doesn't matter, or funny stuff. One of the things I think about is the trajectory of that individual through life and how, uh, social media can help that person become the best version of themselves. I don't mean from, like, an Or- Orwellian sense, like educate them properly or something. I just mean, like, we're all... I believe we're all fundamentally good, and I also believe w- uh, we all have the capacity to do... to create some amazing stuff in this world, uh, whether that's ideas or art or engineering, all those kinds of things, just to be amazing people. And I kinda think about, like, you know, a lot of social media mechanisms bring out the worst in us. And I try to think like, in the long term, how can, uh, the social media or how can a website or how can a tool t- that you create can make the best... Like, you take a trajectory that makes you better, better, and better and, like the best version of yourself. So, I think about that 'cause like, you know, Twitter can really take you down some dark trajectories. I've seen people just not being the best version of themselves. Forget the cancel culture and all that kinda stuff, it's just like they're not developing intellectually in the way that's going to make the best version of themselves. I think Reddit, I'm- I'm not sure what I think about Reddit yet. Uh, 'cause one positive side is all the shitposting on Reddit could be just like a re- release valve for- for some stress in life, and you almost have like a parallel life wherein you're in meat space. You might be actually becoming successful and so on, and growing and so on, but you just need sometimes to be angry at somebody. But I tend to not think that's possible. I think if you're shitposting, you're probably not spending your time the best way you could. I don't know. I, um, I'm torn on that. But do you think about that with LibreX of creating a trajectory for the- for Yale, for the Dartmouth, for the students to where they grow intellectually?

Ryan Schiller 1:15:35 One thing that I think about a lot is, how do you incentivize positive content creation? How do you incentivize-

Lex Fridman 1:15:42 Well put, yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:15:43 ... really intellectual content creation? It's something that, frankly, you know, I think about every single day, and I think there are ways that... I mean, one thing that's great about humans is that they can be incentivized, right? And I think there are ways that you can incentivize people to make the right kind of content, if that's your goal.

Lex Fridman 1:16:06 So you think such mechanisms exist for such an incentivization?

Ryan Schiller 1:16:10 I do. I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag-

Lex Fridman 1:16:13 Sure.

Ryan Schiller 1:16:13 ... so to speak, so-

Lex Fridman 1:16:14 You have already idea- like concrete ideas in your mind and like that you want-

Ryan Schiller 1:16:16 I have about three concrete ideas that I'm very, very optimistic about.

Lex Fridman 1:16:21 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:16:21 And-

Lex Fridman 1:16:22 You don't even need to share them. The- the fact... I- I understand totally, but like the fact that you have them, that's really good 'cause I feel like sometimes the downfall of the social media is that there's literally not even a thinking or a discussion about the incentivization of, um, positive long-term, uh, content creation. Uh, Twitter, I really was excited about this when they said like, when Jack has talked about like creating healthy conversations.

Ryan Schiller 1:16:52 He does seem to care. I've listened to him. I mean, he's very- he has a very particular way of saying things.

Lex Fridman 1:16:58 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 1:16:59 But you get the impression that he's someone who actually cares about these things within the limits of his power.

Lex Fridman 1:17:03 Yeah. And that's the question, the limits of the power. LibreX is growing not just in the number of communities, but also in the way you're incentivizing positive conversations, like coupled with the moderation and so on. So you think there's a lot of innovation to be had in that area?

Ryan Schiller 1:17:22 I think there's a tremendous amount. I think when you think about the reasons people post, fundamentally, people want to make a positive impact on their community to some degree. Now, there'll always be bad actors, and part of the benefit of sort of our moderation structure is that we can limit some of them back, those bad actors, you know, no bot accounts, no brigading. At the same time, the more you incentivize a certain type of behavior, the better it's going to be. And it's- we don't see it as our role as the platform to force the community in- in a direction, and frankly, I don't think it would be good for anyone, the community or the conversations if we forced a specific type of conversations- uh, conversation. We just need to make the tools to allow people to be good-

Lex Fridman 1:18:10 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:18:10 ... and to incentivize good behavior.

Lex Fridman 1:18:12 Yeah, I believe that. Like if you- you don't n- You will not need to censor if you allow people at scale to be good. The good will overpower the assholes.

Ryan Schiller 1:18:22 That's- that's my fundamental belief. I- I'm very optimistic about that.

Lex Fridman 1:18:27 But currently, LibreX is small in the sense that it's a- uh, it's a small set of communities that have a leak. And you mentioned to me offline that by design, you're scaling slowly-

Ryan Schiller 1:18:38 That's right.

Lex Fridman 1:18:39 ... very carefully. So how does LibreX scale? Is it possible? You know, Facebook also started with a small set of communities that were schools, and then now grew to be basically the, if not one of the largest social networks in the world.... do you see LibreX as potentially scaling to be beyond even college campuses, uh, but encompassing the whole world?

Ryan Schiller 1:19:07 It's a, it's a long timeline.

Lex Fridman 1:19:09 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:19:11 I'll say this. This gets back to, like, where did Facebook go wrong? 'Cause clearly they did a lot right, and we can only, we can only speculate about what the objectives were of the founders of Facebook. Um, you know, I'm sure they've said some things, but it's always interesting to know what the, what the, uh, mythology is versus what the truth is of the matter. Um, so perhaps they ... and they've been very successful. I mean, they- they've taken over the world to some extent. At the same time, the goals of LibreX are to create these positive communities and these open conversations where people can have real conversation and connection in their communities in a vulnerable and authentic way. And so, to that end, which I imagine might be different than the goals of a Facebook, for example, one thing that we wanna do is keep things intimate and community-based. So each school is its own community.

Lex Fridman 1:20:11 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 1:20:12 And perhaps you could have a slightly broader community. Maybe you could have a ... I know, uh, the California system is an obvious one. Pac-10 might be an obvious one, and we can think about that. Um, but fundamentally, the unit, the unit of community is your school or your school community.

Lex Fridman 1:20:31 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Schiller 1:20:31 So that- that- that's one difference that I think will help us. The other thing is that we're scaling intentionally, meaning that when we expand to a school, we have moderators in place. We have moderators who understand that school's environment in a very personal level, and we're growing responsibly. We're growing as we're ready, both technologically but also socially, you know? But as we think we have the tools to, um, preserve the community and to encourage the community to create the sort of content that we want them to create.

Lex Fridman 1:21:04 And, you know, there's a lot of ways to define community, so f- first of all, there's geographic community as well. Uh, but the way you're kind of defining community with Yale and, uh, Dartmouth is the email, right? That's what gives you ... There's a power to the email (laughs) in the sense that, uh, that's how you can verify your, efficiently verify yourself of being an, a single individual in the university. In that same way, you can verify your employment at a company, for example, like Google, Microsoft, Facebook. Do you see your, uh, potentially taking on those communities? That'd be fascinating, getting, like, anonymous community conversations inside Google.

Ryan Schiller 1:21:51 100% crossed my mind. To some extent, this is, this is something where I understand the college experience. I understand the need.

Lex Fridman 1:21:58 Got it.

Ryan Schiller 1:21:59 And I f- ... I've never, I've never worked at Google. I don't know if they would hire me. (laughs) Um, hopefully, maybe as a product manager. (laughs) Uh, I- I think if there's a community that needs this product and has that an- and has that will, which I think, especially as LibreX continues to grow and expand and change and learn, and 'cause that's what we're doing, is we're learning, right? With each community, it's not just about growing. It's about learning from these, from each of these communities and iterating. Um, I think it's quite likely there are gonna be all sorts of communities that could use this tool to improve their culture, so

Ryan Schiller 1:22:43 to speak.

Lex Fridman 1:22:44 So forgive me. I'm not actually, like, that- that knowledgeable about the history of attempts of building social networks to solve the problem that you're solving. Uh, but I was made aware that there was an app, a app or at least a social network called Yik Yak, uh, that was ... had a similar kind of, um, focus. Um, I think the thing you've spoken about that differs between LibreX and Yik Yak is that Yik Yak was defined ... Am I pronouncing it right even? Uh-

Ryan Schiller 1:23:18 You're good.

Lex Fridman 1:23:19 (laughs) I'm good?

Ryan Schiller 1:23:19 I met the founder, so I can confirm.

Lex Fridman 1:23:21 Okay. (laughs) You can confirm? Cool. Uh, (laughs) the ... that it was constrained to a geographical area versus, like, to the actual community, um, and that r- and that somehow had fundamental, like, actual differences in social dynamics that resulted. But can you speak to the history of Yik Yak? Like, how does LibreX differ? What lessons have you learned from that? Oh, and I should say that I guess there was controversial ... Um, I don't know. I didn't look at the details, but I'm guessing there's a bunch of racism and hate speech and all that kind of stuff that emerged-

Ryan Schiller 1:23:54 Absolutely, there was.

Lex Fridman 1:23:55 ... on Yik Yak. Okay, so that's an example of, like, "Okay, here's how it goes wrong when you have anonymity on college campuses." So how does LibreX going to do better?

Ryan Schiller 1:24:09 Yeah, Yik Yak had a lot of problems, content problems, but the content problems go deeper than maybe what the press would reveal. There's a lot to say, and-

Lex Fridman 1:24:17 Who cares?

Ryan Schiller 1:24:18 ... part of it is parsing exactly what to talk about when it comes to Yik Yak. And when you talk about startups, I mean, you know this. I- I- I- you- you know startups. Um, when you look at the postmortem, it's almost never what people think it is, and, and oftentimes these things are somewhat unknowable. And the, the, the degree to which people seek in confirmation bias to somebody who's seeking closure-

Lex Fridman 1:24:40 Yes.

Ryan Schiller 1:24:40 ... look to find a singular attribute that caused the failure.

Lex Fridman 1:24:43 It feels like the little details often make all the difference.

Ryan Schiller 1:24:47 Yes, and I think, I think the details are so little that, as humans, we are not capable of parsing even what they are. But I'll tell you, I'll tell you my perspective on it, um, knowing that I am also human with biases, um-

Lex Fridman 1:25:02 (laughs)

Ryan Schiller 1:25:02 ... in this particular case, very significant biases, right?

Lex Fridman 1:25:05 Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:25:06 Um-... I, um, so I started building Librex for its own merits. I, I, I, at first I wasn't aware of Yik Yak, but as I started to talk to people about this platform I was building, I, I was made aware of Yik Yak, and I built it from day one with a lot of the issues Yik Yak had in mind. The, so as you said, the diff- one difference between Yik Yak is the geographical versus community-based aspect. Going along with that, one thing I realized by researching social media sites is that the majority of the negative content, the content that's terrible and breaking all the rules, is created by really ... And the people who are not re- reformable, so to speak-

Lex Fridman 1:25:52 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:25:52 ... the people who are not showing the best part of the human (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 1:25:56 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:25:56 ... experience.

Lex Fridman 1:25:57 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:25:58 Um, it's a really small minority, right?

Lex Fridman 1:26:01 Yeah.

Ryan Schiller 1:26:01 I remember, I was listening to the founder of 4chan, Moot, talk about this, how like one guy was able to basically destroy, like, large swaths of his community.

Lex Fridman 1:26:13 Yeah. That's part of what makes it exciting for that minority, is how much power they can have.