Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Commentary on the Joe Rogan⧸Jack Dorsey Podcast

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 4, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

24:08

Commentary on the Joe Rogan⧸Jack Dorsey Podcast

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	So I've had an awful lot of people ask me for a more expanded commentary on the Joe Rogan Jack Dorsey podcast that Joe had with him two days ago.
	And I figured it's probably worth my time doing it because there are some, as far as I can tell, misapprehensions going around.
	And I think that Jack Dorsey did say more than people give him credit for.
	And I realized that defending Jack Dorsey is not a popular thing to do.
	And as someone who had a Twitter account with 260, 280,000 followers, and I know a couple more with 15,000, 20,000 that have all been removed, it would seem counterintuitive that I would be in any position to try and be charitable to Jack.
	But I'm honestly growing to see the Silicon Valley CEOs as prisoners of their own constructs.
	Not that that excuses the things that they've done and the way that they are behaving with regards to who they ban or not.
	But I think that it's worth remembering that at the end of the day, we are all human and we are all fallible and we'll make mistakes.
	Now, I'm still going to rate Jack over the coals somewhat, but I just want to point out that I'm not angry at Jack.
	For me, Twitter is always something of very little value.
	Not that it is for everyone else.
	I know plenty of people who have been banned who genuinely feel like they've lost a lifeline to the world, to their friends, to just the ability that they have to participate.
	And a lot of the time they don't feel that's just.
	And honestly, I mean, I think that a large number of these bannings are political rather than based on conduct.
	But before we get into all of this, I just want to clear up a few misapprehensions.
	So I was under the impression that my comment had been deleted as well.
	But I went down and I can see it here.
	If we have a right to use social media, then you have no justification for banning people, Jack.
	Which is obviously what I made the video about afterwards.
	It does appear to still be there.
	I don't know why no one else can see it.
	Now, it could be that this is a case of YouTube doing this.
	And I've had examples of this happen where I've had to, like, for example, when I was having my sort of feud with the alt-right, I was accused of deleting a comment from one of their talking heads on one of the videos that I'd done.
	And so I had to go through like the thousands of comments, find the comment, and then pin it to prove that I hadn't removed it.
	YouTube itself had hidden it.
	It's entirely possible that this has happened with Joe.
	You know, I mean, he's got 31,000 comments here.
	It's entirely possible that YouTube, for some reason, have like nuked my comment and put it in some suspended animation or whatever.
	I don't see why that would be the case.
	I think that my comment is perfectly fair.
	And I don't think it's offensive in any way, shape, or form.
	But I guess that's the problem with the machine learning algorithms and deep minds and all this other sort of techie crap that I don't know anything about.
	That's the problem with it.
	You know, it catches innocuous comments.
	I don't think that Joe or Jamie were going through deleting comments.
	And I think that they probably wouldn't delete mine given that Joe knows who I am.
	I've been on his podcast.
	And I think that this is a fair comment.
	I think that there is a real philosophical issue.
	If you say that people have a right to use social media and then you ban people, what you're saying is certain people aren't even people.
	And it's quite concerning.
	And I think that it's something that has to be thought about.
	But like I said, I don't think that Joe and his team are acting nefariously.
	Now, going back to the interview itself, a lot of people were understandably angry at Joe Rogan for what I think could be fairly called softballing Jack Dorsey.
	I've got a few opinions on this.
	The first is that I think that a lot of these Silicon Valley types are, well, they're nerds.
	A lot of the time they're nerds who have kind of struck it big with a good idea that they are kind of like on a wild bull or something and now they're stuck on its back and they don't really know what to do with it, but they don't feel that they can necessarily just jump off.
	And so I realise that people are going to go, why are you being so nice to these people?
	Well, I think that redemption is something that should go both ways, frankly.
	But we'll get to that in a bit as well.
	But in Joe's defense, I would say that there is the argument that you kind of have to treat these people with kid gloves or they'll never come and you'll get no accounting from them at all.
	You know, if Joe were just sitting there yelling at him for two hours, then Jack probably wouldn't have done the time that he did.
	And I mean, we did get something out of it.
	I know that a lot of the comments were like, well, you seem to have talked for two hours and said nothing.
	And in many ways, he did, but in many other ways, I think he's actually, I think he's actually being very specific in the language that he's using.
	Very much in the same way as Jack Conte with his manifest observable behavior.
	Not that I have any sympathy at all for Jack Conte at this point, to be honest.
	But for Jack Dorsey, I do have a slight amount because he's in a different position to Jack Conte.
	Jack Conte, there was no danger from anything with regards to banning me or Milo or any of the other people that were banned from Patreon.
	Patreon was in absolutely no danger there, you know.
	So Jack Conte was acting just as a censor.
	And it probably isn't even him.
	It's probably his team under him, over which he probably has very little actual moral authority.
	And I think that he probably gets beasted around by that quite often.
	So I can understand Joe not going as hard as a lot of people would have liked just for the sake of having a productive conversation.
	And I guess out of a sense of respect for the fact that Jack actually did come and talk to him.
	On the reverse side, and I'm not saying this is someone who's a fan of Joe Rogan and what he does.
	I think that the fact that Joe has a good-sized platform on which he will have literally anyone to talk about whatever their specialist subject is is good.
	I think that's very good.
	And I think he's a very open-minded and fair-minded guy.
	But I mean, it does seem to me that a lot of Joe Rogan's personal friends have had their livelihoods stripped away from them by people like Jack and frankly, Jack's friends.
	As Jack Conte showed us in his interview with Dave Rubin, these guys are all buddies.
	They all talk to each other.
	They all share ideas.
	They are all in the same boat as far as they're concerned.
	And they very much are a kind of community.
	And so, I mean, Joe has to have had that in his mind.
	I mean, Alex Jones is the primary example.
	And they did talk about him very briefly.
	And Jack couldn't even tell him why Alex Jones had been banned.
	Now, that seems to me like a massive dereliction of duty on Jack's part, because he must have known, going on to Joe Rogan's podcast.
	I mean, like, the Alex Jones, Joe Rogan podcast they did about a year ago, I think it was.
	Unbelievably famous because Alex Jones was really entertaining on it.
	And Joe's a personal friend of his.
	And after all of the other tech giants had deplatformed Alex Jones, Twitter was the last one.
	And Jack couldn't even tell him why he had been deplatformed.
	I find that very suspicious.
	And just getting onto the whole deplatforming thing, it's remarkable how consistent the ideological lines on deplatforming are.
	He doesn't know why Alex Jones was deplatformed.
	Can't say, well, like I've been deployed.
	I've never had an adequate reason as to why I was removed from Twitter.
	It was never given.
	I was never given a reason.
	At the time, on the day of my deplatforming, I'd spent two days trying to persuade the Nazis that the Holocaust did happen.
	So I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the point is, don't just don't say mean words to Nazis because the Silicon Valley tech giants get sensitive about that.
	It wasn't for the gay porn either.
	Anyway, I was very disappointed to see Joe say something to the equivalent of thank you very much, keep doing what you're doing at the end of his podcast with Jack, given how many of his friends who are right-leaning have been and had their career.
	I mean, this is career-damaging stuff.
	Like, Alex Jones's career is very low ebb at this point.
	And honestly, I don't think Alex Jones deserves it at all.
	Like, you can say, well, I mean, he says things about Sandy Hook.
	It's like, yeah, but he gets sued constantly, as he should be if he's saying things that are libelous, slanderous, defamatory, and outright false.
	Let them sue him.
	That's what the civil courts are for.
	And they work.
	I mean, you know, Alex Jones gets sued on something.
	And he's walked back his Sandy Hook stuff.
	He's apologised and all of this.
	You know, he's recanted what he said.
	That works.
	But it's not really about that.
	It's about the fact that it's Alex Jones and he was successful on their platforms.
	And he was opposing their particular ideological leaning.
	Effectively, this is, it's clear that this is the problem.
	And honestly, I would say that's the reason why I was nuked as well.
	and Milo, frankly, because, I mean, the Covington scandal, the Covington Catholic scandal is the single best example that we have of Twitter's overwhelming left-leaning bias.
	I mean, there were so many verified check marks, left-leaning, verified check marks, who were just openly calling for blood.
	Not one of them got their account suspended.
	Not one, as far as I'm aware.
	As far as I'm aware, all of those goddamn verified checkmarks, I mean, most of the tweets are still up because these people are immune to the consequences that would have been instantaneous for anyone else.
	I mean, I have never called for violence and never would call for violence.
	Not just because I would think it would be the quickest way for me to get myself deplatformed, but because I would think that'd be wrong.
	And Alex Jones wasn't calling for violence, at least not that I ever saw.
	Maybe he did somewhere sometime.
	I don't know.
	I mean, Gavin McGinnis, okay, fine.
	I can understand many of them doing that to Gavin McGinnis.
	And I think this was part of his comedy routine.
	But to unironically say, you know, I want to hurt you or something like that.
	I've seen clips of him saying it.
	It's obviously been taken out of the context.
	And the context is generally that he's a comedian.
	But, okay, you could say, okay, fine, that is a line that you can see has been crossed.
	Whether you meant it sarcastically or whatever, okay.
	I can understand.
	I can understand Gavin McGinnis.
	You know, he's very provocative, very edgy in that particular way.
	But Alex Jones, as far as I'm aware, wasn't.
	And, you know, Milo, myself, a bunch of others, we, you know, none of us were, obviously, you know.
	And so it's, and then you juxtapose it with the people going after the Covington boys.
	And they're all still intact.
	And it's just like, no, Jack, that's unacceptable.
	Like, if it's, it's one thing having the rule, right?
	But it's one thing having the rule that is not applied evenly.
	That's just totally unjust.
	And I can see why a lot of people were very disappointed in Joe for not having just, I know, I haven't grilled him on that.
	You know, that was necessary.
	That was a really necessary thing.
	So getting to the substance of what Jack actually said that actually mattered, in my opinion, is around 30 minutes in, Jack said that they judge based on conduct.
	They don't judge based on the words used, which I find to be a surprising standard that he claims to have set there.
	Because, I mean, frankly, I don't know if I believe that, to be honest.
	I think that it's certain words that will get you deplatformed, whether your conduct is good or bad.
	But, like, how is this defined?
	How is this, how can people know what the conduct that Jack Dorsey finds acceptable is?
	Because I had a quick breeze through their terms of service, and the only part I could find was the offensive or illegal conduct of other users or third parties.
	Otherwise, it was always illegal conduct.
	And the conduct that Jack Dorsey's talking about isn't illegal.
	It's just not very nice.
	And if Twitter, I mean, if Twitter is going to start banning people for not being very nice, they're not going to have much of a platform left by the end of it, are they?
	Because people spend all day, every day, being mean to one another on Twitter.
	Because for some reason, people just want that outlet.
	And Joe pointed that out in the part where he was saying this.
	But he kept saying the word conduct.
	And Joe kept getting hung up on this, like stuck on this, like conduct.
	What do you mean by conduct?
	And Jack never really properly defined it.
	Although he did say that it's about how something is being amplified, you know, like quote retweeting and things like that to try and dogpile users onto a certain person.
	It's like, well, I mean, how do you know that was the intent?
	You know, I mean, when I was on Twitter, if I quote, retweeted someone, it was because I wanted people to see what my opinion of what they had to say was, not because I wanted them to go and harass them.
	But I mean, the effect might have been the same either way, regardless of my intent.
	What can I do to stop that?
	Do I make it so that people don't see what I say?
	Or do I make it that, I mean, am I supposed to put a disclaimer on there or something?
	I mean, at the time, there was only 140 characters.
	So, I don't know, you know, I mean, what is the answer here, Jack?
	You know, what is the, and where is the consistent standard?
	Once again, you are left, like, with everyone scratching their heads because there is no consistent standard.
	I mean, he, he bled this into saying, like, you know, this is harassing people.
	I said, okay, well, what's harassment on Twitter?
	I mean, my goodness, like, I think that almost everyone gets harassed on Twitter by a broad definition of harassment, by the sort of definition one would use in public, for example.
	If what was happening on Twitter was happening in public, it would be nothing but harassment all day, every day to everyone.
	And tens of thousands of people taking part as well.
	Like, utterly unmanageable.
	But Twitter isn't the same as being in front of someone in real life.
	And I think that everyone actually knows that.
	And one of the things I found very interesting is that the amount of times that this person gets blocked is somehow contributing to whether this person is responsible for harassment.
	That's wild.
	Because you get people who are exceptionally sensitive and have block lists and block bots.
	Well, they'll block a person and hundreds of thousands of other people because of their followers.
	I mean, that's not a fair standard.
	You know, it's not something that, like, because you could tweet something totally innocuous at someone who had said, you know, you can't be racist to white people.
	And you said, well, I'm afraid I disagree with your definition of racism.
	And they'll block you.
	You didn't do anything wrong.
	You engaged with their idea, their statement openly and honestly and in good faith.
	And they still block you.
	And then all of your followers at the same time.
	And all of their friends will block you because they'll see it and be like, oh, God, this person is, you know, part of Team X and I don't ever want to hear from them.
	So block, blah, blah, blah, block.
	And you find yourself just in a position where you don't have a sensible measurement of what is and isn't harassment, what isn't, isn't part of a dialogue because of, frankly, a bunch of really sensitive snowflakes.
	And yet this could end up getting someone deplatformed by Jack's own admission.
	So, I mean, come on, man.
	Come on.
	This is obviously not a fair way to do things.
	And again, I just have to stress, it never applies to people in the club.
	These people never the in-club of the leftist sort of group think from California.
	These people never get blocked.
	They never get deplatformed.
	Even when they're calling for blood, man, you know, verified check marks saying, I'm going to feed a child into a wood chipper because I didn't like the smirk in his face.
	And that tweet is still fucking up.
	That is absolutely unconscionable.
	It is just not acceptable for you to run your platform like that.
	And at the end of the day, like, you know, you know that the verified check marks, the journalist class, is what makes Twitter what it is.
	You know that that's what makes it important for the public dialogue.
	And so essentially, Donald Trump controls whether your platform lives or dies.
	If Donald Trump shut down his Twitter account tomorrow and moved to Gab, you'd find yourself in a whole lot of trouble because whether they like it or not, that's where those journals have to go.
	And then why would they use your platform?
	Why would they use it in any way, shape or form?
	What if all the Republicans decided to do it?
	What if they all did it?
	What if celebrities decided they weren't happy with the way that Twitter was being run and they decided to do it?
	You know, you could see your platform tanking very quickly if these people had a mind to act in that way.
	So I really think that you're not on as firm a ground as you think, Jack.
	And I know that you're aware of Twitter's remarkable power as a kind of public broadcast system for world leaders.
	And it is.
	There's no doubting that.
	I think you really do have a responsibility.
	And the thing is, it goes further than that.
	Like, a lot of services use, like, for example, Team YouTube, YouTube support.
	They're very responsive on Twitter.
	They're there to genuinely, as far as I can tell, they seem to be genuinely there to help people on YouTube who are having trouble with the service on YouTube.
	And then, you know, the bot has identified something.
	Some, you know, one of the tens of thousands of, you know, drones who are sat at desks see a clip of something, go, oh, ban that, you know, and then the person's like, well, actually, like, I mean, Monkey Jones is a great example of this.
	Monkey Jones was a satirist.
	He had like 300,000 subscribers.
	And he had a particular interest in Elliot Rogers because Elliot Roger was like, he was an excellent example, an excellent case study in what ostracization does to a certain kind of person.
	And he wrote a whole manifesto that Monkey went through and like analyzed.
	He wasn't endorsing it.
	He was mocking.
	He thought Elliot Rogers was scum.
	But he wanted to help people understand why he was scum, why he did all this.
	And he was a comedian at the same time.
	And his entire channel, his entire YouTube presence just gone.
	You know, totally unfair.
	And unfortunately, Twitter, on Twitter, YouTube support had been unresponsive.
	But if Monkey Jones didn't even have a Twitter account, how would he, and if he was banned like I am, I mean, how do I contact YouTube support?
	How do I get in contact with these people?
	You know, it's, you do have a greater responsibility here, Jack, whether you like it or not.
	And things, I know you know this.
	So you've got to start, you've got to start being more lenient, frankly.
	You're not going to be able to say that this is going to be the sort of the mores of Silicon Valley projected onto your platform because your platform isn't about Silicon Valley.
	It's about the entire world.
	Like you say, you constantly say, we want to have a public dialogue.
	The world can have a public dialogue on our platform.
	Okay, then you're going to get a bunch of people you really don't like on there.
	And they're going to be entitled to use it based on your own reasoning that everyone has a right to use social media.
	After the understandable backlash that Joe Rogan got, he posted this to his social media profiles.
	I had Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, on the podcast on Friday, and many people felt I didn't grill him hard enough on Twitter, censoring right-wing voices.
	My intention was to talk to him, blah, blah, blah.
	I asked them about censorship, but people felt I on the right felt I didn't go hard after him hard enough.
	I'm not even sure if it's people on the right, mate.
	I think it's just a lot of people watching felt that.
	Some people, like whoever wrote this article, this article links to Raw Story.
	Twitter CEO claims Trump is no worse than Obama on right-wing podcast.
	That's a very left-wing outlet if they think Obama, that Joe Rogan's a right-wing podcast.
	He says, There have been talks of us editing the video and deleting disparaging YouTube comments.
	That's not true.
	The video fucked up while we were filming.
	The Tri-Class crashed.
	Jamie put it all back together.
	The YouTube comments, we don't delete those.
	As I can see, I show you that my YouTube comment is still there.
	So that hasn't been deleted.
	I assume the algorithm has got it because, I mean, it's happened to me.
	This isn't what Jamie or anyone else is doing.
	I definitely think there's discussion to be had about censoring comments through computer programs or manual deleting.
	I want you folks to know that we're not responsible for any of that.
	I do my best, and if I didn't fulfill some of your expectations, I can understand.
	Honestly, I think I learn more from negative reactions than from positive ones.
	I truly appreciate having a public review of these conversations because that's part of how I get better at this shit.
	I think there's a very noble comment from Joe there, like taking ownership of the fact that he understands he didn't grill him hard enough, especially on the censorship issue.
	And a lot of people rightfully voice their concerns, and Joe listened.
	And honestly, that's again one of the reasons I have respect for Joe.
	And 13 hours ago, he posted this: Good news for everyone that was annoyed that we didn't cover censorship and deplatforming enough on the podcast with Jack Dorsey because he's offered to come back on again.
	I'm going to take the criticism to heart and research all the high-profile cases on the right and on the left, and any instances that might be viewed as double standards.
	Anything in particular you think is important, please leave a mention in the comments and I'll have someone make a list.
	One thing I really liked that Jack said was that he felt the ability to communicate online was a right we should all have.
	Maybe there can be a road to redemption for people who have been banned.
	I'll keep you posted, folks, as to when we work out the details and the date.
	I'm guessing Joe saw my video and took what I was saying on board because I do genuinely think that if you think that social media is a right, as Jack said, then there does have to be some kind of redemption.
	Now, I know a lot of people have said to this in response to this, well, then you're just putting all the power in their hands.
	It's like, well, it already is.
	You know, it is their private platforms and they can just ban you if they want to just because they don't like your face.
	But that does go counter to what I'm sure they believe their own mission is.
	And I think that if we can pressure social media companies to have some kind of redemption, then that would be at least something.
	Because ultimately, I think that people get more and more radical as they are further and further ostracized.
	In fact, that's one of the reasons I think Monkey Jones' videos were so important.
	Because they showed Elliot Roger and how his constant rejection and his and the same with the Parkland shooting.
	This kid was a total loner and actively ostracized by his community.
	And look what he went and did.
	And I think that whether you like these people or not, you have to understand that your opponents are also your peers.
	They are also people in the same ecosystem as you.
	Even if you don't like one another and just talk past each other, snarking at one another on Twitter or whatever.
	Like, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ben Shapiro are peers on opposite sides of the conversation.
	And so rather than snarking at each other, they should sit down and have a conversation.
	But apparently, that's harassment.
	Because, you know, the person who knows they're going to lose really doesn't want to have that conversation.
	But I'm really looking forward to Joe's second go with Jack.
	I really hope Jack is a man of his word on this and does work out the details and date and will come and try not to worm out of things, because he was in many respects very slippery in what he was saying and he wasn't giving properly committed answers.
	And he definitely definitely, if by some miracle, actually doesn't know why Alex Jones was banned, or myself or Milo or well, we know why Milo was banned but um, but any of these other high profile commentators who have been banned Jack you, You really do have to do your due diligence here and educate yourself on those reasons.
	I mean, it's your company, it's your team.

▲