Charlie sits down to discuss Big Tech censorship with conservative social media star and digital warrior, Alex Lorusso, also known as @ALX on Twitter before he was unjustly deplatformed by the leftwing Silicon Valley tech giant. Two of...
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Digitally Assassinated by Twitter
00:01:46
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| Thank you for listening to this podcast one production. | |
| Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast One, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. | |
| Hey, everybody. | |
| Today on the Charlie Kirk show, we talk to someone who has been digitally assassinated by Twitter. | |
| His identity no longer exists, but we have him here today. | |
| He was retweeted by the president over seven times, and he is an incredible story. | |
| At ALX, Alex LaRusso is here. | |
| We talk social media tech bias and so much more. | |
| And if you haven't listened to our sister episode today, where I sit down with the president of the United States, you got to listen to it. | |
| Download it, press subscribe, email us, freedom at charliekirk.com. | |
| You're in for a treat today. | |
| Buckle up, everybody. | |
| Here we go. | |
| Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. | |
| Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. | |
| I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. | |
| Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. | |
| I want to thank Charlie. | |
| He's an incredible guy. | |
| His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. | |
| We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. | |
| That's why we are here. | |
| Hey, everybody. | |
| Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. | |
| We have discussed at length tech bias, censorship, and the power that social media companies have over the discussion happening in America, political speech, and quite honestly, how digital and social media companies can almost digitally assassinate people. | |
| They can topple governments. | |
| They have a massive amount of authority over what people think and how they communicate. | |
|
Toppling Governments with Tweets
00:15:24
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| You heard me talk previously about a friend of mine, Alex LaRusso, who works at Turning Point USA in a variety of different ways, who was very active on Twitter, retweeted by the President of the United States multiple times, grew his Twitter to over 100,000 followers. | |
| And then one day, his Twitter just got deleted, disappeared. | |
| And I'm honored to have Alex, who's also known as ALX formerly on Twitter, here with us today. | |
| Hey, Alex. | |
| Nice to be here. | |
| Thank you for the opportunity to share my story about what happened. | |
| So Alex, we've been working together for a little time now. | |
| And you work very hard. | |
| The president loved your material. | |
| You gained a lot of notoriety. | |
| And what happened to you was just outrageous and immoral and wrong. | |
| Tell us about it. | |
| Okay, so it was right after a tweet by Joe Biden's campaign. | |
| They sent out a tweet saying, make your own avatar in support of Vice President Biden. | |
| So being the internet troll that I am at sometimes, I thought it would be funny to make a meme out of that where I put President Xi of China in for where you were supposed to put yourself saying I support Vice President Biden. | |
| So I put that in and about 10 minutes later, I received a notification saying that my account has been suspended from Twitter. | |
| And so they didn't email me or give me any specific reason. | |
| They just told me that I was suspended with no other reason. | |
| So initially, I thought it was that meme that I posted, and that's what everyone else assumed. | |
| There were a few articles. | |
| They also said that that was the reason. | |
| So we tried to communicate with Twitter and we tried to appeal the suspension, tried to find out what was going on. | |
| And it turns out that they had suspended me because I had an account suspended in the past. | |
| So I had an account suspended in the past about two years ago. | |
| And they never really gave any background on it. | |
| So the account that I was using at ALX, that was just not affected by the suspension, like the initial suspension that I had two years ago, which frankly I kind of slipped my mind. | |
| So I was continuing to use that account. | |
| I was retweeted by the president, like you mentioned, about seven times, and I was growing exponentially. | |
| It's a massive deal. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| And for them to go back and find something from two years ago where they gave me no background and say that we're going to take you off Twitter because of this, mind you, they normally give a warning. | |
| I went back and they actually said that I was suspended initially for having, what they say, multiple accounts for malicious purposes. | |
| So I looked into that violation and they didn't really give any specifics about what that meant. | |
| I did have a couple of accounts, but for example, I made an account to help my small business that I worked at two years ago. | |
| It was called Emerald Meats. | |
| It was a butcher shop. | |
| So I wouldn't call that malicious, maybe to vegans, but I don't think that's malicious at all. | |
| I also had a Twitter account when I was in high school where it was a Spanish Twitter account where I'd get extra credit for tweeting in Spanish. | |
| So that was another account that I had. | |
| I don't consider any of these to be malicious purposes. | |
| So for them to take every account that I had down in the past except for a few, like the other one at ALX, which I just continued to use, is frankly, it's kind of disturbing how they can just go back. | |
| Yeah, let's talk about this. | |
| So you're a real human being, Alex LaRusso. | |
| Yes. | |
| And you would probably spend eight, nine hours a day on Twitter? | |
| Probably more. | |
| I have my screen time on after a friend asked me that same question, and it turns out about 12, 13 hours sometimes. | |
| And it wasn't unproductive. | |
| I want to make our audience clear. | |
| ALX, Alex, in front of me right now, he's one of the most brilliant minds digitally. | |
| He understands trends, how to spread information, how to counter message. | |
| So it wasn't like you were just flipping through errantly. | |
| And so 12 hours a day for years, and it just disappears. | |
| Yes. | |
| And so I want to just talk about the immorality of this. | |
| And then we'll get into the technical stuff, which is important. | |
| But how can a company just delete something you spend so much time on? | |
| Yeah, so that's a good question because a lot of people talk about how it's technically your property when it becomes when you create it. | |
| You're thinking of the tweets. | |
| So you're not an employee of Twitter. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So you're creating the content on their platform, which they claim to be. | |
| So technically, I would think that that would be your intellectual property, your thoughts, your work, everything going into that. | |
| So for them to just take it away without any sort of specific explanation or even warning at all, like, it is immoral because it's taking away a piece of you. | |
| Exactly. | |
| And that's not an overstatement. | |
| It's almost... | |
| It's almost, and I don't want to be overly hyperbolic here, but it's like chopping off an arm. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, it's something that meant something to you that was useful to you, that was part of your identity. | |
| And especially in these times where, like, I'm in an industry where viral politics, it's very, very useful and almost impossible to not have a Twitter account in these times. | |
| The President of the United States uses Twitter a lot. | |
| How am I going to have my work seen by the President of the United States? | |
| Appeals were made. | |
| I sent private messages, and I'm incredibly irritated with how I was treated. | |
| And that's not even about you. | |
| Because I'm one of the most engaged Twitter accounts on the planet. | |
| I don't say that braggadociously. | |
| I'm just, if I can't get them to respond, there's something very wrong. | |
| And I have 1.7 million Twitter followers. | |
| I've tweeted 42,700 times. | |
| I've had an account since 2011. | |
| I've spent probably tens of thousands of hours on Twitter pouring into that platform, thinking about funny, insightful, wise things, you know, to be able to, hopefully wise things to say. | |
| And when I went up the food chain to try to appeal your decision, I was told you know why you were suspended. | |
| Do you know why you were suspended, ALX? | |
| I frankly do not. | |
| And the interface that we had that they claimed was when you appeal a Twitter suspension, you fill out a form, and then they send you back an automated email. | |
| The automated email essentially read like, again, an automated email, like they didn't even read my appeal. | |
| So they just said, sorry, you violated our terms and your account will not be reinstated. | |
| So that's not a reason why. | |
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| So you can't go on Twitter and if you even dare, they're monitoring emails and IP addresses and they're hawking you. | |
| Yes. | |
| So there's no way you can create a new Twitter. | |
| No. | |
| Are you the only one that's been banned? | |
| Oh, no. | |
| There's been a whole host, even this week. | |
| The President of the United States, if he was not the President of the United States, he would have had already multiple strikes against his account. | |
| To use a Google term. | |
| So yesterday, they were talking about how the Chaz protesters were basically, that trend was migrating to Washington, D.C. | |
| And they were saying, oh, we want to take our own autonomous zone into D.C. | |
| So the president said, if they do that, they will be met with force. | |
| Twitter says that violated their rules. | |
| The president of the United States is telling protesters, as the media is calling them, that they cannot establish their own police-free, law-free zone within the nation's capital. | |
| I think that's frankly dangerous. | |
| But if he was a private citizen that wasn't the president of the United States, that tweet would have been removed. | |
| And also this week, a famous meme stern that the president... | |
| Carpe Donkum. | |
| Yes, Carpe Donkum. | |
| Why did they ban him? | |
| So it's actually kind of complicated. | |
| So initially, they thought it was the meme of the two toddlers that went viral last week that the president also tweeted that they labeled manipulated media because he was making a point where CNN and other mainstream media outlets cover a narrative inaccurately and try and purvey their own message when that's not what actually happened. | |
| So he had the CNN Chiron, obviously Photoshopped. | |
| It had the watermark of Carpe Donkum's account right there. | |
| Clearly a joke and clearly a meme. | |
| So it was manipulated media, blah, blah, blah. | |
| So that was a whole thing. | |
| And then it turns out it was removed for copyright violations. | |
| And that was, I think it was a week ago when that happened. | |
| So Carpe was banned yesterday for too many DMCA violations, which Twitter never even tells them. | |
| What's a DMCA? | |
| Just walk our audience to that. | |
| So it's the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. | |
| And that's when if somebody makes a claim that they have their property in a video, that they'll take it down because that's a violation of Twitter's rules. | |
| So I guess normally what happens is you just say, okay, you agree to read their terms and say, okay, I'll take down the tweet. | |
| And that's normally what happens. | |
| So Twitter never really tells you how many you get. | |
| It's a very secretive process. | |
| Exactly. | |
| So you have these authoritarian 20-something tyrants that were educated at the same universities that we fight against at Turning Point USA. | |
| They hate me. | |
| They hate Trump. | |
| They hate America. | |
| A lot of them hate themselves that have incredible authority and power to just make someone disappear. | |
| And all that work, I mean, I think I put a lot of work into my Twitter account. | |
| You see some of the edits that Carpe Dongtum makes. | |
| And these are dozens of hours of work in some of this content. | |
| Yeah, and it's not unseen. | |
| The president loves his work, and I'm not even sure if he's heard about it yet, but I'm sure he's going to be upset when it happens. | |
| Everyone in the administration, everyone in the movement loves his work. | |
| Memes are funny. | |
| And I also think it's an unfair target on his back because the people who have higher audiences, they're more likely to get a copyright violation. | |
| So say someone with 20 followers tweets 100 times as many copyrighted material as Carpe Dongtum does. | |
| They're not going to get their stuff taken down because the President of the United States isn't tweeting. | |
| Now, are these rules applied equally, left versus right? | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| So they are not definitely applied. | |
| Here's some examples. | |
| Ice Cube posted manipulated media, didn't he? | |
| Yes. | |
| That wrongly claimed Derek Chauvin with the Make America Greggen hat. | |
| That one comes to mind. | |
| Yep. | |
| So, yeah. | |
| So those ones, maybe they'll get marked as that. | |
| And this draws me back to the example of what happened during the Covington Catholic Kids incident. | |
| So there were hundreds of death threats online. | |
| Not only is it against Twitter's rules to make. | |
| Kathy Griffin, I think, said something right now. | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| Her, among many other blue check marks on Twitter. | |
| Blue check marks are verified according to verified accounts, yes. | |
| You and I know the terminology, not everyone does. | |
| So they're celebrities. | |
| And so during Covington, they had so many death threats. | |
| A lot of them stayed on Twitter for hours. | |
| One of them was even reported, and then they got an email back saying, sorry, this didn't violate our terms. | |
| So these attacks ranged from encouraging school shootings to burning down the school to even having an image of a wood chipper saying MAGA hat kids going through the wood chipper screaming. | |
| So it's funny. | |
| So the person in charge of the area of the company that enforces these rules, Vahaya God, I think her name is, she was actually asked on Joe Rogan's podcast by Tim Poole why these tweets or why these people were still on the platform. | |
| So her excuse was that they were actioned but not in the way that Tim Poole would like them to be. | |
| AKA, they still maintained their verified status and they still got to keep their account. | |
| So what happened is one of even just one of these accounts made multiple of that threats and all together. | |
| Against children. | |
| Yeah, against high school kids. | |
| And all Twitter did was make them delete that tweet. | |
| There was a very interesting episode on Rogan where he dove into this and I thought the answers were so lackluster, to be honest with you. | |
| Was just so corporate and so rehearsed, and the rules are so unequally applied. | |
| I mean, you see how the left is able to basically use Twitter as their own medium, as their own source of communication and their own source of camaraderie. | |
| It's outrageous. | |
| And you have the quote right there. | |
| Yeah, so she said after he asked why they weren't permanently suspended, she said it's a very rare occasion where we'll outright suspend someone without any sort of warning or any sort of ability to understand what happened. | |
| And Tim pressed her on that because he was actually targeted by Antifa. | |
| I believe he was doxxed, and he was reaching out to Twitter saying, why aren't you taking this down? | |
| This is my personal information. | |
| So he kept pressing her, and she said, we want people to understand what they did wrong, give them an opportunity not to do it again. | |
| And it's a big thing, again, to kick someone off the platform. | |
| I take that very seriously. | |
| So I want to make sure when someone violates our rules, they understand what happened and they are given an opportunity to know, you know, get back on the platform and change their behavior. | |
| So I would love to ask her where that was in my instance, where I wasn't given anything. | |
| You weren't giving any notification. | |
| She just lied. | |
| At all. | |
| And even when I, in my appeal, I reached out and I said, look, I think it was a misunderstanding. | |
| I would love to explain what happened. | |
|
Explaining Platform Violations
00:07:59
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| I'd love to have you guys explain what you think happened. | |
| And so I can, again, using her words, understand what I did so I don't do what apparently they think is violating the rules. | |
| So those are her words and not mine. | |
| And she's heading the Trust and Safety Council, which is in charge of enforcing those policies. | |
| So if that's the head of that area of the company, why are what she's saying in public different from her actions? | |
| Well, I think Twitter has truly become a left-wing organizing tool. | |
| And they've made it. | |
| I mean, they have gone so outside the realm of normalcy recently. | |
| And Jack Dorsey, what has he been saying? | |
| So Jack Dorsey, he's been kind of quiet. | |
| CEO of Twitter, so he's been kind of quiet in a sense where he's not going on a full-out public campaign against the president or against conservatives. | |
| But when, like in certain instances, when the president's ad, one of the president's ads got taken down, that was a George Floyd memorial ad. | |
| I guess one of the pictures was the property of a photojournalist that claimed copyright. | |
| So they took it down. | |
| And Trump tweeted that it was wrong and illegal and censorship. | |
| And he quoted it. | |
| Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, did, and said that it was a lie and that it was copyright violation. | |
| So he's been inserting his bias on Twitter, but I mean, he hasn't been as vocal as some of the other people. | |
| I mean, his employees have been outrageous. | |
| Oh, yeah, for sure. | |
| There's been death threats against other people in the administration. | |
| I remember seeing there was someone who was tweeting every time Dan Scavino, who is the social media director at the White House, every time he was tweeting, this guy would be replying. | |
| This is a Twitter employee, saying that they can't wait until they get arrested and that they were coming for the White House next and that they all deserve to be locked up and in jail, Scovino, Trump, and everyone in his administration. | |
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| So can you help for some of our older listeners explain the significance of this? | |
| And so I struggle with this because they're like, oh, so what, Twitter or Facebook? | |
| Like, what's the big deal? | |
| I mean, the only way I could possibly explain it is imagine a world where all of a sudden the TV companies could decide that Fox News can no longer be shown. | |
| Like it just disappears. | |
| I want you to imagine that. | |
| How angry would you be if all of a sudden you can't watch Tucker? | |
| Like that's the equivalent of what happens every single day on Twitter is these tech tyrants just push the button and they decide, nope, you can't do it. | |
| Now what I can understand though, Alex, is they say they're a platform, but they act like a publisher. | |
| Correct. | |
| Yeah, so they and they're also given special protections by our government under section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act. | |
| So in good faith that they're acting as a platform which they're not allowed to make editorial judgments and just take out what they don't like. | |
| They're supposed to be, that would be a publisher. | |
| So there's supposed to be a platform where people are able to talk. | |
| You gave the example of like a TV station. | |
| I'd like to say maybe even say like a telephone company. | |
| Yeah, what if they just disconnect your line if you've all of a sudden you say MAGA? | |
| Exactly. | |
| So a picture for older listeners, maybe picture you're having a conversation with a friend and you just say something that the owners of the telephone company don't like and they disconnect the line permanently and they don't even tell you why. | |
| So that could be an explanation of just how jarring it is. | |
| And even further, like I explained earlier, how in my career path, it's almost necessary to have a Twitter account. | |
| So not only are you shutting down conversation, but you're like shutting down entire careers. | |
| So, and I also imagine for our older listeners, you board American Airlines and you're in seat 18A and you have the Wall Street Journal in your briefcase and you open it up and all of a sudden a flight attendant says, sir, you're going to have to leave the aircraft. | |
| We don't allow Wall Street Journal readers get out. | |
| You say, what do you mean? | |
| I have to get to Tucson. | |
| Why someone would be going to Tucson? | |
| I'm kidding. | |
| We love our friends in Tucson. | |
| Kidding, of course. | |
| No, there's a big Phoenix-Tucon rivalry. | |
| But I have to get to Boston. | |
| How about that? | |
| I have to get to Boston. | |
| And why though? | |
| I'm kidding. | |
| Going to Boston. | |
| Good place. | |
| And I have to get there. | |
| This is the only flight. | |
| I have to get there for a very specific purpose for my job. | |
| Sir, we don't allow people that read the Wall Street Journal to go to Boston. | |
| And they take you off the aircraft. | |
| You're strength. | |
| Exactly. | |
| You have no way to get there. | |
| And all of a sudden you try to rebook the flight. | |
| They say, sorry, Wall Street Journal readers are not allowed on our aircraft. | |
| But they might say, no, you violated our terms of service at American Airlines. | |
| What are you talking about? | |
| You know what you did. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| That's a similar analogy. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, and there's. | |
| And you're banned from the airline forever. | |
| Exactly. | |
| And there's a limited amount of airlines, too. | |
| Just like there's even a smaller amount of tech companies. | |
| And there's like six airlines, three major ones. | |
| There's basically two or three tech companies. | |
| Exactly. | |
| There's only two real conversational tech companies, and that's Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. | |
| But Facebook and Instagram are the same company. | |
| Yeah, and they're all different. | |
| YouTube is not a conversational. | |
| It's a much more front-facing. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So, I mean, exactly. | |
| That's a good example to use for practical use. | |
| But again, like we said, there's a smaller amount of tech companies, and it just impacts everyone in a different way. | |
| So let's talk about this philosophically. | |
| There's a lot of people that are financed by these tech companies, by the way. | |
| A lot of these people talk about this stuff. | |
| And I am a free market guy. | |
| I love the beauty of the market. | |
| However, I'm a patriot before I'm a capitalist. | |
| Very important to prioritize that. | |
| I love my country before I love Milton Friedman. | |
| I love Milton Friedman. | |
| I'm not saying I don't dislike him. | |
| I know that. | |
| So explain this to me, ALX. | |
| There are conservatives that say we should do nothing. | |
| There was an individual on television the other day who said, it's a bad idea to go after the tech companies. | |
| Now, whether he's getting money or not from the tech companies, we actually found out there was an article that showed how many of these people receive money from the tech companies. | |
| And any conservative group that gets money from these tech companies, I'm very suspicious. | |
| Oh, yeah, for sure. | |
| Right? | |
| I mean, in my book, it's like you're getting money from a power that wants to reconfigure America. | |
| So what do you think the policy approach should be here? | |
|
Patriots Before Capitalists
00:02:51
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| So for anyone that says that we should do nothing and say that they're a private company, I'd like to ask them what they would think about a company that falsely advertises their services. | |
| Because if Twitter is advertising themselves as a public platform where they and it says this in their terms of service that they love to cite, that they do not take any content into account when they terms like bias and saying political leanings. | |
| And actually, Jack Dorsey, I believe, testified under oath that they don't take any different actions against people of political leanings. | |
| So I'd love to talk to people about what they think about false advertising. | |
| That's a very interesting point. | |
| Go deeper there. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So say you wanted to purchase a product. | |
| You saw an infomercial on TV and they detailed what this product gave you. | |
| And then you got the product and it was completely different from what they detailed on TV. | |
| Deceptive trade practices. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Would you complain or would you say, well, it's a private company. | |
| I just gave them my money and my time and whatever. | |
| And that's okay. | |
| I got gypped. | |
| Does that sound like what you guys are advocating for? | |
| Or I don't understand why it's okay in this instance, but it wouldn't be okay in that instance. | |
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| It keeps your computers running great. | |
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| Well, and so what's interesting is that there is a broad agreement outside of the absolute free market fundamentalists who say, oh, yeah, deceptive trade practices will sort themselves out through regulation. | |
| And look, I do believe regulation is a wonderful comp I think competition is a great regulation. | |
| Let me put it that way. | |
|
Corporate Immunity and Deception
00:15:41
|
|
| I misphrased it at the beginning. | |
| Competition is generally a really good regulation that when you have people competing against each other, you're going to have better products. | |
| I think that's generally true. | |
| I don't think that's law, though. | |
| I don't think that's a, I think that's a very important thing. | |
| I think that's a general rule. | |
| However, when you have people, and this is where I differentiate with just absolute fundamentalist libertarians, so I think that there are companies that, and individuals, that do seek to deceive, and that there is a role to make sure they don't seek to deceive. | |
| And people say, oh, buyer beware and all that. | |
| Maybe you lose me at that a little bit, right? | |
| But whether or not you lose it, those laws are on the books. | |
| So whether or not you believe that or not, that exists. | |
| So if we're concerned, like Elizabeth Warren and all these people, they set up the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau under Barack Obama to go after companies that were doing huge robocalls and going after seniors, right? | |
| They were predatory in nature, payday lending or whatever it is, right? | |
| And they said, this is the worst thing ever. | |
| They're deceiving themselves. | |
| They say they're going to be coming to fix your car, but they never show up, like whatever, right? | |
| This is total scheming. | |
| And you see, if you watch the DOJ website every other day, they're indicting people on this stuff all the time, right? | |
| I mean, there's huge crackdowns on deceptive business practices. | |
| So make the case. | |
| How are these tech companies making deceptive business practices? | |
| I believe so. | |
| And even when people say that, oh, you agreed to their terms of service, well, actually, when I signed up for Twitter, it was about like 10 years ago. | |
| So their terms of service have changed quite a bit. | |
| And I know each time they update them, they send the email where they said, we changed our terms of service or whatever. | |
| And this has been over the period of 10 years. | |
| And they've made them more vague. | |
| So yes, I do think they've been deceptive, especially when we have so many instances of this. | |
| So I think they should, which President Trump is already doing, and I think it should go into legislation. | |
| Looking more into their Section 230 immunity. | |
| Because if they're not acting like the platform that they were given that immunity to be, and they call themselves a platform, but they behave like a publisher. | |
| So how can they possibly be a platform if they're funding shows? | |
| That's a good question. | |
| Yeah. | |
| It doesn't seem like they're funding shows. | |
| Yeah. | |
| There are Facebook-funded watch pages. | |
| There are Google-funded programs. | |
| There are Twitter Periscope-funded programs, too. | |
| How is that not a platform? | |
| Yeah, it seems to be. | |
| They're Snapchat-funded content. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Seems to be a publisher to me. | |
| Right. | |
| So why are they not treated as such? | |
| So how would any other publisher be treated in that instance? | |
| They could be held accountable. | |
| So the government gave them this sweetheart deal, basically, in good faith, because the internet is a big place. | |
| The reason it was given is because they can't remove every piece of illegal content. | |
| And that kind of gave them a crutch in the sense where now they're sending all of their people who look into this stuff and say we're going to take this content down. | |
| Since they're not going to be held accountable for leaving up the illegal content, that means they're shifting their attention to the content that they want to remove. | |
| And they'll maybe remove the illegal content when enough public pressure gets to it. | |
| But to take the counter argument, Alex, is that people would say, you get rid of 230. | |
| These tech companies will be basically inoperable. | |
| That it'll lose its competitive advantage. | |
| And we want innovation. | |
| What's your response to that? | |
| Like, you won't be able to post what you want to post. | |
| Well, I mean, that's where the tech companies have to come to the table, is my opinion. | |
| If they want to keep their Section 230 immunity, maybe they should come to the table and make the argument why they deserve to keep it. | |
| And maybe they should come to the table and have a conversation about why they're not behaving like a platform. | |
| So I think that's where we're at at this point. | |
| Even Trump said that he would love to shut down Twitter. | |
| I don't necessarily agree with that. | |
| And I don't think that he would actually do it. | |
| I think he was just saying. | |
| I think he was setting up the rules of engagement. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| I mean, it's a good negotiating position when you start with shutting it down. | |
| And anything less might be a win. | |
| Yeah, and exactly. | |
| It's smart from a negotiating perspective. | |
| And you say it might be inoperable. | |
| Well, again, why is that my problem? | |
| I'm banned from the platform. | |
| Why do I care if Twitter can't operate under these new rules? | |
| Again, that's their problem. | |
| So do you think platform access is a civil right? | |
| For sure, because I think in a digital age where everyone lives online, everyone gets their news online, everyone communicates online. | |
| So why shouldn't everyone be able to have a voice online? | |
| That's the way people communicate. | |
| And saying, even like First Amendment rights, I know they're not the government, and then First Amendment protects against the government. | |
| But for example, if you don't agree with a law that the government, well, I'll give this as an example, the coronavirus lockdowns. | |
| So it was technically illegal to protest these because you had stay-at-home orders. | |
| So if it's illegal to protest in person, I can protest online and say I disagree with these. | |
| So I basically would have my right to assemble online or voice my opinion online and petition a government, a massive government. | |
| I'd have that taken away. | |
| How else are we going to petition our leaders in Washington, D.C. who are all on that platform? | |
| What am I going to do? | |
| Fly to Washington, D.C. when I'm supposed to be a stay-at-home order and hold the sign in front of the Capitol building at this point. | |
| Yeah, so the First Amendment guarantees the protection of your right to petition your government to be able to, without any rights or redresses, to be able to go and gain support for your own purposes. | |
| Do you think that it is a suppression of First Amendment rights if you're not able to do that where the conversation is happening? | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| Like I said, we live in a digital age. | |
| So that's what you said. | |
| The conversation is happening online. | |
| There are protests in the streets still, but these have turned into riots in recent times. | |
| But I think it's more effective online. | |
| Like you see a trending hashtag or whatever. | |
| That's the equivalent of a protest, in my opinion. | |
| So if a law passes or whatever and a bunch of people online are tweeting about it, that's where the conversation is happening. | |
| Maybe you don't have the time or you don't have the energy to set up a massive protest. | |
| So if something happens, you can immediately tweet about it, voice your opinion. | |
| So can everyone else. | |
| And then you get a direct result when it makes the news. | |
| That's much different and much more efficient than maybe planning a protest in Washington, D.C. in a week. | |
| And maybe it will get covered on local stations or something. | |
| So you've been personally impacted by Twitter. | |
| Let's talk about Google for a second. | |
| Do you think Google or the federal government are more powerful? | |
| Oh, Google for sure. | |
| Do you think Google's more powerful than the federal government? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Why? | |
| Well, I'm not sure the exact percentage, but I'm pretty sure it was over 90% of all ads across the internet are by Google. | |
| 93% of all search results. | |
| Oh, yeah, that too. | |
| So advertisements control what everyone sees, and search results control what everyone basically thinks. | |
| Say, if you want to gain an opinion on a certain subject, what do you do? | |
| You Google it. | |
| So Google is able to shape public opinion, basically. | |
| I remember there's actually a good example of this that was going on during the election. | |
| So during the 2016 election, Google actually changed the definition of fascist. | |
| So if you Googled fascist, it would say like something to do with right-wing politics. | |
| And if you went to the Merriam-Webster definition, it had no mention of right-wing. | |
| Fascist literally means bundle of sticks. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yes. | |
| If you go back to the Italian definition, it's just the truth. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So that's one way where people were basically saying, oh, Donald Trump is a fascist. | |
| Here's my Google definition stating it's a right-wing authoritarian government style. | |
| So Donald Trump is a fascist because it's right-wing. | |
| So there's one way in which they're able to shape mass public opinion. | |
| With no basis in truth. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Google also, I mean, Google could topple a government if they want to. | |
| I mean, Google could say, believe this, don't believe that. | |
| And I think we're actually experiencing something that's quasi-hypnotic. | |
| Because when I go to YouTube, when I open up my Gmail or whatever, and yes, I still do use Gmail too much, not because it's free, because if you think it's free, you're actually the product, not the consumer. | |
| Yes. | |
| It's just actually a very easy-to-use platform, to be honest. | |
| I should probably gravitate away from that. | |
| When I go to YouTube and all these, everywhere it says, Black Lives Matter, learn about systemic racism. | |
| I can't avoid it right now. | |
| And the government doesn't have that power. | |
| The government is just kind of, I mean, the government has the power to lock you up. | |
| I'll give you that. | |
| The power the government has is to ruin you financially, ruin you criminally, and all that. | |
| But I will say this: if you are accused of the worst possible thing in the world, still in our system, you do get a jury of your peers in representation. | |
| It's true. | |
| Do you get representation against the tech companies? | |
| No, you don't. | |
| You don't have to process, right? | |
| Exactly. | |
| And they think it's a private company, and they'll use that argument. | |
| But what does our country say about monopolies? | |
| And that's the real question. | |
| Well, and so the monopoly laws were not written for monopolies like this, though. | |
| Yeah. | |
| The monopoly laws were written for early 20th century vertical monopolizations that were gouging prices of consumers. | |
| They were not written for massive tech companies to say, oh, our product's free and always will be. | |
| Hold on a second. | |
| It's the most expensive product I've ever used. | |
| It's just counting my free, you know, you're in the monopolization of cultural change. | |
| And it's not good social revolution. | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| You know, I just think Google is, it's come to a point. | |
| The only explanation I can possibly tie it to maybe a government is, say, where China has state-run propaganda. | |
| So like you said, oh, I go to YouTube and Black Lives Matter ads pop up. | |
| No, it's not just an ad, it's half the screen. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| So that, to me, seems like it's what I would call state-approved stuff comparing Google to a government. | |
| Yeah, that's very interesting. | |
| And even further, I remember during the coronavirus when it first started happening, how the WHO was not too reliable. | |
| So I do remember YouTube when they updated their terms of service saying that they're going to start taking down any videos that aren't in agreement with the WHO. | |
| World Health Organization. | |
| Yes. | |
| Which is the Wuhan Health Organization. | |
| Yeah, precisely, because I mean, they've been back and forth. | |
| So they came out very early on and they said that the coronavirus was not contagious and that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, according to China. | |
| Obviously a lie. | |
| Yes. | |
| So at that time, if I published a video on YouTube and say even one of the Chinese doctors who turned out to be whistleblowers and were disappeared by the Chinese government. | |
| So if I, I, an American, had some sort of intelligence stating that it was contagious and I put that on YouTube, would YouTube take that down if they had that rule in place at the time? | |
| They took down the video of the two doctors from Bakersfield, the Reverend, California, that were just telling the truth. | |
| Yep. | |
| Nine million views like that, and they just take it down. | |
| Yep. | |
| Yet I have found materially false information on YouTube about me, about other things that they will not take down. | |
| Harassment, too, that violate their terms of service. | |
| So Alex, this is one of the biggest issues for our generation. | |
| Would you say? | |
| Oh, yes, for sure. | |
| And especially going forward, because you have to think all of these tech CEOs are operating in a world where they didn't grow up online. | |
| So Jack Dorsey, I could ask Jack Dorsey what he did when he was in college or high school. | |
| He probably did some stuff he regrets. | |
| Now, if I told him that he did something wrong when he was 20 or what other people said he was wrong, and then I asked him, okay, would you love to be permanently, your opportunities in the future permanently taken away because of that? | |
| So you have to think in this sense, everyone's growing up online. | |
| So like I said, I signed up for Twitter like 10 years ago. | |
| I've spent like 10 years of my life on that platform, whereas Jack Dorsey just kind of created it. | |
| And he, I think, joined when he was, what, 30-something, whenever he started the company. | |
| So they're not in the right mindset to be taking action against people, a whole generation that's growing up online. | |
| They're interacting with their peers online. | |
| I'm afraid, though. | |
| Alex, in the couple minutes we have remaining, I'm afraid that the digital manipulation is so severe right now. | |
| And we're doing an amazing job at Turning Point to try to educate people and enlighten them. | |
| But when we're dealing with Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube, half of the YouTube homepage, which, by the way, they're losing tens of millions of dollars in revenue from this because those are, unless someone's financing it, those are insanely expensive. | |
| That's your prime territory. | |
| That's like if you own a billboard company. | |
| That's right there. | |
| In the huge sector of the most busy highway in New York, you're like, oh, we're just going to put a black square there. | |
| Right? | |
| I mean, they must be losing money on it. | |
| I guess that's the question then. | |
| But I hope adults start taking this seriously because our lawmakers are not fighting on this. | |
| They're not. | |
| There's a few that are. | |
| Matt Gates, Josh Hawley, they really get it. | |
| Senator Cotton, who was actually just affected. | |
| He's been terrific. | |
| Cotton has just been taking real tough fights. | |
| But most Republicans, just so people listening to this podcast understand, most Republicans are financed by the tech companies. | |
| They take money from Facebook, they take money from Google, or they take money from lobbyists who represent them. | |
| So if you think just because you're supporting Republicans that you're going to get reform here, you're wrong. | |
| In fact, a lot of the Republicans hide behind the tech company-financed think tanks and like, oh, well, we can't do anything because we're free market people. | |
| Got it. | |
| Let me make the argument for you. | |
| George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the heroes of our country that were sitting around a table, what concerned them most? | |
| I would say the threat of tyranny. | |
|
Fighting Against Digital Tyranny
00:07:17
|
|
| Bingo. | |
| It wasn't the threat of government. | |
| Now, mind you, it was the threat of government because the answer to threat of tyranny was government at the time. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So, however, it wasn't necessarily anti-government sentiment. | |
| It was just that we have studied human history and the most egregious form of tyranny and power was government. | |
| Now, I know that sounds obviously, to us, self-evident, but fast forward 250 years, more or less, less than that. | |
| Yeah, it's about right, 240, 250 years. | |
| Here we are now. | |
| Founding fathers sitting around a table are worried about tyranny. | |
| Wouldn't you think they'd be worried about tyranny in all forms? | |
| Oh, for sure. | |
| It's not like, oh, we're really worried about that government tyranny, but not the other government tyranny, not the other type of tyranny. | |
| That might be corporate tyranny. | |
| Now, mind you, Republicans are inactive on this issue because they say we can't do anything because of the market. | |
| But then I ask yourself the question, if something gets more powerful than our government, is that not a reason to act? | |
| Now, I'm not saying you have to eliminate that power, but there has to be some form of recalibration and rebalancing, right? | |
| Oh, for sure. | |
| Yeah, and like I said earlier, maybe legislation in the future would not necessarily be the answer if it dismantled them completely to the point where they couldn't operate, and which, again, is why they have to keep their end of the bargain. | |
| If they want to continue to operate in this country, they need to keep their end of the bargain and allow themselves to keep platforms. | |
| And just imagine, imagine for a second one of these tech companies was owned, operated, and staffed by conservatives. | |
| And we were just kicking leftists off the platform, which we wouldn't do because we're decent people. | |
| Do you think that would be tolerated for a second by the media? | |
| For sure, no. | |
| I would give an example. | |
| If someone who supported Black Lives Matter or any other organization had any sort of ban or censorship, there would be a trending hashtag immediately and it would be reversed. | |
| And the tech company would actually probably come up with an apology and they'd probably verify them instantly, actually. | |
| Well, so that's what I think it comes down to is that you're a victim of tyranny. | |
| ALX, Alex. | |
| And don't play a victim. | |
| We don't do that stuff. | |
| But you are. | |
| But you're not going to feel sorry for me. | |
| That's not what we're here. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Right? | |
| For sure. | |
| We don't do that. | |
| I think it's unbelievably destructive. | |
| The whole like, oh, I'm awful. | |
| Okay, so yeah, something bad happened to you. | |
| Let's move on. | |
| Right? | |
| No, we're still fighting for you and all that, but we don't do the whole oppression Olympics thing. | |
| Leave that to the left. | |
| However, you are a legitimate victim in this sense. | |
| And by a completely autocratic, tyrannical force. | |
| The fundamentalists in the Republican Party don't actually believe their free market fundamentalism. | |
| They just use that as an excuse because they get money. | |
| They're financed by big tech companies. | |
| And I just ask the question for everyone listening to this. | |
| First of all, if you think it's not coming for you, you're wrong. | |
| I want everyone listening to this to email me, freedom at charlieclirk.com, your instances of when you get biased and censored and you guys get deplatformed. | |
| The emails we've got are unbelievable, by the way. | |
| They're incredible. | |
| I read every single one. | |
| I wish I could respond to more of them. | |
| They're absolutely unbelievable. | |
| I want to hear the stories. | |
| And people say, I can't like your posts. | |
| I can't follow it. | |
| I subscribe to your podcast. | |
| I have to resubscribe all the time. | |
| I hear these things. | |
| It's like incredible. | |
| So it's really about the idea of freedom versus tyranny, isn't it? | |
| Because you right now, Alex, you are not free because you can't communicate on this specific platform, private or public. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Yep, that's correct. | |
| And so your freedom has been restricted. | |
| Isn't that government's job to protect your freedom? | |
| I would say so, yeah. | |
| And we live in a free country, so if I can't be free, then what is my government really doing? | |
| And they hide behind a very nuanced legal protection where they say, well, it's the same as if you say no shirts, no shoes, no service. | |
| And they say, well, because they violated the terms of service. | |
| First of all, they're always changing. | |
| They're unequally applied. | |
| Whereas no shirts, no shoes, no service, you can see very clearly. | |
| Exactly. | |
| And you get a warning, like, please, sir, go put a shirt on or else we're going to have to escort you out. | |
| Whereas this is just this amorphous thing, and you're shopping in the 7-Eleven, and they handcuff you and kick you out, and you're never allowed back in. | |
| Yep. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Right? | |
| And you're like, I was wearing the shirts and the shoes, man. | |
| We don't want to hear it. | |
| But that's basically the legal protection that they're hiding behind. | |
| It's a very, it's a simple way to encapsulate it. | |
| However, when someone gets kicked off these platforms, the ideas get kicked off. | |
| It becomes less likely that we have a diverse conversation, ideologically diverse conversation, which is what the left wants. | |
| And this should horrify everyone listening to this. | |
| This is how absolute totalitarianism begins because it's already happening. | |
| And whether that totalitarianism is from Google Inc. or federal government Inc., it really is kind of irrelevant. | |
| I mean, it's actually terrifying. | |
| And just the sense that our tech is in a young stage, I'd say. | |
| Social media has only been around for, what, 10, 15 years. | |
| Just think of 10 years in the future, how much more powerful they'll get. | |
| Oh, they're not slowing down. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| And their profits are record high. | |
| And they're only hiring more diabolical, committed Marxists. | |
| And the federal government, if there was an actual power struggle between the federal government and these tech companies, the federal government would lose. | |
| The only thing the federal government has is a standing army. | |
| But Google and Twitter and Facebook could completely mass propagandize people to believe something that is so untrue. | |
| Federal government doesn't have that power. | |
| It just doesn't. | |
| Exactly. | |
| In closing ALX, how could people support you? | |
| Right now I'm on a new platform called Parlor. | |
| I use it too. | |
| Yes, it's very good. | |
| It's at ALX on Parlor. | |
| And I'm also on Instagram at ALXThe Lord. | |
| Until you got kicked off, right? | |
| For now, yes. | |
| I hope that's not the case. | |
| Everyone can email us or questions, freedom at charliekirk.com. | |
| Go to charliekirk.com slash support if you guys want to become a monthly donor to help support the show. | |
| Helps us get people like Alex. | |
| How old are you, Alex? | |
| I'm 24. | |
| 24 years old. | |
| And you've been digitally annihilated. | |
| People need to know that you can literally have an identity destroyed, assassinated. | |
| And very little you can do about it, but you're going to be strong. | |
| You'll rise up. | |
| You'll be okay. | |
| Yes, I will. | |
| Thanks for coming on the show, Alex. | |
| Thank you for having me. | |
| If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com, tpusa.com. | |
| Get engaged, get involved, chip in some money if you can. | |
| Spend more money on cultural engagement than you spend on coffee every single year. | |
| That is my challenge for you. | |
| Pray on that, think on that, meditate on that. | |
| Type in Charlie Kirk Show right now to your podcast provider. | |
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| Email me your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com. | |
| Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. | |
| Thank you guys so much. | |
| God bless. | |