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Jan. 7, 2025 - Info Warrior - Jason Bermas
26:33
Zucker Bro Isn't Censoring Anymore?
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We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad, worse than bad.
They're crazy.
Silence!
The great and powerful Oz knows why you have come.
You've got to say, "I'm a human being!" God damn it!
My life has value!
You have met all the primal forces of nature!
Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think, or what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder!
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts.
Thank you.
You're beautiful.
I love you.
Yes.
You're beautiful.
Thank you.
It's showtime.
And now, Reality It with Jason Hermes.
And who loves you and who do you love?
Facebook is like so back, bro.
*laughing* Ladies and gentlemen, I am Jason Bermas and I'm just here to ask some questions.
So, for those that were watching the program this week, you know I did a Zuckerberg slash rebranding video.
And I really warned people.
That this rebranding was extremely disingenuous.
And I would just like to say that what we are going to watch now, in my opinion, is a full-on extension of that disingenuousness.
Basically, Mark Zuckerberg, who never really admitted to censoring anything, right?
You can go watch even that Joe Rogan podcast.
When he starts talking about things coming down the line in moderation of content and yibbity-yabbity-you, you can tell he's still very much on that train.
Now, a lot of people have talked about the fact that the guy's been doing mixed martial arts, that he talked about the Trump assassination attempt.
Positive manner towards Trump's reaction.
He's been hanging out with Dana White, and really that's the bombshell news that we're going to get to in a moment, that Dana White is now going to be on the board of Meta.
And look, surface level, that sounds and looks great, right, Jason?
You're an MMA fan.
You're a UFC fan.
Yes.
But I'm also a realist, and I know that Dana White, especially in regards to his company, has done more than bend the truth on occasion and completely and totally obfuscated the entire Conor McGregor serial, brutal, violent rapist thing.
In fact, even after the civil trial, When he was asked about that in a post-fight press conference, he answered it with total disgust that he was even asked the question, as though he shouldn't have been asked the question, which to me is completely ludicrous and insane.
So we are going to go through the entire Zuckerberg video.
It's about five minutes long.
He's trying to relate to the everyman, the little guy.
He's talking about copying Twitter's community notes.
Hey, everyone, Twitter's not a free speech platform.
All the shadow banning of individuals that go outside the left-right paradigm are still going to be there.
They're still going to be picking winners and losers.
You can guarantee it.
I actually, you know, in the dark cartoon that we live in, every once in a while something is just so over the top.
Disingenuous.
That I burst out into laughter.
And this video in particular has a part where he talks about moving the content moderation team from California to Texas that just, I mean literally, I know everybody, LOL! No, I was laughing out loud by myself with nobody around.
That was my legitimate reaction.
So we're going to play this video.
We're going to talk about Dana White and more.
Before we get there, I do want to remind everybody, we're doing this on our own.
5, 10, 15 bucks, it means the world to us.
The buy me a coffee link and others are down below.
And also, please share the content.
Although we have been losing subscribers, I think when I first started showing people, it was something like...
We were down 30 and then we were down 50. Now we're only down like 25 this week.
That's why you got to go over, unfortunately, to the other platforms.
Rockfin, Rumble, yes, X as well.
Especially if you want to get some of the stuff outside of the video content.
So let's do it up.
Let's play the Zuck as he...
As he addresses everybody and the elephant in the room just tries to be a normal dude.
He's just a normal dude.
Hey everyone.
I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
I started building social media to give people a voice.
I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression and I still believe this today.
But a lot has happened over the last several years.
There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.
Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
A lot of this is clearly political, but there's also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there.
Drugs, terrorism, child exploitation.
These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly.
Let's just stop it right there.
Why are you conflating the two issues?
First of all, the beginning move right there.
Was to try to pass the buck on the idea that, hey, I was always free speech.
I said so at Georgetown.
It was the mainstream media and the government.
The government made me do it.
The government!
Well, you're an extension of the government.
Not just the United States government, but the World Economic Forum, global governance, the media.
Peter Thiel, very involved in the success of your company.
Sean Parker, also very much a part of that in the beginning.
And look, we can debate whether Mark Zuckerberg started out as a good guy or he was a bad guy.
We could talk about the Winklevoss twins and the actual origin story of Facebook.
We can even talk about the DARPA program, LifeLog, which...
If you look at the Total Information Awareness Network, it sure looks like Facebook mirrors that ideal set very, very closely, to say the least.
Let's get back to the Zucker.
So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.
But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.
Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's millions of people.
And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.
So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.
More specifically, here's what we're going to do.
First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S. I mean, just the fact that this guy had to say similar to X in the United States.
First of all, the community notes stuff a lot of the time on X is a total and complete sham, especially when you're talking about geoengineering.
Go and try to post something about solar radiation management.
You don't have to use the conspiracy term chemtrail.
You post anything about what you can clearly see being sprayed in the skies.
You post anything about the material that is found in the water, in the soil, on the surface of the biological plant life after the fact of barium, aluminum, strontium.
You're going to get some community notes.
Oh, it's all just...
It's all just water vapor.
Okay?
So, like, this isn't a big win.
Oh, we're going from fact-checkers to community notes.
Thanks, Zuck.
After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.
We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.
But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased.
And have destroyed more trust than they've created.
That's absolutely a lie.
They absolutely played the quote-unquote arbiters of truth and tried to play that role, just like the mainstream media, just like those in government calling for the censorship of others.
I mean, this isn't a right or left issue.
Never has been.
You step out of bounds on either side, okay?
And you're going to get banned.
You're going to get fact-checked.
You're going to get shadow banned.
You're not going to be able to post for a while.
And quite frankly, even if you're running a media business, and really that's what this is.
This is the invitation to operations like the Gateway Pundit and others to start spending advertising dollars with them again.
That's one of the big moves here and the motivations behind all of this.
Especially in the U.S. So over the next couple of months, we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system.
Second, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.
What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far.
It started out going too far.
It was the inverse of reality, this inclusivity agenda.
In fact, I am going to be posting tonight my Making Sense of the Madness that just aired.
That's more on the trans issue that apparently is now opening up over at Facebook.
But tomorrow...
I'm going to be posting a video from Making Sense of the Madness where I interview, for the second time now, a central intelligence agency analyst and somebody that's big on the DEI and the inclusivity and kind of exposing that arena.
But look, here's the deal.
Here's how you include everybody.
You let everybody speak.
And if it's not illegal, you don't moderate it.
And that's it.
I suppose if you want to moderate overtly non-human sock puppet bot accounts that can't be traced back to a person, I can understand that as well.
Because look, even outside of government agencies and things like signature reduction, you do have a lot of anonymous losers on the internet posting as five or six different people.
In order to sow, you know, discourse or to promote a certain agenda.
That's how the QAnon sense thing really took off, was that you had this group of people who were mainly internet trolls with tons of SOC accounts after they had created that, you know, basically a LARP on the success.
Of getting Trump in.
Of moving some of the more absurd stuff surrounding Pizzagate out there.
That's what they latched onto.
And I don't love that behavior.
But I am a free speech absolutist.
If you're not breaking the law, if you're not posting something that's illegal, I don't care how dirty, disgusting, defamatory it is.
If it gets into defamation law, then you can be sued by somebody.
Right?
So, you know, I want all comers.
I want all opinions.
It went too far a decade plus ago, Zuck.
It went too far then.
So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.
Third, we're changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms.
We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation.
Now we're going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations.
And for lower severity violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action.
So let's just stop there.
You know, the idea that because everything is not going to be automated through an algorithm that's going to stop this is absolutely ludicrous.
You know, especially when we're talking about other platforms outside of Facebook because Facebook, although the vast majority of what I post is my work, I barely engage in it.
Guys, with 5,000 friends and a 5,000 person fan page, if I put a video up on Facebook, if I get 100 engagements, and I'm not talking about 100 thumbs up, I'm not talking about...
A hundred comments.
I'm talking about if a hundred people even see it, that's outstanding.
Go look at my videos.
Five thumbs up?
Five.
One comment maybe?
Maybe?
Maybe?
You're telling me that's a natural algorithm?
Of course not.
And as I've stated before, you know, X is just as bad, if not worse, on the majority of these issues.
They're just as much...
A part of social engineering and programs like Signature Reduction as Facebook, as Instagram, right?
As Google, which is YouTube, you name it.
All different types of a way to not only try to shift but control narratives.
Let's continue with the Zuck.
The problem is that the filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn't.
So by dialing them back, we're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.
We're also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content.
The reality is that this is a trade-off.
It means we're going to catch less bad stuff, but we'll also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.
Think that there's going to be more bad stuff on Facebook because of this.
Look, I'm going to be honest with you.
From what I have read and seen via testimony for those that actually have to look at some of the worst content on Facebook, these people end up with a type of PTSD, it is so mentally stressing.
We're talking snuff films.
We're talking child abuse of all nature.
We're talking things that are just physically grotesque and repulsive, etc., etc., etc.
Human beings do bad things and they get posted.
I don't believe that toning down any of their filters in content moderation Is somehow going to make those type of things more visible, okay?
I think, again, this guy is really just towing the line.
And obviously, you know, this isn't coming from the heart.
This is something that, you know, was written down, you know, with a bunch of lawyers and PR folks.
And hey, this is how we're going to present it, Mark.
And we want you to do it.
And why don't you rock a nice little gold chain?
I'm actually surprised with the amount of working out that he's doing.
He's not wearing like a tank top or maybe something a little bit more huggy on the arms.
Because he could be.
He could bro it up another 5-10% in this if he wanted.
Fourth, we're bringing back civic content.
For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed.
So we stopped recommending these posts.
But it feels like we're in a new era now.
And we're starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again.
So we're going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram, and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.
Fifth, we're going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our U.S.-based content review is going to be based in Texas.
As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.
Finally, we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.
You know, I just want to put it out there.
It doesn't matter to me whether or not the content moderators are from New York, California, Texas, Colorado, etc., If their job is to do anything more than take down illegal content, they don't need to be there.
And somehow, this rebranding, like if you're in Texas, everything's a gravy train with biscuit wheels, it's not true!
It's not true.
Texas at this point is actually a very, very diverse state.
There's a lot to love about Texas.
I'm not here to take a dump on Texas.
But just like Florida, right?
There are places with its issues.
You know, this is an issue.
And I understand the optics of why you would do it.
But one where when you really peel back the layers, first of all, you could have hired these people from anywhere.
And is a person from an Ivy League standpoint, which are a lot of those hires at this company, it's not going to matter where they are or where they live or where they move to.
Okay?
It's just a fact, Jack.
The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world.
Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.
Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down.
China has censored our apps from even working in the country.
The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government.
And that's why it's been so difficult over the past four years when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship.
It's not just the last four years.
Let's stop with that, alright?
The COVID-1984 nightmare really full-throttled an already very, very vibrant censorship industry.
There was already censorship going on.
Before Trump, right?
During the Trump administration, you saw a pickup on that censorship, mostly in opposition to some of the things that they would associate with Trump or if Trump would vocalize something, right?
I still remember that Osama Bin Laden story, right?
With the member that said that the whole thing was a sham and that story went, You know, super mega viral.
And I think Trump even got asked about it because I think at the time he actually retweeted it, right?
But by the time that the Trump administration was gearing up for Operation Warp Speed, was ready to bend the knee to the lockdowns, etc., they were lockstep, the Trump administration, with organizations like Facebook and Google and YouTube in that regard.
Did it get worse?
During the Biden administration?
Sure.
But the idea that a tech company or a social media company cannot exist without the cooperation of government shows you we live in a techno-fascistic society.
If we actually lived in a free society based on free speech, and it was a capitalistic one, none of this would be necessary.
Because the court of public opinion is clear.
Citizens, consumers don't want censorship like that.
Period.
If it's legal, most of us want the opportunity to share it.
If you can't do that outside of a government agency or a government in general, what does that say about the reality of the system that we are under?
By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.
But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression, and I am excited to take it.
It'll take time to get this right, and these are complex systems.
They're never going to be perfect.
There's also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove.
But the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focus primarily on removing content, It is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people voice.
I'm looking forward to this next chapter.
stay good out there and more to come soon so even at the end there he again tries to conflate the issue of freedom of speech with illegal content i don't love it and you know just hearkening back to the the fact that um he has tapped dana white to join meta's board of directors There are a couple things to glean from that.
Number one, that Meta is going nowhere.
Facebook has had a multitude of failures that are huge and would have ruined really almost any other company.
Remember when they tried to do the Facebook phone?
I mean, he talked about threads, tried to launch threads.
Facebook, no.
Has nowhere near the amount of advertising dollars it once did.
Now, whether or not Instagram is able to make up for that, sure.
The metaverse has been a complete and total flop.
The Oculus headsets have sold nowhere near the amount that had been hoped by the establishment.
I mean, you just look at the sale of things like that compared to traditional video game systems that are thriving right now.
And it's just not there.
But again, you have the metaverse being backed by the World Economic Forum.
You have the idea of a virtual universe being backed by the establishment that wants to really push you as far away from humanity, nature, consciousness, and reality as they possibly can to give you something that is artificial.
That is not real but so convincing and so comforting that people will gravitate to that as something that is better than reality.
All right, folks.
You got my Zuckins for the day.
I hope that you enjoyed my take.
I do want to thank everybody that has donated recently.
Vic USA, Hedvy Check Talks, Jose, Melissa Kelly.
Thank you so much!
I could not do it without you.
$5, $10, $15.
It does mean the world to me.
There are other links down below.
I do want to remind everybody I'm a documentary filmmaker.
All of my films are free.
Loose Change Final Cut.
Fabled enemy.
You know the drill.
It is not about left or right to this guy.
It is always about right and wrong.
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