Timcast - EP2 Another "Woke" Far left News Outlet Bites The Dust
Salon is looking to sell for an absurd cash closing of around $500,000. This is an absurdly low rate for a media company of their size, but as the saying goesGet Woke Go BrokeFollowing stories covera Comedian who had the police called on him for telling an offensive jokeElizabeth Warren calling for Fox News to Shut DownOutraged Feminists Targeting White Women Over Abortion IssuesAnd The US Rejecting an international proposal for Censorship
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Our first story, Salon Media in talks for a $5 million fire sale in a last-ditch effort.
You may be wondering, what is Salon.com?
Maybe you know.
But Salon is considered to be one of the wokest of media outlets, putting out such great hits like, quote, I don't even think I can read this quote.
They wrote an article, this is Salon.com in 2015, saying that white men must be stopped, the very future of mankind Depends on it.
Incredible.
They also have a segment, another article called, What it really means to be woke.
Radical activism is spiritual as well as political.
And it explains what wokeness is.
So, actually, this looks like a repost from Alternet, which is also an activist site.
But now it would seem that we have another story about woke media going broke.
Now, Salon has been woke as long as I've known about it.
And I can't say I'm surprised, but here's the thing.
Of all of the media companies we've seen take a big hit, most of them that have sold have
retained their staff and they've literally sold.
Right?
So let's do this.
Mike.com sold for $5 million.
I believe Mashable may have sold, but Mike.com, which was once valued very, very, you know,
I think $100 million or something, sells for $5 million.
They actually sold for $5 million.
Now you see this story about Salon from the New York Post.
It seems, in reality, the deal will be worth $5,000,000, but it's only going to be a $500,000 cash transaction.
Oh my God!
Seriously, to go from being this woke, profitable venture to selling for 500k in cash.
Now, the deal is worth 5 million.
That means they're going to sell it and they're hoping that eventually
they're going to do...
Well, let me read the story because basically,
eventually they pay off 5 million dollars with no guarantee the business survives.
So this is a $500,000 cash.
This is the lowest deal I've read about.
This is bad news for the woke, fungible journalists of New York.
From the New York Post reads, Salon Media Group, a one-time digital darling, has fallen on hard times.
It lost its CEO of the past three years last week and appears to be on the brink of a deal to sell itself for a fire sale price of $5 million.
Oh boy, just wait.
It gets worse.
The struggling company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on May 8th that it reached a deal to sell itself to a company called Salon.com LLC.
So this is interesting.
What is Salon.com LLC?
It sounds like someone set up a venture to offload the site.
So this may be some kind of transfer scheme, right?
If they're selling it to a new venture or a venture named after it.
But let's read.
The filing contains no further info on the mystery buyer or buyers, but said the deal would only require a $550,000 payment at closing.
You want to talk about Mike.com's $5 million sale being bad?
Let's talk about the $550,000 do-it-closing for Salon.com.
It said $100,000 would go to an escrow account, and $500,000 was already paid as a deposit.
$100,000 would go to an escrow account and $500,000 was already paid as a deposit.
The remaining $3.85 million would be a promissory note, payable in two installments over two
years.
Here's the thing.
Check this out.
Even with those favorable terms, Salon issued a dire warning in the filing.
There can be no guarantee that the asset sale will be completed and, if not completed, we may have to file for bankruptcy and liquidation.
What they're basically saying is, it's a deal that is potentially worth $5 million with a caveat that $3.85 million might just never come to existence.
This is one of the brokest I have ever seen.
One of these media companies.
So look.
You know, I'm usually not one to gloat and partake in a dance of schadenfreude.
You know, glad that these weird, woke, fringe companies are doing poorly.
I mean, these are people's jobs, so I can definitely respect that people are gonna be out of work, they're gonna be struggling.
But I have to point out a sort of reap-what-you-sow attitude.
Listen.
For years, these companies knew they were chasing after an algorithm writing the most ridiculous and absurd nonsense.
So I think it's fair to point out the White Men Must Be Stopped story originated on alternate, but it's republished on Salon.
So you can see the kind of things that Salon promotes.
Salon also had some pro-child abuse, the best I can say it.
Like, I don't want to say certain words.
You know?
But they had some pretty, pretty controversial articles that were trying to normalize some pretty bad behavior that they eventually took down.
That's my understanding.
But they had this article, White Men Must Be Stopped.
And why would you write this?
They say, for 500 years, they've exploited their fellow man and plundered the planet.
It's time they reigned themselves.
Who do you think you're selling content to?
So here's the challenge.
You make a media company.
What we're seeing now is, at the launch of these companies, they're trying to target a market.
Initially, media was only a handful of companies, so they tried to target everybody.
That meant the content had to be rather balanced if you wanted a mainstream audience.
But now the internet has allowed for a website for literally anything.
I kid you not.
One of the things I've brought up is there was once, until Facebook deranked all these news sites, there was a website in the global top 500 websites dedicated to nothing but police brutality videos.
That's gonna screw people up.
And it did.
The amount of people seeing just endless videos.
Listen.
There's something I call the scaling problem.
Let me put it this way.
Let's say Apple releases 100 iPhones and 1% break.
No one cares.
You'll have 100 celebrities all going, this iPhone's great, and then one celebrity says, mine broke, and people shrug, oh, whatever, it's one phone.
Let's say they release 100 million phones and 1% break.
Now you've got a million blog posts of people saying, my phone broke, and everyone goes, whoa, what is going on?
A million broken phones, same margin of error.
So we can look at what these websites do.
You have more and more police officers.
As the economy expands, as our population grows, you end up with more people and, hence, more police.
But what happens when you take the million videos and put them online and say, we have a serious problem?
If it was one cop out of a hundred, no one would have cared.
Because it's a million out of a hundred million, people all of a sudden care.
Those aren't real numbers, I'm just speaking hypothetically.
But these websites can capitalize on this, because you only need so much content to push this narrative forward.
This screws people up really, really bad.
But here's the thing.
Eventually, Well, some people get tired of it, right?
I used to track this stuff.
I used to make videos.
I did a documentary on Ferguson, where we talked about... It's called Going On Tour, when the police... I don't want to get into all the complicated issues of Ferguson, but suffice to say, it is very, very...
Systemically racist in St.
Louis County due to the structures that exist, right?
That negatively impact certain communities.
It's part of history, it needs to be rectified.
And so I've tracked this stuff.
But I can see and understand math.
Eventually Facebook says we really can't have this radicalizing people and you want to talk about media radicalizing people.
This is it Well, eventually nobody wants to read about white men must be stopped salon and now they're in a fire sale half a million bucks for this company Wow, that's That's ridiculously low ridiculously ridiculously low Let's read a little bit more of the The article here over at the New York Post.
Whoa!
CEO Jordan Hoffner, a one-time NBC and YouTube executive, resigned suddenly on May 3rd, according
to the filing.
He remains a company director but could not be reached for comment.
The SEC is also threatening to delist the penny stock for failure to file financial
disclosure documents for more than a year.
Whoa!
Not only are they in fire sale mode for trash rates...
They're gonna get delisted!
The company said it expected to be in compliance with SEC filing rules by June 7th, but acknowledged that it was way past the 15-day deadline the SEC had imposed.
They say Richard McWilliams, a managing partner of Vista Capital Advisors, and the chairman of the board of Salon Media, was named acting CEO.
Trevor Calhoun, another board member and a partner at Humulus Holdings Capital Management, was appointed acting CFO, replacing some people we don't care about.
Replacing Elizabeth Hambrecht, who resigned back in October.
I don't want to be a dick.
Neither McWilliams nor Calhoun returned calls seeking comment.
The left-leaning website was launched in San Francisco in 1995, staffed largely by refugees from a newspaper strike at the San Francisco Examiner.
It went public in June 1999, valued at $107 million, but has lost money ever since.
Four years.
John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems and William Hambrecht, a venture capitalist, The father of the former CFO who was involved in the IPOs of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Adobe Systems injected cash to offset mounting losses.
Calls and emails to Hoffner, McWilliams, and Calhoun were not returned.
Let me give you some advice!
You get woke.
You go broke.
Now, that's not really true, right?
You know, Jordan Peele certainly hasn't gotten broke.
He's actually gotten rich.
Get woke, go rich, Jordan Peele.
People like to say, get woke, go broke.
It's not a law, right?
It's not like it's guaranteed to happen.
But it does happen sometimes.
And I do think people pull out the story and say, ha, this proves it.
No, no, no, no.
I think get woke, go broke is just a funny saying when you see these stories kind of happen.
But the truth is, Solanas has always been woke, and they've always chased after this far left narrative.
That's what they are.
Eventually, people don't want to hear it anymore, right?
Let's put it another way.
If BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Vox, Vice, Mike, God, the list goes on, Salon, all are putting, AJ+, they're all putting out the same trash.
Why would anybody want to see the same thing over?
It's mind-numbing, right?
If everyone posts the same police brutality video, well, the market's saturated, and it can't hold itself up.
So here's what's happening.
You may have seen my video on my main channel yesterday, or for those that are listening on the podcast, you probably didn't see this, but we're going to be, you know, we're hiring, we're expanding, we're getting a space just north of New York in Connecticut, and we're going to grow slowly and organically, and we're not going to rely on Chasing formulaic algorithms.
One of the biggest mistakes these companies make is, you know, we saw that story from Mike.com where it's the formula.
X celebrity says X about Y. Right?
Like that's an oversimplification of what they're doing.
What the formulas really were was like X is outraged over, you know, racist Y. They were specifically targeting identitarianism, identity politics.
And when you do that, you run yourself off a cliff because that's not a sustainable business.
What we're actually looking at in terms of expanding Subverse is going to be more like physical events.
You know, come and buy a ticket.
It's a big theater.
We're going to do a live show.
We're going to do talks.
And we're going to do paywalled content, like subscription content.
The goal is not to rely on algorithms and crossing our fingers, but to produce a real product, like something you can actually hold, and then selling the product.
What these companies do now, and admittedly what I do on YouTube, is rely on the algorithm to promote the content so that I can sell ad revenue that Google is listing.
We'll do some of that, but we want to make sure we avoid the pitfalls of all these companies and create a backbone that is longer lasting, which is going to be a subscription model.
It's going to be, you know, if you are, we're still working out the details, but imagine if you
are like a paying member at like, you know, ten bucks a month or whatever for our content and we do a physical
event, you get like preferred access or whatever or you can buy a
physical ticket.
We're talking about ideas like this, where we can figure out how to turn this into a real business.
And one of the things I've always really wanted to do is run multiple hacker spaces.
If you don't know what that is, a hacker space is where hackers hang out.
And this doesn't mean computer hackers, some of them are.
Some of them are hardware hackers, some are musicians and artists.
It's just a creative space.
And so I'm looking at, you know, in the future, can we set up multiple spaces that help run a media company, but also are for the community to come in, hang out, and see the real process.
Imagine this.
Imagine you were a member of Salon.com.
And that meant you could actually come into the newsroom and hang out.
Then you could actually talk to the people who are writing, like, hey, why did you write this?
That's real transparency.
But we'll get to that point.
So anyway, the other little tidbit I'm going to sign off on is, For now, so I have a podcast.
It's on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, etc.
And for the longest time, it has just been my main channel content.
From now on, it's going to be an hour every day from the videos on my second channel.
So if you're listening on the podcast, you already get this.
But now I'm going to have a daily hour-long podcast.
And it's going to be just...
Sometimes big news sometimes stories I just care about for the most part and then I don't know what's gonna happen with my main channel But I think it's going to just I'm just gonna have fun with it.
I'm just gonna you know It's just what it is.
We'll figure out as we go I'm probably gonna use it to document as we expand and grow into subverse But check it out the video on my main channel youtube.com slash Tim cast because there's information we do a tour of the space and more information to come The next segment, for those listening, will be up in about a few seconds, but for the rest of you, it'll be at 1 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews, this channel, and I will see you then.
Our next story, unsurprisingly, comes from Florida, where an audience member called 9-1-1 after Middle Eastern comment made at comedy show in Naples.
An audience member called 9-1-1 after attending comedian Ahmed Ahmed's show at Off the Hook Comedy Club.
Now, you may be saying to yourself, God bless the First Amendment.
We have a right to speak and express ourselves.
But there are some limits.
And it's interesting where those lines are drawn.
So as you know, there is some controversy over whether or not you can yell, fire at a crowded theater.
Or incite to violence.
We have decided that free speech is not absolute in this country.
The argument now between what I guess you could call the right and the left has to do with where the line is, where it should be.
Because in fact, there are some free speech absolutists in this argument saying you should be able to yell fire in a crowded theater.
That is your right to speak.
And I'm kind of sympathetic to that argument because what we're doing is policing interpretation of certain words.
Imagine if he said certain words on an airplane.
You could incite panic that could be dangerous, and thus, we have actually set a restriction on speech.
Now, I am not an absolutist in free speech.
I do believe there are reasonable limits.
Don't incite violence.
Don't direct someone to commit a crime.
Because that's different from expressing your thoughts.
But then it is an interesting debate as to where that line is drawn.
If someone is a comedian at a show, and they say something, and someone takes it literally and calls 911, Can you be surprised?
Well, let's read this story.
This is from NBC, but there's a reason why I'm highlighting this specifically.
And it's because over across the pond in the UK, from whence we came hundreds of years ago, sort of came.
I mean, I understand America's a great melting pot.
But, you know, the Revolution, Great Britain, yadda yadda yadda, they don't have a First Amendment.
And you can see actually how bad it gets with Count Dankula, who is a comedian who made a joke, getting arrested and convicted of making a joke.
And he's certainly not the only one.
You can also see how the press reacts to three-year-old jokes when you look at someone like Carl Benjamin, now that he's running for office.
But the reason why this is important is because we can see what happens when you don't have at least some kind of restriction on the government when it comes to your speech.
Let's read this story and then we'll take a look at some other issues pertaining to free speech.
An audience member called 9-1-1 after attending comedian Ahmed Ahmed's show at Off The Hook Comedy Club on May 12th.
The caller said, Ahmed asked the audience how many Middle Eastern people were there, according to a 9-1-1 call released by the Collier County Sheriff's Office.
They actually have the full 9-1-1 call.
I'm not gonna play it, but we'll read the story.
The caller said about 25 Muslims were at the show, claiming to be from Iran and Iraq.
Later, Ahmed allegedly said, we could organize our own, wow, terror organization.
I don't know if it's fear, racism, ignorance, or Islamophobia, or whatever you want to call it, Ahmed said.
It's unfortunate that somebody was very adamant about making a point- about a point to make a 911 call.
The person admitted to the dispatcher that they called deputies because they felt uncomfortable after the comment and asked if something like that should be said.
The caller was concerned Ahmed would say the same comment again in a later performance.
Clearly a joke at a comedy club.
But here's something interesting.
This comedian is Ahmed Ahmed.
He posted a video of him talking to the club owner about what happened.
And I believe, I'm not entirely sure, I believe he's from or lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
So when he makes a reference to Islam, you don't typically associate those kind of jokes with the left.
The point is, outrage can affect everybody.
We don't know who this person was who called the police, why, you know, or what their motivation was, but it was definitely related to Islam.
There are people who want to draw lines in different directions for different reasons.
I would stress that outrage is not unique to any one side, and we should be, like, here's the thing.
Here's the point I'm trying to make.
In the free speech debate, conservatives have circled the wagons to protect conservatives.
But the left won't protect the anti-war left.
And so we're seeing people who are, you know, anti-intervention for Venezuela on the left, their accounts get wiped.
You see people who are, one of the most notable instances is Mathic Media.
So these are left-wing individuals.
They don't like Donald Trump, but they really, really don't like war.
Facebook suspended their account and they broke no rules because of a CNN hit piece.
So I think it's important to point out, well, It definitely appears that conservatives are the overwhelming majority of those restricted, suspended, banned, etc.
You still have people on the left who are being restricted, and actually I think when it comes to anti-intervention, a lot of conservatives will agree, but they are getting restricted too.
This comedian should not have the police called on him because he made a silly joke about the fact that there were Middle Easterners in his club.
I actually think it's really important to ridicule these ideas.
Ridicule is one of the most important things you can do to break the fear I don't care if you want to joke about that stuff.
So he wants to make a joke about, he's pointing out, you have all these people from the Middle
East and that's something people are concerned about.
He makes a joke about it.
I respect the right to joke.
I recently saw some woke comedians make jokes about white people and the devil.
And I said, I don't care if you want to joke about that stuff.
I really, really don't.
I understand maybe some white people would be upset, but the issue is really the double
You know, if this guy wants to be able to joke about Middle Easterners, no, you shouldn't call the cops on him.
And no, you shouldn't get offended or outraged that he, as a Middle Eastern individual or South Asian Muslim, is talking about Islam.
And at the same time, if a woke comedian wants to make jokes about white people, I'm also just gonna be like, hey man, it's a joke!
People make doubts, but it doesn't go that way.
That's not the direction things flow.
The reason I highlight this story, the reason I want to talk about this is it's not for lack of trying that people in the U.S.
want to stop free speech, okay?
They're definitely trying.
We can look at the UK and we can see comments made on Twitter result, you know, get people put in jail.
We can see Mark Meacham.
We have the story from the BBC.
Where it talks about YouTube candidates in politics.
And we have Count Dankula, who literally... He made a silly video for... He had no subscribers.
He was just some dude in Scotland who made a funny video where he taught a pug to do a salute.
And sure enough, he gets charged and arrested.
So thank God for the First Amendment.
But look at what's happening in the U.S.
You still have people who are trying and pushing the line.
And that really is disconcerting.
When you see so many people say that hate speech should be regulated.
When you see that you actually have the co-founder of Facebook saying the government should regulate speech.
I kid you not, he actually said that in an op-ed in the New York Times.
Well, they can't.
Because the founding fathers were correct.
People have a right to express themselves.
They saw this.
They knew it would happen.
And it's really interesting.
Why did the Founding Fathers want to declare independence from Great Britain?
A lot of reasons.
Interestingly though, one of the things they enshrined in the Bill of Rights, the first thing they enshrined, protecting religion, the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to a redress of grievances.
Things, as if we actually get a redress of grievances, for the most part, but we have a good system.
It's not perfect, and we can constantly improve it.
But protecting the press, speech, religion, these are paramount.
Excuse me.
If somebody wants to make a joke, I'm all for it.
I'm all for it.
There are lines.
Admittedly, there are lines.
And people are trying to push the line further and further to restrict more and more speech.
The dangerous thing here is that we're seeing it in America more and more often.
We saw activists at Berkeley burning free speech signs.
And now, I understand, look, we're talking about one comedy club in Florida from one guy.
But this guy, Ahmed Ahmed, has a Netflix special, right?
How many followers does this guy have?
He's got 23,000 followers.
He's not some nobody comic.
He's a comic with a Netflix special.
And someone actually called the police because they felt threatened by a joke he made.
Okay.
So the police came and said, yeah, nothing's wrong.
God bless the First Amendment.
But again, the point is it's not for lack of trying.
We have to make sure that we defend the right to make jokes.
I grew up on George Carlin.
George Carlin Was a great inspiration to me.
Somebody who told the authority, told the establishment to buzz off.
Gave him the middle finger.
And he had no problem going on stage and saying, this is what's important.
And he said some pretty damn offensive things to applause.
And I couldn't imagine George Carlin, I know for a fact, if George Carlin was around today, and this breaks my heart, his YouTube channel would be banned.
I'm surprised you can still watch his clips, because he has a segment where he refers to Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy with a disparaging hate comment.
Not allowed today.
You can't tweet that stuff.
And this is a guy who pioneered and fought against censorship, the seven words you can't say on TV.
Now we end up with, you know, over in the UK.
This is where things have gone.
That Sargon of Akkad, the YouTuber, is being investigated over a joke he made three years ago.
So think about this.
It's not so much that, you know, Carl did something wrong today.
They're investigating him now.
Why are they investigating him now?
He's running for office.
You can see the dangers of policing speech.
As much as we have a First Amendment, we don't have the protection from these big tech companies.
So, I am appalled, not surprised, that someone would call the police on a comedian But repeatedly, the argument from the left is that private platforms have no obligation to keep you on board.
But the other big issue when it comes to free speech that I want to highlight here is how the public, the media, will use your speech as a weapon.
You know, I watched Dave Rubin the other day.
He had Mike Cernovich on.
Ruben talked about how years ago he made a comment about the alt-right, and he said that he referred to them in a certain way, and now he's quoted as saying something that isn't true today.
It's an old comment about a group that wasn't as clearly defined.
At the time he made the comment, no one really knew what the alt-right was.
So when Rubin made his quote, he did make reference to the bad people associated with it, and they take the one snippet where he's praising this group of people, that's the danger of what the public, what the media does with speech.
So I guess the point I'm trying to say is, Thank God for the First Amendment, this comedian was allowed to do his routine.
The police came.
That shouldn't have happened.
That should not have happened.
But I will admit, it's entirely possible someone crosses the line at a comedy routine and actually does say something because we do have a line.
I'm talking about a direct incitement to violence.
Like, if someone on the... a comedian on the stage said, I want you to go do X, at a certain point you gotta say, hey man, it's not comedy.
Like, you've crossed the line.
Some people disagree.
If you disagree, let me know what you think, you know, in the comments if you're watching on YouTube.
But the point I'm trying to bring up is that with the ledger existing, your speech will be weaponized and the government can't do anything about it, can't protect you.
They just can't stop you, you know, from saying something.
But certainly, the BBC can then write a smear campaign.
Vox can take you out of context.
This is the real danger of the weaponization of speech and, you know, I don't know if there's a real solution.
All I can really say is I'm someone who believes people have a right to express themselves and joke about things.
Ridicule is important.
You get rid of bad ideas by mocking them.
And that's really all you can do.
I don't think there's ever going to be a point where those of us who believe in free speech can sit back, hit the lever on our recliners, and say, we've won.
We've done it.
This is a never-ending battle to protect the right to express yourself.
And it's been going on since the beginning of time.
Many countries still have blasphemy laws.
And technically now, these hate speech laws in the UK are akin to that.
You can't speak ill of a religion.
They've expanded blasphemy beyond the religion to now encompass other groups.
So much so that three years after a joke was made, Carl Benjamin now gets investigated by it.
I feel for my cousins across the pond.
It's unfortunate.
You guys need a constitution.
And I am grateful every day we have one.
The point of this video.
Someone just had the cops called on them for making a joke.
Here's the thing.
I should have read this earlier, so I apologize.
But the joke was essentially, he said something like this.
He said there was 25 people from Middle Eastern countries.
He said, I knew there was at least one of us in here.
Comedians, of course.
Comedians.
That's the joke.
He was mocking the extremists.
He was, like, I applaud the joke.
I think it's funny.
He's making fun of this idea.
That's what comedians do.
And the other thing we need to remember is that comedians are meant to push the line over what is or isn't offensive.
It's as offensive as possible and disgusting on purpose.
Because, you know, comedians go up on stage and try and figure out what's too offensive and what isn't.
That's part of what they do.
But today, you have people seriously trying to shut down speech.
And this is worrisome.
To call the police?
Kind of an escalation.
Not yet.
Maybe they're scared.
Sure.
And I'm glad the police backed off and were like, hey man.
But what Ahmed Ahmed said is he says it's never happened to me or any comedian I believe.
F-ing crazy man.
The cops were like WTF.
So here's the thing.
I don't want to over overestimate the severity of what really happened because the cops smiled, laughed, and they all had, you know, left.
But just always remember the line isn't ever just shifted dramatically.
It's nudged.
They push it slowly.
Incrementally.
Today, the police... It's the first time this person's experienced this.
Him or any other comedian.
The first time.
It could happen again.
And what happens when it keeps happening?
Comedy!
Man, I am not too optimistic.
I gotta say that.
But I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
I've got more videos coming up later.
If you're listening, it'll be in a few seconds.
And if you're watching on YouTube, there are six.
I believe I'm doing 6, 6.30, and 7 p.m.
now.
So stick around.
There'll be more videos later today.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all at the next video.
One thing that I think unifies many people who are not just conservative or moderate or disaffected liberals is this understanding of media bias.
How the system works.
The story that we're, uh, the story right now is from the Daily Caller, media suddenly silent on importance of free press as Warren declares war on Fox News.
If you're not familiar, Elizabeth Warren was invited to a town hall on Fox News to which she declined.
And she then called Fox News hateful, etc.
She then released a series of photographs.
This is from at Jordan Yule on Twitter.
He says, Elizabeth Warren just posted this on Instagram.
And the first photo we can see, it says, stop the hate for profit Fox News racket with Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, all saying the same thing.
Jeanine Pirro and then Laura Ingram.
Now, here's the thing.
When Trump repeatedly You know, called out the press, or does call out the press for being fake news, or he calls out the fake news.
The press, you know, clutches their pearls and says, Haramfa and EGAD and things like that.
They talk about how the president is openly, you know, trying to stifle the free press and things of that nature.
And I think to a certain extent it's important to, yes, to push back on the president.
Look, the president is allowed to have his opinion, and just because you're in government doesn't mean you can't have an opinion on it.
If Trump actually makes moves using governmental power to stifle the press, we've got a problem.
So good, yes, push back please.
Elizabeth Warren would like to be president, and she is now doing essentially the same thing.
Curious.
Curious then.
When Ocasio-Cortez, like she just did, criticizes the press, calls them Republicans, when Elizabeth Warren says Fox News should be stopped, shut down effectively, where is the collective outrage?
Non-existent.
Well, what should we expect if someone like Elizabeth Warren then gets into office?
She'll do the same thing.
I mean, Cortez does the same thing.
I think it's hilarious.
I think Cortez is like little mini-Trump.
She gets mad because people fact-check her.
Sorry!
If you say something that's not real, and you get fact-checked by a journalist, you can't go and complain about it later.
I will point out, for one, yes, fact-check Trump.
That's a good thing.
But we do know about the Trump bump, how the media is just trying to generate ratings by constantly being outraged by Trump.
And I also want to point out, Trump isn't completely innocent in that regard.
He played the media like a fiddle.
He used controversy to promote himself.
They say that he got like $5 billion in free press from the media constantly coming after him.
Well, guess what?
It worked to get you elected, but now it still happens.
It's like, you know, dominoes falling over.
You pushed it over.
It worked for you in the short term, but here we go.
That doesn't mean I think the media has no responsibility.
No, they do.
They need to chill out.
Let's read about what's going on with Elizabeth Warren and why she's putting out a call to end Fox News.
The Daily Caller reports, Some of the same news outlets up in arms over President Donald Trump's attacks on CNN and The New York Times are now touting Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's war on Fox News.
Warren's decision to snub an invitation from Fox to do a televised town hall prompted glowing headlines from The Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times, and other liberal outlets Wednesday.
They highlighted her characterization of the conservative network as a hate for profit racket.
And noted it puts other democratic presidential candidates who have taken Fox News up on the
offer in the position of having to justify their decision. I was critical recently of NewsGuard
because BuzzFeed wrote a story, clearly not fact, it was opinion masquerading as fact, and
I wonder what's the threshold for NewsGuard to rate?
If you're not familiar, NewsGuard is a non-profit, I believe they're a non-profit, they're a business, and maybe they're not a non-profit, but they give ratings to news sites.
I use NewsGuard.
I don't think they're perfect, but I think they're good.
So I'll be critical, but I still appreciate their service.
Here's the thing.
Fox News, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, etc.
They are rated as credible by NewsGuard.
The only thing I think that NewsGuard takes issue with with Fox News is that they don't disclose ownership or something like that.
So if you're going to have all of these news outlets pointing the finger at Fox News and being angry, but you'll have independent fact-checkers deem Fox News to be credible but partisan, well then it's clear what they're doing is just political.
And this is why I started this video by saying one thing that maybe unifies the disaffected liberals, moderates, and conservatives is we're all sitting here looking at various news outlets.
I watch Fox News.
Not a big fan of the pundit lineup, but I think their reporting is fine.
It's pretty good.
NewsGuard agrees.
I agree with NewsGuard.
Independent rating agency.
I get it.
They're conservative.
But when I look at Vox and I look at, you know, Fox News, I'm like, I get it.
V-O-X, not F-O-X.
You know, you've got V-O-X and F-O-X, and they're on the opposite end of the spectrum, and I look at it and I say, I get it.
They're hyper-partisan, they have their perspective, but one thing that's really important is that These digital media sites, they get a pass from independent news agencies, like fact-checkers, even though the digital sites masquerade as fact when they're really opinion.
They don't label opinion, and they should.
But of course, the rating agencies go after any conservative who would do the same thing.
So anyway, the point is, if you're going to see the Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, etc., and they're going to, like, celebrate this or agree with this, it's clear that they have a political agenda.
Because, independent fact checkers say Fox News is legit.
Anybody who would then push back, it's gonna do it for political reasons.
Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to bad people.
It's designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences to provide cover for the corruption that's rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class, Warren tweeted.
Fox News is welcome to come to my events just like any other outlet, but a Fox News town hall adds money to the hate-for-profit machine to which I say hard pass.
And I could absolutely say the same thing to MSNBC.
Seriously.
Russiagate for years.
She also attacked several specific Fox News hosts.
Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, etc.
Of course it's a news organization.
They have pundits.
So does MSNBC.
Are they going to point the finger in the direction?
Eric Wemple wrote of the news.
The debate concerns whether Fox News is in fact a news organization or something far
different.
Of course it's a news organization.
They have pundits.
So does MSNBC.
Are they going to point the finger in the direction?
Well, guess what?
There's more to the story.
Something much more awful.
Jay Rosen.
He teaches journalism and directs the Studio 20 program at New York University.
Well, what did Jay Rosen say?
He tweeted, It is entirely fitting that Fox News has become an issue on which candidates in the Democratic primary have to take positions.
It tells us something about them.
My coordinates on this are, talking to Fox viewers is good, legitimizing Fox News is bad, squaring the circle is hard.
Excuse me?
Legitimizing Fox News is bad?
Why?
Because they have a perspective you don't agree with?
Then realize that this is Jay Rosen, a professor at a university, telling people that Fox News is not, you know, credible.
Should not be legitimized.
Well, I'm sorry, NewsGuard rated them as credible.
So who do we trust?
Well, here's the thing.
I don't think NewsGuard is perfect, as I said early on, but I do use them because it's a good, you know, like, I don't know, barometer for my personal bias.
I naturally have a bias against many right-wing and left-wing sites.
I find some to be credible, and so I use them as sort of like, I don't know, an alternate, a second opinion, right?
Okay, what did you think?
I agree that Fox News is credible.
Why is a professor at a university holding the opinion that Fox News should not be legitimized?
Well, Michael Tracy brings up a very good point, saying, What are your thoughts on legitimizing MSNBC, considering they've filled the airways for three years with former FBI, CIA, and NSA officials pushing a debunked militaristic conspiracy theory?
That's a really good point.
Why is it that when professors and critics come out, it's always pointing in one direction?
Makes you wonder.
Well, I will say this, though.
The media isn't entirely absent because, I guess kind of surprisingly, not too surprising, The View slammed Elizabeth Warren for snubbing Fox News.
Once again, we have a story from the Daily Caller, which reads, The ladies of ABC's The View criticized Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday for refusing to appear on Fox News, calling the move short-sighted.
Warren announced Tuesday that she had refused an invitation to appear on Fox News.
We covered that.
Warren explained that she wouldn't ask Democrats to tune in and support ad sales for the network.
Sonny Hostin took the first swing, arguing that Warren's choice was at best dismissive of a large segment of the population.
And I completely agree.
It may be a minority opinion, but I just, I think that it's being very dismissive of so many Americans for her not to go on Fox News.
Fox News is a top, is the top basic cable network in April.
There are a lot of real journalists.
They're like Chris Wallace and Shep Smith.
And I think if you want to be president of the United States for everyone, then you need to speak for everyone.
Joy Behar then cut in, pointing out the fact that President Donald Trump rarely appears on any other network other than Fox News, although she did note that he routinely took direct questions from reporters at numerous outlets from the White House lawn.
It's short-sighted on her part, Meghan McCain added, arguing that Warren's move was political and intended to rally her base, but that it may not pay off in the long run.
If you can change one mind in a Republican household, that to me would be worth it.
She's right.
Whoopi Goldberg wrapped this segment by adding, if you can't face the Fox audience, you can't face the US.
It's that simple.
Bravo, Whoopi Goldberg.
You know, I've been a big fan of Whoopi Goldberg because she was on Star Trek The Next Generation.
I don't agree with all of her opinions, but she's spot on here.
And surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with The View.
What a strange thing for a 33-year-old man.
Not really.
Their opinions are actually kind of diverse, right?
Meghan McCain disagrees with the other liberals.
They get into a lot of arguments.
But here's the thing.
If you're going to be president, you do need to represent everyone, even people you disagree with.
Elizabeth Warren just hurt herself by doing this.
Now, of course, I think she's trying to play the Trump game, but you can't be two steps behind someone and think it's going to win.
Trump knows how to play the game, and he's paving the way.
You can't come up from behind and think you're going to do the same thing he's already done.
Oh, I know.
I'll call Fox News the fake press.
Fox News is the number one cable channel, period.
So they're the biggest base for independents, moderates, conservatives.
You need to speak to them.
How about you go on Fox News and you say, I disagree with your network.
I think you use hate to make money, to get viewership.
And I think everyone watching should be careful that they're being dragged.
How about you do that?
This is one of the biggest problems I have.
We can all see it.
Like I said in the beginning of this video, we know that there is a double standard at play.
Why can't someone just go on the network, have a conversation?
Look at what happens when Dave Rubin does this with conservatives.
They call him right-wing.
It only ratchets in one direction.
So, I think the most alarming takeaway from this is a university professor, Jay Rosen, taking this stance.
And I will add, Jay Rosen has praised me as the most innovative journalist in the street.
Granted, I'm in the street much less often.
But here's someone who actually praised me, and I'm gonna turn that back and say, I'm actually really confused why a professor would inject politics into the discourse.
You should be explaining to people the importance of a diversity of opinion.
Why?
Why?
I shouldn't say why, but I guess... Just keep that in mind.
That's what you get when you send your kids or when you attend NYU.
You'll get a professor who is going to be heavily biased against the biggest news channel and the biggest cable channel, period.
Yeah, that's a bad bet.
It's a really bad bet.
If you want to win the presidency, you've got to talk to everybody.
But we'll leave it there.
I've got a couple more videos coming up in a few minutes.
And for those that are listening, stick around because more stories to come.
Recently in Georgia and Alabama, some fairly restrictive, I didn't say fairly, some pretty damn restrictive bills were passed on the issue of abortion.
The story we have is, the first story in this segment we have is from Pluralist.
Angry feminists launch purge against white women over Alabama abortion.
Bill, you did this.
When I was younger, I've always been pro-choice, and I've always had conversations with people about the issue, but I've always tried to really understand and listen to those who are pro-life or religious or conservative, because I don't think I'm the smartest person in the world, and if I want to truly have the correct approach, I need to hear what other people have to say and truly understand this.
And one of the craziest things to me was how you'd hear a lot of women say, men are trying to regulate our bodies.
And that was confusing to me.
I understand it's mostly dudes in politics.
In Alabama, for instance, it was, I think, like, you know, 23 men and, like, three women or something.
But those men are elected by women.
There are women who vote for these individuals who are pro-life.
And in the instance of, I believe, Georgia, more white women voted for Kemp—is that Georgia?—than white men did.
So certainly there are women who are not pro-choice.
It is not an issue of men.
It is an issue of ideology.
So now we can see in this very strange photograph, angry feminists, well if you're listening you can't see it, but it's, it's, they're dressed like it's The Purge with clown masks on or something.
It seems like they finally realized that they are pro-life women.
Strangely though, they've only gone after the white women.
So, uh, the story reads.
The Alabama Senate approved a measure on Tuesday that would outlaw almost all abortions in the state, and advocates of women's rights declared a national crisis.
Activists and journalists sought to shame the 22 Republican senators who voted against including an exception for force and family relations.
I have to be careful about speech because this is up on the... While you guys know I typically try to avoid using certain words, I'm also now putting this up as a podcast on Podcast Network, so that gives me a lot more restrictions, but you understand what I'm trying to say.
Pointing out that they were all white men.
However, the racial politics also turned inward and threatened to undermine feminists' united front on the issue.
Most prominently, Women's March leader Linda Sarsour pointed to what she said was the complicity of white women in Georgia's heartbeat bill, which Governor Brian Kemp signed into law last week, seemingly dismissing most of her allies in opposing the law.
Sarsour faulted white women for voting for Kemp in even higher numbers than white men.
That's where the work needs to happen.
WW continued to uphold the patriarchy, white women, she declared on Twitter, seemingly continuing her attempt to purge white women from the movement.
What we can see here in this tweet, it's actually really interesting.
32%, white women made up 32% of Brian Kemp's voters at 76%.
And 28% of men made up Brian Kemp's voter with 73%.
Okay, so let me try and start this over.
percent of men made up Brian Kemp's voter with 73 okay so so let me try and
set this over 73 percent of white men voted for Kemp 76 percent of white women
voted for Brian Kemp More white women than white men voted for Kemp.
I would actually argue, if the women are the majority, then it's not men trying to legislate your bodies, it's women.
Now, it does break down, you know, further from there.
Black men and black women overwhelmingly supported Abrams.
But Kemp still won out on this issue.
Although others... I don't know what other refers to.
Is that because they don't give Asians a category?
Linda Sarsour says, while folks are debating tactics to respond to Georgia's heartbeat bill, let's remember that 76% of the white women electorate in GA, more than white men, voted for Brian Kemp over Stacey Abrams.
That's where the work needs to happen.
Sarsour's fellow feminists echoed her sentiment, with many angrily citing white women's disproportionate support for President Donald Trump in 2016 and for failed Republican candidate for U.S.
Senate Roy Moore in 2017.
Some said that black women would be most affected by the legislation, which bans abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalizes the procedure for doctors who could be charged with felonies and face up to 99 years in prison.
Others noted that black women are three times as likely as white women to die due to complications related to pregnancy.
The Alabama bill includes an exception for cases when the mother's life is at serious risk, but not for cases of force or family relations to be, you know, I don't know, whatever.
The female feminists were not without allies.
Some black men agreed that white women are part of the problem.
Let me stop here and make a point about, you know, the increase in racial identity rhetoric and things like this.
What we can see here is that the narrative and the conflict is breaking down on racial lines, not gender lines.
Like I mentioned earlier, women used to say it's men regulating their bodies, but now it's white people.
White people regulating the bodies of others.
And they're saying the risk is on black women.
It's becoming a racial issue.
I don't think that's going to be a good thing.
I think that's actually a really bad thing.
Let's read on.
Transgender woman journalist Caitlin Burns spoke out for transgender men, who she said have less access to abortions than biological women.
Even white liberal women got on board.
Looking forward, one woman indignantly predicted that Alabama's female governor, Kay Ivey, would sign the bill into law, though she has yet to commit to doing so.
It's really, really interesting, actually.
So the story goes on for quite a bit, but there's a, um, I want to move on to the next issue, uh, the next story in this segment, and that's It's kind of weird, but it's also from Pluralist.
Alyssa Milano reveals abortion bill made her so mad she cracked the screen on her phone, but it's because she apparently she threw her phone at the wall.
Look, I think it's a silly thing to report on, but I guess we'll add it to the story.
Because, look, people are really, really angry.
I'm going to have to say, why are you throwing your phones?
And apparently it wasn't even Alyssa Milano by herself.
Other women were chiming in talking about how they dropped or threw their phones.
And it's like, if something in a state you don't live in makes you this mad, You know, I think you need to chill and take a step back.
I understand.
These are serious issues, right?
Georgia and Alabama have passed a very restrictive law that's likely, many people believe, is going to go to the Supreme Court.
I saw a really good comment made on Reddit where they said, the law isn't meant to actually pass muster.
It's meant to create a challenge which will find its way to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade.
And that's a serious, serious issue that's going to impact many, many women.
So I understand why people are angry.
I would just say, don't throw your phone.
It's kind of, let's read this.
They say, amid an ongoing debate over women's rights, actress Alyssa Milano informed her legions of followers that her fury over reports of various state bills aimed at curtailing abortion caused her to throw her phone across the room.
The force of the throw was apparently so great that Milano said it cracked the screen on her device.
But this is actually not just in reference to the bill.
It's in reference to an 11-year-old assault victim.
That I can understand.
It's a bit different.
So let's make sure we frame this properly.
Several commentators were sympathetic, revealing that they too had similarly damaged their apparatuses in frustration.
Just dropped mine for the same reason.
Off to replace it tomorrow.
A simple resolution for my issue in comparison to this eleven-year-old child.
There are no words.
Keep up the fight and faith, Alyssa.
I'm going to have to point out, though, if you're not going to be sympathetic to the anger someone faces or feels when you have a story about a pregnant eleven-year-old, Yeah, we got— Look, man, I can definitely empathize and sympathize with someone throwing their phone.
I do want to stress, like, yeah, come on, you know.
I get it, I get it, you know.
You know, calm down.
I'm not trying to be a dick when I say that.
I mean it seriously.
But this is kind of a crazy story if you haven't been following.
This is over in Ohio.
We are seeing these laws passed in a bunch of states.
So I guess the predictions were right.
A lot of women said that there will be the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
We're not there yet.
But with all of these states passing these laws, it's entirely possible.
Now, for those of you who know me and you watch my content, you know that I'm pro-choice, and it's, uh, I would call it, like, begrudgingly, and it's on libertarian grounds.
Not too dissimilar to Dave Rubin's argument, but I'm not entirely familiar with his argument is, for the most part.
But for me, it really just comes down to government restriction on medical procedures.
However, there are some really interesting points that are made by the pro-life side, and I hear them, I hear them, I definitely do.
Because I don't believe abortion as contraception is right, but I also don't think it should be an issue for the government to determine when or when you shouldn't have someone performing a medical procedure.
It's tough.
It really is.
I don't think I'm the arbiter of morality.
I don't think I know everything.
I don't think I'm right.
Right? So it is a challenge, but for me, it's going to come down to, look, man,
I don't want the government telling somebody that they should have to provide
their body to someone else because you do have issues like this 11 year old girl.
And I would rather err on the side of making sure the 11 year old victim doesn't
get put in the situation. It's tough. It really is.
I don't think I'm the arbiter of morality. I don't think I know everything.
I don't think I'm right, but this is why I'm, I'm like kind of moderate on a lot of issues because I don't
necessarily know what is right and what is wrong.
A lot of people like to say centrists just don't know what they're talking about or they don't have an opinion.
That's not true.
I have opinions.
It's just that trying to solve these problems is difficult and I'm trying to work with everybody to figure out what's the right thing to do.
So I think I can, you know, throwing your phone across the room and cracking the screen, yeah, don't do that, but it's a serious story.
We also have a couple more just quick shoutouts real quick before I sign off on this video.
Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren are both calling this a major issue, but they're right.
Elizabeth Warren says this ban is dangerous and exceptionally cruel, and the bill's authors want to use it to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Naturally, you're gonna have a lot of pro-life people saying, yup.
And they're happy about it.
You're gonna have the left being very, very upset about it.
I think it's a dangerous territory.
I gotta say, I'm apprehensive on the passing of these bills.
It's going to get dangerous.
It's going to be bad.
And a lot of this is settled.
Right?
I get it.
But you know what?
Here's what happens.
There's an ebb and flow to politics.
And for the longest time, we had precedent.
The precedent can be overturned.
Precedent has been overturned.
So...
I guess I would say this.
The pro-lifers are probably cheering, and the pro-choice people are probably freaking out.
And I can only say, I guess, for me, I do find this worrisome.
I do.
But I've done a ton of videos talking about my position on choice and life, and I hate rehashing the issue every time I make a video.
So, we'll leave it at that.
Suffice it to say, my position is slightly center-left, pro-choice, but it is rather nuanced.
I am not oblivious to the arguments made by the right.
I have listened a great deal to Ben Shapiro.
I actually agree with a lot of what he says on the issue.
I believe life begins at conception.
But it is a moral challenge that can't be solved simply by saying it is or isn't.
There are a lot of people on the left that I think don't think about the true nature and what's really going on, and there are a lot of people on the right who are very absolutist on this, but I can't just be on one side.
You know, I can't just say I know exactly what's right and what's wrong.
What I do know is I don't like the idea of government being involved in people's medical choices, especially when it pertains to someone having to provide their body to someone else.
It is complicated.
I'd love to have a greater conversation with it, you know, at a different point, but for now we'll leave it there.
Main point before I sign off on this segment is that it's not just men, okay?
Can we please just stop the narrative of men controlling women?
It is about people.
Women, more women voted for Kemp, okay?
So if that's the case, you want to play the game, we'll say then women are controlling women's bodies.
Well, that is kind of confusing.
The issue is people disagree.
We need to work together and figure out where we can, you know, unify Or compromise.
Of course, people don't want to compromise, and for good reason.
People on the pro-life side are saying compromise on the harm to babies?
Yeah, never gonna happen.
And I hear you.
I understand your position.
And people on the left saying compromise on the right for women to be free from the government control, and it's...
You know what, man?
It's a tough issue.
Maybe one of the most difficult moral conundrums I've ever had to deal with, and I don't know the answers.
And that's one of the reasons I err on the side of choice.
Just keep the government out of it.
You know, for the most part.
For the most part.
There's a line.
Let's figure out where it is.
I'll leave it there.
I got one more video coming up for you in a few minutes, and if you're listening, stick around.
It's coming up now.
Eighteen governments had a meeting where they called for more censorship.
And you know what happened?
The U.S.
said, nah, no thanks.
God, I love the First Amendment.
Do I like what these people, you know, this guy did in New Zealand?
No way!
Who would?
Very few fringe, crazy people would like what that person was doing.
And if you're someone like PewDiePie or Candace Owens, who got named by this dude, you're probably extremely unhappy too.
If you're fans of those individuals, you're probably unhappy.
No, I don't like hate speech.
Hate speech is bad.
But should we ban people's opinions?
No.
Where do you draw the line?
It is a slippery slope.
And we need to be able to criticize bad ideas.
Fortunately for us here in the States, we have a First Amendment, which means when it came to the call to control speech on the internet, the U.S.
said, no thank you.
Because you can't do it.
Quite literally, in the U.S., you cannot restrict speech.
The government can't agree to these things.
Sorry.
We have a constitution that says, never gonna happen.
This story is from the Washington Post.
White House declines to back Christchurch call to stamp out online extremism amid free speech concerns.
The United States on Wednesday broke with 18 governments and top American tech firms by declining to endorse a New Zealand-led response to the live-streamed incidents at the two Christchurch mosques, saying free speech concerns prevented the White House from formally endorsing the largest campaign to date targeting extremism online.
The Christchurch Call, unveiled at an international gathering in Paris, commits foreign countries and tech giants to be more vigilant about the spread of hate on social media.
It reflects heightened global frustrations with the inability of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to restrain hateful posts, photos, and videos that have spawned real-world violence.
Now that's the argument they use, spawned real-world violence.
Unfortunately, it's an opinion.
Curious.
How an opinion gets put into a Washington Post story.
Because the line between opinion and fact for news organizations is gone.
Let's break this down.
They say it reflects heightened global frustrations with the inability of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to restrain hateful posts, photos, and videos that have spawned real-world violence.
What posts?
Specifically, what posts?
We have no facts confirming that online content actually led to these things.
We don't.
We know that some people are bad people.
We know that the internet is where our culture is born and culture influences people.
But why is the Washington Post including an opinion Who's frustrated?
Global frustrations?
From who?
Seriously, from these 18 governments?
Well, 18 is what, less than 10% of the governments in the world?
I'm sorry to break into this tirade, but man, the media really frustrates me.
They always do this, pushing opinion masquerading as fact.
Leaders from across the globe pledged to counter online extremism, including through new regulation, and to encourage media outlets to apply ethical standards when depicting terrorist events online.
Companies including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, meanwhile, said they'd work more closely to ensure their sites don't become conduits for terror.
They also committed to accelerated research and information sharing with governments in the wake of the recent attacks.
The call is named after the New Zealand city where a bad guy, Hurt, ended the life of 51 people in a March attack broadcast on social media sites.
Facebook, Google, and Twitter struggled to take down copies of the videos as it spread on the web, prompting an international backlash from regulators who felt malicious actors had evaded Silicon Valley's defense too easily.
Let's stop here.
Let's point something out.
You will never stop people who want to do these things.
Prohibition just doesn't work.
Restriction and regulation can work.
We also have another story here that I'm going to pop over real quick.
Facebook changes livestream rules after the New Zealand incident.
You can change your rules.
And I think one of the reasons why a lot of governments are very happy to have Google and Facebook, Twitter and others monopolizing speech is because when it comes to, say, the dark web, how people refer to it, You can't stop people from accessing it.
You can't.
There is a bunch of different ways that people can bypass your censorship.
VPNs, dial-up phone lines.
There were hackers during the Arab Spring called, it was, uh, Telecomics.
That's what they called themselves.
And they created dial-up phone lines so that when the government shut down the internet completely, they could still use the phones to connect to the internet and get information in and out.
So the government can't stop this.
They're trying, though.
One of the most important things in implementing mass censorship will be the consolidation onto a single platform, because now Twitter can restrict you.
Now, of course, when it comes to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., you can use a VPN, you can create a new IP address, you can create a new profile, you can act anonymously, so you can still get back on these platforms.
But the platforms have been getting ban-happy.
Another thing that's great for these governments is that they can claim the government supports free speech, but it's the private entity like we're seeing in the U.S.
The U.S.
enshrined the freedom of speech in the First Amendment.
But now, special interests are probably loving the fact that speech is being privatized by these big platforms.
Well, unfortunately, for these 18 governments who want more censorship online, It's not going to work in the US.
We're seeing laws get passed in Australia.
I believe it's Australia and the UK that are extremely restrictive in terms of speech.
Here in the US, we're going the other direction.
There's actually conversations and laws being presented that would stop the restriction of speech because it is in our culture and enshrined in our constitution, which I got to say, I'm very happy.
I'm very happy about every day.
I am.
I am very grateful.
America, number one, please.
They say New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, this is back at the Washington Post story, and French President Emmanuel Macron organized the call to action, part of Ardern's international plea this year, for greater social media accountability.
Along with New Zealand and France, countries such as Australia, Canada, and the UK endorsed the document, as did tech giants including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter.
So let's stress this point.
In the United States, the government can't enact policy to restrict speech.
But you better damn well believe Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, American companies, would love to restrict your speech.
And have agreed to speech restrictions.
And they have it in their rules.
They have it in their rules.
Now look, I don't have sympathy.
um, for hate speech. I do not like it. I think it's bad. I think it weakens your argument,
but you know what? Let them weaken their argument. That's the point. When it, when, when a weird
wackaloo and fringe person goes online and says crazy hate speech, I say, good. Now we
all know that you're crazy. You've undermined yourself. Do you know what happens when you
censor the crazies?
The only people left are the suit-wearing types.
It's really funny how we see these stories from, like, the Daily Beast or whatever, where they're talking about how the alt-right is trying to dress up in suits to cover up how crazy their ideas are.
And the way I see it, I'm like, no, they're not.
Those are the suit-wearing types.
It's just that you've banned the crazies, so the only people left are the suit-wearing smooth talkers who are trying to influence you.
You are giving them cover.
Let the weirdos speak.
What happens?
You get people on the left like Sarah Jong and other weirdos who have racist beliefs, and they say crazy stuff and we can all see it.
And then we're like, well, those people are nuts.
And the people standing next to them, they believe the same thing.
But what happens when you censor only the crazies on one side?
Well, then you leave the suit-wearing smooth talkers.
No!
Let the crazies talk about what they really believe so we know!
Which is why it's great that we have the First Amendment.
Let him speak.
Unfortunately, Google will still restrict speech.
Google— You know, there was a point— I talked about this not that long ago, but— where a certain word and any combination of the word was banned from Google Shopping Search.
So you couldn't search for toys.
Because, like, you ever hear of Gundam Wing, the anime?
Yeah, what's the first three letters of that name, Gundam Wing?
If you searched for that, nothing would come up.
If you searched for the toy, it wouldn't come up.
In fact, you couldn't search for Gunnison, Colorado.
Oh my god, that's why censorship is insane!
And people were asking Google, why can't I look up, I looked up like the Gunnison, I think it's Gunnison Colorado, you know, Historical Society or something like that, and it didn't come up.
I tried to buy souvenirs, couldn't come up, because Google censored it.
So you know what ends up happening is, I try having an argument with someone saying, I can prove these people believe weird things, but Google is cleaning them up!
Let us see what they're saying, so we know they're crazy people.
America's top tech giants celebrated the call, a voluntary effort, not full regulation, as an important step toward tackling one of the web's biggest challenges.
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter issued a joint statement saying, it is right that we come together, resolute in our commitment to ensure we are doing all we can to fight the hatred and extremism that leads to violence.
And that's a far left argument, that speech results in violence.
No, no, no, hold on.
Incitement does.
Saying, you know, telling someone to go do something does.
But they're trying to move the line to say, hating someone leads to violence.
Sure.
Okay?
Sure.
Everything leads in some direction, but we have to figure out what we're going to draw the line at.
We need to draw the line at people saying, take action, and the people taking action.
Not the people saying, I just plain don't like pineapple on pizza.
Could you imagine if someone said, you saying you don't like coffee will lead to violence against coffee growers?
Oh, because think about the chain of events.
I don't like coffee.
Then people start talking, you get radicalized by coffee content.
This is literally what they're saying.
Simply because someone goes on Twitter or goes on YouTube and says, I just plain don't like Catholics, doesn't mean you're going to get a bunch of people who are going to go out and harm Catholics.
It might happen, but blame the perpetrators who break the rules and hurt other people, not someone for saying, I don't like something.
Hate is a natural human emotion.
You don't end the hate by shutting people up and putting them in a box.
That makes them more hateful.
And they try and justify the way they feel.
So let's just wrap up the story here.
The story ends by saying...
Greater regulation on tech companies is needed, but we shouldn't be calling on tech companies to remove content without also demanding that they act with far more transparency and accountability, he said.
Otherwise, companies will censor first and ask questions later, leaving users with little recourse to appeal poor decisions and uphold their right to free expression.
But I'm curious why they say greater regulation on tech companies is needed.
That's an opinion.
That is a straight opinion, and I don't see opinion It just says tech policy.
Once again, I am faced with another news organization creating an opinion piece masquerading as fact, but welcome.
Welcome to the future.
News is few and far between, but that's why, final thought, we're pushing forward to expand Subverse.
I'm really happy to announce things look pretty good.
We may already have a space.
I'm hoping to secure some investment if you're an investor and you want to get involved.
We have a bunch of plans.
We're hiring.
I will add one more thing.
If you did watch the video on my main channel where I announced everything we're doing, please do not go to the physical space because it is not set up for the public and there's a bunch of other people who work there that have nothing to do with us that are getting kind of worried, so don't do that.
Just send an email to pitch at subverse.net if you're interested in working with us.
And also, do not email me personally because it will just get sent into a spam folder.
I'm not going to read through emails.
It is all going to pitch at subverse.net.
By all means, feel free to email me for anything else, but just, like, if I get an email about, you know, people have sent me like 50 emails.
I can't go through them.
I can't.
And I can't go through each one to try and forward it to pitch.
You've got to send it to them, not to me.
But by all means, you can email me about whatever you want, I do read it.
I'll end there by saying our goal for Subverse is to do the right thing, is to do good journalism, and we're seeing some pretty good growth.
Hopefully that's enough.
Hopefully we can get investment, and we can crowdfund or something, and we can make it sustainable.
Because, admittedly, I'll end with one more thought too.
As I'm shifting over to putting more focus into building up Subverse and organizing things, then it means, you know, revenue in other areas goes down.
So, you know, it is what it is.
But we're going to have more announcements coming up soon.
Thanks for hanging out.
Thanks for listening.
For those that are watching on YouTube, I just want to clarify for the past few videos.
This is now going to be an hour-long podcast on iTunes, Spotify, etc.
I hope.
I gotta figure it out.
It's actually kind of expensive to host a daily podcast that's an hour long, but hey, you know, I'm doing my best, and it is what it is.
So I'm trying to figure out how they can be both at the same time, but we'll leave it there.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you tomorrow on YouTube at 10 a.m., or for those that are listening to the podcast, every day at 7 p.m.
