Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

Hey everybody. Hey everybody, welcome. Besties are back. Besties are back. It's another all in podcast. Dropping it to you unexpectedly because there's just so much news. There's too much rise bestie pod. But dropping a bestie? It's not a code. There are 13. We're not dropping any Snickers bars today, just dropping the bestie. Oh no, he's got a megaphone. This is. Special Censorship edition warning ordinance. We hit a new low in terms of people needing to be home. My God. By the way, Tremont Sachs, his agent and his chief of staff called me. He felt like he only got 62% of the minutes in the last two podcasts versus the rest of us, and so I'm dealing with his agent a little bit. It's like the the debates where they count the number of minutes and interview. Daniel, is Daniel grinding you for more minutes? Grinding? I go for. I go for quality over quantity. Absolutely. OK, well, this week's going to be. I mean, what a complete disaster of a week. It's another way to explain what is such a every day is a dumpster fire. It's a huge dumpster fire. So here we are. We're three weeks out from the election and somebody's emails. Have a Democrat's emails have been leaked again, potentially, but last time. We had an investigation by the FBI. And then that might have infected impacted the election this time. We have. A whole different brouhaha, apparently. Hunter Biden, who loves to smoke crack and has a serious truck problem, this this is, you know, he's a seriously obviously troubled individual, but he brought three laptops to get them fixed and never picked them up, according to this story in the New York Post. So the New York Post runs a story with an author who is. Kind of unknown. And this these laptops were somehow the hard drives made. He never picked them up. That's a little suspicious. The hard drives wind up with, really, Rudy Giuliani and the FBI. And anyway, what they say is that Hunter Biden, which we kind of know is a grifter who traded on his last name to get big consulting deals. I don't know what board anybody here has been on that pays 50,000 a month, but it's obviously gnarly stuff. But the the fallout from it was the big story. I went to tweet the story and it wouldn't let me tweet the story. So the literal New York Post was banned by Twitter. At the same time, Facebook put a warning on it, so let's just put it out there. You know, Sachs, you're guys losing pretty badly in this election. And so we'll go to our token GOP. Or what do you think is this? Let's let's take this in two parts. One. What do you do? What do they think the chances that this is fake news or real news or something in between? And then let's get into Twitter's. Insane decision to block the URL. Yeah, I mean, so so first of all, so I I think this whole thing is a is a tragedy of errors on the part of sort of everyone involved. I think the New York Post story stinks. I don't think it it it it needs sort of standards of journalistic integrity. We can talk about that. But then I think, you know, Twitter and Facebook overreacted and I think that the story was well in the process of being debunked by the Internet and it was like Twitter and Facebook didn't trust that process. That happened, and so they intervened. And now I think there's gonna be 1/3 mistake, which is that conservatives are looking to repeal section 2:30. We should talk about that. And so each one, there's been a cascade of of disasters that have led to this, this dumpster fire. But starting with the story, it is, it is very suspicious. First of all, these disclosures about 100 Biden's personal life, they didn't have to go there was completely gratuitous to the article. It was sleazy. And then of course this story about how the hard drive ends up with the reporters makes no sense. Even today Giuliani was was making up a new explanations for how it got there. It's now being widely speculated that this was the that the content came from the result of a hack maybe involving foreign actors that this whole idea that it came from this sort of hard drive that he left at a repair shop and forgot to pick up. I mean so that that's now, you know I think that would have been the story today. If it weren't for Facebook and Twitter making censorship the story. And then the final thing is, you know, this story wasn't a smoking gun to begin with. I mean, the worst thing it showed was that there was a single e-mail between Burisma exec and and Joe Biden and the the Biden campaign has denied that, but that Joe Biden never met with this guy. And so it wasn't ever this smoking gun. And and and that makes it all the more apparent why Facebook and Twitter sort of overreacted. It was almost like they were trying to overprotect. Their candidate. That's the thing that obviously looks crazy, like they now have given the GOP the right, the extreme right, the belief that. The the technology companies are now on the side of the left, whereas last time they were on the side of the right I think, right. Facebook was on the side of the right last time. So Chamath, you worked at Facebook famously for many years. What are your thoughts? Well, Jack came out last night and basically said that the reason that they, that they shut down distribution was that it came from hacking and doxxing or something. I think that was basically the combination, a combination. And then Facebook today came out and said, you know, before we could take it down. They've been distributed or read 300,000 times. I mean, look, if we just take a step back and think about what's happening here, there are more and more and more examples that are telling, I think all of us, well, we kind of already knew, which is that this fig leaf that the online Internet companies have used to shield themselves from any responsibility. Those days are probably numbered because now, exactly as David said, what you have is the left and the right looking to repeal section 230 and so. And by the way, two days ago, I think it was Clarence Thomas basically put out the entire road map of how to repeal it. And if you assume that Amy Coney Barrett gets, you know, put into the High Court in a matter of days or whatever, it's only a matter of time until the right case is thoughtfully prepared along those guardrails that that Clarence Thomas defined. And it'll get, you know, fast tracked through to the Supreme Court. But if I was a betting man, which I am, I think that section 230 is their days are numbered. And Facebook, Twitter, Google, all these companies are going to have to look more like newspapers and television stations after this. OK, so before we go to your Friedberg, I'm just going to read what section 230 is this is part of. A law basically designed to protect common carriers, web hosters of legal claims that come from hosting third party information. Here's what it reads. No provider. A user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information. Provided by another information content provider. So what this basically means is if you put a blog post up. And people comment on it. You're not responsible for their comments. Or if you're medium and you host the blog, you're not responsible for the comments of that person, is that person. So it makes complete logical sense. The entire Internet was based off of this, that platforms are not responsible for what people contribute to those platforms. That's how publishing works if you look at the Internet paper. But again, let's build on this. When that law was originally written, we had no conception of social distribution and algorithmic feeds that basically pumped content. And increase the volume on those things. So what you have now is really no different than if, you know, you created a show on Netflix or HBO or CBS and put it out there. If that stuff contained, you know, something that was really offensive. Those companies are on the hook. Did they make it? No. Did they distribute it? Yes, and it's the in here. But here's the difference. It's the Netflix, but it's the active act of distributing it. You cannot look at these companies and say they are basically holding their hands. That they have written active code. And there is technical procedures that they are in control of that are both the amplifier and the kill switch. But isn't this a bad analogy, Netflix? Shouldn't it the analogy be the person who makes film stock, where the person who makes the camera where the person who develops the film, not the person who distributes? No, because that limited amount of shows on Netflix you can police, all of you can't Netflix and everything written. Netflix is making editorial decisions about which shows to publish, just like, you know, a magazine. Makes editorial decisions about which articles to publish. They are clearly publishers, but the the communication C-section 2:30, the original distinction. I mean, if you want to think about like an offline terms for a second, you've got, you've got this idea of publishers and distributors, right? That's a fundamental dichotomy. And magazine would be a publisher. The newsstand on which it appears is a distributor. It shouldn't be liable if there's. If there's a a libelous article contained in that magazine, you shouldn't be able to sue every single newsstand in the country that made that magazine available for sale. That was the that the original offline law that was then kind of ported over into section 2:30. It made a lot of sense without this. I mean I think it was a really visionary provision. It was passed in 1996. Without that, every time that somebody sends an e-mail that you know potentially created a legal issue. You know, Gmail could have been liable freeberg is it. What's the right analogy when people post to the Internet? Is that the is the analogy the paper or film stock? Is it the newsstand or is it the publisher? So remember, like what Sax is pointing out is this was passed in 1996, so think back to 1996 when you would create some content right in the term around that time with user generated content, right. You guys remember this like the early days, it was like the big you GC, GC and it was like the big sweeping. Friend was like, Oh my God, all this content is being created by the users. We don't have to go find content creators to create, you know, a reason for other consumers to want to come to our websites so users could create content. You know, Blogger was an early kind of user generated content service. You could create a blog post, you could post it and people would show up. The problem with Blogger or the challenge was a distribution or syndication, right? How do I now I've posted my content? How do I, as that content creator, get people to read my content and you'd have to send people like. Link to a website or link to a web page and you click on that link and then you could read it. What chamath is pointing out is that today, Twitter and Facebook make a choice about and and YouTube make a choice about what content to show. And so, you know, I think the analogy in the offline sense via the algorithm is what you're saying. To be clear, the algorithm. And, you know, YouTube realized that if they showed you videos that they think that you'll click on, they'll keep you on YouTube longer and make more money from ads. So it keeps the cycle going and so they optimize. And it turns out that the content that you need to optimize. Or to get people to keep clicking is content that is somewhat activating to the amygdala in your brain. It's like stuff that makes you angry or makes you super pleasured and not just boring, ordinary stuff. And so this sort of content, which the New York Post sells a lot of, is the sort of stuff that rises to the top of those algorithms naturally because of the way they operate. Now, if a magazine stand were to put those newspapers, using the offline analogy, on the front of their magazine stand and told people walking around the street, hey, you guys should check these out, you know, top of the news. Is Hunter Biden smoking crack with a ******? People would, you know, probably stop, but I think the question is should they be liable? Now in in, I think 2000 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed and that act basically created a process by which folks who felt like and it was related to copyright. But I think the analogy similar. If you thought that your content was copyrighted and was being put up falsely or put up without your permission, you could make a claim to one of those platforms to get your content pulled down. And I think the question is, is there some sort of analogy around libel content or false or misleading content that maybe this evolves into law where there's a process by which platforms can kind of be challenged on what they're showing, much like they are with the DMCA takedown notices. So the problem, the problem comes back to the code if you explicitly write code that fundamentally. Makes it murky whether you are the publisher or the distributor. I think that you have to basically take the approach that you are both and then you should be subject to the laws of both. If for example Twitter did not have any algorithmic redistribution amplification, there were the only way you could get content was in a real time feed. That was everything that your friends posted and they stayed silent. You could make a very credible claim that they are a publisher and not a distributor, which by the way, is the way it originally worked. And it was why they were falling behind Facebook, as you well know, because you worked on the you can't algorithm, you cannot cry, but you're you're not a distributor when you literally have a bunch of people that sit beside you writing code that decides what is important and what is not. You can debate, but you can debate which signals they decide to use, but it is their choice. Well, but, but but if the signals are are the users own clicks, then I would argue that's still just user generated content. No, it is. It is a signal, David, but that's not the only signal. For example, I can tell you very clearly that we would choose a priori stuff that we knew you would click on. It wasn't necessarily the most heavily clicked. We could make things that were lightly clicked, more clicked. We could make things that were more clicked, less clicked. But my point is, there are people inside the bowels of these companies that are deciding what you and your children. D and to the extent that that's OK, that's OK. Wait, maybe we've actually solved this problem sacks in that if we said if you deploy an algorithm that is not disclosing how this is going then you are ergo a publisher. And if you are just showing it reverse chronological our Cron as we used to call back in the day with the newest thing up top, that would be just. So maybe we should be not getting rid of 2:30. We should be talking to these politicians. About algorithms equal publisher so the publisher at the New York Post is the same as the algorithm. I like this as a as a better framework. Well, yeah. So, so Senator Tom Cotton, you know, who's a Republican, he tweeted in response to the the New York Post censorship. Look, if you guys are going to act like publishers, we're going to treat you like publishers so that that's not modifying section 230, that's saying you're not going to qualify for section 230 protection anymore. If you're going to make all these editorial decisions, I would argue that these decisions are making about. Censoring specific articles. And by the way, it's a total double standard because, you know, when when Trump's tax returns came out a week or two ago, where was this censorship of that that was wasn't that hacked material? I mean, that was material that found its way to the New York Times without Trump's consent. By the way, so were the Pentagon Papers. I mean, you cannot apply this standard, this, this idea that we're going to prohibit links to articles. You're, but you're proving the point these people are. Hold on. I'm, I'm saying I'm saying if they make editorial decisions, they're publishers. I think there's a way for them to employ speech neutral rules and remain distributors. So I would be, I would, I would have a little bit of of an issue with you. I would say the reason why they're going to fall into this traffic coming publishers is because of their own desire to censor their own biases. They can't. I don't think that's what it is. I think it's purely market cap driven if you go from an algorithmic feed. To a reverse chronological feed only I can tell you what will happen in my opinion, which is that the revenue monetization on a per page per impression basis will go off by 90 percent, 90%. For sure people wouldn't. Only reason why these guys won't switch because they know that for every billion dollars they make today, it would go to 100 million in a reverse chronological feed because you would not be able to place ads in any coherent, valuable way. There would be zero click throughs and the ads would be just worthless. Look, look, look, look. Otherwise, they should do it. Now, if you could keep all the revenue and you could be reverse chronological, right, and have the same market cap, just do it and be under Safe Harbor so that you're not attacked everyday. How fun is it to be sitting there and being attacked every single day by both sides? All that and by all the libertarians in the middle. The reason they don't do it is because of money. Let's just be honest, that's the only reason they don't do it there. It's all market cap driven. Maybe maybe they should go back to this kind of the straight reverse front feed and maybe you're right that the, I mean I think you probably are right that the algorithms are make the situation worse because they kind of trap people in these bubbles of like reinforcement and they just keep being fed more ideological purity and it and it definitely is fueling the polarization of our society. So I'm not trying to defend I mean I I think maybe you have a point that we should get rid of these algorithms but but just to think about like the publisher aspect of it going back to the newsstand example. Say that the guy who works at the newsstand knows his customers and pulls aside every month the magazines that he knows that his clientele wants. And in fact, sometimes he even makes recommendations knowing that, oh, OK, you know, tumath likes, you know, these three magazines. Here's a new one. Maybe he'll like this and he pulls it aside for you. That would not subject him to publisher liability. Even though he's doing some curation, he's not involved in the content curation. I I would argue that if the. That algorithms proceed in a speech neutral way, which is just to say they're going to look at your clicks and then based on your own revealed preferences, suggest other things for you to look at. I don't think that makes you a publisher necessarily, and I think if it, but if you, if you do, if you do put your finger, if these engineers are putting their thumb on the scale and and and pushing the algorithm towards certain specific kinds of content that may cross over. No, no, no, you're being, you're being too specific and it's it's not that extreme and it's not as simple as you're saying. The reality is there are. Incredibly intricate models on a per person basis that these companies use to figure out what you're likely going to click on, not what you should not what is exposed to you, not what you shouldn't, but what you likely will. And that's part of a much broader maximization function that includes revenue as a huge driver. So the reality is that these guys are making publishing decisions and right, you are right, David, that you know the law back in the day, it didn't scale to the newspaper. Better. But you know what? In 1796, you know, colored people were 3/5 of a human, and we figured out a way to change the law. So I'm pretty sure we can change the law here, too. And I think what's going to happen is you should be allowed to be algorithmic, but then you should live and die by the same rules as everybody else. Otherwise, that is what's really anticompetitive. Is to essentially lie your way to a market advantage that isn't true just because people don't understand what an algorithm is. That's not sufficient to me. But they're not actually in the content creation business, right? And so what's the, what's the, the, the definition of a term publisher in that context? Because in all other cases, publishers pay for and guide and direct the editorial creation of the content versus being a kind of discriminatory function of that content. Here's the problem. Let's take for example, Instagram reels. Can you manipulate content through reels? Yes. Now as the person that provides that tool. To create content that theoretically could be violating other people's copyright or, you know, offensive or wrong or whatever, and then you yourself distribute it to other people knowingly. The reality is that the laws need to address in a mature way. The reality of what is happening today versus trying to harken back to the 1860s and the 1930s, because things are just different and we're smart enough as humans to figure out these nuances and that sometimes we start with good intentions and the laws just need to change. Well, ironically, tumath, you're making a point that Clarence Thomas made. Justice Thomas made it in his filing, recent filing, where he said that that if you are acting as both a publisher and distributor, you need to be subject to publish reliability, which means peeling back section 230. And moreover, you may not even be the primary creator of the content if you're merely a secondary creator. If you're someone who has a hand in the content, then you are. You're a creator, you're a publisher, and. Therefore you should use section 230 protection. That is basically what he said. If you if your argument is that the algorithms make you a content creator effectively and the tools algorithms and tools well. The other thing is you know what, you have the because David, but you also have monetization. Energization involved in the YouTube example. So they are helping you make a really serious conversation. Jason, let's not, let's not go off in that. I'm just no, but but dramas, I mean this goes back to the politics makes strange bedfellows point. I mean, I think a lot of the Conservatives are actually making the point you're making, which is that these social media sites are involved in publishing. I don't want these guys involved in any of this **** because I don't trust them to be neutral over long periods of time. So do you trust their decision to pull down Q Anon groups and zero? What? Just like just like it took it took years for us to figure out that Holocaust denial was wrong, anti VAX was marginal. Q Anon was crazy. Like wearing masks was a good idea, right? I mean, I I don't want these people in charge of any of this stuff. And to the extent that they are, I want them to be liable and culpable to defend their decisions. So chamath your ideal nonprofit social media service? Would be a chronological feed of any content anyone wants to publish that anyone can browse. And that's not what I'm saying, David. What I'm saying is that you have to be able to live with the risk that comes with, you know, playing in the big league and wanting to be a 500 plus billion dollar company. There is a liability that comes with that and you need to own it and live up to the responsibility of what it means. Otherwise you don't get the free option. What if they didn't take a hand in it and they followed the dig? The Reddit model. And it's just upvoting that decides what content rises to the top. Expect that. I suspect that. So Reddit has a just a different problem, which is sort of like, you know, a decency problem and and a different class of law. Who are we to judge decency, right. I mean like in in the vein of like editorialist, like they're taking no hand in, in what content rises to the top? Well, they did ban certain topics, so they did recently. But like, like, assume they did it right and it was just purely like uploaded consumer and not algorithmic. That's yeah. It's very hard to pin. I think it's really hard platform to me. I think it's very hard to pin a section 230 claim on Reddit as easy as it is YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and YouTube reverted to just hey, what people are watching right now rises to the top and that was the only thing that drove the algorithm. You would feel more comfortable with YouTube not being it's not comfortable. This is what I'm saying. It's it's what what I know. All I wanna know is what am I getting when I go here and if what I'm getting is. A subjective function where they are maximizing revenue, which means that I can't necessarily trust the content I get. As long as I know that, and as long as there's recourse for me, I'm I'm very fine to use YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. What I think is unfair is to not know that there's a subjective function. Confuse it with an objective function. Go on with your life. End up in this state that we're in now, where nobody is happy and everybody is throwing barbs. And you have no solution. Maybe I just want to be stimulated. Like, I remember the day when I would go to Facebook and Twitter and it was boring as hell. It's like just ******* random **** that people like, here's a picture of my show me the best stuff get, you know, like, I like and now I go to Facebook and I'm like ******* addicted because it's showing me this and there's like **** that I've been buying online and the ads keep popping up and I'm like, oh, this is awesome. And I keep buying more stuff. Well, I think all of that is good, but I it's all it all should be done. Eyes wide open where in these corner cases, the people that feel like some sort of right or privilege. Or has been violated or some overstepping has occurred. They should have some legal recourse and they should be there should be on the record a mechanism to disambiguate all that? Wait, hold on a second here. Just one question, David. Would this be alleviated if the algorithm was less of a black box? If we could just say, hey, we need these algorithms to be so that's not a solution. And then what is this and I want to hear about and then also labeling because Facebook labeled. Yeah, and if labeling stuff, hey, this is disputed from a third party, that feels to me like that would have been a better solution in Twitter's case. Alright, let me, let me get in here. So I half agree with chamath. OK, so the the half I agree with is I don't want any of these people, meaning the social media sites, making editorial decisions about what I see, censoring what I can look at. I don't trust them. I don't want that kind of power residing in really two people's hands. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. I don't. I don't trust them and I don't want them to have that kind of power. But where I disagree is if you repeal section 230, you're gonna make the situation infinitely worse. Because Section 2, what is the response to these companies going to be corporate risk aversion is going to cause them to want to hire hundreds of low level employees, basically millennials to sit there making judgments about what content might be defamatory, might cause a lawsuit. They're going to be taking down content all over the place. And do you know what will happen to be a world, you know what will happen those companies? Will lose users lose engagement and new things will spring up in its place around these laws that work. How are they, how they lose audience? I mean, I think what will happen is you have a torrent of lawsuits anytime somebody has a potential lawsuit based on, you know, I don't think of like trying to police speech at a dinner party like never existed. Assisted at the scale, I don't think the goal is to work backwards from how do we preserve a trillion dollars of market cap? So what if that's what happens? I don't think that's what we're doing. So for me, I I'm I'm trying to work back from how do we preserve the open Internet? I but I think this is exactly what it's saying, which is here's a clear delineation in 2020, knowing what we know, you know person, entrepreneur who goes to why Combinator or to launch to build the next great company, here are these rules. Pick your poison and some will choose to be just the publisher. Some will probably create forms of distribution we can't even think of. Some will choose to straddle the line. They'll have different risk spectrums that they live. And that's exactly how the free markets work today. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe the only like disagreement here is that I I think that code can be written in algorithms, can be written in a speech neutral way so that the distributors don't cross over the line to becoming publishers. I fully agree with you that these sites should not be publishers. The reason why the New York Post they should be taken off, they should be platforms and they cross the line. I would say that this this newer post story is that the reason why people up in arms about it is because what? Twitter and Facebook. Have done is basically said they're gonna sit in judgment of the media industry and if a publisher like the the The New York Post puts out a story that doesn't meet the standards of Twitter and Facebook, they're going to censor them. That is a sweeping assertion of power picking and choosing who they don't want to give distribution to. But we all, we all agree on that piece. They should not be the arbiter of that. That is what is triggering, but that is what is triggering the Conservatives in particular, but everybody, but especially conservatives to say they want to. Feel section 230. Nobody. My point is nobody is safe and and it's less about I I actually think that there's a nuanced point to this, which is it's less about what they think is legit or not, as much as what they think is important or not. They chose to make this an important article. They chose to kind of intervene in this particular case when every day there are going to be hundreds of other articles that are going to be actively shared on these platforms that are, by those same standards false. With, you know, some degree of equivalency false. Should be on the the platform, absolutely. And it is the simple choice that they chose an article to exclude regardless of the reason in the background because there are many articles like it that aren't being excluded and that alone speaks to the hole in the system as as kind of satisfying. Well, it's because it's because they they have too much power and they're unaware of their own biases. They can't see this action for what it's so clearly was. It was a knee jerk reaction on the part of employees at Twitter and Facebook to to protect the Biden campaign. From a story that they didn't like I mean because if they were to apply these standards evenly they would have blocked the Trump tax returns for the exact same reason by the way just so you know talked about to block you so he can keep the Biden campaign strong and not have your. Well I I I would say I've been red pilled actually the last 24 hours have been red Pilling for me. I I I I gotta say David I agree with you because like I thought I thought that both things were crossing the line like meaning either you publish them both or you censor them both. And there are very legitimate reasons where you could be on either side, but to choose one and not do the other, it just again, it creates for me uncertainty. And I don't like uncertainty, and I really don't like the idea that some nameless, faceless person in one of these organizations is all of a sudden going to decide for me. Knowledge and information. That to me is just unacceptable. The journalistic standard becomes a slippery slope to nowhere, right? Like, at that point you're just like what? What is true? What is not true? What is opinion? What is not opinion? What is what? You know? How do I validate whether this ******* laptop came from this guy or this guy or this guy? It's a slippery how are you ever gonna resolve that across billions of articles a day? Standards would be and look at the the answer. Yeah. And you're both has lower standards, right? And so let's let's look at how slippery the slope has become. Just a week ago, I mean, literally a week ago, Mark Zuckerberg put out a statement explaining why Facebook was gonna censor, censor Holocaust denial, why? He really went out on a limb. Hi, David. Well, it's, I think. Wow. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But my point is no, but you're missing my point. My point is you actually put out a multi paragraph, well reasoned statement. Paragraphs about the Holocaust is bad. Wow. Congrats. Well, what I'm trying to you're you're you're not listening my point my point is that. He took it seriously that he was going to censor something. And I think, you know, people can come down. You could be like a Skokie, ACLU liberal and oppose it. Or, you know, you could say, look, common sense dictates that you would, you would censor this. But he felt the need to justify it with, you know, like a long post. And then one week later, we're already down the street slope to the point where, you know, Facebook's justification for censoring this article was a tweet by Andy Stone. You know, like that was it. It was a tweet. That was the only explanation they gave, by the way. One of the reporters pointed out that if you were going to announce a new policy, you probably wouldn't want it done by a guy who's been a lifelong Democratic operative. You know, this was just so and and so it just shows that once you start down this slope of censoring things, it becomes so easy to keep doing it more and more. And, and This is why I think these guys are are really in hot water. Whatever, whatever. You know, whatever controversy there was about section 230 before, and there was already a lot of rumblings in DC. About modifying this, they have made things 10 times worse. I mean, as someone who's actually a defender of section 2:30, I wish Dorsey and Zuckerberg weren't making these blunders, but I think they're going to ruin the open Internet for everyone. Super blunder. Now I'll tell you what wasn't even bigger blunder for or an equal blunder for me last night. I don't know if you guys had this experience, but I was trying to figure out what the consensus view on the Biden Hunter Biden story was, and I went to Rachel Maddow and the last word and Anderson. Looper and there was a media blackout last night. I couldn't find 1. Left-leaning or CNN if that is even in the center. I don't think the center anymore than the left. I couldn't find one person talking about buying. I was like, alright, let me just see if I tune into Fox News. And Fox News was only discussing the Biden story. And so this now felt like, wow, not only if you were one of these, you know, folks on the left who's in their filter bubble on Twitter and Facebook, they're not going to see that story. And then if they tuned into Rachel Maddow or to Anderson Cooper or you go to the New York Times, it's not there either. And then Drudge didn't have it for a day. You're like, wait, you're bringing up something so important. So think about what you're really talking about. Jason. There was a first order reaction that was misplaced and not rooted in anything that was really scalable or justifiable. Then everybody has to deal with the 2nd and 3rd order reactions. The left-leaning media outlets circle the wagons. The right leaning media outlets are are up in arms. Nobody is happy. Both look like they're misleading. And then now if you're a person in the middle, for example, what was what was frustrating for me yesterday was it took me 5 or 6 clicks and hunting and pecking to find out what the hell is actually going on here. Why is everybody going crazy? But that bothered me. You know, and so I just think like again. It used to be very simple to define what a publisher was and what a distributor was. In a world without code, without machine learning, without AI, without all of these things, I think those lines are bird we have to rewrite the laws. I think you should be able to choose. And then I think if you're trying to do both. By the way, the businesses that successfully do both will have the best market caps. But if you're trying to do both, you have to live and die by the sword. Yeah it would be interesting also if I I don't know if you guys have done this, but I switched my Twitter to being reverse chronological, which you can do in the top right hand corner of the app or on your desktop because I just like to see the most recent stuff first. But then sometimes I do miss something that's trending whatever, but I just prefer that because I have a smaller follower list now. But to Friedberg your point, you kind of like the algorithm telling you what to watch. So a potential solution here might be like it rationally by the way, I'm just saying like as a. Human humans like it. I like it. Like, I like to be stimulated with titillating information and yeah, you know, interesting things that for whatever reason I'm gonna, you know, want click on again. You like that experience of jumping down the road? All all. My point is, all humans are activated. And the algorithms, the way they're written, they're designed to activate you and keep you engaged. And activation naturally leads to these dynamic feedback loops where I'm going to get the same sort of stuff over and over again that that it identifies activates me because I clicked on it. And therefore. I'm gonna, you know, continue to firm up my, my opinions and my beliefs in that area. But I think showing me stuff that I don't believe, showing me stuff that's anti mean because I was a science guy, showing me stuff that's anti science showing me stuff that's ******** that I consider ********. I'm not going to read it anymore. So if I'm reading just random blur things by random people in reverse chronological order, it is a completely uncompelling platform to me and I will stop using it. And that leads back to kind of the, you know, the month point, which is that the ultimate incentive, the mechanism by which these platforms stay alive, is the capitalist incentive. Which is, you know, how do you drive revenue and therefore how do you drive engagement? And and that's to give consumers what they want and that's what consumers want. All right, let's let's give sacks his victory lap. He predicted last time that there was a possibility that Trump would come out of this like Superman and would do a huge victory lap. And sure enough, he considered putting a Superman outfit on under his suit and he did a victory lap literally around the hospital. Putting the Secret Service at risk, I guess. And then did a Mussolini like salute from everybody from the top of the White House. I mean, you nailed it. Sacked. You came out, it was very ill douche. Douche he did was very ill. Douche. Douche. It was, it was, it was very predictable. It was. The media was making it sound like Trump was on his deathbed, you know, because the presumption is always that the administration's hiding something. He must be much sicker than he's letting on if he says he's not that. I think it must be really bad. And so for days and days they were talking about how Trump was, you know, potentially. Had this fatal condition and by the way, he deserved it. You know, as a moral failing. He was negligent. And so it and it's not unlike really what the right was doing constantly accusing Biden of senility, you know, and then Biden went into that debate and then blew away expectations and so the same thing here. You know, the the media set up Trump to kind of exceed expectations. But I but but I do think, you know, it is noteworthy that Trump was cured so quickly with the use of these. You know, clonal antibodies that we talked about last time and we talked about it on the show 2 weeks ago and it was a combination, I guess, of Regeneron and Remdesivir and the guy was out of there and like a couple of days. So, you know, it's it's like the the media doesn't want to admit anything that is potentially helpful to Trump, but you have to say that at this point we have very effective treatments for COVID. They may not be completely distributed yet. Trump obviously had access to them that the rest of us. Don't have, but it feels to me like we are really winding down on the whole the whole COVID thing. And I asked a question is it has have they published the blow by blow, tick tock of exactly what he got when? No, they haven't, right. I would love, I would love to have that because all Americans deserve to have that. They know they know what his dosage was and they, they said what day he got it on the remdesivir, he got several doses. It said what days he got the antibody treatment. I just want to print that out. Keep it as a folded in my pocket just in case. We know what to take. Now we know what to take if we get sick, right? I mean, yeah, well, the question is, can we get it? But you could be getting any of that right, like I think. People love anecdote. It's very hard for people to find emotion and find belief in statistics. And you know, if you look at the statistics on COVID, you know you go into the hospital 80% chance you're coming out. And, you know, the average stay for someone that that goes in, a lot of people would go into the ER. They're getting pushed back out because they're not severe enough. And I I think the anecdote is everyone that gets COVID dies. The statistics show that that's not true. And, you know, whether or not Trump got exceptional treatment, he certainly did. It's very hard, this access point for the storytelling that has kind of been used to keep people at home and and manage kind of and create this, this expectation of severity of this crisis, etcetera. It's very hard for people to kind of then say, hey, like you know, he's got a 97% chance of making it through this and he'll be 9090% chance he'll be out of the hospital in three days. When it happened, it was a shocking moment and it really hit that narrative upside down, right. Like it was just like, well, can we, can we show that there was a tweet recently? Providing the statistics on what the real infection fatality rate was for COVID. You know, it's it's about half a percent .4, and that's across, you know, the whole spectrum. But like in in anyone under 75 years old, you've got the number of strikes back, right? But it's here. Let me pull it up. So we we. I think Bill Gurley first tweeted it and then I retweeted it. Fr was like .1. If you're young and it goes all the way up to like .4, if you're above 75, it's way less than .1. Yeah, it's it's it's it was. I thought the IFR was a lot less severe than that. That IFR is also distorted. You, you know, based on the SEROPREVALENCE study that was just published, you can take that number that's published and divide it by about 3/3 to five. Why get to get the true IFR? Because not everyone that's had COVID has is registering as a positive infection because they had COVID got over it. So there was a paper published in in in JAMA a few weeks ago where they took dialysis patients and they measured and they get blood from these dialysis patients and they measured COVID antibodies. In these patients and they showed that in the northeast, 30% of people, it's 27 point something. Percent of people have already had COVID. It's an incredible fact. Wow. And in the West, the number is close. In Western states, they've kind of got it all written up in this paper and they did a great job with the paper. It's about 3%. But in aggregate across the United States, it's a, this was a few weeks ago, so nowadays it's it's it was a 10.5%, I think. So it's probably closer to 12% now if people have already had COVID and so then if you assume that number, right. And that's 30 million people. And now you look at how many people have died. We haven't gotten the deaths wrong, right, because everyone that's died from COVID, we've recorded that death. We know that numbers, right? It could be a little inflated, right, people who died with COVID. Exactly. But from COVID, be conservative and assume that it's right, right. I mean if I look in the United States 217,217 cases, but the real cases is 30 million. Thirty million and that's where you that's where you end up with this like you know, adjusted IFR, true IFR of .1. Yeah, like very, very. .1 percent .07% or .7%. Sorry. By the way, my my tweets aren't loading right now. So I think Trump just took the tick tock decree and he just crossed that Tik T.O.K and put Twitter and he just shut Twitter down. What? What? What is the tick tock thing done? Yeah, who knows? That was like 3 weeks ago. It doesn't matter anymore, chemlab. Was there a second debate? There's tonight, there's going to be 2 town halls. Trump refused to do a zoom with or, you know, a zoom debate. Like, I'm talking about the power of zoom. He a virtual debate he wouldn't do obstensibly because he's not good when he's not interrupting somebody would be my take on it. So then he went to NBC, which she made, $400 million, I guess, from The Apprentice. And NBC let him take a time slot directly opposite Biden tonight to do his own town hall. So they didn't even stagger it. Which NBC, which is responsible for saving Trump, is getting absolutely demolished by their own actors and showrunners on Twitter. So I think NBC's gonna come out swinging tonight in this town hall to try to, you know, take down Trump as maybe their pants. That's my prediction for it. But how do you watch Biden if Biden is up against Trump? Like, that's like watching paint dry versus watching like, you know, some maniac running down Market Street with the samurai sword on meth. I'll be I won't be watching either. I cannot wait for this election to be over. How many days until November 3rd? We are like 18 and a wake up. 18 days? My gosh, maybe 18. Yeah, let us just get this over with. Yeah, yeah, 18. We're all sick of it. I I do feel like, I mean it's the the polls are now showing that Biden is up by as much as 17. I mean things are really continue to break his way. I think to your point, Jason, about Trump being more watchable, I think that's sort of Trump's problem is he just can't help making himself the center of the news cycle every single day. And to the extent the election is a referendum on Trump, I think he's going to get repudiated if the election were more of a contest. And people would weigh Biden's, you know, positions as well. I think Trump would have a better shot because I think he does have some. Bing does have some weaknesses, but the whole reason why Biden's basement strategy has been working so far is because Trump just ease up all the oxygen and he's making it a referendum on him, which I think he'll lose if he keeps doing it that way. You know what they say, sacks. What got you here will not get you there. What got him into his office was the ability to take up the entire media channel during the Republican runoff and just be able to demolish everybody. Was entertaining. I wanted that is exhausting. It's now exhausting. I want to change topics. I would like to ask David to explain his tweet related to Prop 13 or 15. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I saw that that Mark Zuckerberg had contributed $11 million to try and convince the people of California to vote for this Prop 15, which is the largest property tax increase in California history. What it does is it chips away at Prop 13 by moving commercial property. Out of of of Prop 13. And it would then tax it almost called fair market value as opposed to the the cost basis of the property. It would have a lot of unfair consequences for property owners who who've owned their their commercial property for a long time. You know if you're a small business and you've owned your your store or whatever for 20-30 years, all of a sudden you're going to get your taxes are going to get reassessed at the new fair market value. But, you know, I just think there's the, the larger prize, though, is that the the, the California unions, the government workers unions, want to chip away at Prop 13. This is the first salvo. First we're going to strip out commercial property. Eventually they want to, they want to basically repeal of Prop 13. And I just think it's like so misguided for billionaires to be using their wealth in this way because Prop 13 is really the shield of the middle class in California. And it's kind of no wonder. That, frankly, like tech built wealth, is so increasingly despised in this country because technicians are funding such stupid causes. To explain this to people who don't know, in California, if you bought your house in 1970 for $50,000, the 1% tax you pay on it is $500.00. That house might be worth 5,000,000 today if it was an Atherton, and so you're still paying what would have been a $50,000 tax bill is a $500.00 tax bill. So they're starting with commercial spaces. Jason, sorry, backwards and you can pass it off to your kids. At that cost basis, yeah. So This is why you have two old people living in a five bedroom, right? It caps the rate increase of the, the tax increase every year. There, there, there's there. If you didn't have, you didn't have Prop 13, no, hold on it. Well, if you didn't have, probably just explain to people, if you didn't have Prop 13, anybody who owned, who owned their house for, say, 20 years would have a massive tax bill all of a sudden and probably would have to sell their house just about anybody who's middle class, who's been in California. For for more than a decade or two probably could no longer afford to live in their house. But the reality is people are mortgaging that asset sax to access capital that they're using and investing in different things whether it's, you know, that's fueling the economy, right. So I mean the libertarian point of view might be less taxes is good because in this particular case that building can still be used by that resident to buy stuff. They can take a mortgage out and they can go spend that money versus having that money eaten up by property taxes, which just goes well. Yeah. So, so, so I I understand that if you were to design the, like perfect tax policy, it wouldn't look like Prop 13 or, you know, or you know, maybe Prop 15 in a vacuum. If you're just like a policy wonk trying to design the ideal tax policy, it might look more like that. But the real problem in California, we're not an under taxed state. It's a massively taxed state and and there's never enough, you know, the beast always wants more. And So what I would say is, look, if you want to reform. Up 13 do it as part of a grand Bargain that creates real structural form in the state of California. What I mean by structural form, we gotta look at who controls the system and it's really the government employee unions who block all structural reform and who keep eating up a bigger and bigger portion of the state budget. So we've talked about this on previous pods that the police unions block any kind of police reform. You know, the the prison unions block Prison Reform. You've got the teachers unions blocking education reform and school choice. If you want to talk about systemic problems in California, look at who runs the system. It's these, these gigantic unions, and a bigger and bigger portion of the budget keeps going to them every year. They're breaking the bank. And by the way, it doesn't get us more cops on the beat. It doesn't get us more teachers in the classroom. What it's buying is lots and lots more of administration, along with a bunch of pension fraud. And So what I would do is I would say, look, we need some structural reforms here. We need some caps on the rate of growth in spending. We need some pension reforms in exchange for that, as part of a grand bargain, you might get some reforms to Prop 13, but just to give away one of the only cards we have in negotiating with these powerful special interests for no reason. I just think it's dumb, you know? Do you think that Zuck was tricked or what do you think I think he's probably got? Look, I don't really know, but I don't know how anything can suck. And I've defended him on this podcast a lot, basically on on the speech issue, but I think what it is, he's got some foundation and he's got some pointy headed. Policy walk sitting there trying to analyze what the perfect tax policy is, and it probably looks more like fair market value than like cost basis. And they're not thinking about the larger political. Sort of ramifications, which is we the private sector is being squeezed more and more by these public employee unions and we do need structural reform and we can't just give up one of the only cards we have, which would be, you know trading reform on Prop 13 exact doesn't already commercial real estate. Yeah. Well, even if so I, I, I don't I I would, I would venture to guess that maybe Sax does. I I don't know. I mean hold on, let me. I, I I do. But let me explain that this doesn't affect me because my cost basis is fresh. Yeah, all the all the commercial real estate that I've bought in California has been the last few years, it's probably underwater. I mean it's certainly not about my cost basis. So it doesn't affect me. It affects the little guy, it affects the small business who's owned their property for 10 or 20 years. And again, I'm not arguing that we couldn't come with a better tax system. But what I'm saying is the bigger, more pressing need is structural reform. Totally. No, I mean, look, I I totally agree. The bloated monster of socialism is coming for us, and it starts with the unions and it evolves, and it's just average salary. I don't know if you saw this go viral in the last couple weeks on Twitter. Average to average salary in San Francisco, $170,000 for not a lot of tech workers. City employees, yeah, of city employees, I saw that like 170,000 was the average shower. I was like, oh, wow, tech people are doing good. I was like, no, no, no. That's the city employees, 19,000 administrative employees in the city of San Francisco, City of 800,000 people, 800,000 people were the $14 billion budget. The state of California is converting the entire middle class into government workers because if you're a small business owner, you're getting squeezed by more and more taxes. You're getting driven out of the state. People leaving the state now exceeds people immigrating into the state. So the the the private sector middle class is leaving. And this public sector, this sort of public sector, middle class of government workers is being created. And like I mentioned, it's knocking us more cops on the beat. It's knocking us more teachers in the classroom. What is getting is a giant number of overpaid administrators and bureaucrats. That is a big structural problem. The, you know, private sector unions are very different. You see, when when a private sector union goes to negotiate, they go negotiate against ownership or management, and there's no one to oppose their unreasonable demands. Not all their demands are reasonable, just the most unreasonable demands. But it with the public sector unions, they're negotiating against the politicians and they are the largest contributors to those politicians. And so there's no one. And the politicians need them for their votes, right? They're like they're gonna deliver whatever number of teachers, police officers, exactly the unions. The politicians and the politicians feed the unions. That is the structural. That is a structural problem. And these unions, the unions will never be a piece you can never buy them off. It's white democracy, always ends in in the state like it's it's just an inevitable outcome. I I had no idea about any of this until I'm glad I asked you about that tweet. That's really I I actually learned a lot just in that last little bit. I have one other thing I want to ask you guys about, which is the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings. Whether you guys have watched them and what you guys think, and I don't know whether these are just cherry picked clips or whether she's playing dumb or I I really don't want to judge because I want to know more, but I just want to know what you guys think up going into this. You know the I'll say something about climate change because look, I'm I spent a lot of time looking at data and research on climate change and certainly feel strongly that there's. A human caused function of of global warming that that that we're actively kind of experiencing. But I think everyone kind of assumes you have to take that as truth. I think one of the the key points of science is you have to recognize your ignorance and you have to recognize that science is, you know, kind of an evolving process of discovery and understanding. I don't. And she's getting a lot of heat for what she said about I'm not a scientist, I don't know how to opine on climate change. And I heard that and actually gave me a bit of pause that like, this. This is exactly, you know what? I would expect someone who's thoughtful to say, not someone that's trying to act ignorant and play to the right if she didn't say, I don't think climate change is being caused by humans. And I think like everyone kind of wants to jump at her and every it's like become religion. I just want to point out that climate change has become as politicized. As dogmatic as all these other topics we talked about, and we all kind of assume that if you do or don't believe in climate change, you're left or right. You're evil. You're good. And I, I think, like, it's very easy to kind of just go into here those hearings and assume that. But I wouldn't say that her answer necessarily made me think that she is ignoring facts and ignoring the truth. I think, you know, she's kind of pointing out that this is a process of science and there's a lot of discovery underway. So I, I don't know. I mean, that was one point, that controversial point that I thought I should make because I am a believer and I do think that climate change is real. I do think the data and science supports it. But I do appreciate that someone recognizes that they may not have the skills and the few. Let's assume what the what the media tells them to us to believe. Yeah, the few, the few clips that I saw of the confirmation hearing. My take away was basically, you know, any candidate on the left or the right comes in extremely well coached and they're taught basically how to evade meaning there's a go to answer. Amy Coney Barrett's go to answer was listen. As a judge I'd have to, you know, hear that case on the record. I can't opine on something hypothetically. You know, she had this very well rehearsed answer and a lot of the answers to the questions from the left were that. And you know, the questions on the right were more softball ish. So I couldn't really get a sense of it. Now the thing that I take kind of a lot of comfort in is that, you know, when we saw John Roberts get confirmed to the court, it was supposed to be 5-4 conservative with John Roberts. And basically what we learned was now John Roberts and, you know, some critical decisions. He is willing to basically, you know, make sure that things don't change that much. Including Obamacare? Yeah, exactly. You you you don't you don't know exactly how they're going to vote on these issues. You really don't. Roberts was the deciding vote and upholding Obamacare. Gorsuch extended gay rights well beyond anything Anthony Kennedy ever did. That was a big surprise. And so we don't really know exactly how she's going to vote. The reason why Amy Coney Barrett rockets to the top of Trump's list, quite frankly, is because of how Dianne Feinstein treated her three years ago in the last confirmation hearings, which she is. She where Feinstein attacked her Catholicism. It was and it was so ham handed. It was so poorly done that it made Barrett a hero instantly on the right and it rocketed to the top of this list. But but we don't know how she's going to vote based on her Catholicism, you know, which is the father, isn't it, David? Because the lifetime appointment means they like tenure. They can go with what they think is right. So that that is kind of a good feature of the Supreme Court. Did you think there should be like a a term. Well, I I think it's a little crazy that decisions as important as, you know, the, the, the, the, the right to to choice or something like that hangs on whether an 89 year old cancer victim can hold on for three more months. You know, it seems very arbitrary to me and therefore these seem court battles become very heated and and and and and toxic and there's been a recent proposal by Democrats that that I would support. Which basically says, listen, we should have an 18 year term for Supreme Court Justice. That's long enough. And each president should get 2 nominees, like one in the first year and then one in the third year. And so you basically have one justice rolling off every two years and one coming on. And so you have 9 justices. And so every two years adds up to 18 years. That proposal makes a ton of sense to me. And and so, you know, you know that when you vote for a president, they're going to get two Supreme Court picks. That feels less chaotic than this. That would be. Gonna be a much better. That's a great idea system. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. I think it's. I think it's a fabulous idea. I I took solace in the fact that when they asked her the what's protected in the First Amendment, she couldn't name all five things that I could. I was like, what about protest? Did you miss that one? And I thought that was like a I mean it's a gotcha moment, obviously, and it's not easy to be under that kind of scrutiny. And obviously she justice jakal. Well, I just thought that was like it was also like pretty interesting. I think they, I think they, I think they, I think they rode the danger Fable. I think they invented the word unconfirmable for Jackal. You got a right to have your own pistola, but you shouldn't have a shotgun, boys. Friedberger Friedberger has a hard stop at three. The the the fact that you left out protesting, I do think let's let's just end on the election and our little handicapping of what's gonna happen and getting out of this mess I do think. One of the stories coming out of this is going to be female voters. I have the sense, and you know, it's anecdotal, that Trump has just alienated and ****** *** so many women and that the threat of the Supreme Court thing and with RGB dying, this has made women feel so under appreciated and attacked, especially with Trump. You know, in terms of how he treats women and things he says about women. And then you had the constant interruption by pence of the moderator. And Kamala, like, I think all of this is going to add up and we do the postmortem on this. Losing all these women as voters is going to be and and as well as the black vote and people of color. This is going to be a big part of it. So I think that Trump's going to lose and it's going to be a landslide. What a roundabout way to say the same thing you've been saying for four months away. He's disrespected women. I don't know. Listen, I I don't know. I think Biden is, is, is on the path to an enormous victory right now. What the polls, that's what the polls say certainly, is that it looks like a buy in landslide. I and I I guess that makes sense. I think Trump's running out of time to change the polls every day that goes by. He's basically got like 19 outs or 18 days, he's got 18 oz. Every day that goes by where he isn't able to move the pole number, he loses an out, right. And so we're going to get closer to Election Day. He's only going to have like a three out or something. So yeah, I I mean, look, obviously I understand the polls. I still somehow think. It I know it sounds kind of weird, but I'm just not sure Americans are ready for this reality show to end. I mean, we know it's jumped the shark, OK? But the Kardashians? The Kardashians lasted for 19 seasons. I just don't know if America is ready for the Trump reality show. I think part of the appeal of Trump last time around was the the message of change. And he's not delivering a message of change anymore. And I think that's where he's kind of lost the narrative and the excitement of building a wall and changing everything and draining the swamp. Like he's just like keep draining the swamp or keep building the wall and just people don't love that. He's also. He also. I think it's coming across as not being, he's looking weak by not being willing to be challenged. And that came across clearly in that debate. He last time around he got on stage and he just knocked everyone down. But by not letting Biden talk, by not kind of engaging on any of the topics, he looks just he looks like he just doesn't want to have a shot at it and it just comes across as bad. So. I don't know. These are all contributing factors, I think to what's going on. Chances of of pardon by Pence. He resigns. He pardons himself. Pence parents him 00 ego table. He won't resign. Well, we wouldn't see that unless he lost the election. If he loses during the lame duck, during the lame duck. If he lost maybe 20 percent, 20%. Because at that point got nothing to lose, right? Right that I think it's, I think it's like a, I think it's 5050, he just goes for the full family part in. Alright. Love you guys. I gotta go. Alright. You guys love you guys and hopefully we'll have a a bestie poker soon. Yeah, soon. Talk to you guys later. Bye. Bye.