Back to episode — Episode 2713 CWSA 01/07/25
Context —
is the case. Obviously it was a lie. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. Then Biden is going to release 11 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo. In other words, people with suspected terrorist tendencies. Two of them were, I think, Osama bin Laden's bodyguards. But the Biden administration is assuring us that they've been either rehabilitated or vetted and checked out, and they just want to send them to…
← Previous segment →t point of view is less censorship and better processes for the censorship. So he described what he's going to do, which is remarkable.
Now, as I'm talking about this, I know exactly what you're going to be thinking. You're going to say to me, Scott, but what about all the terrible, terrible things he did in the past with Facebook, banning people and censoring and all that? Those are true things that I don't care about because I don't live in the past. If I lived in the past, I would care about it. Now you might say, but Scott, what took him so long? To which I say everything good takes too long. I'm not going to judge him for taking too long. I'm going to be happy if it's a good idea. So I think, and I'll tell you more details, but I think he is right on point. It's one of the most brilliant CEO moves you'll ever see. He is so smart. And again, I know that you're going to say, but I'm so mad at him, I can't get over it. I get it. I get it. You don't like what he did in the past, and I'm not defending it. I'm just saying that the moves he's making now probably are exactly what he says, and they're good.
Listen to this. He's going to get rid of fact-checking. He's going to get rid of the fact-checkers because they're biased. What does that sound like? That's MAGA. That's pure MAGA. The fact-checkers are fake, and you have to get rid of them. So he's getting rid of them. Do you know what he's going to replace fact-checking with? He's going to copy Community Notes from X. And he says that's what he's going to do. I'm going to basically copy X and use Community Notes because it works. So Musk went first. Community Notes is quite successful, I would say. And Zuckerberg noticed, and so he's copying. Now, it's not easy to be a social media network and say, you see my competitor? I'm just going to copy that because it was a good idea. That's what Zuckerberg can do. It's just brilliant.
But there's more. They're going to get rid of the automated censoring and only consider censoring in some situations where somebody's being reported. So there'll still be things censored, the worst violent stuff, the usual stuff, but it won't be automated. You'll have to report it. Now, do you approve of that? Yes, you do, because you want humans to decide whether humans can or cannot. So you don't want the algorithm deciding. So yeah, that's good. He says explicitly that the new process is going to let a lot more inappropriate stuff on the platform, but that the principle of free speech is more important. Do you have a problem with that? No, that's America. He just described a perfect MAGA opinion about free speech. It's messy, it's violent sometimes, it's dangerous, but it's free speech, and the alternative is worse.
Now, here's the one that will blow your mind. The moderation, the human moderators, apparently they're in California. What's going to happen if your moderators live in California? Well, it's all going to be liberal opinions of what should be allowed and what should not. So here's what he's doing. He's moving the moderation from California to Texas. Let that sink in for a moment. He's moving the moderation from California because they're too biased to Texas. Does that sound like MAGA? Yeah, it sounds like exactly what you would have done. It's exactly what you would have done. You would have moved it to Texas. And he says he's going to, this might be the real money shot here, he says he's going to work with Trump to influence or pressure other countries to not try to put Facebook, Meta in a bind. And that's smart. So he's completely aware that he needs the Trump administration and the government of the United States to back him and threaten other countries. Say, look, if you're going to censor us over there and that has an impact on our American company, we're going to tariff you or we're going to stop protecting you or something. So I love this. Other countries probably had back doors and everything else, and you want to get rid of that, I think.
So a lot of people said, is Zuckerberg just chasing the money? And this is not his own philosophical opinion. He's just knows he has to do it to chase money. To which I say, so? Why is that bad? He's the head of a major commercial enterprise. He's not allowed to chase money? Chasing money means being compatible with the country you're serving. So I don't care. I don't care if that's his only motivation. If it's his only motivation and he can clearly say that getting out of that censorship business is good for business, working with Trump productively is good for business, supporting systems that would give you more free speech is good for business, if the only thing he wanted to do is make money, I would say good job. Excellent. That you nailed it. If you just want to make money, I'm completely supportive of that.
Now, some of you might say, but Scott, it's a trick because he did all those things in the past to buy us a system. It's pretty transparent. He's either going to do these things he said or he's not. I mean, that moderation will either move to Texas or it won't. The automated system will either catch things or it won't. We can watch. It's all transparent. I think it's brilliant because he was in a tough place, and I think he's completely cognizant of the way Facebook and maybe even his personal donations to try to fix the elections, fix as in improve, he probably knows that that was a huge mistake and that it distorted the system in a way that the system wasn't built to be distorted. So to me it looks like he thought he was doing the right thing and thought he was working with the government of the time productively as he saw it, I guess. And now he knows that those are all mistakes. And so he's doing a really hard pivot. Hard as in it's hard to explain it. It's hard to, especially to his own company. Imagine how much trouble he's getting from his own employees today. Do you know how hard that would be to go against all your liberal employees and just do a pure MAGA version of the service?
Now, when I say pure MAGA, I want to be really careful with my words. He's not saying I want to be right-wing. When I say pure MAGA, I mean just compatible with the Constitution, and that's it. We just want free speech. So if he gives us that, pretty happy. We'll see. I mean, I agree with you that the jury's out. He has to perform. But everything about his history suggests he knows how to perform. All right, so all good.
The Wall Street Journal is talking about the success of Robby Starbuck. And I guess he's got a staff of people who have now got 15 public companies to change or abandon their DEI and LGBTQ policies. And what's interesting about this is you already knew Robby Starbuck was having a lot of success there. What's different is that it's now a big article in the Wall Street Journal. Do you know how big that is? Like every major corporation has somebody paying attention to the Wall Street Journal. So it's one thing when Robby Starbuck is bragging on X that things are working, and he has a right to brag, by the way. He's doing amazing w
Context —
ork. But once it's in the Wall Street Journal, that's the thing that every business has to pay attention to. You can't ignore the Wall Street Journal if you're in a business. So it kind of raised Starbuck's profile, and it raised it in the context of he's winning like crazy. That's how you want to be elevated. Because if he's winning like crazy and it's creating a pattern in your brain that these…
Next segment → →