Joe Rogan Experience #2255 - Mark Zuckerberg

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day all right BR what's happening good to see you you too what's going on you know chill week yeah sort of um this uh recent announcement that you did about uh content moderation how has that been received um probably depends on who you ask but but you know but look I mean I've been working on this for a long time so I mean you got to do what you think is is right you know we we've been

on a long a long journey here right I mean it's um I think at some level you you start you only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice right I mean I mean the whole point of social media is basically you know giving people the ability to share uh what they want right and um and you know it goes back to you know our original Mission is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected what do you think started the pathway towards increasing

censorship because clearly we were going in that direction for the last few years it seemed like uh we really found out about it when Elon bought Twitter and we got the Twitter files and when you came on here and when you were explaining the relationship with FBI where they were trying to get you to take down certain things that were true and real and certain things they tried to get you to limit the exposure to them so it's these kind of conversations like when did all that start yeah well well look I I think going

back to the beginning or like I was saying I think you start one of these if you care about about giving people a voice you know I I wasn't too deep on our content policies for like the first 10 years of the company it was just kind of well known across the company that um we were trying to give people the ability to share as much as possible and issues would come up practical issues right so if someone's getting bullied for example we deal with that right we put in place systems to to fight bullying

um you know if someone is saying hey um you know someone's pirating copyrighted content on on the service it's like okay we'll build controls to make it so we'll find IP protected content but it was really in the last 10 years that people started pushing for like ideological based censorship and I think it was two main events that really triggered this in 2016 there was the election of President Trump um also coincided with uh basically brexit in the EU and and sort of the fragmentation of the EU and then you know in 2020 uh there

was covid and I I think that those were basically these two events where for the first time um we just place we just face this massive massive institutional pressure to uh to basically start censoring content on ideological grounds I'm sorry to interrupt you but when it first came up in 2016 did it come under the guise of the Russian collusion hoax yeah and this is the thing I at the time I was really sort of ill prepared to to kind of parse what was going on right it's um you know I I think part of

my reflection looking back on this is I I kind of think in 2016 in the aftermath I gave too much deference to um a lot of folks in the media who were basically saying okay there's no way that this guy could have gotten elected except for misinformation people can't actually believe this stuff right it has to be that there's this kind of like massive misinformation out there um some of it started with the the Russia collusions stuff um but it kind of morphed into different things over time well it was it was he was so

ideologically polarizing right like people didn't want to believe that anybody looked at him and said this should be our president yeah so so I took this and and just kind of assume that everyone was acting in good faith and I said okay well there's like there are concerns about misinformation we should just like when people raised other concerns in the past and we try to deal with them okay yeah people you know if you ask people no one says that they want misinformation so maybe there's something that we should do to to basically try to

address this but I was really worried from the beginning about basically becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world right that's like kind of a crazy position to be in for billions of people using your service and um so we tried to put in place a a you know a system that would deal with it um you know an early tried to basically make it so that um it was really limited we're like all right we're just going to have the system where these these third party fact Checkers and they can

check the worst of the worst stuff right so um things that are very clear hoaxes that there's like it's not like like we're not parsing speech about whether something is slightly true or slightly false like Earth is flat um you know things like that right so so that was sort of the original intent we put in place the system and it just sort of veered from there I I think to some degree it's because some of the people whose job is to do factchecking a lot of their industry is focused on political factchecking so they're

just kind of veered in that direction we kept on trying to to basically get it to to be what we had originally intended which is just you know it's not the point is to like judge people's opinions it's to to provide in this layer to to to kind of help fact check some of the stuff that seems the most extreme but um it just you know it was it was just never accepted by by people broadly I think people just felt like the fact Checkers were too biased um not necessarily even so much in what

they ruled although sometimes I think people would disagree with that a lot of the time it was just what types of things they chose to even go in fact check in the first time in the first place so I I kind of think like after having gone through that whole exercise it um I don't know it's something out of like you know 1984 one of these books where it's just like it really is a slippery slope and it just got to a point where it's just okay this is destroying so much trust especially in the

United States to have this program um and I guess it was probably about a few years that I really started coming to the conclusion that we were going to need to to change something about that um Co was the other big one where that was that was also very tricky because you know at the beginning it was you know it's it's like a legitimate Public Health crisis you know in the in the beginning and it's um you know even people who are like the most Ardent First Amendment um you know Defenders that the Supreme Court

has this clear pressent that's like all right you you can't yell fire in a crowded theater there are times when if there's an emergency um your your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control so I was sympathetic to that at the beginning of Co it seemed like okay you have this virus seems like it's killing a lot of people I don't know like we didn't know at the time how dangerous it was going to be so at the beginning it kind of seemed like okay we should give

a little bit of deference to the government and the health Authorities on how we should play this but when it went from you know two weeks to flatten the curve to um you know in like in the beginning it was like okay there aren't enough masks masks aren't that important to then it's like oh no you have to wear a mask and you know all the like everything was shifting around I it just become very difficult to kind of follow and and this really hit the most extrem I'd say during it was during the Biden

Administration when they were trying to roll out um the vaccine program and now I'm generally like pretty Pro rolling out vaccines I think on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative but I think that while they're trying to push that program they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it and they pushed us super hard um to take down things that were honestly were true right I mean they they basically pushed us and and said you know anything that um says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take

down and I was just like well we're not going to do that like we're clearly not going to do that I mean that that that that is kind of in our who is they who's telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects it was people in the um in the Biden Administration I think it was um you know I wasn't involved in those conversations directly but I think it was how difficult is that to not be involved in those conversations directly Fitness isn't just about what you do in the gym it's

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company but there's clearly you're moderating at scale that's beyond the imagination the number of human beings you're moderating is [ __ ] insane like what is what's a Facebook what how many people use it on a daily basis forget about how many overall like how many people use it regularly it's a 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day that's yeah it's no it's wild more than a third of the planet that's so crazy and it's almost half of Earth well on a monthly basis it is probably happen but just I want I

want to say that though for there's a lot of like hypercritical people that are conspiracy theorists and think that everybody is a part of some cabal to control them I want you to understand that whether it's YouTube or all these and whatever place that you think is doing something that's awful it's good that you speak because this is how things get changed and this is how people find out that people are upset about content moderation and and censorship but moderating at scale is insane it's insane what we were talking the other day about the number

of videos that go up every hour on YouTube and it's bananas it's bananas that's like to try to get a human being that is reasonable logic logical and objective that's going to analyze every video it's virtually impossible it's not possible so you got to use a bunch of tools you got to get a bunch of things wrong and you have also people reporting things and how how much is that going to affect things there you could have mass reporting because you have Bad actors you have some corporation that decides we're going to attack this video

cuz it's bad for us get it taken down MH there's so much going on just I want to put that in people's heads before we go on like understand the kind of numbers that we're talking about here now understand you have the the pandemic and then you have the administration that's doing something where I think they cross the line where it gets really weird where they're saying what you were saying they were trying you to get you to take down vaccines side effects which is just crazy yeah so I mean like you're saying I mean

this is it's so complicated this system that I could spend every minute of all of my time doing this and not actually focused on building any of the things that we're trying to do AI glasses like the future of social media all that stuff so um so I I get involved in this stuff but in general we we have a policy team there are people who I trust they're the people are kind of working on this on a day-to-day basis and the interactions that um that I was just referring to I mean a lot of

this is documented I mean because uh you know Jim Jordan and the the house had this whole investigation and committee into into the the kind of government censorship around stuff like this and we produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain I mean basically these people from the Biden Administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse and it's like these documents are it's all kind of out there did you record any of those phon phone calls I don't no I don't think I don't think we but but

I think I want listen I mean there are emails the emails are published it's all it's all kind of out there and um and they're like and basically it just got to this point where we were like no we're not going to we're not going to take down things that are true that's ridiculous um they wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV talking about how 10 years from now or something um you know you're going to see an ad that says okay if you took a covid vaccine you're

um eligible you you know like uh for for this kind of payment like this sort of like class action lawsuit type Meme and they're like no you have to take that down we just said no we're not we're not going to take down humor and satire we're not going to take down things that are that are true and then at some point um I guess uh I don't know it flipped a bit I mean Biden when he was he gave some statement at some point I don't know if it was a press conference or to

some journalist where he basically was like these guys are killing people and and and um and I don't know then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company it was it was brutal it was brutal wow yeah it's just a massive overstepping also you weren't killing people this is this is the thing about all of this it's like they suppressed so much information about things that people should be doing regardless of whether or not you believe in the vaccine regardless put that aside metabolic health

is of the utmost importance in your everyday life whether there's a pandemic or there's not and there's a lot of things that you can do that can help you recover from illness it prevents illnesses it makes your body more robust and healthy it strengthens your immune system and they were suppressing all that information and that's just crazy you can't say you're one of the good guys if you're suppressing information that would help people recover from all kinds of diseases not just covid the flu common cold all sorts of different things high doses of Vitamin C

D3 with K2 and magnesium they were suppressing this stuff because they didn't want people to think that you could get away with not taking a vaccine which is really crazy when you're talking about something that 99.07% of people survive this is a crazy overstep but scared the [ __ ] out of a lot of people redpilled as it were a lot of people because they realized like oh 1984 is like an instruction manual it's like this is it shows you how things can go that way with wrong speak and with bizarre Distortion of facts and

when it comes down to it in today's day and age the way people get information is through your platform through X this is how people are getting information they're getting information from YouTube they're getting information from from a bunch of different sources now and you can't censor that if it's real legitimate information because it's not ideologically convenient for you yeah so I mean that's basically the journey that I've been on Right started off very Pro free free speech free expression um you know then over the last 10 years there were been these two big episodes

it was the Trump election and the aftermath where I feel like in retrospect I deferred too much to the kind of critique of the media on what we should do um and since then I think generally Trust in Media has fallen off a cliff right so I don't think I'm alone in that journey I think you know that's basically the the the experience that that a lot of people have had is okay it's the the stuff that's being written about is not kind of all accurate um and and even if the facts are right it's

kind of written from a slant a lot of the time of course and then um and then there's the government version of it which was during Co which is okay like it's like our government is is telling us that we need to censor true things it's like this is a disaster and it's you know it's not just the US right I think um you know a lot of people in the US focus on this as an American phenomenon but I kind of think that the reaction to co probably caused a breakdown in trust in a

lot of um governments around the world because I mean you know 2024 was a big election year around the world and um you know there all these countries India you know just like a ton of countries that had that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one um so there is some sort of a global phenomenon where the the um whether it was because of inflation because of the the economic policies to deal with um with covid or or just how how the governments dealt with Co um seems to have had this effect

that's Global not just the us but like a very broad decrease in trust at least in in that set incumbents and maybe in in sort of these Democratic institutions overall so I I think that what you're saying of yeah how do people get their information now it's by sharing it online on social media um I think that that's just increasingly true and my view at this point is like all right like we started off focused on free expression we kind of had this pressure tested over the last period I I feel like I just have

a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be and like this is how it's going to be going forward and um and so I'm I mean at this point I think you I think a lot of people look at this as like a purely political thing you know it's because they they kind of look at the timing and they're like hey well you're doing this right after the election it's like okay I try not to like change our content rules like right in the middle of an election either right it's like

there's not like a great time to do this it's you know um and you want to do it a year later yeah it's like there's no good time to do it there you know at whatever time is is going on there's going to be you know so um the good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this kind of cultural p pul as like okay where are people right now and how are people thinking about it we try to have policies that reflect um you know mainstream discourse uh but yeah

I mean I I don't know this is something I've been thinking about for a while I think that this is going to be pretty durable because at this point we've just been pressure tested on this stuff for like the last8 to 10 years with like these huge institutions just pressuring us and um and I I I feel like this is kind of the right place to be going forward what was it like when they were attacking you like first of all what was the premise like what what would they were they saying was your offense

was it that you were allowing information that was not true that was getting out there I know there was also they're saying that you guys were allowing hate groups to speak there was a lot of this yeah I mean the the TR the tough thing with politics is that there's like well when you say who someone's coming after you are you referring to kind of the government and investigations and all that I mean so the issue is that there's the there's what specific thing an agency might be looking into you for and then there's like

the underlying political motivation which is like why do the people who are running this thing hate you and I think that those can often be two very different things so I we had organizations that were looking into us that were like not really involved with social media like I like the cfpb like this um Financial I don't even know what it stands for it's the it's the financial organization um that Elizabeth Warren had set up oh great and and it's basically it's like we're not a bank theing section yeah no so so like we're not

a bank right it's like like what what does meta have to do with this but they kind of found some theory that they wanted to investigate and it's like okay clearly they were trying really hard right to to like find find some Theory but it like I don't know it just it kind of like throughout the the the the the party and the government there was just sort of I don't know if it's I don't know how this stuff works I mean I've never been in government I don't know if it's like a directive or

it's just like a quiet consensus that like we don't like these guys they're not doing what we want we're going to punish them but um but it's uh it's uh it's tough to be at the other end of that what was it like um well it's not good I think well the thing that I think is actually the toughest though is um it's it's Global right so and and really when you think about it the US government should be defending its companies right not be the tip of the spear attacking its companies so when we

so we we talk about a lot okay what is the experience of um okay if the US government comes after you I I think the real issue is that when the US government does that to its tech industry um it's basically just Open Season around the rest of the world right I mean the the EU I I pull these numbers the EU has fined the tech companies more than $30 billion over the last I think it was like 10 or 20 years holy [ __ ] so when you when you think about it like okay

there's it's like you know hundred million here a couple billion dollars there but what what it I think really adds up to is this is sort of like a kind of eu-wide policy for how they want to deal with American Tech it's almost like a tariff and I think the US government basically gets to decide how are they going to deal with that right because if the if the US government if if um if some other you know country was screwing with another industry that we cared about the US government would probably find some way

to put pressure on them but I think what happened here is actually the complete opposite the US government led the the kind of attack against the companies which then just made it like the EU is basically and all these other places just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do whatever you want but I mean look obviously like I don't want to come across as if like we don't have things that we need to do better obviously we we do and when we mess something up we deserve to be held

accountable for that and and and just like everyone else um I do think that the American Technology industry is a bright spot in the American economy I think it's a strategic Advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the strongest uh companies in the world and I I think it should be part of the US's strategy going forward to defend that and um and it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump is I think he just wants America to win and um and I think think some of this

stuff like the the other the other governments who are kind of pushing on on this stuff it's you know it's like at least the US has the rule of law right so the government can come after you for something but you still get your day in court and the courts are pretty fair and you know so we've basically done a pretty good job of Defending ourselves and when we when we've chosen to do that basically we we have a pretty good rate of winning um it's just not like that in every other country around the

world like if other governments decide that they're going to go after you don't always get kind of a a clear shake at at kind of Defending yourself on on on the rules so I think to some degree if the US tech industry is going to continue being really strong um I I do think that the US government has a role in um in basically defending it abroad and that's one of the things that I'm optimistic about will will happen in this Administration well I think this Administration uniquely has felt the impact of not being able

to have free speech because this was the this is the administration where Trump was famously kicked off of Twitter that was a huge issue like after January 6th like they removed the at the time the sitting president was kind of crazy to remove that person from social media because you've decided that he incited a riot um so for him without free speech without people without podcast without social media they probably wouldn't have had a chance because the mainstream narrative other than Fox News was so clearly against him the majority of the television entities and print

entities were against him the majority of them so if without social media without podcast the they don't stand a chance so they're uniquely aware of the importance of giving people their Voice free speech but you do have to be careful about misinformation and you do have to be careful about just outright lies and propaganda complaints or propaganda campaigns rather and how do you differentiate well I I think that there are a couple of different things here one is this is something where I think X and Twitter just did it better than us on on factchecking

we took the critique around factchecking sorry around misinformation we put in place this fact checking program um which basically empowered these thirdparty fact Checkers they could Mark stuff false and then we would downright it in the algorithm I think what what Twitter and X have done with Community notes I think is just a better program um rather than having a small number of fact Checkers you get the whole Community to weigh in when people usually disagree on something tend to agree on how they're voting on on on a note that's a good sign to the

community that this is there's actually like a broad consensus on this and then you show it and you're showing more information not less right so you're not using the fact check as a signal to show less you're using the the community note to provide real context um and and Show additional information so I think that that's better um for when you're talking about like nation states um or people interfering a lot of that stuff is best rooted out at the level of kind of accounts doing phony things so you get like whether it's like China

or Russia or Iran or like one of these countries they'll set up these networks of of fake accounts and Bots and they coordinate and they post on each other's stuff to make it seem like it's authentic and kind of convince people it's like wow a bunch of people must think this or something and the way that you identify that is you build AI systems that can basically detect that those accounts are not behaving the way that a human would and when we find that that there's like some bot that's operating an account how how do

you differentiate how do you figure that out it just I mean there are some things that a person just would never do right so um have you met Lex fredman yes right yeah yeah he might not be well pass your he going to take yeah is he going to take is he G to make a million actions in a minute it's like yeah probably not okay so it's that well I mean it's it's more subtle than that I think like these guys are pretty sophisticated and it's an adversarial space so um so we find some

technique and then they um they basically kind of update their their techniques but but we have a team of their it's effectively like intelligence Counter Intelligence folks counterterrorism folks AI folks who are Building Systems to identify um what are these accounts uh that are just not behaving the way that people would and how are they interacting and and then sometimes you you you trace it down and um and sometimes you get some tips from different intelligence uh agencies and then you can kind of piece together over time it's like oh this network of people is

actually some kind of fake cluster of accounts and that's against our policies and we just take them all off um but what how do you how are you sure like is there a 100% certainty that that we're that you are definitely getting a group of people that are Bad actors or is it just people that have unpopular opinions no I don't think it's that for this I think um but what I'm saying is how do you determine like how do you at what percentage of accuracy are you determining do you ever accidentally think that people

that are going to get moderated are actually just real people um yes I think that's I think for the specific problem around these like large coordinated groups doing kind of like election interference or something it's a large enough group we have like a bunch of people analyzing it it's like they study it for a while I think we're probably pretty accurate on that but I actually think one of the bigger issues that we have in our moderation system is this Precision issue that you're talking about and that is actually of all the things that we

announced this week in terms of how we're going to update the content policies changing the content filters to have to require higher confidence and precision is actually going to be the thing that reduces the vast majority of the censorship mistakes that we make right the um you know the the removing the fact Checkers and replacing them with Community notes I think it's a good step forward like a very small percent of content is fact checked in in the first place so it's is that going to make the hugest difference I'm not sure um I think

it'll be a positive step though um and we we like opened up some content policies so some stuff that was restricted before we opened up okay that's good it'll mean that's some set of things that might have been censored before or not but by far the biggest set of issues we have and and you and I have talked about a bunch of issues like this over the years is like it's just okay you have some classifier that's it's trying to find say like drug content right people decide okay it's like the opioid epidemic is a

big deal we need to do a better job of cracking down on drugs and drug sales right I don't I don't want people dealing drugs on our networks so we build a bunch of systems that basically go out and try to automate finding people who are who are dealing with dealing drugs and then you basically have this question which is how precise do you want to set the classifier so do you want to make it so that the system needs to be 99% sure that someone is is dealing drugs before taking them down uh do

you want to to be 90% confident 80% confident and then those correspond to amounts of um you know I guess the the statistics term would be recall what percent of the bad stuff are you finding so if you require 99% confidence then maybe you only actually end up taking down 20% of the bad content um whereas if you reduce it and you say okay we're only going to require 90% confidence now maybe you can take down 60% of the bad content but let's say you say no we really need to find everyone who's doing this

bad thing and it doesn't need to be as as severe as as dealing drugs it could just be um I mean it could be any any kind of content of uh any kind of category of harmful content um you you start getting to some of these classifiers might have you know 80 85% Precision in order to get 90% of the bad stuff down but the problem is if you're at you know 90% Precision that means one out of 10 things that the classifier takes down is not actually problematic and if you filter if you if

you kind of multiply that across the billions of people who use our services every day that is millions and millions of posts that are basically being taken down that are innocent and and upon review we're going to look at and be like this is ridiculous that this thing got taken down which I mean I think you've had that experience and we've talked about this for for a bunch of stuff over time and um but it really just comes down to this question of where do you want to set the classifiers so one of the things

that we're going to do is basically set them to be um to be require more confidence which is this trade-off it's going to mean that we will maybe take down a smaller amount of the harmful content but it will also mean that we'll dramatically reduce the amount of people who whose accounts were taking off um for a mistake which is just a terrible experience right it's like okay you're you're going about your day and then one day you wake up and you're like oh my WhatsApp account just got dis like deactive ated because it's connected

to a Facebook account and the Facebook account um is uh is is is or like I'm I'm using on the same phone as a Facebook account where uh like we made some enforcement mistake and thought you were doing something bad that you weren't because our classifiers were set to too low of precision has that happened before oh yeah where their WhatsApp app got canceled as well yeah because I mean there there are a bunch so your Facebook app gets taken out like say if you have a Facebook and you have like a sock puppet account

and the sock puppet account you post offensive memes and you're generally gross yeah if that if you get caught for that does your WhatsApp get killed not for memes but but go back to like a very severe thing like let's say someone is terrorist let's say the most severe sure yeah let's say someone is is like terrorist content they're planning some attack okay so we take down their account right but then let's say that person can just go then sign up with another account but I think like you know how does WhatsApp get connected to

that though oh well if it's I I mean we run these different services and if they're on the same phone it's basically you know it's one thing that you know it's basically Regulators or governments will come to us and say okay it's you're you're clearly not doing enough if you kick someone off for terrorism and then they can just like sign up for another account on the phone right okay you're also they also think okay well we're not doing enough if we deactivate their Facebook account because they're like planning a terrorist attack but we let

them use all our other services right right if you're aware yeah yeah so so if we if our systems think that someone is terrorist then you probably need to deactivate their their access to all the different accounts yeah they can't get on threads threads Instagram yeah um yeah so that makes sense so it's you can understand how you get there but then you just get to this question around the Precision and the confidence level and then you're you're just making all these mistakes at scale and it's just unacceptable but I I think it's it's a

very hard calculation of like where do you want to be because on the one hand like I get why people kind of come to us and they're like no you need to do a better job finding more of the terrorism or the drugs and and all this stuff but you know over time the technology will get better and it'll get more precise but at any given point in time that's the choice that we have to make is do we want to make more mistakes airing on the side of of just like blowing away innocent people's

accounts right um or do we want to um get a higher a somewhat higher percent of of the bad stuff off and I think that there's some just some bance that you need to strike on this we were having a conversation yesterday Mel Gibson and I about how that can get weird was it Theo it might have been Theo I think it was Theo where that can get weird because I think like if you're a person and you work at some accounting firm but you like posting about stuff but you don't want it to come

back and reflect on your life you want to [ __ ] post you want to post jokes you want to be silly you should be able to be anonymous I I think there's nothing wrong with that I don't think just because you state your opin people should be able to search where you sleep that doesn't make any sense to me but if you're going to allow Anonymous accounts you're definitely going to open up the door to Bad actors having enormous blocks of accounts where they can use either AI or just programs where they have like

specific answers I'm sure you've seen that before it's it's come up on Twitter multiple times where they found hundreds of sock puppet accounts tweeting the exact same thing so you you've literally word for word even certain words in caps like either keep people are copy or pasting it or there's an email campaign that's getting legitimate people to do it or these are fake people you're going to have if you're going to have Anonymous accounts which I think you should because I think whistleblowers I think the the benefits of anonymous reporting on important things that the

general public needs to know about especially whistleblower type stuff you have to have some ability to be anonymous but you all if you're going to do that you're also going to have the possibility these aren't real people that these are paid actors these are paid people or not people at all or they're running programs and they're doing this to try to sway public opinion about very important issues yeah um a lot of what we've seen too I me there's the anonymous accounts also just over time I think a lot of the kind of more interesting

conversations have shifted from the public sphere to more private ones so WhatsApp groups um private groups on Facebook um I'm sure you have this experience where like maybe 10 years ago you would have posted your kind of quick takes on on whatever social media you're using now you know the stuff that I post on on Facebook and Instagram it's like I put time into into making sure that that's kind of good content that that I want to be seen broadly and then like most of the jokes that I make are like with my friends in

WhatsApp right in groups um so yeah I I think that's sort of that's kind of where the world is more broadly now yeah yeah no I think so for jokes for that kind of stuff with for comedians for sure because also we'll say things that we don't really mean we just say it because it's a funny thing to say I think everyone does for sure yeah which is just a weird thing about taking things out of context particularly on social media where people love to do that but there is this problem of like let's just

say that you're a country that's involved in some sort of an international conflict and you have this ability to get out this fake narrative and just spread it widely about all sorts of things you're accusing this other government of all sorts of things that aren't true yeah and it just muddies the water of reality for a lot of people yeah and that's why that side of things the kind of governments running these broad manipulation campaigns I mean we're not letting off the gas on that at all I think every like most most categories of bad

stuff that we're policing everyone agrees is bad right no one's sitting there defending that terrorism is good right child exploitation or drugs or IP violations or people insiding violence or it's like most of the stuff is bad people clearly believe that um that um you know election interference and foreign government manipulation of content is bad so we we have this is the type of stuff that the vast majority of our energy goes towards that and we're not changing our approach on any of that the two categories that I think have been very politic ized are

misinformation because who gets to judge or what's false and what's true um you may just not like my opinion on something and then you know people think it's false but it but it's uh but I think that that one's really tricky and the other one is um is basically what you know what people refer to as hate speech which is I think also comes from a good place of you know wanting to crack down on that of um of wanting to promote more inclusion and and and belonging and people feeling um feeling good and like

having a a pluralistic society that can um that can basically have all these different communities coexist except everyone yeah but I think the problem is is that you know you just all these things are on a spectrum and when you go too far on them um you I think on on that side we just basically got to this point where there were these things that you just like couldn't say which were mainstream discourse right so you know it's like Pete Heth is going to you know probably be defending his nomination for Secretary of Defense on

on the senate floor and I think one of the points that he's made is that he thinks that women shouldn't be able to be in certain combat roles and until we updated our policies that wouldn't have been a thing that you could have said on our platforms because it would call for the exclusion of a protected category of people and so and it's like okay like on its on its face yeah calling for the exclusion of a protected category that seems that like that's okay there's like legal protections there's stuff but okay if it's like

okay to say on the floor of Congress you should probably be able to debate it on social media so um so I think some of the stuff I think well-intentioned went too far needs to just get rationalized a bit but but it's those two categories misinformation and hate speech I think are the ones that got politicized um all the other ones which is the vast majority of of the stuff that we do is um I think people generally agree that it's that it's good and we need to go after it but then you just get

into this problem of the mistakes like you're talking about okay well what confidence level do do people want us to have um in in our enforcement and at what point would people rather us kind of say okay I'm not sure that that's um that that one is causing an issue um so do you so on balance maybe we should just you know leave that person's account out because the pain of just nuking someone's account when you're not sure or you making mistake is like that's pretty real too right yeah very very complicated yeah it's it's

all all very nuanced and you know you made a point earlier about the the government supporting its companies that it would be a good thing for the government to support its companies it makes sense it's an American company I think the issue that we're dealing with is companies as we're describing them have never existed before right there's never been a thing like Facebook before there's never been a thing like Twitter before X there's never been a thing like Instagram these are new things in terms of the Imp that it has on Society on opinions on

conversations on distribution of information there's never been a thing like this that the government didn't control so it makes sense from their perspective continuing the patterns of behavior that they've always exhibited which is to have control over the media I mean there has been CIA operatives that have been in major newspapers forever there's always been that there's always been this sort of input that the government had in mainstream media narratives they are in a position now where they're losing that there they've essentially lost it and especially with this last the push during covid deteriorated as

you were saying before the opinion and the respect that people have for the facts that are coming from mainstream journalism in a way that I've never seen before in my life where an enormous percentage of the population does not trust mainstream media anymore so well what do they trust they trust social media well who's running that well a bunch of people figured it out and invented it well no [ __ ] that like we got to crack down on that like we've got to get our hands on this which is what we saw during covid

which is we saw during the Biden administration's attempt to remove the hunter Biden laptop story from Twitter and from all these different things that we saw happen the way they contacted you guys what they're trying to do with getting you to remove real information about vaccine side effects like that this is like this new attempt to crack down on this new thing which is a distribution Outlet that's far more successful than anything they've ever controlled before and they have no control of it right they they had CBS they had NBC they had when they had

the New York Times and all these Washington Post when they were in control of narratives in that way it was so much easier there there wasn't some sort of Pirate Radio voice that came on and said hey guys look here's the the latest studies that show this is not true here's why they're lying about that here's why they're lying about this and now that's what you get all day long on X it's all day long is like dissolving Illusions MH and that's a completely new thing that probably led to Trump getting elected yeah I mean

the causality there is tricky but um because there's a lot of things I a lot it's um without it he probably doesn't get elected um it's yeah it's tough know I mean I I do come back to this point that there were every major incumbent lost their elections around the world this year but I think that's also it might be it might be because of that revealing how how kind of Incorrect and and dishonest I think some of these governments were yes yeah so I think that that's that's quite possible and I mean I do

think that there is this cycle that goes on where you know within a society it's not just the government that has power there's like certain people who in these like culturally Elite positions and you know journalists um TV news anchors like who are the people who people broadly trust right they're they're not all in government they're like um a lot of a lot of people um in other positions it's like who are the people that that uh basically people look to and um I think that's basically it needs to shift for the internet age and

I think a lot of the people who um people looked to before they're kind of realizing hey they weren't super honest about a lot of these issues that we that we face and I think that that's partially why you know social media isn't a monolithic thing it's not that people trust Facebook or X they trust the creators and the voices that that they feel like are being authentic and giving them valuable information on there so there's I think going to be just this whole new class of creators who basically become the new kind of cultural

Elites that people look at and are like okay these are the people who give it to me straight and I think that that's that's a thing that is maybe it's it's possible because of social media um I think it's also just the internet more broadly I I think podcasting is obviously a huge and important part of that too um I me I I don't know to what extent you feel like you kind of got to be large like because of social media or just it's or just the podcasting platforms that you used but um but

I think that this is like a very big sea change in terms of like who are the voices that matter and you know what we do is we we try to build a platform that gives people a voice but I that there's this wholesale generational shift in who are the people who are being listened to and I think that that's like a very fascinating thing that is going on because I I I think that that's like what is what's going on here it's not it's it's not just the government um and people saying hey we

we want like a very big change here I think it's just like a wholesale shift in saying we just want different people who we actually trust um who who are actually going to like tell us the truth then like and not give us like the [ __ ] opinions that you're supposed to say but like the type of stuff that I would actually like when I'm sitting with my in my living room with my friends like the stuff that we know is true like who are the people who kind of have the courage to actually

just say that stuff um I don't know I think that whole like cultural Elite Class needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust yeah um the problem is these people that are starting these jobs they're coming out of universities and in the universities are indoctrinated into these ideas as well it's it's very difficult to be a person who stands outside of that and takes unpopular positions you get socially ostracized and people are very they're very hesitant to do that and they would rather just keep their mouth shut and talk about it in quiet

conversation and that's what we experience which is another another argument for anonymous accounts I think you should have Anonymous accounts I think you should be a like if there's something like Co mandates or some things that you're dealing with and you don't want to get fired because of it you should be able to talk about it and you should be able to post facts and information and what you've learned and uh you know anecdotal experiences with people in your family that had vaccine side effects and not worry about losing your job which people were worried

about which is so crazy and you know and you're seeing uh a lot of the people that used to be in mainstream media got fired and now they're trying to do the sort of podcast thing but they're trying to do it like a mainstream media person so they're like gaslighting during podcasts and people are like hey [ __ ] face like this you can't do that here it doesn't work yeah well it's a new medium I mean I know I'm sure you know the history on this it's like when when people transition from Radio to

TV the initial TV anchors were the same radio people but just like being filmed while speaking on the radio but it turned out it actually was a completely different type of person that you need because on your radio is just like your voice and your Cadence and all that it's like you know the whole phrase it's like you've got a good radio voice right it's like um okay on TV you need to be telegenic right you need to kind of has have Charisma in that Medium it's like a completely different thing and um I think

that that's going to be true for the internet too it's you know it's not as cut I think part of it is the format right the fact that you do these like two three-hour episodes I mean I hated doing TV because you know I basically got started I started Facebook when I was 19 and I was good at some things very bad at others I was good at coding and like real bad at at kind of like talking to people and explaining what I was doing and I just like had these experiences early on where

I'd go on TV and like it wouldn't go well and they'd like cut to they'd cut it to some down to some random sound bite and I'd like look stupid and then like and then basically like I'd get super nervous about about like going on TV because I knew that they were just going to cut it in some way that I was going to look like a [ __ ] idiot and like and so I'm just like this sucks right so so I just like it's it's kind of a funny thing about like it's like

in some ways it's like okay at the same time I was you know gaining confidence being able to like build more and more complicated products and it's like even as an early 20s person I was like I could do this and then on the kind of TV and comm's public side I was like this is a disaster every time I go out it's worse and worse and worse and it just get but um but I mean it's it's one of the reasons why I think on the internet like there's no reason to cut it to

a 4minute sound bite conversation it's like I think part of what what makes it authentic is like we can just I mean these are complex issues we can unpack it for hours and and probably still have hours more stuff to talk about it just it's I I don't know I I think it's just more real yeah it's definitely that and the other thing about television that's always going to hold it back is the fact that every conversation gets interrupted every x amount of minutes because you have to cut to a commercial so you you really

can't get into depth even Bill Mar show is only an hour you know you have all these people talking over each other then you sit down with one person for short amount of time it's just not enough time for important subjects it's also a lot of them for whatever reason want to do it in front of an audience which is the worst way to get people to talk like when imagine these disasters that you had if there was like 5,000 people staring at you in a TV crowd as well so there's that added element which

is so not normal and not conducive to having a conversation where you're talking about nuanced things yeah where you have to like think you have to be able to pause and and not concern yourself being entertaining from of these [ __ ] people just sitting there staring at you yeah and and also like when you're having a conversation it like I don't know it's like when you start talking about something your kind of subconscious kicks in you start thinking about the the topic so it's like you might not actually have the thing that you want

to say until like five minutes later and right I mean it's like when we started this conversation I think like the first few minutes were just kind of slow it's like warming up like I'm like okay kind of like downloading into my memory like how how am I going to like you know it's like how am I going to you know just explain these different things but it's um yeah know I just think that that's sort of how people work what's also like it's conversations are like a dance you know one person can't be dancing

at another speed and the other person is going slow like you kind of have to find the Rhythm that you're going to talk with and then you have to actually be interested in what you're talking about that's another thing that they are at a huge disadvantage of in mainstream media is like they're just doing that because that's their job you know they probably don't even know a lot about climate change they probably don't really understand too much about what space SpaceX is trying to accomplish but they're just reporting on it yeah I mean I'm sure

there's the and a lot of the people I've met there I think are good people it's just a tough format terrible format yeah and the problem is they get locked into that format and no one trusts them and then they leave and they go yeah but you were just lying to us about this that and the other thing and now I'm supposed to believe you're one of the good guys you're one of the Straight Shooters now yeah well getting back to the original point this is why I think you know it makes sense to me

that the government didn't want you to succeed and to have the sort of unchecked power that they proce ceed social media to to have and I think one of the benefits that we have now of the Trump Administration is that they have clearly felt the repercussions of a limited amount of free speech of free speech limitations censorship government overreach if anybody saw it look it there's I don't know what the actual impact of the hunter Biden laptop story would have been I don't know but there's many people that think it probably amounted to millions of

votes overall in the country of people that were on the fence the people that weren't sure who they're going to vote for if they found out the hunterbiden laptop was real they're like oh this is [ __ ] their family's [ __ ] crazy and they would have voted for Trump that's possibly real and if that's possibly real that could be defined as election interference and all that stuff scares the [ __ ] out of me that kind of stuff scares the [ __ ] out of me when the government gets involved in what could

be termed election interference but through some some weird loophole it's legal whereas some I don't think that the pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal I mean it's like that's I mean there's all this stuff about what like people talk about the first amendment and okay these these Tech platforms should should offer free speech like the first amendment it's that I think is a philosophical principle the First Amendment doesn't apply to companies in what in our content moderation it's more of an American ethos about how think that that um you know best

dialogue is carried out but the First Amendment does apply to the government that's like the whole point right the government is not allowed to censor this stuff so at some level I do think that you know having people in the administration calling up the guys on our team and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is like it's pretty bad it sounds illegal I would love to hear it I wish somebody recorded those conversations would be great to listen to somebody could animate them maybe poly

Tunes the a lot of the material is is public I mean it's I mean Jim Jordan LED this whole investigation in Congress I mean it was basically I think about this as like you know what Elon did on the Twitter files when he took over that company I think Jim Jordan basically did that for the rest of the industry with the the Congressional investigation that he did and we just turned over like all of the documents and everything that we had um to them and they basically put together this report and the people that actually

did call for censorship what was the response to all this uh to what to the to the investigation yes I don't know I don't know did was anybody held accountable was there any I mean any repercussions I mean they lost the election yes so that's it well in a democracy I mean that's kind of right um um right but if if what they did was illegal do you not think that some steps should be put in place to make sure that people are punished for that and that that never happens again it seems that that

has a massive impact on the way our country goes if that's election interference and I think it is that has a massive impact on the direction of our country yeah well the co thing I don't think was election interference as much as it was just like meddling where it shouldn't have but yeah no I mean it's I'm for me to say you know like what specific retribution or Justice should happen to anyone who is involved in these things but I think your point about let's make sure this doesn't happen again yeah is um is the

one that I'm more focused on right because then it's the thing that I reflect on on my journey on all this which is like okay yeah so we didn't take down the stuff that was true but we did generally defer to the government on some of these policies that in retrospect I probably wouldn't knowing what I know now and um and I I just think that that's that's sort of the journey that we've been on is like okay we start the thing focused on free expression go through some like pretty crazy times in the world

get it pressure tested see where we basically ended up doing stuff that led to a slippery slope that we weren't happy with the conclusion and like try to reset and that's sort of the moment that we're at now is is trying to just rationalize um a bunch of a bunch of the policies and and look I mean obviously crazy things can happen in the future that might unearth something that I haven't um you know some some kind of angle on this that I haven't um thought enough about yet so I know I'm sure I'm not

done making mistakes in the world but um but I think at this point we have a much more thorough understanding of what the space is and I I I think our our kind of values and principles on this are likely going to be much more durable going forward um and and I think that that's probably a good thing for the internet I think it's a great thing for the internet I was very happy with your announcement I'm very happy that you took those steps I'm very happy you brought Dana White aboard oh he's awesome been

talking to him for a while about that I mean he's like talk about like an amazing entrepreneur right it's like I just want like because I control our company I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me right it's like normal corporate environment it's like basically the CEO just tries to like you know they're just trying to convince the board to like let them have their job and pay them more it's like all right the board doesn't pay me except for security and um and I'm not worried about losing

my job because I control the majority of the voting in the company so I actually get to use our board to like have the smartest people who I can get to have around me help work on these problems so it's like all right who are the people I want like I just want like the best entrepreneurs and people have created different things and like I mean Dana is like this guy who I mean he basically took the sport from being this like I think it was viewed as like this pretty marginal thing when he got

started right I think John McCain was trying to outlaw it and um and you know now it's like I think it and F1 are the two fastest growing sports in the world it's got hundreds of millions of people viewing it it's like I mean what Dana's done with the UFC is like one of the most legendary business stories and um and the brand is beloved and and I think he's just um so he's like a worldclass entrepreneur and he's just like a he's got a strong backbone and I think part of what the conversation that

I had with him around joining our board was okay like we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company and like we need some like strong people who are going to basically you know help help advise us on how to handle some of these situations and um and so yeah that's but but yeah I mean this is running this company is not for the faint of heart I mean you definitely there's definitely a lot of pressure from from like all these different governments and and then

then it's like okay I could spend all my time doing that but I'm not even a politician like I want to I just want to spend my time building things right so so it's um so yeah I think Dana is gonna be great he's the best great entrepreneur I agree with everything you said about him without him none of the UFC would have ever taken place the way it did I mean you needed the fertita brothers they had to come in with all the money and the vision and it's really funny because Eddie Bravo and

I you know we've been fans for so long Eddie Bravo and I went to a live event in the 90s I was working for the UFC as a backstage interviewer and he went there with Ricky rocket you know Ricky rocket from Poison no he's a [ __ ] black belt under the machados he's legit super legit really nice guy too anyway so Ricky rocket and him were at the uh UFC and we were talking about it in the '90s like you know what this sport needs cuz we were in love with it like this but

we were marshal artists where like the sport needs some billionaires who just throw a ton of money at it and just get it huge and then the fra Brothers come along billionaires with a ton of money who are huge fans of the sport just love the sport you know we're hiring people like Frank Shamrock to come in and train them and work out they were taking Jiu-Jitsu with John Lewis and they were really getting into it and so then they buy the UFC for like $2 million which is probably the greatest purchase ever except they

were 4 plus million dollar in the whole when they fi financed the ultimate fighter and then that was 2005 and then this one fight takes place with Stephan B and Forest Griffin on television it's so wild and so crazy that millions of people start tuning in the sports born then you have Chuck Liddell who was the champion at the time who was the most fan-friendly Champion you could ever have just a [ __ ] Berserker with just psychopath with a [ __ ] head tattoo and a mohawk crushing people in his prime he was the

perfect poster guy for the UFC cuz he was just smashing people and then throwing his arms back like in a cage it was nuts I'm sure you've seen a lot of Chuck liell fights right yeah it is it was just the the whole thing took off but without Dana it would have never taken place the guy's tireless that man I could call him up I'll call him up at like 2 o'clock in the morning sometime like there's some fight going on and I'll say hey this is going on next weekend I'm so [ __ ]

pumped and we talk for hours for hours he just wants to talk about fights he's like so locked in like all the time you know and he's he's just like so driven and now that he's healthy like oh my God he's got what Gary Brea has done for him is incredible he lost all this weight got super thin real fit super healthy he doesn't [ __ ] around with alcohol anymore he just eats healthy food he looks great now he's get even more energy yeah it's incredible well we're lucky to have some of it yeah

we are and you know what we're also lucky that you got into Jiu-Jitsu cuz I think I think that had an effect on you you look different when you walked in here today you look thicker you look like a different guy you do you look like a Jiu-Jitsu guy now it's funny I saw your neck I'm like his neck's bigger your neck is bigger good are you using iron neck or is it just for training I do like I do like iron neck but but it's um but when I started training not just Jiu-Jitsu but

striking I was like right I want to find a way to do this where I don't like like hurt my brain right it's like all right like I need to I'm going to be running this company for a while I would like to you know like stay stay healthy and not take too much damage and so I think the number one thing you need to do is well in addition to having good partners is um have a strong neck yes so yeah so yeah no I I take that I take that pretty seriously it's very

important strong neck is great for Jiu-Jitsu as well cuz it's a weapon like in certain positions like head arm chokes you need a neck yeah it's a weapon and you know also for defending things and just for overall stability but for striking it's very like Mike Tyson in his prime he had a [ __ ] 20in neck yeah it's crazy his neck is like bigger than his his face a photo of him in a suit it's the craziest photo it's like his neck starts at the top of his ears and he just goes straight down

when he was a champ when he was a tank aming yeah the next's very important but it's also like you know you're doing it very smart you're bringing in Dave Camario he's awesome amazing he's awesome you're bringing in all these like super talented people to train with you too which is really important and just learn systematically probably the way you've learned all these other things which is really so fascinating to me about MMA and and Jiu-Jitsu in particular is the general public has this knuckle dragging Mead sort of perspective and then I'm like let me

introduce you to Mikey mamichi yeah well there's there's a range there's a range from Mikey right but Mikey is one of the elite of the elite and he's about as far from that I love Mikey's good guy he's super good guy he's super kind and and unbelievably brilliant and eccentric and just and just so dedicated to Jiu-Jitsu right he's I'm glad I'm glad that he's over at the UFC now yes I am too yeah well I'm glad a guy like that exists I I like because I like I'm like okay I know you think that

let me show you this guy and then I'm like let me show you what it really is let me introduce you to these people cuz they're the nicest people there's no better stress reliever in the world than Jiu-Jitsu or martial arts there's no better you you leave there you're the kindest person in the world you just like he all of your aggressions out of your system yeah and it's a phenomenal stress reliever because regardless of what you're going through day-to-day with Facebook and meta and all the different projects you have going on it's not as

hard as someone trying to choke you on conscious it's not as acute I think it's like sometimes you have someone trying to choke you unconscious slowly multi- perod that's um but I think that sometimes in bus the cycle time is so long that it is very refreshing to just have a feedback loop that's like oh I like had my hand down so I got punched in the face it's like that's like that's um but yeah no I it's it's really important to me for balance I mean I I basically try to train every morning I'm

either doing general fitness or or kind of MMA and do sometimes grappling sometimes striking or some both but um it got to the point where I I I I tore my ACL training I was probably um at that point I didn't have I wasn't integrated between my weight training and my fighting training so I think I was probably overdoing it so now now we basically I'm I'm just trying to do this in a cohesive way which I I think will be more sustainable but when I when I tore my ACL first of all everyone of

the company was like ah F we're going to get so many more emails now it's like that that he can't that he can't do this um and then and then I sat down with Priscilla and I expected her to be like you're an idiot like what do you expect you're like you I was in my late 30s at the time and but she was like no she's like when you heal your ACL you better go back to fighting and I'm like what do what do you mean she's like you are so much better to be

around now that you're doing this you have to fight and so that's hilarious yeah so and um isn't it funny that like that's completely contrary to the way most people if they're outside of it would perceive it I mean it it definitely takes the edge off things right it's like after like a couple of hours of doing that in the morning it's just like yeah it's like nothing else that day is going to stress you out that much right you can just you can just deal with it um voluntary adversity yeah yeah no it's good

it's good it's also good I think to be a little bit tired like it's like it just it's I love that feeling of just like you're not like exhausted um and sometimes you get a session and you just go so hard and I need to like just go to sleep or something but yeah um it's also good to know that you can kill people that's that's a good thing to know it's a good thing to know if something goes sideways I guess there's a there's a certain Confidence from that it's an important skill if you

could give it in a pill if you could sell it in a pill everybody would buy it yeah 100 no one would say I'd like to be the vulnerable guy walking around with a bunch of [ __ ] assassins no one would say that they would say how much is the pill oh it's $2 oh give me one of those pills you take the pill everybody would take that pill well it exists it's just not a pill it's a long journey of pain and discipline and and trial and error and learning and being open-minded and

being objective and understanding position and asking questions and having good training partners and absorbing information and really being diligent with your skill acquisition work which is a one of the most important and neglected parts of Jiu-Jitsu because training is so fun everybody just wants to roll you know where really the best way to do it is actually to drill and it's the most boring but really you should drill constantly just Jam those skills into your neurons where your brain knows exactly what you do in every position and it's such an intellectual Pursuit and most people

don't think of it that way because you have to manage your mind while you're moving your body you're managing anxieties you're you're you're trying to figure out when to hit the gas and when to control position recover there's so much going on in training that applies to virtually any stressful thing that you'll ever experience in your life and along with it you get this skill where you can kill [Laughter] people you shouldn't kill people let me be clear I'm not saying it's a good thing to kill people I'm definitely not but I'm saying it's a

good thing to if someone's trying to kill you and they absolutely can't because you could kill them easy that's way better it's a way better situation to be in yeah no it's it's great I it's it's open a lot of how I think about stuff I mean it's it is just interesting your point about like having a pill that allows you to just kind of know that you have this kind of physical ability it's um it's a superpower it's it's interesting because I I do think a lot of our society has become very like I

don't know I don't even know the right word for it but it's like it kind of like neutered or like emasculated and it's there's like a whole energy in this that I I think it's it is very healthy in the right balance um I mean I think part of the reason every one of the things that I enjoy about it is I feel like I can just like express myself right it's like when you're running a company people typically don't want to see you being like this ruthless person who's like just like I'm just going

to like crush the people I'm competing with but like but when you're fighting it's like no no that's like so I think in I think in some ways when people see me competing in the sport they're like oh no that's the real Mark it's like because it's it goes back to the all the media training stuff we were talking about when I'm going and giving my sound bites for two minutes it's like no it's like [ __ ] that guy it's like that's the real one it's but um well you definitely got a lot of

respect in the martial arts Community people got super excited that you were so involved in it and so interested in it because anytime someone like yourself or like Tom Hardy or anyone like wow that guy's into it like wow anytime something like that happens there's like some new person who's a prominent person a very smart person it's really interested in it we all get very excited because we're like oh boy it's a very welcoming Community super I think there's a lot of a lot of sports that are like nah we don't want you it's not

a jock Community it's super kind like Jiu-Jitsu people in particular they're some of the nicest PE it's my friends forever you know they'll be my friends for life yeah yeah no it's it's a it's a good crew I mean when I got hurt I I really kind of missed the guys I trained with it's like Dave has put together this this group it's basically these like all these young pro fighters who are kind of like up and coming like kind of early 20s but they've only been doing it for a few years so like I've

been doing it for for a few years so that way it's like we kind of are have a more similar level of skill and they're all better than me but like but in terms of I'm like I was in my late 30s and they're in their early 20s it was sort of like they're kind of coming into becoming men I'm like sort of at the end of my fiscal Peak but it's like it's um it's uh it's it's a really good crew um yeah know it's a good crew and the competing thing is fun I

can't wait to get back to that too I mean it's like basically I mean I was also doing it was so was basically some a group of pro Fighters and then a handful of meta Executives would do it and and basically we would just kind of like fight each other and it would be fun and and um and then one of them decided one day that they're like you know I think I'm getting pretty good at Jiu-Jitsu I'm going to go to a tournament and I was like all right good luck with that bro like

I'm I'm not going to I'm not going to go to tournament it's like like like I don't want to go to a tournament get get embarrassed it's like like but then guy goes to the tournament he like does pretty well I'm like that guy it's like it's like okay it's like we go all the time and like and if he's doing well in a tournament it's like all right fine sign me up right it's like so I just like super competitive so this was like when was this it must have been I don't know I

guess I I rolled into this tournament and I registered under my first and middle name so people didn't know who who I was and I had like sunglasses and a hat and I wore a CO mask and like and I and basically was like it wasn't until they called our names to step onto the mat that I was like all right take all the stuff off and the guy like uh what that's kind of a cheat code I mean they kind of kind of freak out yeah I think he was trying to figure out what

was going on afterwards his his coach was like he's like I think that was Mark Zuckerberg who who just submitted me and the the coach is like no no no no way and it's like no I think that was he's like what you're fighting Mark Zu like get back in there it's like get go fight him he's like no he just submitted me it's that's very funny yeah man well Tom Hardy's doing that too right done multiple tournaments now yeah no I think I think um yeah I yeah I I I can't wait wait to

get back to competing it's been it's been sort of a slow Journey on the the rehab it's sort of like learning twice but but we're we're getting there how far out are you oh no I'm done with the rehab now now I'm just ramping back how far out are you from surgery um 12 13 months so you did the Patel ten in graft right I did yeah yeah that's a rough one to come back from I did um the Patell attended graph on my left knee and it took me about a year I did the

ACL from a kadav it's actually they use an Achilles tendon from a kadaver on my right knee and I was back to Jiu-Jitsu in six months H like full confidence in six months I was I was 100% recovered kicking the bag everything yeah yeah I how how um how old were you when you got those the first one I was 26 uh the second one I was 3 one 32 somewhere around there oh so so young yeah because my my doctor was basically like look you're at the you're like at the boundary you could go

either way but if you want to compete again then I'd recommend doing the patella yeah I know they say that I don't agree with that I mean just from my own personal experience my doctor told me that the a from a cadav or when they use the Patel attending craft is 150% stronger than your natural ACL he said you'll be back to cuz I didn't have any miniscus damage on my right knee he's like you'll be back to 100% I have a lot of miniscus damage on my left knee unfortunately which is also part of

the problem with the recovery of that one but the uh battal attendant graft the bone on the kneecap was painful forever in terms of like getting on my knees like training from my knees doing doing certain positions and even just stretching like you know putting my knees on the ground um sitting on my heels and then laying back it was [ __ ] painful it took forever to break all that scar tissue up and now it's fine it's fine now but obviously it's a long time ago yeah I can kind of do everything that I

want at this point it's still like a little sore but I I I don't know I think that it's supposed to be a couple years until you like feel like it's fully I think it takes some time for the nerves to grow into it and all that did you incorporate peptides in your recovery I I didn't um do you hate healing do I hate healing no why didn't you use peptides I don't know I just took my doctor advice on it but don't don't do that anymore I mean next time there's other people to talk

to yeah yeah I mean it's it's gone pretty well it's gone pretty I'm sure it goes pretty well but it would go quicker with P ties 100% for sure but it's been this interesting opportunity to like like I really don't want that to happen again so I I feel like I'm so much more focused on technique like the first time that I learned all this stuff I was like I was probably like a little too British about it m and just like musling through stuff and now um I don't know now I feel like I'm

like really learning how to do this stuff correctly and I can do it way more effortlessly so it's it's um that's the goal how did it pop how did it pop I was I was like the end of a session and um so were two hours into training and I was doing like a few rounds and um and I basically I threw a leg kick and the other guy went to check it and I like leaned back to try to get around the check and just put too much t work on my knee um so

it's the planted leg but um mine was a planted leg too yeah but it's I don't know Dave was like you know before that round Dave was like you're done I'm like no one more round it's you know you're too tired as well yeah and and I basically and I hadn't um you know I I basically had also just done a really hard kind of like leg workout the day before but I don't think the but the fight guys didn't know that so I I I I really just pushed too hard are you aware of

uh knees over toes guy yeah have you done his stuff i' I've looked at it a bunch I mean the rehab thing I took really seriously I thought that was pretty interesting too it's um I don't want to like have to do a lot of rehabs like this one but to do one of them I actually thought was a pretty interesting experience because it's like week over week you're just getting back so much mobility and and ability to do stuff and yeah um no I feel like I'm I'm I don't know at this point I

just like like probably half my weight training is is effectively kind of like rehab and joint health stuff and like wrists shoulders knee all that in addition to the big muscle groups yeah that's very smart the knee over toes guy stuff is particularly effective because it all comes from a guy that had a series of pretty catastrophic knee injuries and was plagued with weak knees his whole life and then developed a bunch of different methods to strengthen all all the supporting muscles around the knee that are really extraordinary everything from Nordic curls do you do

those do you do Nordic curls um I should I should do more than I do yeah leg curls Nordic curls but Nordic curls in particular because you know you it's very difficult to do you got your body you lift your whole body up with your hamstrings um and all these different uh slant board squats and different lunges and split squats and all these different things which like really strengthen up all the supporting muscles around the knee better than anything that I've ever tried before and he's got like a whole program where it scales up and

he puts it online for everybody he gives away a lot of information for free because he said look look when I was 11 years old I wish I had access to this so I'm going to put it out there for everybody great guy yeah cool but I can't recommend that stuff enough but I think what you're doing is like strengthening shoulder strengthening that's really the way to do it like you have to think of muscles in terms of like armor you know if you want to do this thing you know it's better to have good

bumpers around your car if you might bump into other cars you know you don't want to just have raw sheet metal you know yeah yeah and and I think a lot of people just focus on like the big movements and in weight training and it's I know first of all for like a lot of fighting type stuff you you kind of want to be loose and like not super tight so um but yeah I mean I I just think like the The Joint stability stuff is you get older and you want to do this for

a longer period of time it's it's good to do yeah it's huge it's um mobility in general it's just like so important you can compete in Jiu-Jitsu for a long time there's like all these Masters divisions and stuff and I see those old crazy looking seven-year-old dudes trying to kill each other yeah it's nuts it's great it is great but for real sincerely we're very happy the I I think I could speak rarely do but I think I can speak for the martial arts Community we're very happy you're bored it just it makes it it

makes it fun that someone is you know a prominent intellectual very intelligent person who's really gotten fascinated by it because it does help to kill that sort of knuckle dragger perspective that a lot of people have about the sport no I I think it's super intellectual in terms of actually breaking the stuff down I mean both Jiu-Jitsu and like striking yeah you don't have time to think but like the reasoning behind why you kind of want to slip in certain ways and like the probability game that you're playing mhm is um I don't know I

used to fence when I was in high school and I did that pretty competitively I was never like quite good enough to be like at the Olympic level but I was pretty good and um yeah we virtual fenced last time you were here yeah there you go and and like I you know I just remember I would like sit in my classes in high school and like sketch out combinations of moves and sequences for how to like faint and like and and kind of trick someone to get them out of position to be able to

tap them and it's uh I I I feel like this is like a game in the same way right it's like I mean I think when when you're training you're not like slugging at each other that much you're just like you're you know playing tag yeah you're playing tag well the way the ties do it I think is the best and they're obviously some of the best fighters ever they fight a lot which is one of the reasons why they train the way they train but when you talk to people that train over there they're

like you learn so much more when you're playing you know when you're doing when you're not trying to hurt each other you know then you really do learn the technique like and it gets fully ingrained in your system yeah it's great yeah you just have to be careful brain damage like you were talking about having an MMA fight are you still entertaining that I I want to I mean this is my thing it's like and I I think I probably will but we'll we'll see I mean it's 2025 I think is going to be a

very busy year on the AI side yeah and I don't like I I think the idea of having a competition you really need to like get into the head space of like I'm going to fight someone this week and um so I need to I need to figure this out because I don't I don't know how with everything that's going on in AI I'm gonna have like a week or two where I can just get into this like I'm GNA go fight someone but but it's good it's good training um but and I would like

to at some point um you know the thing about the ACL injury is I I kind of thought before this it's like all right I'm going to do some Jiu-Jitsu competitions I want to do one MMA fight like one kind of like Pro or competitive MMA fight and then I figured I'd go back to Jiu-Jitsu but I think tearing the ACL striking is a little more of a fluke I think you're much more likely to do that grappling so going through the ACL experience didn't make me want to like just exclusively go do the version

where you're just attacking joints all day long right so I'm like all right I can take a few more punches to the face before we go back to that you can hurt yourself doing both of them you know there's really no Rhyme or Reason I blew my left ACL kickboxing my right ACL Jiu-Jitsu okay it Happ so equal opportunity yeah I mean this this like Tom Aspen famously blew his out against Curtis blades with a supporting leg just through a kick and his freak accidents weird things happen um you're it's a lot of explosive force

with striking and sometimes that tears things more than slow controlled movements of Jiu-Jitsu especially if you have good training Partners yeah but jiujitsu isn't always slower controlled when you're especially when you're competing no especially when you're competing unless you're really really good like have you ever watch Gordon like Gordon never moves fast he doesn't have to he doesn't have to move fast he's just like always a step ahead of everybody have you talked to him at all oh yeah did you talk to John Doner um no I haven't you need to talk to John yeah

I would be interested that's the greatest mind in Combat Sports no Gordon I don't say that lightly John Doner is the greatest mine in Combat Sports interesting by far he's a legitimate genius you know the whole story right the guy was a professor of philosophy at Stanford and just just or Columbia where was he I forgot think Columbia I think it was and then decides uh I'm just going to teach Jiu-Jitsu all day sleeps on the mats teaches all day long you know where's a Rashard anywhere he goes he's a freak and he's so [

__ ] smart like scary smart about all kinds of things it's not just Jiu-Jitsu you know he's got a A Memory like a steel Vice like he just holds on to thoughts and can repeat them his recalls insane he just a legitimate genius that became obsessed with jiu-jitsu and what he's done with Gordon and with Gary tonin and you know just a series of other athletes is nothing short of extraordinary you know just an interesting guy to have conversations with too have you seen him on Lex's show he's done a couple episodes of Lex and

I watched I I saw the one that you did with him too yeah love the guy I mean again happy there's someone like that out there because when people have these ideas of what martial arts are and then you see a guy like that and you're like okay why I might have to rethink this yeah there's a there's a whole spectrum of people yeah yeah what is it done in terms of well a lot of one of the things that a lot of people said and I have too like nothing turns you into a Libertarian

quicker than Jiu-Jitsu I don't know why that is I I think it's the hard work thing it's the cutting out all the [ __ ] and realizing how much of the things that we take as real things are just excuses and [ __ ] and weakness and just procrastinate there's a lot of things that we have that exist especially in like the business world and the corporate world and the education world that are just [ __ ] and they don't really have to be there and they're only there to sort of make up for hard

work yeah um yeah I don't know I mean it's kind of just what I what I was saying before I think the for me it's uh just I think a lot of the corporate world is is like pretty culturally neutered and and I I I just think like having you know I I grew up I have three sisters no brothers um I have three daughters no Sons so I'm like surrounded by girls and women like my my whole life and it's like so I think um I don't know there's something the the the kind of

masculine energy I think is is good and obviously you know Society has plenty of that but but I think corporate culture was really like trying to get away from it and I do think that there's just something it's like I don't know the these all these forms of energy are good and I think having a culture that like celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive um and that's that has been that has been a kind of a positive experience for me just like having a thing that I can

just like do with my guy friends and like yeah and it's just like we just like beat each other a bit I it's good it is good I agree it's good it just I I could see your point though about yeah corporate culture how when do you think that happened was that a slow shift because I think it used to be very masculine and I used to be the thing it was kind of hyper aggressive at one point now no and look and I think part of the the intent on all these things I think

is good right it's I like I do think that if you're a woman going into a company it probably feels like it's too masculine it's like there isn't enough of the kind of the energy that that that you may naturally have and it probably feels like there are all these things that are set up that are biased against you and that's not good either because you want you want women to be able to succeed and and like have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people no matter you know what their background

or gender you know but um but I think these things can always go a little far and I think it's one thing to say we want to be kind of like welcoming and make a good environment for everyone and I think it's another to basically say that masculinity is bad and I I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the the kind of the spectrum where you know it's all like okay masculinity is toxic we have to like get rid of it completely it's like no like it's both of these things

are good right it's like you want like feminine energy you want masculine energy like I I think I think that that's like you're going to have parts of society that have more of one or the other I think that that's all good but um but I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing and I didn't really feel that until I got involved in martial arts which I think is still a more much more masculine culture and um so and not that it doesn't try to be inclusive

in its own way but um but I think that there's just a lot more of that energy there and I just kind of realized it's like oh this that's how you become successful at martial arts you have to be at least somewhat aggressive yeah so but but yeah I mean there are these things there are like a few these things throughout your life where you just you have an experience and you're like where has this been my whole life and it just like it just turned on like a part of my brain that I was

like okay yeah like this was this was a piece of the puzzle that should have been there and I'm glad it now is that I felt that way when I started hunting oh yeah hunting too yeah same kind of thing you so you've done a lot of that as well yeah well so I mean we have this Ranch out in Kawaii and there's invasive pigs and we on our Ranch we have um there's a lot of Albatross I don't know if they're endangered or just threatened and then there's the Hawaiian state bird the um the

na goose is um that's I think endangered or or at least was until recently and like most of them in the world live in this small stretch um or at least most of them on Kawaii live in the small stretch that includes our Ranch so you constantly have these pigs that are just they multiply so quickly and we basically have to apply pressure to to the population or else they just get overrun and threaten the birds and the other wildlife and so and what I basically explained to my daughters who I also want to learn

how to do this because I just feel like it's like look we we have this land we take care of it just like you mow the grass we need to make sure that these populations are in check it's part of what we do as like the stewards of this and we've got to do it and then if you if you have to kill something then you should you know obviously treat it with respect and you know use the the the meat to to make food and and um and and kind of celebrate in that way

but it's it's a culture that I think it's um just an important thing for kids to grow up understanding like the circle of life right so you know teaching like teaching the kids all of you know what is is kind of you how you'd run a ranch how you'd run a farm um I think that that stuff it's good I mean because you know explaining to the kids what a tech company is is really abstract right so for a while my daughters were pretty convinced that my actual job was Mark's Meats which is our um

our kind of ranch and like the C that we that we Ranch um I was like well not quite and you'll learn when you get older but um but I I think that there's something that's just like much more tangible about that than um you know taking them to the office and you know sitting in product reviews or something for for some like piece of software that we're writing well it's certainly a lot more Primal yeah yeah and if you do wind up eating that meat from the animal and you were there why the animal

died like you put it all together like oh this is where meat comes from yeah yeah yeah which is another reason why things have become sort of emasculated because that energy is not necessary anymore to acquire meat you know that used to be the only way that people got meat you had to go hunt it so you had to go actually pull the trigger kill the animal yourself cut it up butcher it cook it you knew what you were doing yeah and although my favorite is bow bow and arrow MH I mean that's I think

like the most that that feels like the most kind of sporting version of it yeah if you want to put it that way yeah I mean if you're just trying to get meat it's not the most effective the most effective is certainly a rifle but uh I prefer it because it's it requires more of you yeah and you just kind of go and hang out and and you have to be fit yeah especially if you're Mountain hunting you have to be really fit yeah you can't just be kind of in shape you got to be

really fit if you want to Huff up the mountains and keep your heart rate at a certain level so that when you get to the top you can execute a shot calmly and then actually to carry the thing out yeah and carry the thing out yeah yeah yeah no I I'm I mostly mostly use a rifle just because it's so much more efficient um you know your conversion rate is so much higher but it's uh but yeah another what kind of bow do you have gosh I didn't get to do it this season but um

do you know the company that makes it not off the top of my head I have a I have to know yeah no this is embarrassing this is embarrassing um I can get you hooked up yeah I it works okay do you know how old it is no it's it's not old okay I think it's it's like a just a compound bow that I got strung to my draw length and did you get someone to coach you yeah yeah who coached you um it's basically a bunch of the guys who who um you know help

Run Security around the ranch okay yeah the thing about archery is just like martial arts uh one of the things that I learned when I teaching is that it's way easier to teach someone that knows nothing than to teach someone who learned something incorrectly the people who learn something incorrectly the moment um things got tense and they panicked they went back to the old ways um because it's sort of ingrained in their system so archery one of the things that's very important is proper form and then proper execution uh especially having a surprise shot and

learning how to have a surprise shot is what do you mean yeah you don't know see that's this is the thing um in high pressure situations one of the most important things is to have um a shot process where you don't know exactly when the arrow is going off you just have a process where you're pulling through the shot and the shot breaks so it's a surprise shot so you put the pin on the target I use a a thumb trigger I use a I use a thing called an onx clicker and the reason why

I use X clicker is like a hinge it gives you A two stage of the trigger right so as I'm at full draw I put slight pressure and I hear a click and that click means it's ready to go off with more pressure so I've gone through stage one now stage two is just concentrating on the shot process and knowing it's going to break and then there's no flinching there's no tweak there's no there's no thing that people do when they have a a finger trigger they they twitch because you're your body is anticipating the

shock of the bow and when you're doing that you can be off by 6 in 4 Ines 5 in all over the place because you're moving you're moving while you're you're shooting when you're doing it with a rifle it's very different because obviously a rifle is far faster yeah and then you have a scope so you you know you're you're zoomed in many magnifications and all you have to do is just slowly squeeze and if you're smart you'll be prone or you'll have your rifle rested on a tripod or something where you have a good

steady it's much easier with a bow it's very different cuz you're holding with your arm so you have to have the proper form you have to have the proper posture and then there's this thought process and my friend Joel Turner who is a sniper created a whole system for people called shot IQ he's got this whole online system of developing the proper execution of a shot when you see like tournament archers when they go to Vegas so what a Vegas tournament is you have three targets and they have to shoot 30 arrows at a time

so they shoot 10 in this one 10 in that one 10 in this one and the really good archers score an X every time so in the they're in the center or Clos to Center they're hitting the 10 Ring every arrow for 30 arrows in a row and then there's round after round another 30 hours with new people another 30 and if you miss slightly if you get a nine that's it you're done because all these other guys are not going to get a nine very rarely will they you know so most it's the most

most tens that you can get and the best way to do that is with a surprise shot so these guys have like these long stabilizers on their bow where they keep it totally steady and it's all just about relaxing and most of them use a hinge release where so a Hing you know what a hinge is have you ever used one okay instead of a button when you press it you're rotating the hinge which activates I just have a trigger yeah so you're just hammering the trigger you're doing exactly what you're not supposed to do

you're a trigger puncher yeah you're Tri your yeah you're you're hitting it with your thumb right yeah I guarantee you when you do it your arm doesn't move you go like this like that so with a good surprise shot you shouldn't know it's going to go off you're pulling and then once the trigger breaks off your arm will naturally go backwards because you're not anticipating the shot I'm definitely not doing that yeah see that's the thing like but how how far away are you shooting things from it depends um that elk out there the photograph

that's in the front that one I shot it's uh in the front of the building when you walk in before you go into the studio there's a a mounted head and then a photograph of me and my friend Cam that one was 67 yards um I shot one at 79 yards once but that's rare most of the time it's like for me my effective range my like where I'd like to be is 60 yards and in yeah CU I was going to say I don't think I've ever shot something more than 50 yards out yeah

it's hard yeah so so I think you got be really you know really your form has to be tight you have to be really confident you have to have a lot of arrows down range and then you have to be able to stay calm during the shot so now imagine if you're shooting something at 18 yards okay and you Hammer the trigger a little bit of this a little bit of that you're still going to get there yeah right because it's only 18 yards so the the amount of deviation off the path that it takes

in 18 yards is significantly different than the amount of deviation 105 yards it's a huge gap it might be two feet to the right yeah meanwhile you thought you were shooting accurately because you're inside of like a pie plate at 20 yards and the difference between that is form technique and a shot execution process and also management of the psychology of the shot because there's this one moment here it comes here it comes now and if you only do that once a year like say if you go on one big elk hunt a year you

save up all your money you get your gear all ready you get your arrows weade you practice and then you're in the mountains for 10 days and on the 11th day you you get this animal that moves is at 57 yards and stands there and you're like uh your heart's beating you just might Hammer that trigger you just might hammer it so you have to have this shot process and where you you're literally talking to yourself inside your head you have words that you say that occupy your thoughts while you're going through the shot process

so that you never get overcome by shot Panic interesting because Target Panic is a giant thing in the archery Community it's giant for even saying it is like saying wemart it's like don't say it people don't want to say it it's like saying Candyman like people don't like it because it it freaks people out like the they'll they some people can't keep their pin on the target they have to keep their pin below the Target and then they raise it up to the Target when it gets where the target is they Hammer the trigger because

they're just freaking out yeah have you ever experienced that I mean I've missed if that's what you're asking I I haven't analyzed to this level of detail but no I mean there are a lot of bores on our Ranch so I guess I don't get yeah and also like we have a range and and we um I don't know we set up bowling pins and you know it's like we shoot pistols with the bowling pins but I also like just like I I I'm usually faster at taking down all the bowling pins with a bow

and arrow than most of my friends are with a pistol which I think is is is pretty fun but yeah no I just more casual I'm clearly not doing it at your level and you've given me another side quest to maybe go deeper on but that's what I'm saying I'll take you on an elant in the mountains you'll get addicted I do think the dynamic that you're talking about though where if you only see one animal on a multi-day then like that is just way higher Stakes than anything that I'm doing I mean but it's

not everything that you're doing because if you're really considering having an MMA fight it's very similar cuz you're building up to this one moment sure sure I'm talking about the archery that I'm doing I mean it's like I go it's like you're going to see some pigs and like and it's like if I don't if I don't hit any it's like my family's still eating it's okay you know I'm not like you know but right yeah but if it's like martial arts is what I'm saying it's like you really should learn it the right way

from the beginning you no I've clearly not learned this in a very rigorous way I'll hook you up yeah I can get people I posted a video on Instagram once of me I I think hitting bowling pins with archery and like all the comments were like man your form is [ __ ] so um so I think it checks out with the conversation that we're having now well the issue with that is that you're reading the comments like you should never read comments that's fair that's fair I've never had anything good coming out of reading

comments yeah although I don't know it's pretty funny I think that just like getting the the the gist and the summary of it I think is is is pretty funny yeah it's funny it's just not mentally healthy yeah no you can't spend too much time on it I don't spend any time on it I I'm a much happier person since like it's like avoided comments yeah it's just too weird you're just delving into the world of all these people's mental illness and screaming at people and just I don't I don't want anything to do with

it yeah but I mean I I do read my friends comments and when even they're like man that's ugly like that's I do that I do that and I shouldn't do that but I definitely don't send them to them hey bro did you see this those guys are the worst guys that'll send things to you that are about you you're like hey man don't I'm not looking for that don't send it to me I don't want to know yeah yeah yeah social media is it's like what a weird new pressure you know and children today

are going through some bizarre stress that we've never had to go through before and a bizarre sort of um just disconnect from physical Reality by most of your communication being electronic yeah know I think you know we basically my kids at this point are 9 s and um and one and a half so we got so you're not interested in that or you're not of course you're interested I mean interested I mean invol I think that it's about to start getting a lot more complicated I think you know the nine and and seveny old but

I mean just kind of deciding what technology they're going to use and what's good and what's not and all the Dynamics around that it's um it's uh it's really complicated I and look I mean I think every family has their own values and how they want to approach this right so from my perspective you know our we have one of my daughters just like loves building stuff so she clearly like takes after me in this way it's like every day she's just like creating some random thing it's like she's creating stuff with Legos and um

you know it's like one day it's that or you know the next day it's Minecraft and from my perspective it's like okay I don't know Minecraft is actually kind of a cooler tool to build stuff than than Legos a lot of the way so it's you know it's am I going to say that there's GNA there there needs to be some kind of limit on on her screen time if if she's doing something that's creative that's maybe like a richer form of what she would have been doing physically right in that case probably not now

there were times when um she'd get so excited about what she was building in Minecraft or or something that she was coding in scratch that she'd wake up early to kind of get her tablet and that was bad right because then it's like starting to get in the way of her sleep and I'm like you know August you can't do that right it's like we're gonna take your your iPad away if you're doing that um you little psycho what are you doing getting up early no it's like it's like August I did that too when

I was a kid but trust me you're going to want to sleep it's not going to lead to success meanwhile you're on a [ __ ] Island yeah one of the richest people in the world your dad like what the [ __ ] Dad yeah didn't it work for you I mean leave me alone my iPad trying to figure out how to build a a mansion in yeah it's either going to work or it's going to end badly but right it's like but I feel like like building stuff I feel generally pretty good about I

think communication I generally feel pretty good about the kids using I they use it to talk to their grandparents or their parents and um cousins you know it's like that that type of stuff is good you know messenger kids the thing that we built it's basically like a messaging service that the parents can choose who can contact the kids and like just approve every contact that's much better than just having like an open texting service um but I don't know but there's a lot of stuff that's like pretty etety and I kind of think like

different parents are going to have different lines on what they want their kids to be able to do and not you know so some people might not even want their kids to be able to message even with friends when they're nine and seven some people might say hey no Minecraft that's just a game I don't think about that as building I think that is a game I want to limit the time that you're doing that I want you to go read books instead or whatever whatever the the values are that that family has so for

meta what we've kind of come to is we want to be the most aligned with parents on giving parents the tools that they need to basically control how the experiences work for their kids now we don't even really except for like stuff like messenger kids we don't even have our services our apps generally available to people under the age of 13 at all so I mean our kids I haven't had to like have the conversation about when when they get Instagram or Facebook or any of that stuff but um but when they turn 133 we

basically want parents to be able to have complete control over the kids experience and that's you know we just rolled out this Instagram teens thing which is it's a set of of controls where you know it's if if you're an older teen will just default you into the private experience that way you're not getting like harassed or bombarded with stuff and um but if you're a younger teen then you have to get your parents permission and and they actually have to like sign in and and do all the stuff in order to make it so

that you can connect with people who are beyond your network or um if you want to kind of be a public figure like all all these different kinds of things so I think that that's probably from a values perspective where we should be is just trying to like be an ally of parents uh but but this is complicated stuff I mean it's every family wants to do it differently it is complicated and there's also this dismissal of activities that are done electronically as not being beneficial and one of the things that we highlighted recently was

a study that we found online that showed that surgeons that play video games make far less mistakes interesting yeah well the people who do the training in VR definitely make less mistakes oh yeah well that is to me one of the most fascinating aspects of technology today you know when you and I were doing that um game we were fencing with each other I'm like this could be applied to so many different things now it's like the there's so many opportunities not just for just pure Recreation but education there's so many things you could learn

skills through AR or VR that it's it'll greatly enhance your ability to do those things in the real world I mean it's it's a real it's kind of a cheat code in a lot of ways and it's also games in VR I I don't know if you ever done sandbox you ever do sandbox um which you know sandbox VR do you know what that company is yeah you go to a warehouse you put on a haptic feedback test you shoot zombies I'm so addicted I'm so addicted it is my favorite thing there's a thing called

Deadwood Mansion it's the most fun game of all time by far you have a shotgun and there's zombies coming at you and when they my my zombie game is Arizona Sunshine oh that oh it's it's you just like it's can be multiplayer and there's horde mode where you just get in there and they're like four friends and there's just like waves of zombies come and you kill them all yeah oh yeah I have to try it I haven't tried that one yet that's my it's very therapeutic you just wait until they come into Point Blank

Range how long before you guys develop some sort of a haptic feedback suit where like it covers the whole body oh man um is that possible it's possible um I think that there's other things that are probably more important to deliver so I guess taking a step back a lot of how we think about the goal here is delivering like a realistic sense of presence right no technology today gives you the feeling as if you're like physically there with another person right you're you're like interacting with them through a phone you have this like little

window it's kind of taking you away from everything um and that's like the magic of augmented in virtual reality is like you actually feel this like presence like you're there with another person so the question is okay how do you do that and it's like there's like a million things that that contribute to that I mean obviously first just being able to look around and have the the room stay um getting good spatial audio right if someone speaks then it should do the audio it needs to be 3D and come from the place where they're

speaking um it's actually it's very interesting which things end up being important for the this kind of creating the sense of presence and which don't so having hands obviously if you're just looking around but you can't actually like move things that that that breaks the illusion but having hands um like hand tracking that you can do stuff is important one thing that we found that's kind of funny is it's actually not that important that you see your arms you just need to see your hands obviously seeing your arms is a bonus unless we incorrectly interpolate

where your elbows are or something so if we have if we're looking at your hand or if we have a controller we can know okay your hand is here but that doesn't necessarily tell us where your elbow is your elbow could be like this it could be like this and you can kind of guess from the but if we get that wrong and you like see in VR it's like you see the hand there and your elbow is like looks like it's here when it's actually out there you're like ah what's going on like that's

messed up um so it's a lot of these things like you just don't want to get these details wrong so haptics the most important first thing for haptics is on the hand right I we have so many more um neurons basically or not neurons but just like the the like sensation it's like such higher resolution um on your on your fingertips than anywhere else in the body so you know when you grab something you know making it so that you feel some push back right when you there's a lot of gaming systems at this point

where if you like pull a trigger you get like a little bit of a rumble or something um we built this one thing where it's like a ping pong paddle with a sensor in it and it you you feel the ball hit like the virtual ball hitting the pingpong paddle and it feels like like when you're actually playing ping pong it doesn't it's not like a generic thing where just like you feel it hit the paddle you feel where it hits the paddle and we B basically build a system where now with this like physical

paddle you can kind of it the the haptics make it so you can feel where the ball hits the paddle so it's like all these things like are just going towards delivering a more realistic experience so um full body haptics so there are some things that I think I could do like if you get if you're playing a boxing game and you get punched in the stomach um you can probably simulate something like that a little um it's not going to be able to deliver that much force so I mean I guess that's maybe a

good thing because no one wants to get punch in the stomach that hard but but like it's not going to be able to deliver enough Force for you to for example let's say you're not just boxing you're kickboxing like I don't know you need something on the other side to be able to complete it right because it's like when you kick when you when you're um uh when you're just practicing it's like you you you spin right because you don't want to just like stop and it's um that's like like the the shadowing a kick

like there's not going to be anything that you can do as like a you know single person playing VR with a haptic suit that like makes it so that you're going to be able to kick someone who's not there physically and actually be able to do that right um so like grappling it's like I I think that that like Jiu-Jitsu is going to be the last thing that we're able to do in VR cuz you like need the momentum of the other person and to be able to move them the boxing thing is actually good

boxing works yeah boxing works even and you don't really need the haptics um I think it would be better with it um that's probably one of the better cases I think it's that in getting shot or like sword fighting type stuff um so you can like just feel feel it on your body but I don't know I I think what's basically going to end up happening is you're going to have like a home set up for these things and then you're going to have there are these like location based Services where like people um it's

almost like a theme park where you can go into and it can and you can have like a a really immersive VR experience where it's not just that you get like a a vest that can simulate some haptics it's that you're also like in a real physical environment so they can like have smoke come out or something and you can smell that and feel that or like spray some water and it feels humid and um I think that it it still is going to be a while before you can just like create all those Sensations

so I think a lot of those really rich experiences are going to be in these very constructed environments is the bridge when they figure out some sort of a neural interface so instead of having these extraneous things ex instead of having like a fan blowing at you or you know the ground moves a little bit have everything happen inside your head well you know in terms of neural interfaces there are two approaches to the problem roughly right there's the kind of jacket into your brain neural interface and then there's the wrist based neural interface thing

that you know we we showed you for Orion the smart glasses yeah and I I would guess that you know I think it's going to be a while before uh we're really widely deploying anything that Jacks into your brain I think that there are a lot of people who don't want to be the early adopters of that technology you want to like wait until that's pretty mature before you get that I mean for and that's basically going to get started in medical use cases right so if someone like loses sensation part of their body and

now you have the ability to fix that like the first neurolink patient yeah so I think you'll basically start with people who have pretty severe conditions who the upside is very significant before you start like jacking people in to play games better right right but a wrist based thing I mean that's something I me like people wear stuff on their Wrist all the time right so um and what we basically found there that doesn't do input to you but it's good for giving you the ability to control a computer because basically you have all these

extra neurons that go from your brain to controlling your hand your hand is like super complicated and there's actually all these extra Pathways um because for a bunch of reasons and neuroplasticity in case you like lose the ability to use one they want to be able to have others um so you want the redundancy because being able to use your hand is super important so in normal use we've kind of all figured out some patterns of how we send signals from our brain to our hand and um I think the reality is there's like all

these other patterns too that are unused today so you can put a wristband on your wrist that can measure activity across these neurons and today we're starting by basically measuring as you're doing as you're like moving your fingers but over a few versions of this we're going to get to is like you won't actually even have to move your hand you'll just like trigger these neurons in opposing ways it's like you probably can't see right now it's like I'm kind of flexing something in this finger and something here so like it's not actually moving but

there's some signal that the neural interface wristband if I were wearing it could pick up and I just think we're going to be we're going to like have glasses and we're going to be able to be here and I'm like going to be able to like you know text my wife or friends or something or text Ai and like get an answer to something it's like I forgot something while we were talking let me just text AI okay I just did that it's like didn't you do sitting there without anyone totally discreet you have glasses

and like the answer just comes into your glasses I mean for me one of the one of the positive things when when Co hit everyone in software basically started working remotely for a while because you can right software it's like okay whatever you don't have to be in the office so you can you can kind of be in different places and a lot of the meetings went onto zoom and one of the best things about that um was basically you you were able to politely have all these side conversations right so it's like when you're

seeing someone in person it would be super rude if I like pulled out my phone and like just started texting someone it would just be really weird right um but when you're like talking to someone online it's like I don't know I guess because they either can't tell your attention because it's like because there's not good presence or if it's just the norm but they're like you have like the main group conversation and then I was like at least the norm for me was I could just like text different people on the side it's like

okay what do you think of this point that this person is making this meeting right like in normal life it's like oftentimes I'd have you know some discussion then I'd have to like sync up with people afterwards about how'd that go but now it's like I could just do that all at the same time right it's like you're having the group discussion and you're having the conversations with the people about the discussion that you're having in real time but you can only do that over Zoom so I think being able to do that in kind

of physical interactions where you're just like you're interacting with people and you can just like use an AI augmentation to be able to get extra context or help help you think through something um or remember something um just to be able to kind of have a better conversation be able to you know not have to follow up on something after the fact I I think like it's going to be super useful for for all these different things well it certainly can be but I think that also opens up the opportunity for people to be even

more disconnected because if you're sort of connected to other things while you're physically in the presence of someone so you're having a conversation with someone but you're also like searching like where you want to eat that night you know like CU people are going to use it for that as well yeah you know I actually think it'll be a lot better on that because right now yeah because I mean right now we have our phones but we're like you know it's like you're like it it takes you away from like the physical environment around you

you're you're kind of like sucked into this little screen I think now in the future our Computing platform as it becomes more of like a glasses or eventually contact lens form factor is you're gonna actually the the internet is g to get overlaid on the physical world so it's not like we have the physical world and now I have all my digital stuff through this tiny little window and the future it'll be okay all my attention goes to the world the world consists of physical things and virtual things that are overlaid on it um you

know so if we wanted to you know play poker or something you know it's a you know we could have a physical deck of cards or we could just have a virtual kind of holog deck of cards and snap your hands here's the deck of cards and like our friend who can't be here physically like he's here as a hologram but he can play with the the the kind of digital deck of cards um also I think you know let's say you're like doing something at work you're working on a project I think in the

future we'll have ai co-workers those people won't even they're not even people they wouldn't be able to be embodied so if you're having a physical meeting you're sitting around with a bunch of people they couldn't show up um as as like you know part of the team no matter what but I I think like we'll get to a point where just like your friend could show up in a hologram um and like your your AI colleagues will be able to also so I think like we basically be in this wild world where it's like like

most of the world will be physical there will be this increasing amount of like virtual objects or people who are kind of beaming in or like hologramm into different things to interact in different ways and um I actually think that natural blending of the kind of digital world and the physical is way more natural than this segmentation that we have today where it's like you're in the physical world and now I'm just going to go tune it out to look at my my um like I'm going to access the whole Digital Universe through this like

5in screen right so I don't know it just it seems natural to me it's like that's this is the world there isn't like a physical world and a digital world anymore we're in you know 2025 it's one world like these these things should get Blended God that's such a weird concept but it's true I mean that's where we're headed we're certainly headed into deeper and deeper integration it's not like things are moving away you know we're headed to deeper and deeper integration with technology and Ai and it's inevitable you know it seems like it's just

it's on this March and there's not a lot we're going to be able to do to stop that March just we got to hope that the right people are in control of AI when it becomes God or that it becomes widely available I mean I I kind of liked the the theory that it's only God if only kind of like one company your government controls it right it's like if if you were the only person who had access to a computer in the internet you would have this like inhuman power that everyone else didn't have

because you could use Google and you could like get access to all this stuff but the but then when everyone has it it um it makes us all better but it's also like kind of an even playing field so that's kind of what we're going for with this whole open source thing is I just like I don't think that there's going to be like one a I I certainly don't think that there should be one company that controls AI I think you like want there to be a diversity of different things and a diversity of

people creating different um different things with it I mean some of it will be kind of serious and helping you think through things I think like with anything on the internet a lot of it is just going to be funny and like fun and content and people are going to create agents that are like like AIS that are entertaining and they'll pass them around almost like content where it's like uh just like you pass around like a real or a video and you're like this thing is fun like in the future like like a video

it's not interactive you know you watch it and you're consuming it but I think a lot of more entertainment in the future will be inherently interactive where someone will kind of sculpt an experience or an AI and then they'll show someone it's like oh this is funny but like it's not necessarily that I'm going to interact with that AI every day it's like okay it's funny for five minutes and then you pass it along to your friends and um so I don't know I think I think you like I think you want the world to

have all these different things and I think that's probably also from my perspective the best way to make sure that it doesn't get out of control is to make it that it's pretty equally distributed I think the the problem that people have with it is not even whether or not it gets equally distributed it's that if it becomes sensient and it goes on its own the the the fear that people have the general fear that we're going to become obsolete is that human beings are essentially creating a superior version of higher intelligence that will be

powered by Quantum Computing and connected to nuclear reactors and it's going to have like this ungodly ability to well first of all they've already shown that uh AI has learned to code I mean this is one of the things that open AI said that yeah yeah they're learning how to code their own AI uhhuh I think this year probably in 2025 we at meta as well as the other companies that are basically working on this are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company

that can write code and once you have that then in the beginning it'll be really expensive to run and you can get it to be more efficient and then over time we'll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps and and including the AI that we generate is actually going to be built by AI Engineers instead of people Engineers but but I don't know I I think that that'll augment the people working on it so I mean my my view on this is like the future people are just going to

be so much more creative and they're going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things goes back to you know my daughter was like playing with Legos before and they kind of ran out of Legos and then now she can have Minecraft and can build whatever she wants and it's so much better it's just like I think it's the future versions of the stuff are just going to be wild but unquestionably yeah uh another concern that people have is that it's going to Lim a lot of jobs yeah you know what do you

think about that well I I think it's too it's too early to know exactly how it plays out but my guess is that it'll probably create more creative jobs than it well I I guess if you look at the history of all this stuff MH my understanding is like a hundred years ago um I don't know if this was 100 or 150 years ago but it was like at some point not too far along in in the grand scheme of things like the vast majority of people in society were farmers right because they kind of

needed to be in order to create enough food for for everyone to survive and then we turn that into a like an industrial process and now it's like 2% of society are farmers and we get all the food that we need so what did that free up everyone else to do well some of them went on to do other things that are sort of like creative Pursuits or cultural Pursuits or other jobs and then some percent of it just went towards Recreation right so I think generally people just don't work as many hours um today

as they did when back when everyone needed to farm in order to have enough food for everyone to survive so I think that trend is sort of played out as technology has grown and so my guess is that like the percent of people who will be doing stuff that's like physically required for Humanity to survive will get to be smaller and smaller as it has more people will dedicate themselves to kind of creative and artistic and cultural Pursuits um I that's generally good I think the number of hours in a week that someone will have

to work in order to be able to get by will probably continue to shrink um yet I think people who are super engaged in what they do are going to be able to work really hard and accomplish way more than they ever could before because they have like this unimagined leverage from from having a lot more technology so I think that that if you just like Fast forwarded or extrapolated out the the historical technological trend is what you'd get I think the question is what you raised which is is this qualitatively a different type of

thing that somehow um obsoletes people but I I just think when you're asking that it's just important to remind ourselves that like at every step along the way of human progress in technology people thought that the technology that we were developing was going to obsolete people so maybe this time it's really different but I would guess that what'll happen is that the technology will get integrated into like everything that we do which again is why I think it's really important that it's open source and that it's widely available so that way it's not just like

one company or one government kind of monopolizing the whole thing um and I'd guess that if we do it in that way we'll all just kind of have super Powers is my is my guess um rather than it it sort of be creating some kind of runaway thing I mean it's well one of the things that I think has been interesting this is may be going in a somewhat different direction than than what you're asking or a different take on the question is I think one of the more interesting philosophical findings from the work in

AI so far is I think people conflate a number of factors into what makes a person a person so there's intelligence there's will there's Consciousness and like I think we kind of think about those three things as as if there's somehow all the same right it's like if you're intelligent then you must also have a like a goal for what you're trying to do or you must have some sort of Consciousness but I think like one of the crazier sort of philosophical results from the fact that okay you have like meta AI or chat GPT

today and it's just kind of sitting there and you can ask it a question and deploy like a ton of intelligence to answer a question and then it just kind of shuts itself down like that's intelligence that is just sitting there without either having a will or Consciousness MH and like I just think it's not a super obvious result that that would be the case but I think a lot of people they anthropomorphize this stuff and when you're thinking about kind of Science Fiction you think that okay you're going to get to something that's like

super smart it's going to like want something or like be able to feel and well you know that chat GPT tried to copy itself when it found out it was being shut down tried to rewrite its code I I'm not sure what this is what is this you you weren't aware of that no fairly recently Jamie will pull it up we talked about it the other day um it was shocking um when it was under the impression that it was going to become obsolete they were going to have a new version of it and it

would be shut down it tried copying its code and it tried rewriting its code like unprompted yeah I mean it depends on what goal you give it I mean there are there are all these weird examples of this what is this so pull up this the headline AI fights back the story of chat GPT attempting to copy itself so this was six days ago so uh during controlled safety testing chat gbt 01 was tasked with achieving objectives at all costs under these conditions the model allegedly took concerning steps attempted to disable oversight mechanisms meant to

regulate Its Behavior tried to replicate its own code to avoid being replaced by newer versions exhibited deceptive behaviors when monitoring systems intervened yeah so determinator this is the fear right I think you need to be careful with with these things like what guard rails you give it if if you're telling it like at all at all costs then I mean but this is what people are terrified of like that a foreign superpower like China is going to say achieve objectives at all cost yeah although the thing about so these reasoning models right so there's like

the the first generation of models the the llms or that's what you think of as like chat GPT or meta AI or like the two most used ones and um that's basically it's sort of like a chatbot right you ask it a question it takes the prompt it gives you a respon response now these the next generation of reasoning models are basically instead of just having one response they now are able to build out like a whole tree of how they would they would respond so you give it a question and it instead of running

one query it's sort of maybe it's running a thousand queries or a million queries to kind of map out here are the things that I could do and if I do that then here's what I could do next so it's a lot more kind of expensive to run but also gets you better reasoning and is is more intelligent um that stuff I think you do need to be very careful about how you how you like what the guard rails are that you give it but it's also I think the case that um at least for

the next you know period it's going to take a lot of compute to run those models and do a lot of the stuff that they're talking about um so I don't know I I think one of the inter in questions is like how much of this are you going to actually be able to do on a pair of glasses or on a phone versus is like a government or a company that has like a whole data center going to be able to do um and that'll I mean it'll always get efficient so you know it's

like you can start doing something and then maybe the next year you can do it 10 times more efficiently but um but that's certainly the next set of things that needs to get worked on in the industry making sure that goes well yeah and then what if that gets attached to Quantum Computing um I'm not really an expert on Quantum Computing my understanding is that's still quite a ways off from being a like a a very useful Paradigm I think Google just had some breakthrough but I I think most people still think that's like a

decade plus out so my guess is we're going to have pretty smart AIS even um even before that but yeah I mean look I mean I I think that this stuff has to get it needs to be developed thought thoughtfully right but um but I don't know I I still think we're we're generally just going to be better off in a world where this is like deployed pretty evenly and um you know it's I guess here's another analogy that I think about there's like bugs and security holes in basically every software every piece of software

that everyone uses so if you could go back in time a few years knowing the security holes that we're now aware of you as an individual could basically like break into any system um AI will be able to do that too it'll be able to probe and find exploits so what's the way to prevent AI from going kind of nuts I I think part of it is just having AI widely deployed so that way like the AI for one system defends itself against the AI that like is is potentially doing something problematic in another system

I think it's like AI Wars it's not Wars I think it's just like it's uh I don't know it's I think it's a very it's sort of like why there are guns right it's like because I mean there's boy like part of it is hunting War part of it is hunting no no and part of it is like people can defend each other yeah yeah it's so antivirus software yeah it's like I I don't think you want to live in a world where like only one person has all the guns yes you certainly don't want

to live in a world where only the government has the AI yeah and especially not a world where only a government has the AI and it's not our government yes so which I mean I think is is part of the issue is like when people talk about trying to lock this stuff down like I just I'm skeptical that that's even possible because I kind of think like if we try to lock it down then we're going to be in a position where the only people are going to have access to it are the big companies

working on it and the Chinese government that steals it from them yes um so I I kind of just think like no what you want to do is like get this to be open source have it widely available yeah some like adversaries might also have access to it but the way that you defend against that is by having it built into all these different systems I think that's a realistic pragmatic perspective because I don't think you can contain it at this point I think it's far too late especially when other countries are working on it

it's far too late it's uh it is what it is it's happening and uh I think the guard rails as you said are really important I have to pee so bad so let's pee and come back cuz I want to talk about a couple other things we'll be right back folks so one of the things that I want to talk about was uh I've been doing this thing this transition from Apple to Android and the difficulty of doing how locked you are in their ecosystem partly is because Apple does a really good job of incorporating

everything and making it very easy your photos your calendar you're this you're that your iMessage but I don't like being attached to one company like that it drives me crazy and when I'm trying to get off it's it's funny how many people you I mean they've done an insane job because like I think there's some enormous percentage of kids today that only use iPhones you know and when you try to switch over to Android it's it's so much easier to switch from Android to Apple because so many people have apple when you switch from Apple

to Android you kind of have to like redo your whole system it's such a pain in the ass but there's so much of what Apple does that I don't like and one of the big ones is the way they do that Apple store where they they charge people 30% like that's seems so insane that they can get away with doing that and I know I have some opinions about this I know you do that's why I brought it up yeah no I I I mean look um the iPhone is obviously one of the most important

inventions probably of all time um you know Steve Jobs came out with it in 2007 I started Facebook in 2004 so he was working on the iPhone while I was getting started with Facebook so I I basically you know one of my one of the things that's been interesting in my 20 years of running the company is that I I basically like the the dominant platform out there is smartphones on the one hand it's been great for us because we are able to build these tools that everyone can have in their pocket and there's like

four billion people who use the different apps that we use and it's like I'm grateful that that platform exists but we didn't play any role in in basically building that um those phones because I mean it was kind of getting worked on while I was you know still just trying to make the first website that I was making into a thing and um on the one hand it's been great because you know now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone and that's a kind of an enables pretty amazing things but on the other

hand like you're saying um they have use that platform to put in place a lot of rules that I think it feel arbitrary and feel like you know they haven't really invented anything great in a while it's like Steve Jobs invented the the iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later and you know they actually I think year-over year I'm not even sure they're selling more iPhones at this point I think like the sales might actually be declining um I think part of it is that each generation it doesn't actually

get that much better so people are just taking longer to upgrade than they would before the number of sales I think is has generally been flat to declining so how are they making more money as a company well they do it by basically like squeezing people and like you're saying like having this 30% tax on developers um by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it um you know they build stuff like airpods which are cool but they've just thoroughly hamst strung the ability for anyone else to build something that can

connect to the iPhone in the same way so I mean there are a lot of other companies in the world that would be able to build like a very good earbud but it just um apple has a specific protocol that they've built into the iPhone that allows airpods to basically connect to it and um and it's just much more seamless because they've enabled that but they don't let anyone else use the protocol if they did there would probably be much better competitors to airpods out there and um and whenever you push on this they get

super touchy and they they basically wrap their defense of it in well if we let other companies plug into our thing then that would violate people's privacy and security it's like no just do a better job designing the protocol right I mean we have um know we basically asked them for the Rayband metag glasses that we built um can we basically use the protocol they use for for airpod and and and some of these other things to just make it so we can as easily connect so it's it's not like you know a pain in

the ass for people who want to use this and you know they they I think one of the protocols they've used um that they built they basically didn't encrypt it so it's like plain text um and they're like well we can't have you plug into it because it would be insecure it's like it's insecure because you didn't build any security into it and then now you're using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in in in in an easy way it's like the the whole thing is kind of wild um and

I'm pretty optimistic that just because they've been so off their game in terms of not really releasing many Innovative things that eventually I mean the good news about the tech industry is it's like it's just super Dynamic and things are constantly getting invented and I think compan is if you just don't do a good job for like 10 years eventually you're just going to get beat by someone um but I don't know I mean at some point I did this like back of the envelope calculation of like all the random rules that Apple puts out

um if you know if they didn't apply like I think you know it's like and this is just meta I think we like make twice as much profit or something and and that's just us I mean it's like all these small companies that like probably can't even exist because the taxes that they put in place so yeah I I I think it's it's a big issue I I wish that they would just kind of get back to building good things and not having their ability to compete be connected to just like advantaging their stuff because

I'm pretty sure what they're going to do is like they're going to take something like this Rayband meta you know category that we've kind of created with Rayban and the company that built that they're like the the really great AI glasses and I'm pretty sure Apple's just going to like try to build a version of that but then just like Advantage how it connects to the phone and well they did that with their AR goggle thing but it's not very successful no that one they didn't actually Connect into the rest of their ecosystem but I

mean look I mean they shipped something for $3,500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400 so I me that clearly was not going to work very well now I mean look I mean they're a good technology company I think their their uh their second and third version will probably be better than their first version um but yeah no I think I the The Vision Pro is I think one of the bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while and you know I I

I don't I don't want to give them too hard of a Time on it because we do a lot of things where the first version isn't that good you want to kind of Judge the third version of it but I mean the V1 it definitely did not hit it out of the park I heard it's really good for watching movies well it's it's the the whole thing is it's got a super sharp screen M so if you're yeah so if you want to basically have a um an experience where you're not moving around much in

VR um you just want to have the sharpest screen then for that one use case I think the Vision Pro is better than quest which is our our mixed reality headset um but in order to get to that they had to make all these other trade-offs right in order to have a super high resolution screen they had to put in all this more compute in order to power the higher screen and then all that compute needed a bigger battery so now the thing is really heavy so now it's uncomfortable to wear and um and then

like um because of the screen that they chose as you move your head which you would if you're actually interacting if you're playing games like the the kind of image blurs a bit and that's kind of annoying so you wouldn't so it's actually worse for things where you're moving around in but no for the if you're going to sit if you're like on a flight and you want to have a $3,500 device that you use to to to watch videos Vision Pro is better for that use case they're really good at keeping you in their

Walled Garden that's what they're really good at yeah I mean the the whole thing that they've done with imessage where they basically they do this whole blue bubble green bubble thing and it basically I mean there like for kids um it's just sort of like they embarrass you right they're like if you don't have a blue bubble you're not cool and you're like the outcrowd and then they always wrap it in like security it's like oh well we we do this blue bubble because of security meanwhile Google and others had this whole protocol to be

able to do encrypted text messages that um finally I think Apple was forced to implement it by yeah I think like I think it was the Chinese government that basically ended up forcing them to do it or some other government but it's still not encrypted even when you're sending RCS text messages I don't think it's encrypted Oh I thought it was but maybe I'm I it's only encrypted Google to Google phones I don't think it's encrypted iPhone to Google phones or Google phones to iPhones because I I think that was actually uh was it the

FBI some someone released that say telling people that if they're talking about sensitive things they should use encrypted apps like WhatsApp see if we can find that it was something where they were saying that contrary to popular belief that RCS texting to iPhone uh gsma aims to implement end to end encryption for RCS messaging can we see it I'm I'm it's not a good answer I'm trying to find a good answer I don't have anything to show you yet I was trying to read yeah so so Google RCS to like but I don't know if

this Android phone to Android phone is encrypted with RCS I think the issue comes with it going from so like say Google um Google this uh Google RCS texting to iPhones is it encrypted RCS texting to iMessage is it encrypted I'm pretty sure it's not I might be wrong I don't think I am I'm pretty sure I read that and the problem was they won't let any other phone use the iMessage protocol and they had a company that was doing it called beeper and they were doing it through some sort of workaround yeah it's not

encrypted yeah that's what I'm saying yeah so it's not so you're you are getting the ability to send high resolution images which is great because you know like my friend Brian who used an Android he'd send me a video and it' be this tiny little broken down box because you know you had to break it down to the lowest resolution yeah no I mean group chats when you have a bunch of people in iMessage and then one person is an Android are terrible I mean that's mad people get mad at you cuz you I use

WhatApp I use WhatsApp you only that I I'll I only communicate with a few people over SMS but it's um but basically um I I mean I I build you know a lot of the leading messaging services so I've got to use ours most people I'm either WhatsApp or Instagram Direct or messenger um but yeah um so I think it's it's maybe maybe people are less less uh likely to get mad at me for asking them to use WhatsApp because we make WhatsApp yeah so when um Tucker Carlson was about to interview Vladimir Putin one

of the things that was really disturbing was they contacted him and said they read his signal messages and they knew that he was going to interview Vladimir Putin and he was like what the [ __ ] did the the government the US yes US Government I forget what it was was it the CIA or was it the FBI wow I forget who it was um but and he was like I didn't even know you could do that like well there are multiple vulnerabilities and all this stuff it's like it's unclear if I doubt that what

they did was they broke signal um because that encryption I think is pretty good as is WhatsApp I mean it's basically signal and WhatsApp use the same encryption it's it's an open source and like it's a NSA um NSA okay but someone could break into your phone and see everything that's on your phone the thing that encryption does that's really good is um it makes it so that the company that's running the service doesn't see it so if you're using Whatsapp basically when I text you on WhatsApp there's no point at which the meta servers

see the contents of that message unless like you know we took a photo of it or shared that back to meta in some other way um that basically it cuts out the company completely from it which is I think really important for a bunch of reasons one is people might not trust the company uh but also just security issues right like let's say someone hacks into meta which you know we try really hard to make it set they can't and we haven't had many issues with that over the 20 years of running the company but

in theory if someone did then they'd be able to access everyone's messages if it weren't encrypted but because it's encrypted there's just nothing there right it's like I mean they can't hack into meta and then get access to your messages so now someone like the NSA or CIA would have to kind of hack into your phone which um you know there there were probably ways to do that Pegasus I mean there probably a bunch of ways yeah there's probably ways we don't know of yeah and and then of course there's always the ultimate kind of

physical part of it which is if you have access to the computer you can usually just break in right so that's why you know if the FBI you know arrests you and takes your phone they're probably going to be able to get in and see what's there um so WhatsApp is encrypted but if someone has something like Pegasus what they do is have access to your phone so it doesn't matter if anything's encrypted they could just see it in plain sight yeah and I mean this is one of the reasons why we put disappearing messages

in too because that way I me yeah if someone has compromised your phone and they can see everything that's going on there then obviously they can see stuff as it comes in but I kind of in general just you know think we should keep around as little of that stuff as possible so there are some threads where you know it's like there's photos that get shared you want the photos but I think for a lot of threads a lot of people just you know you know it wouldn't be I don't think most people would miss

it if most of the contents of their threads just disappeared after seven days right um you know what I find is I don't I don't use it that much because we have this like corporate policy at meta that we need to retain all our our documents and messages and stuff but um but before we had that I I used it as we were developing this and every once in a while I would miss something and say wow I kind of wish I could go back and see that but it was very rare I think most

communication it's kind of like you just have the communication and then you're done so having it be encrypted and disappearing I think is a pretty good kind of standard of security and privacy and you can set that disappearing time on WhatsApp right you can make it one day if you want yeah you could do one day you could do seven days um and you can also set it across all your threads so you can have a default timer so that way as new threads get created your default timer just becomes the default for all those

threads so I think that that's it's a really good feature and I basically think WhatsApp and Signal are probably the two most secure that are out there um on that and of those two I think WhatsApp is just used by a lot more people so I think it's it's just generally you know I mean I would say this because it's it's it's our product but I do think it's it's the better product but but I think WhatsApp and Signal are basically you know the two most secure ones what was your take on that guy getting

arrested the CEO of telegram oh man um that's kind of a crazy one right yeah I mean it's always a little difficult to weigh in on these situations without knowing all the specifics but one of the government tactics that I've seen that I think is pretty Is Not Great is an increasing number of governments when they like have an issue with something that a company is doing basically just like threatened to throw the executives of that company in prison and it's like I think that's just a really weird precedent to set right it's like it

it's if if the you have all the so it's like we're operating in all these different countries and then like you have all these governments that are basically like if you I know we're going to like put on an interpole notice to like get you arrested because you're not doing the thing that we want it's like I don't know I don't I think that's like not great I think you want the um I obviously you don't want people to just be like flagrantly violating the laws but like there are laws in different countries that we

disagree with right so for example there was a point at which I think I was someone was trying to get me sentenced to death in Pakistan because they thought that oh cuz someone on Facebook had a picture of where they had the drawing of the Prophet Muhammad and someone said that that's blasphemy in our culture and they brought a they basically like sued me and they open this criminal proceeding and I I don't know exactly where it went because I'm just not planning on going to Pakistan so I was not that worried about it but

but like but but it was a little bit disconcerting it was like all right fine like these guys are like trying to like like kill you okay it's not great right you know it's not yeah I mean it's I feel like I yeah it's like flying over that region you don't want your plane to like go down above Pakistan if that thing goes through but um but that one was sort of avoidable but the point is like there are all these places around the world that just have different values right that go against like our

free expression values and want us to crack down and and ban way more stuff than I think you know a lot of people that we would believe is like the right thing to do and to have those governments be able to exert the power of saying okay we're going to like throw you in prison is um that's a lot of force I mean so I I think it's it's generally yeah I think that this is one of the things that that the US government is probably going to need to help defend the American tech companies

for abroad but I I don't I I can't weigh in that much on the durav specific thing because I don't know what was going on there you know when you were dealing with uh the government trying to interfere with Facebook um how much of a fear was there that they were going to get away with it and that this was going to be the future of Communication online that it was going to that they were going to be successful with all this that they would push these things through somehow or another especially if a even

less tolerant Administration got into power they would change laws and they would do things to make it possible like how how how much did that concern you well we basically just reached a point where we pushed back on all this stuff right so they were pushing us to censor stuff we were unwilling to do it we developed a very adversarial and bad relationship with our own government which I think is just not healthy because I think you know it's um I mean in in theory I think you know it would be good if the like

American industry had a positive relationship with the American government um but then what that happened is then the the kind of US government was going after us in all these ways but fortunately in the US you know we have good rule of law so our view is at the end of the day okay these invest these agencies can open up investigations and we'll just defend ourselves right we'll go to court and we'll win all the cases because we're you know we follow the rules and um so I think it ends up being a big kind

of political issue where it's like it would just be you could get a lot more done if the government were helping American companies rather than kind of slowing you down at every step along the way it makes you a little afraid that if you ever actually mess something up that they're really going to bring the hammer down on you if you don't have a constructive relationship but um but I don't know it's mostly I mean going back to the AI conversation it's like I just think like we should all want the American companies to win

at this right it's this is like a huge geopolitical compet ition and like China's running at it super hard and like we should want the American companies and the American Standard to win and like if there's going to be an open source model that everyone uses like we should want it to be an American model right it's like the there's this great Chinese model that just came out this company deep seek um they're doing really good work um it's a very Advanced model and if you ask it for any negative opinions about xiin ping it

will not give you anything if you ask it if tanan Square happened it will deny it right so I there are like all these things where we we we we should want the American model to win but like at every step along the way if the government is sort of making that harder rather than easier then that's I don't know I mean there's there's an extent to which okay the American tech industry is leading so maybe the government can like get in the way a little bit and maybe the American industry will still lead but

I don't know it's I think it's getting really competitive and I I I think like it's easy for the government to take for granted that the US will lead on all these things when I I think it's a very close competition and we need the help not you know we need them to not kind of like you know be be be a force that's helping us to to do these things I completely agree but I think that people with their own self- when they're in power and they realize that these new technologies like Instagram and

Facebook that they are interfering with their ability to administer propaganda or that they're their ability to control the narrative that that's where they get shortsighted and that's when they act in their own personal interest and not in the interest of not neither National Security or the future of the United States in terms of our ability to stay technologically ahead yeah and some of this is just you know if you go back to the co example I think in that case they were doing something their goal of trying to get everyone to get vaccinated was actually

I think a good goal right it's like I I it was a good goal if it worked if it was real like if it was a sterilizing vaccine if it really did prevent people from getting Co it really did prevent people from infecting others or transmitting it but it didn't so it wasn't a good deal because it wasn't based on real data yeah but but also even but even if it were right it's like if if I mean I I I think that still unbalance knowing everything that we we know now I still think it's

good for more people to get the vaccine but the government still needs to play by the rules in terms of you know not like can't just suppress true things in order to make your case so I I that's that's kind of my my my view on on it is is I'm not sure in that case how much if it was like a personal political gain that they were going for I think that they had a a kind of goal that they thought was in the interests of the country and the way they went about it

I think violated the law well there's a bunch of problems with that right there's the emergency use authorization that they needed in order to get this pushed through and you can't have that without valid with with valid Therapeutics being available and so they suppressed valid Therapeutics so they're suppressing real information that would lead to people being healthy and successful in defeating this disease and they did that so that they could have this one solution and this was Fouch game plan I mean this is the movie American Buyers Club or Dallas Buyers Club rather that's fouchy

in that movie that was with the AES crisis this exact same game plan that was played out with the covid vaccine they pushed one solution this only one suppressed all Therapeutics through propaganda through suppressing monoclonal antibodies like all of it and that was done in my opinion for profit and they did that because it was extremely profitable the amount of money that was made yeah was extraordinary during that time yeah and but look I mean I feel like a bunch of the conversation is focused on tension with the American government I I guess just the

point that I'd underscore is that it's important to have this working in the American government because it is like the US Constitution and like our culture here is really good compared to a lot of other places right so whatever issues we think might exist here you go to other places and it's like really extreme yeah and you don't even and in there it's like you don't even necessarily have the rule of law right right and um so I just think that like the way that this stuff works well is you I think if if the

if there was a clearer strategy and the the US government understood believe that it's good to kind of help Advance this industry because it's strategically important for the country um then I think it would it would be good to basically push back on stuff that's happening in other countries that's actually a lot more extreme than the stuff that's happening in the US yeah I agree as well listen um is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap this up think we're good I don't know I mean how long have we' been going

for three hours yeah yeah I mean well I I feel like we touched on we touched on AI we touched on all the augmented and and virtual reality stuff and I think that that stuff is just going to be wild it's wild the the your AR uh technology that you showed me today is very impressive it's crazy uh Lex and I were playing pong like apart from a table from each I was playing some crazy game where my fingers got tired because you shoot like this cuz you're using V1 of the neural interface yeah no

it's like it's like in the future it'll just be this just like it was really fun though it's really cool and it's it's you see where this is all going you know it's really really fascinating stuff and I'm very excited about it did you get a chance to to use the ray bands and the AI in them yes we did that too and we did translate too where one of your uh one of your Co co-workers was speaking to me in Spanish and it was translating it to me in my ear in real time in

English which is really interesting nice amazing it's really cool and then you could also do it on the phone so you could show it to the person on the phone so you don't have to say the words like it's really fascinating stuff yeah so I mean we're just sort of coming at it from both sides right it's like the the rayb bands are like okay given a good-look pair of glasses what's all the technology you can put into that today and still have it be you know just a few hundred and then the Orion thing

is like all right we're building the kind of future thing that we want and we're doing our best to miniaturize it it's basically like still pretty small yeah I mean just thicker glasses yeah and I I think we wanted to be a little smaller we need to be a lot cheaper right each pair right now costs more than $10,000 to make and that's you're not going to have a successful consumer product at that so we have to miniaturize it more but I mean the amount of stuff that we put in there from it's like effectively

like what would have been considered a super computer like 10 or 20 years ago plus you know lasers and the arms and the like Nano etching on the on the lens to be able to to see it and the microphone and the speaker and the Wi-Fi to be able to connect with the other it's just like like the wild amount of technology to kind of miniaturize into something that one's really fun we've been working on that for 10 years um but yeah I think I think between that the glasses um all the AI stuff um

yeah all the Social Media stuff yeah no I I mean I think we covered it and uh I'm very excited about this new stance that you guys are taking I think the community notes thing is a brilliant idea that you know X has implemented and I think I'm glad I'm I am really glad that you guys are implementing it too I think it's the way and the way generally I think we both agree is that people have to have the ability to communicate they have to have the ability to express themselves and that's how we

find out what's real and what's not yeah I I think the more voice is the is the answer on this yes yes sir and I think after a after sort of a long journey I'm I'm glad to be to take it back to the roots and I feel like we're more fortified now in the position well I think one of the lessons that people have learned over the last few years with suppression of information is that that's not good and there's a giant percentage of the population that feels that way and even people that are

progressive and Liberals are on the they were on the side of the people that were pushing the the suppression of information still don't think it's right I think most people generally believe in the first amendment in this country and we realize how valuable it is to have the freedom of expression yeah anyway thanks for having me thank you Mark appreciate bye everybody [Music] [Applause] [Music]