Pirate Wires - Mark Zuckerberg Regrets Working With Biden, Telegram Founder Arrested, & PIRATE IDOL Week 2

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

EPISODE #67: This week, we’re joined by Brad Polumbo to discuss the news of the week. The Mark Zuckerberg story arc continues to be unpredictable as the BJJ fighting, gold chain wearing, Gen-Z haircut chad is now regretful for cooperating with the Biden/Harris administration during Covid. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was arrested in France this week. Is this a free speech issue, was it politically motivated or neither? Tech press continues to be unhinged, a recent WIRED article calls out tech leaders over Trump’s infamous “very fine people” quote. And finally, week 2 of Pirate Idol! 4 new contestants join the show to win a chance at being a regular contributor to the pod. Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork, Brad Polumbo Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital Brad Twitter: https://x.com/brad_polumbo TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:00 - Zuckerberg Regrets Working With Biden/Harris Administration During C*vid. 17:40 - WIRED Magazine Attacks Silicon Valley For Supporting Trump's "Very Fine People" Quote 27:25 - Pavel Durov, Founder Of Telegram, Arrested In France 44:40 - PIRATE IDOL - The Weeks Topic: The Guardian Wants More Tech Boses Would Be Arrested - WTF? 1:21:00 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe! Leave Your Votes In The Comments. #podcast #markzuckerberg #technology #politics #culture

Mark Zuckerberg sends a letter to Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it. Yeah, so Zuckerberg's redemption arc continues. When you get in shape, you get more right wing. It's a fact. I think he wants to do good in the world. He came pretty late with this statement. Now that we have allowed misinformation to be basically a canonically bad thing, the government is using that as an excuse to contact and pressure private companies to censor speech. I don't even know why is the government allowed to talk to companies

in a private way at all? What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod we have a special guest uh guest co-host and a guest judge later for pirate idol with us brad palumbo the host of brad the brad verse everyone pod on youtube which you guys should go check out if you like him only so you better you better bring it um so brad's here we've got pirate idol coming up uh at the end of the show so that'll be our last segment i will say just kind of recapping on on what happened last week i mean again i'll talk about this later but i mean cardick annihilated in the comments so uh you'll definitely be seeing him later probably the others i mean i like people will be coming back um let's just say as this thing progresses we also have our uh polymarket segment uh coming up in i think towards let's say segment three we're gonna be talking about pavel and the betting markets and what they think is going to happen with him there.

But right out of the gate, I think we have to talk about Mark Zuckerberg's apology letter. So Mark Zuckerberg sends a letter to Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and admits a bunch of shit. Brad, you just wrote a piece about this. So welcome to the pod, first of all. And then let's just get into it, man. Take us down the Mark Zuckerberg apology tour. Yeah. So Zuckerberg's redemption arc continues, right? All of a sudden, he's going from establishment dweeb to at least in the minds of some people on the right, having a little bit of a redemption moment. We can kind of question the sincerity of it later. But what he did just do is, in my view, essentially blow the whistle and reveal the Biden-Harris administration's complete contempt for at least the societal

principle of free expression and maybe the First Amendment. So in his letter to Jim Jordan that you mentioned, he explained that during 2020, during 2021 and the pandemic and everything that went down, they were actively pressured at Meta and Facebook in particular by the federal government, the Biden administration, to take down posts and censor what would otherwise be First Amendment protected speech and including even parody and satire. So they're going after your uncle's Babylon Bee memes about Dr. Fauci or whatever it may have been. That's what they were doing, right? Talk about a misplacement of priorities. It could have been, hmm, I don't know, working to reopen the economy and our schools safely. Took their damn time on that one, but they had more important things. And Zuck is now essentially passing the buck. He said in this letter, I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today. Now, he said something

interesting at the end of the letter, too. He said, we're ready to push back if something like this happens again. And I think it very well may, guys, because the Biden administration put out a statement in response to this story. And the short version is we did nothing wrong. And we still absolutely think the government should dictate to companies what speech they should allow online. They said in their, you know, word salad, when confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to encourage public health and safety. Our position has been clear and consistent. We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present. So basically, we did nothing wrong. I was surprised they said anything. They didn't have to say anything. You could have just sat

there and ate your breakfast. You did not have to address- Yeah, and better say nothing than say something that means absolutely nothing. So, I mean, we're looking at the evolution of the party from a free speech party. This is the party of, what is that famous, the nonprofit that the Republicans that grew up watching the Fox News people hated- ACLU. The ACLU for just protecting free speech relentlessly, no matter who was saying what. I mean, that was what the Democrats were. We saw the evolution from that to whatever the hell it became throughout the 2020s. It was like a sort of implicitly anti-speech party,

but it was never official. And we kind of knew and we've written about the fact that like, okay, the norms have changed. They really want this stuff. But it felt like you were really attacking them by saying that. Now they're sort of admitting it themselves. You have Waltz, the clip sort of being resurfaced now talking about what free speech is you have the party saying that it is totally fine pressuring facebook into doing this i think we need to push back on this there's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or or hate speech and especially around our democracy and we have the twitter files right so we already knew they were doing this this is more of the same yeah we we knew this

was happening it's the first time mark is is getting into it i would say i i still have a lot of problems with i love mark like on principle okay like a stanford he built a lot he's i think a cool dude he just built a giant statue of his wife that was pretty interesting. I think he wants to do good in the world. He came pretty late with this statement. And this information that I would say is very critical. We need to know this kind of stuff. I don't even know, why is the government allowed to talk to companies in a private way at all? If they're asking for something without a warrant, we should know about that. And this is something that he should have said. All of these executives should have said this. The government

petitions you for private information or to censor someone, and it is in apparent violation of, if not the law, the actual standard norms of the country, then you should say something. And he said nothing. And now it's too late, and we're gearing up towards the next election. And it seems to me like, okay, well, there's a real chance that donald trump is going to win this next election and what did what was mark's like last sort of interaction with donald trump or on the topic of donald trump it would have been erasing him helping to erase him from the internet back in january of what was that 2021 yeah so it was after 6th. So that's the last time that he has been sort of touching the topic of Donald Trump. And I think that there is a chance that he's probably just

hedging here. I'm glad to see it. I think it's a little bit too late. I hope he maintains the integrity. I'm interested to see what he is going to do if the requests come again. I mean, it would be much better if it had come at the time and he'd taken a stand and released the emails and said, no, we will not cooperate. I do want to draw one distinction, though, is like, there are some things that are not protected by the First Amendment. So if they want to tag if they want to reach out to companies about, you know, child exploitation material, or, you know, terrorist terrorism propaganda or those kinds of things I have no issue with. What I have issue with is them identifying posts. And that's what

they would literally do. We don't have the details from Meta yet, but we do from the Twitter files. They send them links and lists of posts. Take these down as the suggestion. But also like when the federal government gives you a suggestion and you're a company that they have this regulatory ax hanging over your neck with Section 230, with a bunch of other regulations, it's not really a suggestion. I mean, it kind of is, but it's more than a suggestion. It's not- We saw it. I was writing at the time that they would drag these people to Congress.

While this was happening, concurrently, they were dragging these people to Congress and telling them, we're going to have to regulate or something. It was empty threat basically, because we have the first amendment. I just wanted to, the one thing I noticed is that I didn't actually, Brad, the first I'm learning that Biden and Harris responded to that letter. But I was looking at Vox today and they published an article about the letter, maybe it was yesterday. And they were basically like, we already knew all this, right? Which is kind of like at vox today and they published an article about the letter maybe it was yesterday and they're basically like it's we already knew all this right which is kind of like com it's like a version of biden's statement as well and i just wanted to point out like this is totally the like it's not

happening it doesn't matter that it's happening it's good that it's happening meme in the wild yes like 100 right um and i think the other thing I wanted to comment, Solana, is like, yes, Zuckerberg's last engagement with Trump was in 2020 when he disappeared him from the platform, but he also did call his reaction to the assassination attempt when he said, fight, fight, fight, pretty badass in a video. So maybe there's- Recently, again, because Trump is going, he thinks there's a good chance Trump could win the election. I think it's fine. I think it's fine to evolve on this stuff. And Mark is separately from Trump clearly evolved, right? I mean, look at the haircut alone. And I think that says a lot. It is interesting how your philosophy changes the more jacked you become. One of the things that I was thinking about when we were having this conversation just now is like on net, like how fact of the matter is is that now that

we have allowed misinformation misinformation to be like basically a canonically bad thing the government is using that as a as a as an excuse to contact and pressure private companies to censor speech and again like i'm not saying that misinformation isn't a bad thing, but for me, it really calls into the question whether or not, again, on net, like this introduction of misinformation, which is a recent term, basically, in my opinion. I mean, we've always had that term, but only in the past 10 years or so did this become a major part of the discourse. There are a lot of negatives to having that around? Yes. Well, because for me, it's a question of who decides, right? Everyone agrees that fake news is a bad thing, but it's the government policing misinformation. I mean, the government is one of the biggest purveyors of misinformation at times. If you think of all the things they said

during COVID that weren't true. And in fact, Facebook gives us a great example of this. I don't know if you guys remember, but early in the pandemic, if you posted the lab leak theory on Facebook, they would take it down. They said it was misinformation. Yes, but of course, the government didn't force them to do that. And this is why... We actually don't know that. The government may have pressured them to do that. We don't know that. Pressured is a very different word than forced. And I think that a little bit of this is Zuckerberg trying to say, it wasn't me, it was Biden, go get the old man. Yeah, you're right, it was deflection.

And the thing that really stuck out to me here was the... So in his letter, Zuckerberg also said that they were making a change to their misinformation policy. Basically, what used to happen is stuff would get flagged and then removed from algorithmic distribution. Now, what's going to happen, and what would happen then is it would go on to third-party fact-checkers, and they would say if it was misinformation or not, and then they would either let it back into the news feeds or suppress it. Now, what's going to happen is they're not going to remove it from algorithmic distribution until it comes back from the third-party fact-checkers.

The journalists in the Washington Post specifically, Will Arimus was writing about this, and he seemed to frame this as obviously the end of the world. And this was going to accelerate the amount of election misinformation and blah, blah, blah. And all I could think of was the same thing that I thought years ago when they suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, a question I asked repeatedly, which nobody had any answer for, which was, who are these mysterious third-party fact-checkers? Who are they? Who do they work for? Who gives them money? Are we ever going to get a determination, by the way, from them? We never heard back from them when they went and reviewed the Hunter Biden laptop story. Well, Mark, what did they say? Was it real or was it not real? Can you let us know?

Is there a memo they gave you? I would love to know if they got that one right. And I would love to know today, why were that system itself? Why do we think that system that has nothing to do with the government, that just has to do with Facebook, why is that system okay? Who fact checks the fact checkers? There are literally accounts dedicated to fact checking Snopes and PolitiFact because they do some valuable work fact checking, but the people there do have a liberal bias and it does show with some of their fact checks for sure. And I like the approach better of leave it up, leave it in the algorithm until it's litigated. But I'm also not happy with that approach, Right. I still believe and maybe I'm naive.

I still believe in even in the age of the Internet, the free market of ideas is the best way to handle things. Put it all out there. Let people see it. Let people decide for themselves. I don't really want any benevolent class, whether it's journalists, whether it's fact checkers, or whether it's the government deciding what information I'm allowed to see. I would rather handle it myself because I don't really trust anybody with that power, to be honest, private or public. Which is why the letter doesn't... I guess the more I'm talking about it, the more I'm realizing the letter really doesn't do it for me at all. Because the more that I'm talking about it, the more I'm realizing that nothing actually has changed other than Mark is maybe not going to listen to the government. But if his third party fact checkers and everybody at Facebook at the time and everybody at Twitter at the time and all of

their fact checkers, the problem was not that the government was telling them what to do. The problem was that they agreed with the government. Their opinion on what was true, what was not, was the same as the people working for the state. Remember, this started not under Biden, but under Trump, which is the other piece of the story that has been just completely erased from the canon. And that's when it began. And so I don't know. I feel like I think that Dorsey has really done a lot to explain what was going on and to take accountability leading up to really. I do just have to point out because I'm so happy you raised that point. Trump literally asked Twitter when he was president to take down a derogatory tweet

from Chrissy Teigen, according, at least that's what's been reported. So, and I, I do believe that was in the Twitter files, although I can't quite remember. And I mean, if that's as bad as it's a little different than like the taking down the misinformation. But if you have a problem with that, you got to have a problem with both. Like that's also pathetic and snowflake behavior. Yeah. Like, is that pressure? I don't know that that's true. I would have to, by the way, this is the first I'm hearing that. That's fucking funny. But I've never heard that before. But I don't, I wouldn't put it past him. Riley, what is your, what are you thinking about this before we move on to the Wired story?

Yeah, so we've alluded to this. I do sort of wonder if Zuck is just jumping on the bandwagon now that time has passed and things like calling out censorship are more acceptable now. if zuck is just reading the tea leaves and sees that things like jujitsu popping gold chains and calling out the government are good things um then that's sort of a win in my book regardless but i do think there is a bit of he's just sort of reading the room and trying to fit the vibe but we have that with a lot of things where it's like people who are right too early and then other people come around do we get mad at them or do we embrace them? And I understand both, right? But you kind of ultimately do have to welcome people in.

Like that's what the cancel culture people get wrong, right? Is if you want a movement to succeed, you can't punish people who convert to you. You have to actually welcome them ultimately. But I do understand the resentment that like, for example, one of the things I've talked about that's gotten me in trouble over the years is since 2017, I've been, I'm on record against kids medically transitioning. That was a very unpopular belief. You would get labeled all sorts of things at the time. Well, the worst thing would be what would happen to your content, which is erased. I literally media matters got me, uh, essentially kicked out of a gay men's soccer league because they informed them of my dangerous content. And I was told that my participation made a

hypothetical trans member. There weren't any unsafe. You were canceled from a gay men's soccer team? Yes. Yes, I was. Which is the gayest thing I've ever heard. That's the gayest cancellation I've ever heard for sure. Which is the gayest thing I've ever heard. That's the gayest cancellation I've ever heard, for sure. What I'm saying is, on that, I feel I was proven, I was right too early. We have the cast review, we have the world coming around to this position, and it's now, in part, thanks to people like J.K. Rowling, much safer to say that.

And so, sometimes, the people that have, like, come around on it, you feel resentment to them, a way if you were right too early but i think we ultimately have to welcome people and i would that was a long way of saying i appreciate zuck's evolution even if i do agree it is self-serving and self-dealing in some ways word moving on to wired uh brandon you are on this one this is uh i guess i maybe i should tee up a little bit um so wired had a lot of shit to say this week about their sort of new what you refer to them as uh brandon as the the new right-wing villains uh in tech sean mcguire mark andreessen and others i believe it was mark maybe it was david sacks and others um who had been talking about Trump's very fine people quote, the infamous very fine people quote.

Tell us about it. So the piece is called Trump's New Silicon Valley Supporters Really Want You to Forget. He called Nazis fine people, again, referring to Charlottesville. This is in response. Basically, this happened because Kamala HQq uh which i guess is the twitter of the official twitter account of kamala um she tweeted many snopes on this one well wired calls it the official twitter account the bio of kamala hq is ironically providing context that's literally in the bio um they tweeted an edited clip of that infamous

press conference and said seven years ago today um trump said that nazis something trump said that nazis were very fine people um a few days later this guy uh at wired let me find his name his name's dave he seems to be an Irishman and a disinformation reporter. Writes this article. He puts it in his bio, disinformation researcher. Anytime you see that, you know you're about to see the worst take. Yeah. And it's also in his bio on Wired at the bottom of the article. So he repeats, he basically repeats this demonstrably untrue lie that trump was referring to the white supremacists at this rally as very fine people now if we if we're going to get into litigating

the actual speech which has been done over and over again all you have to do is just watch the full clip. And it's easy. Like it's, you have to have an IQ lower than 65 to not realize that what Trump is saying is that there was a valid reason for normal people to be at that protest. And the reason was because it's valid to worry about the removal of statues. And he goes on and on about this in a back and forth exchange with reporters. For example, he says, George Washington was a slave owner. Should we remove statues about him? Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. Should we remove statues of him? And so, it's very, very obvious that he's making this case. He's like, look, there are normal people at this rally. And then he goes on to say, I am absolutely not talking about the white supremacists.

I'm talking about these normal people. And he closes it by saying there were also good people on the left, except for Antifa and their black hoods with their bats. Excuse me, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group, excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a

park from Robert E Lee to another name you know what it's fine you're changing history you're changing culture and you had people and I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and the white nationalist because they should be condemned totally but you had many people in that group other than neo-nazis and white nationalists you know just read the in Wired and you'll see that this Irish bug man, disinformation reporter, who's also covering the 2024 election for Wired, weirdly, just kind of like does all this jujitsu to make it seem like Trump was referring to Nazis. Well, the thing I don't get about this is that Trump has said enough, like,

actually crazy shit and offensive stuff. Why do they always feel the need to lie? Like, instead of just picking the true things he's actually said that they could use against him. I've never understood it. This is the Sam Harris line. I think, I don't know if you listen to him, but he's, people have different opinions about him. But his, his big thing is like, yeah, this, this demonstrably untrue lie. They keep harping on when there are so many other dumb ass things that Trump has said that you could just, you could make into the narrative. Uh, instead, I think that they know that Trump is popular among black voters. I think that

more than anything about him, it's not just, yes, relatively, but it's also a huge difference between him and Romney, for example. That's what I mean by relatively. He'll still lose the black vote, but he'll do way better than other Republicans. Yeah. And it's better than any Republican in any of our lives, mentioned a lot here. I think that people are under... They're discounting how important that is to Democrats and what that means for the Democrats potentially. They can no longer count on close to the entire Black population voting for them if suddenly there's just more diversity there like there is in most other racial demographics. And that is why, because when it comes to race, he hasn't actually...

He's said a lot of stupid things, but he's never on race. Like what are his actual views on race and race relations and things? They're not that bad. And to be honest about that would not allow them to erode that support, which is what they're hoping to do with something like Charlotte and our Charlotte's villain. And actually not even just hoping, but they have successfully done that. I thought that he really said that for a long time. I did too.

I also thought that for a while, which I'm kind of embarrassed to admit now. In my mind, I'm like, oh, I bet he meant it the way that he actually then said it. But then to hear him actually say it, I was like, holy shit. No, he actually even said it. I didn't have to intuit that. They were just being uncharitable in their interpretation of what he said. They were actually lying by omission what he said. And I think that's because they're scared. They're bothered. They're nervous. They know what this means if they don't successfully tarnish him and his movement as very racist. If they don't have that, it's really hard

to defeat it because a lot of what he talks about is just naturally popular among most working class people, regardless of their race. Riley, what do you think? It's so depressing to me that like, is this election really going to come down to relitigating what Trump said at a press conference in 2017? Like, can we actually talk about policies? policies? I don't care who was called a fine person seven years ago. What's your plan to ensure seven years from now we're not without a border in the middle of World War III?

They're both going to build the wall now. You guys saw that Kamala is literally building the wall. Build the wall, Kamala. That is crazy to me. She's just an empty vacuum. She'll just say anything to get power.

It's wild. As with all of these people, it's not her and the fact that she said that. That's crazy to me. What's crazy is that no one is shocked. No one is like, wait, what do we really think about immigration? There's just lockstep NPC.

Yes, build the wall now. And there's not going to be a conversation about that. You're not going to tell me how you changed your views. Well, she would have to do an interview and be asked about it. I mean, like the New York Times. I don't care what Kamala thinks about the wall. I want to know what the New York Times thinks about building the wall. Are you now in favor of building the wall? Is this a policy proposal that you're endorsing? Well, I think they would argue that she signed on to that legislation that was compromised legislation with Republicans, and they gave them the wall

funding and exchange. They got more asylum judges and other things they wanted. So it was more of like a making peace with the wall, and it was less like, we love the wall now. Is it still hypocritical to support something you call the racist and an insane use of money? Yes. But I think that's the context. Because you went down to the border and sobbed. That is where the immigration conversation was. What was that? Four years ago, five years ago. And now Kamala is building the fucking coconut crate across the southern border. And we're all just supposed to pretend that nothing has changed. That's crazy. That's just insane, man. But in another sense, though, doesn't that give you a little bit of hope that if you just change, if you win hearts and minds in the public, they do adapt, like they do change when

the tides change. So I don't know. Yes, it's kind of this thing like being right to Trump was right too early on the wall. He was right too early. I guess I'm a little skeptical that Kamala is actually for the wall, or is she just trying to say this to get elected? Because like the politics of immigration actually work to Democrats benefit. So I'm not so sure that she would. I don't think that's true anymore. Shifting for sure. Yeah, I don't know.

I think that he used to, but i think the american public has shifted to the right on immigration a bit oh no that's true i think riley you you mean the demographics change benefits the democrats in a in a way yes yes not not yeah everyone's against immigration now i mean that's just broadly that's true everywhere not even just in america or europe i mean japan australia there's no one is down for an open border other than i guess ocasio-cortez now is the last woman standing i would like to know what she thinks about kamala's border policy but come on the pod aoc i would love her on this pod personally i have a lot of questions. Let's make it happen. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But first, we got to talk about Pavel Navarro.

This is a wild story. There's a lot here. I don't want to get any of it wrong. So I'm going to be actually reading from a bunch of stuff during this. So we just get it as right as we can. As we are currently speaking, so Pavel Dvrov is the founder of Telegram, which is a messaging app. He's a billionaire. He was arrested in Paris over the weekend. It was immediately framed as he was being arrested for insufficient spying, not even framed, but reported as failure to moderate, failure to give information to the

government, et cetera. It was sort of justified as like in... How would I say this? It was caused, taken up by the, I guess, Telegram heads, the people who are obsessed with Telegram. They think it's the best messaging app to use, that it's encrypted, which it's not, or end-to-end encrypted. Today, in our ongoing look at European despotism, Riley is going to break down a few more details on this story. And then I'm going to share the French sort of questions they're asking him. Yeah, sure thing. So like you mentioned, Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram. He was born in Russia and is a citizen of France, Russia,

some islands in the Caribbean, as well as the UAE. Side note, he's also totally ripped and has a bunch of like unique health protocols. Anyway, not really relevant. So it's relevant to me. He also has... Are you talking about the kids? Yeah. He also has like a hundred kids and we can get into the Instagram girlfriend a

little bit later in her possible role in this. But like you mentioned, he landed in Paris on Saturday after a trip to Azerbaijan. He's taken into custody by French authorities. There were actually reports that he was going to have dinner with Macron that night, which I'm not sure if that's true, but that's a rude awakening if so. As for why he was arrested. So as of this recording, there are no official charges yet. Those, if any, are expected to be announced today. But French authorities have announced a list of 12 possible suspected criminal violations that he was being questioned over.

Those include complicity in selling child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud, abetting organized crime transactions, and refusing to share information or documents with investigators. documents with investigators. Three of the suspected charges also seem to have to do with crypto, including one that says like provision of cryptographic services without proper declaration. And then Telegram has released a statement saying they abide by EU laws and Durov has nothing to hide. Meanwhile, Macron has released a statement saying that Durov's arrest was in no way a political decision. However, it does come amid an increased crackdown on free speech from Europe that we've covered extensively here at Pirate Wires, including our friend Thierry Baguette sending that letter to Elon threatening him over his interview with Trump. So we'll see if any charges do in fact come from his arrest, but the fact that he was detained without any official charges at first, which is apparently cool in France,

especially amidst this crackdown. So yeah, I guess we'll see what charges come of this, but all of it makes for a concerning situation to say the least. I do want to add two sort of very important, I would say, additional factors to consider. Obviously, this has been framed, and even by me at first, I mean, I sort of felt an initial instinctive desire to protect this person who's running a messaging app, right? It's a speech platform. And he's being arrested in Paris and you hear things like moderation or whatever beside it. As you mentioned, Riley, there were all those French reasons that things that he was being questioned for, one of them was failure to do cryptology or

whatever without a permit. You feel that this is insane and has to be stopped and where will it end? And then you have the Guardian columnist saying like, well, it's going to end with Mark Zuckerberg and chains. I mean, they're not denying that this is what's driving this forward, but I'm not entirely convinced it is. So I want to read a tweet of Moxie Marlin Spike. So Moxie Marlin Spike is the founder of Signal, which is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app. It's the one that I use. It's the one that I think most people in Silicon Valley use. This could get crazy if true. Telegram messages are not encrypted. France is trying to arrest the CEO of a Russian team that has

plain text access to every message the French president has ever sent or received. Telegram messages aren't end-to-end encrypted. It is also a cloud messenger, meaning that all messages live on Telegram servers rather than the user's device. With one query, the Russian Telegram team can get every message the French president has ever sent or received to his contacts. Every message those contacts has ever sent or received to their contacts. Every message those contacts' contacts have ever sent or received, etc. It's just plain text. There are no limits to what they can do, like use an LLM to help go through all that material and pull out the dirt, map the relationships, figure out who's keeping secrets from who, et cetera.

For the French politicians and cabinet members, it is kind of too late to do anything. Even if they try to delete all their messages now, the Telegram team can just mark the messages as deleted so that they no longer display to the user, but not actually delete the data they retain access to. This could get really wild. He says, this could just be geopolitics. The Russians have information on the French government and Macron is understandably pissed. The other one is, as Moxie mentioned, the app is not end-to-end encrypted, which means you could conceivably subpoena them for information that is actually illegal, like forbidden child... I don't even want to say it on YouTube because I feel like it's going to demonetize and remove us from

distribution. But the most horrific things that you can think of in the world that are all illegal, that Facebook or Twitter or any other free speech, Twitter, for example, a free speech platform would work with the government to give up information on users that were breaking the law in this really heinous way. The French have accused him of doing this. They have accused him of not giving the information up. They know they have access to the information. And the reason that this company is different than Signal, for example, is Signal literally can't. They don't have the messages. That's how it was built on purpose to never be compromised by a government on something like, I don't know, sharing sensitive information between government officials and the press or whatever else. So two things here. One, it's like, it sounds like he possibly legitimately,

not only violated the law, but repeatedly sort of, I don't know, threw it in the face of the law. And then two, there's a government component here that I, like a sort of international politics component here that is very hairy. Can I, Yeah, I want to touch on that because if that's true, right, which I believe you, I don't know much about that, but the French government would essentially be taking a hostage, right? They would essentially be taking him hostage to use him as a chip in geopolitics. That would be immoral and wrong in its own right. It's a totally different thing than the free speech warrior aspect of it. That would also not really be okay to do. He's a French citizen now. He got the passport. And so at that point, it's like, are you a hostage or are you a French citizen being

arrested for doing crime in France? Well, but Telegram is not a French company, which also complicates it. It's not based in France. So is it actually subject to their jurisdiction? Well, I mean, anything that operates, I mean, Twitter, for example, is subject to their, Elon follows the rules in all these different countries because he'll get shut down if he doesn't. But have we ever seen them go after a CEO personally? Because I understand shutting down the company, fining the company. We've seen Europe do all this stuff, fining companies. But if they're upset with the decisions of the company to then just criminally prosecute the CEO or the person in charge of the company in their private capacity, to me, is unprecedented

in what I've seen and what I've covered, right? Because you're taking civil matters into the criminal law. You're taking company decisions and assigning them individually. And it is more though than just him refusing subpoenas or refusing to turn over a request, which obviously is a different question. This document that the French government put out lists him as complicit in the possession of inappropriate illegal pictures of minors, for example, complicit in drugs sales and all that. And what they're essentially doing then is assigning to him the blame for the things that people have done on his platform. To me, you could arrest the executives of AT&T at that point for the things criminals are texting each

other. That to me is scary and unprecedented. We don't know. I would say I agree. If that's true. Yes, I think I agree that we need more information and more details. But part of that is because they arrested him without official charges, which is also fucking crazy. France, man, they just they're wild over there. I my hot take. So sorry to keep going on. My hot take is that at this point, France or England would be lucky to be colonized by America, and they wouldn't even be worthy of being the 51st state. Yeah, I wouldn't want them. The voting, man. We don't need more voters like that. What a twist. We colonize. We end up with the UK.

We'd be doing them a favor by colonizing. There is a sort of poetry to it. Uh, I think it's a, it's definitely an L for, for free speech in Europe and maybe the, the, the,

the Western chattering classes either way, like whatever the reason is, um, and, and encryption and these geopolitical concerns are basically confusing. And I'm not going to read well, um, to like most people. Uh but but what i see happening is like in uh and we're going to talk about this in a minute but somebody in the garden in the guardian uh i think recently called for

you know uh social media executives to be arrested um this is at the same time as people in Britain are actually being arrested for social media posts. And so the Overton window is actually shifting in this direction where you can now not sound insane, at least in Europe, for calling for the arrest for people exercising their free speech. And I think that regardless of what's happening with Telegram in reality, this is just another notch in that direction. And if you go on, I think I saw a screenshot of blue sky reactions to the Telegram.

Elated. of blue sky reactions to the telegram elated oh 100 they were like this is a great thing you know everybody was just super happy about it and i bet you have those people are journalists who should know better yeah right yeah and so i don't know it doesn't for me it doesn't look good um on on sort of on that front at all but don't you think it's interesting how it's it seems like it's totally separate the conversation about this is totally separate from the facts about this. And the conversation about this is like, should free speech executives be imprisoned? And obviously, it's divided along expected lines. But the actual story about this is like, there's a lot going on here, both in terms of geopolitics and in terms of just actual straight up crime, potentially,

that is being alleged. And we probably do just need to wait a second to find more. And it's weird how I think the stories have actually divorced from each other. The actual story has divorced from the conversation. The conversation is still really important. Doesn't that kind of happen with a lot of stories now, though? I feel like that happens a lot. Yes. And this one is like people were waiting to do it because actually, as we're seeing, it's not being pulled from nothing. There are a lot of people who do want people arrested for failure to censor and failure to spy. I do just want to hit the Polymarket segment really quick.

We're going to check out the betting markets. This is courtesy of our pay partnership with Polymarket, our friends over there. We have some interesting information here. So on the Pavel Dvorov story. Since arrest, Polymarket has been observing Pavel Dvorov's chances of prison release. The Polymarket odds that Pavel Dvorov would be released in August stood at just 38% this morning, Wednesday, at the time of our recording. However, at around 9 a.m. Eastern, reports emerged that Dvorov had been transferred from jail to court, causing it to spike to 93% in just two minutes. The French authorities mentioned that prosecutors intended to question De Vrave as part of the investigation and extended the timeframe for his custody to a maximum possible period of 96 hours from August 25th to the 28th.

It's a huge international thing. You have, because Pavel, riley how many passports does this guy have he had like four passports um so one is russian one is french certainly one i don't know what the other one is but one is uh is it saudi arabia uae yeah the uae so the uae has already issued a statement saying you know we're monitoring we're monitoring the situation closely, which is fucking wild. Because what that actually means is that you have potentially now the cradle of liberty holding prisoner, a speech prisoner, while one of the leaders of the Arab world is trying to, I guess, free him so he can free speak another day. One thing on the international component, but just because he's like from Russia,

from my understanding, Durov is like far from some like Russian op. Like he actually like fled the country after Russian authorities demanded hand over personal data from the app he founded before Telegram. So I know Telegram is like- Telegram is used by Russian dissidents and by government supporters

as well but yeah so i guess just one thing that why they're using it if it's if it's so easy to just force a telegram executive to release messages it seems fucking crazy to me why would you use that i mean maybe they believe that he won't because he has refused all the requests actually because i saw people going after moxie online, and they were saying that Signal is run by the NSA or something. And it's like, oh, it's all – and then all end-to-end encryption is just a backdoor to whatever you – Well, to be fair, Signal would have – is a competitor. So not an unbiased commentator. It's not really a competitor, though, because it's a competitor. So not an unbiased commentary. It's not really a competitor though, because it's a nonprofit. I think it's super different when you have, when there's no profit incentive,

but they're competing. It's like, I don't know. I guess nonprofit- My friend, you have a very kind view of nonprofits. Nonprofits are for profits by a different structure in many cases. Well, let's say, let's just break it down. Pavlo Dvorov is worth, or Dvorov, I'm sorry, is worth $15 billion. And how much is Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of SignalWorth? Oh, I don't know. Signal is blocked in Russia, by the way. What was that?

Signal, as of earlier this month, is blocked in Russia. Oh, because it works. That's the reason. That is the reason reason that's the fucking reason okay brb switching to signal actually i don't use either to be honest um oh i use i'm always on full disclosure this is not even an ad spot love signal but also like that could be on me that isn't they have i know moxie defenser but i just don't push it in writing anymore the woman in charge of them now was one of those annoying google people um was it meredith whitaker oh no she's now just she's the president of the signal foundation oh he's talking about katherine marr katherine marr is connected to Signal as well. No, is she? Yeah. There are some unsavory associations.

I will give that to the tinfoil hat anti-Signal people. There are some unsavory associations. Catherine Marr is or was the chairman of the board of Signal? We don't like it. That's your official word from Pyrewire is on that. But I still will use that over Telegram, which I don't know. More to come there. But we're also kind of leading directly into our next story here. So we're looking at the odds

of Pavel being stuck abroad for the time being. They seem pretty decent. As we've referenced now a handful of times, there were a pair of stories in The Guardian that really celebrated the fact and kind of took the free speech crusader version of the story and amplified and then defended it and asked for more. So we're going to talk about that in our Pirate Idol segment. it is time for pirate idol week two with uh we've got a bunch of new folks joining us today who have reached out, who are ready to smack down. Our breakout winner last week was definitely Cardik. Just like so many Cardik heads in the comments freaking out about Cardik season, Cardik era. It was like they could not get enough of Cardik. A lot of grand heads too

floating around. Jesse started out strong and brought a new demographic I would say. A lot of girlies in the comments rooting for Jesse. I'd like to see that. I don't know. We're going to play it by ear and see how it goes. But this week we got 40 folks to

come and talk about why does Europe want to jail so badly American tech executives? We're going to break down that story in a second. First, the rules of Pirate Idol. It's going to be very simple. One by one, you're each going to go. You're going to introduce yourselves. You're going to give your take.

are each going to go. You're going to introduce yourselves. You're going to give your take. And while that's happening, feel free to, or while someone is giving their take, feel free to dunk on them. Feel free to go back and forth. Feel free to respond, question, whatever. You're here to hang out with us on the pod. After which, guest judge Brad Palumbo will provide thoughts on the take. Lumbo will provide a take or provide a thoughts on the take. I will provide thoughts on the take. Probably will be in the form of just my opinion, which I can't keep to myself and have never been able to, which is why I have a podcast.

Most likely let's get into it. We have to talk about, Oh man, this one's really crazy. So I mean, Raya is going to break it all down for you, but I have been following this pretty closely because I thought it was pretty shocking the other week when, or was it last week? It was not that long ago. The Guardian published an op-ed urging the

British government to arrest Elon Musk and have him extradited for inciting a riot, they said. It was a tweet um now this week uh in the context of the story we were just talking about which was the pavel devrov i don't even know what the chaos uh another story has been written riley my good man wearing an amazing shirt i should add uh please break it down for us. Sure thing. So your topic today, contestants. On the heels of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov being arrested in France,

The Guardian published an article calling the arrest a smart move. The author goes on to say that tech bosses care more about themselves than you and appears to signal that Derov's arrest also warrants the arrest of other CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. The author states, if making an example of Derov is what it takes to get tech executives to think twice before acting, that must surely be welcomed. I mean, they actually said, I will just say before we get into it it was like uh i didn't believe the headline i'm like i gotta i can't just fire my mouth off about this i've got to actually read this steaming pile of shit because there's no way it's as bad as it as it has been framed by an editor who wants clicks it is it was worse because they actually it was a sad sort of hey

we probably won't be able to arrest Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg anytime soon. They used the phrase, what is it, cart them off in chains or something? However, and the entire piece was just like, how do we get to a world where American tech executives are held accountable by European bureaucrats legally with prison time? Okay, there's a lot to work with here. Let's start, Patrick, tell the people who you are, where you've come from, maybe something interesting about yourself, and then give me a fire take. I'm a VC. Something interesting about myself. I just spent a month in Ukraine. I'm going back next month. I won't give exact dates for OPSEC purposes. Hot take. I mean, I have a lot of broad thoughts on this about like Telegram specifically.

But, you know, I think Europe over the last 10 years has just kind of evolved to a place where it knows that it can't innovate or build anything. And so its new instrument of power is just kind of regulate and that's its way of remaining relevant. Um, you saw the same thing with COVID. Uh, I don't remember the exact details, but they were like coming out with guidelines for regulating the vaccine before the vaccines were even available. And like I did not see any European based initiatives even create vaccines. And if they were made,

obviously they weren't successful because I haven't heard about them. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of about it. My funny take here is that there's a new startup market opportunity here for offshore plane refueling. If you're a tech CEO and you want to avoid landing in Paris or a European country that's going to arrest you, someone should create a refueling aircraft carrier or something, just park it in international waters. So if you're on vacation from New York to Egypt or Israel or some shit, you can just dock there and not worry about getting

arrested with your side piece. We talked about this a little bit in the previous segment. I don't know that he was even... There are a lot of question marks, I think, on this one. I'm not sure why he went there, why he landed there, what's going on. I do know that he was even trying. I don't, there are a lot of question marks. I think on this one, I'm not sure why he went there, why he landed there,

what's going on. I do know that Europe is just, I mean, even I'm sort of thinking, fuck, do I need to stop going to you? I'm not really thinking that, but then again,

like I take a lot of risks. Too nice. Brad, what do you think? Well, I mean, I definitely agree with your points. I would love to know,

what does your hat say? Struggling to actually read it. It says, Deep Funk and Divine Intervention. All right. What does that mean? Tell me the story behind that. I feel like I'm a free influencer right now. I have not been paid by the brand.

It's a brand called Aquatic Leisure Center in LA. I should add, by the way, Patrick's been on the show. in la i should add by the way patrick patrick's been on the show but patrick you you were in uh the ukraine giving our your sort of breakdown of what was going on there for us that was like a couple months ago i think um and now you're an influencer yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna ask them before you publish this if they would pay me to come on and talk about their hat brand and then hope that they say yes before you publish it so 30 second answer should we be sending more money and weapons to ukraine uh i i am a yes on that um i think uh it's probably one of the best foreign policy decisions we've made in the last 20 years which is a hot take i know that's not what we're talking

about so i don't know how long you want me to talk about this do you actually think people need to just literally avoid france at this like is the euro is europe that bad that we need to just people who are at all controversial or run major companies can't go there i mean i would be worried honestly i think that uh what are they gonna arrest you for tell us tell us the crime oh i don't want to because who knows this isn't encrypted so i would message you on telegram but now i'm not so sure and you should message us on telegram as we've already uncovered it's not end-to-end encrypted which is a whole other thing um i want more patrick i want more from you i want more from i want more from ukraine i want more from you. I want more from Ukraine. I want more from Emmanuel Macron.

Rob, tell me, what do you think about the fact that, I mean, really, it's like The Guardian. This is a British journal, first of all. So we tend to blame like, I tend to, me, I'm the problem. It's me. I tend to blame American journalists for everything. I do want to draw a distinction here between American journalists and British journalists. As we discussed a little earlier today, even some of the, what we think are American journalists are actually just terrible British or let's say Irish journalists in the case of the Wired story. But this, the Guardian is a British, I don't know if they would call themselves a tabloid, but I certainly will.

And they're kind of out like, just like just like i mean it's weird to have multiple pieces now arguing for this it's definitely a common opinion at this point abroad uh certainly british politicians are reading this european politicians are reading this they're thinking you know should we be harder on i guess american tech executives what do you make of it right yeah well i'm first thing i'll say as a proud irish american is we do not claim that wired writer um i think it's it's obvious it always has been that europe does not have the respect for free speech they obviously don't have first amendment the way we do but there's very clearly sort of a political agenda to this because if the so-called thought crimes or the issues with this platform is how the users are using it,

and Pavel's, I guess, inability to step in and do more to content moderate, I mean, he's not nearly the only person to do that. And obviously the other targets of this article, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, who just came out and said, yes, it was wrong for us to censor COVID misinformation. They're not the only three platforms where bad things happen. They're not. One of the big accusations that's getting lobbied at Telegram now from France is child sex exploitation. I mean, I wrote a story about a month ago about these vigilante pedophile hunters who catch.

I don't know if you guys seen these. They catch and they beat the shit out of these guys. Almost all of them find their targets on Grindr and Tinder and these apps. And I haven't seen anyone say, oh, arrest the CEO of Grindr, arrest the CEO of Tinder, because there is no political agenda. Those aren't the places where people in Gaza are spreading anti-Israel messages. People in Russia are spreading anti-Ukraine messages and vice versa. These are the platforms where dissidents and people that kind of have anti-corporatist,

anti-power voices are the loudest. And that, to me, is the bigger issue here. It's kind of veiled behind, you know, with this guy saying, oh, you know, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg. But the real issue is his power. I mean, not even dissident, right? Because they're talking, once you're invoking Mark Zuckerberg. The real issue is his power. Not even dissident, right? Because once you're invoking Mark Zuckerberg,

you're talking about the normal establishment majority. You're talking about controlling just anything. I think that the Europeans, I've said this before, I think the Europeans are spooked after the last election in France. I think they think

that there could be a huge shift in politics across the continent, mostly due to immigration. And I think that they're right. I think that if left to actually some sort of fair democracy, there would be a title shift abroad. And I would have to stop

making fun of Europeans, which I would hate. Macron's afraid to even, you know, install a prime minister. It's been like two months now since he called that snap election and fucked up. And now it doesn't have a government. He doesn't know what to do. Rob, is there any other walk of life where we so easily, or not we, but I guess the European

authorities in this case, blame the platform rather than the actual person doing the thing? The idea, right. I mean, if people sell drugs oh and they use facebook messenger or do we blame facebook if i if i use my cell phone do we blame verizon for the crime i mean it seems like an aberration to me this this approach but i i liked your your examples with grinder and tinder i hadn't thought of those but do we apply this logic like anywhere else well you can subpoena phone calls and things like this. There are phone records rather. You can say, but we don't arrest the president.

I think if they didn't turn over the records. What about Apple? What about the CIA trying to get into that? Would be probably arrest. I mean, if they, if they failed to answer a subpoena, they'd probably be, I'm assuming there'll be some sort of legal recourse. In that same Bernardino shooting,

however long ago that was now, didn't they say, no, didn't they say no? Didn't they say, no, we're not going to give you access to the phone? Oh, so access to the phone. I'm pretty sure you can get access with a subpoena. And you can certainly get access to Facebook messages with a subpoena. And you can certainly get phone records, like records of calls and things with a subpoena. All of these things with a subpoena, I thought that was pretty settled.

I think you uniquely see that kind of treatment there with new tech. So another parallel here is the Ross Holper case, which I'm not saying he was innocent or that he didn't deserve to go to jail at all, but they charged him or he ended up getting sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years, which was like double that of El Chapo. because from a technological perspective, they treated him as the proprietor, orchestrator, executive behind every transaction on the platform. As in, you know, obviously that hasn't been applied to eBay, which basically Silk Road was eBay for drugs. And so I think you're seeing something similar play out with Telegram right now.

One interesting caveat that I'm kind of interested in seeing people talk about, because I just don't know about it, is I think Telegram is not encrypted by default. And that creates like kind of an interesting legal situation where the company does kind of have to respond to subpoenas in the US and in Europe for like child porn and drugs and stuff like that. And I think the way that Signal can avoid that is it's encrypted by default. And their argument is we can't do anything about it. We can't do it. Yeah. And so they kind of put themselves in that position. So on the Pavel case, you're correct.

But I think the broader thing here, which is very... So what's interesting about the Guardian piece is that they were not talking about the realities of the Pavel case as you were just about to and as we did earlier in the episode. What they were talking about was the kind of... What quickly became the free speech crusaders version of the pavel case which was like

he was and i say that pejorative it's not the i'm a free speech crusader yay free speech i'm crusading for it right now um but a lot of us were very quick to be like this man was arrested for the crime of you know insufficient censorship and moderation and probably that's part of it i do think um the guardian piece was saying there's i think there's an argument to me that that's not entirely true that there's like a lot this is a complicated story we're going to learn more today actually the french um government's going to release the charges uh i think it's probably part of it but the guardian case was just like the garden case was just like yes and that's great and we should do it more like there should be more of this it should be the it should be facebook it should be elon musk um that

is yeah that's fucking that's scary to me that that is a normal thing that you can say online in the year 2024 and not be ratioed into outer space for it also by i i mean i guess i when i said i did a take on this in the daily and i was just like can you imagine the apoplectic rage with which journalists would respond if elon musk suggested jailing a journalist um it would be insane you would have never seen anything like it in your life uh and this is just falling on deaf deaf ears you can just say something this extreme as mark zuckerberg should be in jail rob before we move on i didn't uh have you introduce yourself tell the people who you are sir rob mcgrady i'm a reporter at the daily caller uh you can find my work there i'm happy to be here

you know and i've got to say i do like a real reporter in our midst sanjana was that and we certainly i don't like to do a lot of research clearly i like to just fucking say things and have people say no you're wrong and here are the facts um it's just my way uh great moving on um molly who are you? Where are you from? Yeah. Okay. So I'm Molly. I work in VC. I also have a newsletter called Sorcery. I'm not evil. I don't know why when we first met, you thought I was evil or something. Did I? I said that? Yeah. You look slightly evil.

I'm always worried about... I'm suspicious of everybody online. My assumption is that it's that actually Game of Thrones thing where Cersei Lannister says to her son, her son's like the evil son, is like, are the Starks our enemy? And Cersei says, everybody who's not us is the enemy. And that's how I survive this internet hellscape. But I now know you and I don't think that.

Okay, cool. Well, okay. So this is a big topic and it's also like super dense. Given the context that you guys already talked about it in the segment and kind of broke it down based on the actual like allegations and criminal activity and like all of that. actual like allegations and criminal activity and like all of that. I guess what we're going to talk about is like the construct of a journalist asking to jail a very big media exec. Okay. So Pavel is like, what they say is the Mark Zuckerberg of Europe. Okay. So he fled Russia. He ended up in Dubai.

He has like four passports, a hundred kids. Like he's always shirtless and is just like this extravagant, you know, man. And so, you know, I don't know if that's why French France is like jealous. And that's really why. From the nation of skinny fat. That's a good, I like that take. Yeah. I don't know if that's why they're jealous, but anyways, in a more serious note, it's

kind of like a weird delineation of like how media has just kind of taken this road and they just want to be billionaire haters and continue to regulate and take people down. You'd think like cancel culture would be over, but I don't know if this is like matter of media getting so constrained. I mean, there's bankruptcies like all the time, like these companies are going under, none of these journalists are paid well. It's a hard environment. You have to continually put out hot, like heat pieces and just take people down. Like that's kind of what has become of this now trying to take down more billionaires uh whether that's elon musk or mark zuckerberg is another thing um

elon musk uh for example like he pulled out x out of brazil because you know he was actually uh like i think he they were like talking about arresting him there. So, like, this is not, like, an uncommon thing. One of his employees, I believe. So, I think they shut down their office there because the Brazilian, and they fired everybody because the Brazilian government was threatening to arrest ex-employees. And so, he was like, then we can't have employees in Brazil. It's that simple. But I think the platform might still be there until they shut it down.

Yes, it's there. I mean, there's so many different ways that this piece could go or the conversation around it. Because there's also Mark Zuckerberg writing a letter to Jim Jordan and actually talking about censorship in the US. And how he was pressured to talk about COVID in a certain way or censor it and more that comes out of that. So there's a lot of big factors that have been driving media and the usage of free speech or whatever you want to call it and how we're going to be positioning it. I would say it's very hot to go after these big tech titans. And I don't know if it's because they're a huge target, but it just kind of makes journalists

look bad. It's not a good story. I'm just surprised we're even talking about this, honestly. When I saw that, I was like, but isn't the guardian kind of like a trash magazine like i don't know what that is can i when i was in college so obviously professors are 90 communist and this guy he ran our social sciences department um and he was awesome he was a brilliant professor but he was a fucking communist he did a lot about china he was always telling us about i professor but he was a fucking communist he did a lot about china he was always telling us about i mean the guardian was straight up he's like here are the different sources you could read the guardian was one of them and he said it's a little bit left of center but that's good for you he said but that's good for you i remember thinking at

the time like and i was at my most radical left back then. And I remember thinking, that doesn't sit well with me. You just said that out loud. That feels a little bit, I don't know, indoctrinating. Anyway. But yes, it's a legitimate story. I call it a tablet, but I think that the thing that's shocking about The Guardian doing this is that it is legitimate.

Now, these are opinion pieces and columnists. It's not like reporting, but I don't know how you would report on a request. The request, the ideology of the paper is delivered through the op-ed section because it's curated and that's how you do it. Partly, it's that, and then you have to intuit what the coverage means. But for me, this is a very big deal that this is happening and it's a very big deal that no one's talking about it in the media. It's wild to be talking about arresting people for any reason. And then again, I mean, maybe there's like the Trump of it all. What do you guys make of that? Like, is this just a fact? Are we so desensitized to calls for arrest? I mean, Trump is being tried right now in the middle of an election or he's about to be given his sentence,

right? Has that just changed the balance of acceptable speech in such a way as calling for the arrest of people you hate is totally fine now? Can I just jump in here? Because there was a journalist from The Guardian eight days ago and he hasn't posted an article since. Are you guys familiar with Channel 5, Andrew Callahan? No. It is a YouTube, a pretty popular YouTube news content, tongue-in-cheek type deal. They had a masked reporter who only revealed his first name and this Guardian journalist was incensed. He was like, I'm a real journalist. He was like, fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck anyone who supports you, unhinged rant. It represents what people at the Guardian think of themselves as journalists.

Like they put themselves on a pedestal. Since the Trump era, journalists, not people in my publication, but many of these mainstream left wing journalists view themselves as the guardians of democracy. We have the keys. We are the gatekeepers. We will interpret for you what you can think about the news. You know, Biden, he sometimes mixes up his words. This is what he meant to say. Like, they kind of have this elitist view of what journalism is and who they are in the broader sphere. So this is kind of indicative of that mindset that's like, oh, these people are letting you see information. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Pavel, they're letting you see information that

you shouldn't have access to. They basically think of most of us as children who don't have the intellectual capacity to understand information. I think what's kind of interesting with The Guardian is, you know, this is a little bit out of my zone, but my perspective as an American is that they were always like the bastions of, you know, on the forefront of like leaking government information for stuff that I think people should know about. They did the Snowden story, right? They did the Snowden story. They did Snowden. They were one of the first collaborators with WikiLeaks,

which opinions on WikiLeaks aside, these are very anti-government actions that will certainly land you on list as an organization of interest. And I think where we're at just reflects that traditional publications now view big tech as a bigger existential threat to their relevancy and their existence than government, which is kind of a very interesting reversal to the point where they're now kind of seeing government as an ally almost against big tech.

Well, it is literally an ally, as we've seen in the case of australia the canadian australian government the canadian government the california government all of which are trying to pay literally pay them money taxpayer money to keep reporting whatever garbage they're reporting on um matt welcome back we all thought that you had been arrested for crime think because you are reporting live from the continent of europe um tell us a little bit about yourself and what brings you here and then i'm gonna need you take hello uh i'm matt i go by um i'm here on the base northman whatever prolific twitter ship poster and part-time vc and all these kinds of different things um and yeah i'm i'm coming in from the

front line of the race war in Britain. Constantly under threat from the two-tier queue and all that kind of thing. Fuck, I'm just completely running blank. I think... Well, let's start with, are you nervous? The crowd... This stuff is happening in Europe. Yeah, no, sorry. I've just like...

Basically, with The Guardian and this article, you know, the crowd that I surround myself with on Twitter and stuff, I'm pretty, we're all fairly racist towards journalists.

That kind of is pretty standard. And The Guardian have not been making it any better for themselves. That being said, I've recently become acquainted with some actually really cool British journalists, funnily enough. Some of your best friends are journalists.

Yeah, I can say the word because some of my best friends are journalists. But they're not making it any better for themselves and I think that The Guardian have been rabid recently about, Patrick, as you said, to big tech and billionaires and Elon Musk and stuff. And this is just another link in that chain.

And they know that they're on the way out, if not already out the door in terms of viewership and ratings and attention and whatnot. ratings and attention and whatnot. I think Patrick, that's actually a really good point that there's been a sort of shift in the polarity where now the government is their ally because they have a bigger enemy in big tech, which is taking everything away from them. And journalists, you know, British journalists absolutely are just attention seekers. And all they're going to do is try their very best to, they make maximum use of that snarky smugness and to be like you know fuck elon musk that guy sucks uh i know what's right um doesn't matter what he does he sucks and i'm correct because i'm a journalist um and i'm going to give you my opinion and the guardian are a bunch of commies as well. I just think that they're rational.

I think that their anger towards tech is rational. It's based in a correct understanding of shifting power in the world. Tech has changed the game for not only power generally and wealth generally, but also speech. Like who gets to have a platform? I mean, look at all of us talking on this podcast. It was hard to have a radio show 30 years ago. It is no longer hard. Anybody can get out there and build an audience very quickly. Journalists hate that. Mainstream media hates that, right? Yes. Well, listen, there are people who have huge audiences who also hate it,

who actually can compete and hate it and those tend to be ideological people because they understand that with the power shifting the way that it is it's not shifting in their favor and once people are allowed to speak uh they're sort of their little gated world of ideas is very much at risk now of course they're aligning with the state for two reasons one is economic and the other is just like, that's what their ideology is. The New York Times, even before all of this new shit online was happening, the New York Times was defending the Iraq war incessantly. So they've always been on the side of the state. When have they not been on the side of the state? And I don't know. I guess I wrote a piece called Fifth Estate way back when Elon was taking a, he had just

taken over Twitter. And my sense is like the tech is just a, it like resets power. And if you understand that and you understand that this is a new crop of elites potentially, then you're threatened. It's, it's war. And they're just, they're right. It's like, there's this phrase, uh, the wokes are correct. I guess that people are always bandying about. And this feels like a version of that. The journalists are actually

correct. We can't just be like, oh, you're so stupid. You shouldn't be threatened by Elon Musk or something. It's like, you should definitely be threatened by Elon Musk. You should definitely be threatened by Mark Zuckerberg. And so I understand why they're calling for their arrests. The question I have now is like, will the Europeans actually try some crazy shit with these founders? I mean, up until now, it's been the EU dude, the bug guy, Thierry Breton, running around trying to find them into oblivion. Could there be something more, I don't know, draconian? Are we looking at Twitter people being arrested for failure to comply with whatever free speech ordinance? So do you think like the larger narrative in question here is, okay, so the EU doesn't like America, doesn't like innovation. They've been stagnant for a while, if not

declining. And so first they go after us with fines. I think there's like over like 15 to 30 billion dollars in fines against US companies. Now their next move is going after imprisoning US tech founders. And that's the next move. What is the end goal here? I mean, I think they're going to try and do the fines. And it's a great question. And I think that they're going to wait and see if we pay the fines. I don't see any world in which Elon Musk is giving Thierry Breton money. I just don't think that's going to happen. I don't see any world in which Elon Musk is giving Thierry Breton money. I just don't think that's going to happen. I don't think he has it. I don't think Twitter has the money to give him. And I don't think that if they had the money, he would give it. And it's a game of chicken

right now. So there's a question of like, are we going to pay the fines or not? And if we don't, are the companies going to be shut down or not? And I think probably that's the direction that we're headed, especially if Trump gets in office, because I think that Trump is going to be throwing down the gauntlet when it comes to retaliatory tariff policy and things like this. You know, like, oh, you're fucking with all of our tech companies. Well, now we're fucking with all of your tech companies. Even Canada is doing that. I mean, did you see that Canada is doing the 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles on the heels of limiting the amount of like third world low-skilled workers it's like how is this like the world is changing very quickly the politics of north america are evolving rapidly that's all stuff that could have gotten

you fired in canada for even saying out loud a year ago yes even i mean that guy who's running was eating the apple what's his name the apple i love that guy i love yeah i love apple guy and apple guy was called accused of like fascism for that like oh this is i mean they said donald trump ask which is you know that's a dog whistle if you will for fascism um and uh and he was just spitting facts like very casually um anyway that's that uh i guess yeah no idea how it's going to end other than i think i think trade war is the most likely and maybe this is just maybe a good this is a good indicator of that right like you see that the heightened speech that's sort of what we saw with china we saw heightened speech like this heightened rhetoric like really sort of aggressive rhetoric and then trade war. And maybe we're finally heading towards some kind

of trade war with Europe. Well, that's, I think that's actually one of the saddest things about this from a geopolitical perspective is I think in a geopolitical context, Western countries have forgotten the value and it's going to be impossible to say this without being cliche or trite, but we've forgotten the value of being a free speech first nation and culture and the comparative advantage that that provides you over countries like Russia and China. Like we're basically responding to, you know, their nation state involvement, you know, whether it's Russia and election claims or TikTok, things like that, by just kind of instituting their policies, right? Like we're becoming more draconian, we're becoming more pro-censorship, when we should be leaning in the opposite direction. But also, by the way, in an offensive context, like maybe this

is my hot take on this one, but we should be like funding Siberian independence groups, we should be distributing flash drives to Uyghurs in China, we should be encouraging pro-democracy, pro-free speech groups in all these countries. And instead, we're just kind of on the back foot. Hillary Clinton, this was 15 years ago, I think, said every single American tech company should be trying to force through American free speech norms. That was what the democratic platform was under Hillary not too long ago. Maybe that was a little bit longer. It might've been like 2008. Wait, that was, yeah. So around then. In a very short period of time, there's just been a total evolution from that point. The idea was that we would use our sort of soft power and economic power to normalize our values abroad.

And the opposite is happening now, especially with things like Disney and China, that relationship there, the NBA, where we're sort of, by way of economic forces, absorbing their norms. I mean, our movies get censored so they can appear in Chinese markets rather than- Yeah, we self-censor. Rather than telling them, no, fuck you. get censored so they can appear in Chinese markets rather than yeah we sell we sell rather than telling them no fuck you we're gonna make our movies how we want and you can either run them and buy them or not shout out to Tom Cruise by the way for keeping the flag of Taiwan on his jacket and getting Top Gun banned in China pretty pretty based shame of all the crazy cult stuff i'm in favor of the cult stuff i think it's dark it gets bleached keep it interesting i want more religions if someone wants to be a scientologist and like

you're promised a planet or something after you die i think that's cool i also think there's a lot of abuse that happens in it though that's the problem it's not just the belief that happens in regular i was raised catholic Nothing happened to me personally, but I know that abuse happens in all the different religions. Not with the same degree. Catholicism? I mean, we're like,

I don't know about that, man. Maybe you're right. Um, I just think the midichlorian thing they have there is like with the, the, like the testing of you and stuff like that's interesting. I think we're going to gonna have I was thinking about doing

Scientology testers at a reticon make America clear again yeah I want to be tested I want to see if I want to see how close to the alien they're thetans I'm sorry midichlorians are star wars I want my thetans tested and if you're a Scientologist out there listening

actually I'm interested in having my thetans tested I'm'm interested in having my fetons tested. I'm not interested in joining the cult just yet, but I would subscribe to the newsletter. You shouldn't even call it that. They're literally going to email you and demand a correction and a retraction. Well, if they do that, I'll publish it and then we'll have another story. I mean, yeah, same. But they have an entire Karen PR department that goes after people who criticize criticize them and they do all sorts of crazy stuff to their critics so i guess they're

going to go after you now brad i don't care i think i think they're only going to go after you everyone else here's pro-scientology we love we all love scientology but brad go after brad um brad thank you for joining uh as a guest host this week. Matt, Rob, Patrick, Molly, any final words before we round this episode out? I would like to say that I am an EU accelerationist in that the things that they're doing are going to directly lead to their complete downfall and fragmentation.

So I want that to happen as fast as fucking possible. That I like. We should bring you back to the European segment. Sorry, Rob, continue. Just, Molly mentioned jealousy of Pavel's body and, you know, the skinny fats in France. I just think it's worth pointing out that Macron did have Pavel in 2018

to France to court him to move Telegram's offices and be based out of France. So jealousy is certainly a factor here. To court him? You wretched his body and then to court him. And there's allegedly in France, they say that his wife is actually a man. Exactly. So you think he's gay? And this is like a, this is like a, there's a sexual component to all of this. I think he thought it was good business to have Telegram in France. And also if he got a little hanky panky on the side,

he wouldn't mind that either which who can blame the man um anything else patrick molly uh just based off of that i have nothing to do with that don't bring me in uh my last words free my boy pavel for my boy ross olbrich that's it and free free free speech free speech tell us who you liked in the comments tell us who

I don't know what you wished we had talked about tell us what you want us to talk about next week tell us what you think about Pavel being arrested and the threat of Elon being extradited just tell us something it's been real goodbye catch you next week