Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/7/22 Bill Ottman on Alternative Social Networks and the Future of the Internet

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

Scott is joined by Bill Ottman, the co-founder and CEO of Minds — a blockchain-based social network. After Twitter banned Dr. Robert Malone for spreading alleged medical misinformation, many have been voicing frustration with the major social networks. And although some alternatives have been gaining in popularity, nothing has taken off as the new place as of yet. Ottman and Scott discuss the landscape of alternative social networks, the features these networks are offering and what we can expect as the internet continues to evolve.  Discussed on the show: Dr. Robert Malone on the Joe Rogan Experience Bill Ottman is an Internet entrepreneur and freedom of information activist based in Connecticut. He is also the CEO and co-founder of Minds.  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of antivore.com, author of the book, Pools Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing bill ottman he is the founder and the CEO of minds dot com welcome the show bill how you doing hey hey great thanks for having me well happy to have you here

So listen, it's come up a lot of times recently, but especially lately it was a old Dr. Malone, is it, that got kicked off a Twitter right before he appeared on the Joe Rogan show. And whether that was a coincidence or not, I don't really know what's going on with that. But anyway, another seemingly, you know, professional credentialed qualified person who didn't say the N-word or threaten anyone or anything. thing, but had an unpopular opinion and got thrown right off of Twitter, which is obviously an extremely important tool for, you know, in social media. It's obviously not as big as Facebook, but it has certainly a place within the media and between people in the media and the people they're covering and this kind of, you know, world, the public world of of public policy and of social criticism and everything really important. You know,

Facebook is a bit broader, I guess. Anyway, so it came up again that, well, what are we going to do when we're at the mercy of these people? And so, and I put out tweets like this a few times before. Everybody tell me, who's your favorite alternative to Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, et cetera? And there's quite a few of them, and yours is one of them. So I wanted to hear from you about what it is behind the creation of minds.com. What are you trying to accomplish and how well are you accomplishing it and kind of introduce us to your site here? Awesome. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I mean, yeah, I was actually in touch with Dr. Mellon the other day and we're going to do some cool stuff with him and get him over.

It's just unbelievable that the discourse, you know, totally lawful discourse is being shut. down. I mean, it's almost laughable at this point, you know, just totally reasonable content. And there's just no rational justification. It's, you know, because misinformation is a word that means whatever they want it to mean. There's no, there's no definition. and also the big tech has provably been wrong multiple times because guess what information changes over time you know science is a process science is not a conclude it's not a static thing which it's sort of people are referring to it that way which is very problematic and so you know we essentially, you know, our content policy is First Amendment-based.

We stick to that as much as humanly possible. And we also have a jury system for much of our moderation where the community can actually get involved in the appeals process. And we're trying to expand that out as much as possible because, you know, we don't want to be the, like, centralized authority on these decisions, you know, because there certainly are gray areas and you know we you want everyone to have as much of a fair shot to make their case and just you need multiple independent parties involved in that so you know for me with alternative social networks it's there's a litmus test for me if i'll touch a new

application. And it's really, one, are they open source? That's my primary. And I know a lot of people don't even know what that means. But what it means is that the code itself of the app is transparent so that it can be audited and so that they are accountable to the community. It's not saying that most normal people are going to go in and look at the code because they're not. But it's a principle of transparency around algorithms, which is just absolutely the next paradigm of all apps. And you're starting to see that with crypto. You know, most of these new Web3 apps are all open source because it's almost laughable

to not be in sort of the cypherpunk internet freedom circles. I don't even know what Web 3 is. I've seen it before. Yeah, so basically you've got this. And some people like the term. Some people don't. But you know, you've got Web 1, which is like the original kind of old school. You know, people hosting their own email servers back in the 90s.

Web 2 is Web 2.0, you know, the rise of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, centralized behemoths, which undoubtedly have value, you know, and have created amazing technology, which is a part of the evolution of the Internet. But, you know, rapidly they became sort of surveillance silos, censorship silos, and, you know, too centralized. And now what's happening is that decentralized applications are emerging, which, you know, some of that, and there's even a spectrum between Web 2 and Web 3, where applications may have certain services running on decentralized infrastructure like blockchains or torrents or, you know, various distributed systems and federated systems, which enhance the resiliency of the apps, which make them more

censorship-resistant, which give users sovereignty over their identity and their content. and so your assets, your funds are sort of portable with you. So you can actually log in to different sites with your crypto wallet. And a lot of these apps are running on the Ethereum network, but there are others, other blockchains and other distributed systems like IPFS, where the content is stored sort of in this torrent-like system. And so it's really fascinating all of the development happening in the space. And you're even seeing big tech start to touch on Web 3.

We're seeing Twitter supporting Bitcoin wallets. Unfortunately, they don't share the code. And they're sort of doing it in this backwards way. But you're seeing Facebook, you know, meta now, Metaverse. The metaverse is, you know, the phrase originated in the Ethereum community, I'm pretty sure, around these sort of virtual worlds, projects like Decentraland, where, you know, your identity is your crypto identity, and you can kind of enter into this world, and your NFTs are tied to your identity. Because what are NFTs? There are these tokens, non-fungible tokens, that can represent any unique object. And you kind of own those with your crypto address, but then you also own, you know, fungible tokens like, you know, Mines has a token, which we reward users.

It's on the Ethereum blockchain. There's many tokens. The Brave browser has a token that they reward users for participating. So anyway, I'll kind of stop talking so much. but there's this progression in the internet to more of a decentralized web where users just have more freedom. Right. Okay, now here's the thing about it is I think with everybody on Facebook or Twitter,

I mean, I quit Facebook, absolutely fed up back in 2014, I think. I mean, I have a guy that runs it for me. My friend runs it for me. Because you've got to be on there somehow, but I don't even check in. I got nothing to do that. But I think a lot of people have. sort of an obsession slash hate relationship. I certainly do with Twitter, for example. And I think a lot of people feel that way. And I think, you know, the kind of analogy is obvious

because everyone remembers that back in 2007, 2008, or I guess maybe it was 2008, 2009, everybody, everybody just switched from MySpace to Facebook. Because it was a clean white page with blue lines and things and it wasn't a mess the way MySpace. was. They just worked so much better. And I don't know why MySpace kept that thing with the scrolling foreground over the static background thing that they had. It was just a nightmare.

Anyway, so it was like the discovery of the new world or something. Everything changed overnight. Everybody moved to Facebook and MySpace was totally out of business, essentially. So that's what everybody wants to happen, because who wants to have a hundred of these

things when what we One is to be able to talk with each other and all kind of be on the same thing of a jig. But it seems like the obvious thing would be to have just an app that we all have where it's not minds.com, but it's just minds the app on my computer that talks with everybody else's. And then that's what makes it, you know, really peer to peer in that torrent type sense. It seems, and look, I can run windows from the outside. I don't know nothing. I got a guy for that. But, you know, I'm no computer genius type. But it seems like minds.com is more that Web 2.0 rather than that Web 3.0 that we all want it to be. Am I wrong about that?

Well, we do have apps as well. And we, no, we are sort of in, we're evolving towards Web 3. We're sort of like Web 2.5. Okay. And, you know, pure Web 3, you know, you have to realize is a little bit complicated because you, have to be controlling your, you know, your crypto keys. It's, you know, there is a learning curve to operating in a fully decentralized way on the internet. It's not super easy from a UX perspective yet. But like, for instance, mine's chat, which is, so we have two apps, similar, honestly,

to how, like, Facebook and Messenger work, we have mine's chat. And mine's chat runs on a federated decentralized infrastructure on the Matrix Protocol. And it's end-to-end encrypted, so we don't have access to anybody's conversations. which is essential. That's another part of the litmus test. And you can communicate through Minds chat with other nodes on the Matrix network. So, you know, it's not reliant on us. And that's really important that, you know, different people and companies can build interfaces into these protocols. And so, you know, but again, there's a learning curve, and I think it's, it's not to say web two is bad, web three is good, because it's just the evolution of technology.

It's like centralization is not evil. It is a part of how systems work. So with any system, whether you're talking about a biological system or a technical system, you know, you have centralization and decentralization. You have networks. And I think that having like a bend towards decentralization is important. You know, that's where we sit. That's, I think, you know, when you look at, you know, government systems, when you, when you look at social systems, a bend towards decentralization typically is going to make those, that system more resilient and, you know, better for the participants. So, yeah, does that make sense? Yeah.

well and you know I don't I only understand again from the outside looking in most superficial kind of thing but it seems like for example you'd have to keep the worst most illegal types of pornography off of your network somehow someone has to be in charge of that it can't but I don't know who or how or what or if you could just have AI do that or something but it just seems like you basically have the protocol so I guess the point is this is that if it ain't Zuckerberg then it's you instead which I I like you, but maybe other people don't. And it just seems like we shouldn't have to have a Zuckerberg, you know? Exactly. I don't want to be that. That is, and we've already implemented some tools so that we're not that. For instance, you can currently, when you post on minds, post to what is called the perma web. So you have the option to do this every time you post.

There's a little drop down in the upper right of the composer. And what the perma web is, is, it's built by RWeave, which is a blockchain. It's a decentralized content storage system that is immutable. They're basically trying to create a decentralized, uncensurable library of Alexandria. And it's an amazing project. IPFS is another system like this, which we tap into. So currently, you can post to mines. and the perma web simultaneously through us,

and we cannot take down that content. We can, you know, if illegal content is uploaded to that, we can hide it from the mine's UI, and the permaweb and our weave have a content moderation system built into the node structure of the perma web where various node operators can ignore certain content but it cannot be taken off. So there are always theoretically be nodes

and the perma web which can access everything. And so this is this sort of pretty fascinating concept as we move into Web3 or fully decentralized world in a mutable world where, you know, because if you want full censorship resistance,

you sort of need immutability. you need no central party to be able to take it down. Otherwise, exactly what you're saying. It's just sort of another person that I have to trust. And what we're trying to move into is a trustless world. We don't need to trust people because we trust the encryption and structure of the technical systems that we're using. So, yeah, I mean, we are already tapping into decentralized protocols.

so that we, and, you know, I think, but that doesn't mean that every interface to that protocol, like Mines, or like there are many other apps that tap, you know, that use RWeave and the perma web, and they create their own unique interfaces on top of it. You know, we have jury systems for, for content moderation. You know, every interface can sort of choose their own moderation structure, but at the end of the day that content will still exist and I think that's just a really important thing it's also a little bit scary because you know in a mutable world is you know it is what it is you know it's there forever and and so I don't in IPFS and our weave work a little bit differently

our weave is fully immutable in IPFS it is fully decentralized so you know no one can take it down but I think it can also be forgotten about. So if no, as long as someone is hosting it, you know, the way like seeds work in torrents, it can exist. But once nobody is seeding it, it's sort of, it goes away. And so, you know, but this is how distributed systems work. And there's a lot of responsibility involved with, you know, being aware of what you post. You know, you have to think about that already. Like, you think when you delete something from Facebook that it's actually getting deleted right away?

No, no, no, no. It's being hidden. And because deleting things from any database, even if it's a centralized database, is quite complicated. Because there's all these tombstones and footprints that get left in the database. There's always a trace of stuff. When you're on the internet, you have to realize you are wading through databases. and you leave trails. And it is, that's just the nature of it.

So, you know, central, it's easier to delete stuff from centralized databases. And you can, but there's always traces. Yeah, man. All right. Very interesting stuff. Now, tell me this. Is this a trap and are you funded by IncUTel? No, no.

We are funded. So our first funding round was a community. crowdfunding round. We, over 1,500 members of the Mines community, we raised a million dollars. And that was really amazing experience. And then we raised around from a blockchain focus group called Medici Ventures. They were just excited for us to build into Ethereum and, you know, really supported our values of Internet freedom. And then our more recent, funding round with Futo, which is a tech freedom organization. And we literally the mandate of the round was to build a decentralized censorship resistant social network. So, you know, we like our

stakeholders are all deeply committed to this. You know, our, you know, we published our, you know, financials, very transparent with our financials. Our cap table is is very transparent. And yes, So, you know, ultimately we want to reopen the equity crowdfunding structure, which is an amazing vehicle for, you know, sort of open access, both accredited and non-accredited investors to get involved in the ownership structure. And, you know, it's, we're doing the best we can with kind of the integrity of our, of our stakeholders in making sure that they represent our values. Yeah, yeah.

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including Inside Syria by the late great Rees Erlich. That's listen and think.com. All right, now, so like we're talking about, kind of everybody wants to switch from Facebook and Twitter, but they kind of can't

because there's too many different things to switch to and there's no consensus on which one. And, you know, I have a page on mines, but I've never been to it until like just now, but my buddy set it up for me. And I think I have one on Miwi and Mastodon to maybe. I'm not sure. But I never go by there. Because who can keep track of all these things? And so I guess I have kind of an idea, but also with the question, it seems like there's a problem in drumming up that consensus that this is the one we all want to switch to. and of course you want that to be mines.

So my idea is how about you invent your own kind of tweet deck app where people can run minds and they can run their Twitter and their Facebook and whatever else, their Mastodon and everything else from the same app at the same time? We actually have that. Go ahead.

We actually have that. Oh, yeah? Yeah, your Twitter can auto post to Mines right now. Oh, that's good. Well, I can definitely have Harley set that up. Yeah, that's an easy thing. I completely agree in terms of... But then that's kind of less reason to go there, though.

I guess the real question is, how do you get people to say, you know, enough of this, the way they did with MySpace and switch to Facebook and have them quit Facebook and Twitter and switch to minds instead? I think that we, you know, at the end of the day, native participation on apps is always going to be, you know, make you more successful. I completely agree with like an open source sort of tweet deck type thing, which can post to all of them at the same time. But some people just don't like to do that on, you know, all of their pages because it sort of makes the it not optimized. I mean, I think that there's ways that you can do it so that like for certain posts where it's just going to be like a standardized thing, which you want to share everywhere.

But there are sort of unique quirks on every app. And I but I also completely agree with you that. you know, there's only so much time in the day. And so for me, like, I'm very particular about who I give my energy to. I don't give any energy to Facebook. I mean, you don't even reach people on Facebook. Like, the reach is like, the organic reach is just destroyed with their algorithms. But, I mean, we have monetization incentives. We have a whole crypto token incentive that we reward, I think that we reward, you know, monetization-wise better than even in, I mean, most big tech sites. So that's something that is really appealing to people. And, you know, I don't think we

want to live in a world where there's just like one single place that we go. Again, I think that we want. We want our assets to follow us around. We want our content to be, you know, if I log into a new network, my content and my identity comes with me so that I don't have to start over. And so that I can display, you know, when I post one place, I go to another place and it's there. I agree with what you're saying. That's sort of what is starting to be achievable in Web 3 because, you know, you post these systems, these distributed systems, it doesn't matter where you log in. When you log in, it detects your address, and that address is correlated to these assets,

which exist on decentralized systems. You know, Tweet deck and HootSuite and these types of things are centralized, proprietary apps which are sort of not the future. They do make things easier, but they're actually not the way that that ultimate, you know, kind of tech freedom decentralized version of tweet deck would exist. Yeah. So, so I think that... Well, you know, back a few years ago, I think if you go back maybe four or five years, I forget if it was tweet deck or which one it was. There's one of these apps where you could run Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace from it. And I was, and I was even posting, I started posting to Facebook again because I didn't have to go there.

I was, I had my tweet deck open anyway. So I started posting on Facebook again. And I could even post on Myspace. And somebody emailed me and said, wow, you're active on my space again. I'm getting notifications. How yeah, how's it going? So yeah, that was kind of a cool thing. And then they, somebody zapped it and it didn't work anymore. And you can only do one thing at a time now again. But, you know, if they would do that, it would be, that way I could sort to stop by Mastodon minds and everybody else too. Not necessarily put out the same message on every

platform at the same time, but carry on different conversations with different people, but without having to have 20 tabs open on my Mozilla here, because I just got the one app open that has the different channels on it, you know? I completely agree, and I think I would love to kind of

keep in touch with you to work on that, because that is absolutely just a necessity. But I, I I also really try to tell people that what builds the alternative networks in this new sort of digital rights respecting world, whether they're using like Mozilla or Brave or, you know, at the browser level, it's very important to not use Chrome. Do not use Safari. like these are malicious browsers use Firefox

brave browsers that are actually conscious of privacy like that's a base layer which you know you need to be aware of what you're using but every time you open a browser every time you go to a network

an alternative social network or a big tech site you are feeding that site you are the reason you are a small part of the reason that it is still so dominant so I understand you can't visit you know 20 places every day but I think changing the mentality around it's like voting with your dollars but like you're voting with your attention online and so not thinking it thinking of it in this sort of scarcity frame where like, you know, I got my biggest following on Twitter and YouTube. Like, you know what? I'm just

going to do that. I just don't have time. I just, I sort of reject that because, you know, we all have time. We have a little, we have 30 seconds to go log into that app, check it for, you know, see what's up. That 30 seconds of attention just helped. that app grow. It helped the metrics of that app. Those metrics then, you know, help propel it. It's, it is those kind of micro movements which cause like major shifts. And I, and at the end of the day, it is totally like all these different platforms responsibility to have to, to incentivize you to do that. You know, it's not just like you don't have endless charity to just go around giving apps energy. But And that's why we've been focused so much on the monetization incentives and, you know, helping

propel the reach of people. And so, like, you earn tokens on mines, and then you can use those tokens to boost your posts. So one token is worth a thousand views. So there's this contribution to a system where you give energy, you generate engagement. You earn tokens for that. And then those tokens, you know, they do have a value. which you know, you can, you know, use them on Ethereum, but you can also use them to promote your

content. And we have very aggressive rewards for people who come. So that's just, you know, because there's human nature. At the end of the day, people need to be incentivized. And I think that in the future networks of the world need to pay creators a lot. Because, you know, what do you get from Twitter. Twitter doesn't pay you. That you're just giving, and they have value. There are people there. So it's like there's certainly value to Twitter. But the networks of the future that reward creators the most, which we have both Fiat and crypto rewards. So we have a whole rev share system with Mines Plus where we actually take 25% of our revenue and proportionally share it with the creators who, you know, post into minds plus the most. And so we're, you know, not surveillance

advertising reliant. We're actually doing rev-share systems, much more cooperative financial model. So, you know, those are things that I think, you know, might not have been completely obvious to you from like, you know, checking it out for five seconds. But once you dig in, you sort of see that we're, we are really working on more novel incentivization. systems. Yeah. No, that's all really great. And I mean, just on the face of it, the idea of the open source code behind an entire app and website like this, I don't know how precedent setting that is, but it seems like a pretty big deal. And it's rare on encryption and crypto and all of these things. It seems like you at least have all your intentions in the right place here, your

priorities straight. And I'll sort of help you run through the list right now, like of the ones that you've mentioned. So Miwi, not open source. Mastodon is open source. Mastodon is actually, you know, I totally respect that project. Now, the problem with Mastodon is that you have all these different nodes. And, you know, this is also the best thing about Mastodon. It's similar to what I was talking about with, you know, similar to some of our federated node structure that I was talking about before. But sometimes you log into Mastodon and there's literally like two people there. So, you know, you know, you. But again, they're federated.

So, like, there is a big community on Massadon, which I think is worth supporting, and they're fully open source, and they're doing it right. They really are a very important project. You know, I've been hearing about Getter recently. Getter is not free speech. Read their terms. They're banning people like crazy. It's a political, it's a polarized political network that is, you know, using the land.

language of free speech to try to drive people there. It's not open source. It's not privacy preserving. There's nothing different about it. It's the red version of the blue site. It's same with parlor. Parlor, getter, rumble are all the same. They're not transparent with the users. They, you know, I think Rumble might have a, I don't, I haven't read Rumble's terms yet, but, and I'm not saying that they're 100% bad. I'm just saying that there's nothing foundationally different about them.

Well, now, is there a video site that is up to your specs? We have video, we host video. But I would say that Odyssey is, you know, which is, I think, built on the library protocol. They are open source. They do video specifically. We do video.

Rumble does video. Rumble is not open source. And so, you know, I don't know if you have others that come to mind that you've explored, but, you know, for sure, you know, parlor, getter, not open source. And they know what they're doing. You know, startups aren't... When you mentioned about them banning people left and right, I think this is part of their dilemma is they don't want to be gab, where everybody who's an outcast and already canceled on the right goes there. And then... then it's nothing but swastikas and pepe frogs everywhere and then no one else wants to have anything to do with it. In fact, when the doctor promoted getter and his getter account

on the Joe Rogan show, and Rogan said, and it's not all a bunch of right-wing crazies, because who wants to be associated with something? And instead, and then I think you just nailed it though, right, that like in their marketing essentially that, no, they're like Republican right. They're not very, very far right. But then, I mean, it makes sense on their business, model to do that, that let Gab be Gab, where all the Nazis go and say the N-word to each other and laugh or whatever, and then let them have a different thing. It's understandable. I'm not saying I agree with each choice they've made on who they've banned or whatever. I don't know anything about it at all. But I'm just saying, I can see how that's a dilemma that they have, you know,

because once you get the reputation of just being the home of people that nobody else wants to talk with, then that's who you're stuck with. I think that I, yeah, I agree with you. on sort of that's probably their thought process, but I reject the path that they're taking. I think that, you know, there are progressives, you know, major progressives who are very pro-free speech. And, you know, you've got the, you know, Max Blumenthal's, the Jimmy Doors, the Abby Martins, the, you know, there, and there's a number of media organizations, you know, Tulsi even, like there's a whole contingent of the left that is rational in terms of free speech. Also, LGBTQ communities experience all kinds of horrible censorship on big tech.

You know, you've got the whole, you know, Marx actually was profiling. free speech. This is what a lot of the Antifa people don't realize. And so free speech, if you truly study the history of it, it is not a political ideology. And there are ways, which we've worked really hard on so that anything that's NSFW can be tagged and people don't have to see it. But at the end of the day, once you start playing the game of, oh, you know, this, I'm going to ban this word, going to ban, you know, this, X, Y, Z, and you, and you start to drift from the First Amendment, you are now in a chaos of gray area where there is no grounding for context. I mean, you could have a post that, you know, there's a swastika in it, and it could be a totally

intellectual take on swastikas coming from someone on the left. But yet, if you're just banning swastikas, then, you know, that is called dumb AI. And that is what makes the world a much more dangerous place. Well, and frankly, like, I think it's okay. In the Wild West days of YouTube, there were plenty of you know videos up there praising hitler and whatever and i think that's fine too i mean yes you know uh whatever you believe in free speech and free thought and and the very principle that it's worthwhile to know what other people think whether you agree with it or not or any of these things um but i guess you know that's sort of different than just being the haven for one kind of one kind of political stripe that then i come sort of self-exclusive

of everybody else who will disassociate immediately. So, you know, the way that you don't become Gab is the management of the, you know, the company don't be a political religious zealot. You know, it's like I support Gab's right to free speech, of course. And but like, you know, if Getter is worried about, you know, the back of, for having certain content, it's like, why is your company clearly a conservative run by, you know, a conservative echo chamber? Like the corporate tone, the corporate messaging, you know, we have been so focused

and, you know, why we partner with people like Daryl Davis, who famously de-radicalized over 200 members of the KKK, black man who did this, and other sort of pro-free speech people who also care about positive intervention with, you know, controversial characters. Like, how do you actually cause change? How do you, how do you cause a neo-Nazi to stop wanting to become a neo-Nazi? Oh, you think... Talk with him. You have to talk to the guy. Yeah. So this is basic physics, and it's malicious, to be honest, and I get fired up about this, because it is completely brain dead the way that big tech is operating. It's completely brain dead how Getter is responding to this.

And because it's just a short-term, you know, very shallow take. And the most powerful and heroic, you know, de-radicalization figures in the world have always engaged, you know, and obviously we need, you know, it needs to be legal. and lawful, you know, people, if people are unlawful, then they have to get banned. But for people who are on the edge, they need to be able to be communicated with. And a huge disservice is being done to global discourse by shutting this down. This is what the realists on both the left and the right realize when it comes to global discourse. So, and this is what isn't being talked about from these political alternative networks.

And they should. I encourage them to, I encourage them to change their policy, start working with de-radicalization experts, keep the free speech policy, and start to become a forum where change can actually occur, and make a specific effort to bring in both progressives, conservatives, Democrats, libertarians.

You know, that's the company's responsibility is to bring in the full spectrum and to dedicate resources to making sure that their community is balanced. I mean, when we first, you know, kind of had our first big growth spurt, like a million users back in, like, 2015, that was largely progressives and, like, privacy advocates, definitely libertarians as well. but, you know, like during the Snowden Revelations, that whole crew. And now, like, you know, you've got people like Glenn Greenwald and like, you know, he's progressive, but he's totally pro-free speech. So, like, this is where we need to kind of reach out to people. I think it's just a lack of education. Like a lot of mainstream people, establishment, you know, sort of people who play identity politics,

I just think that they just aren't aware of. this information and they just watch the news and they think oh those people you know are are bad and they need to be banned and all misinformation needs to be banned they're just regurgitating what they're being told yeah all right well listen i mean i think it's great what you're doing i hope it takes off um i guess you know i wish you continued success and um you know keep in touch and i'll try to stop by your site more often rock on scott thanks for having me man and uh yeah let's let's let's keep talking because i agree it needs to be easy and you know we don't we we it shouldn't be just a struggle to to have freedom yeah so we'll keep talking right yeah absolutely all right

everybody that's bill ottman founder and ceo at minds dot com and his handle is at ottman on minds dot com the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kp pfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scot horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org