The David Pakman Show - 1/26/23: Not Only Hypocrites, But Liars Too

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Cory Doctorow, science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger, joins David to discuss Big Tech, censorship, science fiction, and much more -- Republican Senator Ted Cruz figures out a way to criticize President Joe Biden but defend former Vice President Mike Pence over the classified documents situation -- Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik twists herself into a rhetorical pretzel, explaining that Mike Pence did nothing wrong with regard to classified documents, but Joe Biden's actions are a national security threat -- Failed former President Donald Trump makes a sweaty, slurring statement in which he attempts to order Republicans around now that they control the House of Representatives -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to be Donald Trump's 2024 Vice Presidential running mate -- Following up on the incredible and disastrous YouTube situation from earlier this week -- Supposed small government Republicans demand Congressional hearings over the decision made by private company DirecTV to no longer carry right wing television channel Newsmax -- Voicemail caller attempts to confront David about cancel culture -- On the Bonus Show: MyPillow Mike Lindell's campaign for RNC chair, students ready to sue if Florida bans AP black history class, ad spending on Twitter plunged 70% in one month, much more... 🍯 Manukora Honey: Get 5 FREE honey sticks at https://manukora.com/pakman 📺 Get Curiosity Stream for 25% OFF (code PAKMAN): https://curiositystream.thld.co/pakman_0123 ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz has now eliminated any doubt whatsoever that remained that, yes, he is a completely disgusting and immoral human being. We are going to look at a couple of examples here in the first couple of segments of the show at the hypocritical and disgusting reactions from multiple Republicans to the latest news that Mike Pence also had classified documents at his home. Now, later in the program and maybe tomorrow, even we're going to look at the rise of immediate conspiracy theories surrounding the classified documents story

involving Joe Biden and Mike Pence. But for now, let's look at the pretzels that some of these Republicans are twisting themselves into and sometimes very brazenly. Ted Cruz appeared on television with Larry Kudlow. Larry Kudlow, I guess after working for Trump, he got a show back now on Fox Business. And as you can see, if you if you're watching, Kudlow just looks like he really enjoys himself when he hosts these shows, doesn't he? And Ted Cruz started talking about, oh, well, the FBI needs to investigate not only Joe Biden, but Hunter Biden, because of everything that's going on. And Larry Kudlow, to his credit, plays a sort of soft devil's advocate and says, well, I don't know. I mean, you know, Pence also had documents there.

And Ted Cruz, I don't know. Don't worry about that. We know where those documents came from. Do we take a listen to this? Then this shifts from a political problem to a very serious problem of criminal liability and major crimes. And so the FBI needs to search the University of Delaware archives and they need to search Hunter Biden's home and business address. Just as an addendum to this, the news came out today. I'm sure you saw it. That former Vice President Mike Pence, a friend of both of ours, he's found some classified documents. It turns out that a friend of both of ours is a big factor here. I think it is home in Indiana, not in his office. What do you make of that? Is this different from the Biden

story? Does this just like I know this is totally meaningless, Senator, but like just so I can say I put the question on the record, there's no similarity, is there? Speaker 2 Complicate the story. We're going to continue the bull market and special counsels. I'd rather have a bull market in stocks than in special counsels. How do you see it, Senator Cruz? Speaker 5 Oh, look, the Mike Pence story, it's still early. You know, Mike Pence. And as you noted, he is a good friend. He's a good man. He's explained where these came from.

What his office has put out is is that in packing up the vice presidential offices, that there were a couple of papers that were classified that were inadvertently put a couple inadvertently with non classified materials. That was a mistake. But there's no reason to think it was anything but inadvertent. There is no reason to think that the Biden stuff was anything but inadvertent. Listen, it's not partisan for me. It's not even partisan. As some of our friends across the pond like to say, there are right now three situations

we know about Trump, Biden and Pence. I have no reason to believe that the Biden one is anything but inadvertent. If the facts change, I will revise my opinion. I have no reason to think that the Pence situation is anything but inadvertent. The facts change. I will revise my opinion. I have every reason to think that the Trump situation is deliberate, given the dozens of different data points and reports about Trump directed people to do this. Once the FBI and National Archives became interested in the documents, they're on video moving the documents around rather than simply packing them up to be turned back over to the National Archives.

The fact that Trump pushed his lawyers to lie and say, we gave you back what we have, even though Trump knew that they hadn't. It's piece of evidence upon piece of evidence. These are three situations to seem benign. One seems deliberately criminal. That is very different from what Joe Biden has done. Joe Biden has given zero explanation as to how these classified documents got there. And in particular, he has given no explanation as to how he has documents from his time in the Senate.

Yeah. So as as many of you, of course, know, the Republican Party and people like Ted Cruz are numb to hypocrisy. It's astonishing hypocrisy. It's it's mind blowing and they are completely numb or immune to it. There is no political punishment for it. In fact, often they are rewarded for maintaining the party line the way that Ted Cruz is doing. And at the end of the day, what the hell do you expect from a guy who had his wife called ugly by Donald Trump and then turned around and supported Trump and talked about how great how great Trump is? Now,

there's another side to this. OK, maybe we see it as hypocrisy, but they don't. What I mean by that is they might see it as we aren't hypocrites. We are good and Democrats are bad. We deserve power. Democrats don't. We are above reproach even for the same things that we criticize Democrats for doing. And that's it. Right. It could be a means justify the end sort of thing and that they fundamentally deserve different treatment and different considerations, even for the same things when applied to Democrats.

That's a possibility. The other is they're just hypocrites and brazenly so. And why would they stop being hypocrites given that they are never punished for it? So that's Ted Cruz. Let's now go to another example of this. This you have to see Elise Stefanik, Republican congresswoman from New York, explains how what Mike Pence did was fine and Trump was treated unfairly for the documents document stuff. But Joe Biden is a national security threat. That's the that's the real issue here. There are three stories here. Two of them, the Republican ones, are not a concern, but the Biden one, that is the real issue. Let's take a look at this. And she starts talking about a weaponized FBI and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Folks,

we have three situations. We can analyze them pretty clearly. And this is not the way that the line is that the the the what would I'm searching for a metaphor here? Let's just listen. In the case of Vice President Mike Pence, he came forward and proactively reached out and is following the process. In the case of Joe Biden, he has had classified documents going back to his time in the Senate where he started serving before I was born. So this is a long standing national security threat, setting aside the very important fact that Hunter Biden also had access and used as his home address where those classified documents were improperly

and illegally stored. Does she realize the number of people that have access at Mar-a-Lago? Like if she's concerned that Hunter Biden sometimes went to his dad's house, she is going to be stunned to learn what happens at Mar-a-Lago with regard to who could have had that have had access to the boxes of documents that Trump directed to have placed down there. We don't even have evidence. Biden knew he had this stuff. We don't have evidence. Pence knew he had the stuff. Let's continue. This will be a part of the oversight agenda. And on the House Intelligence

Committee, we absolutely want to make sure we have all of the facts. Well, let's highlight the difference here in what the consequences have been. You had the FBI raid Mar-a-Lago. You did not see any of that happen for President Joe Biden. You know why? You know why there was a different handling? Because the legal law enforcement authorities trying to get the Trump documents back, spent months trying to get them back through other means with Biden and with Pence in Pence's defense. Pence did the same thing. There would be no opportunity for a raid or search warrant to be executed because the amount of time between when the documents were found and turned over was so small. That's why they're among many other

reasons, by the way, illegally did this. What also is different is President Trump as president has the right to declassify documents that that's a ruse. OK, he has the right to. He didn't. And legal experts are almost unanimous on the fact that just saying pack up my documents and send them to my house does not de facto declassify them just because the president doesn't. So the media should cover the fact that the FBI has been weaponized against President Trump and clearly has covered up for sitting President Joe Biden. What a rhetorical pretzel that Elise Stefanik has wedged herself into. It may not shock you that Elise Stefanik was a gleeful endorser of George Anthony Kitara, DeVolder, Santos. You know who I'm talking

about, right? The guy who invented the heart transplant technique and built the Eiffel Tower, that George Santos. Anyway, she was lovingly, gleefully an endorseee, an endorser rather of Santos shouldn't come as a huge shock. At some point, I actually do think that this will maybe not backfire on Republicans, but just fall flat. And what I mean by that is if you look at polling and approval polling, so far, Joe Biden has been unaffected by the classified document situation. My guess as to why is that the American people realize there is no evidence of any kind of malicious intent or subterfuge, whereas the Trump situation is dramatically different and Trump's approval continues to suffer. I think the American people are actually smart enough to know.

And that's a phrase that's often used by Republicans to say, I believe the American people are smart enough to realize what's being when socialism. It just really genuinely seems as though people realize the difference between the Trump document story and the Pence Biden stories, which right now look relatively similar, although differences may come up in the future. Let me know your thoughts. Is it clear to you? That we are dealing with dramatically different situations here in terms of Trump, Biden and Pence with these documents, or do you think that it's basically all the same thing? Let me know. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash the David

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telling Republicans exactly what he expects them to do. We have not digitally altered this video. This is really Trump's physical appearance. This is really Trump's voice. Notice also the jump cuts done terribly. Trump really struggles to record this drivel. So they often have to take it a sentence at a time. Usually when you do this, you do the jump cut from a different angle. So it's not obvious that it's stitched together with with Trump. It's just a disaster. Everything about this video is a disaster. Let's take a look. The new House committee on the weaponization of the federal government is a rare chance to expose the breathtaking corruption of the security state, the media and the Washington swamp. Is Trump OK? I mean, this level of sweating, I almost wonder whether the orange fake tan is to cover something else going on. His eyes are almost completely swollen,

shut like slits. I mean, it does not look good. Here are just a few of the questions the committee hopefully will be asking. Who in the Mueller team was in charge of leaking? OK, so this was a smart jump cut. They actually went to the side. Good information and fake news stories to dishonest journalists, of which there are many, to perpetrate the Russia hoax. And that's what it was. Turned out it was a total hoax. It was all misinformation. It was all a horrible thing that was given to the people of our country illegally by a fake press and a corrupt press. And Understand that there was nothing illegal about the Russia probe, nothing. By corrupt politicians. The day the fake Steele dossier was first

published because they knew it was fake and they knew that sometime there'd be a guy like Trump that wants to go after them. Have any fake news journalists been paid or compensated by U.S. government agencies directly or indirectly for their role in spreading domestic disinformation like the FBI did with Twitter? Who orchestrated the FBI's repeated operations to interfere in domestic politics in the fight? I genuinely don't think Trump even understands the words he's reading off the prompter. He seems lost in the prompter and completely disconnected from the meaning of what he's saying.

And weeks of multiple U.S. election seasons. Right. And specifically and most importantly, in the presidential election of 2020, what the FBI did was suppress anything bad about Biden and go all out, put it all out there. If there was anything at all bad about Trump and if there wasn't anything bad, we'll make it up. Now, none of this is true. I know you know that. And of course, he doesn't cite any examples. That was as a rigged election just by itself. All the federal agents and that jump cut was so bad,

they cut off one of Trump's words. Who's editing these things? Informants and pressing the crowd toward the Capitol on January 6th. And who is Ray Epps? Tell me about Ray Epps. Where does he come from? I think we know this is Trump feeding this conspiracy theory that Ray Epps, a man who was videotaped in D.C. the day before the January 6th riots, the idea that some right wingers have is that he was actually an FBI either informant or actual agent. Of course, there is no evidence of that whatsoever. And there's just no evidence of that whatsoever, period. In addition, the committee needs to do a full review of Pfizer warrants. Pfizer.

Any abuse. We should also get a full report on it. There are an audio glitch that was in the video. Just so you know, just a disastrous video. Domestic surveillance of MAGA supporters that has taken place under Biden or Obama and the radical left. The deep state is very, in fact, deep seated. It's a deep seated deep state.

The greatest threat American freedom in generations has seen and their collusion with the fake news media is absolutely atrocious. This committee is a vital chance to bring it all to light. This is arguably the worst that Trump has sounded. Forget about how he looks, struggling to put together these words. And of course, he is pretending as though he is now going to direct these ridiculous committees that Republicans are putting together, the weaponization committee, their covid committee, which is not really a covid committee. It's sort of like a get Fauci committee. Trump believes he is now going to direct Republicans in their investigations, if that's what you're

going to call them. Maybe he's right. I am not going to assume until we see. Is Trump still in control of the Republican Party or is he not? His endorsement record in contested races in November was not particularly good, as you know. And so we'll see whether Republicans are going to listen to Trump or not. But he really doesn't look good. And the rallies, I guess, are starting soon this weekend. There's going to be it's called an event.

I guess it's not really a rally. I don't know what it is in South Carolina. I told you Trump was struggling to find state legislators willing to go up on stage and support him. Our correspondent, Luke Beasley, is going to be there interviewing people. And hopefully some of the questions Luke asks will be about, like, do you still think that that this is the guy that's good for your party? But it's just amateur hour in every way. The reading, the filming, the audio, it's completely bonkers. Let's now go from talking about the guy who wants to be president

to the gal who wants to be his vice president. We know how great it went for John McCain to select Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate in 2008. So naturally, the next step is for Trump to choose Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2024. Right. And indeed, it has been suspected that she wants the job. It has now been confirmed that Marjorie Taylor Greene does indeed want that job. We suspected that the lunatic extremist conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene was desperate to be Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate. Now we know it. And this is the continued Jerry Springer if the case of the Republican Party, Marjorie Taylor Greene's dangerous conspiracy theories

and horrible statements obviously have no place in the White House. They have no place within a heartbeat of the presidency. But when it is the modern Republican Party, I don't assume that it's out of the question. NBC News reports Marjorie Taylor Greene aims to be Trump's VP pick in 2024. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon has spoken with Greene and says, quote, she sees herself on the shortlist for Trump's VP. Now, whether she is on Trump's shortlist is a completely separate question. Two people who have spoken to Greene say that she is trying to be the VP. This is no shrinking violet. She's ambitious. She's not shy about that, nor should she be, said Steve Bannon. She sees herself on the shortlist for Trump's VP, parapaphrasing Cokie Roberts, when Marjorie Taylor Greene looks in the mirror, she sees a potential president smiling back. A second source who

has been advising Greene said, quote, Her whole vision is to be vice president. The source is tied to Trump and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he also believes Greene would be on Trump's shortlist. The goal is at the heart of Green's recent effort to rebrand herself as a politician who can stand astride the divide between the party's hardliners and its establishment wing. So understand that this sheds major light onto why Marjorie Taylor Green, after saying for years she is not part of the Republican establishment. It explains why she criticized those who dissented from supporting Kevin McCarthy for speaker just weeks ago and joined those who support Kevin McCarthy. She sees an opportunity. And you know

what? Marjorie Taylor Greene is out of her mind, but she's not. Stupid in the sense that she recognizes now that Republicans are going to control now that Republicans do control the House, she can be on one side or the other. She can be one of the detractors of Republicans within the House, or she can be on the side of we are now in power. We are legitimate people to be taken seriously rather than the clowns that many correctly see us to be. And so she has decided to put herself on the side of the speakership and of the establishment Republican Party. Clearly, this was all to try to make herself more palatable and to be taken more seriously. To potentially be Donald Trump's running mate. Now, she is out of her mind. She said the 2018 California wildfires, maybe there was a Jewish

space laser. That was a factor. She has alluded to the 9-11 attacks being a false flag event in the sense that she said she's not really sure that a plane did hit the Pentagon. She has talked about shootings potentially being hoaxes or hoax like she, of course, is one of the biggest promulgators of the obvious to any sane person lie that the 2020 election was not really won by Joe Biden, but rather stolen by Biden and actually won by Trump. This is what we might refer to as a dumpster fire of an elected official. And not only does she want to be Trump's VP, there are people who would vote for her to be the vice president. That's maybe the most frightening thing. Now, admittedly, it may be a relatively small portion of the Republican Party. I don't know. We're going to find out. I am sure that she is being vetted among with others to potentially potentially be Trump's

VP. But thinking ahead many steps, Trump as president was humiliating enough for the United States. OK, if somehow Marjorie Taylor Greene became the vice president, it would be even more embarrassing. Let's hope it doesn't happen because it would also endanger our national security in all sorts of different ways. But Marjorie Taylor Greene, we knew it and it's now been confirmed she wants to be Trump's VP. We'll have more on all of these stories on our Instagram. Find us on Instagram by searching David Pakman show.

Find me on Instagram at David Pakman. from your doctor, your spouse. That's why you get those creepy ads a few minutes later. And other companies collect your data every time you open an email from them. It's a huge mess. All of this information gets sold around. They can piece together where you've been, who you know, what you like, and it's out there forever. That's why I recommend start mail. Start mail never collects data from your emails. It blocks the trackers embedded in the emails that you receive. Start mail encrypts every email you send, protecting it from prying eyes. Even the government start mail never shows you ads. And unlike other services, when you delete an email, it's gone forever. And I love this part. You can create unlimited email aliases so you don't have to give companies your real

email address, which can really cut down on spam. You can seamlessly migrate your emails and contacts from Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and others. It's really easy. Start taking your privacy seriously by signing up for start mail. You'll get 50 percent off your first year subscription. Go to start mail dot com slash Pacman. That's S.T.A.R.T. M.A.I.L. dot com slash Pacman for 50 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome back to the program today, Corey. In my focus to say his last name correctly, I almost called him Kerry Corey Doctorow, who is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger. His latest book is Chokepoint Capitalism, How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back. Particularly interesting now in the context

of all of the concerns around tools like chat GPT and AI and the impact that they may have on creative labor markets. Maybe just to start somewhere, Corey, we start there. What's your sense? Very big disruption coming from these tools or maybe overblown? You know, I think that as interesting as the hypotheticals about what will happen when these markets mature and start taking away jobs from creators can be to think about, it's pretty speculative. There are elements of what GPT does and other ML tools. I don't like calling them artificial intelligence. They're neither artificial nor intelligence. But these machine learning tools,

they're also not learning. But what they do sometimes amounts to something that I think is absolutely legitimate and the kind of thing we want to encourage, which is thinking really hard analytically about how art is made and then making new art. That's how I became a writer. And, you know, irrespective of what tool you use to make your art, it will always include some element of automation and always

include some element of analysis and making something new by analyzing the things that came before you. That is not just legitimate. It's how art emerges. And, you know, one of the things that we've learned and that Chokepoint Capitalism tries to emphasize is that when you have an enormous amount of market concentration, right, there's five giant publishers, four giant studios, three giant labels, two giant ad tech companies, one giant e-book and audio book company that giving exclusive rights to creators is not a way to get them paid more. It's like giving bullied kids extra lunch money. You know, if you have to do a deal with one of those companies to go live, then they're just going to take whatever you've got. And so, you know, not long ago,

there were a slew of music lawsuits over kind of look and feel or groove of songs. The first one was a lawsuit over the song Blurred Lines that argued that it just sounded like a Marvin Gaye song. Yes. Not that there was any notes from a Marvin Gaye song, rhythm from Marvin Gaye song, lyrics from Marvin Gaye song, key changes or chord progressions, but that it just in its totality sounded Marvin Gaye-ish.

And the victory in this lawsuit was kind of heralded in a mixed way by both by record industry executives and by performers. But ultimately, I think, you know, with three giant record labels, if it does turn out to be the case that there is such a thing as a groove right, and that becomes well established in law, it's just going to become a feature of the normal record deal that when you sign a record deal you sign away your groove rights and what that means is that whole genres will become the property of three companies and there's just going to be no way to make new art without submitting to whatever terms they demand of you that would be the worst case scenario of creating a new right to control how people can make new art out

of what they've learned from looking at your art. Now, there's a much easier case, which is the plagiarism case. That's where machine learning just coughs up whole sentences, paragraphs, images, figures from other art. That's a lot easier. That's just copyright infringement in the main. But I think that even if they could guard against that and as a kind of pretend computer scientist, have an honorary doctorate in computer science, I can imagine a pretty easy way to compare output from a machine learning system to training data from the system and ask yourself, is this a direct lift? And if it is, then you then you discard it and start over. And I think that even if that were happening, all of the concerns that people have about creative labor markets

would would still persist with machine learning images, words and so on. If we step back a little from the creative side and content creators and talk a little more generally, on the one hand, there are more and more ways in which computing generally and by this we might be in mobile devices, computing generally is kind of integrated in every aspect of people's lives, jobs, shopping, travel, quite literally every aspect of people's lives. There is a maybe a growing realization from some about the power that big tech has, both in terms of guiding people's choices and in terms of data in all sorts of different ways. There's a growing realization. I don't know that it's

really completely widespread and understood in the way that maybe someone like you would would hope people would understand. What is the direction of this in terms of what where this is taking us as a as a five, 10 or 15 year timeline? Yeah. You know, there's a kind of galaxy brain meme version of this, right, where, you know, first you have this inkling that some computer technology, some digitized element of your life is adversely affecting you. Yes. Right. And it should be better. Then you realize, oh, well, this is pervasive across all of society. Then you see some muscular action taken in one corner and you see it ripple out across all these other areas in unexpected ways. So, for example, you know, the copyright notice and takedown system that was created in 1998 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act really changed the way that we do

copyright enforcement for the digital era. You know, when I worked at a bookstore, if you thought a book on the shelf infringed your copyright, you didn worked at a bookstore, if you thought a book on the shelf infringed your copyright, you didn't just get to march in and say, take it down. Right. Right. You'd have to like get an injunction and show evidence. And if it was frivolous, you'd face penalties. Now, under notice and takedown, you literally just send an email to any of the intermediaries. Right. So there can be a payment processor, it can be a cloud provider, it can be the ultimate application provider like YouTube. It might even be an application conduit like the App Store or the Google Play Store. And you just say, there's some infringing material here.

You need to take it down. And by and large, that's what happens. That turns out to have all kinds of weird consequences. You get cops who play Taylor Swift songs when people try to video record them in the hopes that YouTube's copyright filter will automatically remove the content. You get reputation management companies that are really just reputation laundry companies. There's one in Spain that's quite notorious that works for convicted torturers, murderers, human rights abusers, war criminals, and it uses fake copyright notices to make news articles about

their crimes disappear from the internet. And so this is the next stage where you're like oh wait we need to do this with care and then you know for me the galaxy brain stage the part where you get to the where you go oh wait there's like a way through this is to say that um all of the impediments to making good evidence-based policy about tech do not stem from regulators merely being a little clueless about technology. Regulators are capable of text from the other four, it's very hard to have an uncaptured regulator. Every time you try to do a proceeding, everybody who shows up from industry tells the same story, even if that story isn't true. And you get kind of twisted and distorted regulation that redounds to the benefit of those firms. And that's why we need to demonopolize the Internet. And that's when you realize, oh, wait, Google is not a company that's an idea factory. Google is a company that buys other companies that have good ideas. Google

itself has made one and a half successful products. It made a search engine, a hotmail clone, everything else it's made, it bought from someone else or just copied from someone else like Chrome, which is based on some open source code abandoned by Apple, ironically. And and, you know, the the, you know, the products that it launched internally, Google Video, Google Plus and so on, these all just crashed and burned. It hasn't made a success in-house. So, you know, if we were to apply antitrust laws as they were written instead of as they've been practiced for the last 40 years, and just say you can't buy your nascent competitors, you can't merge with major competitors,

you can't acquire vertical monopolies, you can't collude with your competitors to rig markets as Google and Facebook have done with their Jedi Blue program to steal money from publishers, you know, they're not stealing your copyrights, they're just stealing your money, that, you know, if we were to apply those laws, then we would have a very different technology landscape. And a lot of these problems could be much more narrowly focused. We could say to a company that's doing something wrong, hey, this is your conduct remedy. You have to change

your ways and clean up your act rather than creating these these policies that ripple out through these individual companies that control so much of our lives. So if we step back for a second from the antitrust and sort of regulatory piece of this at the individual level, is this just like the ship has sailed in terms of like unless you are quite literally going to opt out of using devices, leaving any footprint on the Internet? It's just sort of like, yeah, I don't know, like using a VPN is not really going to make a big difference here. Like, is there anything that individual behavior even has as a role to play here? Speaker 3 So I think that that that we need to talk about monopoly again to talk about the role of

individuals, because one of the things that made monopoly possible was this ideology of consumerism and this idea that the way that we make the world a better place is by shopping carefully, that your political participation amounts to being an ambulatory wallet. You aren't going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism, but you never were going to shop in a way that would prevent monopoly capitalism. You know, if you go down the grocery aisle and you pick up the product that is a low packaging alternative because you care about the environment to some major product, it's going to be made by the same company that makes the high packaging alternative. It's going to be made by one of two companies, Unilever either Procter & Gamble or Unilever would buy him out. Yeah.

And they did. They'd issue a press release that said, we bought this company because we know our customers value choice. Right. Well, you can have any choice you want, except for the choice not to enrich the companies that are doing bad things, which means that there is no choice for cleaning up society to clean up society. You have to be part of a movement. Systemic problems need systemic solutions. The second half of chokepoint capitalism is a bunch of shovel ready solutions that are quite technical and have no individual role, except for the role of making these part of the ideas that are lying around when crisis strikes, because when things that can't go on forever will eventually stop. And when they do, there is the space in which ideas that have been in the air about how

we can make contracts fairer, how we can make business fairer, how can we give individuals, performers and workers more rights? That's when they come to the fore. So, you know, for years, people have been talking about what we lost when unionization went away. As an individual, a role to support the union. They'll tell you how. They'll say, here's our strike fund. Here's the day that we don't want you to, you know, we don't want you to buy Starbucks gift cards this Christmas. You know, they will give you ways that you can act as an individual to enhance the action of a movement. But in the meantime, what you can do is find out what the systemic problems are, talk about and socialize those systemic solutions, and then be do is find out what the systemic problems are, talk about and socialize those systemic solutions and then be ready to deploy them when the moment comes. Speaker 1

aside or in addition to the monopoly and antitrust issues, what else are the big, big tech concerns to you in terms of, you know, funneling people into a unit culture or whatever? Right. I mean, I'll just leave it open. What else should we be concerned about? So, you know, I wrote another book that also has the word capitalism in the title. It's the season for those books called How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. Yes. And and it argues with Shoshana Zuboff and her book in the age of surveillance capitalism, whose core hypothesis is basically that ad tech is a kind of mind control ray. And that while it might have been invented to sell your nephew fidget spinners, it's been hijacked to make your uncle a QAnon.

And that's where all of this collapse and our support for institutions comes from. It comes from the persuasive power of ad tech. I don't think that's true. I think that, you know, ad tech companies, their greatest persuasive power is convincing people to buy ads. And that's always been the ad industry's greatest power. But I do think that people's confidence in our institutions has collapsed because our institutions are not worthy of our confidence. When the NIH lets Moderna make an mRNA vaccine using NIH patents without taking a license and then doesn't step in to assert that patent when Moderna quadruples the cost and scoops up for itself a 4,000% margin

on this vaccine that was produced with $10 billion in public money, that that is a reason to doubt our institutions and that monopolies pervert our institutions. And so, you know, to the extent that ad tech helps you find people who are disillusioned, it doesn't make those people disillusioned. And the way that ad tech makes people disillusioned is by abusing our rights, not by being persuasive, but by, for example, effectively blocking privacy regulation, which we still don't have on a national basis in the United States. I think in a world where our privacy is so comprehensively invaded so frequently and so visibly, when our regulators don't step in to give us a privacy

regulation, then that makes the claims of conspiratorialists who say that our agencies are captured, shouldn't be trusted and so on. It makes them credible, not because Bill Gates is putting microchips in our vaccines, but because the agencies themselves haven't earned our trust. So that's, I think, the main problem of big tech is that big tech makes the claims of conspiratorialists credible, which makes it harder for us to rebuild our institutions, which we really need to do. Lastly, Corey, you know, you are so well known for issuing these extraordinarily important critiques of the system out of sheer curiosity. Do you do anything at the individual level that people might find interesting? Like you stick with an old flip phone just to or,

you know, anything like that? No, you know, like this is the thing. So I'm not, I guess the biggest thing is that I'm a Zucker vegan. I don't have any Facebook accounts or Facebook adjacent accounts. I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on WhatsApp. I'm not on Facebook. I'm not on Facebook messenger, but you know, that doesn't help at least, or except at the very margins because Facebook still has a dossier on me.

All the apps on my phone are built with Facebook SDKs, which means that they're gathering data for Facebook and Facebook is maintaining it. There are only so many hours in the day and I am pursuing systemic changes. And so if I stop pursuing systemic changes to pursue individual ones, then I'm going to lose efficacy. There's a great bit at the end of Zephyr Teachout's wonderful book, Break Them Up, about antitrust, where she says, if you spend three hours driving around looking for fair trade mom and pop magic markers to make a sign so that you can go to the strike against Amazon and you miss the strike because you didn't want to buy your markers from Amazon.

Amazon wins. Yes. Right. And so rather than taking these meaningless individual steps at the margins, I try to take big step, big swings at the center. You know, that said, like with arts, artistic work, I try to buy it in the way that gives the artist the most money. So with music, that means when there's an artist I love, like most recently it was Penelope Scott. I go and buy their whole catalog on Bandcamp, which does give significantly more money to the artist than listening to them on Spotify.

OK, interesting. Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the broader, broader philosophy there. The latest book is Chokepoint Capitalism, How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back. We've been speaking with the book's author, Corey Doctorow. Always great having you on. Really appreciate it. Likewise. It's a it's a great pleasure. Nice to see you again, David. peace of mind. And our sponsor, Aura, is the app that protects you from scammers by alerting you anytime your info like email, password, social security number are found in data breaches. Aura also automatically requests removal of your info from search engines and it can reduce spam calls. Aura alerts you quickly about suspicious credit inquiries, like if someone

tries to take a loan out in your name and or as password manager makes it easy to keep your account secure to begin with. Aura also has parental controls for your kids devices. You can restrict apps or manage screen time, set focus time, make sure they're doing homework instead of binging on YouTube. You can try Aura free for 14 days at aura dot com slash Pacman. Use the free trial to see if your email password are already out there. You may be surprised. That's a URA dot com slash Pacman to try or a free for 14 days. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, my friends, you did something quite notable over the last 72 hours. Remember

that on Monday I came to you with almost tears in my eyes and I told you about a disaster facing many creators like me on YouTube. And I asked you take some simple steps, simple actions. And many of you did. And the results are stunning. And they have turned up quite a bit of interesting information. Now, before I get the results, I'll quickly remind you what went down on January 9th. Mysteriously, there was a six hour period during which our live analytics on YouTube showed that we were getting almost no views, not like 10 percent less than we normally get, but almost zero. Some hours we got nineteen hundred views when we would normally get one hundred thousand views. This impacted our channel. It impacted other people in and out of left wing

politics on YouTube. YouTube told us your views are fine. It's merely a reporting glitch. We're going to fix the glitch. But views are completely fine. The next day, things were supposedly fixed. And after three to four days, some slightly higher numbers were retroactively updated in our analytics for that weird six hour period on January 9th. But views were dead. The channel was dead. Subscribers were flat. One day we even lost subscribers after gaining subscribers basically every day for years and years. We actually ended the day with fewer subscribers than we started since January 9th. The channel's been anemic videos that after 90 minutes, after two hours, have 2000 or fewer views. Again, something that hasn't happened for years. Do the

math. You know that this is just a mathematical reality. We come to learn these things from doing this for so long with one point six million subscribers. The mathematical possibility of ending up with 2000 views on a video. It doesn't pass the sniff test views down 60, 70 percent revenue down 60, 70 percent subscribers at a crawl happening not just to our channel, but to the channels of others, you know, as well. So I asked you to do something really simple. First, search YouTube for David Pakman. Click on one of our videos and the results. Do it a second time. Do it a third time. The key is search for me and then click on my videos. We are training the

YouTube algorithm. When you click on my videos, make sure you are subscribed. Many people watch the clips, but don't subscribe. That's bad for us in the algorithm. And make sure after subscribing, you click the bell and select that you want to be notified. Please like the video, I said. And if you can, please leave a comment. The idea was if YouTube shows you my videos in the recommended videos, you click on another, you comment, you like you keep a string going. This, if nothing, would show that if there was nothing nefarious that took place, maybe we fell out of the algorithm because of that glitch on January 9th. So maybe we can fix it. So here's what went down. As soon as that video went live on Monday at 4 p.m. Eastern

explaining what was going on, we started promoting the hell out of this video. We dumped every resource we had, massive dumps to artificially drive traffic to the video as much as we could. The video picked up over 450,000 views as of yesterday and even more now. And something incredible happened. That video generated more than 13000 new YouTube subscribers. But did it fix the algorithm is the next question. Well, yes and no. The next video we published, meaning Monday at five thirty Eastern, was a video about Donald Trump's absurd eulogy of diamond from diamond and silk. And that video did OK. It got about two hundred000 views, still really good. So it seemed as though the activity from the 4 p.m. video did help us in the algorithm when the next video went live. But after that,

things sort of went to crap again. But there are some really important takeaways here. It seems and again, we are working with zero transparency. So we're just kind of feeling around in the dark. It seems that we can force our content back into the recommendation engine. It seems that the dumping everything we had into that four o'clock video did lead to more recommendations for the five thirty video. But then things trailed off. Things aren't sustaining themselves the way they used to. So for now, the good news is if we keep at it, if we keep trying to retrain the algorithm in this way, as I'm talking about, it might pay dividends. It also might not. OK,

so please keep it up. Keep up the like comment, subscribe stuff. Now, I also want to mention because people have emailed me and said, David, you sound extraordinarily naive. I am not so naive that I believe we can fix this ourselves alone. And reporters have reached out to me since this video went out. They're talking to me and other YouTubers about what's going on. I'm hopeful that an article or more than an article will be written about what's going on and published soon to maybe shine more of a spotlight on this. In the meantime, please keep doing these things. They are simple and they are free. And if you can afford it, get a membership at join Pacman dot com. We are down in revenue dramatically. We were counting on the YouTube revenue to launch the Spanish language YouTube channel, which is scheduled to launch soon. So if in addition to those free things,

you can get a membership for a couple of bucks a month. You can do that at join Pacman dot com. Of course, you get the bonus show. Why not? Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. You get the whole thing and you can use the coupon code. Twenty four starts now to get yourself a discount. But thank you. I mean, just incredible what folks have been able to do. You know how the right is about small government and not getting government involved in stuff unless it's absolutely necessary. Well, it turns out that's not really true. Multiple Republicans are now demanding hearings over DirecTV dropping the right wing channel Newsmax. Now, if you didn't

hear about this, what happened is as follows. Companies exist that make decisions. One of those companies is DirecTV. The David Pakman show is on DirecTV. We're on a channel called Free Speech TV. I believe it's channel 348 on DirecTV, although it might be 9415 and, one, five. And we're on three forty eight on on Dish. I don't remember. Anyway, we're on DirecTV on free speech TV. DirecTV could decide we don't want free speech TV anymore. They could decide that for any reason. They could decide that because free speech TV is left wing or because they don't like my face or whatever. Right. DirecTV could decide that they're a company that can make decisions as long as those decisions are not illegal based on some

narrow regulation that exists. Well, DirecTV is deciding they're going to drop Newsmax. Now, why are they doing it? I don't know. Is it because Newsmax is right wing? Maybe that would be their right. Is it because people aren't watching Newsmax on DirecTV? Maybe. Is it because they want to replace it with Golf Channel number seven. Maybe they can do that. And this is a private business making a business decision the way Republicans always say is what should happen. Not anymore. Let's start with our first clip. Here is Senator Rick Scott saying we need congressional hearings into this. By the way, do you realize what's going on with health care and climate and education and the debt ceiling?

And this is what we need congressional hearings about. And if anyone knows how to balance a budget, it's you. You were the governor of Florida for quite some time. And so I know that the House will be thankful to have you help them with ideas. I don't ask you about this. We've had about 40 of your colleagues in the House send a letter to AT&T and direct warning of hearings and demanding to know why conservative platforms like ourselves are being censored and pushed off of their lineup. What would you say to that, and are there efforts in the Senate

to try to dig into why they're censoring conservatives? Absolutely. We've got to get to the bottom of this. This censorship by companies like AT&T of conservative voices, what Google does, what Facebook does. Remember. So, God, this is called the fire hose of falsehoods. It's not censorship for companies to decide what channels they want to carry. Sometimes I might like the decisions and sometimes I might not. It is not censorship. Secondly, we just had a study that revealed the claims about Google's bias are untrue. There have been studies about Facebook's bias and it found actually conservative political content is usually the best performing stuff on Facebook. He just squeezed three lies

into five seconds and people watch this stuff and they go, he's probably right. You know, we watch we know what what Elon Musk has put out about what Twitter did. This has got to stop. So we need to we need to hold hearings here. We need to get the bottom of this. I'm going to do everything I can. They already got rid of another conservative network earlier, or sometime last year, now Newsmax. That's what they're trying to do.

They're trying to shut down our voices. And we've got to fight for this. The American public have to show up. So if you're watching, call A&T and can call AIN TNT and tell them you want Newsmax. Absolutely. You can do that. But congressional hearings using the power of government to investigate cable lineups, satellite TV lineups, Congressman Michael Waltz says there should be congressional hearings as well. Forty one members of Congress have have signed this. I've got it right here.

Letter to DirecTV calling calling on them to to address this. Your name is on that list. Where does that go from here? Something like, you know, a letter like this that you send to to the people that run DirecTV and AT&T. What happens after that? Well, you know, we have a number of questions in that letter that will demand answers for you know, it could go so far as to have their executives come to talk to us and explain this to us. Why did you get rid of the show? Is it because you don't like the look of Sean Spicer suits on Newsmax? Tell

us the truth in terms of that, both the timing and the intent. And it could go as far as is the timing doesn't matter and the intent doesn't matter. They are free to decide what channels to have in public hearings. But I think the public hearing should be part of this broader effort and, you know, from the left to essentially snap everybody in line with their view, their way of thinking. Or you can't get access to over the House has immediately put them laser focused on the issues most important to the American people. Oh, wait, no, it's actually not. Here's one more. Here's Congressman Jeff Van Drew saying we need to do hearings before there aren't any conservative voices left. No question about it. And it's not self-indulgent because the bottom line is what he means is it is self-indulgent. What this country is about is freedom of ideas,

freedom of vision, which applies to DirecTV. DirecTV has freedom of ideas to determine what they want on their network. DirecTV has freedom of vision to determine how they want their network to play out. Freedom of discussion, freedom of speech. And I would be angry if they were strictly doing that to a liberal. Sure, you would. A group of people or a liberal, you know, magazine or a liberal newspaper or anybody that represented one side or the other. The point is, we should be able to have our viewpoints and they should be able to be expressed. In this particular case, it's real obvious something's

wrong because there are stations that are on DirecTV that don't do as well as you. There are stations that are on DirecTV that don't. It sounds like the Republican here is saying DirecTV should use the metrics he thinks should be used to decide. Why does DirecTV have to decide about channel lineups based on what is most viewed that that's for the government to tell DirecTV? That's how you have to decide is extraordinary overreach. I can't even continue with this nonsense because it's so crazy. Listen to the bottom line of what's going on here. They claim that they are against government

regulation. They don't want government overreaching. Government should stay out of stuff unless absolutely necessary, except all of a sudden they want government to force Twitter to publish covid disinformation. And all of a sudden they want government to force Twitter to publish covid disinformation. And all of a sudden they want government to direct the conversations and decisions made by doctors and women in medical settings about abortion. And they want government to decide what types of sex are legal. Talk about sodomy laws here the way Ken Paxton recently said would be completely defensible in Texas for Texas to do. They love the free market until the free market dumps them. DirecTV wants to dump Newsmax and they can do that. Will this fix inflation? No. They claim that that's a real issue,

which, by the way, has been coming down for months. Will this fix the issue of the debt or whatever else? All this stuff. Will anyone get health care as a result of this? Of course not. These people are pathetic and they are dangerous. And this is the type of stuff, unfortunately, many Republicans have elected them to do. They want them doing this sort of thing. It's sad, but it is not altogether surprising. We have a voicemail number two one nine two. David P. Speaking of cancel culture, here's Peter from China saying, I am a counselor. Hi, David, this is Peter from China. Yeah. On your recent show, you once again said that cancel culture was something that didn't really

exist and we should, quote, push back against the concept of cancel culture, end quote. So, David, a few months ago, when you were encouraging your audience to call their cable provider and complain about Fox News being among the channels provided, what would you call that if not cancel culture? Was that just a case of activism going too far? Speaker 1 No, it was neither. Many people don't realize that they if they have a cable subscription are sending a few bucks to Fox News. People who dislike Fox News are funding Fox News. Many people don't realize Fox compared to other networks is more funded by cable fees, your cable fees than by advertising relative to other networks. So I told my audience,

if you're displeased with Fox News, you can choose to make your voice heard. You don't want your money going to Fox News. You can call your cable provider. That's not cancel culture. That's me telling people if you want there to be consequences to the things that Fox News is saying and doing, you can choose to call and tell your cable provider you don't want to pay for Fox News. This is exactly the point. This isn't cancel culture. It's consequences to the actions of people based on the things they do and say. I don't know how many times I have to repeat it, but Peter from China doesn't seem to get it. We have a great bonus show for you today. We're going to talk about MyPillow, Mike Lindell's RNC camp, a chairmanship campaign. We will talk about lawyers ready to sue

on behalf of three students over that AP Black History class that Ron DeSantis wants to cancel and 70 percent declines in one month of ad spending on Twitter. What on earth is happening over there? Get instant access to the bonus show by signing up at.