The Young Turks - Zuckercuck Changes Meta

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Trump warns that if hostages aren't returned by Hamas ""all hell will break out."" The incoming National Security Advisor says Trump's administration will spy on mosques and colleges. Zuckerberg seemingly bends the knee To Trump and changes Meta's moderation policies to more closely resemble X. HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER ☞ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH ☞ https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Earth responds to that. The guy! All right, well, young Turks, Jake U Granik is very with you guys, still not at the Polymarket Studios. We got an amazing show for you all today. So it has Elon Musk overstepped? Interesting. Is Donald Trump going to either invade or buy Greenland? Interesting. Okay, we've got strong opinions on some of those things, including his statement that he is going to unleash hell on Gaza. I got bad news for him. It has already arrived about a year ago, well over a year ago. Anyways, all right, lots of news, so let's get to it. Casper, what do you got for us?

Well, why don't we actually begin with some of the latest developments in regard to the war on Gaza and how the incoming Trump administration intends to deal with the whole war and a government that's carrying out the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people. Let's watch. All hell must be paid if they don't release the hostages, don't you? Well, do I have to define it for you? Look, all hell will break out. If those hostages aren't back, I don't want to hurt your negotiation. If they're not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don't have to say anymore, but that's what it is.

Well, there you have it. President-elect Donald Trump doing what he likes to do the most, which is to negotiate publicly in regard to both domestic and foreign relations. And in that clip, you hear him say that Hamas will have a heavy price to pay if they don't return all of the hostages that they had captured during the October 7th attacks on Israel. Now, there are some interesting details here because it's not just what Trump said there. It's also what we're hearing from other members of his incoming administration, which we're going to get to in just a moment. But before we do, if you're wondering who the gentleman's standing next to him is, it's Steve Whitkoff. He's an American real estate. investor who Donald Trump has chosen to be part of Donald Trump's Middle East envoy. And so

I don't know how being a real estate investor makes you qualified for that position. But nonetheless, that's who we're talking about here. Jank, what are your thoughts about Trump threatening Hamas? Yeah. So look, he's not threatening Hamas. Hamas leaders are all dead. What he's doing is threatening more innocent Palestinians. So hell, what are you talking about? talking about. They're already in hell. They've been in hell for over a year now. So you're going to give them more hell, double the hell? How's that going to help? So if you actually wanted to solve the issue, what you would do is you would put pressure on the people that we have leverage over. And that's Israel, because we just gave them $30 billion. So that's a lot of leverage

we have that he's choosing not to use because Miriam Aedelson ordered him not to use it. And so now she's ordering him to bomb the poor Palestinians, defenseless Palestinians more. And Donald Trump is taking his orders from those donors. Why is a real estate, rando real estate dude in charge of this? Well, to be fair, in his first term, there was another rando real estate guy who was in charge of the Middle East. And his name was Jared Kushner. So like this guy's probably some lackey of Miriam Adelson. I don't know of him from Adam. Nobody does.

But she's picking the entire foreign policy team. And so this is a nonsensical statement by Donald Trump. Oh, I'm gonna punish the Palestinians more. Wow, what a unique idea. I bet that gets the job done. So look, this is not a test of Donald Trump. I know what Donald Trump's gonna do in the beginning. He's gonna kiss the ass of his donors.

This is a test of MAGA. Are you guys actually anti-war or are you not? Because Trump is promising nothing but more war here. And so is his national security advisor, as Anna is about to tell you. Yeah, and I should note that the entirety of the press conference that Donald Trump held today was sprinkled with all sorts of plans for U.S. imperialism, the use of the American military to essentially take control of foreign sovereign countries. Look, the thing with Trump is, he says all sorts of crazy things, and oftentimes he says crazy things specifically to scare other countries or foreign leaders into doing what he wants them to do. So who knows what he's actually going to carry out once he's in office again. But it is something that everyone should keep on their radar, especially if you found Donald Trump to be more favorable because he's a so-called anti-war president.

I don't know if that's actually going to play out the way that these individuals think it is. But one other thing I'll mention about Whitkoff, the guy who is next to Trump during the press conference. He's also in business with the Trump family on a new crypto venture. So I'm sure that that plays a role in him being chosen to be part of Trump's middle. released envoy. Now, let's move on to Representative Mike Walts, because unfortunately, we are starting to see how much of an Israel Simp Donald Trump and his administration plan to be. In fact, what Representative Walts said recently in regard to Muslims in America is concerning to say the least. Let's take a look. We look at the broader issue of radicalization,

And that's what you're getting at, and that we will convene the interagency, Department of Education, State, local, federal, all of those pieces to look at whether we have mosques, individuals, universities, professors, you name it, that pose a threat to the United States that are radicalizing individuals to harm the United States. Wow, 2003 called. They want their domestic policies back. Okay, so here you have the NSA chief under Trump, right? This is the person that Trump chose to serve as, you know, as part of the National Security Council, the head of the National Security Council. And essentially, he's saying, yeah, once I'm in charge, I'm going to use whatever power we have to spy on American citizens that we suspect of radicalizing people in our country,

it's not an issue in the United States. There was one terror attack that happened in New Orleans. It was a tragic event to say the least. He was allegedly inspired by ISIS. But, you know, this is a very different time from what we were experiencing in 2016, 2015, when there were terror attacks taking place in, you know, various countries, especially European countries, and there was this big fear of Islamic terrorism. Now all of a sudden you have one incident, and of course you have a right winger using that

or exploiting that as a way of carrying out Islamophobia to spy on American citizens in places like mosques and schools. How much of our resources are we going to be using on this? I mean, I just think it's a ridiculous thing. And when you look into the numbers, you see how little of a threat radical Islamic terrorism is within the United States. So I'll give you those numbers in just a moment. But, Jank, what are your thoughts? Yeah. So this is dangerous and it's against everything that Trump claimed he was for. Look, we're not naive. I didn't think that Trump was being honest. But I do think that his base is way different than it was before. So to me, the interesting part is how the base reacts to all this. Because what's the court campaign

promises he's violating here. Number one, free speech. So if you are a Muslim American and you're protesting Israel on a college campus, Mike Walls is making it absolutely clear, we're gonna arrest you on behalf of Israel. And you're not gonna have free speech in America if you dare oppose a foreign government, Israel's. And we're gonna spy in on you. Well, again, Maga says they hate when the government spies in on you. So this is Mike Wall saying, I'm gonna use a deep state against all of Israel's enemies. So the idea that it's, He's concerned about terrorism here is absurd. We're gonna show you charts in a second.

There's way, way more political violence here domestically, even from the left wing, let alone the right wing, than there is religious violence or anything having to do with fundamentalist Islam. Yep. Yeah, and so we got the receipts on that in a sec. But basically saying all these statements combined are, yeah, I was kidding about being anti-war.

I'm gonna do whatever Israel tells me to do. It includes more war, more bombing. more spending money on Israel, et cetera. I was kidding about being for free speech. No, I love cancel culture as long as we're canceling Muslims or canceling people on behalf of Israel. And never meant anything about free speech or any of that. So this is hypocrisy defined. But look, Trump in the beginning is definitely going to do whatever his donors tell him first and foremost.

And in this case, his third largest donor is Miriam Adelson. And if you take the Adelson family, they've donated more to him than anyone else, including Elon Musk. So this is him saying, thank you, Miriam. I will serve you dutifully, Miriam. And the only thing that could turn him around is the Maga base. If the Maga base says, no, no, this isn't what we asked for. Maybe he turns around. Otherwise, God help the Palestinians.

God help Muslim Americans. God help anyone who dares to disagree with Israel. Yeah, I want to be clear. This isn't about protecting Americans from radicalization at all. This is all about the hurt little feelings of Benjamin Netanyahu and the other far-right members of the Israeli government feeling super chapped about protests taking place on college campuses. And so that's what this is really about.

And in fact, you know what? Let's go to the very last graphic here where you see the amount of money that Representative has collected from the pro-Israel lobby. There you have it, between 2017 and 2024, $15,051. And that's of the money that we know about. Don't forget that a lot of campaigns also get funded by dark money. And so that's really what this is about. It's not about protecting Americans.

It's not about doing what's right for the American people. It's about serving the Israel lobby and making sure that the far-right members of Israel's government don't get their feelings hurt over college students protesting the way that they're prosecuting that brutal war on Gaza. Now, with that in mind, there's some more details about Representative Wals and what he's been saying. So during a hit on Sunday's episode of Life, Liberty, and Levin, titled Mark Levin, More Americans Will Die if we don't acknowledge being in a war with Islamic terrorism. Okay, I'm going to stop right there. More Americans are going to die. if we don't acknowledge that we're at war with Islamic terrorism.

Are we at war with Islamic terrorism, really? I just, it's fearmongering and it's so reminiscent of Bush-era garbage. So I hit at Kamala Harris pretty hard because she was campaigning around the country with a neocon like Liz Cheney. I loathe neocons. And now you have the same neocon mindset totally infiltrated, within the Trump administration, the incoming Trump administration. And you're right, Schenk, the question is, what happens next? The anti-war contingent of the MAGA crowd, are they going to speak up about this?

Are they okay with using tax dollars not to better the lives of American people, but to use tax dollars to spy on Americans on behalf of the Israeli government, because that's what this is really about. Now, during that interview, you know, Wals made it pretty clear that he plans to use the tragedy that happened in New Orleans as an excuse to fearmonger about Muslims and to basically kick people out of the country, including those protesting Israel on college campuses. Let's watch. The terrorist, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, all of them. They didn't get the memo that the Biden administration decided the war on terror was over. And so they've absolutely infiltrated our borders.

They're in the United States. I don't know that we have a full picture of how many cells. are here and how operative they are. But we do know that ISIS did get the memo that the southern border is wide open. They've infiltrated people across. President Trump has been loud and clear that we are not going to stand for people being here in the United States. Even, Mark, as you've mentioned before on your show, people that are here on a student visa with the privilege to study in our universities, you don't then get to protest and radicalize. You're going to go back home real fast. I agree with you 100%. Yeah, because you're a moron. That's why you agree with the 100%. You're a hateful bigot. Look, the guy who carried out the terrorist attack in New Orleans

was a Houston-born American citizen who served in the military, in the army specifically, and even did a deployment in Afghanistan. What are we talking about right now? I mean, these are the kinds of idiots that unfortunately Trump has chosen for important roles within his upcoming administration. And so let's get to some of the details about how much of a threat radical Islamic terrorism is here in the United States. So let's look at this data. According to a 2024 report from the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Justice Department, since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.

Now, by the way, those acts of terror, that political violence that was carried out by right-wingers should not be used as a way to paint the entirety of the right-wing in America. Okay, that's what an adult with a brain that functions would say. But that's not what you're hearing from people who have been chosen for top roles in Trump's upcoming administration, unfortunately. There's more. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has also found that far-right perpetrators, like white supremacists, anti-government extremists, and violent misogynists have committed

the most U.S. terrorist attacks in recent years. Let's pull up this chart. It'll show you what I'm talking about here. It'll help you visualize what I'm talking about here. So according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as you can see, that blue line at the top represents violent far right terrorist attacks and plots. And if we look specifically at 2021, the very end of the graph of the 77 terrorist events that year, 38 events or 49% of them were perpetrated by those on the violent far right, 31 events or 40% by violent far left,

and three events, 4% of them, by jihadists. So what's with the fear, mongering and why are we talking about using resources, like law enforcement resources, by the way, okay, to spy on people based on what, based on their disagreement with how Israel is prosecuting this war in Gaza? It's ridiculous. Yeah. By the way, final thing I'll read to you, Jang. So violent far right extremists have been responsible for 94 of the 108 terrorist fatalities or 87% in the United States in the past five years. Yeah. So, So again, the MAGA reaction here is super important because if you believe the logic of Mike Walls, you'd say, well, since there's so much more far right extremists and terrorist attacks

than Muslim attacks, we have to infiltrate the right wing. We have to go into their churches, their places of education, wherever they congregate, we have to arrest them, we have to stop them from speaking. This is Mike Wall's logic, it's not my logic, I hate it. I don't want the right wing infiltrate it. I don't want the left wing infiltrate it. I don't want any religious group infiltrated. But these, the thugs are back, the neocon thugs are back. So you've got Mike Walls, you got Huckabee, you got Sephanic, you got Marco Rubio. They're totally in charge of foreign policy, totally team Israel.

And now you've got, you know, Mark 11, but he was to show that he was on. Just for him, Israel's number one, America's like number 87 at best, right? So he prioritizes Israel over everything. So if you guys, if the MAGA base then says we're good with it, you know, we kicked out Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, but that's just because they were opposed to Trump. But actually we love neocons and we love discriminating against people based on religion. We love cancer culture, we love spying in on American citizens. We were just lying about everything.

We're totally lying. As long as Trump and frickin Mark Levin and Mike Walls tell us to, we'll all turn back into war hawk neocons and we'll say America second. maybe in Israel first, okay, then then I was wrong about the Maga base and and they're just they're like the old Maga base and they'll follow anything their cult leader tells them. But I don't think so. And I think that and here I'm gonna say something even more outrageous and people can say, oh no way, that's never gonna happen. But I think Netanyahu is wrong. I think Netanyahu believes that Trump will follow every order he gives him.

And Biden would follow it every order too. He just complained every once in a while. And then he was like, my servant is bothering me by complaining. Send me the goddamn money, Joe. And he's like, okay, okay, right? Now my guess is, not my guess what he's doing. So far as Trump is doing the same but worse, he's saying I'm gonna help you bomb Gaza even more. And I'm going to spy in on Americans and hurt them if they disagree with you even more.

So Maga, if you're good with it, man, then okay, then you this is what you signed up for and it's back to to internal war as well. But we'll see how that plays out. But look, I just want you guys to understand the last two things. One, they're not gonna stop at Muslims. If you're a fundamentalist Christian or you're, it doesn't matter what you are. You're a person who's Jewish and believes in peace and wants to protect every human being. And you protest Israel, they're gonna arrest you, okay? They've already done it under Biden. And Trump is saying we're gonna do it way more when he's in charge. They're not stopping at Muslims, and this has nothing new with Muslims, it has nothing

new with radical Islam, this has everything to do with serve Israel first. So, and then finally, the guy said things like, they're already inside America, and we don't know how many cells there are, yeah, because there's no evidence of a single Hamas cell inside America. There's barely any Hamas left in Gaza, let alone in Albuquerque, Right? No, the reason I point that out, guys, is because it's classic neocon fear mongery. You remember Connoisse or the first sign we could have trouble is a mushroom cloud over America. So they scare you and scare you. Oh, the Muslims are coming. The Muslims are coming. We have to attack them on behalf of Israel. So if you fall for that, you're a bunch of suckers

and you deserve everything you get and we'll fight you to the end of the earth. But if you actually meant anti-Warnat and all the things that you said, if you're part of the Maga base, Well, you're going to get tested soon. And I'm super curious whether you pass that test or not. All right. Let's take a break. When we come back, we have more news for you, including pretty big announcement by Mark Zuckerberg over at Meta.

Come right back. All right. Anna with you guys in randomous crime. Thank you for joining. We appreciate it. They hit the join button below. We hope you do likewise on YouTube and you can join through t-yt.com as well. We appreciate that. All right, Casper. All right, well, Box writes in and I'm going to read this comment from our member Box. Hi guys, I'm watching from the doctor's office. I do not have pneumonia, so that's good. There is a nasty illness going around. I thought I had recovered from it, but now I'm regressing. So I'm glad you're okay, Box. Take care of yourself. And everyone,

please take care of your health. If you happen to catch this bug, it's awful. And so don't underestimate it. All right, let's get to the next story. There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content. Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. It's been so difficult over the past four years when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship.

By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further. What's going on with Mark Zuckerberg? Is this a big life crisis? Is that how it's manifesting for Mark Zuckerberg? No, that's not about the comments he just made. It's just about the overall look. It's not bad. It's just different.

And it's out of nowhere. What say you, Jank? Yeah, I think that this is a multitude of factors. And I think you're right. I think it is partly personal. So the things that he announced today, I kind of generally like. We'll break down why we like them for you guys. But he, remember, he picked up Jiu-Jitsu, he challenged Elon Musk to a cage fight.

All of Silicon Valley is becoming way more agro and bro, right? Oh, great, yeah. And so, and he's going way more towards Trump. And so this is only a part of it. To me, the actually problematic part was when they all went and gave him a million dollars apiece for his inauguration. And that was a way of kissing up to him. And now he's put Dana White, the head of the UFC on his board. So he's going full agro, the hair, the look, the attitude, everything.

It's like, but it's not just Zuckerberg guys, this is an interesting cultural phenomenon. All of Silicon Valley has gone from super liberal, super libs to like agro masculine bro dudes. And so it's interesting to see how it plays out. And again, I don't necessarily disagree with all the different policy positions that they've come up with for Facebook and meta, but it's fascinating to see from a distance. So let's get to those details because the announcement that Mark Zuckerberg put out today has to do with the censorious nature of the platform and how he intends to change it. And so he listed all the changes that Facebook users, for instance, can expect, including the one

thing Elon Musk actually implemented himself on X after he purchased Twitter. So let's take a look. Here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S. So over the next couple of months, we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system. I actually think this is a good move. Now, had we not experienced what community notes is like on X, maybe I would be against it just because I wouldn't know how it would manifest in real life.

But we've seen how community notes manifested in real life. And I actually think that it's been pretty effective. A lot of tweets that lack nuance are usually slapped with a community note. And the community notes, of course, are generated by ex-users. And from what I've seen personally, the added nuance or the corrections to misleading or just deceitful tweets has been excellent. And I would much prefer that over, you know, the model. that we've seen with Facebook, for instance, they use a group of fact checkers known as the international fact checkers. And we don't know exactly who these people are. Everyone has biases,

including individuals who work as fact checkers within any news organization. So I think, you know, I guess crowdsourcing is a little bit better than the model that we've seen from Facebook so far. And I say that as someone who feels that Facebook has been too censorious when it comes to our personal experience in posting news content, right? And so, and when we talk about censorious, it's not just about taking content down or banning content. It also has to do with demonetizing content because you said a naughty word like sexual assault, right? Like things will get demonetized if you're covering an important, serious, substantive story that has to do with allegations of sexual assault. And I think that punishing news organizations for that is insane. But so far so

What do you think, Jake? Yeah, so this one is a little bit complicated. First of all, I like the community notes model a lot better than the just block any disinformation because look guys, it's easy to say, oh, it sounds outrageous that you're getting rid of fact checkers. But who are the fact checkers? And there is, and there's different ways of doing fact checks. When you do a fact check and you say, here's a community note, this item is very likely

to be false and here's why it's false, here's the real information. That is a fact check of a sort. In fact that's the fact check I prefer instead of taking it down. The fact checks that we used to have is, okay, we don't agree with this. And look, 98% of the time I agreed with the fact checkers, right? But we don't agree with this and we're taking it down. But that led to other problems because even that 2% is important when they get it wrong. Because that is the voice of dissent that we need to hear out.

Because then as we discovered during COVID, yeah, we were right about an overwhelming majority of the things. There were a couple of things that we didn't get right. And the government didn't get right. And the experts didn't get right. So if you squash that speech, I'm not saying, oh, I'm in favor of it running wild and don't believe in vaccines and go full Ivermectin. No, I don't agree with those things. But let us fight those things with other facts. When you shut it down, it creates a really hostile environment that is problematic and gives all the power to who? You heard it in that Zuckerberg statement. He actually mentioned something that is not getting lot of attention. He said we're basically we're done with relying on legacy media. That's who the fact checkers were in the past. And legacy media has an enormous agenda. They are not at all objective. They've been lying to you and pretending to be objective for decades. So if he, it appears that he's getting rid of the legacy media objective police that pretend to be the arbiters of truth. That is definitely a good thing. But one of the one of the the things that they're keeping as a safeguard is we still reserve the right to get rid of anything

that we call related to terrorism. So don't think that they're going to allow like anti-Israel comments left and right. They could still have some censorship. There's some golden caps in America that are too large to ever get past. No, that's the top golden calf. Let's keep it real. Okay, so that's the one area where you will literally have the band of so-called free speech absolutists turn their backs on that absolutist, you know, attitude. And it absolutely disgusts me. Let's move on to more of what Zuckerberg has to say because he also wants to stop. restricting certain content.

Second, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms. So what does it mean to have that type of content restricted on Facebook? It doesn't necessarily mean that you would be banned from posting that type of content, that type of content or those types of comments had been posted even in the censorious era of Facebook.

What he's referring to is the fact that Facebook will stop preventing the recommendation of that type of content on the platform, Jank. Yeah, so I want to go to Octo Squiddies here, who's a member on Twitch, because he made a point that I think is really important. They said Zuckerberg in Silicon Valley turning to the right wing is surprising absolutely no one who understands class dynamics. Or are we supposed to believe the billionaires are the good guys to believe they were ever liberal or progressive is laughable and naive. And so that gets to a core point here because it's not like Zuckerberg was ever a progressive. He, remember, he stacked his board with wall-to-wall Republicans from day one. All the political consultants he'd ever hired, including the guy he promoted today, were always Republican. And his, what appeared to be his best friend in the media was Ben Shapiro.

So the only reason why there was this talk of him being on the left is because at that point, they were appeasing the people in power. The people in power were the Democrats and the establishment. So the billionaires know, hey, it's important to have political power. So whoever's in power, they move together, right? So the establishment is power, so Zuckerberg, Musk, all those guys were pro establishment or pretending to be somewhere in the left side of the spectrum. Now the power is on the right, so they immediately go over to the right, which is where they naturally are because the right is the one that always gives them the tax cuts and the deregulation

and less them run wild and create monopolies, et cetera. So they're just flowing with the power. So it's a great point. And that's exactly what Zuckerberg is doing here. Again, the rules themselves are not at all bad, but he is clearly shifting in his attitude and towards the power of Trump. And again, the money that he gave is the best indication, not the rules. Yeah, and look, make no mistake, there's definitely going to be more offensive content on Facebook, much like what we experienced with Elon Musk's takeover of X. I mean, one of the first things he did after he took over X is he unbanned a bunch of, you know, nefarious characters, offensive characters who had previously been banned for saying terrible offensive things. And so I'm expecting

people to say offensive things. But my issue with the censorship, was that all sorts of things that shouldn't have been censored at all were being censored, right? So it ends up being this massive dragnet of censorship that I don't think work. So if you have to choose between, you know, withstanding dumb people saying some offensive things, but you at least get to, you know, put your message out there without someone putting the thumb on the scale, well, then I'd rather take that over what we've experienced in recent years, especially on Facebook. So let's keep going. And by the way, one comment in response to Octosquitties, I mean, yeah, obviously, like, you think these billionaires have any concern or obligation to us? Of course they don't. You think they have any concern or obligation for America? I don't know. So, yeah, they're going to immediately attempt to ingratiate themselves to the party that is in power because they want cookies. Of course they do. And they want to ensure that they don't deal with any legal ramifications for anything that they're

doing in their businesses. And so I'm not surprised by this at all either, but I do see that as somewhat separate from the new policies that he's trying to implement here. So let's go to the next video. He explains that there is certain content that they plan on going after, but it needs to hit a certain bar. Let's watch. We're changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms. We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation. Now we're going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations. And for lower severity violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action. The problem is that the

filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn't. So by dialing them back, we're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms. We're also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content. The reality is that this is a tradeoff. It means we're going to catch less bad stuff, but we'll also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down. So here he's baking clear that the content that meta or Facebook will be taking down is anything that has to do with illegality. So if there are scams, right, People are using Facebook as a platform in order to scam people or if there's evidence of fraud.

You know, just obviously anything that victimizes children, illegal activity, that'll be taken down. But interestingly enough, Jank, Ken Klippenstein is reporting that Zuckerberg's updated policies include a blanket ban on illegally obtained information, even if it's newsworthy. Ironically, this would prohibit the Hunter Biden laptop story that triggered this whole debate in the first place. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I'm sorry, I keep going back to this, but I would be shocked if they use that on anything but intelligence about Israel that they wanted to block. So I've barely ever seen any of these things get blocked other than anything that offends Israel. So we'll see, we'll see how that goes. And so look, on the offensive comments being back, I care a lot more about government power than I care about Randobab on Facebook saying something

terribly hateful about Muslims. Man, that's so Tuesday, I'm so used to it. And by the way, that's life. There's good people, there's bad guys, there's great comments, there's horrible comments, and the force of good and the force of truth have to fight back. But I'm much more worried about the first story we covered today, where Trump is putting Mike Walls as national security advisor and saying, I want you to infiltrate Muslim groups and mosques and universities and et cetera. That's government saying I am going to discriminate against these people and I'm going to infiltrate it against them, a spy against them and do all these things. Whereas the others are just civilians. And okay, so they say something crazy. we say something saying and we fight back and forth. I don't mind that at all, right? I mind

the government overreach a lot more, whether it's a Democratic government or a Republican government, led government. And then look, I always on this stories, I always give you our bias, just so you're clear, at least my bias. Facebook is also saying they're going to bring politics and news back, which they stopped really sharing for years. And that's great for us, for the Young Turks for TYT, right? Because that's where we reached a ton of people. And then they turned off the faucet and it blocked our ability to reach hundreds of millions of people. I love that we're gonna be able to get our message out. I hated the way they blocked all news. And this is one of Anna's first points. When these platforms go to block things,

and a lot of times it's led by advertisers, but sometimes it's led by executives, right? They don't block just racism. They block anti-racism. They don't block, you know, just the bad guy's point of view. They block everybody's point of view. So you can't hear from us, you can't hear from the left, you can't hear from the middle, you can't hear from anyone. And that is the worst kind of censorship. The fact that they're opening up news and politics, whether it's for the left, the right, or everyone in the middle, that I think is the best news of all. All right. Well, when we come back from the break, looks like Sean Hannity is not happy about the growth of the populist movement in America. In fact, he took some time to speak out against it. We'll tell you what he had to say when we return. All right back on TYT, Jank, Anna, Bill Hinkle and Cynic Dragon, who hit that beautiful join button below on YouTube, and Megan Layone, who became a member through tight.com, which we deeply appreciate. All right, Anna, what's next?

Well, Sean Hannity is not happy about the populace, and he made that clear during a recent episode of his show. Let's watch. I've even heard some Trump supporters say they, but they want to soak the rich. You sound like Bernie Sanders, you want to soak the rich. When I didn't have any money and I was a contractor, I never got hired by a poor person. In my 10 years in the restaurant business, I never got a tip from a poor person. No, I want a thriving economy where Americans have high-paying career jobs. There's actually data showing that those who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder tend to give more to charity than incredibly wealthy individuals. But nonetheless, that was Sean Hannity, who is not happy about a trend he's seeing in

the United States, a trend that he's seeing even within the Republican electorate. And that trend has to do with populism, this fury that Americans are feeling over growing inequality and the fact that the corporate world has completely taken over our political system, has completely bought our politicians, along with certain media figures like the one you just heard from. And while Hannity clearly doesn't understand why Americans, of all political persuasions, want to soak the rich, most Americans understand that it does have to do with ever-growing wealth and equality. quality, and we have plenty of evidence to prove it. So let's start with this. The typical Fortune 500 CEO had already made more money by January 2nd than the average U.S. worker will make this entire year. Okay, so not the average MAGA supporter, not the average woke liberal, but the average

American worker. And this is where I think Americans of all political persuasions find common ground. and if they're willing to work together to hold their politicians accountable to ensure that they're actually serving us, the American people, as opposed to the corporate overlords that they've been serving, that might cut into some of the money that people like Sean Hannity have been happily making all these years. Now, and by the way, happily making as a mouthpiece for corporate America. Here's another stunning statistic that has to do with the holiday season specifically. We've talked about consumer debt and how it's at record highs. Well, a lot of Americans felt that they had no choice but to take out more debt in order to afford the holidays. Over a third of Americans took on debt this holiday season in order to make seasonal purchases like gifts. And that's according to a December survey by retail dive. And the amount of debt that Americans are taking out during the holidays is increasing more and more year after year. So let's take a look at the next graphic that shows you that consumers took on an average debt of 1,181.1.1.1.

dollars this holiday season up from the $1,028 in 2023, with the vast majority of shoppers using credit cards, store cards, and by now pay later services, which are a disaster, to make purchases. 60% of consumers who took on debt say they were stressed doing it, probably because it's not just that they're taking on some debt for the holiday season, it's that they're already drowning in debt, just to afford the basics, Certainly, you know, the era of inflation during the Biden administration has played a huge role in making it more difficult for Americans to afford basic items that they need for their households. And so, yeah, this is a huge issue. And I understand that rage. It doesn't matter

like what your political identity is. If you're a working class American, you know exactly where the anger and frustration is coming from and you know that it's justified. It's hard for someone like Hannity who makes millions of dollars anchoring on Fox News to understand it because he's not, he's not hungry for anything, okay? He's good. So for him to sit there and fearmonger about populace is hilarious to me. What do you think, Jake? Yeah, so many things here. First of all, him saying, I never got a tip from a poor person. Really? You worked at a restaurant and you never got a tip from a poor person? Like what, you think, like, poor people are some sort of like monsters and they come into restaurants, but they leave zero tip.

I mean, he's just such a jerk. And he has such contempt for non-rich people. And it oozes from everything that he says. So he's old school right wing media. And one of the things I realized when I went on a lot of these right wing shows is this is not the same right wing media that we've known. In some ways on social issues, they're more radical than even Fox News was. But on populism and economic issues, they're not at all where Fox News was. So what Sean Hannity is saying is classic old school right wing media.

The poor should shut up and know their role. You're middle class, you should also shut up and understand that the most valuable people in the country are the very rich. We give you jobs. We give you tips. We give you everything. You should just be thanking us, okay? And that is old school establishment propaganda. Remember right wing and left wing and Fox News and MSNBC's just good cop, bad cop, establish for Democrats, establishing republicans, good cop, bad cop. They're driving towards the same thing. The rich and the powerful should remain rich and powerful and the rest of you should know your role. And so to me, his statement there is proof positive that we, I'll just

personalize it to me, that I was right that there are now, there's now a different base for the right wing. It's not doesn't mean that they're all angels or they agree with us on everything. But look at Sean Hannity complaining about his own base. Say what are you guys doing? You guys sound like Bernie Sanders. I told you. I told you. Some of them when you go talk to them on economic issues, they sound like us. Take a yes for an answer. I'm begging you take yes for an answer. So those are folks that we can go and convince to form a populist block that Sean Hannity's of the world and Fox News will despise. And I got news for you, MSNBC will also despise it because they are the establishment. And now you see Sean Hannity panicking

over the new right wing base. And I love it. Yeah. And one other thing that I'll say, because this is the kind of, this is the kind of information that pisses off a lot of people, again, across the political spectrum, working class Americans. Let's go to the last graphic here, where more perfect union posts that the 12 richest people in America have a combined wealth of over two trillion dollars. In contrast, the poor 50% of America, about 167 million people have a combined net worth of 3.8 trillion. So it just helps you to understand how much. I mean, you want to talk about a redistribution of wealth. There has been a multi-decade redistribution. of wealth from the bottom to the top, and to the anti-war component of Trump's base,

it's not just that we're using our resources in foreign wars and conflicts that we shouldn't be involved in. I get the sense that they also understand that the war machine is another way to redistribute wealth from the bottom to the top. Because think about it, we're the The working class Americans who pay their taxes, huge component of that, a huge chunk of that goes to the military industrial complex. A country like Israel that had, you know, an economic surplus in 2021 is somehow entitled to like tens of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to afford their weapons for the brutality they're carrying out in Gaza. How does that make any sense? So look, I think that there's power in numbers. And I think for the first time, populist Americans on both the right and the left realize that maybe there are some issues where there's agreement and we can work together.

Let's see if that actually comes to fruition because certainly there are people who don't want to accomplish a damn thing. And like their partisan corner where they can point to the other side and moralize about how they're allegedly better than the other side. Yeah. So first shout out to a YouTube member, Phil Jay, who said, I was poor and I tipped. And Phil, I'm right there with you. I was poor for a long, long time in my life. And when I went to restaurants, did I stiff the waiters or waitress? No, if you're going to a restaurant, you tip. And he's such a, Kennedy is such a jerk, is such contempt for anyone who isn't wealthy, it oozes from him. So, and look guys, I'm not in favor of like this whole eat the rich stuff. Hating the rich for being rich is not the point at all. It's absurd. No, what I'm against

is when some of the wealthy rigged the rules in their favor, when they donate to politicians and then have the politicians say, oh yeah, I'll give it another hundred billion dollars to the defense contractors and their executives get unbelievably rich. I'll give $30 billion in oil subsidies, I'll give corporate tax cuts, I'll give deregulation, etc. That is how they rig the rules through money and politics and then redistributed from the middle class mainly to the very top. And it's gross. And that injustice is what's gnawing at the right wing base and the left wing base. We've always hated it. And finally, a poll that almost never changes. 76% of Americans believe we should increase taxes on the rich.

And that has held true for so long, right around that three quarters of Americans number. But you never see that in media because Fox News, MSN, etc., they're all part of the establishment. And they don't want to ever share that fact with you. If they said all the time on the air, well, you know, three quarters of Americans wanted to raise taxes on the rich, three quarters of Americans want to raise taxes on the rich, whether Republicans or Democrats, Then there might be pressure to raise taxes on the rich. And that is the very last thing Sean Hannity wants, Fox News wants, anyone in establish a media or politics wants.

But it's a new day in America and this populist movement, it's got a lot of issues. It's not perfect by a long shot, but it's actual human beings, actual Americans, rebelling against guys like Sean Hannity. And that is a beautiful day in America. All right, when we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll talk a little bit about how we might try to acquire Greenland, and it sounds crazy. We'll be right back.