 Welcome to the Knuckleheads of Liberty. The topic of today is mainly about online free speech and misinformation and such and some of those issues. So we're going to dive into some of that. And of course, what's really been heating up is the discussion of Elon Musk buying 9% of Twitter. And of course, there's some huge free speech implications to this. It sort of took everybody by surprise, including I guess the SEC as well. It's apparently there's going to be a lawsuit since he didn't quite report it correctly when he was buying some of this stuff. But the key part of the story is 9%. And that makes him the majority stakeholder. Not the majority. What was the largest? Yeah, the largest. And so then the question is initially they thought maybe he's going to join the board of directors. And so there was some talk about that. And then he suddenly pulled the plug on joining the board of directors. And there's a lot of speculation now that he may be gearing up just to try and become the majority stakeholder and take a sizable enough stake in the company that he can call the shots. And some of the speculation is that if he had joined the board, they would have limited him to 15% of the company. And also, he would have been constrained from sharing their code, which is one of the things I guess he's talked about is going a little more open source with the company. And he has made a lot of noise about free speech in the past. And of course, Twitter and a lot of other social media companies have been stepping on free speech. And there's a lot of speculation that there's algorithms that these companies are using to suppress conservative speech. Certainly we've seen outright Twitter banned Donald Trump from their platform early on. And we've seen a lot of other activities where these different platforms have either restricted speech or maybe because of identity politics and concerns about hate speech or other things like that that they think they've identified. And of course, one of the biggest things aside from them banning Trump from Twitter was the whole Hunter Biden laptop that he talked about recently and the fact that that very well could have shifted the election one way or the other. And Twitter, I believe, and some of the other social media companies, they had either throttled or banned company or new sources that were trying to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop issue, which was the issue where Hunter Biden had apparently dropped off his laptop just to give a quick recap of that at a repair facility. And I forgot to come back and pick it up, I guess. It turned out there was all kinds of CD pictures and everything else of him on the laptop, gauging and prostitution drugs and a lot of communications that are popping out about him collecting money for himself and possibly his dad for connections to overseas companies like Ukraine and China and such. So essentially trading on the Biden name. But of course, the issue that we're focused on today is just the fact a lot of people didn't get to hear that. That was just called Russian misinformation by the mainstream media and was blocked. So anyway, this is some of the implications that Elon Musk buying this company has. And by the way, the issue I alluded to with Twitter, him buying the stock and not reporting correctly, apparently he had to report by I believe it was May 20 or March 25 that he had exceeded 5% of the company and he didn't. And he reported it apparently in April. And so there's a lawsuit going on with some investors saying that well then therefore they lost potential gains because the stock would have shot up. They believe if he had said that he was a 5% stakeholder in the company at that point. So anyways, let me throw it to you guys. And what do you guys think of this big issue in free speech? Currently, Twitter forgot to have an algorithm that would warn when someone bought more than a certain percentage of shares on the company. Maybe they should have had an algorithm for that. For that. Okay. And maybe but this is the government requirement. This is an SEC requirement. He literally has broken a law I guess in this in this move. Yeah. I'm kind of referring to they're probably not happy that an Elon Musk bought their company at all. Because it's somebody that's woke to the wokeness apparently. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, this, this whole thing about mass purchase of Twitter stock. First of all Jason that lawsuit. I mean I'm sure that's going to get thrown out of court seriously. I mean he may get fined for not I'm not filing any time in Manai. I think he was a few days later than he should have because I think he was supposed to make the disclosure within 10 days of exceeding 5% and he didn't do it. I think he did it within 14 days or 15 days or something like that. So it's he's probably going to end up getting fined for it but it's not going to he not going to face any any other any penalties for for that because this has happened in the past and it's of all is resulted in fines. Nobody have been paid punitive damages or anything like that because of a late filing. So this is this is all a bunch of nonsense though. But I do hope I do hope that all the thing about Mars and free speech. I hope the hype that we're hearing about this lives up to to to what we expect, because you must have really said some things about free speech that I really do like. And Twitter have been a very, very, if you could talk about guilty in this case, I know it's a private organization, all that kind of stuff, but they have been very much guilty of censorship, censorship of people on the right in particular. And you spoke you just mentioned the Donald Trump, the Donald Trump, it's you the Hunter Biden's laptop issue that could have sway in the election and Twitter and Twitter know it. Even Jack Dorsey at the finally admit that it was a mistake that he made recently Dorsey been tweeting something saying, oh, maybe we created some problems here with the way we we censoring people are some words like that he used trying trying to make a confession. I think what they're all probably realizing too is the mistake that they put in the White House. This keeps getting worse and worse they would go on go on sorry. I like that that's true. That's true. There was a real some real serious biasing remorse is probably ongoing. But, but the thing is, though, the thing is, though, there is a free market solution. Free market solution to the problem of censorship, obviously there is and must is beginning to show that and I hope there are others. My big concern, and I've always been I've said it before in the show. When the government get involved with the censorship, where the government is in the background, and these platforms are doing the dirty work of the government, especially the Democratic Party. So, I hope, I hope mass Elon Musk could finally break this nastiness of censorship that we are seeing going on with the social media platform. I really hope it happens. And if I can tag onto the top of what Leon said. Yeah, that's the crux of the issue because all this nonsense of, oh, they're a private company they could do whatever they want. You know, see how good I am. And that is is only based on if Twitter and Facebook and all those YouTube and everybody, all just independently decided to censor all these conservative voices and all these, you know, alternative viewpoints and all this other stuff. Oh, just, you know, all buy them a little lonesome, you know, not not under the direction of a massive federal bureaucracy like what is has been bandied about, and is we're all suspicious of. So, don't tell me that they're a private company. If they're being utilized by the federal government to do their dirty work, like Leon said, don't tell me it's not true that no longer the case. And just to highlight what you said, I mean, we've seen Jen Psaki and others from the White House, even the Surgeon General calling for these companies to to regulate who's speaking on their platforms. Exactly. Yeah, throw it right back to you though. Yeah, so, no, no, no, you're, you know, it's all it's all the same stuff. It's all it's, you know, so what is really free market responses when the free market like an Elon Musk takes over and changes the direction of it. That's free market. Yes. Or if somebody else starts a new. Thank you for listening to the Knuckleheads of Liberty podcast.