 Everybody, tonight we are debating should the government prevent censorship by big tech, and we are starting right now. Thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. This is going to be a fun one, folks. Want to let you know a few things up front. First, if it's your first time here, we are thrilled to have you, no matter what walk of life you are from, and want to let you know that modern-day debate is a neutral platform where we strive to host debates on science, politics, and religion on a neutral platform. So, want to let you know a few things regarding the channel as well? If you are like us, if you're sick in the head and you like juicy, controversial debates, consider hitting that subscribe button as we have many more juicy debates coming up. For example, you'll see at the bottom right of your screen, we are pumped, you guys. Phew, January 8th is coming so fast. I want to do a quick little mention about this if you have not heard about it somehow. 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One, the last time we tried to have this debate, I want you all to know it was 100% my fault that we had the technical errors that we did. And I'm so sorry about that, especially to Carissa, because she set this debate up. It was her great idea and want to say huge thanks to Carissa for her patience. She was, she's out tonight. She's trying to catch up on sleep among other things, but want to say Carissa does a fabulous job. Seriously, like tremendous job that kind of those bloopers last time were 100% me. So thanks for your patience. And last thing is want to say huge thank you in addition to saying thank you to Carissa, to Dave Langer, who helped us recently get Twitch affiliate status. So really exciting folks. If you happen to be on Twitch folks, want to let you know, if you get a, if you have Amazon Prime, you have a free Twitch subscription and then, Hey, if you want, you can use it for modern day debate now, because we are now an affiliate and can now have subscribers. So really cool. And want to say again, thanks to Dave Langer, as well as, as well as Lily Aja and many others who helped us kind of learn the ropes regarding Twitch. So we're going to introduce our speakers. We're thrilled to have these guys. Thanks for your patience for all that channel housekeeping stuff. We are very excited to have these guys here. It's going to be epic folks. Want to remind you all of their links are in the description. We're going to start going left to right on your screen. So we'll start with Jengles first thing. Thanks so much for coming back on Jengles. It's a true pleasure to have you back on. And what can people expect to find at your link? Thanks for having me back on James. So hello, everyone. My name is Justin. I for some reason go by Jengles on the internet. You can. So I have a YouTube channel called Jengles Science Lab. I've done several debates. A couple of them are on this channel right here and also do lots of YouTube videos with academic citations out the wazoo. So again, YouTube at Jengles Science Lab. And you can follow me on Twitter and SJW debates. Thanks so much. Glad to have you back. And Jay Stenstrom, stoked to have you with us again. Thanks so much for being with us. And if you want to let people know what people can expect to find at your link, thanks so much. We have a little bit of a connection issue. There might be a little bit of buffering, folks. This is unusual. Give me one sec. I just want to make sure that you're able to share about your link. It started right after Jengles. Okay, I think we're in the clear now. Sorry about that. Once in a while, that kind of surprises me, but we are back in the green. And so Jay Stenstrom, thrilled to have you here. If you'd like to share what people can find at your link. Thanks so much. And the floor is all yours. Hi, so I'm Jordan. This is actually the first time I've done anything like this in any kind of a public capacity. I did a debate in high school. This is very, very different from what I'm used to. If you were to follow my Twitter link at the Jay Stenstrom, I don't post very often. But every once in a while, I might make some quick remark about something that came through my feed. And usually there's a lot of retweeting memes. Oh, I didn't know that I thought we hosted you before. I thought that Carissa once hosted you before. You guys, this is your first time. Yeah, no, this is the first time I've done any kind of a public debate or even really done anything like this. Oh, well, well, thanks. We're so glad you're here. I'm embarrassed I was wrong about that. And thrilled to have you here for the first time. So thanks so much and Distributist Pump to have you here. If you can let people know what they can expect to find in your link in the description, we'd love to hear it. And thanks for being here. Sure, I run a YouTube channel called The Distributist and I largely make video essays about, I would say, sort of new reactionary ideas intermixed with some other thoughts I have about modern culture and the evolution of history and longer video essays. And sometimes I do debates, which is what I'm doing tonight. Absolutely thrilled to have you back and a straight lattes. Am I pronouncing it right? Please let me know. Thanks so much for being here and if you'd like to share what people can expect to find at your link, please do. Sure thing. I'm Andrew Stratilities and you will find at my Twitter link, Musings on Culture, Science, Mathematics, Philosophy and Religion. I'm sort of in the same social network as Dave, the Distributist. I'm a traditional Anglican and consider myself an American Tory politically. Absolutely. Thanks so much. And with that, we will jump into our opening statements. Now, this is flexible. So guys, if you guys had decided anything outside of the conversation that we had on Twitter today in terms of who goes first, usually the affirmative would be going first, which is Distributist and Astra Andrew. And in this case, so if you guys want to change it up, you can. And that's just a flexible five to 10 minute opening statement as much as 15 minutes if you guys want, where you can split it between yourselves and who would like to go first? Well, I can I can kind of go first. I'm a little bit rambly because I don't pre-prepare these things. But no, if Andrew would like to let me go first, or do you want to go first, Andrew? Dealer's choice. Dave, go ahead. OK, great. So our resolution today is should the government basically regulate large social media corporations? And I'm really, I guess, again, once again, I suspect that we're going to have some argument over the resolution, but I'm going to take this on its face. The problem is I don't really see how we can't at some point need this kind of regulation, unless you're a complete anarcho-capitalist, which I'm fairly sure none of the people on the opposite side of this debate are. You have to you are probably aware that monopoly power and perverse monopolies with with perverse incentives involved are a natural function of any market economy, even if you do believe in market economies, which I'm not so sure about that. And what we're entering into right now, the environment we're entering into after one year of this covid virus is an environment where the vast majority of communications go through three, four social media providers. I work an ordinary job and it all goes through Zoom. All communications that has to do with media go through Twitter and Facebook. And even the even the classical publications like the New York Post, they have to use Twitter in order to get any kind of cloud or coverage. So what we have is we have a natural or unnatural monopoly in the case of this covid handing unprecedented amount of media control over to these social media corporations. And inside this monopoly power, which would be a problem in and of itself, these corporations are essentially trying to have it both ways. They are giving themselves the ability to completely edit out opinions that they don't like. And then at the same time, they want to be covered from any kind of liability by the idea that they are simply platforms and not publishers. So they want to act both as publishers one moment and then platforms in the very in the very next. And this, quite frankly, is totally insane. It's the same formula that we've seen a thousand times before from corporate power, essentially private profit and public liability. Again, I know my opponents aren't anarcho capitalists. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but this is usually considered a problem in most other contexts. I know this is the example we started off with last time. But last time sort of key example of this was the the censoring of the New York Post's coverage of the of Hunter Biden's email leaks. Now, New York Post is a classic media. It's a classic publisher. They decided to publish a story about leaks of emails that came from a Hunter Biden laptop that showed potentially illegal behavior on the part of a government a government actor. So what we have is potentially illegal government abuse. And Twitter decided that they just wouldn't cover that. They essentially muted the New York Post from the most prominent public platform ahead of one of the most important elections or one of the biggest elections we've had in recent memories. And they did this basically on the whim of their managerial staff, probably in this is speculation on my part, because they saw the release of those emails to be detrimental to their profit bottom line. Now, the excuse given, and here I'm incorporating some knowledge that was provided last time, the excuse given were, oh, oh, these emails were hacked. This is absolutely ridiculous. It's a cover your ass excuse by hacked. All they mean is illegitimately obtained. And if this was the first time, if we were born yesterday, this might seem kind of logical in isolation. The problem is, is that we've had hacked, we've had hacked sources be part of ordinary journalism since the beginning of modern journalism. Very famously, people have heard about the Pentagon papers. These were sort of the bombshell papers that came out that exposed the Nixon and LVJ administrations abuses in Vietnam. They were borderline illegal and when they were released by the New York Times, I believe the guy who leaked them Ellsworth was under investigation for espionage, which was dismissed on a technicality because of Watergate a few years later. This was an enormous, this would be considered a hack before there were computers and and and it was a bombshell for the country. It exposed potentially illegal behavior and and it really and this was considered for a very, very long time to be the height of professional journalism. At this stage, the future that we're staring down, social media could just have prevented that sort of ever being published. It could have covered the government's ass. It could have covered LBJ's ass on this and they could just Oh, well, they're illegally obtained. And then the American people would never have that information. What really our opponents seem to be proposing is it's almost kind of strange. They seem to want to say that for reasons that can only chalk up to tactical anarcho capitalism that any kind of protection we have on monopoly has to has to be blown up. In addition to that, our understanding of the responsibility for publishers and their responsibility to communicate potentially illegal activity to American people has to be destroyed. And for what reason? Because my free market, again, it makes absolutely no sense to me. If we want to have any kind of of of understanding that there is there is some kind of responsibility of these platforms, we have to regulate at some stage because these these platforms are monopolies, they're acting like monopolies and they're fundamentally aligned to the American people about what role they play. Now, I want to end this my talk with sort of an analogy here. So imagine this wasn't 2020, but 1920. And imagine as in 1920, there were many monopolies and in both like in both radio and in railroads. Imagine if the railroad and telegraph and radio monopolies got together one day and they decided to just get rid of incriminating evidence that came out about politicians that they liked. And so the New York Times could publish whatever they wanted to. But then the monopolists would just nix that. You would never go out on the radio, would never go out on broadsheet because they relied the distribution mechanisms would be next. Everyone would recognize that as both an abusive monopoly and also corporate interference with a quote unquote democratic decision making process. But somehow the second these things go digital, our brains fall out of our heads. And what was obviously abusive in one era becomes sort of this free speech excuse, which is every time I have seen it employed when you dig right down to it is an excuse that only a lawyer could possibly believe if he's being paid to believe it. So, you know, I look forward to discussing this, but I'm generally flabbergasted how there could be a pushback on the reasonable idea of regulating a monopoly that is demonstrably interfering with an electoral process. You bet. Thanks so much. Go ahead, Andrew. Yeah, I just have a few points that I'd like to underline that that they've sort of implicitly discussed. One is basically in a democratic republic like the United States. The assumption is that the way things function is that the sovereignty and responsibility of finding out the truth of things is diffused through all of society. And social media has a significant important role to play in enabling this. And as such, that's why it's important that they're they don't censor things to prevent society to come to understanding of truth of things, be it about politicians or policies or the past or the future. And fundamentally, that's the issue is that if the government doesn't cause that to occur, then we are implicitly giving that responsibility of determining what the truth is to some other institution besides society at large. And I mean, there are societies that are set up this way, but that's not how we're supposed to be set up. And that's fundamentally what this is about, is to provide that function. I don't really trust companies to be rational, even when they are trying to work in the profit interest, because companies are run by people and people have social pressure and hidden agendas. And there's no real strong incentive for social media to publish true information that is damaging to their manager's hidden agendas. And that's why we need some sort of regulation in it just to make sure that it's a fair game, just the same way that we regulate things like air pollution or things of that sort. And this was supposed to be the deal of Section 230, which is that in exchange for them giving up editorial control and just being like a communication device that they wouldn't be responsible for what people said, because they were providing a communication medium, as opposed to something like the New York Times, which curates information. So that's what I'm going to end it on, is fundamentally this is about enabling truth to be found through our social processes. These companies take a very important part in that, and they are using their power to supplant then the rightful sovereignty of society at large to discover the truth things. Thanks so much. Amazing. I forgot to mention, by the way, we are really excited that we also just got our podcast on Audible and Amazon Music. So one last channel, Housekeeping Things. One also reminds you all of our guests are linked in the description. That includes Jengles, Jordan, Distributist, and Andrew. So with that, we'll kick it over to Jengles and Jordan. Thanks so much, gentlemen, for being here in the floor, is all yours. Excellent. So I think Dave was definitely right. We're going to have to do some communication to figure out what exactly we're going over. I mean, obviously we are not saying that there should be no regulation whatsoever. It's just should the government be able to step in and prevent censorship by big tech? So we'll get into that, I'm sure. So for what it's worth, I think, no, the government should not be able to force platforms to host content they do not want to host. I do not like the idea of unelected billionaires deciding what parts of my speech are not fit for public consumption. But I like the idea of a farcical and contradictory politically neutral form of content moderation being enforced by the government a whole lot less. Yes, platforms often enforce their TOS inconsistently and without much transparency. Yes, platforms have an enormous reach in today's world and hold much sway over the public conversation. And yes, platforms should be held at least partially responsible for actions made possible by their avenue of communications. But these problems are made worse, not better, by the government stepping in to prevent these private platforms from cracking down on the content they allow. Much of the censorship these platforms are engaging in has to do with the rampant spread of misinformation. As recent events have shown, or really the entirety of political history has shown, but recent events should jump out at you, what politicians deem true is very often synonymous with what is politically convenient. To take one such recent example, Senator Josh Hawley said that he will object to the certification of electoral college results, despite a complete lack of evidence of any sort of widespread voter fraud. Senator Hawley was also behind the most extreme conservative push to limit the protections of platforms under section 230 to those that operate without political bias. Ask yourself if you want people like Senator Hawley, someone very willing to endorse outright falsehoods and subvert the democratic will of the American people to be determining what is and is not politically biased. Put another way, do you want the government to force platforms to allow the spread of politically convenient lies in order to benefit Washington bureaucrats, regardless of your political identity? To say, to address something that Dave said, one of the reasons that section 230 was implemented was based on a case called, let's see, Stratton, I can't read my own handwriting, basically Stratton v. Prodigy. So back in 1994, this person on a message board, I guess the closest thing to a modern equivalent of Twitter, said some defamatory things accusing this like investment banking firm of fraud. And then the investment banking firm sued that person for defamation and also sued the platform. Now it turns out that person was right, that this investment banking firm was engaging in a lot of fraud. They lost their license like a year after this case was settled. I'm not sure that what you're proposing would limit these things because now if you hold a platform liable to things, they're gonna crack down way more on what is allowed to be put on their platform. Do you really want the government to be able to, do you really want companies to be able to sue for defamation for potentially damaging things they say about the company? To address something that Andrew said, Yeah, I agree. It is not a perfect system whatsoever. The truth is a very touchy subject but I also don't think that's allowing the rampant spread of misinformation of conspiracy theories of baseless claims of things like voter fraud that it could potentially lead to damaging and societally damaging consequences. I'm not sure that that is gonna help things. And so yeah, I don't have a perfect answer to this and we'll do some discussion on it but I don't just allowing this free form spread of misinformation, I don't think it's a good thing, so. Thanks so much Flora Zora Jordan. All right, so yeah, I don't have any kind of a formally written out opening statement here but I did take some notes over the last three speeches and there's just a handful of things that I wanna cover. So honestly, let's just get into the meat of it here. I completely understand where both Dave and Andrew are coming from on this issue. As somebody who grew up incredibly conservative as somebody who grew up believing in a lot of the values that not necessarily they espouse but would somewhat align with them on this issue. I understand why there's a lot of frustration when it comes to things like big tech and social media censorship, especially when it's coming out of these highly liberalized areas in Silicon Valley. And I'm not gonna be deaf to the concerns that are brought up there but I don't think a couple of things. First off, I don't think that the way that regulation would be implemented on the ground level would necessarily solve a lot of the problems that the distributist and Andrew are talking about. I actually think that it would make a lot of these problems, particularly the problem with monopoly power a lot worse. So I'm gonna probably wrap with monopoly power because it's one of the things that I think is a key. It's an interesting topic and it's something that could really carry the rest of this discussion if we let it have its day in the sun. But there's some other things that are I think a little bit more prescient to the issue at hand. So first off, there was a lot of talk that was brought up around the story about the New York Post being censored on Twitter's platform due to a hack materials policy. There's a lot of sub points under this but first I just wanna clarify in our pre-tape or well, not really pre-tape and in our first attempt at having this debate I was actually the one who started talking to Dave a little bit on the New York Post case. And I just wanna kinda highlight for people where I got that information from. This wasn't some like BS like legalese argument. I actually have good reason to believe that Jack Dorsey was telling the truth when it comes to the New York Post case. Primarily because he actually said that the hack materials point was primarily why the New York Post had its content removed in front of Congress under oath. And now I understand that might just be some limited cop out. But the other thing that we need to keep in mind when we're talking about whether or not Twitter's being a good faith actor here is the New York Post actually had the complete ability to put this story back out after having their account suspended. And the original decision that Twitter made was undone within 24 hours after they realized that they'd made a mistake on this story. So I know it doesn't actually and it doesn't at all even excuse Twitter for removing the publication of the New York Post but we can't just throw this out and say, well, this was just some like trying to narrow around because we're trying to help buy them. So Dave also talked about this idea of the Pentagon Papers which I think the way that he talked about it was rather interesting and there's a lot that can be delved into here. I understand the significance of the Pentagon Papers. I understand what it meant for free speech in general but we need to consider something here. The Pentagon Papers were published by a news organization. I lost my train of thought there. Let's wind back to what I was gonna say. One of the things with the New York Post story that I think gets really overlooked and neglected especially when we talk about the ubiquity of things like social media just because Facebook and Twitter might have taken issue with the New York Post reporting doesn't mean that this is something that was censored off of the face of the earth. And I think this actually comes down to the crux of the argument that we need to be making when it comes to things like social media in the first place. Social media, yes, does have a lot of power but in no way shape or form are they monopolies especially when it comes to the broad reach of the internet. First off, the New York Post when they posted their story to Twitter we're linking back to the New York Post's own website. That's a way that they have an ability to speak in a way that they have an ability to keep their foot in the door and be a part of the conversation, right? We're not talking about the idea of, you know for instance, Twitter is not like spectrum. Twitter didn't go, hey, I don't agree with what you're saying about Joe Biden. Therefore, we're just going to get rid of everything that you have up to this point and we're just not going to let this story get out. One of the other big things that needs to be talked about is this idea of publisher versus platform and it gets brought up a lot in a lot of conservative circles but it's something that really needs to be hammered in if we're going to get anywhere here. There's this idea that floats around in a lot of conservative circles that went just because Twitter, Facebook and all of these other entities decide that they're going to be removing content every once in a while that violates its terms of service that it suddenly becomes some sort of a publisher which has both been debunked inside of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which ended up dealing with this case when Prager University sued YouTube for shadow banning some of its content but the other place where this was dealt with is honestly inside of the legislation that created section 230 in the first place. I think that we need to realize that when the internet was being created it put a lot of these platforms into really tricky positions which is why section 230 exists in the first place. If you're a company like Twitter or Facebook or even back in the day something like AOL or an email provider, the general understanding was if you were hosting this platform we didn't actually know what to do with you legally, right? There was this big question of whether or not you would even have the ability to moderate anything to begin with because the more that you knowingly knew of a legal activity, the more likely it was that you could potentially be held culpable for any of it existing on your platform. So when section 230 came into the mix it was actually to allow the expansion of speech and actually to allow these platforms to take things off that the government had already deemed illegal and weren't allowed to be out inside of the open. The last thing that I kind of want to talk about is monopoly power because this really is kind of the crux of everything that we have inside of this conversation but I understand why it's frustrating to deal with platforms like Facebook and platforms like Twitter but I don't see how legislating them to behave in a free and open manner necessarily solves any of the problems that we have up until now. Primarily due to the fact that any kind of a regulation that you put on these giant monolithic companies that have the resources to deal with anything coming down the pike actually is more likely to cut down on competition is more likely to cause other entities to not be able to enter the space. There have been some great examples of this if you want to go look into any of the regulation around particularly FOSTA and one that did to a lot of particularly places like Tumblr but sadly I didn't tag any of that here. This was a little bit more rambly than I would have liked but I think I can see the floor with that. Do you mind if I go next? Thanks so much. We can jump right into open conversation and so thanks so much and also thanks so much to those of you. We have jumped from 70% to 77% on the meter on your right for the Kickstarter for January 8th's debate and so thank you so much to those of you who've pledged during the debate. Really appreciate it and we'll jump right into that open conversation. The floor is all yours guys. Okay. So one thing that Jangle's brought up is that he doesn't trust the government to determine what is true and false and I agree. I do not trust the government to determine what is true and false. This is actually a very unique and asymmetrical situation because preventing censorship doesn't actually need to determine whether something is true or false. What we're actually doing is making that the responsibility of the consumer or the reader to determine what is true and what is false. Jangle's is concerned about misinformation but I'm actually ironically going to do the classic liberal view on this and say that the best cure for misinformation is having free flow of information that shows how it is wrong. And this ties in a little bit about what Jordan was talking about with how Twitter isn't really censoring because they have like community guidelines and it's not really a monopoly because other things exist. And there are a couple of things here. One is even if it isn't a monopoly basically it's Pareto distributed which means that these companies have significantly more power than other things, right? Free markets work best when there are a large number of relatively same size factors giving fungible things but the social media is very distinct from that because it actually has a network effect into it, right? I can't take my Twitter followers and take them to Facebook very easily or two things like that. So even if they're not a classical monopoly they have significantly more power in influence than previously. The other thing is there's a difference between regulating content and form of information. So a great historical example of this is blasphemy laws, right? A two blaspheme is to basically desecrate something holy with speech but blasphemy laws did not actually cover reasonable and cogent critiques of religion. And so a compromise that I would be willing to accept and I think it would actually be sort of an ideal is that let's say Facebook and Twitter had rules about what civic discourse was and politeness and things like that but that doesn't include the content it just includes how you say it. If that was implemented and done in an even-handed way I think that would work really well. And I think that can be implemented without doing things like causing regulatory capture. Having a transparent and audible system of determining whether content meets standards for civility is something that could easily be done for any company that has that type of community guideline. We can also implement other things that would require a more open social media world like requiring all social media to publish their protocols. So it's not something that necessarily can stifle competition and even if it did there were ways to remediate that. The final point that I wanna end on is attempts to reduce disinformation by eliminating people's access to it tend to backfire. So a great example of this is the Roman Catholic church used to have something called the index which was the index of books that contained heresies that no one could read. And what tended to happen in the 20th century and even the 19th century is it sort of got this forbidden truth type thing where people were actually more interested in reading books on the index because the Roman Catholic church had banned them. And this is actually even happening with Twitter with their information warnings. And this is the thing is we don't necessarily trust any institutions to be the arbiters of truth and falsehood and our cultural habit which I think we should preserve is to give that to the individual and to society as a whole. I'm really curious, especially with recent events do you think that if we offer that like the arbitration of truth to society as a whole and the individual do you think that there are random nobody on the street should have as much say in what is medically true as a doctor? Sorry, I don't understand the question. If society, if it is up to society to determine what is and is not true does this mean that if enough people think that for example masks don't work or that COVID can be, COVID isn't a big deal that those people get to decide what is true as much as medical experts because that's essentially what you're proposing here. I'm sorry, how am I proposing that? Because you're saying that the arbitration of truth should be left up to society. So for example, the accusation of widespread voter fraud to bring back to a previous example this is unsubstantiated. And yet a lot of people seem to believe it anyways so much so that at least one senator has proposed that we should overturn the democratic process in order to endorse it. Jangles, jangles, but this, how does this follow? Because we're saying the only thing that Andrew proposed was a set of common sense neutral regulations about the kinds of things that could be taken off the platform. The mainstream media with the New York Times and CNN pursued for two years a Russia collusion investigation that yielded absolutely no results. If the social media had quashed that, I mean, that seems to me to be, that would be a corporate intrusion even if the claims about Russian collusion had no supporting evidence against them. Hey, a quick question. How would you define this as a neutral? I'm not done. Yeah, the two options if the government regulates it, which seems reasonable, although it creates a backup question, right? The government defines truth or we have sort of an open market on truth, right? Where a lot of people can discuss it. But what you're opposing is a weird middle ground where a corporate monopoly gets to terminus truth and their moderation team gets to terminus truth under no possible way of assessing the facts. Can I make that even make sense? I mean, I'm curious of those two other options of the two extremes, you're saying I'm somewhere in the middle. The government regulates truth versus the open market of truth. Which one of those are you endorsing? Well, we're saying and Andrew, I'm glad Andrew outlined this. We're saying that we could have some very neutral regulations and he proposed two of them. The first regulation he proposed and I apologize if I'm mistitting this Andrew was to have sort of a regulation, allow these systems to make a regulation on how this was expressed, AKA the difference between critique and blasphemy. And this will allow them to get rid of things like slurs and racial slurs and profanity and pornography. But it would keep the information intact. The other thing was an open protocol regulation, right? Which is an open protocol regulation is completely neutral because it doesn't even touch the problem of the content of speech, but it allows multiple different actors to essentially deminopolize these large industries. In order for what we seem to be proposing is that the Facebook and Twitter moderation teams are the new arbiters of truth, which are completely privately owned. I just feel like I'm hearing tactical anarchism here. Tactical anarcho-capitalism. Can I ask you a couple of quick just back to back questions? All right, so as much as we're going to keep this on the broader philosophical point of what it is that we need to be doing as far as regulation is concerned, we are talking about the current status quo when we're making those decisions, right? I don't understand the nature of that question. So we're talking about whether or not government in general should be regulating Twitter and Facebook, but are we talking about that in the current status quo? So are we talking about like- We propose two regulations, well, Andrew proposed two regulations. I'm sure I could come up with other regulations that I would like, but there were two regulations that could be introduced to the status quo that would make the situation much better. Okay, so can you name one time anybody's been banned off of Facebook or Twitter outside of violating their terms of service? The terms of service are flexible. They can say that they've violated the terms of service without, for instance, I'll give you an example. Like they're, I believe, wasn't Stephen Mull new banned off of Twitter and they didn't give him any responsibility what the violation in terms of service was. Yeah, there are also lots of examples of people saying race-hatred things about whites, but the same exact phrase is against- Yeah, that's a good example. Blacks don't, yeah. So- Yeah, but what it's like compared Sarah Jong to Jared Taylor, right? What did Jared Taylor say that got him banned that Sarah Jong didn't say? I'm curious, do you think that the government should step in and say that no Twitter, you cannot ban Stephen Mull and you or Jared Taylor from this platform? I'm saying that Twitter, in order to be considered a platform has to have formalized rules that when they interfere, I think, and I don't wanna speak for Andrew here. My preferred regulation is the regulation Andrew mentioned about open protocol. That's the best one. But failing that, if we have to be more specific, what I would require here is that I would require a formal for these monopoly corporations that have 80, 90% of the market share in terms of Twitter and Facebook between them. I would require that they actually have a legally binding terms of service that could go under review. And if they do not apply consistently, then we just yank their platform status, which will immediately make them go into business. Yeah. And as consistently applied, will be determined by the governments. So we've essentially kicked the can down the road to people with guns. I'm sorry, are you a narco capitalist? Like you understand the regulation, but you understand we have regulation. Do you think that I'm fighting against regulations? Look, this is not actually solving the problem. This critique you're making is just an argument against regulation altogether. So I would say like Dow Chemicals has to submit to the EPA to determine that it's pipes are clean, right? And Dow Chemicals has its own internal cleanliness regulations. And they have to say, are you just kicking the can down the road to the EPA? Well, I guess I am, right? But the whole idea of regulations is that the government is a different entity with different incentives than Dow Chemical Company is. The whole idea about having a regulatory system on top of corporations is that the regulatory system of government is, I mean, I don't know if you're getting this, the regulatory system of government has different incentives and is different party than the corporation that's regulating. Do you believe that there's a fundamental similarity between the EPA and the way that the EPA would regulate and the way that we'd be talking about free speech issues inside of the United States? I'm waiting for a difference. You have to show me a difference here. Like the question is, there's always a relative standard about openness for platforms like Twitter and Facebook. There's also a relative standard of cleanliness, right? Now, saying that the government regulation is kicking the can down the road is not an argument against social media regulation. It's just an argument against all regulation. Well, look, and this is right. I have no idea where you're coming from with us. Yeah, I have no idea where you're coming from this because in our conversations, like when we were trying to lead up to this, we agreed that no, like, of course, the government can regulate these platforms insofar as like a legality is concerned. No one here, at least of all of us, and I feel like you're unintentionally strawmanning us are saying that there should be no government regulations of platforms whatsoever. But what we're trying to get at and what I think we understood the debate to be, or at least I did, is that you think that platforms should not be able to censor someone based on views they don't like. I don't like that either. And that could absolutely come and bite me in the butt. But the difference is as much as I don't like that platforms can censor me if they decided they don't like my views, I like even less the notion that the government would be in charge of that decision. Okay, so let's say that the Twitter just destroyed all progressive accounts on its service. Like that wouldn't be a regulatable action. They decided to do that. No, we would have to hope that the public would step in and like, no, we're not going to use this anymore. It's ineffective. But that's an extreme hypothetical, though. That's not anywhere close to what's happening here. It's not hypothetical. I mean, you're basically saying. It's entirely a hypothetical unless you're actually insinuating inside of this conversation that for some reason, all of them are on Twitter. Is it just me here or is anyone else not hearing? I don't have them at all. That's a super robot. Distribute us. We can't, I hate to interrupt, but we can't hear you at all. People won't be able to hear you at all. Distribute us, can you hear us? Or. I don't think you can hear us either. Distribute us, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I think we'll, oh wait, did we just lose him? No, hold on a second. He has dropped. Hopefully he'll be back in a moment, but we'll give Andrew, if you'd like a chance to jump in. This is a great opportunity. So, Jengles was talking about how, like I seem to be implying or to him, it seemed like I was implying that truth would become like a democracy if we gave it to society, rather than to companies. And basically the point that I'll make to that, Jengles, is that the mechanisms for determining what truth are, are discourse and hierarchies. And the way that social media ties into that is social media needs to be transparent to those. So that social media is itself not altering the structures that we have in society for determining what truth is. And that it's only supposed to lubricate and make things easier to communicate. And by marking disinformation or things like that as the platform, they're mixing these responsibilities in a way that is open to significant conflict of interest. It could be, but things like, so for example, when we say that a claim about election fraud is disputed, that was considered censorship by a lot of people who apparently don't know what censorship means, but just something like that, that is provably true by any reasonable definition of truth. Well, that's the thing though, is that's true of literally almost any claim of political import is that there are conflicting views on it or disputations about it, right? And so that's the question is who are we, who gets to decide what institutions to trust? Is that an individual choice or is that something that comes part in parcel of using a platform? I mean, this wouldn't interfere with what you're proposing though, right? If a social media company just says that claim that this claim is disputed, it's still up to the individual as to who to trust. We haven't determined that Twitter is the arbiter of truth by putting that disclaimer on there. So it's just- Well, let's look at it a little bit differently, right? What we're talking about was actual censorship, not just marquing things. If Twitter determines that it's in disinformation and takes it off the platform, then you're implicitly trusting Twitter for two things. You're trusting it for providing the platform and for being the arbiter of truth. And that's the issue is that these mechanisms they have for community guidelines that are attempting to create a civic discourse or being abused to be used against views, not just the tone or cordiality of the environment. I'm not gonna sit here and defend Twitter and defend the way that Twitter tends to run its platform. I actually don't like a lot of their moderation decisions, but can you give me one example of that happening that we can actually pull from and kind of parse through to see if we actually agree or disagree on this? Well, sure. One Twitter account says it'll be fun to kill all white people. And another Twitter account says it's fun to kill all black people. And the one that said- This is literally done with Sarah Jong thing. Yeah. And- Wonderfully someone did this and demonstrated there was a different response from the Twitter moderation team. And the one that said kill all white people was allowed and the one that said kill all black people got banned. Right? Yeah. That's what happened. So- I wouldn't defend that decision, but also like, again, do you want the government stepping in to dictate what Twitter can and cannot allow? Yeah. Jangles, jangles. Like, hasn't the government been enforcing racial fairness since the 60s? Yeah. It is- So, how is this libertarian argument coming out of left field? Because it's not libertarian like hate speech. Yeah, there's nothing illegal about it. Hate speech is not illegal in the United States. Essentially what you're saying is hate speech ought to be illegal. No, I'm saying that if you have a hate speech law, you have to enforce it equally against blacks and whites. Okay, but we don't have a hate speech law. Yeah, we don't- Okay, I meant euphemistically. I mean, hate speech regulation on your platform, you have to apply it equally. And you're saying we can't force companies to treat races equally? No, we can definitely lobby them to do that. We can definitely lobby them to do that. But again, legally, hate speech is legal in the United States. Is the civil rights act forcing corporations to treat races equally? Is that lobbying them to treat races equally? Or is that actually a law? Because last time I checked that was an actual law. I'm sorry, is it or is it not illegal to say I hate ex-group of people? Is it legal to say that? In the United States, the answer to that question is yes. Hate speech is not illegal in the United States. So the entire point getting back to this is this is an example of Twitter engaging in not even handed censorship, right? And the question seems to be, or at least my understanding was, can the government regulate Twitter to force them to have consistent policies? It's not about whether or not they can, because obviously they can, it's the government. What we need to be talking about is whether or not they should. Why, okay, so why shouldn't they? I think there are plenty of reasons that they shouldn't, primarily. I think that the biggest problem that we end up running into if we give government control over these platforms is the fact that now all of a sudden we have a system where the government gets to decide who does and doesn't get to stay on the platform. It's not like censorship goes away. We now just have legally codified reasons people can and can't be censored when these things get taken to court. Awesome, great, it's an improvement. Everything is formalized and we know what the rules are. Okay, so what happens if you guys in particular were to lose a court case and now all of the social media platforms can just take you off? Does that actually solve the problem? Yes, it does because the courts require to have a consistency. The terms of service are not. The terms of service can be rewritten and they are rewritten regularly. If you check your email, you'll have plenty of terms of service updates in your inbox from every social media platform you follow if you allow that. So then why not go to a different platform? The courts cannot do that. The courts have to operate through the law, which has a series of regulations that move much slower and has a variety of oversight mechanisms to keep these things safely in place. Okay, but do you not understand that the biggest problem there is that when you lose at a governmental level, all of a sudden it's perfectly fine to absolutely excise somebody from society rather than the subjective opinions of Facebook, Twitter or any of these entities on their own? Okay, but this is like saying that like, what if the seatbelt fails type of deal? You know, the idea is we're introducing a second level of protection. Right now, Twitter can just ban me for whatever reason it wants and change its terms of service retroactive. Yeah, go to Facebook. As we have demonstrated several, they have incredibly, it's something like there's two companies, right? So these are the two systems and they both have... I think big tech is coming down on Dave again. What we'll do, distributors, I'm so sorry. We might have to just kind of wait, kind of weather the storm. Amazing, so. Yeah. The real big tech is ISPs. Luckily, they're, well. We've demoed, sir. Dave, Dave, Dave. You can't hear us. The worst robotic I've ever heard. That was intense. Are you still there, Dave? Interesting. Dave, oh, we lost Dave. Okay, don't worry, he'll be back folks. Go ahead, whoever was about to jump in. Sure, well, and this is the thing, right? Is by saying, oh, just go to another platform. You are basically being locked out of the mainstream discourse. And the entire point we're talking about isn't about the government determining what can be censored, but is the government taking action so that views aren't censored just because of the information content that they have? So I don't want to strom in you. So there are, platforms should be allowed to censor certain views, even if they're legal, correct? So for example- And this was the exact same argument. No, you're robotic again. No, well, you're robotic again, I'm... Dave, I'm so sorry, we're not laughing at you, man. It's just that, I don't know if you can hear me right now, but your connection, you probably already noticed yourself. It's not super strong tonight. Can you hear us? Well, okay, what was it, I think that Jengles was going to say. I guess I'll ask Andrew, but if Dave can hear me, he can answer as well. So should the platform be able to decide what his objection will be on, what the government says, beyond legality? So for example, should every single platform be allowed to host pornography, or should they decide platform by platform, whether they will or not host adult content? Because adult content is completely legal in the United States. So does that mean that a platform is censoring certain forms of speech, censoring certain forms of information, if they decide that they do not want to have this content on this platform? Well, I think that every platform should be allowed to censor the form that content takes, but not necessarily the content. So for example, showing a couple engaging in sex, graphically, not everyone has to allow that, but Twitter needs to be able to say that, you know, Andrew had, I had sex with my wife, right? That is conveying the same information in a different form that is not obscene. And that's the issue, is that that type of information needs to be everywhere for us to be a society where we can find truth effectively. So can people hear me now? Yeah, we've got you. So I'd want to add something in with this whole, you know, go to a different platform type deal or build your own Google type thing. This is the same arguments that railroad monopoly is used to justify their own monopoly and the inability of the government to regulate it in the early 20th century. The idea was, well, we don't have a monopoly, we just control all the railroads. If you don't want to use a railroad, just use a carton bucket. Again, I feel that that's kind of, I don't know how serious I'm supposed to actually take this. Again, like, you know, I understand if you're a narco capitalist and you don't think there's a right to do this. I don't understand how, you understand that there's a certain amount of... I really don't appreciate the straw manning of going for the end cap point all the time, partially because unlike when we're talking about railways, there are legitimate differences with the internet, primarily while you might be able to say that Facebook and Twitter have a monopoly over social media, they don't have a monopoly over the internet as a whole. There's always going to be a way to get these pieces of information out. And just because somebody gets kicked off of Facebook or Twitter, they're not necessarily going to be kicked off of the other one. Meanwhile, you have a situation where- Your conclusion was if you get kicked off of Twitter, you've got your website. I mean, that's very much like saying because the social media's technology, I mean, I'm old enough to remember Web 1.0. You're saying that we can essentially bar you from using Web 2.0 and the social networks it contains. So go back to using internet the way it was used in the 90s and help someone Google's your website or directly checks you for information. That's something you don't have- Is that not the same as the system that we currently have with these giant monolithic platforms? I mean, it's not like anybody's necessarily going to be able to find your YouTube page unless it randomly shows up either A and recommended the same way that it would with retweets or anything else or B by actually searching you out. I don't see how Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 are necessarily all that different. It's just different mediums of accessing the same information, one of which is owned by a private company. I understand why this makes sense for you to argue because you want to win this debate. I don't think you believe that. You can just look, if you take an article and just post it to a website and prevent anyone from sharing it on Facebook and Twitter, that article will get almost no views. But if you take that same article and post it on Twitter and Facebook and allow people to share it through networks and allow it to go viral, you'll have like a three order of magnitude difference. You must know that this is the case. So this can be demonstrated scientifically. Okay, now let's say that that article is, I forgot his name. Who was the, he was a meme a while back, but it turns out not to be a meme. It's advocating a certain form of sexual abuse. So let's say that this is an article making arguments in favor of a certain form of sexual abuse. Do you think a platform should not be allowed, should not be allowed to prevent the spread of that article because it is information? I think that the advocacy of things that are illegal is already something that things that people have the ability to regulate. That's not under contention, I need the examples we gave. Wait a second. So if something, are you tactically missing the point? No, I have to know. Are you tactically missing the point here? No, wait, no, I want to stick on this point for a second. So wait, I might be interpreting you, but so someone is not allowed to advocate for something to be legal. We're making this very broad here. I'm not endorsing this thing. Someone should not be allowed to be able to advocate for something to be legal that is not already legal. No, no, no, no, no, you're saying using a platform, I mean, you're saying using a platform to advocate for a crime. That's already a crime. No, advocating that a crime should not be a crime. Okay, sure. What about it? So this would not be covered under legality. So of course it's legal to advocate for something that is a crime to not be a crime. What I'm asking is do you think that a platform should not be able to prevent the spread of this certain article? I don't think, I think if the conversation about how we make the laws comes down on social media and they disallow that they're acting as publishers, if that's gonna be regulated, it's gotta be regulated through something that's other than a private company. Otherwise you're just gonna tell these companies that they can completely decide the frame of our debate. I know you can see this. That's the problem is I feel you do see this and that's my sense. I know my bad internet's caused me to miss part of this debate. But my frustration here is I feel that our opponents understand the problem that we're pointing to, that these companies do have monopoly power, that social media is different than Web 1.0 and having a website is not a replacement for that, that social media's force is controlled by three or four companies and that if they control the framework for controversies on their platforms, they can essentially date the entire conversation of our politics. Those are such simple points. Can we acknowledge that you see that problem? Okay, I'm gonna step in here. I completely understand that problem and I would say the same is likely true for Justin. Here's where I'm really gonna come down against you and had we not been going around in circles this entire time, this really would have been what I would have liked to get at. I do see the problem and I don't even like how Twitter and Facebook run their platforms, okay? Like I fundamentally think that this does a disservice to the discourse, okay? But I don't think that the best way to go about attacking this is merely through enforcing laws that could potentially harm the way that the internet functions right now because we're talking about should we stop censorship? But the question is what happens when those things actually get put into place, right? Okay, so let me ask a follow-up question. What's the best way to solve the problem? Hold on, I got more. All right, so I do understand the problem and I understand that these companies primarily have the plate here, but the problem is that these companies are also so big and make so much money at this point that if you put more regulations in place, they're going to be the only ones with the apparatuses to be able to put all of that together. So they'd be able to ban content which is primarily illegal while also keeping on content that may be controversial and they'd have to hire people to make that distinction. What I'd like to see and what I think Justin might also like to see is rather than just saying, hey, let's just regulate away the company's right to free speech. Why don't we talk about the idea of breaking up the monopolies in the first place and subvert the problem while also keeping what's good about the internet in its current state? Okay, so would you embrace the regulation that Andrew proposed at the beginning of this conversation before we supposedly went around in circles to mandate? Did you even know what I'm going to say? In order to mandate an open protocol? I don't support that regulation. I don't support the idea of necessarily regulating open protocol. I do understand the importance of the US. I don't think it should be government enforced. So Jordan, do you don't believe that we should force social media companies to allow anyone to connect to their network? Fundamentally. You don't believe that we should make social networks behave like email where you can use Yahoo or Gmail and talk to everyone else through email. You don't do that. I believe that's how they already fundamentally work until you break the rules. I mean, email is already kind of a publisher, isn't it? I have a standpoint. They don't work like email because email uses services like pop that are open protocols. Facebook's and Twitter's protocols are IP, which means that, A, they can't be connected to by any service. It's not like Mastodon. Are you, I'm curious, do you think that it should be like, this statement sort of regulation should be applied to like emails and like a cell phone providers? They filter, they automatically filter things that they consider spam. So they determine what I should see. Are you against that as well? Email, this is the clarification. The protocol is not filter that. What filters that is your spam filter, which you can turn on and off by the way, right? That goes through something like Gmail. Yeah. Which is owned by Google. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about requiring them to make their protocols public like PopMail, which is sort of the protocol that runs behind most of your Gmail email services, which allows you to sort of, which would allow you to connect to social media the same way you connect to email. Yeah. I don't think that really works because the primary reason why people gravitate towards social media platforms is fundamentally for the different experiences that each of them provides. And part of that is actually controlled by the company and the way that the company sets these things up. Part of these are protocol related. Part of these are API related. Part of these are UX related. And as somebody who understands programming will have to know the difference between these things, I don't think that the necessary solution is make it all work like email. I don't even think I understand. We already have examples of social media that use these kinds of things like Mastodon. Yeah. So I mean, you're telling us something that's impossible. And we already have an example of it existing. Look, here's the thing is if you like Mastodon, and here's the thing, Twitter's talked about this too is they wanna release a version of the Twitter site that would potentially be completely unregulated as well. I think these things are good things. I also don't think that we should force people to behave in this necessary way. And I don't understand why you're so intent on doing so. So what behaviors do you think we're forcing people to do? Fundamentally, I think that your beliefs here primarily are going to control companies into platforming and de-platforming certain types of speech that fundamentally would be more arbitrary than it is now because here's the thing is you're allowing- Jordan, we listed the regulation and that wasn't it. Well, yeah, but the other regulation that we were talking about was the idea of TOS. It seems to be you want to put the government in charge of what is and is not a biased moderation. It might have a fairly characterizing argument. We are putting the government in charge. We're putting the government in, well, first of all, there's one regulation we proposed that does not require that to Andrew listed. There's another regulation on the table. And again, either of those would count in my book as proper regulation. The first regulation was publicizing the protocol, which we know works despite Jordan saying it doesn't, which we know it does, right? And the second regulation was requiring that the TOS be very specific when it came to moderating informational content in the way that Andrew defined it. Those are the two things. None, nothing would require anything to be done by these social media sites. It would require them not to do certain things or when they took certain actions and make sure that they adhere to a formalized system of rules that was overseen by the government. The same way, for instance, the government regulates corporations when it comes to racial bias, which has been doing for what? Again, 50, 60 years now. Or even finances. I mean, Yeah, exactly. We have to pretend like the government's never regulated ever with anything ever, right? Like this is, you know, the 19th century or something. Government has been having oversight for corporate bias for 50 or 60 years when it's come to racial bias and hiring decisions. So something that we very clearly discussed when we talked about this is, of course we're not saying that social media companies should be able to like kick out white people or kick out black people. We very clearly said that if it violated a non-discrimination law or if a social media company was like violating any law by kicking somebody off the platform, of course this is not what we were talking about. We were talking about, should the government be able to decide what is and is not bias moderation? So the social media companies can be regulated. We just draw the line in different places, is what you're saying? We very clearly agreed on that being the topic of the discussion. No, no, slow down, Jangle, slow down. Because a few minutes ago, we were on the thing that we couldn't possibly regulate at all. So now you're telling me that we could prevent Google from, or Twitter from kicking off all the Muslims on that site. But 20 minutes ago, you said we could, Twitter could kick off all the communists or progressives. So Dave, can I? Well, you go take it, Andrew, take it. Okay, so Jangle, what Dave is talking about is companies have to keep records of their hiring process in an audible format so that they can prove to the government with a lawsuit or an audit that they are following an unbiased process. So they would have to follow a similar process for moderation where they would have like an audit book of what occurred and what evidence they use for moderation in case it came to court or they got audited. And that's the analogy Dave is trying to make. Thank you very much, Andrew. I don't understand the analogy, I guess, because we're not talking about whether or not a, we're not talking about whether Twitter can hire certain people for a hiring process. And we're not talking about, we very clearly agree that Twitter. Okay, well, I'm not done, I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm not done. Hey, man, you, you, you got mad when we know you. So we're not talking about whether or not Twitter should be able to kick off certain identities or protected classes of people. We're not talking about whether Twitter should be able to do anything illegal. We're talking about things that are extra legal, things that are beyond that, which is what ideas, what information should be able to be decimated on this platform. That's it. Yeah, yeah. And so then the same way that when you hire someone at Twitter, you have to have an audible thing that to prove that you're not being racially biased, you would have to have an audible thing when you moderate things on Twitter to prove that you're not being ideologically biased or you're only biasing it on. I would say that somebody is or isn't ideologically biased. The same way you determine whether they're racially biased. We should be ideologically biased. I don't like terrorism. Is that ideologically biased? Of course it is. One of the biggest like proponent, like we've already dealt with this under illegal actions change. Hold on. No, hold on. What we're talking about, we have two different like, yeah, but terrorist attacking, we have two different camps attacking section 230. One of them is requiring like more censorship. Like for example, I don't think it's controversial to say that like terrorists definitely use social media sites to recruit. I don't think it's dishonest to say that misinformation has affected elections, both in the United States and abroad. And a lot of people are saying that Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites should crack down more on that disinformation. And so they want more censorship of these ideas. And yes, that requires them to be ideologically biased because this notion of unbiased moderation is a fool's errand. Every decision is to some extent subjective. So it's obviously going to be biased. So how did, okay, maybe I don't want to straw man anybody. How would you reconcile this push to like stop the spread of extremist content that might very well result in real world terrorism with your notion that we should be ideologically neutral in our moderation? Okay. So the first fence around it is illegal action, right? That advocating illegal action, including acts of terrorism is forbidden, right? That doesn't get into this, right? It doesn't matter if you're an eco-terrorist or a Islamist terrorist or a communist terrorist or what have you. Advocating illegal acts can be eliminated through moderation, right? Yeah, but that would be easy to handle for the court of law because we've already had that regulation for other things. Yeah. And so then the question comes in, are you being even-handed on? Well, the real question is, is social media being conducive to having the type of dialectic we need to sense-making the world, right? And that includes being able to come to different perspectives and analyze them to get all the information necessary to be an effective electorate and so on and so forth. And that's where the issue is, is that we're not dealing with ideological enemies outside the system. It's about our opponents in the system, right? That in some really strong sense, you, me, Dave and Jordan have all agreed to the basic round rules of politics in America, right? Where things like speech and elections and citizen action committees are the mechanisms through which we negotiate politics. And the issue is, is the importance of social media is we need to have a way to have those conversations for the political process. And if they don't do that, they will be doing the hidden agendas of whatever the people at those media companies do, just like the hidden agendas of the railroad companies a century ago and so on and so forth. Can I ask a question? Jengles, do you think that, since you said that Twitter can get rid of all communists or all progressives, could Twitter, five days before an election, ban all the Republicans and just silence them, both Twitter and Facebook, could that be, that would be fine? I mean, it wouldn't be illegal. I don't think it would be illegal. No, no, no, no. If it did that, do you think the government should take action or we should investigate Twitter and say they couldn't do that? If it was that extreme, maybe. Okay, so in principle, you understand where we're coming from. I understand your frustration. I really, really do. What I don't like is that I don't want the government to be deciding what can and can't be discussed. So hold on, let me go back to it. Let me go back to it. Let me go back to it. Let me clarify. I also have another example that I wanted to go for. So for example, we said that like, yeah, you shouldn't be able to advocate in any sort of illegal activity. But how about when we crack down on extremist content, extremists and terrorists aren't stupid. They know how to get around TOS. And so we are required to like platforms and social media companies are required to like, go around like, yeah, you're not overtly saying a thing but you're heavily implying it. So for example, the, I'm sorry, James, the white genocide conspiracy theory was heavily promoted on YouTube, heavily promoted on Twitter and heavily promoted on Facebook and an inarguably heavily contributed to a terrorist attack that killed something like 50 people. And so, yeah, they didn't do anything illegal. And actually, and I'm such a free speech extremist that I don't think that that should be illegal to discuss. But I think it's completely responsible for a social media company to take an extra step to stop the spread of that conspiracy theory in order to prevent real world harm. You call, but you're saying that the social media companies are allowed to control ideology because extreme ideologies might influence terrorists or, I mean, could, I don't think you believe that. Look, I think there's a whole... I know, of course I don't believe that. Of course I don't believe that. I'm asking, that seems to be what you're advocating for, Jankles. I mean, this example, you're telling me that the government can't regulate, but in that extreme example I gave you... No, I didn't. No, come on. No, take that back. I'm not saying that I can't regulate. I think there's a whole other side of this that we're not really... I don't remember what you guys are saying personally. It seems like you're taking back your own statements. Well, if you let me finish, I'd get there. I was talking to Jankles here, but okay, Jordan, do you wanna add something to that? Look, yes, I think there's a whole other side of this that you guys aren't even willing to consider, especially when it comes to extremist content, which is the fact that whether or not these things are or aren't illegal to say and whether or not these are things that we believe are good for society. The biggest problem is that if Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all of these other social media platforms allow people to post terrorist content, allow people to post things that are outright calling for genocide and calling for all of these other horrendous actions, people are going to attach that to their brands. So there's a whole other side of this problem, which is why they have the TOS in place that they do in the first place. Whether or not speech is illegal, these companies also have to realize that they actually have to be profitable, and they have to be viable, and they have to be able to make money off of what they're selling. It's not profitable for any- The government already regulates direct advocation of terrorism, so that's off the table, right? The problem comes down to when these companies basically put themselves- Okay, how about I use a less extreme example? As the game for extremist content or truth. Because like I said, the mainstream media for two years was on this Russian-clusion thing, which is a conspiracy theory that had zero evidence for it, and social media did not crack down. Wait, didn't it have like a ton of convictions? What? The Trump collusion? That came back with no collusion found. No, but it was- Yeah, but there was also a whole bunch of corrupts. The allegations were that Trump directly colluded with Russia. And then the story continued with lots and lots of people going, well, they would have gone to jail if Trump hadn't just pardoned them this week, but lots of people going to jail for either A, colluding with Russia, or B, committing other things that were forms of election campaign fraud. But that's not the story is that people like Rachel Maddo were put in forward. They put forward that Trump directly colluded with Russia. Okay, I'm not getting a response here. The point is, guys, is that you're, this is kind of the game we're playing here, right? So let's say that some conspiracy theories come out, right? These conspiracy theories usually have a strong and a weak form to them, right? The strong form, it has some truth. The strong form is this completely nuts. And the weaker form has some kind of things that are like that maybe somebody had in poll to communication with Russia, right? Now, if you regulate this, if you hand Facebook and Twitter, the keys to regulate all the designation of whether something is a conspiracy or not, you'll have something's being labeled as conspiracies and getting legitimate facts just removed from the discourse in the case with the Hunter Biden emails. Yeah, in the case of Hunter Biden emails, they legitimately censored for two weeks before an election factual information, factual information about the legal activity. The New York Post is responsible for that lasting for two weeks. Twitter admitted they made a mistake and took it down within 24 hours. Their, the New York Post is claiming that their account was suspended for two weeks. Yeah, they were told all you got to do to get your account back is, all right, delete the tweet. You can repost it again. We don't have a policy in place that allows us to just kind of retroactively undo this, but we can get you back on the platform if you just- I think that's bullshit, to be quite honest. And I think you're- Well, they fixed it since- Hold on, I gotta go back on this. Like, so you seem to be seeing this since some conspiracy theories can be nuanced and have grains of truth to them. That means we can't touch or regulate conspiracies whatsoever. I don't like it that social media companies, I don't like it that corporations get to dictate what is and is not a conspiracy. I don't like it that Twitter and Facebook get to be the arbiters of what isn't, is not conspiracy theories. That's not really what we're discussing. Me and Jordan, like, we don't love Twitter. We're not big, like, he's like, we're not going to bat for their, like the altruism or what's the word, they're, you know, hold on, my words just gave me. What we're saying is that- You're putting them forward as the arbiters of truth. I don't, I'm saying, no, I don't like that they're the arbiters of truth, but I like the fact that government would decide what is and is not a conspiracy theory. So then who does, Jengels, who does? Who does? Well, I guess we do. Who does? It's not government and it's not the corporations. So do you think that a corporation should not, a corporation like Twitter should not be able to tackle a conspiracy theories at all, whatsoever. And so they have, they are going to be completely toothless when it comes to fighting extremism online. The reason why we go in circles is we've very explicitly stated the regulations that we're seeking multiple times. And then every time we get to this point where I ask how you want to regulate it, you pitch back to me some potential regulation that's not what Andrew or I were talking about. He mentioned two specific regulations and both of them had specific things that would be regulated when it came to the speech that could be included in the terms of service and couldn't be. And then there was even failing that, there was a more middle ground position which has been rejected also by you guys that we could just regulate, require and open protocols. Both of those propositions have been rejected by you guys if it's not my mistake. So let's not go in circles, let's stick, our position is that. So you don't need to ask me what I believe should the regulation should be since we've made that amply clear. I'm asking you what you think the regulation should be. Now, now that we've spent much time discussing the two regulations we want, what is the regulation you want, Jengles? That wasn't the debate we came up here and signed up for. But you proposed a couple of policies. This is tactical guys, this is sort of, we're getting to the part of- No, you're the one being tactical. Let's talk about that for a second, okay? You came in. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is, the point is we're trying to get to what you guys actually believe. Jengles said that he believed in some kind of way that it wouldn't be, that Twitter wouldn't have ultimate control over what we debated in the public square. Yeah, that's called legality. It's a very- Government, right? Yeah, which is the government, which is legality. But that is the baseline of what they should be allowed to do. I don't think that any social media platform should be allowed illegal activities on the platform. That's the baseline. What I'm advocating for- That's not, that no side has debated that. I know, but what you're saying is that there should not be, that social media companies should be regulated in what they're able to do on top of something- Yes. Otherwise they control the frame of the debate in ways we've already demonstrated. So- You said that they could, you said for instance- They'll control the frame of the debate either way. You, okay, so in the event that the ridiculous thing that I said happened, and there was a mass banning of Democrats ahead of the election, which used to be a major problem, the government could not step, should not step in to regulate that abuse. All right, it would be really, really, really bad. But to give you another hypothetical that is just as outlandish, what if the only things that were being shared on social media were complete utter false, like completely false claims of like, I don't know, election fraud or something. And social media companies couldn't fight it whatsoever because, you know, truth has to be determined by society, by the individual. And so they're not able to like push back at whatsoever against a mass lie that could potentially be incredibly dangerous for society as a whole. Well- That's what I don't like. So Jengles, Jengles, this is the issue, right? Is if a lie is so powerful that it's going to screw us like that, there's nothing we can do about, right? Because the creator of that lie could be the social media companies. It could be, and I really, I don't like it that they have that much power. I just like less the fact that you want the government to have that power. So- Somebody's got to hold the stick at least when Twitter and Facebook- I'm going to request something from you. Please restate the regulations that me and Dave have been advocating. So the first one was open protocol. And the second one was talking about enforcing TOS to be more open. Be a lot more concrete with that one if you can. I can't remember what the exact wording was. What I wrote down was requiring TOS moderation, moderating informal content or informational contents. Okay. Okay, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, so part of this is that this hasn't been communicated, right? So I think, and Dave, please correct me if you disagree that we want for regulation of speech on things like Twitter or Facebook or social media, clear articulation of what obscene speeches and what slurs are, but not forbidden topics, right? So I can talk about what the effects of violence on politics is as long as I don't advocate for killing all the redheads, right? Or I can give an elaborate story about how the redheads are Neanderthals and that's why they're superior to all other types of women. And we should get the government to issue it with your girlfriends, right? Do you see how this makes fighting extremism almost impossible? How so? Because, okay, well, I'm not saying that we should cause harm to anybody. What I am saying is, isn't it weird how this one ethnic group is replacing everybody in our society that looks like us? Isn't that weird? Isn't it weird how all these people are just like, it's almost like they're being funded by some sort of like satanic of all. Isn't that weird? You see how that's so easy to circumvent. This is literally, you want that speech to be banned by the corporation. What you just said, like just- I think that the, I think a corporation should be allowed to take extra legal steps beyond what is legal. I don't want that content to be illegal. I don't want someone to be locked up in a jail by the government for engaging in that speech. But I think it would be incredibly responsible. I think that it would be incredibly responsible for a social media company or a platform to crack down on things like that because it's been demonstrably linked to increases in terrorism. It's not at all that we would necessarily agree with or at least I would agree with that decision. But fundamentally speaking, I believe that they do have a right to make that decision. And I think that's where we keep getting caught up on this entire thing. I thought we said that they, I mean, so this is basically the free market. I feel like we're getting two different arguments here. Jordan, it feels like you're making more of a free market argument. Like they have some kind of right against being regulated whatsoever. That's sort of inviolable. It's not a right. And then Jacob making a practical argument about like something like the corporation has a moral responsibility to defend against extremism. Look, it's not about whether or not they have a right to be regulated whatsoever. We already regulate these companies. I think the steps that you are willing to go to regulate these companies signal a decline in what our actual social conversation would be because of who you're giving that power to and who suddenly gets to decide what can and can't be discussed and what falls within those purviews. Even if we're talking about what's supposed to be a TOS and censorship. Jordan, that doesn't seem to reflect what you're actually saying. I'll give you a chance to respond, Dave. What I want to do is just quick. Jordan will give you a chance to finish that thought, but I also want to let you know if you have a short, pithy finish to what you're saying, Jordan. And then we'll give you a chance to respond, Dave. And then pretty quick, we got to go into the Q and A. We've got a good amount of questions. Look, even if we're talking about creating what should be neutrally enforceable TOS law, there are two fundamental issues. First off, nothing is neutral, especially when we're dealing with the government. Whoever gets in charge is the person who has all of the power in that situation and the rules could suddenly change tomorrow as to what that law is actually talking about. Opening the door makes the problem fundamentally worse later down the line. And the other thing is that while I don't agree with how these sites run their platforms, how I don't think that Twitter as it's currently set up is actually providing any kind of a public good. But part of that, part of it for them is being profitable. Part of it for us as consumers is understanding that some of the decisions that these companies are going to make, we're not going to agree with. And we can fundamentally choose to fund people who are competing with these companies. It's not because I don't believe, I believe that they should have complete access to free market zero regulation. It's because fundamentally I understand the fact that allowing these types of speech on your platform is in and of itself saying something. And I think that's important to realize that these companies have to take that into account simply to be able to make money. It's not our responsibility to ensure Twitter and Facebook make money. It's our responsibility to make sure that corporations aren't becoming the implicit arbiters of our political conversation because they have monopoly share in a natural monopoly market. Just underlined that. If Twitter isn't providing a public good, it should be burnt to the ground. Yeah, I mean, I don't care. I mean, like who cares whether Twitter or Facebook can make a profit? I don't care. I don't even think that they should really exist. I mean, how about this, guys? Can we all agree on breaking up these monopolies? Is that something we'd agree on? I'd agree on that. Jengles? I'd have to do more research on it. Okay, so the strange thing is that regulation to me would be a less intrusive way of just breaking these guys up. You know, open protocol seems to be a less intrusive way of doing that. My sense is that if we break them up, there'll be a natural reminopelization in about a decade. And this is where I wish I could have dragged things, but like honestly where the debate got stuck didn't really allow me to go there. The fundamental issue that I have with a lot of these regulations is while they're going to work at, you know, keeping the big boys in check now, what happens when somebody does actually do something which radically changes this monopoly up and we're no longer in a natural monopoly situation anymore or the person in charge of that monopoly changes. The problem is that I understand how these things help with the speech issue completely. My bigger concern is that I actually, and there's a lot of evidence to this fact, if you look up any major publication talking about the effects of section 230 and repealing that, which is one of the only major bills dealing with this topic right now, the biggest thing that everybody cites, especially people like the EFF, is that these are actually going to be anti-competitive in the long run. The EFF doesn't care about competition, it cares about consumer rights. Do you believe monopolies are good for consumer rights? Sometimes. Utility, monopoly utilities that are well-regulated by governments tend to do very well for citizen rights or consumer rights. You can say that the EFF primarily cares about consumer rights, but I can literally, and like I, to a degree, I do think you're fundamentally right most of the time, but especially on their coverage on section 230, they've fundamentally pointed out the issues for the internet as a whole. It actually causes more of a public damage to be messing with these types of regulations in the long run, because as I said before, but we never really had a chance to get to, the biggest thing we run into is that large companies with a lot of money like Twitter and Facebook have a better ability to put together a legal team that can find a way to comply with these laws. Smaller people who would be able to push them out or even just provide alternatives aren't going to be in that position once we start putting these regulations into place. We are going to go into the Q&A. Forgive me, gentlemen, I know that you've got another round in the barrel, but I am really excited to read these questions. Also want to say thanks so much, folks, for your contributions to the Kickstarter. You can see the progress as the meter has gone up during the stream to where we're at about 80%, which we started at the stream at 70%. I'm stoked, you guys, this is going to be epic, and I want to let you know, one thing about this is that, including the speakers that we have on right now, I love to travel. My hope is that modern day debate, we get to do more on tour type of events, and that would mean basically when we use the funding to do things for more in-person debates, things like that, as well as new speakers like Dr. Michael Shermer, things like that, is that hopefully these might be the kind of guys that you get to see in person that day if we happen to find a convenient city that we can kind of arrange for a debate. As we do want to take 2021 as a huge opportunity to have more new opponents, as well as new formats, such as in-person debates. And so, do want to say thanks so much as we're testing out this new Kickstarter strategy in order to kind of see what kinds of new things we can do. So, we do have some questions. We're going to start with our dearest and loyal friend, Samuel Lillahom, says, question for both, if the U.S. is like a home with rules set up, what is the best system for a family? It seems not letting others silence others would be good to me. Yeah, as long as they're not, you know, cursing at each other or things like that, I think that having a house rule of you don't silence others, while they're making the point is a good one. I would add to that by saying, well, we're at why it can't speak for Andrew, but what I want more than anything else are consistently applied sets of rules that these companies have to own up to, or perhaps the government can own. And this would broadly reflect the best practices for parenting, which is that if you have rules, they have to be clearly enunciated and clearly enforced. That's what I feel is not going on in the social media monopolies in 2020. And that's why I feel we have to reestablish. And I'd really like to engage in the discussion with how we reestablish it and not just, you know, not just to defer to the tactical statement that we're the negative side, we don't have to have an idea of actually how to deal with this problem. Gotcha. We just wondering how clearly established rules is going to be better with the government, because the government's great at clearly establishing rules, correct? There's no inconsistencies there for how laws are applied. There's no subjectivity there, but now they have guns. I just don't know how that's an improvement on things. So this is literally the anarcho-capitalist thing that like laws are the same thing as private statements that are modulated. Supposedly, the government has consistency with laws because it has to enforce through a legal system, which has, like I said, tracking an oversight, which is corporations don't have. The closest we get to a perfectly-wise system is a court of law. It's not perfect, but that's the closest humans can get. Well, the reason why it is, is because the court of law has, we've built in over the course of 400 years of adjudicating things. We've built in oversight mechanisms to deal with this and to make sure that we have clearly understood consequences for people who perjure themselves, for people who try to supplant the court or try to bias it. And we've been come as good as we can adjudicating things fairly in court. If we move what goes on to the court into a corporate boardroom, you're not gonna find a fairer system there. And again, I understand that the anarcho-capitalist argument is that, like it's all the same, but I don't know. I'm saying anarcho-capitalist. I guess you should argue against one of those next time. We are going to jump into the next question. This one comes in from, you guessed it, appreciate your question, from apostatex, who says, you can say anything, people can say anything they want on their own website. What you are demanding is access to an audience. We're demanding, I mean, this is, again, like this is what we're demanding is we're demanding that monopolies submit to regulations by the government to make sure that they're fair. Why? Fundamentally, okay, no, no, no, no, no. Don't try and we're mad at this. The main thing here is, well, no, you're trying to we're mad at the question. The main thing is I understand that's what you're asking for, but the bigger question is why? What is it you hope to gain by forcing these companies to behave in that manner? It's like saying that, you know, in order when regulating the railroad industry, what we want is access to trains, I guess, technically. The audience, the thing that they've monopolized is audience. That's what the monopoly is. The monopoly is the network. You want access to Houston? Well, I've already said it. We want a public discussion conducive to the finding of truth. Yes. What if someone is interrupting that discussion with speech that may not be illegal, but is going to disrupt the public conversation? But it's not, what we're saying is that it's not the corporation's job to decide that. That's a denial of service attack. We do, let's see. I think that we will give the last word to the team at which the super chat was attempting the challenge. So we'll jump into the next one. This one from dearest friend, Brenton Langle. You guessed it. Says, collusion is not a legal term. Trump was under investigation for obstruction of justice. He only avoided prosecution because POTUS is above the law. Collusion was clearly discussed in the Mueller report. What we were not interested in is the legal niceties of whether it was collusion or obstruction of justice. The only thing I was interested in was simply the statement of fact. The media alleged collusion for two years and the Mueller report did not find any on Trump's behalf. So directly speaking, there was a factual misreporting there. Now, again, my case was, and I don't have any emotions towards Trump as I made it clear in my previous debate with Brenton, I don't even vote. So I don't care about Trump or Biden or whatever this stuff is, although I do have political opinions on the side. The only thing was, is that we see a clear distinction between the possible factual inaccuracies of the New York Post article, which turned out to be factual as far as we can tell now. And the factual inaccuracies of someone like Rachel Maddow, which apparently were not factual. Next up, I wanna say thanks so much for your super chat. This one comes in from Silver Harlow. Says, Jengles, you agreed that they could be, or I'm sorry, it's not for Jengles. This is for Jordan. They said, Jordan, you agreed that they could be monopoly regulated. Wouldn't opening their protocols be just that? I'm not entirely sure that I understand the question here. I'm trying to find it in the chat so that I can take a, agreed that they could be monopoly regulated. Gotcha, I can read it. So I don't fundamentally think so, because I fundamentally don't understand what opening the physical protocols would actually change about the way that these platforms behave, other than essentially making it less likely that anybody could be kicked off, period, whether or not somebody had a good or a bad reason. Now, it would all come down to implementation and maybe I'm misunderstanding here. I do know a half decent amount about technology, especially on that side of things, but I don't fundamentally understand how this works and I don't also understand how, from a business side of things, this would allow these companies to properly function in the first place because the primary issue I'm running into here is if everything behaves like email, all of a sudden, instead of having unique and distinctive platforms, like for instance, things like Reddit or Tumblr or Facebook or Twitter, we suddenly have everything that's basically the difference between Gmail and Hotmail. Yeah, companies would sell interfaces, not platforms or networks. Gotcha. I don't fundamentally know, and this is less of a political question, but more of a technical question as to how likely that is to be workable. Next up, I do wanna jump, I hate to do this, just because we do have so many questions, I do wanna try to jump to the next one. Samuel Liloham has another. He says, should we have no government interference on businesses or government interference? If we are going full non-government interference, which I might agree with, that includes letting racists be so. I think that's to jangles. Yeah, where did this notion that we're against all government regulations? Like that, we have government regulations, they're called laws. What I'm arguing that is that I think racists should not be locked up by the government. I'm just a free speech advocate like that, but I think that platforms should have the freedom to target racism on their platforms. That's it. I can clarify that, jangles. The reason why people are making this mistake is one of the arguments you've been making throughout this debate, which is that kick the can down the road argument, which is to say that when a government, when government regulates a bad behavior, it's equivalent to governments taking over the decision-making process from the corporation, and it does not actually solve the problem, but simply transfers. No, my critique on that is that you're not solving any problem whatsoever. You're just moving the problem to people with guns, and that's what I've been taking an issue with. I understand that, but jangles. I don't want the government. I'm trying to help you out here, so you can send the person's question, and not to be condescending. That's how they're condescending, so I apologize. But that argument that says regulation is simply moving from corporations to government with guns, that's an argument that can be put against any regulation. Well, I guess I could just answer the question itself and say that I want the government to regulate businesses legally. However, I don't want them to be, I want platforms to be able to tackle things beyond legality, beyond government regulations. I don't think that the government regulations should be the end all of the platform. I think they should be able to enforce TOS beyond that, and that will require some subjectivity. That does mean that ultimately, a platform is responsible for what is and is not on its, but hey, I think that's fine. I don't, and there's a lot of problems with that. We are never arguing for that being like the best thing that could possibly happen. I'm saying that the alternative, which is putting that decision in the hands of the government is worse. Gotcha, I do want to jump into the next question, even though, as I mentioned, I know you guys have always got another round in the chamber ready to go, but this next one comes in from Dear President Sunday, we appreciate your question, who said, does not some discourse silence people by invalidating the perspectives of their targets, e.g. speech that denigrates people along lines of race or sex? Well, it doesn't invalidate their speech, but that can be handled by obscenity and vulgarity, right? There's a distinction between making a critique and just an insult. And part of the cultural agreement that we have as Americans is we accept unflattering opinions and unflattering arguments in exchange for this idea that we're able to find truth through discourse. Yeah, if we muddy the waters between blasphemy or slur and disagreement on policy matters or disagreement on philosophy, we'll have basically undone a learning that we thought we had achieved in the Enlightenment. Because at that point, you might as well just nail down the discourse ahead of time. What's the allowable thought at that stage? Thanks so much. Anne, next question, layman, sorry, Mr. Question said, question for all, would the world be better off without the existence of social media? Social media and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. Yes, what's the caveat of not including modern instant messaging as social media? Yeah, okay, I like social messaging and I like sort of blogging essays, but Twitter and Facebook happen to cancer. Gotcha, Anne, thank you very much for your... Does Jangle sort of want to answer this? There's a difference between... Yeah, I think there's a lot of bad that social media does, but if it were up to me, I wouldn't eat it from the platform because it's not up to me to determine what someone finds value in their lives. So it's the difference we'd say in like, man, I think it would be great if conservatives just shut up forever versus I think that the government should say that conservatives shut up forever. There's a vast difference between those two. Gotcha. Um, it's difficult because I'm the youngest one here, I'm 21 and I essentially grew up with this around for at least most of my teenage years, if not longer, YouTube came out when I was like six years old. So this has just been something that's been a part of my reality forever. I think that a lot of psychological data and studies would definitively prove that we would, on an objective level, be a lot better off without these things and even though I was so young at the time, I do look back and wonder what would have happened if we didn't have to worry about the things that we do now, especially with social media and smartphones. So I would objectively give it a yes, but at the same time I'd give it a no because for somebody like me who hasn't been able to afford to go back to school, this has been not so much Facebook and Twitter but another social media platform, YouTube or going through Discord has given me access to people who understand politics and our thinkers and can share data and can share information back and forth and give me understanding into new perspectives. So it's really a double-edged sword here. The same social media that created Facebook and Twitter also created something like YouTube, which has fundamentally enriched my life for the better. So would we be better off? Yes, but I don't think it's all just absolutely negative across the board and I think it's about how a lot of these sites have been implemented and I think it's more about trying to fix them rather than get rid of them. Gotcha, thank you very much. And next, this question comes in from, I think I read President Sunday, Silver Harlow said, I hope these chats are going to the Shermer Debate Fund. We do have some of our own funds from Modern Day Debate invested in the Kickstarter, but do want to tell you folks, if you want to give to the Kickstarter fund, it's best to do it more directly to Kickstarter because Kickstarter take, I think it's like eight to 10%, Kickstarter has their fees on eight to 10%, but YouTube, it's 30% that YouTube takes from the Superchats and so I would highly encourage you, Kickstarter is more direct. And then Brenton Langle strikes again, here he is, it's that guy, says hate speech is inherently hostile to free speech. If someone does not deserve to live due to identity, it follows that they don't deserve to speak. I mean, no one's been able to give a very consistent definition of hate speech. Is Sarah Zhang guilty of hate speech? Neither Twitter nor the New York Times thought she was, but change the races around in that expression and very few people would say that's not hate speech. Direct threats we can deal with because there's a very formal definition. And one of the reasons why it is formal is that it's a legal definition. And once things are in the legal system, over time, we have mechanisms to make them more formal. When it comes to hate speech, no one, you ask two people what hate speech is, they'll get two different answers. Even people like Brenton who think that it's this category that needs to be built into our laws and corporate regulations. Is Sarah Zhang a hate speaker? Apparently she's not. What's the definition of assault? Definition of assault has a formal legal definition and you can look up in Black slot dictionary. What is it? You want off the top of my head? No, obviously, this is a generalized question. Is it clear? You can literally look up the definition of assault. It was a leading question and I apologize for that, but I'm saying that even the definition of assault, which is formally legalized, still has some wiggle room. They don't specify a PSI that quantifies assault. They don't specify what is the actual Newton's of force that would quantify assault. It is a little bit up to interpretation. That's why we have judges in the first place. So I, and this is just the free speech. And you think that's as vague as hate speech? I think it can be. I was saying that there's a, hey, there's a vague spectrum of vagueness here, isn't there? But if you're going to attack hate speech as being vague in its definitions, that's a, that could apply very, very easily to a lot of legal definitions. So because it's a little wiggle, so because there's an inch of wiggle room around assault, we should allow a mile of wiggle room around hate speech. That's exactly what I said. Good job. We do have to jump into the next question. So do you appreciate that? This next question comes in from Silver once again. Silver Harlow thinks, says, to the negative side. By that they mean the people taking the negation. What was the problem with requiring moderation be recorded and disputable in court instead of being invisible? What's the problem with like, if I get banned from Twitter, I can take them to court? A couple of things. I don't think I should have a legal right to be on Twitter. Like, I think I wish we would have brought this up earlier. Like this, if you cannot physically move from your location if you, unless you get on this train and that's what the monopoly is, that is far different from, if I don't have a Twitter account, that means I don't have a Twitter account. Like I get that social media companies have a very large say in our public discourse, but I also don't think that, I mean, is your life gonna be as, I mean, we kind of just agree that social media companies would be better if they were completely burned or at least our opponents did. And so like, isn't Twitter doing you a favor by banning you? I don't agree for one- If I didn't have a Zoom ban me, I couldn't do my job. Okay, if I don't agree for us, well, hey, you can make that argument which is different than what we're, the one we're making here though. I don't think you can make a cogent legal argument that I should be able to be on Twitter no matter what. Well, we, wait, we don't have to make that argument. No one's arguing that. We, I think he was only bringing that up because it was in response to the question, but... Gotcha, okay. Feel good with that, Jingles? Oh, yes. Cool, cool. Radical, we'll go to the next one then. Amazing, so. This one comes in from Silver Harlow strikes yet again. He's throwing thunder and lightning bolts tonight. He says, I think open protocol thing would allow cross posting from new services or a different UX and transferring followers to reduce network effects. Yes, I agree. Yeah, so. That's the idea. All right, here's where I'm gonna chime in on this is, this is one of those things that I'm actually of two minds on because you brought up stuff like Masted on. I'm not fundamentally opposed to these ideas. I think that if we could find a way to make social media work in this way organically, it would be fine. What I don't like is the idea of legislating around that. As a concept, I think the idea of making an open platform, making an open protocol with customizable UX for people who aren't into computer lingo, it's user experience, which would basically mean like the way that Twitter is laid out is UX and all of the stuff that actually runs Twitter is like on the backbone. Those are two completely different components and usually require different teams. If we could find a way to organically get that to work, the tech part of my brain says that's freaking cool. The part of me that is a little bit more on the political side though says, I don't like the idea of forcing Twitter and Facebook to have to do that and have to cross pollinate with one another when they're trying to create very different communities. And part of that is also part of the terms of service that they allow. Gotcha, oh good. I don't understand, Jordan, why you are okay with breaking up Facebook and Twitter, which would essentially basically virtually and all of their IP, but you're really against regulating this one aspect of their IP. I feel like a lot, well, Jordan, I'll let you answer. Fundamentally, it comes down to an issue with monopolistic power of one entity, which is using that power in a negative way versus altering ways that all of these entities get run long-term that may or may not end up handing out the way that we expect it to because once you start codifying things into laws, they get very, very tricky. Perfect example of that honestly would be the only thing that's codified, the decision that these platforms have the ability to regulate their platforms as they see fit, which is section 230, which has caused a lot of negative externalities, both that conservatives and liberals agree are bad, but for totally different reasons. It's not necessarily that I don't see the point that you're trying to make nearly as much as I'm always very cautious about saying, well, we should definitely legislate around that because that tends to just cause a lot more problems than it does fix things and not from a libertarian perspective either. It's just especially when we're dealing with speech because the way that speech is perceived as so subjective, it tends to cause a lot of problems which get very, very messy, especially in the court system. Yeah, I think a lot of the confusion that we're having is we can think something is a good idea that should happen and that smiles away from, I think the government should enforce this idea. Again, it's a world of difference between, I think racism shouldn't be a thing anymore versus I think the government should decide what is racist and outlaw it. There's a world of difference between those two and it almost seems like if we say that something would be a good thing to happen, it's, they were somehow contradicting ourselves by saying that the government shouldn't force it to happen. The government does. I do, I hate to, I hate to do this just because we do have a lot of other questions. Really quick, just me, sorry I missed your super chat from earlier, appreciate it, said love the channel, James, really do appreciate that. So I really, really appreciate that. Next up, appreciate your super chat. This one comes in from the Duke of Tumwater, says question to the negative side. Do you believe that business should be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds? I think they mean if the business owner, for example, is religious. No. Gotcha, thanks so much. It's legally protected. It's identity rather than, it's like something that is an innate identity. You can even argue that religion is an innate identity in some ways, which is far different than views. I am honestly gonna have to say that I abstain from answering this, not because I don't want to, but because it's something that even years later, after thinking about this and doing five years to debate, I still really don't have a definitive answer on just because I think it is very complex. I am very, very tempted to go with, no, I don't think you should do that, but I also understand the merit of arguments to say that you should. And despite that, I do think it's a fundamentally shitty thing to do. Gotcha, and want to say thanks so much for your question. This one comes in from the, Jicamen says, can y'all just admit you just want to say the N word on Twitter without getting kicked off? This debate would have been a lot shorter. Next. I rarely swear, so. Yeah, I can't swear. Good for you. Well, that's good. I appreciate that, and. Hey, for what it's worth, I didn't think that was your argument. Okay, I know it was. For whatever it's worth, whatever animosity we have. I think part of the reason why Carissa booked you guys is because we were fairly, fairly confident that you weren't going to be doing it for that reason. I should probably modify that. I should say I try not to swear because I've got a young child, so I'm trying to cure myself of that affliction, but I aspire to be like Andrew. That's excellent, and thank you so much. Just double checking that I've got all of the questions. We do have another one. Let's see, this one is from just me asked, do you believe governments fulfill the role they were created for, and does that role include censorship or freedom of speech? Everything should fulfill the role it's created for. I'm a big advocate for the minimally effective government, and I don't think that in a well-functioning society a government needs to determine what is true and what is false. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that's the big thing. No official truth, please. Rick. I'm gonna get that question back again. You betcha. That one was from just me who said, do you believe governments fulfill the role they were created for, and does that role include, namely the role that they were created for, does it include censorship or freedom of speech? Well, whether or not they're fulfilling their role is something that's been debated throughout human history, including people like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, so I'm not even gonna try and touch that with a 10-foot poll without a political science degree. As far as whether or not I believe it fundamentally includes censorship, I don't. And there are a good number of reasons for that, but I think part of what keeps civil discourse functional is the fact that we have the right to make these decisions and we have the right to speak to one another, even if it's something that we shouldn't say or something that we shouldn't necessarily isn't polite or something that's outright offensive. I believe that there is a place for having the right to say these things. The part that always trips me up though, is whether or not people hosting that speech have a right to take people off of that. In reference to the analogy of the House from the first question of this entire section, we're not talking about a situation where we're asking really whether or not Twitter has the right to silence anybody else. We're asking whether or not people who as one of our other questioners commented, if somebody were to go into your room, grab a megaphone and start screaming the N word, are you allowed to kick them out of your room? And I think that's really where this debate needed to be focused in order to really get at the core of the free speech issue. But we got a lot done here, but sadly that wasn't really the crux of the argument. Gotcha. And I wanna say just as a quick, because I do appreciate that there's nuances in what groups you guys identify with. For simplicity's sake, the thumbnails are all there, for example, liberal versus conservative, even though I know some of you don't identify particularly as either necessarily. Bricks says in promotional images for this debate, there was text using conservative versus liberal. Does this accurately describe their political identification? So this will give you guys a chance to explain what exactly, what strange creature you actually are if you're not the standard liberal or conservative. I don't need a label, man. Could try to force your labels on me. I would describe myself as like generally left. And maybe you know, hey, if you can identify, you go right ahead. Thank you. I'm certainly not a conservative. I am, the conservative movement is one of my main targets. And I probably will be considered on the right, but I kind of reject the label conservative explicitly. Gotcha. Yeah, so I'm also right-wing. I'm not what would be considered a mainstream conservative. I believe that traditions and culture has a lot to teach us, but there are a lot of things that actually need to be restored from the past and brought to life again and appropriately adapted to our own context. So yeah, I would call myself a Tory and a restorationist, occasionally a reactionary. Gotcha. Thank you very much. Wanna say thank you so much to our guests. Thank you all for being on today. It was a pleasure to have all four of you. All of them are linked in the description, folks. I'm gonna be right back in just a few moments with a post credits scene. So do stick around, folks, as you won't regret it as we have some epic updates we're really excited about. And so wanna say though, thank you all four of you. It's been a true pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Alrighty, as mentioned, we'll be right back, folks, with that post credits scene. So stick tight. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to be with you tonight. You guys, I've got some epic updates. I'm super encouraged for several reasons. One, that was an epic debate. We loved it. Really do appreciate those guests. Those guys are honestly a blast to have on. And so we hope you enjoyed it, too. Also, a couple of things. One is I am pumped as during this debate, the Kickstarter, I don't know if you guys noticed, because I mentioned it once, and then it went up to, I think it's at about 80% now, roughly. It's like right on the cusp of 80%. When we started this debate, we were at 70% for that Kickstarter. And so I'm just gonna show you that picture. So you can see it right over here on the far right. Oh, this way. Yeah, so you see here's our lovely poster. For the debate, you see here is Michael right here. And then just past that at about this level, if you keep going that way, you will see that meter on the far right side of your screen as it is epic, you guys. We're at roughly 80% for the Kickstarter. So I am super excited for that. You guys might be wondering, James, why a Kickstarter? I mean, you have super chats and advertisements that come in through debates. Why not just use those, James? Well, the reason is we want to basically wanna freshen things up in 2021. We wanna have new guests on. And a lot of these are gonna be big time guests. So I mean, this is just the start folks. Like Michael Shermer is big time. I'm excited for it. I think it's awesome. And so as we do that though, the honorariums are gonna be bigger oftentimes for speakers. And a lot of times it's to the point where you guys, I don't usually mention it, but I'll say it now that in the past we've had speakers on where it's like an honorarium maybe of like 500 bucks or something. But that's something that for me, I'm like, well, I'm willing to risk it because with super chats and ads, like we'll probably make up for it. And if we don't, we have super chats and ads from other debates. So it's like, it's not that big of a risk. But, and we do, sometimes we do have debates that don't bring in the same amount that they cost. And it's just the way life goes. It's not a big deal. But like I said, we have other super chats and other ads and things from debates because we do a lot of debates. So we can usually make up for that. In this case though, some of the speakers that we're going for, they have bigger honorariums because they're, you know, they're more highly desired. A lot more people are saying like, hey, we'll pay you to come here and speak on our channel or on our whatever else it is. And so, you know, it's fair. We think that a worker is worth their wages. And so we want to pay these honorariums but some of them are so big that for me it's like, ooh, it's too big for me to risk on a single debate. But you could say that many hands make an honorarium light. In other words, it's something where we can put, we can invest money like as we have in the Kickstarter. And what we do then is we basically say, well, we can, let's say three bucks to watch it live. And if enough people sign up for it, well then the debate actually happens, which is epic. And then we don't have to worry too much about if we, let's say, put in for a lot on the honorariums, then it's kind of like, whew, we're safe because we know other people are supporting it. And so we do want to say thank you so much to those of you who have already contributed. You guys, we are honestly, I think the number is at, let me look here, 1,971, I think is the exact number. And so that is huge, you guys. I am pumped. We're absolutely going to make this goal. And the reason that I keep putting up this unseemly photo, this photo of myself, you'll see there on the right, as well as Steven Steen in his notorious green and black speedo there in the middle. And then Tom Jump dressed as a pirate during the car wash is, I said, I've said it before, folks, I don't care if we have to put a car wash on in January, we are going to make this event happen. We're going to raise the funds and we're going to make this happen. And I guarantee it, folks, this is going to be an epic one. We are going to make the goal and I'm pumped for you guys. This debate right here, as you're seeing on your screen, Mike Jones and Mike Schermer on whether or not Christianity is dangerous to society. It's going to be a juicy one. It's going to be a lot of fun. And I want to let you know that Kickstarter link is in the description. You might be thinking, oh, James, but man, it's like, I don't want to pay for a debate. It's like, well, a couple of things to consider. It helps us get bigger guests on the channel, as I mentioned, and as you can see, this is the actual Kickstarter page where I'm zoomed in. It's three bucks to watch it live. I mean, it's like the price of a cup of coffee where it's like, eh, you know, even if you forgot somehow to watch it live, how could you forget? I don't know, you must be crazy. But even if you did forget, you'd be like, eh, three bucks, who cares? So, want to encourage you to sign up for this event. It's coming up on Friday the 8th, you guys. And if you just like the channel and you're like, you know, I'm not huge on this particular debate, like maybe you're not super big on these guests, namely, Mike and Mike. Well, I want to tell you this strategy that we're doing, namely using Kickstarter and that you are now seeing on the far right of your screen with that meter showing our progress. That basically, we have seven days left and this strategy is something that we are going to use for other debaters in the future. That's our plan. So, for example, if you like political debaters, we would love to do like a, let's say, in-person debate with David Pakman or maybe Sam Cedar or Dave Rubin or, you know, we do want to have those big time debates and the Kickstarter strategy, I think is the future for modern day debate in terms of how we're going to do that. So, I do want to let you know, this is kind of like, you could say, it's a, we're testing how well this strategy can work. We're very confident it's going to work. I'm determined to make it work for this next debate. It's going to happen, folks. And it's going to give us an opportunity to have things like, hey, who knows? Like I said, it might be in-person debates with maybe if we use it in the future to cover travel costs, wash, maybe destiny again with, not necessarily each other, but with different people, like David Pakman, hopefully. And these aren't, these are just pie in the sky. Like as of now, we haven't talked to the speakers yet, but these are the people that we are, these are kind of the people that we're thinking about reaching out to. But let me know in the chat, like are there people that you are like, dude, James, if you're going to do this Kickstarter strategy, you got to get Sam Harris, you got to get Jordan Peterson, you got to get Steph and Malinu, like whatever it is, I got to know guys, let me know. We do want to know that and that feedback is really helpful. Soli Deogloria, thanks for your kind words. Thanks, James, greatest platform on YouTube. That's super kind of you, I wish it were true, but thank you very much. The Shire Cryer, thanks, says, great debate, thanks. Appreciate that. 25th says, have a wonderful day and happy holidays. Thank you, 25th, you too. Appreciate that. Justme says, thank you, thank you, thank you. Appreciate that. That really does mean a lot. And then, let's see. Bricks says, James, you never need to explain yourself. Appreciate that, Bricks, that's kind of you. And then, yeah, yeah, but I'm reading the chat right now. I do appreciate you guys giving that feedback. And Stripper Liquor says, consider offering MDD branded soy candles as merch to bring your light into our homes 24-7. That, do they have, is there such a thing as soy candles? I don't know, but sounds good to me. Maybe I'll try it out. But yeah, thanks so much. Silver Harlow says, where are you getting coffee that cheap? So true. One time, I remember I spent coffee, I got a couple of coffees. One for me and for a date. This was a long time ago. And it was $9, like $9 for two cups of coffee. What the heck is going on here? But it's true. But yes, we do appreciate it. And then let's see. Timo says, let's make it happen. I appreciate your confidence and your optimism. Timo, that does mean a lot. I'm determined, folks, it's gonna happen. I am super excited for it. And then Renee Names says, why James hasn't purchased a decent Cam and microphone by now? I have no clue. That's a great observation. I'm traveling right now, so I don't have my good mic or my good camera with me. But, you know, we're gonna make it. You'll be all right. And then, see the third finger from the right says, Stefan Molyneux is amazing. That would be a juicy one. And I'm dead serious though, like I really do want to get someone else's. Elon Musk versus Thunderfoot. Colin Lorenz says, that would be a lot more fun. That could be an interesting one. And then Andrew Kroll says, Elon Musk versus Flurfer. You know what the funny thing is, I was just watching a video of Elon Musk today, and I was like, man, I was like, wonder if someday we would ever get to have Elon Musk on. Maybe someday, it could be, maybe it'll be like 10 years down the road, but maybe we'll get to have him on for a debate on whether or not his aspirations, his pioneering ventures are really possible, which I love his attitude. I'm like totally like, I love his positive, hard work oriented attitude. And so I wish him all the best in doing what he wants to do in terms of getting to Mars or wherever, making space travel for ordinary citizens possible. I do appreciate his work ethic and his emphasis on hard work. Thought Patrol says, get Destiny and Vosh again. I enjoyed washing Vosh cry. Thank you for that. I don't know if Vosh really cried. I don't remember that. But yeah, thank you guys so much for your support. And let's see. Willy Aja and Colin Lorenz said, if you can think of a good Middle East foreign policy debate, you should invite the young and brilliant Twitch streamer, Dylan Burns to debate. Could boost your Twitch followers too. That would be dank. I think I've seen Dylan Burns. I've definitely been told about him. So I would be happy to. I think I reached out to him before. I don't know if I got a response, but maybe he's busy. Nipak Edrar says, hope plans work. Seems debates are getting better. This one was nice and civil to thanks. Appreciate that friend. That means a lot. Jacob says, James is the best. I appreciate that. That's really kind of you. I wish it were true, but I'll take what I can get. Thank you for your kind words. Space says, given you claim to aspire to be a bias for a YouTube channel, why does money determine whether a question is asked? If money is speech, then lack thereof is censorship and thus bias, wink face. So I think the wink means he's like joking. Let's see. If money is speech, then lack thereof is censorship and thus bias. Oh, so you might say that we have a bias against the people who don't give money. I know you're joking, so I don't want to take this seriously. Like I don't want to seem like I'm defensive. Tonight we read, I think we read some of the non-paid questions before the super chats, which by the way, then I run the risk of pissing off the super chatters. But the Duke of Tumwater says, you should do a debate on whether or not P-O-R-N should be banned. That would be an interesting one, no doubt. Only reason I'm not saying it is because I'm trying to not get any more videos demonetized. But it starts with Saturn says, we post a debate on your channel after it's over. Yes, we can, or we will. We do plan on, within a couple of days of the debate happening, it's going to be posted on the channel. I do want to mention though, and I'm not saying this is the case with you, it starts with Saturn. But yeah, we do want the whole world to see it. We do think that thoughts and ideas and debates influence culture. And at the same time, if we don't meet our Kickstarter goal though, so if too many people are like, oh, well I'll just wait until after, I don't have to pay the three dollars then, which I understand. But the trick that is this isn't quite, it's not quite like that because if not enough people do the Kickstarter, the debate doesn't happen at all. And so then there's not a live showing and there's also not a debate that ever occurs for the public to watch afterward for free. And so I would just like to encourage you, if this channel has ever been a, if it's ever been enjoyable for you, if you ever thought, hey, I appreciate it, then please do consider giving that three dollars toward the Kickstarter. If you do pledge, like I said, price of a cup of coffee and if we have a thousand people that did it, well then that easily covers all of the, and that more than covers our goal. So Nifak Adorar says, you do non-pays, I get him, it's kind of tongue in cheek. You can always get paid either, they just get priority, you're good at that. Appreciate your kind words. Nifak Adorar, hope I said that right. And but yeah, we're pumped. I gotta let you know folks, if you're kind of like, oh man, I don't know about this, I wanna let you know, when it comes to the Kickstarter, if you don't wanna create a Kickstarter account, no problem, you can sign in through Facebook and just bypass that. And then you just sign in through Facebook each time that you enter into Kickstarter. And that's where you'll get the message from me giving you a link to watch the debate live. Namely, you just sign into Kickstarter and you check your inbox and that's including if you sign in with Facebook. And so it's pretty handy and it's like, you have to give it to Kickstarter. It's a pretty cool idea that they have. And then Silver Harlow says, I think that's what the net, I think that's why the net calls it prawn, though that goes back to the 90s. So not really, not related to monetization, but to censorship in general. Is prawn the word? I don't know. That's Silver Harlow, thanks for teaching me that. I do appreciate that. You seem like you've got a good reading on internet history. You've had a lot of experience and I appreciate you sharing that. And Aluminum Marsupial says shirmish marmy. That's interesting. Well, I would encourage you, if you hate this debate and you're like, screw you James, consider giving because it shows us that Kickstarter is sustainable and consider that the next debate we might have somebody that you like more. And so maybe you're like, dang bro, I'm not into this. It's like, well, I'd still ask you to consider to support it because it is a strategy that like I said, it's just not realistic for us to host these big time debates. If it's like, let's say, let's say we hosted, you know, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson or something. That's just a risk I could not bear at this point. Not by a long shot. And so even if you don't like these particular debaters, I encourage you to consider donating it just because it is a good thing in the sense that, well, it actually is still good because maybe we see that the Kickstarter strategy works and then we're like, hey, this works and we can try it for other debaters that you would like to see on the following time. And so we do appreciate it folks. We are pumped. This thing is going to be dank. We 100% believe in it. And so I am going to quick put that Kickstarter link in the description or I'm sorry, in the chat. And as I sign off, just want to encourage you guys to consider giving to that as we have just seven days left, you guys. It closes on Thursday, okay? So what day is it today? It's Wednesday. It's not tomorrow. It's the following Thursday. So tomorrow's the 31st and then it'll close on the seventh. And so I do want to encourage you folks. It's coming quick. Don't let it surprise you. I would encourage you to sign up as soon as possible just so you know, I'm good. Don't have to worry about it. Everything's taken care of. And that way there's no chance that you're like, oh dang, I wish I would have signed up because the deadline is a whole day and a half before the debate. So that is something to keep in mind is that you won't actually have until Friday the eighth. You'll have until Thursday the seventh at 12 p.m. central standard time. So do want to let you know that. And then I'm posting the link. If you guys can like let me know if this link, because my computer's loading so slow. Let me know if this link in the description works, you guys. And appreciate your support. Nifak Ederwar, thank you for your kind words and your likes for the debate. And appreciate that. Please do slam that like button if you enjoyed this debate. Silver Harlow says in Google and Twitch, Amazon are certainly big tech. You're right about that. Big time. Silver Harlow says, I find it interesting that the debate didn't cover YouTube and their monetization rules, which are just as arbitrary and inscrutable as Facebook and Twitter. I can see where you're coming from. I get that, Silver Harlow. That makes sense. And then they say, Silver Harlow also said, yeah, I was on the internet in 88 and my best friend made UT's website, which is one of the first 10 or so websites. Huh, that is really cool. Is UT, U-Texas? Let me know, but that's pretty interesting. MysticWolf says, Lovey James, the channel and debates you bring. Love you, the channel and the debate, debaters you bring on, James. Thank you, MysticWolf. That seriously does mean a lot. I really do appreciate it. And then, let's see, Stripper Liquor, in their own words, said they're gonna donate Monday. We really do appreciate that. That means a lot, Stripper Liquor. And that Kickstarter link is pinned in the description, so please do let me know if it works. If that link works, because I'm gonna double check it right now myself. I think it should work just as well for me as for everybody else, so yeah, yeah. Okay, it's working, so yeah. Thanks, everybody. We hope you have a great rest of your night. I'm pumped to be with you next time. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Truly, I'm pumped to try this little soundboard I have here. Let me know if you know who this fellow is. But yeah, I, oh wait, no, you couldn't hear it. Hold on, okay, now it's on, so. I'm here to date your six-year-old. Okay, so that's out of context. It's everybody's favorite debater, not really, but we do, no joke. I actually have tried to get a certain A-L-E-X Jones onto, I have reached out to say, hey, are you up for a debate? So hey, maybe someday, who knows? But do appreciate you guys, thanks so much. I am stoked, you guys, as we are. Let me check, I think we're at, let me, I have like, super pumped. Let me see your really, really quick, Shermer. I'm just pumped to see it. I'm like, we've gotta get there. We're at 79% funded. So I'm pumped, really excited. We just jumped up to another, somebody else just pledged. So really do appreciate that. Wait, what I was doing yesterday, I'm not supposed to, so I can't say anybody's name, sorry guys, for holding you guys up. You're like, James, let us out of here. But it's just fun for me to hang out with you guys and also say thank you, because I do like getting to say thank you, and I do appreciate all of your support. And so I do wanna just quick say thank you so much to the people who have given during this debate. As we jumped up 9% during this debate, that's just gigantic. Like, I'm surprised. Like, I'm like, whoa, that was gigantic. What would like, let's see, 0.9 times, that can't be right. Is that right? 0.09 times. Whoa, that means $225 came in during this debate. That was, you guys, seriously, thank you so much. Really do appreciate that. In the, I'm going to the backer report. Don't worry, I will never share your name on stream. So you don't have to worry about that. I promise I will always keep it on the DL, as some people like to say. I think that's like the new slang. Thank you, person with initials J-S, as well as the person with the initials S-J, and then J-B and J-E, as in Josh Elephant, and M and A, appreciate that so much. You guys appreciate that. And then a certain James, appreciate your support, that means a lot. And then a certain, I don't want to say it, your name starts with an L and you're a super supporter. I totally appreciate that support. And then a person who starts with an M, appreciate your support. And a person who starts with a C, appreciate it. And a person who starts with an R and their second name starts with an H. Totally appreciate your guys' support. So anyway, I will stop harassing you guys with these infomercials. So seriously, but tell me what's new. I'm seriously, I just like reading your chats and hanging out, cause I never get to hang out with you guys. Silver Harlow, let's see. Oh okay, Silver Harlow says, yes, you have Texas and Austin, have a good night and thanks for the debate. Thank you, appreciate that. And then MysticWolf says, what time is it over there? It's 11 39 p.m. Holy smokes. I didn't realize it was that late. I really should go. So yeah, we do appreciate you guys, seriously. But yeah, you guys probably recognized that quote from that soundboard. I've got to play around with that soundboard so I don't say anything too bad during the stream using it. And KCA Randy, thanks so much for being in. Totally appreciate it, man. It seriously means a lot. I just saw that, appreciate your support. It seriously means a lot. I'm pumped, man. And yeah, so anyway, but I'm pumped. Let's see, is anybody out there anymore? Let me try to reload this thing and see who's actually chilling with us still. It's like, whoa, really close up here. Wow, Lily Aja lives on the West Coast where it's 9 39. Living the dream, Lily, good for you. It's pretty late over here. Mystic Wolf says, what time is it there? Oh yeah, yeah, I already answered that, sorry. But thank you guys. Mystic Wolf says it's 7 40 there. That must be 7 40. Try to think of what it would be in Hawaii. Could that be Hawaii? Cause I would think that they wouldn't. I think Hawaii is two hours earlier. Yeah, Mystic Wolf, are you in Hawaii? Or are you like on the other side of the planet? Andrew Kroll says 20 to 1 a.m. here. John Smith, it's 12 39 where you are. Wow, Eric Nelson says it's 12 41. You guys are some crazy mofos as they say on the streets. You guys are up late, but I'm up super late. I gotta worry because I don't wanna wake up my host. That's why I've been kinda quiet tonight. I don't know if you guys have noticed that. I haven't yelled as much because I usually like to yell a lot. Just like my boy. I'm here to date your six year old. But yeah, I've healed a lot. But anyway, thanks so much. We hope you have a great rest of your night. Appreciate you guys. Love you guys, seriously. It's a lot of fun. And even if you never donate to the Kickstarter or anything at all, like in terms of the channel, I just hope you know, we really appreciate you hanging out here. So I know that's like, I've been doing these infomercials and just hammering away at the Kickstarter. But seriously, I just appreciate you hanging out here. It means a lot. It makes it fun. The more the merrier. It's always fun. For me, this is like while doing my PhD. I just don't, like I don't really get into a lot of the things that a lot of other people like to do. Like, but for me, this channel has just been a blast. Like this is like for me, like what I get to do for fun when I'm not doing the PhD stuff. So Mystic Wolf says I live in South Africa. Whoa. So that must, it must be 740 in the morning there. Good for you, Mystic Wolf. That's awesome. Manic Pandas to see you all next year. That's true. I don't think we have a debate tomorrow. Let me double check. Yeah, it's, we don't, we don't have a debate tomorrow. I'm pretty sure. We will be back Friday though, folks. So they are right. It will be next year. It will be 2021 when I see you next. So do appreciate you guys. I hope you've had a great, great day and night or morning wherever you are. So do appreciate you. And I hope you guys have a great one. I hate leaving. You guys can tell that I like, I don't know if you can tell that I like trying to drag this out as long as possible because I don't want to leave and I just enjoy it. Colin Lorenz says cheers, James. Cheers all happy new year. Appreciate it, Colin. You too. Lillia just says don't wake the queen. Andrew Cole says thumbs up to the aliens. I agree with that, Andrew. I support that. Jeremy Creason says it's been debunked. I don't know what he's talking about. But thank you for hanging out here, guys. All right, I gotta go. Have a great night. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. We will see you next time and appreciate you. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm out of control. I apologize for the.