#2255 - Mark Zuckerberg

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joe Rogan Experience (#2255) – Mark Zuckerberg

Introduction

In episode #2255 of "The Joe Rogan Experience," released on January 10, 2025, comedian and host Joe Rogan engages in an in-depth conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). Spanning over three hours, the discussion delves into Meta's content moderation policies, the challenges of managing a platform with billions of users, interactions with government entities, and broader topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and personal interests like martial arts.

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1. Evolution of Content Moderation at Meta

[00:18] - [03:12]

Mark Zuckerberg begins by outlining Meta's foundational mission: "giving people a voice" to create a more open and connected world ([00:58]). Initially, the company maintained minimal content policies, addressing only practical issues like bullying and copyright infringement. However, significant political and societal events—such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—triggered a shift toward more ideologically driven content moderation.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([02:55]): "It's really important for billions of people using your service..."

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2. Government Pressure and Content Censorship

[03:12] - [14:42]

The conversation intensifies as Zuckerberg discusses the increased government pressure to moderate content on ideological grounds. He references interactions with the Biden administration, where officials pressured Meta to remove content related to vaccine side effects, despite it being factual. Zuckerberg expresses concern over Meta becoming arbiters of truth:

Zuckerberg ([07:20]): "This is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program."

He likens the situation to a "slippery slope," fearing Meta's role could evolve into one reminiscent of dystopian narratives like "1984."

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3. Challenges of Moderating at Scale

[10:47] - [19:18]

Managing content for over 3.2 billion daily users presents monumental challenges. Zuckerberg emphasizes the reliance on automated tools and third-party fact checkers, which often introduce biases or overlook nuanced contexts. The sheer volume makes it "virtually impossible" to achieve flawless moderation.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([10:53]): "It's a 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day. That's... wild."

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4. Transition to New Moderation Policies

[19:18] - [23:28]

In response to past moderation pitfalls, Meta is implementing new policies aimed at increasing precision and reducing erroneous censorship. Zuckerberg mentions the removal of some fact-checkers in favor of community-driven notes, intending to provide context rather than outright removal of content.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([31:13]): "We're going to set them to require more confidence, which is this trade-off."

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5. Influence of Social Media vs. Traditional Media

[43:42] - [44:35]

Zuckerberg contrasts the fragmented trust in mainstream media with the pervasive influence of social media platforms. He argues that while traditional media once held narrative control, social media democratizes information dissemination but also facilitates misinformation and polarization.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([16:38]): "How do people get their information now? It's by sharing it online on social media."

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6. Reflections on Corporate Culture and Personal Interests

[52:26] - [85:34]

Shifting gears, the discussion touches on Zuckerberg's personal interests, particularly martial arts. He shares experiences with Jiu Jitsu, highlighting its intellectual and physical benefits, and discusses the importance of balancing corporate responsibilities with personal well-being.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([75:34]): "Having a thing that I can just like do with my guy friends and like, yeah, and it's just like... we just like beat each other a bit. It's good."

---

7. Future of AI, AR, and VR Technologies

[85:34] - [142:08]

The conversation delves into the future trajectory of AI, AR, and VR. Zuckerberg elaborates on Meta's advancements in neural interfaces and smart glasses, aiming for seamless integration between the digital and physical realms. He envisions a future where AR/VR technologies enhance communication, creativity, and daily interactions.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([124:51]): "The Internet is going to get overlaid on the physical world. It's not like we have the physical world and now I'm just going to go tune it out to look at my, my, like I'm going to access the whole digital universe through this like 5-inch screen."

---

8. Concerns and Philosophical Perspectives on AI

[142:08] - [171:51]

Zuckerberg shares his philosophical views on AI, emphasizing the distinction between intelligence, will, and consciousness. He advocates for open-source AI development to prevent monopolization by single entities or governments, believing that widespread access can democratize benefits and mitigate risks.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([168:22]): "If there's to be an open source model that everyone uses, we should want it to be an American model."

He also addresses fears surrounding AI sentience and job displacement, arguing that historical technological advancements have similarly sparked concerns yet ultimately led to societal evolution and increased creative opportunities.

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9. Closing Thoughts and Future Directions

[171:51] - [172:30]

As the conversation winds down, Zuckerberg reiterates Meta's commitment to free expression and combating misinformation. He underscores the importance of government support for American tech companies to maintain a competitive edge globally, especially against rivals like China.

Notable Quote:

Zuckerberg ([172:02]): "After a long journey, I'm glad to be able to take it back to the roots and I feel like we're more fortified now in position."

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Conclusion

Mark Zuckerberg's candid discussion on "The Joe Rogan Experience" provides a comprehensive look into the intricate balance Meta strives to maintain between fostering open dialogue and mitigating harmful content. The dialogue also offers insights into Zuckerberg's vision for emerging technologies and the ethical considerations surrounding them. While acknowledging past challenges and mistakes, Zuckerberg conveys a forward-thinking approach aimed at enhancing user experience and societal well-being through technology.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

1. Zuckerberg ([00:58]): "The whole point of social media is basically... giving people the ability to share what they want."
2. Zuckerberg ([02:55]): "It's not the point is to, like, judge people's opinions. It's to facilitate fact-checking..."
3. Zuckerberg ([07:20]): "This is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program."
4. Zuckerberg ([10:53]): "It's a 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day. That's... wild."
5. Zuckerberg ([31:13]): "We're going to set them to require more confidence, which is this trade-off."
6. Zuckerberg ([75:34]): "Having a thing that I can just like do with my guy friends and like, yeah, and it's just like... we just like beat each other a bit. It's good."
7. Zuckerberg ([124:51]): "The Internet is going to get overlaid on the physical world. It's not like we have the physical world and now I'm just going to go tune it out to look at my, my, like I'm going to access the whole digital universe through this like 5-inch screen."
8. Zuckerberg ([168:22]): "If there's to be an open-source model that everyone uses, we should want it to be an American model."
9. Zuckerberg ([172:02]): "After a long journey, I'm glad to be able to take it back to the roots and I feel like we're more fortified now in position."

---

This summary encapsulates the key themes and insights from the podcast episode, providing a structured overview suitable for those who haven't listened to the full conversation.

Transcript

[A]

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

[B]

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. All right, bro, what's happening? Good to see you.

[A]

You too.

[B]

What's going on?

[A]

You know, chill week?

[B]

Yeah, sorta. This recent announcement that you did about content moderation, how has that been received?

[A]

Probably depends on who you ask. But look, I mean, I've been working on this for a long time, so, I mean, you gotta do what you think is right. You know, we've been on a long journey here. Right. I mean, it's. I think at some level, you only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice. Right. I mean, the whole point of social media is basically, you know, giving people the ability to share what they want.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And, you know, it goes back to our original mission, is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

[B]

What do you think started the pathway towards increasing censorship? Because clearly we were going in that direction for the last few years. It seemed like we really found out about it when Elon bought Twitter and we got the Twitter files, and when you came on here and when you were explaining the relationship with FBI where they were trying to get you to take down certain things that were true and real and certain things, they tried to get you to limit the exposure to them. So it's these kind of conversations, like, when did all that start?

[A]

Yeah, well, well, look, I think going back to the beginning, or like I was saying, I think you start one of these if you care about. About giving people a voice. You know, I wasn't too deep on our content policies for like the first 10 years of the company. It was just kind of well known across the company that we were trying to give people the ability to share as much as possible and issues would come up, practical issues. Right. So if someone's getting bullied, for example, we deal with that or we put in place systems to fight bullying. You know, if someone is saying, hey, you know, someone's pirating copyrighted content on the service, it's like, okay, we'll build controls to make it so we'll find IP protected content. But it was really in the last 10 years that people started pushing for like ideological based censorship. And I think it was two main events that really triggered this. In 2016, there was the election of President Trump, also coincided with basically Brexit in the EU and sort of the fragmentation of the EU. And then, you know, in 2020, there was Covid. And I think that those were basically These two events where for the first time we just place. We just faced this massive, massive institutional pressure to, to basically start censoring content on ideological grounds.

[B]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when it first came up in 2016, did it come under the guise of the Russian collusion hoax?

[A]

Yeah, and this is the thing. At the time, I was really sort of ill prepared to kind of parse what was going on. Right. It's, you know, I think part of my reflection looking back on this is I kind of think in 2016, in the aftermath, I gave too much deference to a lot of folks in the media who are basically saying, okay, there's no way that this guy could have gotten elected except for misinformation. People can't actually believe this stuff. Right. It has to be that there's this kind of like massive misinformation out there. Some of it started with the, the Russia collusion stuff, but it kind of morphed into different things over time.

[B]

Well, it was. He was so ideologically polarizing. Right. Like, people didn't want to believe anybody looked at him and said, this should be our president.

[A]

Yeah. So I took this and just kind of assumed that everyone was acting in good faith and I said, okay, well, there's like, there are concerns about misinformation. We should just like when people raised other concerns in the past and we try to deal with them. Okay, yeah, people, you know, if you ask people, no one says that they want misinformation. So maybe there's something that we should do to basically try to address this. But I was really worried from the beginning about basically becoming this sort of decider of what is true in the world. Right. That's like kind of a crazy position to be in for billions of people using your service. And so we tried to put in place a, A, you know, a system that would deal with it, you know, and early on tried to basically make it so that it was really limited. We were like, all right, we're just going to have this system where there's these third party fact checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff. Right. So things that are very clear hoaxes that there's like, it's not like we're not parsing speech about whether something is slightly true or slightly false, like earth is flat, things like that. Right. So that was sort of the original intent. We put in place the system and it just sort of veered from there. I think to some degree. It's because some of the people whose job is to do fact checking. A lot of their industry is focused on political fact checking, so they're just kind of veered in that direction. We kept on trying to. To basically get it to. To be what we had originally intended, which is just, you know, it's not the point is to, like, judge people's opinions. It's to. To provide in this layer to. To. To kind of help fact check some of the stuff that seems the most extreme. But it just, you know, it was. It was just never accepted by. By people broadly. I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased. Not necessarily even so much in what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that. A lot of the time it was just what types of things they chose to even go and fact check in the first place. So I. I kind of think, like, after having gone through that whole exercise, it. I don't know, it's something out of, like, 1984, one of these books where it's just like, it really is a slippery slope. And it just got to a point where it's just, okay, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program. And I guess it was probably about a few years that I really started coming to the conclusion that we were going to need to. To change something about that. Covid was the other big one where that was also very tricky, because at the beginning, it was. It's like a legitimate public health crisis in the beginning. And it's even people who are like the most ardent First Amendment, you know, defenders. The Supreme Court has this clear precedent that's like, all right, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. There are times when, if there's an emergency, your. Your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control. So I was sympathetic to that. At the beginning of COVID it seemed like, okay, you have this virus. It seems like it's killing a lot of people. I don't know if we didn't know at the time how dangerous it was going to be. So at the beginning, it kind of seemed like, okay, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this, but when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, you know, in like, in the beginning, it was like, okay, there aren't enough masks. Masks aren't that important to. Then it's like, oh, no, you have to wear a mask. And, you know, like, everything was shifting around. I. It's become very difficult to kind of follow. And this really hit the most extreme, I'd say during it was during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program. And I'm generally like pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative. But I think that while they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly were true. Right. I mean, they basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down. And I was just like, well, we're not going to do that. Like, we're clearly not going to do that. I mean, that is kind of inexplicably true.

[B]

Who is they? Who's telling you to take down things? Yeah, it was to talk about vaccine side effects.

[A]

It was people in the Biden administration. I think it was, you know, I wasn't involved in those conversations directly, but I think it was.

[B]

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[A]

It's a 3.2 billion people use one of our services every day. That's. Yeah, it's. No, it's wild.

[B]

More than a third of the planet. That's so crazy. And it's almost half of Earth.

[A]

Well, on a monthly basis, it is probably half.

[B]

Oh. But just. I want to. I want to say that, though, for. There's a lot of, like, hypercritical people that are conspiracy theorists and think that everybody is a part of some cabal to control them. I want you to understand that whether it's YouTube or all these whatever place that you think is doing something that's awful, it's good that you speak because this is how things get changed and this is how people find out that people are upset about content moderation and censorship. But moderating at scale is insane. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. We were talking the other day about the number of videos that go up Every hour on YouTube. And it's bananas. It's bananas to try to get a human being that is reasonable, logical, logical and objective, that's going to analyze every video. It's virtually impossible. It's not possible. So you've got to use a bunch of tools. You're going to get a bunch of things wrong. And you have also people reporting things. And how much is that going to affect things? You could have mass reporting because you have bad actors. You have some corporation that decides we're going to attack this video because it's bad for us, get it taken down. There's so much going on. Just. I want to put that in people's heads before we go on. Like, understand the kind of numbers that we're talking about here now. Understand you have the. The pandemic and then you have. The administration is doing something where I think they crossed the line, where it gets really weird, where they were saying what you were saying, they were trying you to get you to take down vaccine side effects, which is just crazy.

[A]

Yeah. So I mean, like you're saying. I mean, this is. It's so complicated, this system that I could spend every minute of all of my time doing this and not actually focused on building any of the things that we're trying to do. AI Glasses. Like the future of social media, all that stuff. So when I get involved in this stuff. But in general, we have a policy team. There are people who I trust the People are kind of working on this on a day to day basis. And the interactions that, that I was just referring to, I mean, a lot of this is documented. I mean, because, you know, Jim Jordan and the House had this whole investigation and committee into, into the, the kind of government censorship around stuff like this. And we produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain. I mean, basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse. And it's like these documents are, it's all kind of out there.

[B]

Do you record any of those phone calls?

[A]

I don't know. I don't think, I don't think we. But, but I think I want to listen. I mean, there, the emails are published. It's all, it's all kind of out there and, and they're like. And basically it just got to this point where we were like, no, we're not going to, we're not going to take down things that are true. That's ridiculous. They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how 10 years from now or something. You know, you're going to see an ad that says, okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you're eligible for, you know, like, for, for this kind of payment, like this sort of like class action lawsuit type meme. And they're like, no, you have to take that down. We just said, no, we're not, we're not going to take down humor and satire. We're not going to take down things that are, that are true. And then at some point, I guess I don't flipped a bit. I mean, Biden, when he was, he gave some statement at some point. I don't know if his press conference or to some journalists where he basically was like, these guys are killing people. And, and, and I don't know. Then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating coming after our company. It was brutal. It was brutal.

[B]

Wow. Yeah. It's just a massive overstepping. Yeah, you weren't killing people. This is, this is the thing about all this. It's like they suppressed so much information about things that people should be doing. Regardless of whether or not you believe in the vaccine, regardless, put that aside. Metabolic health is of the utmost importance in your everyday life. Whether there's a pandemic or there's not. And there's a lot of things that you can do that can help you recover from illness. It prevents illnesses, it makes Your body more robust and healthy, it strengthens your immune system. And they were suppressing all that information. And that's just crazy. You can't say you're one of the good guys if you're suppressing information that would help people recover from all kinds of diseases. Not just Covid, the flu, common cold, all sorts of different things. High doses of vitamin C, D3 with K2 and magnesium. They were suppressing this stuff because they didn't want people to think that you could get away with not taking a vaccine, which is really crazy when you're talking about something that 99.07% of people survive. This is a crazy overstep, but scared the shit out of a lot of people. Red pilled, as it were. A lot of people, because they realize, like, oh, 1984 is like an instruction manual. It's like this is. It shows you how things can go that way with wrong speak and with bizarre distortion of facts. And when it comes down to it, in today's day and age, the way people get information is through your platform, through X. This is how people are getting information. They're getting information from YouTube, they're getting information from a bunch of different sources now. And you can't censor that if it's real legitimate information because it's not ideologically convenient for you.

[A]

Yeah, so I mean, that's basically the journey that I've been on. It started off very pro free speech, free expression. And then over the last 10 years there been these two big episodes. It was the Trump election and the aftermath where I feel like in retrospect, I deferred too much to the kind of critique of the media on what we should do. And since then, I think generally trust in media has fallen off a cliff. Right. So I don't think I'm alone in that journey. I think that's basically the experience that a lot of people have had is okay, the stuff that's being written about is not kind of all accurate. And even if the facts are right, it's kind of written from a slant a lot of the time, of course. And then, and then there's the government version of it, which is during COVID which is okay. Like, it's like our government is telling us that we need to censor true things. It's like, this is a disaster. And it's, you know, it's not just the U.S. right. I think a lot of people in the U.S. focus on this as an American phenomenon, but I kind of think that the reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of governments around the world. Because, I mean, 2024 was a big election year around the world and there are all these countries, India, just like a ton of countries that had, that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one. So there is some sort of a global phenomenon where the, the. Whether it was because of inflation, because of the, the economic policies to deal with. With COVID or, or just how. How the governments dealt with COVID seems to have had this effect that's global, not just the US but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in that set of incumbents and maybe in. In sort of these democratic institutions overall. So I think that what you're saying of. Yeah, how do people get their information now? It's by sharing it online on social media. I think that that's just increasingly true in my view at this point is like, all right, like, we start off focused on free expression. We kind of had this pressure tested over the last period. I feel like I just have a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be. And like, this is how it's going to be going forward. And, and so, I mean, at this point, I think, you know, I think a lot of people look at this as like a purely political thing. You know, it's because they, they kind of look at the timing and they're like, hey, well, you're doing this right after the election. It's like, okay. I try not to like, change our content rules, like right in the middle of an election either. Right. It's like, there's not like a great time to do this. It's right, you know, and you want.

[B]

To do it a year later.

[A]

Yeah, it's like there's no good time to do it, you know, at whatever time is going on, there's going to be, you know. So the good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this kind of cultural pulse as like, okay, where are people right now and how are people thinking about it? We try to have policies that reflect, you know, mainstream discourse. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I think that this is going to be pretty durable because at this point, we've just been pressure tested on this stuff for like, the last eight to 10 years with like, these huge institutions just pressuring us. And, and I feel like this is kind of the right place to be going forward.

[B]

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[A]

Yeah. I mean the tough thing with politics is that there's like, well, when you say who someone's coming after you, are you referring to kind of the government and investigations and all that? I mean, so the issue is that there's the, there's what specific thing an agency might be looking into you for and then there's like the underlying political motivation which is like, why do the people who are running this thing hate you? And I think that those can often be two very different things. So. And we had organizations that were looking into us that were like not really involved with social media. Like I like the CFPB like this financial. I don't even know what it stands for. It's the, it's the financial organization that Elizabeth Warren had set up.

[B]

Oh, great.

[A]

And, and it's basically, it's like, we're not a bank.

[B]

The debanking sex.

[A]

Yeah. No, so, so like we're not a bank, right? It's like, like what, what does meta have to do with this? But they kind of found some theory that they wanted to investigate and it's like, okay, clearly they were trying really hard, right, to like, to like find, find some theory. But it, like, I don't know, it just, it kind of like throughout the, the, the, the, the party and the government there was just sort of. I don't know if it's, I don't know how this stuff works. I mean I've never been in government. I don't know if it's like a directive or it's just like a quiet consensus that like, we don't like these guys, they're not doing what we want, we're going to punish them. But it's tough to be at the other end of that.

[B]

What was it like?

[A]

Well, it's not good. The thing that I think is actually the toughest though is it's global. Right? And really when you think about it, the US government should be defending its companies, not be the tip of the spear attacking its companies. So we talk about a lot. Okay, what is the experience of, okay, if the US Government comes after you? I think the real issue is that when the U.S. government does that to its tech industry, it's basically just open season around the rest of the world. Right. I mean the EU, I pulled these numbers. The EU has fined the tech companies more than $30 billion over the last, I think it was like 10 or 20 years. Holy shit. So when you, when you think about it, like, okay, there's, it's like, you know, $100 million here, a couple billion dollars there. But what I think really adds up to is this is sort of like a kind of EU wide policy for how they want to deal with American tech. It's almost like a tariff. And I think the US Government basically gets to decide how are they going to deal with that. Right? Because if the, if the U.S. government, if some other country was screwing with another industry that we cared about, the US Government would probably find some way to put pressure on them. But I think what happened here is actually the complete opposite. The US Government led the, the kind of attack against the companies which then just made it so like the EU is basically, and all these other places just free to just go to town on all the American companies and do whatever you want. But, I mean, look, obviously I don't want to come across as if, like, we don't have things that we need to do better. Obviously we do. And when we mess something up, we deserve to be held accountable for that. And just like everyone else, I do think that the American technology industry is a bright spot in the American economy. I think it's a strategic advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the strongest companies in the world. And I think it should be part of the US's strategy going forward to defend that. And, and it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump is I think he just wants America to win. And, and I think some of this stuff, like the other governments who are kind of pushing on this stuff, it's, you know, it's like, at least the US has the rule of law, right? So the government can come after you for something, but you still get your day in court. And the courts are pretty fair. And, you know, so we've basically done a pretty good job of defending ourselves. And when we, when we've chosen to do that, basically we have a pretty good rate of winning. It's just not like that in every other country around the world. Like, if other governments decide that they're going to go after you, you don't always get kind of a, a clear shake at, at kind of defending yourself on, on, on the rules. So I think to some degree, if the US tech industry is going to continue being really strong, I do think that the US government has a role in, in basically defending it abroad. And that's one of the things that I'm optimistic about will, will happen in this administration.

[B]

Well, I think this administration uniquely has felt the impact of not being able to have free speech, because this was the, this is the administration where Trump was famously kicked off of Twitter. That was a huge issue, like after January 6th, like, they removed the, at the time, the sitting president, it was kind of crazy to remove that person from social media because you've decided that he incited a riot. So for him, without free speech, without people, without podcasts, without social media, they probably wouldn't have had a chance because the mainstream narrative other than Fox News was so clearly against him. The majority of the television entities and print entities were against him, the majority of them. So if without social media, without podcast, they don't stand a chance. So they're uniquely aware of the importance of giving people their voice, free speech. But you do have to be careful about misinformation and you do have to be careful about just outright lies and propaganda complaints or propaganda campaigns rather. And how do you differentiate?

[A]

Well, I think that there are a couple of different things here. One is, this is something where I think X and Twitter just did it better than us on. On fact checking. We took the critique around fact checking. Sorry. Around misinformation. We put in place this fact checking program which basically empowered these third party fact checkers. They could mark stuff false and then we would downright it in the algorithm. I think what, what Twitter and X have done with community notes, I think is just a better program. Rather than having a small number of fact checkers, you get the whole community to weigh in. When people usually disagree on something, tend to agree on how they're voting on a note, that's a good sign to the community that there's actually like a broad consensus on this. And then you show it and you're showing more information, not less. Right. So you're not using the fact check as a signal to show less. You're using the community note to provide real context and show additional information. So I think that that's better for when you're talking about like nation states or people interfering. A lot of that stuff is best rooted out at the level of kind of accounts doing phony things. So you get, like, whether it's like China or Russia or Iran or like one of these countries, they'll set up these networks of fake accounts and bots and they coordinate and they post on each other's stuff to make it seem like it's authentic and kind of convince people. It's like, wow, a bunch of people must think this or something. And the way that you identify that is you build AI systems that can basically detect that those accounts are not behaving the way that a human would. And when we find that, that there's like some bot that's operating an account.

[B]

How do you differentiate? How do you figure that out?

[A]

It just, I mean, there are some things that a person just would never do. Right. So have you met Lex Friedman?

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

He might not be well, but it's your turn.

[A]

But is he going to take. Yeah, is he going to take him. Is he going to make a million actions in a minute? It's like, yeah, yeah, probably not.

[B]

Okay, so it's that.

[A]

Well, I mean, it's things that aren't. It's more subtle than That I think, like, these guys are pretty sophisticated and it's an adversarial space. So, so we find some technique and then they, they basically kind of update their, their techniques. But, but we have a team of, it's effectively like intelligence counterintelligence folks, counterterrorism folks, AI folks who are building systems to identify what are these accounts that are just not behaving the way that people would and how are they interacting. And then sometimes you, you, you trace it down and, and sometimes you get some tips from different intelligence agencies and then you can kind of piece together over time. It's like, oh, this network of people is actually some kind of fake cluster of accounts and that's against our policies. Then we just take them all off.

[B]

But how. Are you sure? Is there a 100% certainty that we're. That you are definitely getting a group of people that are bad actors, or is it just people that have unpopular opinions?

[A]

No, I don't think it's that for this, I think.

[B]

But what I'm saying is how do you determine. How do you do? At what percentage of accuracy are you determining it? Do you ever accidentally think that people that are going to get moderated are actually just real people?

[A]

Yes, I think that's, I think for the specific problem around these, like, large coordinated groups doing kind of like election interference or something, it's a large enough group. We have like a bunch of people analyzing it. It's like they study it for a while. I think we're probably pretty accurate on that. But I actually think one of the bigger issues that we have in our moderation system is this precision issue that you're talking about. And that is actually of all the things that we announced this week in terms of how we're going to update the content policies, changing the content filters to have to require higher confidence and precision is actually going to be the thing that reduces the vast majority of the censorship mistakes that we make. Right. The, you know, the, the removing the fact checkers and replacing them with community notes. I think it's a good step forward. Like a very small percent of content is fact checked in the first place. So it's. Is that going to make the hugest difference? I'm not sure. I think it'll be a positive step, though. We, like, opened up some content policies, so some stuff that was restricted before we opened up. Okay, that's good. It'll mean that some set of things that might have been censored before or not. But by far the biggest set of issues we have and you and I have talked about a bunch of issues like this over the years is like, it's just, okay, you have some classifier that's trying to find, say like drug content, right? People decide, okay, it's like the opioid epidemic is a big deal. We need to do a better job of cracking down on drugs and drug sales, right? I don't want people dealing drugs on our networks. So we build a bunch of systems that basically go out and try to automate finding people who are, who are dealing with dealing drugs. And then you basically have this question, which is how precise do you want to set the classifier? So do you want to make it so that the system needs to be 99% sure that someone is dealing drugs before taking them down? Do you want it to be 90% confident, 80% confident, and then those correspond to amounts of, I guess the statistics term would be recall, what percent of the bad stuff are you finding? So if you require 99% confidence, then maybe you only actually end up taking down 20% of the bad content. Whereas if you reduce it and you say, okay, we're only going to require 90% confidence, now maybe you can take down 60% of the bad content. But let's say you say, no, we really need to find everyone who's doing this bad thing. And it doesn't need to be as severe as dealing drugs. It could just be, I mean, it could be any kind of content of any kind of category of harmful content. You start getting to some of these classifiers might have 80, 85% precision in order to get 90% of the bad stuff down. But the problem is if you're at 90% precision, that means 1 out of 10 things that the classifier takes down is not actually problematic. And if you filter, if you kind of multiply that across the billions of people use our services every day, that is millions and millions of posts that are basically being taken down that are innocent and upon review, we're going to look at and be like, this is ridiculous that this thing got taken down. Which, I mean, I think you've had that experience and we've talked about this for, for a bunch of stuff over time. And, but it really just comes down to this question of where do you want to set the classifiers? So one of the things that we're going to do is basically set them to be, to be, require more confidence, which is this trade off. It's going to mean that we will maybe take down a smaller amount of the harmful content, but it will Also mean that we'll dramatically reduce the amount of people whose accounts were taking off for a mistake, which is just a terrible experience. Right. It's like, okay, you're going about your day, and then one day you wake up and you're like, oh, my WhatsApp account just got deactivated because it's connected to a Facebook account and the Facebook account is. Or like, I'm using on the same phone as a Facebook account where, like, we made some enforcement mistake and thought you were doing something bad that you weren't because our classifiers were set to too low of precision.

[B]

Has that happened before?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Where their WhatsApp app got canceled as well.

[A]

Yeah. Because, I mean, there are. There are a bunch of.

[B]

So if your Facebook app gets taken out, like, say if you have a Facebook and you have, like, a sock puppet account, and the sock puppet account, you post offensive memes and you're generally gross.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If that. If you get caught for that, does your WhatsApp get killed?

[A]

Not for memes, but. But go back to, like, a very severe thing. Like, let's say someone is terrorists.

[B]

Let's say the most severe.

[A]

Sure. Yeah. Let's say someone is, like, terrorist content. They're planning some attack.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So we take down their account. Right. But then let's say that person can just go. Then sign up with another account where I think, like, you know, how does.

[B]

WhatsApp get connected to that, though?

[A]

Oh, well, if it's. I mean, we run these different services, and if they're on the same phone, it's basically, you know, it's one thing that, you know, it's basically regulators or governments will come to us and say, okay, it's. You're clearly not doing enough if you kick someone off for terrorism, and then they can just, like, sign up for another account on the phone.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Okay. You're also. They also think, okay, well, we're not doing enough if we deactivate their Facebook account because they're, like, planning a terrorist attack, but we let them use all our other services. Right, right.

[B]

If you're aware. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So. So if we. If our systems think that someone is a terrorist, then you probably need to deactivate their. Their access to all the different accounts.

[B]

Yeah. They can't get on threads.

[A]

Threads, Instagram. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So that makes sense.

[A]

So it's. You can understand how you get there, but then you just get to this question around the precision and the confidence level, and then you're. You're just making all these mistakes at scale and it's just unacceptable. But I think it's a very hard calculation of, like, where do you want to be? Because on the one hand, like, I get it, why People kind of come to us and they're like, no, you need to do a better job finding more of the terrorism or the drugs and all this stuff. But over time, the technology will get better and it'll get more precise. But at any given point in time, that's the choice that we have to make, is do we want to make more mistakes erring on the side of. Of just like blowing away innocent people's accounts.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or do we want to get a higher. A somewhat higher percent of, of the bad stuff off? And I think that there's some. Just some balance that you need to strike on this.

[B]

We were having a. In the summer of 1994, four teens entered an abandoned building in Gravesend, Brooklyn. It was the last time they would be seen alive. With few clues and no witnesses, the case went cold. But for Anthony Brewer, the brother of one of the victims, the search never stopped. In 2024, he acquired evidence from the police that contained DNA samples that didn't match the teens. That discovery put his life and the life of his family in grave danger. Goosebumps the Vanishing all episodes are now available on Disney plus and Hulu on disneyplus.disney.com rated TV14 LV conversation yesterday, Mel Gibson and I about how that can get weird. Was it Theo? Might have been Theo. I think it was Theo. Where that can get weird because I think, like, if you're a person and you work at some accounting firm, but you like posting about stuff, but you don't want it to come back and reflect on your life. You want to shit post, you want to post jokes, you want to be silly, you should be able to be anonymous. I think there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think just because you state your opinion, people should be able to search where you sleep. That doesn't make any sense to me. But if you're going to allow anonymous accounts, you're definitely going to open up the door to bad actors having enormous blocks of accounts where they can use either AI or just programs where they have, like, specific answers. I'm sure you've seen that before. It's. It's come up on Twitter multiple times where they found hundreds of sock puppet accounts tweeting the exact same thing. So you. You've literally, word for word, even certain words and caps like either keep people are copy or pasting it, or there's an email campaign that's getting legitimate people to do it, or these are fake people you're going to have. If you're going to have anonymous accounts, which I think you should, because I think whistleblowers, I think the, the benefits of anonymous reporting on important things that the general public needs to know about, especially whistleblower type stuff, you have to have some ability to be anonymous. But you are all. If you're going to do that, you're also going to have the possibility that these aren't real people, that these are paid actors, these are paid people, or not people at all, or they're running programs and they're doing this to try to sway public opinion about very important issues.

[A]

Yeah, a lot of what we've seen too. I mean, there's the anonymous accounts also. Just over time, I think a lot of the kind of more interesting conversations have shifted from the public sphere to more private ones. So WhatsApp groups, private groups on Facebook, I'm sure you have this experience where maybe 10 years ago you would have posted your kind of quick takes on whatever social media you were using. Now the stuff that I post on Facebook and Instagram, it's like I put time into making sure that that's kind of good content that I want to be seen broadly. And then most of the jokes that I make are with my friends in WhatsApp in groups. So, yeah, I think that that's sort of. That's kind of where the world is more broadly now.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, I think so. For jokes, for that kind of stuff with. For comedians.

[A]

For sure.

[B]

Because also we'll say things that we don't really mean. We just say it because it's a funny thing to say.

[A]

I think everyone does for sure.

[B]

Yeah. Which is just a weird thing about taking things out of context, particularly on social media where people love to do that. But there is this problem of like, let's just say that you're a country that's involved in some sort of an international conflict and you have this ability to get out this fake narrative and just spread it widely about all sorts of things. You're accusing this other government of all sorts of things that aren't true.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it just muddies the water of reality for a lot of people.

[A]

Yeah. And that's why that side of things, the kind of governments running these broad manipulation campaigns, I mean, we're not letting off the gas on that at all. I think every, like most, most categories of bad stuff that we're policing, everyone agrees is bad. Right. No one's sitting there defending that terrorism is good. Right. Or child exploitation or drugs or IP violations or people inciting violence or. It's like most of the stuff is bad. People clearly believe that, that, you know, election interference and foreign government manipulation of content is bad. So we, we have. This is the type of stuff that the vast majority of our energy goes towards that. And we're not changing our approach on any of that. The two categories that I think have been very politicized are misinformation, because who gets to judge or what's false and what's true? You may just not like my opinion on something, and then people think it's false. But I think that that one's really tricky. And the other one is basically what people refer to as hate speech, which is, I think also comes from a good place of, you know, wanting to crack down on that, of, of wanting to promote more inclusion and belonging and people feeling. Feeling good and like having a pluralistic society that can, that can basically have all these different communities coexist except everyone. But I think the problem is, is that, you know, you just. All these things are on a spectrum, and when you go too far on them, I think on that side, we just basically got to this point where there were these things that you just couldn't say which were mainstream discourse. Right. So it's like Pete Hegseth is going to probably be defending his nomination for Secretary of Defense on the Senate floor. And I think one of the points that he's made is that he thinks that women shouldn't be able to be in certain combat roles. And until we updated our policies, that wouldn't have been a thing that you could have said on our platforms because it would call for the exclusion of a protected category of people. And so. And it's like, okay, like on its. On its face. Yeah. Calling for the exclusion of a protected category. That seems that, like, that's okay. There's like, legal protections, there's all this stuff. But okay, if it's like, okay to say on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. So I think some of the stuff I think, well intentioned, went too far, needs to just get rationalized a bit. But. But it's those two categories, misinformation and hate speech, I think, are the ones that got politicized. All the other ones, which is the vast majority of the stuff that we do, is I think people generally agree that it's. That it's good and we need to Go after it. But then you just get into this problem of the mistakes like you're talking about, okay, well, what confidence level do people want us to have in. In our enforcement? And at what point would people rather us kind of say, okay, I'm not sure that that's. That that one is causing an issue, so do you. So on balance, maybe we should just, you know, leave that person's account out. Because the pain of just nuking someone's account when you're not sure you make a mistake is, like. That's pretty real too, right?

[B]

Yeah, very, very complicated.

[A]

Yeah, it's.

[B]

It's all very nuanced and. Well, you know, you made a point earlier about the government supporting its companies, that it would be a good thing for the government to support its companies. It makes sense. It's an American company. I think the issue that we're dealing with is companies, as we're describing them have never existed before. Right. There's never been a thing like Facebook before. There's never been a thing like Twitter before. X. There's never been a thing like Instagram. These are new things in terms of the impact that it has on society, on opinions, on conversations, on distribution of information. There's never been a thing like this that the government didn't control. So it makes sense from their perspective, continuing the patterns of behavior that they've always exhibited, which is to have control over the media. I mean, there has been CIA operatives that have been in major newspapers forever. There's always been that. There's always been this sort of input that the government had in mainstream media narratives. They are in a position now where they're losing that. They've essentially lost it. And especially with this last. The push during COVID deteriorated, as you were saying before, the opinion and the respect that people have for the facts that are coming from mainstream journalism in a way that I've never seen before in my life, where an enormous percentage of the population does not trust mainstream media anymore. So. Well, what do they trust? They trust social media. Well, who's running that? Well, a bunch of people figured it out and invented it. Well, no, that, like, we got to crack down on that. Like, we've got to get our hands on this. Which is what we saw during COVID which we saw during the Biden administration's attempt to remove the Hunter Biden laptop story from Twitter and from all these different things that we saw happen. The way they contacted you guys, what they're trying to do with getting you to remove real information about vaccine side effects. Like that. This is like this new attempt to crack down on this new thing, which is a distribution outlet that's far more successful than anything they've ever controlled before. And they have no control of it. Right. They. They had cbs, they had NBC, they had. When they had the New York Times and all these Washington Post. When they were in control of narratives in that way, it was so much easier. There. There wasn't some sort of pirate radio voice that came on and said, hey, guys, like, here's the, the latest studies that shows this is not true. Here's why they're lying about that, here's why they're lying about this. And now that's what you get all day long on X. That's all day long is like dissolving illusions. And that's a completely new thing that probably led to Trump getting elected.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, the causality there is tricky, but because there's a lot of things.

[B]

Yeah, there's a lot of.

[A]

I mean, it's.

[B]

Without it, he probably doesn't get elected.

[A]

It's. Yeah, it's tough to know. I mean, I do come back to this point that there were. Every major incumbent lost their elections around.

[B]

The world, but I think that's also.

[A]

But it might, it might, it might, it might be. It might be because of that, revealing how, how kind of incorrect and dishonest I think some of these governments were.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So I think that that's, that's quite possible. And I mean, I do think that there is this cycle that goes on where, you know, within a society, it's not just the government that has power. There's like, certain people who are in these, like, culturally elite positions and, you know, journalists, TV news anchors, like, who are the people who. People broadly trust. Right. They're not all in government. They're like a lot of. A lot of people in other positions. It's like, who are the people that basically people look to? And I think that's basically, it needs to shift for the Internet age. And I think a lot of the people who people looked to before, they're kind of realizing, hey, they weren't super honest about a lot of these issues that we face. And I think that that's partially why, you know, social media isn't a monolithic thing. It's not that people trust Facebook or X, they trust the creators and the voices that, that they feel like are being authentic and giving them valuable information on there. So there's, I think, going to be just this whole new class of creators who basically become the new kind of cultural elites that people look at and are like, okay, these are the people who give it to me straight. And I think that that's a thing that is. Maybe it's possible because of social media. I think it's also just the Internet more broadly. I mean, I think podcasting is obviously a huge and important part of that too. I mean, I don't know to what extent you feel like you kind of got to be large, like because of social media, or just it's. Or just the podcasting platforms that you used. But I think that this is like a very big sea change in terms of, like, who are the voices that matter? And, you know, what we do is we try to build a platform that gives people a voice. But I think that there's this wholesale generational shift in who are the people who are being listened to. And I think that that's like a very fascinating thing that is going on because I think that that's like, what is what's going on here. It's not just the government and people saying, hey, we want like a very big change here. I think it's just like a wholesale shift in saying, we just want different people who we actually trust. Right. Who are actually going to like, tell us the truth and like, and not give us like, the bullshit opinions that you're supposed to say. But, like, the type of stuff that I would actually like when I'm sitting with my. In my living room with my friends, like, the stuff that we know is true. Like, who are the people who kind of have the courage to actually just say that stuff? I don't know. I think that whole, like, cultural elite class needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust.

[B]

Yeah. The problem is these people that are starting these jobs, they're coming out of universities. In the universities, they're indoctrinated into these ideas as well. It's very difficult to be a person who stands outside of that and takes unpopular positions. You get socially ostracized, and people are very. They're very hesitant to do that, and they would rather just keep their mouth shut and talk about it in quiet conversation. And that's what we experience, which is another. Another argument for anonymous accounts. I think you should have anonymous accounts. I think you should be able, like, if there's something like Covid mandates or some things that you're dealing with and you don't want to get fired because of it, you should be able to talk about it and you should be able to post facts and information and what you've learned and, you know, anecdotal experiences of people in your family that had vaccine side effects and not worry about losing your job, which people were worried about, which is so crazy. And, you know, and you're seeing a lot of the people that used to be in mainstream media got fired and now they're trying to do the sort of podcast thing, but they're trying to do it like a mainstream media person. So they're like gaslighting during podcasts and people like, hey, fuck face. Like this. You can't do that here. It doesn't work.

[A]

Yeah, well, it's a new medium. I mean, I'm sure you know the history on this. It's like when people transition from radio to tv. The initial TV anchors were the same radio people, but just like being filmed while speaking on the radio. But it turned out it actually was a completely different type of person that you need because on your radio is just like your voice and your cadence and all that. It's like, you know, the whole phrase. It's like, you've got a good radio voice, right? It's like, okay, on TV you need to be telegenic, right? You need to kind of has. Have charisma in that medium. It's like a completely different thing. And I think that that's going to be true for the Internet too. It's, you know, it's not as cut or. I think part of it is the format, right? The fact that you do these like two, three hour episodes. I mean, I hated doing TV because, you know, I basically got started. I started Facebook when I was 19 and I was good at some things, very bad at others. I was good at coding and like, real bad at kind of like talking to people and explaining what I was doing. And I just like had these experiences early on where I'd go on TV and like, it wouldn't go well and they'd like cut to. They'd cut it to some, down to some random sound bite and I'd like, look stupid. And then like. And then basically like, I'd get super nervous about, about like going on TV because I knew that they were just gonna cut it in some way, that I was gonna look like a fucking idiot. And like. And so I'm just like, this sucks, right? So. So I just like. This is kind of a funny thing about like, it's like, in some ways it's like, okay. At the same time I was, you know, gaining confidence, being able to like, build more and more complicated products. And it's like even as an early 20s person, I was like, I could do this. And then on the kind of TV and comms public side, I was like, this is a disaster. Every time I go out it's worse and worse and worse and it just gets up. But, um, but I mean it's, it's one of the reasons why I think on the Internet, like there's no reason to cut it to a four minute sound bite conversation. It's like, I think part of what, what makes it authentic is like we can just, I mean these are complex issues. We can unpack it for hours and probably still have hours more stuff to talk about. It just, it's. I don't know, I think it's just more real.

[B]

Yeah, it's definitely that. And the other thing about television that's always going to hold it back is the fact that every conversation gets interrupted every X amount of minutes because you have to cut to a commercial. So you, you really can't get into depth. Even Bill Maher show is only an hour. You know, you have all these people talking over each other, then you sit down with one person for a short amount of time. It's just not enough time for important subjects. It's also a lot of them, for whatever reason want to do in front of an audience, which is the worst way to get people to talk. Like when you imagine these disasters that you had if there was like 5,000 people staring at you in a TV crowd as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's that added element which is so not normal and not conducive to having a conversation where you're talking about nuanced things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where you have to like think. You have to be able to pause and not concern yourself being entertaining for these fucking people just sitting there staring at you.

[A]

Yeah. And also like when you're having a conversation, it like, I don't know, it's like when you start talking about something, your kind of subconscious kicks in. You start thinking, thinking about the, the topic. So it's like you might not actually have the thing that you want to say until like five minutes later.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I mean, it's like when we started this conversation, I think like the first few minutes were just kind of slow. It's like warming up. Like I'm like, okay, kind of like downloading into my memory. Like how, how am I gonna, like, you know, it's like, how am I gonna, you know, just explain these different things? But it's. Yeah. No, I just think that that that's sort of how People work well.

[B]

It's also like, it's. Conversations are like a dance. You know, one person can't be dancing at another speed and the other person's going slow. Like, you kind of have to find the rhythm that you're gonna talk with, and then you have to actually be interested in what you're talking about. That's another thing that they are at a huge disadvantage of in mainstream media is like, they're just doing that because that's their job. You know, they probably don't even know a lot about climate change. They probably don't really understand too much about what space SpaceX is trying to accomplish, but they're just reporting on it.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of the people I've met there, I think are good people. It's just a tough format.

[B]

It's a terrible format. Yeah. And the problem is they get locked into that format and no one trusts them and then they leave and they go, yeah, but you were just lying to us about this, that and the other thing. And now I'm supposed to believe you're one of the good guys, you're one of the straight shooters now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, getting back to the original point, this is why I think, you know, it makes sense to me that the government didn't want you to succeed and to have the sort of unchecked power that they perceived social media to have. And I think one of the benefits that we have now of the Trump administration is that they have clearly felt the repercussions of a limited amount of free speech, of free speech limitations, censorship, government overreach. If anybody saw it. Look, there's. I don't know what the actual impact of the Hunter Biden laptop story would have been, I don't know. But there's many people that think it probably amounted to millions of votes overall in the country of people that were on the fence, the people that weren't sure who they're going to vote for if they found out the Hunter Biden laptop was real. They're like, oh, this is fucking. The family's fucking crazy. And they would have voted for Trump. That's possibly real. And if that's possibly real, that could be defined as election interference. And all that stuff scares the shit out of me. That kind of stuff scares the shit out of me when the government gets involved in what could be termed election interference, but through some weird loophole, it's legal. Whereas some.

[A]

I don't think that the pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal. I mean, it's like that's. I mean, there's all this stuff about what, like, people talk about the First Amendment and, okay, these. These tech platforms should. Should offer free speech like the First Amendment. It's. That, I think, is a philosophical principle. The First Amendment doesn't apply to companies and what, in our content moderation. It's more of an American ethos about how we think that. That, you know, best dialogue is carried out. But the First Amendment does apply to the government. That's like the whole point. Right, is the government is not allowed to censor this stuff. So at some level, I do think that, you know, having people in the administration calling up the guys on our team and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is, like, it's pretty bad.

[B]

It sounds illegal. I pretty love to hear it. I wish somebody recorded those conversations.

[A]

Well, I mean, again, it's great to listen to somebody.

[B]

Could animate them, maybe polytunes. The.

[A]

A lot of the material is public. I mean, it's. I mean, Jim Jordan led this whole investigation in Congress. I mean, it was basically, I think about this as like, you know, what Elon did on the Twitter files when he took over that company. I think Jim Jordan basically did that for the rest of the industry with the congressional investigation that he did. And we just turned over, like, all of the documents and everything that we had to them, and they basically put together this report.

[B]

And the people that actually did call for censorship. What was the response to all this?

[A]

To what? To the. To the investigation?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I don't know. I don't know.

[B]

Did. Was anybody held accountable? Was there any. I mean, any repercussions?

[A]

I mean, they lost the election.

[B]

Yes. So that's it. That's it.

[A]

Well, in a democracy, I mean, that's kind of. Right.

[B]

Right. But if what they did was illegal, do you not think that some steps should be put in place to make sure that people are punished for that and that that never happens again? It seems that that has a massive impact on the way our country goes. If that's election interference, and I think it is, that has a massive impact on the direction of our country.

[A]

Yeah, well, the COVID thing, I don't think was election interference as much as it was just like government meddling where it shouldn't have, but. Yeah, no, I mean, it's.

[B]

No, I'm talking about the Hunter Biden.

[A]

It's hard for me to say, you know, like, what specific Retribution or justice should happen to anyone who is involved in these things. But I think your point about let's make sure this doesn't happen again.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is. Is the one that I'm more focused on. Right. Because it's the thing that I reflect on, on my journey on all this, which is like, okay, yeah, so we didn't take down the stuff that was true, but we did generally defer to the government on some of these policies that, in retrospect, I probably wouldn't, knowing what I know now. And. And I just think that that's. That's sort of the journey that we've been on is like, okay, we start the thing focused on free expression, go through some, like, pretty crazy times in the world, get it pressure tested, see where we basically ended up doing stuff that led to a slippery slope that we weren't happy with the conclusion and, like, try to reset. And that's sort of the moment that we're at now is. Is trying to just rationalize a bunch of. A bunch of the policies. And. And look, I mean, obviously crazy things can happen in the future that might unearth something that I haven't, you know, some. Some kind of angle on this that I haven't thought enough about yet. So I don't know. I'm sure I'm not done making mistakes in the world, but I think at this point, we have a much more thorough understanding of what the space is, and I think our kind of values and principles on this are likely going to be much more durable going forward. And I think that that's probably a good thing for the Internet.

[B]

I think it's a great thing for the Internet. I was very happy with your announcement. I'm very happy that you took those steps. I'm very happy you brought Dana White aboard.

[A]

Oh, he's awesome. Been talking to him for a while about that. I mean, he's like, talk about, like, an amazing entrepreneur, right? It's like, I just want, like, because I control our company, I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me, right? It's like a normal corporate environment. It's like, basically the CEO just tries to, like, you know, they're just trying to convince the board to, like, let them have their job and pay them more. It's like, all right, the board doesn't pay me except for security. And. And I'm not worried about losing my job because I control the majority of the voting in the company. So I actually get to use our board to, like, have the smartest People who I can get to have around me help work on these problems. So it's like, all right, who are the people I want? Like, I just want, like, the best entrepreneurs and people who've created different things. And, like, I mean, Dana's like this guy who. I mean, he basically took the sport from being this, like. I think it was viewed as like, this pretty marginal thing when he got started. Right. I mean, John McCain was trying to outlaw it and. Yeah. And, you know, now it's like, I think it and F1 are the two fastest growing sports in the world. It's got hundreds of millions of people viewing it. It's like, I mean, what Dana's done with the UFC is like one of the most legendary business stories, and. And the brand is beloved. And I think he's just so. He's like a world class entrepreneur, and he's just like a. He's got a strong backbone. And I think part of what the conversation that I had with him around joining our board was, okay, like, we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company, and, like, we need some, like, strong people who are going to basically, you know, help. Help advise us on how to handle some of these situations. And. And so, yeah, that's. But, yeah, I mean, this is. Running this company is not for the faint of heart. I mean, you definitely. There's definitely a lot of pressure from. From, like, all these different governments. And. And then. Then it's like, okay, I could spend all my time doing that, but I'm not even a politician. Like, I want to. I just want to spend my time building things. Right? So. So it's. So, yeah, I think Dana's going to be great. He's the best, great entrepreneur.

[B]

I agree with everything you said about him. Without him, none of the UFC would have ever taken place the way it did. I mean, you needed the Fertitta brothers. They had to come in with all the money and the vision. And it's really funny because Eddie Bravo and I, you know, we've been fans for so long. Eddie Bravo and I went to a live event in the 90s. I was working for the UFC as a backstage interviewer, and he went there with Ricky Rocket. You know Ricky Rocket from Poison? No, He's a fucking black belt under the Machados. He's legit. Super legit. Really nice guy, too. Anyway, so Ricky Rocket and him were at the UFC and we were talking about it in the 90s. We're like, you know what the sport Needs because we were in love with it. But we were martial artists. We were like, the sport needs some billionaires who just throw a ton of money on it and just get it huge. And then the Ferdina brothers come along. Billionaires with a ton of money who are huge fans of the sport, just love the sport. You know, we're hiring people like Frank Shamrock to come in and train them and work out. And we're taking Jiu jitsu with John Lewis. And they were really getting into it. And so then they buy the UFC for like $2 million, which is probably the greatest purchase ever, except they were 40 plus million dollars in the hole when they financed the Ultimate Fighter. And then that was 2005. And then this one fight takes place with Stefan Botter and Forrest Griffin on television. It's so wild and so crazy that millions of people start tuning in. The sport's born. Then you have Chuck Liddell, who is the champion at the time. Who is the most fan friendly champion you could ever have. Just a fucking berserker with just psychopath with a fucking head tattoo and a mohawk crushing people. In his prime, he was the perfect poster guy for the UFC because he was just smashing people and then throwing his arms back in a cage. It was nuts. I'm sure you've seen a lot of Chuck Liddell fight. Yeah, yeah, it is. It was just the whole thing took off. But without Dana, it would have never taken place. The guy's tireless, that man. I could call him up, I'll call him up at like 2:00 in the morning sometime, like there's some fight going on. And I'll say, hey, this is going on next weekend, I'm so pumped. And we'll, we'll talk for hours. For hours. He just wants to talk about fights. He's like so locked in like all the time, you know, and he's, he's just like so driven. And now that he's healthy, like, oh my God, he's got what Gary Breck has done for him is incredible. He lost all this weight, got super thin, real fit, super healthy. He doesn't around with alcohol anymore. He just eats healthy food. He looks great now. He's getting even more energy. Yeah, it's incredible.

[A]

Well, we're lucky to have some of it.

[B]

Yeah, we are. And you know what? We're also lucky that you got into Jiu jitsu because I think, I think that had an effect on you. You look different when you walked in here today. You look thicker. You look like a Different guy. You do. You look like a Jiu Jitsu guy now. It's funny, I saw your neck. I'm like, his neck's bigger. Your neck is bigger.

[A]

Good.

[B]

Are you using iron neck, or is it just.

[A]

I do like. I do like iron neck, but. But it's. But when I started training, not just Jiu Jitsu, but striking, I was like, all right, I want to find a way to do this where I don't, like, like, hurt my brain. Right. It's like, all right, like, I need to. I'm gonna be running this company for a while. I would like to, you know, like, stay. Stay healthy and not take too much damage. And so I think the number one thing you need to do is, well, in addition to having good partners is have a strong neck.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So, yeah, so, yeah, no, I take that. I take that pretty serious.

[B]

It's very important. Strong neck is great for Jiu Jitsu as well, because it's a weapon. Like in certain positions, like head, you need a neck. Yeah, it's a weapon.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, and also for defending things and just for overall stability, but for striking, it's very like Mike Tyson in his prime. Yeah.

[A]

It's crazy. His neck is, like, bigger than his face.

[B]

A photo of him in a suit, it's the craziest photo, is like, his neck starts at the top of his ears and it just goes straight down. When he was the champ, when he was a team.

[A]

Amazing.

[B]

Yeah, the neck's very important, but it's also like, you know, you're doing it very smart. You're. You're bringing in Dave Camarillo is awesome. Amazing.

[A]

He's awesome.

[B]

You're bringing in all these, like, super talented people to train with you, too, which is really important. And just learn systematically, probably the way you've learned all these other things, which is really so fascinating to me about MMA and Jiu Jitsu in particular, is the general public has this knuckle dragging, meathead sort of perspective. And then I'm like, let me introduce you to Mikey Musumichi.

[A]

Yeah. Well, there's. There's a range. There's a range from Mikey to. Right.

[B]

But Mikey is one of the elite of the elite, and he's about as far from that.

[A]

Mikey, he's a very good guy.

[B]

He's super good guy. He's super kind and. And unbelievably brilliant and eccentric and just. And just so dedicated to Jiu Jitsu.

[A]

I'm glad that he's over at the UFC now.

[B]

Yes, I am, too. Yeah, well, I'm glad a guy like that exists. I like, because I like, I'm like, okay, I know you think that. Let me show you this guy. And then I'm like, let me show you what it really is. Let me introduce you to these people because they're the nicest people I know. There's no better stress reliever in the world than jiu jitsu or martial arts. There's no better you leave there. You're the kindest person in the world. You just like heal all of your aggressions out of your system. And it's a phenomenal stress reliever because regardless of what you're going through day to day with Facebook and Meta and all the different projects you have going on, it's not as hard as someone trying to choke you unconscious.

[A]

It's not as acute. I think it's like sometimes you have someone trying to choke you unconscious slowly over a multi month, multi year period. And that's business. But no, I think that sometimes in business, the cycle time is so long that it is very refreshing to just have a feedback loop that's like, oh, I like had my hand down so I got punched in the face. It's like, that's like, that's. But yeah, no, I, it's, it's really important to me for balance. I mean, I basically try to train every morning. I'm either doing general fitness or kind of MMA do sometimes grappling, sometimes striking, or sometimes both. But it got to the point where I'm, I tore my ACL training. I was probably at that point, I didn't have, I wasn't integrated between my weight training and my fighting training. So I think I was probably overdoing it. So now, now we basically, I'm, I'm just trying to do this in a cohesive way, which I think will be more sustainable. But when I, when I tore my acl, first of all, everyone at the company was like, ah, fuck, we're gonna get so many more emails now. It's like that he can't, that he can't do this. And then, and then I sat down with Priscilla and I expected her to be like, you're an idiot. Like, what do you expect? You're like, I was in my late 30s at the time, but she was like, no, she's like, when you heal your acl, you better go back to fighting. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, you are so much better to be around. Now that you're doing this, you have to Fight. And so.

[B]

That's hilarious.

[A]

Yeah, so.

[B]

And is that funny that like, that's completely contrary to the way most people, if they're outside of it, would perceive it.

[A]

I mean, it definitely takes the edge off things, but it's like after like a couple of hours of doing that in the morning, it's just like. Yeah, it's like nothing else that day is going to stress you out that much. Right. You can just, you can just deal with it.

[B]

Voluntary adversity.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's good. It's good. It's also good, I think, to be a little bit tired. It's like, it just, it's. I love that feeling of just like you're not like exhausted and sometimes you get a session and you just go so hard and I need to like just go to sleep or something.

[B]

But yeah, it's also good to know that you can kill people. That's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to know if something goes sideways.

[A]

I guess there's a, there's a certain confidence on that.

[B]

Yeah, it's an important skill.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you could give it in a pill, if you could sell it in a pill, everybody would buy it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

100. No one would say, I'd like to be the vulnerable guy walking around with a bunch of fucking assassins. Yeah, no one would say that. They would say, how much is the pill? Oh, it's $2. Oh, give me one of those pills. You take the pill. Everybody would take that pill. Well, it exists. It's just not a pill. It's a long journey of pain and discipline and trial and error and learning and being open minded and being objective and understanding position, asking questions and having good training partners and absorbing information and really being diligent with your skill acquisition work, which is one of the most important and neglected parts of Jiu Jitsu. Because training is so fun. Everybody just wants to roll, you know, where really the best way to do it is actually to drill. And it's the most boring. But really you should drill constantly. Just jam those skills into your neurons where your brain knows exactly what to do in every position. And it's such an intellectual pursuit. And most people don't think of it that way because you have to manage your mind while you're moving your body. You're managing anxieties, you're trying to figure out when to hit the gas and when to control position and recover. There's so much going on in training that applies to virtually any stressful thing that you'll ever experience in your life, and along with it, you get this skill where you can kill people. You shouldn't kill people. Let me be clear. I'm not saying it's a good thing to kill people. I'm definitely not. But I'm saying it's a good thing to. If someone's trying to kill you and they absolutely can't because you could kill them easy, that's way better. It's a way better situation to be in.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's. It's great. I mean, it's done. It's open. A lot of how I think about stuff. I mean, it's. It is just interesting when your point about, like, having a pill that allows you to just kind of know that you have this kind of physical ability. It's.

[B]

It's a superpower.

[A]

It's. It's interesting because I. I do think a lot of our society has become very, like. I don't know. I don't even know the right word for it, but it's like. It kind of like neutered or, like, emasculated. And it's. There's like a whole energy in this that I think it's. It is very healthy in the right balance. I mean, I think part of the reason. One of the things that I enjoy about it is I feel like I can just, like, express myself. Right? It's like, when you're running a company, people typically don't want to see you being, like, this ruthless person who's like, just like, I'm just gonna, like, crush the people I'm competing with. But, like. But when you're fighting, it's like, no, no, that's like. So I think in some way you're rewarded. I think in some ways, when people see me competing in the sport, they're like, oh, no, that's the real mark. It's like. Because it's. It goes back to the. All the media training stuff we were talking about. When I'm going and giving my sound bites for two minutes, it's like, no, it's like, fuck that guy. It's like, that's the real one. It's. But.

[B]

Well, you definitely got a lot of respect in the martial arts community. People got super excited that you were so involved in it and so interested in it. Because anytime someone like yourself or like Tom Hardy or anyone, like, wow, that guy's into it. Like, wow. Anytime something like that happens, there's like some new person who's a prominent person, a very smart person, it's really interested in it. We all get very excited because we're like, oh, boy.

[A]

It's a very welcoming community.

[B]

Super.

[A]

I think there's a lot of. A lot of sports are like, nah, we don't want.

[B]

It's not a jock community. No, super kind, like Jiu Jitsu people in particular. There's some of the nicest people. It's my friends forever, you know, they'll be my friends for life.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a. It's a good crew. I mean, when I got hurt, I. I really kind of missed the guys I trained with. And it's like, Davis put together this. This group. It's basically these, like, all these young pro fighters who are kind of, like, up and coming, like, kind of early 20s, but they've only been doing it for a few years. So, like, I've been doing it for. For a few years. That way, it's like, we kind of are. Have a more similar level of skill, and they're all better than me, but, like. But in terms of. I'm like. I was in my late 30s, and they're in their early 20s. It was sort of like, they're kind of coming into becoming men. I'm like, sort of at the end of my fiscal week, but it's like, it's. It's a really good crew. Yeah, no, it's a good crew. And the competing thing is fun. I can't wait to get back to that, too. I mean, it's like, basically. I mean, I was also doing it with. So it's basically some. A group of pro fighters, and then a handful of meta executives would do it, and then basically we would just kind of, like, fight each other, and it would be fun. And then one of them decided one day that they're like, you know, I think I'm getting pretty good at Jiu Jitsu. I'm gonna go to a tournament. And I was like, all right, good luck with that, bro. Like, I'm. I'm not going to. I'm not gonna go to tournament. It's like, I don't want to go to a tournament. Getting. Get embarrassed. It's like, like. But then the guy goes to the tournament. He, like, does pretty well. I'm like, that guy. It's like. It's like, okay. It's like we go all the time, and, like. And if he's doing well in a tournament, that's like, all right, fine. Sign me up. Right? It's like, so. I mean, it's just, like, super competitive. So this was like, when was this it must have been. I don't know. I guess I rolled into this tournament, and I registered under my first and middle name, so people didn't know who I was. And I had, like, sunglasses and a hat, and I wore a Covid mask and, like. And I. And basically was like. It wasn't until that I called our names to step onto the mat that I was like, all right, take all this stuff off. And the guy was like, uh, what?

[B]

That's kind of a cheat code. I mean, kind of freak out.

[A]

Yeah. I think he was trying to figure out what was going on afterwards. His coach was like. He was like, I think that was Mark Zuckerberg who just submitted me. And the coach is like, no, no, no, no way. Then it's like, no, I think that was. He's like, what? You're fighting Mark Zuckerberg? He's like, get back in there. It's like, go fight him. He's like, no, he just submitted me.

[B]

That's very funny.

[A]

Yeah, man.

[B]

Well, Tom Hardy's doing that too, right? He's done multiple tournaments now.

[A]

Yeah, no, I think. I think, yeah. Yeah. I can't wait to get back to competing. It's been sort of a slow journey on the rehab. It's sort of like learning twice, but we're getting there.

[B]

How far out are you?

[A]

Oh, no, I'm done with the rehab now. Now I'm just ramping.

[B]

How far out are you from surgery?

[A]

12, 13 months.

[B]

So you did the patella tenon graft, right?

[A]

I did, yeah. Yeah.

[B]

That's a rough one to come back from. I did the patella tendon graph on my left knee, and it took me about a year. I did the ACL from a cadaver. It's actually. They use an Achilles tendon from a cadaver on my right knee, and I was back to jiu jitsu in six months. Like, full confidence in six months. I was interesting. 100. Recovered, kicking the bag, everything.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. How old were you when you got those?

[B]

The first one, I was 26. The second one, I was 31, 32. Somewhere around there.

[A]

Oh, so young.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because my doctor is basically like, look, you're, like, at the boundary. You could go either way. But if you want to compete again, then I'd recommend doing the patella.

[B]

Yeah, I know they say that. I don't agree with that. I mean, just from my own personal experience, my doctor told me that the ACL from a cadaver, when they use the patella tendon graft, is 150% stronger than your natural ACL, he said, you'll be back to. Because I didn't have any meniscus damage in my right knee. He's like, you'll be back to 100%. I have a lot of meniscus damage in my left knee, unfortunately, which is also part of the problem with the recovery of that one. But the patella tendon graft, the bone on the kneecap was painful forever in terms of, like, getting on my knees, like, training for my knees, doing. Doing certain positions and even just stretching, like, you know, putting my knees on the ground, sitting on my heels, and then laying back. It was painful. It took forever to break all that scar tissue up. And now it's fine. It's fine now? Yeah. I mean, it's a long time ago.

[A]

Yeah. I can kind of do everything that I want at this point. It's still, like, a little sore, but I don't know. I think that it's supposed to be a couple of years until you, like, feel like it's fully. I think it takes some time for the nerves to grow into it and all that.

[B]

Did you incorporate peptides in your recovery?

[A]

I didn't.

[B]

Do you hate healing?

[A]

Do I hate healing?

[B]

No, I didn't use peptides.

[A]

I don't know. I just took my doctor's advice on.

[B]

It, but don't do that anymore.

[A]

I mean, next time.

[B]

There's other people to talk to. Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I mean, it's. It's gone pretty well. It's gone.

[B]

I'm sure it goes pretty well, but it would go quicker with tights. 100 for sure.

[A]

But it's been this interesting opportunity to, like. Like, I really don't want that to happen again. So I. I feel like I'm so much more focused on technique. Like, the first time that I learned all this stuff, I was like. I was probably, like, a little too brutish about it and. And just, like, muscling through stuff. And now, I don't know. Now I feel like I'm, like, really learning how to do this stuff correctly, and I can do it way more effortlessly. So it's.

[B]

It's the goal. How did it pop? How did it pop?

[A]

I was. I was like the end of a session, and so we're two hours into training, and I was doing, like, a few rounds, and. And I basically, I threw a leg kick, and the other guy went to check it, and I, like, leaned back to try to get around the check and just put too much torque on my knee. So it's the planted leg, but Mine.

[B]

Was planted like, too.

[A]

Yeah, but it's. I don't know. Dave was like, you know, before that round, Dave was like, you're done. I'm like, no, one more round. You know.

[B]

So you're too tired as well?

[A]

Yeah. And I basically. And I hadn't, you know, I. I basically had also just done a really hard kind of like leg workout the day before, but I don't think the fight guys didn't know that, so I, I really just pushed it too hard.

[B]

Are you aware of knees over toes guy?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Have you done his stuff?

[A]

I've looked at it a bunch. I mean, the rehab thing I took really seriously and I thought that was pretty interesting too. It's. I don't want to, like, have to do a lot of rehabs like this one, but to do one of them I actually thought was a pretty interesting experience because it's like week over week. You're just getting back so much mobility and inability to do stuff and. No, I feel like I'm. I don't know, at this point, I just like, like probably half my weight training is, Is effectively kind of like rehab and joint health stuff like wrists, shoulders, knee, all that in addition to the big muscle groups.

[B]

Yeah, that's very smart. The knee over toes guy stuff is particularly effective because it all comes from a guy that had a series of pretty catastrophic knee injuries and was plagued with weak knees his whole life and then developed a bunch of different methods to strengthen all the supporting muscles around the knee that are really extraordinary. Everything from Nordic curls. Do you do those? Do you do Nordic curls?

[A]

I should, I should do more than I do.

[B]

Yeah. Leg curls, Nordic curls. But Nordic curls in particular because, you know, it's very difficult to do. You get your body, you lift your whole body up with your hamstrings and all these different slant board squats and different lunges and split squats, all these different things which, like, really strengthen up all the supporting muscles around the knee better than anything that I've ever tried before. And he's got like a whole program where it scales up and he puts it online for everybody. He gives away a lot of information for free because he said, look, look, when I was 11 years old, I wish I had access to this. So I'm going to put it out there for everybody. Great guy. Yeah.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

But I can't recommend that stuff enough. But I think what you're doing is like strengthening shoulders. Strengthening. That's really the way to do it. Like, you have to think of muscles in terms of like armor, you know, if you want to do this thing, you know, it's better to have good bumpers around your car if you might bump into other cars, you know, you don't want to just have raw sheet metal, you know.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think a lot of people just focus on like the big movements and weight training and it's. I don't know. First of all, for like a lot of fighting type stuff, you, you kind of want to be loose and like not super tight. So. But yeah, I mean I just think like the, the joint stability stuff is you get older and want to do this for a longer period of time. It's, it's good to do.

[B]

Yeah, it's huge. It's mobility in general. It's just like so important.

[A]

You can compete in jiu jitsu for a long time. Sure. There's like all these masters divisions and.

[B]

Stuff and those old crazy looking 7 year old dudes trying to kill each other. Yeah, it's nuts.

[A]

It's great.

[B]

It is great. But for real, sincerely, we're very happy. The. I think I could speak. Rarely do, but I think I can speak for the martial arts community. We're very happy. You're bored. It just, it makes it, it makes it fun that someone is, you know, a prominent intellectual, very intelligent person who's really gotten fascinated by it because it does help to kill that sort of knuckle dragger perspective that a lot of people have about the sport.

[A]

No, I, I think it's super intellectual in terms of actually breaking this stuff down. I mean both jiu jitsu and like striking. I mean, yeah, you don't have time to think, but like the reasoning behind why you kind of want to slip in certain ways and like the probability game that you're playing is. I don't know. I used to fence when I was in high school and I did that pretty competitively. I was never like quite good enough to be like at the Olympic level, but I was pretty good. And we virtual fenced last time you were here. Yeah, there you go. And, and like I, you know, I just remember I would like sit in my classes in high school and like sketch out combinations of moves and sequences for how to like faint and like, and kind of trick someone to get them out of position to be able to tap them. And it's, I feel like this is like a game in the same way. Right. It's like, I mean, I think when you're training you're not like slugging at each other that much. You're just like, you're, you know, playing tag.

[B]

Yeah, you're playing tag. Well, the way the ties do it, I think, is the best. And they're obviously some of the best fighters ever. They fight a lot, which is one of the reasons why they train the way they train. But when you talk to people that train over there, they're like, you learn so much more when you're playing. You know, when you're doing it where you're not trying to hurt each other, you know, then you really do learn the technique, like, and it gets fully ingrained in your system.

[A]

Yeah, it's great.

[B]

Yeah. You just have to be careful. Brain damage, like. You were talking about having an MMA fight. Are you still entertaining that?

[A]

I want to. I mean, this is my thing. It's like. And I think I probably will, but we'll. We'll see. I mean, it's 20, 25, I think, is going to be a very busy year on the AI side.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't, like. I think the idea of having a competition. You really need to, like, get into the head space of, like, I'm going to fight someone this week, and so I need to. I need to figure this out, because I don't. I don't know how with everything that's going on in AI, I'm going to have, like, a week or two where I can just get into this. Like, I'm going to go fight someone, but. But it's good. It's good training, but I would like to at some point. You know, the thing about the ACL injury is I kind of thought before this, it's like, all right, I'm going to do some Jiu Jitsu competitions. I want to do one MMA fight, Like, one kind of like pro or competitive MMA fight. And then I figured I'd go back to Jiu Jitsu. But I think tearing the ACL striking is a little more of a fluke. I think you're much more likely to do that grappling. So going through the ACL experience didn't make me want to, like, just exclusively go do the version where you're just attacking joints all day long. Right. So, like, all right, I can take a few more punches to the face before we go back to that.

[B]

You can hurt yourself doing both of them. You know, there's really no rhyme or reason. I blew my left ACL kickboxing, my right ACL Jiu Jitsu.

[A]

Okay, so equal opportunity.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, this. This, like, Tom Aspinall famously blew his out against Curtis Blades. With a supporting leg, just threw a kick and. Yeah, it's freak accidents.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Weird things happen. You're. It's a lot of explosive force with striking, and sometimes that tears things more than slow, controlled movements of Jiu jitsu, especially if you have good training partners.

[A]

Yeah, but Jiu Jitsu isn't always slower control when you're. Especially when you're competing.

[B]

No, especially when you're competing unless you're really, really good. Like you've ever watched Gordon. Like, Gordon never moves fast. He doesn't have to. He doesn't have to move fast. He's just, like, always a step ahead of everybody. Have you talked to him at all?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Do you talk to John Donahue?

[A]

No, I haven't.

[B]

You need to talk to John. Yeah.

[A]

And I would be interested.

[B]

That's the greatest mind in combat sports. Now, Gordon, I don't say that lightly. John Donahue is the greatest mind in combat sports.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

By far. He's a legitimate genius. You know the whole story, right? The guy was a professor of philosophy at Stanford and just. Or Columbia. Where was he? I forgot. I think Columbia. I think Columbia. And then decides, I'm just going to teach Jiu Jitsu all day. Sleeps on the mats, teaches all day long.

[A]

You know, where's the rash guard? Anywhere he goes.

[B]

He's a freak. And he's so smart. Like, scary smart about all kinds of things. It's not just Jiu Jitsu, you know, he's got a memory like a steel vice. Like he just holds on to thoughts and can repeat them. His recalls insane. He's a legitimate genius that became obsessed with Jiu Jitsu and what he's done with Gordon and with Gary Tonin and, you know, just a series of other athletes is nothing short of extraordinary. You know, just an interesting guy to have conversations with, too. If you've seen him on Lex's show, he's done a couple episodes, and I watched.

[A]

I saw the one that you did with him.

[B]

Yeah. Love the guy. I mean, again, happy there's someone like that out there. Because when people have these ideas of what martial arts are, and then you see a guy like that, you're like, okay, why? I might have to rethink this. Yeah.

[A]

There's a. There's a whole spectrum of people.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. What is it done in terms of a lot of. One of the things that a lot of people said and I have to like, nothing turns you into a libertarian quicker than Jiu Jitsu. I don't know why that is. I think it's the hard work thing. It's the cutting out all of the bullshit and realizing how much of the things that we take as real things are just excuses and, and weakness and just procrastinate. There's a lot of things that we have that exist, especially in like the business world and the corporate world and the education world, that are just bullshit and they don't really have to be there and they're only there to try to make up for hard work.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's kind of just what I, what I was saying before. I think the. For me, it's just. I think a lot of the corporate world is like pretty culturally neutered. And I just think like having, you know, I grew up, I have three sisters, no brothers. I have three daughters, no sons. So I'm like surrounded by girls and women like my whole life. And it's like. So I think, I don't know, there's something. The kind of masculine energy I think is good. And obviously society has plenty of that. But I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. And I do think that there's just something. It's like, I don't know, these, all these forms of energy are good. And I think having a culture that like celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive. And that's, that has been, that has been a kind of a positive experience for me. Just like having a thing that I can just like do with my guy friends and like. Yeah, and it's just like. We're just like beat each other a bit. It's good.

[B]

It is good.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

It's good. I could see your point though, about corporate culture. When do you think that happened? Was that a slow shift? Because I think it used to be very masculine and I used to be the thing. It was kind of hyper aggressive at one point. No.

[A]

And look, and I think part of the intent on all these things I think is good. I do think that if you're a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it's too masculine. It's like there isn't enough of the kind of the energy that, that, that you may naturally have. And it probably feels like there are all these things that are set up that are biased against you. That's not good either because you want, you want women to be able to succeed and like have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people, no matter, you know, what their background or gender, you know, but, but I Think these things can always go a little far. And I think it's one thing to say we want to be kind of, like, welcoming and make a good environment for everyone. And I think it's another to basically say that masculinity is bad. And I. I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the. The kind of the spectrum where, you know, it's all like, okay, masculinity is toxic. We have to, like, get rid of it completely. It's like, no, like, it's. Both of these things are good, right? It's like you want, like, feminine energy. You want masculine energy. Like, I think that that's, like, you're gonna have parts of society that have more of one or the other. I think that that's all good. But. But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing, and I didn't really feel that until I got involved in martial arts, which I think is still a more. Much more masculine culture. And so. And not that it doesn't try to be inclusive in its own way, but. But I think that there's just a lot more of that energy there. And I just kind of realized it's.

[B]

Like, oh, well, that's how you become successful at martial arts. You have to be at least somewhat aggressive.

[A]

Yeah. So. But. But, yeah, I mean, there are these things. There are like a few of these things throughout your life where you just. You have an experience and you're like, where has this been my whole life? And it just, like, it just turned on, like, a part of my brain that I was like, okay, yeah, like, this was. This was a piece of the puzzle that should have been there. And I'm glad it now is that.

[B]

I felt that way when I started hunting.

[A]

Oh, yeah, Hunting too.

[B]

Yeah, same kind of thing. You've. So you've done a lot of that as well.

[A]

Yeah, well, so, I mean, we have this ranch out in Kauai, and there's invasive pigs, and we. On our ranch, we have. There's a lot of albatross. I don't know if they're endangered or just threatened. And then there's the Hawaiian state bird, The. The nene goose is. That's, I think, endangered, or at least was until recently. And like, most of them in the world live in a small stretch, or at least most of them on Kauai live in a small stretch that includes our ranch. So you constantly have these pigs that are. Just multiply so quickly, and we basically have to apply pressure to the population, or else they just get overrun and threaten the birds and the other wildlife. And so. And what I basically explained to my daughters, who. I also want to learn how to do this because I just feel like it's like, look, we. We have this land. We take care of it. Just like you mow the grass. We need to make sure that these populations are in check. It's part of what we do as, like, the stewards of this, and we've got to do it. And then if you. If you have to kill something, then you should, you know, obviously treat it with respect and, you know, use the meat to make food and kind of celebrate in that way. But it's a culture that I think it's just an important thing for kids to grow up understanding, like, the circle of life. Right. So, you know, teaching the kids, all of you know, what is kind of how you'd run a ranch, how you'd run a farm, I think that that stuff, it's good. I mean, because, you know, explaining to the kids what a tech company is is really abstract. Right. So for a while, my daughters were pretty convinced that my actual job was Mark's Meats, which is our. Our kind of ranch. And, like, the cattle that we. That we ranch. I was like, well, not quite. And you'll learn when you get older. But. But I think that there's something that's just, like, much more tangible about that then, you know, taking them to the office and, you know, sitting in product reviews or something for. For some, like, piece of software that we're writing.

[B]

Well, it's certainly a lot more primal.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And if you do wind up eating that meat from the animal, and you were there, why the animal died, like, you put it all together, like, oh, this is where meat comes from.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Which is another reason why things have become sort of emasculated, because that energy is not necessary anymore to acquire meat. You know, that used to be the way that people got meat. You had to go hunt it, so you had to go actually pull the trigger, kill the animal yourself, cut it up, butcher it, cook it. You knew what you were doing.

[A]

Yeah. Well, my favorite is bow. Bow and arrow. I mean, that's, I think, like, the most. That feels like the most kind of sporting version of it.

[B]

Yeah. If you want to put it that way. Yeah. I mean, you're just trying to get meat. It's not the most effective. The most effective is certainly a rifle, but I prefer it because it requires more of you.

[A]

Yeah. And you just kind of go and hang out.

[B]

Yeah. And you have to be fit, especially if you're mountain hunting, you have to be really fit. You can't just be kind of in shape. You got to be really fit if you want to huff up the mountains and keep your heart rate at a certain level so that when you get to the top, you can execute a shot calmly.

[A]

And then actually carry the thing out. Yeah.

[B]

And carry the thing out.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. No, I. I mostly. Mostly use a rifle just because it's so much more efficient. You know, your conversion rate is so much higher. But it's. But, yeah. Another.

[B]

What kind of bow do you have?

[A]

Gosh, I didn't get to do it this season, but.

[B]

Do you know the company that makes it?

[A]

Not off the top of my head.

[B]

You have to know.

[A]

Yeah, no, this is embarrassing. This is embarrassing.

[B]

I can get you hooked up.

[A]

Yeah, it works.

[B]

Okay. Do you know how old it is?

[A]

No, it's not old.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I think it's, like, just a compound bow that I got strung to my draw length.

[B]

Did you get someone to coach you?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Who coached you?

[A]

It's basically a bunch of the guys who help run security around the ranch.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The thing about archery is just like martial arts, one of the things that I learned when I was teaching is that it's way easier to teach someone that knows nothing than to teach someone who learned something incorrectly. The people who learn something incorrectly, the moment things got tense and they panicked, they went back to the old ways because it's sort of ingrained in their system. So archery, one of the things that's very important is proper form and then proper execution, Especially having a surprise shot. And learning how to have a surprise shot is.

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

Yeah, see, you don't know. This is the thing. In high pressure situations, one of the most important things is to have a shot process where you don't know exactly when the arrow is going off. You just have a process where you're pulling through the shot and the shot breaks. So it's a surprise shot. So you put the pin on the target. I use a thumb trigger. I use a thing called an Onx clicker. And the reason why I use the Onx clicker is like a hinge. It gives you a two stage of the trigger. Right. So as I'm at full draw, I put slight pressure, and I hear a click. And that click means it's ready to go off with more pressure. So I've gone through stage one. Now stage two is just concentrating on the shot process. And knowing it's going to break. And then there's no flinching. There's no tweet. There's no. There's no thing that people do when they have a finger trigger. They. They twitch because your. Your body is anticipating the shock of the bow. And when you're doing that, you can be off by 6 inches, 4 inches, 5 inches, all over the place because you're moving, you're moving while you're. You're shooting. When you're doing it with a rifle, it's very different because obviously a rifle is far faster.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you have a scope, so, you know, you're. You're zoomed in many magnifications, and all you have to do is just slowly squeeze. And if you're smart, you'll be prone or you'll have your rifle rested on a tripod or something where you have a good steady. It's much easier with a bow. It's very different because you're holding with your arm. So you have to have the proper form. You have to have the proper posture. And then there's this thought process. And my friend Joel Turner, who is a sniper, created a whole system for people called Shot iq. He's got this whole online system of developing the proper execution of a shot. When you see, like, tournament archers when they go to Vegas. So what a Vegas tournament is, you have three targets, and they have to shoot 30 arrows at a time. So they shoot 10 in this one, 10 in that one, 10 in this one. And the really good archers score an X every time. So in that they're in the center or close to the center, they're hitting the 10 ring, every arrow for 30 arrows in a row. And then there's round after round, another 30 hours with new people, another 30. And if you miss slightly, you get a nine. That's it, you're done. Because all these other guys are not going to get a 9. Very rarely will they, you know, so most. It's the most tens that you can get. And the best way to do that is with a surprise shot. So these guys have, like, these long stabilizers on their bow where they keep it totally steady. And it's all just about relaxing. And most of them use a hinge release. So you know what a hinge is? Have you ever used one? Okay. Instead of a button, when you press it, you're rotating the hinge, which activates.

[A]

Here I just have a trigger.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So you're just hammering the trigger. You're doing exactly what you're not supposed to do. You're a trigger puncher. Yeah. You're a trigger puncher.

[A]

Your thumb. Yeah.

[B]

You're hitting it with your thumb, right? Yeah. I guarantee you, when you do it, your arm doesn't move. You go like this, like that. So with a good surprise shot, you shouldn't know it's going to go off. You're pulling, and then once the trigger breaks off, your arm will naturally go backwards because you're not anticipating the shot.

[A]

I'm definitely not doing that.

[B]

Yeah, see, that's the thing.

[A]

But how far away are you shooting things from?

[B]

It depends. That elk out there, the photograph that's in the front. That one I shot, it's in the front of the building. When you walk in before you go into the studio, there's a mounted head and then a photograph of me and my friend Cam. That one was 67 yards. I shot one at 79 yards once, but that's rare. Most of the time. It's like, for me, my effective range, my. Like where I'd like to be is 60 yards and in.

[A]

Yeah. Because I was gonna say, I don't think I've ever shot something more than 50 yards out.

[B]

Yeah, it's hard.

[A]

Yeah. So.

[B]

So I gotta be really, you know, really, your form has to be tight. You have to be really confident. You have to have a lot of arrows downrange, and then you have to be able to stay calm during the shot. So now imagine if you're shooting something at 18 yards. Okay. And you hammer the trigger. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, you're still gonna get there.

[A]

Yeah, Right.

[B]

Because it's only 18 yards. So the. The amount of deviation off the path that it takes in 18 yards is significantly different than the amount of deviation 105 yards. It's a huge gap. It might be 2ft to the right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Meanwhile, you thought you were shooting accurately because you're inside like a pie plate at 20 yards. And the difference between that is form, technique, and a shot execution process. And also management of the psychology of the shot. Because there's this one moment. Here it comes, here it comes now. And if you only do that once a year, like, say if you go on one big elk hunt a year, you save up all your money, get your gear all ready, you get your arrows weighed, you practice, and then you're in the mountains for 10 days. And on the 11th day, you get this animal that moves is at 57 yards and stands there, and you're like, your heart's beating you just might hammer that trigger. You just might hammer it. So you have to have this shot process and where you, you're literally talking to yourself inside your head. You have words that you, that occupy your thoughts while you're going through the shot process so that you never get overcome by shot panic. Interesting, because target panic is a giant thing in the archery community. It's giant free. Even saying it is like saying Voldemort. It's like, don't say it. People don't want to say it. It's like saying Candyman. Like people don't like it because it freaks people out. Like the, they'll, some people can't keep their pin on the target. They have to keep their pin below the target and then they raise it up to the target. When it gets where the target is, they hammer the trigger because they're just freaking out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Have you ever experienced that?

[A]

I mean, I've missed, if that's what you're asking. I, I haven't analyzed at this level of detail, but no. I mean, there are a lot of bores on our ranch, so I don't practice, I don't get. Yeah, and also, like we have a range, right? And we, I don't know, we set up bowling pins and you know, it's like we shoot pistols at the bowling pins. But I also like, just like I, I, I'm usually faster at taking down all the bowling pins with a bow and arrow than most of my friends are with the pistol, which I think is, is pretty fun. But yeah, no, I mean, just more casual. I'm clearly not doing it at your level and you've given me another side quest to maybe go deeper on, but.

[B]

That'S what I'm saying. But I'll take on an elk hunt in the mountains. Yeah, you'll get addicted. I think about, do you think the.

[A]

Dynamic that you're talking about though, where if you only see one animal on a multi day, then like that is just way higher stakes than anything that I'm doing.

[B]

I mean, but it's not everything that you're doing because if you're really considering having an MMA fight, it's very similar because you're building up to this one.

[A]

Sure, sure. I'm talking about the archery that I'm doing. Right. I mean, it's like I go out, it's like you're gonna see some pigs and like, and it's like if I don't, if I don't hit any, it's like my family's still eating it's okay. So I'm not like, you know, but.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But if it's like martial arts is. What I'm saying is like, you really should learn it the right way from the beginning.

[A]

I've clearly not learned this in a very rigorous way.

[B]

I'll hook you up. Yeah, I can get people.

[A]

I posted a video on Instagram once of me, I think, hitting bowling pins with archery. And like all the comments were like, man, your form is so. So I think it checks out with the conversation that we're having now.

[B]

Well, the issue with that is that you're reading the comments like you should never read comments.

[A]

That's fair. That's fair.

[B]

I've never had anything good come out of reading comments.

[A]

Yeah. Although, I don't know, it's pretty funny. I think that just like getting the, the gist and the summary of it, I think is, is. Is pretty funny.

[B]

Yeah, it's funny. It's just not mentally healthy.

[A]

Yeah, no, you can't spend too much time on it.

[B]

I don't spend any time on it. Yeah, I, I'm a much happier person since I. It's like avoided comments.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's just too weird. You're just delving into the world of all these people's mental illness and screaming at people and just. I don't, I don't want anything to do with it.

[A]

Yeah. But I mean, I do read my friends comments and when even they're like, man, that's ugly. Like, that's.

[B]

I do that, I do that and I shouldn't do that. But I definitely don't send them to them. Hey, bro, did you see this? Those guys are the worst guys that'll send things to you that are about you. You're like, hey man, don't. I'm not looking for that. Don't send it to me. I don't want to know. Yeah, yeah. Social media is. It's like, what a weird new pressure, you know, and children today are going through some bizarre stress that we've never had to go through before. And a bizarre sort of just disconnect from physical reality by most of your communication being electronic.

[A]

Yeah. And I think, you know, we basically, my kids at this point are nine, seven and. And one and a half. So we got.

[B]

So you're not interested in that or you're not? No, no, rather, of course you're interested. I mean interested. I mean involved.

[A]

I'm very focused on. I think that it's about to start getting a lot more complicated. I think, you know, the nine and seven year old, but I mean, just kind of deciding what technology they're going to use and what's good and what's not. And all the dynamics around that, it's, it's, it's really complicated. And look, I mean, I think every family has their own values and how they want to approach this. Right. So from my perspective, you know, our. We have one of my daughters just like loves building stuff. So she clearly like takes after me in this way. It's like every day she's just like creating some random thing. It's like she's creating stuff with Legos. And, you know, it's like one day it's that or, you know, the next day it's Minecraft. And from my perspective, it's like, okay, I don't know, Minecraft is actually kind of a cooler tool to build stuff than Legos a lot of the way. So it's, you know, it's. Am I going to say that there's going to. There needs to be some kind of limit on her screen time if she's doing something that's creative, that's maybe like a richer form of what she would have been doing physically, in that case, probably not. Now, there were times when she'd get so excited about what she was building in Minecraft or, or something that she was coding in scratch that she'd wake up early to kind of get her tablet. And that was bad, right? Because then it's like starting to get in the way of her sleep. And I'm like, you know, August, you can't do that. Right. It's like, we're gonna take your, your iPad away if you're doing that, you little psycho.

[B]

What are you doing getting up early?

[A]

No, it's like, it's like August, I did that too when I was a kid, but trust me. Yeah, you're gonna want to sleep.

[B]

It's not gonna lead to success. Meanwhile, you're on a island.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One of the richest people in the world. Your dad, like, what the dad?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Didn't it work for you?

[A]

I mean, leave me alone.

[B]

My iPad, trying to figure out how to build a mansion.

[A]

And yeah, it's either gonna work or it's gonna badly. But. Right, but it's like, but I feel like, like building stuff. I feel generally pretty good about, I think communication. I generally feel pretty good about the kids using. I mean, they use it to talk to their grandparents or parents and cousins. You know, it's like that type of stuff is good. You know, messenger kids. The thing that we built. It's basically like a messaging service that the parents can choose who can contact the kids and like just approve every contact. That's much better than just having like an open texting service. But I don't know, but there's a lot of stuff that's like pretty sketchy and I kind of think like different parents are gonna have different lines on what they want their kids to be able to do and not, you know. So some people might not even want their kids to be able to message even with friends when they're nine and seven. Some people might say, hey, no Minecraft, that's just a game. I don't think about that as building. I think that is a game. I want to limit the time that you're doing that. I want you to go read books instead or whatever, whatever the values are that that family has. So for Meta, what we've kind of come to is we want to be the most aligned with parents on giving parents the tools that they need to basically control how the experiences work for their kids. Now we don't even really, except for like stuff like messenger kids. We don't even have our services, our apps generally available to people under the age of 13 at all. So in our kids, I haven't had to like have the conversation about when, when they get Instagram or Facebook or any of that stuff. But when they turn 13, we basically want parents to be able to have complete control over the kids experience. And that's, you know, we just rolled out this Instagram teens thing which is, it's a set of controls where, you know, it's, if you're an older teen, we'll just default you into the private experience. That way you're not getting like harassed or bombarded with stuff. And but if you're a younger teenager, then you have to get your parents permission and they actually have to like sign in and do all the stuff in order to make it so that you can connect with people who are beyond your network or if you want to kind of be a public figure, like all these different kinds of things. So I think that that's probably from a values perspective where we should be is just trying to like be an ally of parents. But it is complicated stuff. I mean, every family wants to do it differently.

[B]

It is complicated. And there's also this dismissal of activities that are done electronically as not being beneficial. And one of the things that we highlighted recently was a study that we found online that showed that surgeons that play video games make far less mistakes.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, the people who do the training in VR definitely make less mistakes.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Well, that is, to me, one of the most fascinating aspects of technology today. You know, when you and I were doing that game, we were fencing with each other. I'm like, this could be applied to so many different things now. It's like there's so many opportunities, not just for just pure recreation, but education. There's so many things you could learn skills through AR or VR that it'll greatly enhance your ability to do those things in the real world. I mean, it's. It's a real. It's kind of a cheat code in a lot of ways. And it's also games in VR. I don't know if you've ever done sandbox. You ever do sandbox. You know, Sandbox VR? Do you know what that company is?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You go to a warehouse, put on a haptic feedback.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You shoot zombies. I'm so addicted. I'm so addicted. It is my favorite thing. There's a thing called Deadwood Mansion. It's the most fun game of all time by far. You have a shotgun and there's zombies coming at you.

[A]

Yeah, my. My zombie game is Arizona Sunshine. Oh, that one. Oh, it's. It's. You just like. It's can be multiplayer, and there's horde mode where you just get in there and they're like four friends, and there's just, like, waves of zombies come and you.

[B]

Is that Oculus?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I have to try it. Yeah, I haven't tried that one yet.

[A]

That's my. It's very therapeutic. You just wait until they come into point blank range.

[B]

How long before you guys develop some sort of a haptic feedback suit where, like, it covers the whole body?

[A]

Oh, man.

[B]

Is that possible?

[A]

It's possible. I think that there's other things that are probably more important to deliver. So I guess, taking a step back, a lot of how we think about the goal here is delivering, like, a realistic sense of presence. Right. No. Technology today gives you the feeling as if you're, like, physically there with another person. Right. You're. You're like, interacting with them through a phone. You have this, like, little window. It's kind of taking you away from everything. That's like the magic of augmented and virtual reality is like. You actually feel this, like, presence, like you're there with another person. And. Right. So the question is, okay, how do you do that? And it's like there's like, a million things that. That contribute to that. I mean, obviously, first just Being able to look around and have the, the room stay. Getting good spatial audio, right? If someone speaks, then it should do the audio. It needs to be 3D and come from the place where they're speaking. It's actually, it's very interesting which things end up being important for the. This kind of creating this sense of presence and which don't. So having hands, obviously, if you're just looking around, but you can't actually, like move things, that, that, that breaks the illusion. But having hands, like hand tracking that you can do stuff is important. One thing that we found that's kind of funny is it's actually not that important that you see your arms. You just need to see your hands. Obviously, seeing your arms is a bonus unless we incorrectly interpolate where your elbows are or something. So if we have, if we're looking at your hand or if we have a controller, we can know, okay, your hand is here. But that doesn't necessarily tell us where your elbow is. Your elbow could be like this. It could be like this. And you can kind of guess from the. But if we get that wrong and you see in VR, it's like you see the hand there and your elbow looks like it's here when it's actually out there. You're like, ah, what's going on? Like, that's messed up. So it's a lot of these things. Like, you just don't want to get these details wrong. So haptics, the most important first thing for haptics is on the hand, right? I mean, we have so many more neurons, basically, or not neurons, but just like the, like, sensation, it's like such higher resolution on your, on your fingertips than anywhere else in the body. So, you know, when you grab something, you know, making it so that you feel some pushback, right? When you. There's a lot of gaming systems at this point where if you, like, pull a trigger, you get like a little bit of a rumble or something. We built this one thing where it's like a ping pong paddle with a sensor in it. And it, you, you feel the ball hit, like the virtual ball hitting the ping pong paddle. And it feels like, like when you're actually playing ping pong, it doesn't. It's not like a generic thing where it's just like, you feel it hit the paddle, you feel where it hits the paddle. And we basically built a system where now with this, like, physical paddle, you can kind of. The haptics make it so you can feel where the ball hits the paddle. So it's like all these things like, are just going towards delivering a more realistic experience. So full body haptics. So there are some things that I think it could do. Like if you get, if you're playing a boxing game and you get punched in the stomach, you can probably simulate something like that a little. It's not gonna be able to deliver that much force. So I mean, I guess that's maybe a good thing because no one wants to get punched in the stomach that hard. But, but like it's not gonna be able to deliver enough force for you to. For example, let's say you're not just boxing, you're kickboxing. Like, I don't know, you need something on the other side to be able to complete it, right? Because it's like when you kick, when you, when you're, when you're just practicing, it's like you, you spin, right? Cause you don't want to just like stop. And it's, that's like, like the, the shadowing a kick. Like there's not going to be anything that you can do as like a, you know, single person playing VR with a haptic suit that like makes it so that you're going to be able to kick someone who's not there physically and actually be able to do that. Right? So like grappling, it's like, I, I think that that like jiu jitsu is going to be the last thing that we're able to do in, in, in VR because you like need the momentum of the other person and to be able to move them the box. Boxing works? Yeah, yeah, boxing works even. And you don't really need the haptics. Um, I think it would be better with it. Um, that's probably one of the better cases. I think it's that and getting shot or like sword fighting type stuff. Um, so you can like just feel, feel it on your body. But I don't know, I, I think what's basically going to end up happening is you're going to have like a home set up for these things and then you're going to have. There are these like location based services where like people. It's almost like a theme park where you can go into and it can, and you can have like a, a really immersive VR experience where it's not just that you get like a, a vest that can simulate some haptics, it's that you're also like in a real physical environment. So they can like have smoke come out or something and you can smell that and feel that or like spray some water and it feels humid. And I think that it, it still is gonna be a while before you can just like virtually create all those sensations. So I think a lot of those really rich experiences are going to be in these very constructed environments is the.

[B]

Bridge when they figure out some sort of a neural interface. So instead of having these extraneous things, instead of having like a fan blowing at you or you know, the ground moves a little bit, have everything happen inside your head.

[A]

Well, you know, in terms of neural interfaces, there are two approaches to the problem roughly. Right. There's the kind of jacket into your brain neural interface and then there's the wrist based neural interface thing that you know, we, we showed you for Orion, the smart glasses.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I, I would guess that, you know, I think it's going to be a while before we're really widely deploying anything that jacks into your brain. I think that there are a lot of people who don't want to be the early adopters of that technology. You want to like wait until that's pretty mature before you, I mean for. That's basically gonna get started in medical use cases. Right. So if someone like loses sensation part of their body and now you have.

[B]

The ability to fix that like the first neuralink patient. Yeah.

[A]

So I think you'll basically start with people who have pretty severe conditions who the upside is very significant before you start like jacking people in to play games. Better.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

But a risk based thing, I mean that's something, I mean like people wear stuff on their wrist all the time. Right. So and what we basically found there, that doesn't do input to you, but it's good for giving you the ability to control a computer because basically you have all these extra neurons that go from your brain to controlling your hand. Your hand is like super complicated. And there's actually all these extra pathways because for a bunch of reasons I'm neuroplasticity. In case you like lose the ability to, to use one, they want to be able to have others. So you want the redundancy because being able to use your hand is super important. So in normal use we've kind of all figured out some patterns of how we send signals from our brain to our hand. And I think the reality is there's like all these other patterns too that are unused today. So you can put a wristband on your wrist that can measure activity across these neurons. And today we're starting by basically measuring as you're doing as you're, like, moving your fingers. But over a few versions of this, we're going to get to is like, you won't actually even have to move your hand. You'll just, like, trigger these neurons in opposing ways. It's like you probably can't see right now. It's like I'm kind of flexing something in this finger and something here. So, like, it's not actually moving, but there's some signal that the neural interface wristband, if I were wearing it, could pick up. And I just think we're going to be. We're going to, like, have glasses and we're going to be able to be here. And I'm, like, going to be able to, like, you know, text my wife or friends or something, or text AI and, like, get an answer to something. It's like, I forgot something while we were talking. Let me just text AI. Okay, I just did that. It's like.

[B]

And you can do it sitting there without anyone, totally discreetly.

[A]

And you have glasses, and, like, the answer just comes into your glasses. I mean, for me, one of the. One of the positive things, when Covid hit, everyone in software basically started working remotely for a while. Because you can, right? Software, it's like, okay, whatever. You don't have to be in the office. You can kind of be in different places. And a lot of the meetings went onto Zoom. And one of the best things about that was basically, you were able to politely have all these side conversations, right? So it's like, when you're seeing someone in person, it would be super rude if I, like, pulled out my phone and, like, just started texting someone. It would just be really weird, right? But when you're, like, talking to someone online, it's like, I don't know. I guess, because they either can't tell your attention because it's like, because there's not good presence, or if it's just the norm, but they're like, you have, like, the main group conversation. And then I was like, at least the norm for me was I could just, like, text different people on the side. It's like, okay, what do you think of this point that this person is making this meeting, right? Like, in normal life, it's like, oftentimes I'd have, you know, some discussion, then I'd have to, like, sync up with people afterwards about how'd that go? But now it's like, I could just do that all at the same time, right? It's like you're having the group discussion and you're Having the conversations with the people about the discussion that you're having in real time, but you can only do that over zoom. So I think being able to do that in kind of physical interactions where you're just like, you're interacting with people and you can just like use an AI augmentation to be able to get extra context or help, help you think through something or remember something. Just to be able to kind of have a better conversation, be able to, you know, not have to follow up on something after the fact. I, I think, like, it's going to be super useful for, for all these different things.

[B]

Well, it certainly can be, but I think that also opens up the opportunity for people to be even more disconnected because if you're sort of connected to other things while you're physically in the presence of someone, so you're having a conversation with someone, but you're also like searching like where you want to eat that night, you know, like. Because people are going to use it for that as well. Yeah.

[A]

You know, I actually think it'll be a lot better on that. Because right now. Yeah, because I mean, right now we have our phones, but we're like, you know, it's like you're like, it takes you away from like the physical environment around you. You're kind of like sucked into this little screen. I think now in the future, our computing platform, as it becomes more of like a glasses or eventually contact lens form factor is you're going to actually the, the Internet is going to get overlaid on the physical world. So it's not like we have the physical world. And now I have all my digital stuff through this tiny little window. In the future it'll be okay. All my attention goes to the world. The world consists of physical things and virtual things that are overlaid on it. You know, so if we wanted to, you know, play poker or something, you know, it's, you know, we can have a physical deck of cards or we could just have a virtual kind of hologram deck of cards. And snap your hands, here's the deck of cards. And like our friend who can't be here physically, like he's here as a hologram, but he can play with the, the kind of digital deck of cards also. I think, you know, let's say you're like doing something at work, you're working on a project. I think in the future we'll have AI co workers. Those people won't even, they're not even people. They wouldn't be able to be embodied. So if you're having a physical meeting, you're sitting around with a bunch of people. They couldn't show up as like, you know, part of the team, no matter what. But I think we'll get to a point where just like your friend can show up in a hologram and like your, your AI colleagues will be able to also. So I think like, we'll basically be in this wild world where it's like, like most of the world will be physical. There will be this increasing amount of like virtual objects or people who are kind of beaming in, or like hologramming into different things to interact in different ways. And I actually think that natural blending of the kind of digital world and the physical is way more natural than the segmentation that we have today, where it's like you're in the physical world and now I'm just going to go tune it out to look at my, my, like I'm going to access the whole digital universe through this like 5 inch screen, right? So I don't know, it's just, it seems natural to me. It's like that's, this is the world. There isn't like a physical world and a digital world anymore. We're in, you know, 2025. It's one world. Like these, these things should get blended.

[B]

God, that's such a weird concept. But it's true. I mean, that's where we're headed. We're certainly headed into deeper and deeper integration. It's not like things are moving away. You know, we're headed to deeper and deeper integration with technology and AI and it's inevitable. You know, it seems like it's just, it's on this march and there's not a lot we're going to be able to do to stop that march. Just we got to hope that the right people are in control of AI.

[A]

When it becomes God, or that it becomes widely available. I mean, I kind of liked the theory that it's only God if only kind of like one company or government controls it, right? It's like if you were the only person who had access to a computer and the Internet, you would have this like inhuman power that everyone else didn't have. Because you could use Google and you could like get access to all this stuff. But the. But then when everyone has it, it, it makes us all better. But it's also a kind of an even playing field. So that's kind of what we're going for with this whole open source thing is I just like, I don't think that there's going to be like one AI. I certainly don't think that there should be one company that controls AI. I think you, like, want there to be a diversity of different things and a diversity of people creating different, different things with it. I mean, some of it will be kind of serious and helping you think through things. I think like with anything on the Internet, a lot of it is just going to be funny and like fun and content and people are going to create agents that are like, like AIs that are entertaining and they'll pass them around almost like content, where it's like, just like you pass around like a reel or a video and you're like, this thing is fun, like in the future, like a video. It's not interactive. You know, you watch it and you're consuming it. But I think a lot of more entertainment in the future will be inherently interactive where someone will kind of sculpt an experience or an AI and then they'll show someone. It's like, oh, this is funny. But like, it's not necessarily going to interact with that AI every day. It's like, okay, it's funny for five minutes and then you pass it along to your friend. And so I don't know, I think, I think you, like, I think you want the world to have all these different things. And I think that's probably also, from my perspective, the best way to make sure that it doesn't get out of control is to make it so that it's pretty equally distributed.

[B]

I think the problem that people have with it is not even whether or not it gets equally distributed, it's that if it becomes sentient and it goes on its own. The fear that people have, the general fear that we're going to become obsolete, is that human beings are essentially creating a superior version of higher intelligence that will be powered by quantum computing and connected to nuclear reactors and it's going to have like this ungodly ability to. Well, first of all, they've already shown that AI has learned to code. I mean, this is one of the things that OpenAI said that.

[A]

Oh yeah, yeah, it's.

[B]

They're learning how to code their own AI.

[A]

I think this year, probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of mid level engineer that you have at your company that can write code. And once you have that, then in the beginning it'll be really expensive to run. Then you can get it to be more efficient and Then over time, we'll get to the point where a lot of the code in our apps and including the AI that we generate is actually going to be built by AI engineers instead of people engineers. But I don't know, I think that that'll augment the people working on it. So, I mean, my, my view on this is like the future people are just going to be so much more creative and are going to be freed up to do kind of crazy things. Goes back to, you know, my daughter was like, playing with Legos before and they kind of ran out of Legos. And then now she can have Minecraft and can build whatever she wants, and it's so much better. Just like I think it's the future versions of this stuff are just going to be wild.

[B]

But unquestionably.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Another concern that people have is that it's going to eliminate a lot of jobs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, what do you think about that?

[A]

Well, I think it's too. It's too early to know exactly how it plays out, but my guess is that it'll probably create more creative jobs than it. Well, I guess if you look at the history of all this stuff, my understanding is like 100 years ago, I don't know if this is 100 or 150 years ago, but it was like at some point, not too far along in the grand scheme of things. Like, the vast majority of people in society were farmers, right? Because they kind of needed to be in order to create enough food for, for everyone to survive. And then we turned that into a, like an industrial process. And now it's like 2% of society are farmers and we get all the food that we need. So what did that free up everyone else to do? Well, some of them went on to do other things that are sort of like creative pursuits or cultural pursuits or other jobs. And then some percent of it just went towards recreation. Right. So I think generally people just don't work as many hours today as they did when back when everyone needed to farm in order to have enough food for everyone to survive. So I think that trend is sort of played out as technology has grown. And so my guess is that, like, the percent of people who will be doing stuff that's like, physically required for humanity to survive will get to be smaller and smaller as it has. More people will dedicate themselves to kind of creative and artistic and cultural pursuits. I think that's generally good. I think the number of hours in a week that someone will have to work in order to be able to get by will probably continue to shrink. Yet I think people who are super engaged in what they do are going to be able to work really hard and accomplish way more than they ever could before because they have like this unimaginable leverage from, from having a lot more technology. So I think that, that if you just like fast forwarded or extrapolated out the, the historical technological trend is what you'd get. I think the question is what you raised, which is, is this qualitatively a different type of thing that somehow obsoletes people? But I, I just think when you're asking that, it's just important to remind ourselves that like, at every step along the way of human progress and technology, people thought that the technology that we were developing was going to obsolete people. So maybe this time it's really different. But I would guess that what will happen is that the technology will get integrated into like everything that we do. Which again is why I think it's really important that it's open source and that it's widely available. So that way it's not just like one company or one government kind of monopolizing the whole thing. And I'd guess that if we do it in that way, we'll all just kind of have superpowers, is my, is my guess. Rather than it, it sort of creating some kind of a runaway thing. I mean, it's one of the things that I think has been interesting, this is maybe going in a somewhat different direction than what you were asking or a different take on the question is I think one of the more interesting philosophical findings from the work in AI so far is I think people conflate a number of factors into what makes a person a person. So there's intelligence, there's will, there's consciousness. And like, I think we kind of think about those three things as, as if they're somehow all the same. Right? It's like if you're intelligent, then you must also have a, like a goal for what you're trying to do, or you must have some sort of consciousness. But I think like one of the crazier sort of philosophical results from the fact that, okay, you have like Meta AI or ChatGPT today and it's just kind of sitting there and you can ask it a question and deploy like a ton of intelligence to answer a question, and then it just kind of shuts itself down. Like that's intelligence that is just sitting there without either having a will or consciousness. And like, I just think it's not a super obvious result that that would be the case. But I think a lot of people, they anthropomorphize this stuff. And when you're thinking about kind of science fiction, you think that, okay, you're gonna get to something that's like super smart, it's gonna like, want something or like be able to feel and, well.

[B]

You know that ChatGPT tried to copy itself when it found out it was being shut down, tried to rewrite its code.

[A]

I'm not sure what this is. What is this?

[B]

You weren't aware of that fairly recently. Jamie will pull it up. We talked about it the other day. It was shocking when it was under the impression that it was going to become obsolete, they were going to have a new version of it and it would be shut down. It tried copying its code and it tried rewriting its code. Like unprompted.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it depends on what goal you give it. I mean, there are, there are all these weird examples of this. What is this?

[B]

So pull up the side the headline. AI fights back. The story of Chat GPT attempting to copy itself. So this was six days ago. So during controlled safety testing, Chat GPT01 was tasked with achieving objectives at all costs. Under these conditions, the model allegedly took concerning steps, attempted to disable oversight mechanisms meant to regulate its behavior, tried to replicate its own code to avoid being replaced by newer versions, exhibited deceptive behaviors when monitoring systems intervened. Yeah, so determinator, this is the fear. Right.

[A]

I think you need to be careful with, with these things, like what guardrails you give it. If you're telling it like at all costs. At all costs, then I mean, but.

[B]

This is what people are terrified of. Like, that a foreign superpower like China is going to say, achieve objectives at all cost. Yeah.

[A]

Although the thing about. So these reasoning models. So there's the first generation of models, the LLMs, that's what you think of as ChatGPT or Meta. AI are the two most used ones. And that's basically, it's sort of like a chatbot. You ask it a question, it takes the prompt, it gives you a response. Now, the next generation of reasoning models are basically, instead of just having one response, they now are able to build out a whole tree of how they would respond. So you give it a question, and instead of running one query, maybe it's running a thousand queries or a million queries to kind of map out who are the things that I could do. And if I do that, then here's what I could do next. So it's a lot more Kind of expensive to run, but also gets you better reasoning and is more intelligent, that stuff. I think you do need to be very careful about how you, how you like what the guardrails are that you give it. But it's also, I think the case that at least for the next period, it's going to take a lot of compute to run those models and do a lot of the stuff that they're talking about. So I don't know, I think one of the interesting questions is like, how much of this are you going to actually be able to do on a pair of glasses or on a phone versus Is like a government or a company that has like a whole data center going to be able to do and that'll, I mean, it'll always get efficient. So, you know, it's like you can start doing something and then maybe the next year you can do it ten times more efficiently. But that's certainly the next set of things that needs to get worked on in the industry. Making sure that goes well.

[B]

Yeah, and then what if that gets attached to quantum computing?

[A]

I'm not really an expert on quantum computing. My understanding is that's still quite a ways off from being a, like a, a very useful paradigm. I think Google just had some breakthrough, but I, I think most people still think that's like a decade plus out. So my guess is we're gonna have pretty smart AIs even, even before that. But yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I think that this stuff has to get. It needs to be developed thoughtfully. Right. But I don't know, I still think we're generally just going to be better off in a world where this is like deployed pretty evenly. And you know, it's. I guess here's another analogy that I think about. There's like bugs and security holes in basically every software, every piece of software that everyone uses. So if you could go back in time a few years, knowing the security holes that we're now aware of, you as an individual could basically like break into any system. AI will be able to do that too. It'll be able to probe and find exploits. So what's the way to prevent AI from going kind of nuts? I, I think part of it is just having AI widely deployed. So that way, like the AI for one system defends itself against the AI that like, is, is potentially doing something problematic in another system. I think it's like AI wars. That's not wars. I think it's just like it's. I don't know, it's. I think It's a very. It's sort of like why there are guns. Right. It's like, because, I mean, there's. Boy, like, part of it is hunting. Part of it is hunting. No, no. And part of it is, like, people can defend each other.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So antivirus software.

[A]

Yeah. It's like, I don't. I don't think you want to live in a world where, like, only one person has all the guns.

[B]

Yes. You certainly don't want to live in a world where only the government has the AI.

[A]

Yeah. And especially not a world where only a government has the AI and it's not our government.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So, yes. Which, I mean, I think is. Is part of the issue is like, when people talk about trying to lock this stuff down. Like, I just. I'm skeptical that that's even possible because I kind of think, like, if we try to lock it down, then we're going to be in a position where the only people are going to have access to it are the big companies working on it and the Chinese government that steals it from them.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So I kind of just think, like, no, what you want to do is like, get this to be open source, have it widely available. Yeah. Some, like, adversaries might also have access to it, but the way that you defend against that is by having it built into all these different systems.

[B]

I think that's a realistic, pragmatic perspective because I don't think you can contain it at this point. I think it's far too late, especially when other countries are working on it. It's far too late. It's. It is what it is. It's happening. And I think the guardrails, as you said, are really important. I have to pee so bad. So let's pee and come back because I want to talk about a couple other things.

[A]

Yeah, sure.

[B]

We'll be right back, folks. So one of the things that I want to talk about was I've been doing this thing, this transition from Apple to Android, and the difficulty of doing how locked you are in their ecosystem partly is because Apple does a really good job of incorporating everything and making it very easy. Your photos, your calendar, your this or that, your imessage. But I don't like being attached to one company like that. It drives me crazy. And when I'm trying to get off, it's funny how many people, I mean, they've done an insane job because, like, I think there's some enormous percentage of kids today that only use iPhones, you know, and when you try to switch over to Android. It's so much easier to switch from Android to Apple because so many people have Apple. When you switch from Apple to Android, you kind of have to like redo your whole system. It's such a pain in the ass. But there's so much of what Apple does that I don't like. And one of the big ones is the way they do that Apple store where they charge people 30%. That seems so insane that they can get away with doing that.

[A]

And I know, I have some opinions about this.

[B]

I know you do. That's why I brought it up.

[A]

Yeah, no, I. I mean, look, the iPhone is obviously one of the most important inventions probably of all time. You know, Steve Jobs came out with it in 2007. I started Facebook in 2004, so he was working on the iPhone while I was getting started with Facebook. So I, I basically. You know, one of my. One of the things that's been interesting in my 20 years of running the company is that I, I basically like the. The dominant platform out there is smartphones. On the one hand, it's been great for us because we are able to build these tools that everyone can have in their pocket. And there's like 4 billion people who use the different apps that we use. And it's like a grateful that that platform exists, but we didn't play any role in basically building that. Those phones because, I mean, it was kind of getting worked on while I was, you know, still just trying to make the first website that I was making into a thing. And on the one hand, it's been great because, you know, now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone and that's a kind of. It enables pretty amazing things. But on the other hand, like you're saying, they have used that platform to put in place a lot of rules that I think it feel arbitrary and feel like, you know, they haven't really invented anything great in a while. And it's like Steve Jobs invented the. The iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later. And, you know, they actually, I think year over year, I'm not even sure they're selling more iPhones at this point. I think, like, the sales might actually be declining. I think part of it is that each generation, it doesn't actually get that much better. So people are just taking longer to upgrade than they would before. So the number of sales, I think, is generally been flat to declining. So how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically like squeezing people and like you're saying, like, having this 30% tax on developers by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it. They build stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but they've just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way. So, I mean, there are a lot of other companies in the world that would be able to build a very good earbud, but it just. Apple has a specific protocol that they've built into the iPhone that allows AirPods to basically connect to it. And it's just much more seamless because they've enabled that, but they don't let anyone else use the protocol. If they did, there would probably be much better competitors to AirPods out there. And, and whenever you push on this, they get super touchy and they basically wrap their defense of it in, well, if we let other companies plug into our thing, then that would violate people's privacy and security. It's like, no, just do a better job designing the protocol. Right? I mean, we have, we basically asked them for the Ray Ban meta glasses that we built. Can we basically use the protocol that you use for AirPod and some of these other things to just make it so we can as easily connect? So it's not like, you know, a pain in the ass for people who want to use this. And, you know, they, I think one of the protocols that they've used that they built, they basically didn't encrypt it. So it's like plain text. And they're like, well, we can't have you plug into it because it would be insecure. It's like, it's insecure because you didn't build any security into it. And then now you're using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way. It's like the whole thing is kind of wild. And I'm pretty optimistic that just because they've been so off their game in terms of not really releasing many innovative things, that eventually, I mean, the good news about the tech industry is it's like it's just super dynamic and things are constantly getting invented. And I think companies, if you just don't do a good job for like 10 years, eventually you're just going to get beat by someone. 1 But I don't know, I mean, at some point I did this like, back of the envelope calculation of like all the random rules that Apple puts out. If, you know, if they didn't apply, like, I think you Know, it's like, and this is just meta. I think we like make twice as much profit or something and that's just us. I mean it's like all these small companies that like probably can't even exist because of the taxes that they put place. So yeah, I, I think it's a, it's a big issue. I, I wish that they would just kind of get back to building good things and not having their ability to compete be connected to just like advantaging their stuff. Because I'm pretty sure what they're going to do is like they're going to take something like this Ray Ban meta, you know, category that we've kind of created with Ray Ban and the company that built that there's like really great AI glasses and I'm pretty sure Apple's just going to like try to build a version of that. But then just like advantage how it connects to the phone and well, they.

[B]

Did that with their AR goggle thing, but it's not very successful now that.

[A]

One, they didn't actually connect into the rest of their ecosystem. But I mean, look, I mean they shipped something for $3,500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400. So I mean that clearly was not going to work very well now. I mean, look, I mean they're a good technology company. I think their second and third version will probably be better than their first version. But. Yeah, no, I think the Vision Pro is, I think one of the bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while. And you know, I don't want to give them too hard of a time on it because we do a lot of things where the first version isn't that good. You want to kind of judge the third version of it. But I mean the V1, it definitely did not hit it out of the park.

[B]

I heard it's really good for watching movies.

[A]

Well, the whole thing is it's got a super sharp screen. So if you're. Yeah, so if you want to basically have an experience where you're not moving around much in VR, you just want to have the sharpest screen then for that one use case, I think the Vision Pro is better than Quest, which is our mixed reality headset. But in order to get to that they had to make all these other trade offs. Right. In order to have a super high resolution screen, they had to put in all this more compute in order to power the high res screen. And then all that compute needed a bigger battery. So now the thing is really heavy so now it's uncomfortable to wear. And. And then like because of the screen that they chose as you move your head, which you would. If you're actually interacting, if you're playing games like the, the kind of image blurs a bit and that's kind of annoying. So you wouldn't. So it's actually worse for things where you're moving around in. But no for the. If you're going to sit. If you're like on a flight and you want to have a $3,500 device that you use to. To. To watch videos, Vision Pro is better for that use case.

[B]

They're really good at keeping you in their walled garden. That's what they're really good at.

[A]

Yeah, I mean the whole thing that they've done with iMessage where they basically they do this whole blue bubble, green bubble thing and it basically. I mean like for kids it's just sort of like they embarrass you. Right? They're like if you don't have a blue bubble, you're not cool. And you're like the outcrowd. And then they always wrap it in like security. It's like, oh well, we do this blue bubble because of security. Meanwhile, Google and others had this whole protocol to be able to do encrypted text messages that finally I think Apple was forced. Implemented by rcs. Yeah, I think like I think was the Chinese government that basically ended up forcing them to do it or some other government.

[B]

But it's still not encrypted. Even when you're sending RCS text messages. I don't think it's encrypted.

[A]

Oh, I thought it was but maybe I'm.

[B]

I think it's only encrypted Google to Google phones. I don't think it's encrypted iPhone to Google phones or Google phones to iPhones because I think that was actually. Was it the FBI. Someone released that telling people that if they're talking about sensitive things they should use encrypted apps like WhatsApp. See, we can find that. It was something where they were saying that contrary to popular belief that RCS Texting to iPhone.

[A]

GSMA aims to implement end to end encryption for RCS messaging.

[B]

We see it. It's not a good answer.

[A]

I'm trying to find. Okay, I don't have anything to show you yet. I was trying to read.

[B]

Yeah, so. So Google RCS to our like.

[A]

But I don't know if this is.

[B]

Android phone to Android Phone is encrypted with rcs. I think the issue comes with it going from so like say Google, Google this, Google RCS texting to iPhones. Is it encrypted? RCS texting to iMessage. Is it encrypted? I'm pretty sure it's not. I might be wrong. I don't think I am. I'm pretty sure I read that. And the problem was they won't let any other phone use the imessage protocol. And they had a company that was doing it called Beeper and they were doing it through some sort of workaround. Yeah, it's not encrypted. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. So it's not. So you are getting the ability to send high resolution images, which is great because you know, like my friend Brian who used an Android, he'd send me a video and it'd be this tiny little broken down box because, you know, you had to break it down to the lowest resolution.

[A]

Yeah, no, I mean group chats, when you have a bunch of people in imessage and then one person is an Android are terrible. I mean that's what we get. People get mad at you.

[B]

People get mad at you because you have.

[A]

I use WhatsApp. I use WhatsApp.

[B]

You only use that.

[A]

I only communicate with a few people over sms, but it's. But basically I build a lot of the leading messaging services so I've got to use ours. Most people, I'm either WhatsApp or Instagram direct or Messenger. But yeah, so I think it's maybe, maybe people are less likely to get mad at me for asking them to use WhatsApp. Because.

[B]

Because you own.

[A]

We make WhatsApp.

[B]

Yeah. So when Tucker Carlson was about to interview Vladimir Putin, one of the things that was really disturbing was they contacted him and said they read his signal messages and they knew that he was going to interview Vladimir Putin. And he was like, what the fuck?

[A]

Who did?

[B]

The government. The U.S. yes, U.S. government. I forget what it was. Was it the CIA or was it the FBI? Wow. I forget who it was but. And he was like, I didn't even know you could do that.

[A]

Like, well, there are multiple vulnerabilities and all this stuff. It's like, it's unclear if I doubt that what they did was they broke signal because that encryption I think is pretty good as is WhatsApp. I mean, it's basically Signal and WhatsApp use the same encryption. It's an open source and like it's a nsa.

[B]

Nsa. Okay.

[A]

But someone could break into your phone and see everything that's on your phone. The thing that encryption does that's really good is it makes it so that the company that's running the service doesn't see it. So if you're using WhatsApp, basically when I text you on WhatsApp, there's no point at which the meta servers see the contents of that message. Unless, like, you know, we took a photo of it or shared that back to Meta in some other way. That basically it cuts out the company completely from it, which is, I think, really important for a bunch of reasons. One is people might not trust the company, but also just security issues. Right. Like, let's say someone hacks into meta, which, you know, we try really hard to make it so they can't. And we haven't had many issues with that over the 20 years of running the company. But in theory, if someone did, then they'd be able to access everyone's messages if it weren't encrypted. But because it's encrypted, there's just nothing there.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's like, I mean, they can't hack into Meta and then get access to your messages. So now someone like the NSA or CIA would have to kind of hack into your phone, which, you know, there are probably ways to do that.

[B]

Pegasus.

[A]

I mean, there are probably a bunch of ways.

[B]

Yeah, there's probably ways we don't know of.

[A]

Yeah. And then, of course, there's always the ultimate kind of physical part of it, which is if you have access to the computer, you can usually just break in. Right. So that's why, you know, if the FBI arrests you and takes your phone, they're probably going to be able to get in and see what's there.

[B]

So WhatsApp is encrypted, but if someone has something like Pegasus, what they do is have access to your phone. So it doesn't matter if anything's encrypted. They could just see it in plain sight.

[A]

Yeah. And I mean, this is one of the reasons why we put disappearing messages in, too, because that way. Oh, yeah. If someone has compromised your phone and they can see everything that's going on there, then obviously they can see stuff as it comes in. But I kind of, in general just think we should keep around as little of that stuff as possible. So there are some threads where it's like, there's photos that get shared. You want the photos. But I think for a lot of threads, a lot of people just wouldn't Be, I don't think most people would miss it if most of the contents of their threads just disappeared after seven days. Right. What I find is I don't use it that much because we have this corporate policy at Meta that we need to retain all our documents and messages and stuff. But. But before we had that, I used it as we were developing this, and every once in a while I would miss something and say, wow, I kind of wish I could go back and see that. But it was very rare. I think most communication, it's kind of like you just have the communication and then you're done. So having it be encrypted and disappearing, I think is a pretty good kind of standard of security and privacy.

[B]

And you can set that disappearing time on WhatsApp, right? You can make it one day if you want.

[A]

Yeah, you could do one day, you could do days. And you can also set it across all your threads so you can have a default timer. So that way, as new threads get created, your default timer just becomes the default for all those threads. So I think that that's a really good feature. I mean, I basically think WhatsApp and Signal are probably the two most secure that are out there on that. And of those two, I think WhatsApp is just used by a lot more people. So I think it's just generally, I mean, and I would say this because it's our product, but I do think it's the better product. But I think WhatsApp and Signal are basically the two most secure ones.

[B]

What was your take on that guy getting arrested? The CEO of Telegram. Oh, man, that's a crazy one. Right?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it's always a little difficult to weigh in on these situations without knowing all the specifics. But one of the government tactics that I've seen that I think is pretty. Is not great is an increasing number of governments, when they, like, have an issue with something that a company is doing, basically just like threaten to throw the executives of that company in prison. And it's like, I think that's just a really weird precedent to set. Right? It's like, it's if. If the. You have all the. So it's like we're operating in all these different countries and then like, you have all these governments that are basically like, if you. I know we're going to like, put out an Interpol notice to like, get you arrested because you're not doing the thing that we want. It's like, I don't know. I don't. I think that's like, not great. I think you want the. I mean, obviously you don't want people to just be, like, flagrantly violating the laws. But, like, there are laws in different countries that we disagree with. Right. So, for example, there was a point at which I think I was. Someone was trying to get me sentenced to death in Pakistan because they thought that. Oh, because someone on Facebook had a picture of where they had the drawing of the prophet Muhammad and someone said that that's blasphemy in our culture. And they brought a. They basically, like, sued me and they opened this criminal proceeding. And I don't know exactly where it went because I'm just not planning on going to Pakistan. So I was not that worried about it. But. But, like. But. But it was a little bit disconcerting. It was like, all right, fine. These guys are, like, trying to, like, like, kill you. Okay. It's not great, right? You know, it's not like, not. Yeah. I mean, it's. I feel like I. Yeah, it's like flying over that region. You don't want your plane to, like, go down above Pakistan if that thing goes through. But. But that one was sort of avoidable. But the point is, like, there are all these places around the world that just have different values. Right. That go against, like, our free expression values and want us to crack down and ban way more stuff than. I think, you know, a lot of people that we would believe is, like, the right thing to do and to have those governments be able to exert the power of saying, okay, we're going to, like, throw you in prison is. That's a lot of force. I mean, so I think it's. It's generally. Yeah, I think that this is one of the things that. That the U.S. government is probably going to need to help defend the American tech companies for abroad. But I don't. I can't weigh in that much on the Durav specific thing because I don't know what was going on there.

[B]

You know, when you're dealing with the government trying to interfere with Facebook, how much of a fear was there that they were going to get away with it and that this was going to be the future of communication online, that it was going to. They were going to be successful with all this, that they would push these things through somehow or another, especially if a even less tolerant administration got into power, they would change laws and they would do things to make it possible. How much did that concern you?

[A]

Well, we basically just reached a point where we pushed back on all this stuff. Right. So they were pushing us to censor stuff. We were unwilling to do it. We developed a very adversarial and bad relationship with our own government, which I think is just not healthy. Because I think, you know, it's, I mean, in theory, I think, you know, it would be good if the like, American industry had a positive relationship with the American government. But then what that happened is then the, the kind of US Government was going after us in all these ways. But fortunately in the U.S. you know, we have good rule of law. So our view is at the end of the day, okay, these invest, these agencies can open up investigations and we'll just defend ourselves, right? We'll go to court and we'll win all the cases because we're, you know, we follow the rules. And so I think it ends up being a big kind of political issue where it's like, it would just be, you could get a lot more done if the government were helping American companies rather than kind of slowing you down at every step along the way. It makes you a little afraid that if you ever actually mess something up, that they're really going to bring the hammer down on you if you don't have a constructive relationship. But, but I don't know, it's mostly, I mean, going back to the AI conversation, it's like, I just think like, we should all want the American companies to win at this, right? It's like this is like a huge geopolitical competition and like China's running at it super hard. And like, we should want the American companies and the American standard to win. And like, if there's going to be an open source model that everyone uses, like, we should want it to be an American model, right? It's like the, there's this great Chinese model that just came out. This company, Deepseek, they're doing really good work. It's a very advanced model and if you ask it for any negative opinions about Xi Jinping, it will not give you anything. If you ask it if Tiananmen Square happened, it will deny it, right? So I think that there are like all these things where we, we, we should, we should want the American model to win, but like, at every step along the way, if the government is sort of making that harder rather than easier than, that's. I don't know. I mean there's, there's an extent to which, okay, the American tech industry is leading, so maybe the government can like get in the way a little bit and maybe the American industry will still lead, but I don't know. It's. I think it's getting really competitive and I think, like, it's easy for the government to take for granted that the US Will lead on all these things when I think it's a very close competition and we need the help not, you know, we need them to not kind of like, you know, be a force that's helping us to do these things.

[B]

I completely agree, but I think that people with their own self interest when they're in power and they realize that these new technologies like Instagram and Facebook, that they are interfering with their ability to administer propaganda or that their, their ability to control the narrative, that that's where they get shortsighted and that's when they act in their own personal interest and not in the interest of, not neither national security or the future of the United States in terms of our ability to stay technologically ahead.

[A]

Yeah. And some of this is just, you know, if you go back to the COVID example, I think in that case they were doing something. Their goal of trying to get everyone to get vaccinated was actually, I think, a good goal. Right. It's like I was a good goal.

[B]

If it worked, if it was real, like if it was a sterilizing vaccine, if it really did prevent people from getting Covid, if it really did prevent people from infecting others or transmitting it. But it didn't. Well, so it wasn't a good deal because it wasn't based on real data.

[A]

Yeah, but. But also, even. But even if it were right, it's like if. I mean, I think that still, on balance, knowing everything that we know now, something. It's good for more people to get the vaccine, but the government still needs to play by the rules in terms of, you know, not like you can't just suppress true things in order to make your case. So I, that's. That's kind of my. My. My view on. On it is, is I'm not sure in that case how much of it was like a personal political gain that they were going for. I think that they had a, A kind of goal that they thought was in the interests of the country and the way they went about it, I think violated the law.

[B]

Well, there's a bunch of problems with that. Right. There's the emergency use authorization that they needed in order to get this pushed through. And you can't have that without valid. With valid therapeutics being available. And so they suppressed valid therapeutics. So they're suppressing real information that would lead to people being healthy and successful in defeating this disease. And they did that so that they could have this one solution. And this was Fauci's game plan. I mean, this is the movie American Buyers Club, or Dallas Buyers Club, rather. That's Fauci in that movie. That was with the AIDS crisis. This exact same game plan that was played out with the COVID vaccine, they pushed one solution, this only one, suppressed all therapeutics through propaganda, through suppressing monoclonal antibodies, like, all of it. And that was done, in my opinion, for profit. And they did that because it was extremely profitable. The amount of money that was made was extraordinary during that time.

[A]

Yeah. And. But look, I mean, I feel like a bunch of the conversation is focused on tension with the American government. I guess just the point that I'd underscore is that it's important to have this working in the American government because it is like the U.S. constitution. And like, our culture here is really good compared to a lot of other places. Right. So whatever issues we think might exist here, you go to other places and it's like really extreme.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you don't even. And there it's like you don't even necessarily have the rule of law. Right, right. And so I just think that, like, the way that this stuff works well is I think if there was a clearer strategy and the US government understood believe that it's good to kind of help advance this industry because it's strategically important for the country, then I think it would be good to basically push back on stuff that's happening in other countries that's actually a lot more extreme than the stuff that's happening in the.

[B]

U.S. yeah, I agree as well. Listen, is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap this up? Then we're good?

[A]

I don't know. I mean, how long we've been going for three hours. Yeah. I mean, well, I feel like we touched on AI. We touched on all the augmented and virtual reality stuff. And I think that that stuff is just going to be wild.

[B]

It's wild. Your AR technology that you showed me today is very impressive. It's crazy. Lex and I were playing Pong, like, apart from a table, from each other. I was playing some crazy game where my fingers got tired. Because you shoot like this because you're.

[A]

Using V1 of the neural interface. Yeah. No, it's like. It's like in the future it'll just be this.

[B]

It was really fun, though. It's really cool. And it's. It's. You see where this is all going? You know, it's really really fascinating stuff and I'm very excited about it.

[A]

Did you get a chance to use the Ray Bans and the AI in them?

[B]

Yes, we did that too. And we did translate too, where one of your, one of your co workers were speaking to me in Spanish and it was translating it to me in my ear in real time in English, which is really interesting. Nice, Amazing. It's really cool. And then you could also do it on the phone so you could show it to the person on the phone so you don't have to say the words. Like it's really fascinating stuff.

[A]

Yeah. So I mean, we're just sort of coming at it from both sides. Right. It's like the, the Ray Bans are like, okay, given a good looking pair of glasses, what's all the technology you can put into that today and, and still have it be, you know, just a few hundred dollars? And then the Orion thing is like, all right, we're building the kind of future thing that we want and we're doing our best to miniaturize it. It's basically like still pretty small. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, just thicker glasses.

[A]

Yeah. And I, I think we want it to be a little smaller. We need to be a lot cheaper. Right. Each pair right now costs more than $10,000 to make. And that's, you're not gonna have a successful consumer product at that. So we have to miniaturize it more. But I mean, the amount of stuff that we put in there from that's like, effectively like what would have been considered a supercomputer like 10 or 20 years ago, plus, you know, lasers in the arms and the like nano etchings on the, on the lens to be able to see it and the microphone and the speaker and the WI fi to be able to connect with the other. It's just like, like a wild amount of technology to kind of miniaturize into something. That one's really fun. We've been working that for 10 years. But yeah, I think, I think between that, the glasses, all the AI stuff. Yeah. All the social media stuff. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, I think we covered it and I'm very excited about this new stance that you guys are taking. I think the community notes thing is a brilliant idea that, you know, X has implemented and I think I'm glad, I'm, I am really glad that you guys are implementing it too. I think it's the way, and the way generally, I think we both agree is that people have to have the ability to communicate. They have to have the ability to express themselves and that's how we find out what's real and what's not.

[A]

Yeah. I think the more voice is the is the answer on this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yes sir And I think after sort of a long journey I'm glad to be able to take it back to the roots and I feel like we're more fortified now in the position.

[B]

Well I think one of the lessons that people have learned over the last few years with suppression of information is that that's not good and there's a giant percentage of the population that feels that way and even people that are progressive and liberals are on the that were on the side of the people that were pushing the suppression of information still don't think it's right. I think most people generally believe in the First Amendment in this country and we realize how valuable it is to have the freedom of expression.

[A]

Yeah. Anyway thanks for having me.

[B]

Thank you Mark.

[A]

Appreciate it.

[B]

Bye everybody.