On today's show, we have a special guest, Ryan Hartwig of the Hartwig Foundation for Free Speech, a group dedicated to exposing social media bias. He joins us to talk about what he's learned about what's going on at the company, and why he thinks it's a problem.
00:03:07.600In his first day, President Biden already issued a number of executive orders on areas that
00:03:13.520we as a company really care quite deeply about.
00:03:15.840But there has been quite a lot of disquiet expressed by many leaders around the world, from the president of Mexico to Alexander Navalny in Russia and Chancellor Angela Merkel and others saying, well, this shows that private companies have got too much power and they should be only making these decisions in a way that is framed by democratically agreed rules.
00:03:53.480And at the moment, those democratically agreed rules don't exist.
00:04:01.800We still have to take decisions in real time.
00:04:03.800We have a system that is able to freeze commenting on threads in cases where our systems are detecting that there may be a thread that has hate speech or violence sort of in the comments.
00:04:17.720These are all things we've built over the past three, four years as part of our investments into the integrity space or efforts to protect elections.
00:04:26.760I wonder whether or not we can use Oculus to help a white police officer understand what it feels like to be a young black man who's stopped and searched and arrested by the police.
00:04:36.680And I want every major decision to run through a civil rights lens.
00:04:40.360I think that these were all important and positive steps.
00:04:43.560And I am looking forward to opportunities where Facebook is going to be able to work together with this new administration on some of their top priorities, starting with the COVID response.
00:04:56.760So that campaign is called Expose Facebook.
00:05:02.440Ryan, why don't you tell us a little bit more, go a bit more in depth about what exactly we're seeing there from Zuckerberg and the team?
00:05:08.440So yeah, in this video, we have, you know, a leaf call basically, and we have Nick Clegg, the head of global affairs for Facebook, talking about how, yes, Facebook agrees we should follow the democratic process.
00:05:21.320So as an American, as someone living in the United States, this, this really shocked me, because, you know, if they had any respect for the rule of law or for the democratic process, then they would be following Section 230.
00:05:34.140And I think it's insane to believe that it's correct in any country to delete the president of that country.
00:05:42.340Like, come on, guys, that's that's the democratic process.
00:06:02.980Why are you censoring the yeah, the president of the United States?
00:06:08.740So what do you think is the thought process behind some of the stuff we saw in there?
00:06:13.000They're wanting to disable conversations that include stuff that they call free speech.
00:06:17.880Do they actually want to make things better, the people working there?
00:06:21.820Do they think that they're changing the world by doing this or do they understand?
00:06:25.540Do you think that hate speech is actually subjective?
00:06:28.540Are these people aware that they're what they're saying might be might be seen by bigger people and they're just saying what they think other people want to hear?
00:06:36.440Do they actually believe that they're making a real difference by subjectively censoring speech?
00:07:45.320But I kind of think that people who are at the level of Mark Zuckerberg and guys who are top level engineers and all this, they're not stupid people.
00:07:54.980They have to realize that there's other opinions out there.
00:08:31.480So, I mean, there's people there who may think they're helping the world, helping protect the world, keep the world a safer place.
00:08:40.440But, you know, that's part of the argument of Section 230, why Section 230 was created in the first place, was to protect the Internet from children.
00:08:47.740And so now we're looking, now we're seeing that Facebook is using 230 as basically a brand protection tool.
00:08:53.480Because if we were to follow Section 230 as it's written, like Facebook could not censor as much as they censor.
00:09:02.500And Facebook would not be as popular because they could not restrict as much content as they're restricting.
00:09:09.980And Section 230 has been misinterpreted by the Ninth Circuit Court.
00:09:17.480And it's given Facebook additional protections.
00:09:20.720And so Jason Fick, he had a lawsuit that was about to be heard by the Supreme Court.
00:09:25.620And they declined hearing that case earlier this month in the United States.
00:09:31.180It was Jason Fick, FYK versus Facebook.
00:09:33.900So once again, the U.S. Supreme Court has failed us.
00:09:36.440So our democratic processes have failed us.
00:09:39.100I think we're facing a constitutional crisis because we had that election lawsuit in Texas, from Texas, that was tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:09:46.740And we also had this earlier in January, we had this case from Jason Fick thrown out.
00:09:51.500So, I mean, we're trying to follow the democratic process.
00:09:53.840We're trying to rein in these companies.
00:09:56.480But they've been given undue protections under Section 230.
00:10:02.060And Section 230 has been misinterpreted.
00:10:04.180It needs to be reinterpreted by the Supreme Court, not repealed.
00:10:12.440I mean, yeah, you have these employees who think they're trying to do the right thing.
00:10:18.160But the laws have been shaped in such a way that Facebook, they can do whatever they want and they never get in trouble.
00:10:24.200So what Facebook should do is they should make a spirit of the policy decision.
00:10:28.400So a lot of times when I was a content moderator, we would make decisions based on the spirit of the policy.
00:10:34.120So the policy, the letter of the policy said one thing, but we could basically break the rules a little bit and make a spirit of the policy decision.
00:10:42.000And Facebook should do the same thing.
00:10:43.660They should say, look, maybe there is some violence with the president, but based on the spirit of the policy, the wrong thing would be to remove Trump completely from Facebook and Instagram.
00:10:55.480So I think they should follow their, maybe do what we did sometimes as content moderators and follow the spirit of the policy.
00:11:01.840But who determines what the spirit of policy is?
00:11:06.400And that's the issue is at the end of the day, it's six people on the global policy team in San Francisco, maybe in Ireland, who make these subjective decisions about the spirit of their policy.
00:11:20.720Are they public people or are they public and people who nobody would hear or have heard of if they heard their name?
00:11:29.120I don't think they're public, but they should be public.
00:11:31.840I mean, with the amount of power that Facebook wields, there should be a government oversight board in each country where these, you know, global employees make decisions that affect each country, whether it's Canada or the United States or Venezuela.
00:12:54.560We have already initiated and will be publicly announcing and making available for everyone a lawsuit that we're filing against Facebook, Inc.
00:13:01.040regarding unfair competition, fraud, false advertising, and antitrust.
00:14:11.440So my question to you, Ryan, is just like Steven Crowder said, they're doing more than a lot of these politicians are.
00:14:19.400I like to point as to one person as Ted Cruz as being somebody who is very vocally against the tech censorship and a lot of the stuff we've been seeing on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
00:14:30.320But a question that most people ask and that I have asked is, why didn't the Republicans do anything when they controlled all the branches?
00:14:39.820Are they getting stalemated by, let's call them, rhino Republicans or whatever you want to call them against people who don't believe in that as part of a broader problem that we have?
00:15:01.620So, yeah, Ted Cruz has been a great proponent, along with Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, and they've pushed back against Facebook.
00:15:10.140I think, yeah, for the first two years of the Trump presidency, we controlled the Senate and the House and nothing was done about it.
00:15:18.620And this last year, late 2020, we had quite a few different hearings with congressional hearings and Senate hearings where big tech executives were questioned.
00:15:29.300But everyone always asks, well, you know, they keep on having these hearings and asking questions and nothing happens.
00:15:35.040In July of last year, I helped with a criminal referral against Mark Zuckerberg that was submitted by Congressman Matt Gaetz for alleged perjury to Congress.
00:15:48.460Because in 2018, right after I started working for Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg testified that they do not censor political speech.
00:25:08.520I mean, if you can control the narrative, then you can control so many things throughout the country.
00:25:14.120So, yeah, so with the fact-checking companies, yeah, there's definitely, it's, they're definitely being influenced by these organizations, by CNN.
00:25:29.360And it's, yeah, we should be looking to form a fact-checked jury.
00:25:33.980Well, there shouldn't even be, I don't think there should be fact-checking in the first place.
00:25:36.680I mean, it comes down to the idea of, you know, are humans intelligent enough to make decisions?
00:27:33.060All they care about is their brand and making money and protecting their brand.
00:27:39.140And right now they're running roughshod over other countries, over conservatives throughout Canada and the United States, throughout the world.
00:27:46.340They're running roughshod over nationalist movements, just people who are patriotic,
00:27:51.320who want to prioritize their country and make their country great.
00:27:57.780And so that's what this comes down to.
00:28:00.080I mean, Facebook has way too, regardless of whether you're on the right or the left, like Facebook has way too much power right now.
00:28:07.880They are not respecting the rule of law.
00:28:09.880They're not respecting political leaders.
00:28:11.620Florida just passed, the governor of Florida is passing legislation to fine the tech companies $100,000 a day when Facebook deplatforms political candidates.
00:28:26.420So the fact that that's where we're at says a lot, where we have to take action against Facebook because they're deplatforming political candidates.
00:28:35.760So that's part of the, once again, going back to the original statement from Nick Clegg, that's part of the democratic process is people run for office.
00:28:43.820And in a public forum, you cannot silence a public, someone running for public office.
00:28:49.000They have the right to speak, to communicate.
00:28:51.340And so Facebook is not following, following the spirit of, of the first amendment in the United States.
00:28:58.240Yeah. And a lot of this has to do with a lack of a competition.
00:29:01.960And as you just said earlier, they can just kick off almost anybody who, who dissents and they're taking it out of the hands of the regular person of you and me to decide what we want to listen to and, and what we believe and not believe.
00:29:15.460One more thing about censorship that it came like kind of home is as if it hasn't come home to roost with you enough, but you were suspended from Twitter.
00:29:25.060I checked before we started this interview. You're still suspended. What day did that happen? And do we know why yet?
00:29:30.220Yeah. So this past Thursday, um, yeah, this past Thursday I got suspended and I don't know why, like I, I posted a link to, um, what was the name of it? Uh, pocket net dot app.
00:29:44.980So yeah, I got suspended this past Thursday, January 28th. There was a couple of things I shared that week that maybe were questionable.
00:29:52.600I actually did post or share a screenshot of when I filmed at Facebook last week as well. So maybe they looked at that, but, uh, I mean, this is, yeah, it's, it's crazy.
00:30:04.380So I had about 35,000 followers. I have about, about half of that's probably in Brazil. Um, but yeah, after January 6th, there were a lot of people purged.
00:30:16.440So I, early January, I was about, I was at 43,000 followers and then I dropped down to 35 and then they banned, they suspended me, but I emailed them. I'm going to probably be sending them a legal letter this week to their headquarters.
00:30:29.240And, uh, yeah, it's, it's just super ironic. Um, it is super ironic, Andrew, that they suspend the, uh, president of the Hartwig foundation for free speech.
00:30:39.580Uh, I get your, I'm a free speech foundation. My, my purpose, I'm a nonprofit in Arizona. I'm going to apply for 501c3 status, but my purpose is to advocate for free speech on the internet.
00:30:49.600And guess what happened to me? They suspended me. So I think that's kind of funny.
00:30:53.660Yeah. It seems like the only way at this point to move forward with these people is litigation. So that Portuguese, is that what you speak? If you're that big in Brazil, I saw an interview with you. I wasn't sure if it was Portuguese or Spanish.
00:31:07.640Yeah. So I, I do speak fluent Spanish. I'm actually more comfortable in Spanish. And I've done some interviews in the last six, seven months in, in Argentina and Columbia. There's a guy in Argentina named El Presto. Who's the, he's like the Mark Dice of, of Argentina or, or the, or the Steven Crowder of, of, uh, Argentina. And he actually got thrown in prison because for like, uh, you know, speaking ill about the president.
00:31:32.680Well, that's a good sign. He's, he's out now, but, um, yeah, so I speak Spanish fluently, very fluently. I lived in Mexico city for a couple of years and I speak some Portuguese as well. Like a little, maybe not, not, not as much as the Spanish, but I've done a lot of interviews in Brazil.
00:31:49.240So Brazil is facing a huge amount of censorship, um, and has been over the last couple of years. So president Bolsonaro actually, uh, used social media to his advantage, much like Trump and won the election. Cause the media in, in Brazil, of course, is not going to, I don't think they have a much of a conservative media as we do. Like they don't have the Fox news or whatever.
00:32:13.220Um, or what Fox news used to be. Right. Um, so, so yeah, port of Brazil has been big. I went down to Brazil about four months ago in September and met with a congressman down there and we talked about big tech censorship.
00:32:27.560And, uh, uh, they wanted me to try to help them, uh, to follow a lawsuit or have us senators take action or, or an executive order against Brazil's Supreme court.
00:32:40.860Cause their Supreme court was basically, basically sending the police to conservatives homes, conservative donors homes and, uh, confiscating their laptops and prosecuting them just for supporting financially, uh, conservative media.
00:32:56.420What is his, uh, term there? Is, is it five years in Brazil, the term for the, for Bolsonaro or when is his, like, when does the next election happen?
00:33:07.160Yeah. His next election is next year, 2022. So I believe it's every, I believe it is every four years. Um, I may, maybe mistaken, but yeah, he's coming out for election next year and Brazil just had some local elections where they're actually using the, the same Dominion software voting machines.
00:33:24.580Oh, that's good. But, but yeah, but unlike here where we can actually do some, uh, counting, physical counting of the ballots, there are no, absolutely no physical ballots.
00:33:35.940It is all done electronically and there can be, and there can be no third party audits from, uh, outside companies.
00:33:42.020That's insane. So that's one of the biggest problems I have with the voting system in the U S like in Canada here, you go in, you put an X on the piece of paper,
00:33:51.940you hand it to the senior citizen that's taking your thing and that's it. There's no, I think they use a counting machine, uh, but there's no Dominion software.
00:34:03.240Thank God. But they did use that for the conservative party election here. So who knows? And, uh, Dominion headquarters was, or is, has one in here in Toronto, which is always great news.
00:34:15.680So one thing I wanted to ask you about parlor, you mentioned it earlier. How do you, how did this happen? Do you have any inside information on that?
00:34:24.540Obviously the Amazon web servers, which is a thing probably a lot of people didn't know about. I mean, it's more advertised in Europe.
00:34:32.160I see soccer fields have AWS on their score, their score displays and stuff. And I don't think a lot of people knew that, uh, Amazon was hosting here.
00:34:42.000And do you think it was, it was purely political? Did they come out with a reason as to why I know that some people wanted them parlor to agree to certain rules. Do you have information on that?
00:34:53.320That's a good question. So, uh, it all, so yeah, the Amazon AWS servers suspended or removed parlor. Now, now Gab was smarter from the get go.
00:35:02.860So they had their own servers built out and Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab is doing a great job of trying to create this parallel infrastructure.
00:35:11.720So that's what we really need is a parallel infrastructure, kind of a dual culture slash, you know, infrastructure for technology.
00:35:19.000If they're going to keep on, you know, censoring us, removing people. Um, so, but yeah, with parlor,
00:35:24.780I know they were getting really, really popular right after, you know, leading up to January 6th, the event, uh, in, in, uh, Washington DC where Trump gave a speech.
00:35:35.580And I try to avoid using the word riot, or of course I would never use the word insurrection, but you know, I, cause I, it is a mischaracterization of the event.
00:35:44.380I was actually there on January 6th. So I flew in on the 5th and I was there through the 7th.
00:35:48.740And I mean, there was like probably 2 million people there and you have like a handful of people, maybe a couple of thousands who were, who were being violent.
00:35:56.940So it was, yeah, it was very, very peaceful. Um, so yeah, we had right after that event is when the crackdown began.
00:36:06.300So they use that as an excuse. They use the mischaracterization of the peaceful protest as an excuse to ban parlor.
00:36:15.400And so their argument is that parlor, uh, removed that was, was allowing objectionable content, allowing people inciting for violence.
00:36:24.520Now parlor does approach, I believe they approach their content moderation a different way, but they don't have the billions of dollars to spend on content moderation.
00:36:34.240Like Facebook does Facebook probably has at least 10,000 content moderators in the U S. Um, if not more.
00:36:41.060And so that that's another reason why we should not repeal section 230, because if we repealed section 230, then you would need a whole lot more either.
00:36:51.340You could, yeah, the, the larger businesses with more money would, would basically be in a better spot to capitalize, um, on everything on, on new legislation.
00:37:01.220So that's why we shouldn't repeal section 230, because if we started the, the, uh, legal legislation process, process, process again, Facebook would have an advantage, but yeah, parlor, um, yeah.
00:37:12.740So parlor got targeted because everyone was on parlor.
00:37:16.540I mean, you got a lot of big conservative voices on there.
00:37:19.500Dan Bongino, I think it was really big on parlor.
00:37:22.060So I don't, we haven't, we haven't, we've never seen Amazon act this openly.
00:37:30.100Normally it's been the other companies that have been more blatant about their censorship.
00:37:46.100They got suspended and removed from the AWS servers.
00:37:48.920So John Matz, I was going to do an interview with him in Brazil, actually on, on the, one of the largest conservative YouTube channels in Brazil, uh, TerƧa Livre.
00:37:57.180But I think, yeah, John Matz, he had to go into hiding because the left targeted him.
00:38:02.740So he had, he was very concerned for his physical safety.
00:38:05.680So we've seen a lot of things since January 6th.
00:38:08.500We've seen a huge backlash, cancel culture against conservatives.
00:38:12.260Um, Mike Lindell, the, the founder of mypillow.com, very close with the president of the United States.
00:38:20.840He, um, Mike Lindell is being, you know, he's had a lot of backlash.
00:38:25.040They're trying to cancel or different companies are canceling his pillows in their stores.
00:38:29.700I met with him about a month ago in late December at an event in West, West Palm Beach, Florida with a turning point USA with Charlie Kirk.
00:38:36.900But, um, but yeah, um, there's just been this huge pushback and, and they're arresting a lot of people who were at the, uh, Capitol event.
00:38:45.740But yeah, Parler, um, look, like going back to it, like Antifa was on Facebook for years and years.
00:38:52.500They were organizing and Facebook knew nothing about it.
00:38:55.360And then you're going to say, that's okay.
00:38:58.700But the second that a new social media platform pops up, you're going to, you know, take down a few conservatives who, I don't even know if they were even inciting violence.
00:39:07.920They were just mentioning they were at the event and the, but that suddenly becomes violence.
00:39:12.220But, you know, for years and years, the left has always said, well, if you want to, if you don't like our platform, create your own.
00:39:37.500I think they were finding, they're going to find a Russian server that would host them.
00:39:41.040But of course the media is quick to point out that there's other, um, like truly racist and abhorrent groups that are hosted by some of these Russian servers.
00:39:50.620Um, so it's almost like a crime of, uh, of just, just being in the same room with these people.
00:40:22.940And because I liked Parler more than I like Gab and, and mine's no offense to them, but I just felt like it was just alt Twitter where I'm not getting censored.
00:40:34.180So the last thing I want to leave you with is a little bit of fun for me and you don't have to answer these questions just because of your whistleblower.
00:40:42.460And I know you, you want to keep it, uh, being as honest as you can and not be associated with things that we just talked about.
00:40:50.180I want to ask you about the conspiracies about Facebook.
00:40:53.280There's long been this conspiracy about Facebook and the, the DARPA program life log start ending the day Facebook started.
00:41:01.800And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, they had the movie, how Facebook actually started, you know, they presented in a certain way.
00:41:09.660Is there any truth to the, that, you know, to the government having a hand in Facebook?
00:41:14.300Is it actually just a data mining company?
00:41:16.780Is that, is that the point that they don't really care about communication with the masses?
00:41:21.020They just want to be able to sell data.
00:41:23.040Can you touch on any of those points or would that get you on a, on a target list?
00:41:28.520No, I think I can talk about that some, I mean, I'm watching this show on Netflix right now called, uh, like spy craft.
00:41:35.280It's here in the U S it's really good.
00:41:36.640And it talks about like the CIA's tactics throughout the years for spying on people.
00:41:39.820And like, so, I mean, if it, you know, if it were, if Facebook were a CIA program,
00:41:46.680I mean maybe, who knows, maybe it is, I mean, it would be very, very useful.
00:41:51.660And, you know, if, if, uh, if Mark Zuckerberg were a CIA asset or whatever, well, he is, he, he's an effective CIA asset.
00:42:29.520I believe at one point, and then who knows what, uh, what Microsoft was, but I feel like a lot of these companies have started in not so honest terms.
00:42:40.940So it's hard for me to believe that, oh, Mark Zuckerberg's actually this great guy, even though he shafted the, uh, the, the Winklevosses and Bill Gates is an amazing guy, but he, he screwed over his buddy there.
00:42:53.340And with, uh, with, I think after they, they left Xerox and he, he takes the, the model of the Apple.
00:43:16.980I watched during the election, of course.
00:43:18.680And then as you mentioned, all that stuff gets thrown out.
00:43:21.080So it's a great, great system we're living under.
00:43:24.300So you want the final word here, Ryan?
00:43:26.420What should we, what should we be looking out for in terms of these Facebook lawsuits and anything with Project Veritas or anything you're working with?
00:43:33.980Yeah, I think lawsuits are the way to go.
00:43:35.880I mean, we want to exhaust all of our options before we become, uh, before we, you know, before we go take the other route of, uh, you know, like an Arab spring type route of an insurrection or an actual insurrection.
00:43:49.620Not a, not a fake insurrection with someone wearing, uh, a Viking corns, right?
00:43:54.380But, uh, yeah, we want to definitely, uh, exhaust all our legal options.
00:43:59.900But we've seen that the U.S. Supreme Court has not acted and not taken decisions on the things they should have.
00:44:06.040So I, we're kind of at a breaking point in the United States.
00:44:08.500I hope we don't just, uh, you know, lay down dead and, and give up.
00:44:15.460Um, so lawsuits are the way to fight right now.
00:44:17.620I know Project Veritas, I'm sure they have lots of, lots up their sleeve right now.
00:44:21.160Um, but once again, you can, you can present all that evidence and get it to the courts.
00:44:26.320But, um, if the courts don't do anything about it, then what, then what, what next?
00:44:30.340But yeah, I'm, I'm optimistic about this year.
00:44:32.640I think it's going to be a great year, uh, having, you know, united, having someone to unite against when Joe Biden is, makes it for an interesting, uh, interesting battle.
00:44:44.660So yeah, I'm, I'm optimistic about this year.
00:44:46.740I think we're going to do great things, uh, but we really need to fight against big tech.
00:44:50.520So if you want to learn more about me and what I'm doing, you can go to ryanhartwick.org.
00:44:55.780And, uh, yeah, we're in this fight for, for the long haul.
00:44:59.020And I think we're going to do a great job in, in fighting, uh, tech censorship.