The Zuckerberg Rogan interview, he said that the administration would call him almost daily, screaming at him, yelling at him to tell him that he has to censor. He tells the story of that’s where he can’t be part of this he says, he’s going to do away with censorship. We’re not going to do it anymore.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Zuckerberg Rogan interview, there was nothing equivocal about what Zuckerberg said. He said that the administration would call him almost daily, screaming at him, yelling at him to tell him that he has to censor. And he tells the story, really, of that’s where it really started to turn with him. That’s where he says, I can’t be part of this and the truth is, he then says, we’re going to do away with censorship. We’re not going to do it anymore.
Farron Cousins: We’re going to do away with fact checking.
Mike Papantonio: Well, fact checking. I call it censorship. We just use different terms. Maybe it’s the same thing, but I want to call it censorship. You call it fact checking. Okay. So in the fact checking, he says that we’ve gone too far and that’s his argument and the argument’s been out there for a long time. You’ve got algorithms that affect the flow of whether it’s conservative or liberal. You have pinheads that are supposed to be making decisions of whether something’s misinformation. The problem has always been that whether it’s the right doing the fact checking or that’s left doing the fact checking the ideology drives what those fact-checkers decide. And it’s clearly there. I call ’em, to me the answer is to let the comment warriors, the netizens, the people who spend all frigging day because they don’t have a life.
Farron Cousins: The crazy people.
Mike Papantonio: The crazy people in front of a computer making comments. Let them find this stuff and let the process work out. What do you think?
Farron Cousins: I think that is a poor system because on the community note system, I can do a video talking about how cutting taxes for the wealthy does not benefit the working class at all. A conservative can come on there, add a community note that cannot be removed and say, trickle down economics is the best thing that ever happened for the middle class in America and now suddenly that statement lives at the bottom of my video for every single person who sees it. It’s not true, but that’s what the community note system allows. But with the Rogan interview, I think what’s really funny about it is Zuckerberg makes those claims, like you said, they would call us screaming, and then Rogan actually pressed him. He’s like, oh, they called you. Well, no, no. I didn’t actually talk to them. I had heard that they talked to some people who worked for me. Well, who? Who from the administration? Well, I don’t know who from the administration actually did it. Um, did you get the phone calls recorded? No. I don’t think we recorded anything. If Zuckerberg were on the stand and you’re grilling him and those were his answers, you would turn to the jury and be like, are you really going to take this guy at his face value when he has no evidence to back it up? Can’t name a single person. Look, I’m not saying it didn’t happen.
Mike Papantonio: It occurred, Farron.
Farron Cousins: Because this was about Covid misinformation. And it also, Zuckerberg conveniently ignored when the Trump administration had them remove Covid misinformation in 2020, which was a good thing and they did it. So there’s a lot of things that Zuckerberg couldn’t answer, and a lot of it has to do with what are his motives right now.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, come on. We know. We’ve done two stories on it. He wants Daddy Trump to save him.
Farron Cousins: The last two weeks, Zuckerberg has gone down to Mar-a-Lago. He has kissed the ring. He’s admitted to basically begging Donald Trump to interfere with the European Union so that they stop their antitrust case against him. He wants the federal government to stop their antitrust case against him, which comes up in April. So he’s got a lot at stake here, and he’s going all in on the Trump folks.
Mike Papantonio: Million dollars for the inauguration. Look, I don’t really care what his motive is. I’m glad he’s doing it. I’m just pleased to death this is occurring regardless of what his motive is. Look, you only got a couple of concerns. 230, you got that out there still. If we could ever do away with that, we would then be able to say, well, the market should take care of itself because if you’re going to put something out there and there’s several different classes. One is you’ve put something out there that’s literally hurt the American public either through something like trafficking or whatever it may be, you ought to be able to deal with that without 230. They ought to be able to hire enough people to make sure they control that. It’s just staffing. That’s all it is. The other thing is, is I really do believe the system will take care of itself and that is, you’ve got people who are obsessive compulsive. Now, they might be crazy, as you like to say, they may be lunatics and there may be a DSM-6 next year that talks about this obsessive compulsive problem with people who sit in front of the computer and have to be heard. But I think that does at least answer the fact checking and it may be wrong facts. But there are other ideas coming out there. That’s what I’m trying to say. May not be a solution, Farron, but to me, I hate the notion, what you call fact checking, I call censorship. I hate it so badly. I think it’s so dangerous that I’m willing to say, I’d rather bet on the nutcases that are in front of their computer all day saying, I want to comment.
Farron Cousins: I think the people getting news from DailyEagle.Stormer that says Hillary Clinton is that trafficking children, I think that’s more dangerous than having a fact checker say, wait a minute, you’re a moron if you believe this and that’s the kind of misinformation that does flow on Facebook. And look, we’ve seen some hilarious things happen since they got rid of the fact checkers. There was a meme going around. One of them said, Mark Zuckerberg successfully the first person to ever receive a rat penis transplant. So careful what you wish for Zuckerberg because it’s coming.
Mike Papantonio: But again, I don’t think we’re that far apart on this. I think you believe in the First Amendment very strongly. I just am extreme on it. I always think that people ought to be able to say what they need to say and it’s just like the economic market. It takes care of itself. It responds. And even though you may be a bunch of nut cases who are sitting at home with nothing to do, making comments, something’s responding to what’s on there.
Farron Cousins: Well, here’s the thing though about the First Amendment argument with this is that those posts of misinformation, whether it’s an article, something somebody just posts, you could still see them. All it said was this information was checked by the fact checkers and determined to be false. So nobody was being silenced. Nobody was being censored. It’s still available. All it has is a little note saying, hey, this is a lie. I don’t see the problem with that.
Mike Papantonio: But then we got to count on the fact checker, don’t we?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, USA today was involved. So we got a lot of actual reputable organizations.
Mike Papantonio: Well, again, how do you get the ideology out of it? You can’t. I’m telling you, you cannot get, if you have Fox fact checkers, you can’t change that ideology. Let it all converge and then let the reader make their way through it. That’s the way I see it. It’s far more extreme than what you’re talking about. I get what you’re saying. I understand it. We’ve seen it happen somewhat successfully. I still think the ideology problem is something insurmountable in my way of looking at it. So God bless the, what do they call ’em? They’ve got all kinds of names for ’em right now. The folks that sit at home all day long.
Farron Cousins: Oh, the keyboard warriors.
Mike Papantonio: The keyboard warriors, yeah.
