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‘F—ing crazy’: Joe Rogan warns mass censoring is a ‘foolish’ approach that only leads to more radicalization

March 17, 2022 | | Print Article

Powerful podcaster Joe Rogan again took on the subject of Big Tech censorship, Tuesday, stating that apps like Twitter and Instagram censor bad ideas because exposing people to good ideas is just “exhausting.”

“It seems like there’s an issue with many social media companies, where they want to censor bad ideas. And it seems to me that part of that is because the work involved in taking a person who’s a Neo-Nazi or a Ku Klux Klan member and showing them the error of their ways, allowing them to spread their nonsense and then slowly but surely introducing them to better ideas — it’s exhausting,” Rogan told tech guest Bill Ottman, CEO of Minds, a new “alt-tech” social network based on blockchain.

He pointed to social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram which suspend and even permanently ban people for expressing their unpopular or “hateful”  points of view.

“The problem with that is that it then goes further and further and further and further down, where you’re getting rid of people for just disagreeing with you,” Rogan said.

 

Ottman, along with partner and activist Daryl Davis, describe Minds as “an open-source social network dedicated to Internet freedom.” The site promises to protect users’ privacy while allowing them to “speak freely” and earn crypto rewards for the content they provide.

“Even the Left, outlets like Vox, are now admitting that de-platforming causes more severe radicalization,” Ottman said. “This is being admitted across the board. So, the fact that Big Tech apps are not looking at this data and applying it to their policy, it makes you almost have to speculate that they’re intentionally causing it.”

While Rogan doesn’t believe they are intentionally causing it, he does think they are “foolish.”

“I think that. first of all, there’s an ideology that is attached to all the Big Tech companies, whether it’s Google or Facebook or Twitter–you have to be what they think is ‘woke,’ right? You have to subscribe to a certain line of thinking, and anybody who deviates from that line of thinking should be suppressed, minimized, or banned.”

“It’s not intentional, meaning they’re not trying to radicalize people. That’s not what they’re trying to do,” Rogan explained. “They’re just foolish in their approach.”

“The CEOs have to virtue signal. All the people that are executives have to virtue signal, and they have to say, ‘We’re doing our best to stop harmful talk. But what they call ‘harmful’–a lot of it is disagreeing with pharmaceutical companies, which is just f***ing crazy. These are the lyingist liars that ever lied. ”

Instead, Rogan appreciates the approach of Daryl Davis, an R&B blues musician and effective anti-racism activist. Davis is known for the time he has invested in persuading many Ku Klux Klan members to abandon their allegiance to white supremacy and denounce the KKK.

“This is a perfect example of not silencing peoples ideas,” said Rogan of Davis’s work, “but giving them better ideas.”

Melissa Fine
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