Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

This episode helps you think clearly in a noisy world, cut through misinformation, and find the solutions as applied to Technology, Power, and Control.

Show Notes

Ryan Hartwig, Facebook Whistleblower & Censorship Expert:

Website: https://ryanhartwig.org/
Links: https://linktr.ee/ryanhartwig

Get the Book: 
Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower's Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship with Kent Heckenlively,

Social Media Freedom Foundation (SMFF)

Project Veritas

Transcript

My guest today is Ryan Hartwig.

Ryan was a content moderator for a company subcontracted by Facebook.

His job was to review and delete groups, posts, comments, and videos for Facebook and Instagram.

He didn't like the way Facebook's policy suppressed content that supported conservative causes and censored some public and political comments, amongst other things.

So even though he signed a confidentiality agreement, he started wearing a hidden camera to work, recording, for example, a team lead who, under the Facebook policy of dangerous individuals and organizations, said, for example, Trump supporters are in the same speech hate category as Hitler.

Ryan's a whistleblower.

The material he captured was used in a lawsuit against Facebook.

He's the author of Behind the Mask of Facebook, Whistleblowers, Shocking Story of Big Tech Biased and Censorship.

Welcome to my show, Ryan.

Thanks, Daniel.

Thanks for having me on.

So tell me, how do you even get a job?

Did you be in a moderator, a content moderator at a company for that does this for Facebook and Instagram?

Yeah, it was kind of it was really random.

So it was it was 2018.

And I've been working doing this as a security guard at a few different places.

And I was working as a security guard at a furniture store.

And so I'm at this furniture store.

And then these two guys walk in and I'm like, hey, what do you do for a living?

And they're like, oh, we can't really tell you.

It's kind of hush hush.

And I'm like, okay, well, where do you guys work?

They're like, oh, we live right across the street.

We work right across the street, right across on either side of the freeway.

So I'm like, okay, well, can I apply?

They're like, yeah, we're hiring.

So I didn't really know much about the job, but I like ended up applying, and I knew it was like content moderation for social media, but I didn't know if it was Facebook until like pretty far along in the interview process.

So that was kind of random.

Yeah, that was 2018.

We were contracted out by Cognizant.

So I wasn't directly working for Facebook.

I was directly working for Cognizant and here in Phoenix, Arizona, making 15 bucks an hour.

But the interview was pretty crazy because they sat you down.

They're like, hey, you are going to see some really troubles like really graphic material.

Is that okay?

And they gave me examples of what I would see.

Like they showed me like anime porn and they're like, are you okay?

Seeing that.

Okay.

And so they made sure that I was okay with that.

I'm like, well, can I skip through the content?

They're like, you can't skip it.

You have to watch it.

And it was, someone was like, violent like cartel videos that they showed us.

So anyways, that was the-

These are the legitimate work that you're doing.

We get hung up on, oh, but they censored Trump or they censored, you know, LGBT or something.

I don't think people realize how much bad stuff it actually takes a human, not a robot to go, no, that's not acceptable, right?

Yeah, no, there's some of the legitimate bad stuff that we took down.

And that was part of what they were telling us is, hey, you know, we had a psychologist or psychiatrist on staff, like on site, and they would often tell us, hey, you're doing a lot of good in the world, you're kind of like the police for Facebook and taking down really, really bad stuff that shouldn't be there, like snuff videos and, you know, pornographic content, cartel videos, terrorist content, a lot of crazy stuff that the average Joe Shimo doesn't know that is on the Internet, that's on the Internet.

So yeah, it's definitely.

How then do they sneak, let's censor or promote Donald Trump or any cause, how do they sneak their agenda in there?

Kind of slick, like, you know, how does it even get put in there?

Yeah.

So the one example that I first came across, because I didn't start there with the intention of exposing them.

It was a good job for me.

The health insurance was good.

So a few months in, I noticed, okay, it was June, it was Pride Month, and they were making exceptions to allow hate speech against straight white males.

So they said, okay, we know it's against the rules to attack LGBT people, but we're going to make an exception and allow attacks against certain groups.

So I'm like straight white males.

And so I thought that was where they're making exceptions to their own rules.

When you say they, it's coming from Facebook and then the subcontractor you work for probably, right?

How exactly do they sneak that in?

They have a briefing in the morning saying, how do they tell you exactly what your job is?

Yeah, they would have daily updates, but also like every two weeks, they would let us know about any policy changes.

When I say they, we had our supervisor managers at Cognizant, who were corresponding directly, interacting directly with the Facebook team.

And Facebook would send someone maybe every month or so to check in with us, but they would have daily meetings with Facebook and do a PowerPoint presentation.

So they'd pull us onto a room.

There was probably a couple hundred of us.

Give me an example.

Yeah, and they would say, Hey, in June, we're coming across this type of content.

You know, we're going to make this exception or this type of content.

Delete this or allow this.

Are you allowed to raise your hand and say, but why?

It's not porn, it's not violence or terrorism.

Why are you or you don't want to lose your job?

Yeah, no, I did.

I mean, part of it is making the client happy.

Part of it is, yeah, I don't want to ruffle too many feathers, to a certain extent.

What's interesting is in one of those presentations that was kind of sensitive, like you was mentioning, allowing attacks against straight white males.

When they did the in-person presentation, like with like 50 of us in a PowerPoint, they skipped over that slide or like it wasn't in the deck for the presentation.

But then when they emailed it to us later, it was in there.

So I almost, they kind of slid it in.

They kind of, I think they tried to hide that possibly objectionable piece of content.

And I was working with, yeah.

So I'm imagining I'm work, I own Facebook or I'm a company.

I get why you're a whistleblower.

You wanted people to know, there are, it's curated.

What you're seeing is a curated feed, essentially.

It has a good intention of keeping the bad stuff out.

But in the end, it's actually somewhat curated.

What's wrong with that?

Like if I own the newspaper, I'm allowed to curate reader opinions that write to the newspaper.

So what's the whistleblower about?

Because I don't see the part that that's wrong and unconstitutional or legal.

Right.

Yeah.

And if it's one thing to say, okay, to censor someone's political viewpoint, okay, whatever, whatever.

Like, yeah, it is important.

But I think the bigger issue that I kind of realized later in my whistleblowing, was the influence on foreign elections.

So you've got moderators in the US who are moderating, like I was moderating content in Latin America, sometimes Spain, Canada.

So if someone's running for office and then Facebook says, oh, hey, this viral video that would show sympathy for Trump, we're going to delete this viral video, even though there's no rationale for it in our policies.

Or, hey, there's some right-wing protesters in Spain, let's keep a close eye on that, flag any content and escalate it to Facebook.

This is basically like the traditional newspaper.

You can tell when you roll into a town and read the newspaper, if the people that live there are Republican or Democrat, based on how the story on the front page reads about, let's say Trump or any president.

Yeah, Facebook's, except Facebook is publicly traded now.

So actually, Mark doesn't have the same, maybe right.

Where I'm going with this is, Yeah, yeah.

Is, if you're one who thinks Facebook or your newspaper is totally unbiased, you're out to lunch.

It's, you own the newspaper, you own Facebook.

Elon Musk owns Twitter now.

Yeah.

He's going to curate it.

If you did, you would do the same thing.

But since Facebook's publicly traded, tell me how that might change things.

I think it's less the publicly traded aspect, more of it goes back to your first question about whether they're allowed to curate or if it's a newsfeed or if it's a newspaper.

And it goes back to 1996, the Section 230, the Communications Decency Act.

And people always use the argument like a platform versus publisher.

And that's an easy way to kind of understand some of it, but it's a little bit more complex than that.

So, yeah, so Section 230 basically gives immunity, civil immunity to web pages.

Like back in the day, in the late 90s, there was like an online forum.

Or let's see, if you want a news article online, if you comment below that, well, the website owner is not responsible for those comments, right?

So that's what it was about, to protect a news website, and not hold them liable for comments below their article.

So there's civil immunity for lawsuits, right?

And then as the law got interpreted throughout the years, it became misinterpreted.

So some of the protections, like the Good Samaritan protection, were not being applied.

What's the Good Samaritan protection?

Yeah, the Good Samaritan provision is like, if you're taking something down and it's lewd or lascivious or just really like extremely vulgar or pornographic for example, then Facebook can take that down and they have the civil immunity protection.

So there's two sections in Section 230.

Well, there's several sections.

There's 230C1 and C2.

Oh, so subjectively, I could, it's kind of subjective, take something down that's political.

Maybe it's a political cartoon, and I disagree with the Paul, the statement.

But the graphic, I go, nope, I'm taking it down because the graphic is disturbing or something like that.

Yeah, along those lines.

So let me pull up the wording of Section 230.

And this is something I've worked closely with, with Jason Fick and Jason Fick, FYK.

He's done a lot of lawsuits against Facebook.

They took down his page and he's been suing them and suing the government.

They took down his Facebook page.

Yeah, he had 40 million followers on Facebook.

And Facebook, he wasn't paying any money with Facebook ads.

So they took down his page and sold it to his competitor, who would actually give Facebook more money.

Well, that's the trouble with you don't own it.

It's not your website.

Being on any, it's like Instagram, YouTube.

You take it down, you're gone.

What is, I got this off your website.

You're part of the Social Media Freedom Foundation to bring a constitutional challenge against the United States of America regarding Section 230's Fifth Amendment on Constitutionality.

So you're saying Section 230 is unconstitutional.

The way it's been interpreted over the years.

So the way it's been interpreted, so the protections of like the Good Samaritan part is being misapplied.

So basically Facebook has been given protections.

Oh, I see.

That's their excuse for taking down the Donald Trump content.

He's Hitler.

And it's my opinion.

He's Hitler.

And I'm standing by it kind of.

Yeah.

Prove he's not Hitler.

Okay, I see.

So basically, Facebook, because the law has been twisted and misinterpreted, it's giving Facebook additional protections that they shouldn't have if you were implied.

If you were, yeah.

Why do they get any special treatment at all people that post?

Because it's not freedom of speech.

You're not allowed to have freedom of speech on any of these platforms.

They're entertainment platforms.

They're not about freedom of speech.

So here's an analogy.

And it's funny, when I talk to Jason Fick, I try to give him these analogies and he doesn't like the analogies because they're too simple.

But most people need analogies.

I love simple.

You're speaking to the man on the simple analogy is good.

So let's say I go to Taco Bell, okay?

I'm inside Taco Bell and someone walks in there and starts punching someone else.

Okay.

So we're in a private establishment, but he's breaking a law.

He's assaulting someone.

Right.

So who do I call?

Does Taco Bell have their own police force?

No, they don't.

We call the government.

Like we call the local, you know, 10 people.

Call the police.

The police come in into private property and they arrest someone for assault.

So think about Facebook.

Facebook has their little Facebook Taco Bell, Facebook store, or Facebook Tacos, let's say.

Facebook Tacos.

So if you decide Facebook Tacos, I walk in there and someone is posting porn, terrorist videos, cartel videos, they're breaking the rules.

Okay.

So Facebook has its own rules.

Now, could Taco Bell have their own people and say, hey, the manager could say, hey, can get out of here.

But so the way the things have been, Facebook basically has their own police and their own, they're enforcing their own rules.

But the government also comes in as well.

And that's where things get sticky is when the government directs Facebook to do something.

And we just had an admission of this this week from Google, where Google admitted they were coerced by the government.

And that involves something called the non-delegation doctrine, where you can't have the government agencies taking action or instructing private companies.

Maybe I need to do the Derek Queen's Taco Bell.

The being assaulted and not having the police is a good example, where you call the police, not the Taco Bell security.

I can't relate it to, again, the free speech and the existing section 230 laws we have in regard to free speech.

Tell me what the 230 is, the law, what that says.

Yeah, 230 is basically, it's defining the Internet and interactive computer services.

So if you have an interactive computer service, like a website that you can interact with and comment, then that's one thing.

And then the other thing, the other definition is information content provider.

So there's interactive computer service and information content provider.

And so if I post something...

You're saying it's unconstitutional too.

You don't like 230.

Well, no, applied correctly, it works.

But the way it's been interpreted, it gives these computer services protections they shouldn't have.

So Facebook is an interactive computer service, but they're acting like an information content provider, and they're curating, they're publishing.

So according to the law, they shouldn't be able to do both and have those protections, but they are getting additional protections that the law didn't provide for.

So what's the solution?

Like if you were in charge of moderation for Facebook, and they said, whatever you think is the right thing to do, we're going to give you the keys to the kingdom, to how would you do things different at Facebook or Instagram?

So if I were in charge of the moderation of Facebook, I would approach it, well, if there's anything politically related, as long as it's not like pornographic or horrible content.

Basically, the bottom line would be anything political, we wouldn't curate at all or moderate at all.

So if it's political, just don't touch it.

Somebody was bullying somebody, you're on here, at your own risk kind of thing.

Yeah.

If there's a political theme or narrative to the content, then we would just leave it alone.

We wouldn't touch it.

I believe there are some protections that need to be in place for bullying with minors.

I don't think the internet is a safe place for minors.

I think there are some good things that social media companies can do to protect minors online.

But adults can throw it back and forth, words won't hurt me all day long.

You want to waste your time, go ahead.

I mean, yeah, there's state laws against like doxing.

So obviously you can't dox.

So yeah, you enforce it.

Bottom line is enforce the state laws.

Like if there's something really bad that shouldn't be on the internet, OK, the people can organize and go to their state legislature.

Hey, let's pass a law so that this is not allowed on the internet.

You know, actually, this reminds me of book banning.

I had no idea.

I'm like, how does a book get banned when I don't even understand what's wrong with this book?

I really have to think about it.

Was it religious, spiritual, something really deep?

It offended somebody.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as it turns out, somehow there is a legal way to get a book banned, even though technically there's nothing obnoxious or obscene in it, right?

I believe that.

Yeah, I believe there's a legal process for that.

I'm not entirely sure of that process here in the United States.

But yeah, it's actually still, you know, if a group of people want to moderate, there's some loophole or some way they will.

I think that's the danger of reading any newspaper or social thing.

How do you know what you can trust and what's not what you're missing?

Like the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.

Until recently, you would never ever hear the other side.

That reporter would lose their job, not a word.

And nobody knew that.

And yet today, it's back and forth 50-50.

Yeah, that's a fair question because, and now with AI and fake, fake, what is it called?

Deep, deep fakes.

We know that all the videos and telegram and all the information being used is information warfare, like fifth-generation, fifth-dimensional warfare.

And so, yeah, I mean, the problem is most of the time they use the argument against fake news, it's to be able to control the narrative and shut down different voices.

So, the blessing of the 21st century in computers is we have access to a wide variety of opinions.

The danger is, just to say from a personal level, not from first, is that you can find anything you want to, if you want to, you can find any kind of article that you want to agree with and kind of affirm your own bias.

Chad GBT will agree with you until you tell it, no, that's not the answer I want.

Then it will give you the answer you want.

Yeah.

So that there's a, when I was in high school, I was in this musical, the Oliver musical.

And there's a song they sing.

If you, I won't sing it for you right now, but the lyrics are, it's like, un papa, un papa, that's how it goes.

Un papa, un papa, everyone knows.

They all suppose what they want to suppose ever since un papa.

So you can, you'll suppose whatever you want to suppose.

Like if you think, and this is just using a recent example, if you think Charlie Kirk was murdered by aliens who came up, came on a spaceship and appeared underneath him, like you can find any conspiracy out there.

So I think as far as censorship goes, yeah, there's going to be a wide variety of opinions.

If it's once again, if it's political, don't touch it.

Like don't just let it be.

That's how you would do it if you were running the company.

How is Facebook doing it now, do you think, right now?

It's hard to say.

They're still censoring and they're still on the same track.

I was really surprised when Mark Zuckerberg was at Trump's inauguration.

It was a bit disappointing because I've been fighting against him and that company for a while.

You know, it's fair game though.

I don't know who I would vote for next time or what not.

If they invited me and I liked the candidate and they invited me to inauguration, I'd go.

Just because I own Facebook, right?

Yeah.

I don't know how worried Zuckerberg was like before a year ago in May of 2024, so before the inauguration, I testified before the Texas State Legislature.

I mean, we got a subpoena to the Texas State Legislature, so yeah, Texas could subpoena Facebook.

So I don't know what they uncovered.

I doubt he's at risk of going to jail.

I mean, when you're worth on, like however much he's worth, $70 billion, I don't think the law...

At the worst case, the weekend in the country club jail, whatever, or lip service.

Yeah.

I don't think the law applies to people like him, honestly.

But I think at the very least, if they can Facebook and Meta can get rid of like bots.

So the bots are kind of like the...

But at the same time, the advantage is...

So bots are used by both sides to influence like thoughts and opinions.

So like there's these whatever, like supposedly there's Israeli bots.

I'm sure every country has their own bots.

A hacker could hack the bots too.

Yeah.

And so if you want to push public opinion a certain way, then you just have like a million bots who are commenting on the posts, and then you can sway public opinion.

So a dictator in South America could use that to like silence his opposition online and kind of influence public discourse.

The thing about the bots is when I learned you had a job at Facebook doing that, first it sounds kind of exciting.

You know how many, you pretty much need one of you for every post somebody makes.

So it takes you as long to review the post as took them to post it.

It's a staggering amount of people you need on the back end to keep it clean.

Yeah, so we had at least we had at least five thousand people at that site.

But Facebook was spending like at least ten billion dollars a year on human moderation.

So I'm sure they've used a lot of and even then, I'm sure they're using like AI tools and they had to have to.

So, yeah, the scalability is an issue.

But it's like, yeah, but we need to have some human element or recourse because and that's the thing with the Fifth Amendment, it was due process.

So if I get banned or I get blocked on Facebook or my post gets deleted, where's my recourse, my Fifth Amendment?

And then if you involve the government, federal government instructing Facebook, well, now then, there's no recourse.

So Jason Fick, he sued Facebook.

He went to the Supreme Court.

They chose not to hear it.

He sued the government.

What did he sue them for?

He sued them for, I'm not sure if it was the due process.

The due process was a subsequent lawsuit.

And who is this again?

They took down one of his comments?

Yeah, they took down his whole page.

So he had like 40 million followers.

Yeah.

So I believe he sued him because he lost his business.

Basically, he lost that source of income from his Facebook page.

That was going to be my question is, what right does he have though?

Because he didn't pay for the service.

And he probably signed up like it's just a free service.

You're not paying.

We could pull the plug anytime you want.

You don't have any rights.

It's like writing to the newspaper, your opinion.

You don't have any.

The newspaper doesn't all of a sudden owe you money for publishing an opinion or something.

Yeah.

So, I mean, because they took down his, they sold his page to the competitor.

That's where he had more of a case.

So the original...

But this again would be like, suppose it's Dear Abby in reverse.

The newspaper is not paying me to be Dear Abby, but as a reader, I kept writing comments they publish.

They own those comments.

They could do whatever they want, take my material.

I knew when I wrote the newspaper, I'm giving it to them.

We don't have an agreement financially, like it's my business, so I own part of it, if you ever make anything of it.

Right.

Yeah, that's a good, that's a good, that's a good question.

So, and that's the argument a lot of people say is, well, it's a private company.

They can do whatever they want, right?

So.

Well, not anything they want, but you don't have a business agreement with them.

In fact, if you do, it's to their benefit, kind of like going to the casino.

You know, they're always going to win most of the time.

You know, you sign that, it's, you don't have anything like that with when you're on Facebook or YouTube.

Yeah.

So with Facebook, yeah.

So they, yeah, you don't have, it's funny, one of my coworkers once told me, he said, you don't have free speech, free speech rights on Facebook, you have Facebook rights, you know?

So what are your rights on Facebook?

So yeah, if you're on there and you're commenting and posting, right?

So in Jason's case, I'm sorry, I'm not giving it due diligence.

Well, he sued, everybody can sue, but he lost maybe because either they had more money to fight him or they did what I'm saying.

We didn't have a contract business-wise and you should have known better, it's, sorry.

Yeah.

But that case, this case against Facebook and it not going to spring-flow and then not hearing it, that allowed him to then sue the government.

So nobody can just like randomly just sue the government because just cause they have to be involved in the process.

So he was able to sue the government under the fifth amendment for due process because he didn't, he never had his day in court.

So he was wronged by Facebook, never had his day in court.

And he's helped some other people like get back on the platform or have their apps, have their content restored.

He is back on Facebook.

No, he's not, he's not.

But he's helped other people with that process using the knowledge he obtained and using some of that, the legal doctrine from like the non-delegation.

Oh, so tell me about the legal doctrine.

It's back to the 230 section, it sounds like.

Yeah.

That is helpful because it sounds like part of it, you didn't like because it was misinterpreted.

What's the helpful stuff they use to get back on Facebook?

Yeah.

So the key in section 230 is misinterpreting the word the.

So I've had multiple conversations with Jason Fick about this.

So in section 230 C1, it says, no provider or user of an interactive computer service, like Facebook, shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

So the provider is you, like you're posting on Facebook, and it's saying Facebook can't be the publisher provided by another information content provider.

So you can't be the publisher and the platform basically.

But it's saying shall be treated as the, and because of the grammar, the way the does interpreted in the law, like it just changed everything.

Yeah, it's in this nuance.

And I honestly, when I have conversations with him, I don't understand all of it.

But what I can tell you is like some of it, some of it has to do with the way it's basically it's been misinterpreted for the last 25 years, okay?

Pretend it's a newspaper because I can see a newspaper physically.

Maybe it's a little easier in my mind.

I'm the publisher, I own the newspaper.

But then you use the word platform.

What does it mean a platform versus the publisher?

The platform is the speaker.

So I would maybe write a column.

No, no, no.

I think the newspaper analogy is not a good analogy because think of just a forum like MySpace.

So like MySpace isn't creating content, right?

They're just letting people, users create an account.

Oh, I see.

That's the platform.

Got it.

Okay.

That's the platform because we are not creating it.

That's a good point.

Facebook doesn't create any content theoretically.

Okay.

I get this.

Yeah.

So the law is basically like, hey, Facebook, you have your social media platform.

That's cool.

But you have a bunch of users.

They're creating all the content.

Hey, if you want to take down some stuff that's lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, then that's good.

You won't be held liable for that.

But you can only be the platform.

You're not the publisher.

You can't be curating content and creating content, and then boosting content.

So when Facebook sold the content, they became a publisher of that content as well as a platform.

Is that what happened?

I wouldn't say when they, not necessarily when they sold it.

When they...

When they owned it, they took ownership of it, quite literally ownership of it, and they can't do that as a publisher.

They can only just be the host, the platform.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So in a way, yeah.

Something like that.

The lawyers found the language, okay.

Yeah.

So so they were they were given, the protections they were given by the misinterpretation of the law was that.

So there's 230C1 and C2.

So I interpret that meaning Facebook can't say anything, meaning Elon Musk is doing something illegal because he tweets on the same company he owns the platform for.

So he's double dipping, breaking the law theoretically.

Well, I wouldn't say it's just I wouldn't say put it that way.

But and we do need to have another conversation or lengthy conversation with Jason Fick.

And I apologize, I'm not probably explaining this the best way.

But it's okay.

We're asking, we're making, it's helping me ask or think better.

When we're done, I'll look it up and I'll have a better overview, a better idea of where to start.

Well, that's the gist of it.

I mean, you can take stuff down in good faith, or so that's the key part of the law is that good Samaritan, you can block and screen with offensive material in good faith, right?

But if you're going out of your way and censoring your political opponents and censoring Trump and things like that, and then that shouldn't fall under that.

So that's the gist of it.

Now, there was a Supreme Court lawsuit about a year ago with the EPA.

So the Environmental Protection Agency has all these agencies within it and they make up their own rules.

And so they go to Arizona and say, hey, you can't have smoke or mist coming out of your power plants or whatever.

So they make up their own rules, they make up their own laws.

And technically, agencies shouldn't be making up their own laws.

That has to be Congress that passes the laws.

So that Supreme Court case last year was really relevant because it deals with the non-delegation doctrine.

So the government can't, a government agency can't create a law, it has to come from Congress.

So if Facebook was being instructed or coerced by the government to telling Facebook, hey, censor these people.

So the government in California or the Fed say, hey, Facebook, I need you to censor this politician because he's right wing and Facebook does it.

Then Facebook is basically a government agency.

And if they're a government agency, they can't do anything unless Congress approves it.

So that's kind of the-

Because it hasn't been a law yet.

Yeah.

So like Congress would, so if we went down that rabbit hole, if Facebook is a government agency and they wanted to ban someone or block to remove, take Trump off Facebook, then they would have to go to Congress and say, hey, Congress, can you pass a lawsuit that we can remove Trump?

Your smoke stack EPA one is a good analogy because I'm imagining the smoke and I'm imagining I work for the EPA and it's killing people.

So it is my job to make a regulation and I'm going to say I shouldn't see any visible smoke.

It's my job to regulate this.

But what you're saying is before it actually has teeth where I can find the coal plant, the government has to pass the law that says you can't have visible emissions from the coal and then as the EPA can enforce that as a cop, is that kind of?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good.

So to Facebook, I'm trying to think out loud.

So you tell me if I got this correct.

Facebook, government can't tell them, I mean, it makes common sense to censor Trump or support him.

That's just common sense.

Wrong thing to do.

I don't know if it's as good as analogy is.

But because they were doing that, Facebook, you can argue that Facebook became a de facto government agency.

That's part of the legal argument brought forward by Jason Fick, is that because the government was instructing Facebook what to do, then Facebook was becoming a government agency, and therefore everything that Facebook is doing is illegal because they don't have approval from Congress.

This reminds me of back in the 90s, it was Quest, the telephone company, when we had landlines before cell phones.

And the CEO got subpoenaed to give over to the government all the phone records of just pretty much everybody.

And he said, no, it's common sense.

I can't do that.

Not without a subpoena.

They just asked him, right?

And they expected to get it because we're the government.

He's like, I can't do that unless you have a warrant.

He got fired and lost his job.

Yeah.

It was one of the first cases in the news, the first person to, because all this data collection thing had just started.

He's like, I can't just give you people's phone records.

But in your example, if he had, then you're saying he'd be working for the government, the phone company.

If he hadn't done what he, without the subpoena, without the legal law, without an actual warrant, just by doing so, he's working with the government.

It's like if you're in a national park and the park ranger decides to make up his own rule.

Like, hey, oh, and he sees you and he says, Daniel, you can't wear purple shoes on this trail.

And you're wearing purple shoes.

So he probably happened or something like it.

Yeah, you got too long hair or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he can't make up those rules.

Like the laws have to come from Congress.

So another lawsuit that Jason Fick was working on just recently is this case.

And there was a case filed against Biden for censorship.

So a lot of the health freedom people talking about the vaccine were censored, right?

Tell me about that.

I don't know about that.

Yeah.

So a lot of people who were talking openly about the COVID vaccine in 2020, a lot of doctors were being censored.

So even when I was there, I left right before COVID started.

But even when I was there, I found rules by Facebook where they said, oh, you can't talk about vaccines this way, or you can't say that vaccines cause autism.

There are certain things you could and couldn't say.

Who gave that to Facebook?

Yeah.

So Facebook made those rules.

But there's an allegation that Dr.

Fauci and other branches of the government, the CDC coerced, like influenced Facebook to censor posts that were anti-vaccine, especially during COVID.

I believe it.

So, yeah, so this case, so there's someone named Charlie Bullinger.

How do you coerce, though?

You can ask, how coerce implies force, or is there a threat of some kind if you don't?

What's the going on with that?

Why do they, why does Facebook do it?

If I own Facebook, I could say no, sorry.

No.

So Trump, or Zuckerberg actually talked about that in an interview with Joe Rogan.

So I'm trying to remember the instrument he used.

Like the way he explained it, he was like, oh, I'm the victim, you know, but part of me is kind of like, I believe there's an element at these big tech companies of executives who actually want to like support the leftist view pointer.

So if there's leftist people in the government.

Sure.

It's like, yeah, I don't like him anyhow.

So yeah, I'll do it for you.

But if I did like him, then I would say no, but you've sure.

And if there's any fallouts, I'm going to blame it on you that you made me do it.

The government made me do it.

Yeah, so Zuckerberg in his interview with Joe Bergen, he claimed that government employees called them and would scream and curse at them and tell them to delete certain types of content.

So I don't know if he actually felt pressured if that was just an excuse.

In Mark's defense, which I don't, from what I've seen, I'm not really impressed, don't like his character that much.

But in his defense, if I was him, I'd be thinking, well, if I say no, back to this phone company exec who lost the job, maybe the next time there's a new law up in Congress about the Internet and about platforms, they're going to remember that I told them no, kind of like a politician remembers, who gave him money, and I'm going to lose.

I'm going to lose my money, my company, and I like what they're trying to do, anyhow, politically.

So yes, you can do it.

I'll do it.

Yeah, I'm sure he's playing that game.

And I think part of his claiming that he was, I mean, he gave that interview and I think right before the election, where he's claimed that he was censored or forced by the government.

So he was playing the victim card, you know?

And then he kind of pivoted saying, oh yeah, he's free speech.

So how can you tell if somebody is honestly the victim or just lying to look better and make an excuse?

Or really, because part of me is then like feels bad for him.

Like as Facebook users, we sort of supported him.

And how dare you make him, you know, censor stuff or not?

Let him run the company open, open and free like it should be.

Yeah, open and free.

I mean, I mean, if you, if my friend Zach Voorhees, like he was a Google software engineer and he exposed kind of the culture.

He exposed a lot of things at Google, but the culture there, like the thought, the what they call the think tank.

So there's a book called Barack Obama and the slobbering media love affair.

And I say this to not be, and I try to be like, I say it's not to be right wing or left wing, but like when you throw a bunch of right wing people in a group and you, there's nobody with different viewpoints, you get group think, and you all think the same way, and anybody that deviates is like an outcast, and the same thing happens on the left.

So in the newsroom, you want to have people with different viewpoints.

And I personally tend to be more libertarian.

And so, I mean, the problem, I think the biggest problem is the culture in these cities like Austin or San Francisco, where everyone thinks the same way, anybody that deviates is like cut off and ostracized.

So, open and free, yeah, like should Facebook, Facebook should definitely adopt a more libertarian approach.

Like Zach Forhees talks about in his book, like when in 2016, when Trump won, like everyone at the company, like this is corporate culture, like there was like, they were like grieving, they were grieving.

And so they, after 2016, like they literally had a meeting with all the executives.

They were like, you know what?

Trump won, we're going to do something about it.

We're going to like, so the whole company culture.

This is Google.

Yeah, this is Google.

This is Google.

So I mean, I was never in San Francisco.

They're in grieving because Trump got elected.

Yeah.

And so they, they set out like very deliberately to take down Trump and influence the elections.

And I saw similar evidence of that, of the influence election at Facebook.

And how would Google do that?

That's the search engine.

So they're going to, they're going to censor when you Google something, just like AI.

It's going to give you what, what we think you should see in terms of the search and filter it.

And it's called, yeah.

Yeah.

It's called ephemeral.

Let's see.

So there's one named Dr.

Robert Epstein.

Not Epstein.

Dr.

Robert, he's a psychologist in California.

I talked to him a lot.

He's a PhD.

He's a classical liberal.

He's a Democrat.

And Facebook or Google has something called ephemeral searches.

So like you search something and it pops up.

Let's see.

You search election, right?

And if you're a lefty in San Francisco, it pops up.

Oh, vote today.

Hurry, vote today.

Here's a list of where you can vote.

And then after that pops up, it's gone forever.

Fermi.

It's called a Fermi?

It's called an ephemeral.

Let me try to search that.

Part of the Google algorithm that.

Yeah, it's called an ephemeral experience.

Ephemeral just means fleeting.

So like ephemeral, like a fleeting impression.

So-

I didn't realize there were fleeting impressions built into the Google search engine that I use all the time.

Yeah.

And Dr.

Epstein's proved it and he has people documenting it.

I'm disappointed in the Google people, even if I agree with your causes, that you would even try to mess with an information.

It's like there's no libraries anymore.

There's no books we can read.

And you're just messing with, you just-

it's not your job.

You should be the librarian making sure all the index cards are in place in the card catalog.

Not taking cards out and in as people walk up and, oh, so-and-so is going, let's put that card back in or let's take it out.

Disappointing.

Isn't that the ultimate superpower though?

If you kind of have a superpower in the world, imagine Daniel if God or whatever, the powers that be were like, Daniel, I'm going to give you the power to change the opinions of 300 million people all by yourself.

That's a pretty amazing superpower, right?

What's fascinating is it'd be one thing if it was big government.

This is your normal smart college kid or person educated, who is, if anything, supposed to be preventing all the censorship and misinformation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you know, I think about the history of Google and how it was started and, you know, successful IT company.

It influences other countries as well.

A great tool if you're the CIA and Google is American company, it's a great tool, right?

If you want to influence regime change.

But yeah, it goes to show like the culture in San Francisco, and kind of how it's evolved.

I'm sure they had good intentions when they started.

But with that much power, I mean, if someone had a superpower like that, don't you think someone would want to, these groups will come in and try to influence them a certain way?

They are trying to use their superpower to make the world better.

The issue is it doesn't belong on that platform.

It's a search engine like the library card catalog, and it's not the librarian's job to pull and put new cards in, take them out depending on what you or she feels like they want people to read.

Yeah, their job is to help people find what they want to read.

It's like if you go to the library and you say, hey, I want to find a book about European history.

Then as she's guiding you to give you the book, she's whispering in her ear, whites are racists, whites.

She's influencing your perception of that historical event.

So that's why.

Literally, they can show me, take me to the section of the library, take me to the card catalog, because the Google search, I don't know where the book is, I'm going to search.

They can literally give me a card that says, here's where you will find that and take out the card of what they don't want me to see.

Book is still there, the information is still on the internet.

You just can't find it in your search now.

Yeah.

And so those powers are dangerous.

So imagine that superpower, imagine you can influence the thoughts of 300 million people.

Now, you also have a global banking system where you have complete control over with debit cards, you have PayPal, which is another topic.

But so like a lot of last five years since I went public, I've kind of veered into this section, this thought process where I want to decentralize.

I think decentralization is really good.

I think with energy and with the internet and with current currency.

You'd like to do a whole show on that, which for people who haven't heard the term before, what do you mean decentral in general?

What's that mean?

Yeah, I mean, when you think of a centralized government or centralized economy, there's advantages to that.

But I think more along the lines of personal autonomy and privacy.

So more of a libertarian standpoint, almost an anarchist standpoint in a way in that there shouldn't be one entity that controls every aspect of your life.

And we're seeing this where to fly now, you have to get this federal ID, okay?

You have to get another ID card and there's a centralized database of all the people in the country, and you can't fly unless you do certain things.

So it's leaning towards this social credit system that China has, where if you criticize the leader of the country, then you lose your privileges to fly.

And if you say good things, you get more brownie points and you can redeem them for tax credits and probably or something like that.

Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, so why should the government tell me what kind of light bulbs I should have in my house?

Now, I can see like, if you look at the growth of the US and like modernization, like in the 1950s, the creation of the suburbs, I see a place for like building codes.

I think there should be building codes.

Yeah, that's common sense.

But if you go to the extreme side and you say, okay, well, why do houses cost so much, right?

Oh, because there's workers and they need to be paid.

Okay, well, why can't we build cheaper houses?

Or why is the, yeah.

I don't know if you knew this or not.

Even though there's a building code, it doesn't matter.

It's up to the guy at the building code department that makes the decision.

And technically, that's how the law reads, is we don't have to follow the building code literally.

You have to do what we tell us.

That's how that works.

Interesting.

I didn't know that.

If you ever build in the house, you'll find out.

Okay.

Just when you thought you won that argument, they'll just flat out admit.

Nope.

I'm like, why?

I had it as in an environmental assessment one time.

I'm like, you know, the electrical stuff is done wrong.

I'm like, it's not to the National Electrical Code standard.

Like, doesn't matter.

What matters?

Like what we say is matter.

Okay.

So I think, yeah.

Yeah.

So I agree with your decentralization.

I'm not as familiar with the Libertarian Party, except I really appreciate the way it encourages everybody to do their own thing and not be bogged down by laws and people telling you what to do.

So bringing it back to the Facebook and the Google, how do you find a solution to make the world better?

Do you use a different search engine instead of Google?

They'll just be doing the same thing as Google, but less good at searching.

I think, yeah, I think the better overall benefit for scientists is, I mean, Google has great products, has expanded, allowed a lot of people to have growth and education, and you can do a lot of good things with that technology.

But I think the privacy constraint, the privacy invasions are a bigger threat to society.

What's the privacy invasions from Google?

So, yeah, if they're scanning through your emails, which they do, or...

They have access to my emails, Google?

Yeah, they can scan you, yeah.

Yeah, they own all your emails.

Just by making the internet connection and being on Google when you do a search, they can go backwards and get on your computer?

That's one understanding.

They can at least scan the words in your emails, and then building a profile of you as a consumer, right?

So like Amazon, actually Amazon pulls more data from you on your browser than Facebook and Google.

Talking about the cookies too, the cookies use media so they can track you, yeah.

So they know more about you than probably you do, and they can use that to influence your behavior, like your shopping habits.

So things like that.

So yeah, the solution, it's like a better lifestyle, is have privacy.

You want to use a VPN that masks some of your traffic, and then you can use browsers like Brave, like Brave is a privacy browser.

I've heard that VPN word before.

One of these days, I'm going to, when things get bad enough, I'll finally do it.

I'm in between conspiracy and I'll believe, you know, and being normal, I'll put it.

Yeah.

I keep it practical.

I wait until.

So VPN again, that stands for what?

Yeah.

VPN is basically just a way to mask your Internet traffic.

Yeah.

So it stands for virtual private network.

And so, you know, they're like I pay like five bucks a month and I just kind of mask your traffic.

So if you don't want like all the marketers to know, like what you're searching for, and if you don't want to see those, you know, when you're on your phone, you see an ad pop up based on what you were talking about.

That's the kind of thing that I think is not healthy for society, like being constantly monitored.

I got an alternative flip solution.

Okay.

Instead of fighting the battle, take the offense.

What if we had an app I run on my computer that randomly, today I'm voting Republican, tomorrow Democrat, next week Libertarian, then Green, then just throw junk data at them.

Totally mess them up.

Let them figure out, randomize it.

Someone once told me, when I was a kid, it's one of the things I remember.

It's probably some conspiracy guy too, worrying about all this.

Daniel, the way to win, don't be predictable.

Right.

That's true.

That's true.

Maybe like a white noise generator for shopping habits.

I went fishing.

I don't even like water.

What are you talking about?

You won't find me on a boat.

Yeah.

If I'm hiking boots to cooking where?

I don't cook.

Yeah.

And then, you know, thinking out loud will happen is all their ad revenue will go down because it's not working.

And then will happen.

I don't know.

No, I think I've got some good solutions.

It's really hard to break out of the matrix because, you know, the last I bought a new smartphone from Motorola, right?

A little the most basic one.

And I opened it up and started up and it had TikTok pre-installed and I can't delete it.

I'm getting the idea you don't want a smartphone brand new one because you don't want it to be tracked and you have all these apps and data.

You got a basic one that you're hoping.

Well, no, I actually did buy a smartphone, like a Motorola G Power, I think.

And like, but it came pre-installed with TikTok and it does not allow me to remove TikTok.

Irritate me.

And so I was scrolling on Twitter and I found this other phone called Minimal.

It's called a Minimal phone and it's designed to like, get you away from that addictive nature of phones.

Because like, we look at our phones all the time, we get the dopamine from social media.

So it's kind of like a black and white screen, easy on the eyes, kind of like a BlackBerry, but like a smartphone with elements of apps.

Like a BlackBerry for 2025.

So yeah, there's, excuse me, there's a lot of solutions like that, like for technology, for getting away from it.

Myself, I kind of, it's like when 9-11 happened, I'm like, instead of, they basically won by making us afraid.

Yeah.

I don't want to live in fear or try to hide in everything else.

Because then I feel they win.

I don't want to be stressed out.

There has to be a better way than going out of my way to keep my privacy and not be part of the problem.

So, I mean, on the one extreme you have, the other one extreme you have, okay, I'm going to go live as a hermit in the woods, no electricity, no cell phone, no EMF radiation.

Then on the other extreme, you have the super, imagine the super connected like Instagram influencer who's on their phone nonstop and they use all of the apps and digital and they have a biometric ID and pretty soon you'll have a chip in your finger.

So, somewhere there's a middle ground where it's like, hey, I'm going to use the Brave browser.

I'm going to like, I'm still going to function in society.

I need a smartphone to function in society.

But I don't really like the way it's going with some of this.

You know, what can we do as a society to like push away from Google?

Because Google and these Facebook and Amazon, they control just so much information flow.

And, you know, Amazon's expanding into like, you know, food.

And then you can buy, when I was on Amazon, they're like, oh, do you want to buy groceries?

Like, no, I want to buy groceries.

I'll buy groceries from the supermarket.

So I think it's the danger is these this oligarchy.

I'm thinking about the Google example now, because I use Google a lot and I use chat CBT and I'm not, I used to be, when I worked in Motorola for 11 years, I didn't even own a computer.

That can't help because I have my own business now.

And, and, you know, we're doing this podcast and everything.

But yeah, where I'm going with this is I use it all time.

Google, I know when to question, can you give me a better answer?

A different answer?

How about this?

I keep thinking for myself, if it tells me something I really wonder about, I ask it, okay, where do you get that?

Is there something else?

Do you think there's a middle ground where if people just understood we're on Facebook, you know, it could be any platform, Instagram, it could be influenced by the government or a corporation.

Maybe you want to.

Is there a way for people just to do better and not drop it all?

Like throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Yeah.

No, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

And there's even like your smartphone.

There's other options for that as well.

There's privacy phones.

There's, I think, Eric Prince, the founder of one of the guy who worked for Blackwater, he has a phone out.

I think it's like a UP phone.

I mean, hey, if the Mexican cartel can build their own cell towers and have privacy, like why shouldn't we have the same privacy, right?

I thought of how, because I use the Google and all this, say I'm just making this up now, but I get that Donald Trump is evil, and he does a lot of bad things.

Even though he's doing a bad thing or a good thing, I still wonder how come that story came through my news feed?

Who has to benefit?

Who is benefiting from me seeing that?

So there's censorship on one hand, and then there's, why am I reading what I'm reading, like about global warming or whatever?

And that helps me automatically, because I'm like, well, whatever it is, I got to question the facts now, because I know I'm not getting the whole story.

And that goes a long ways, right?

It actually works to the detriment of whoever's trying to influence me, because they've done their verse, they've called to my attention.

Maybe I shouldn't believe that.

That's a good point.

And I think there's, I think it's good to question things.

Like I've explored different theories, like flat earth and different things.

I'm open to like people telling me about them, and there's actually some good arguments in a lot of these.

You saw my flat earth one, that's maybe.

I think I glanced at it.

Yeah, I've been researching that a little bit, like for the last few years.

Took me months, months to scientifically, logically, a lot of think problems.

Completely without saying it's junk, it's bogus, actually explain it simply.

Except for one thing.

The one thing that started it all for the flat earthers, which is what they swear by.

The globers as they call them, the people that say you're silly for believing the earth is flat.

Their argument doesn't hold water.

It's fascinating.

And when I use chat GBT to ask about the theory, relativity on how light bends and things like that.

Several times in a row, chat's locked up and says we don't have the tools to process in it anymore.

Meaning it'll tell you on one hand light doesn't bend, but of course light through a prism does and gravity bends it.

It's on the other side, no space bends.

Light keeps going straight.

I'm like, that's a mind-blowing.

How's that working?

Not literally bends, just the math bends.

I'm like, okay.

And then it'll break again, to which I'm like, you know, maybe they're both wrong.

They're not both wrong.

The earth is round.

Dave is right in terms of what he's seeing and observing makes it look like the earth is flat.

In the explanation, you're just on too big a globe so it looks flat.

You can't see it's round.

That's a simplistic excuse.

And if you actually try to use math, the theory of relativity comes in a light lot.

Yeah.

It's actually not that simple.

Yeah.

No.

And the fact that people are questioning this and having these conversations, I think is a good thing.

I think it's good for us to question.

And I ran into a church a couple of months ago in Texas, and the church they go to is usually conservative, but there was someone who teaches the youth.

And he said, in the youth, he was like, I'm really concerned because these kids are questioning things like the flatter theory.

And I'm like, that's a good thing.

They should be able to think critically and analyze opposing viewpoints.

One thing I want to mention, and then I want to mention one other movie as well, but do you know who Isaac Asimov is?

The father of science fiction.

The name.

I've read some of his books, probably, yes.

Yeah.

So he wrote one called Caves of Steel, which is really fascinating, looking at the intersection of robotics and humanity.

But also he wrote one called The Foundation Series.

And in this science fiction novel, they're on a planet and there's this, this, well, there's a mathematician who develops the theory of psycho history.

And so he can predict the future of large populations.

So he can predict all their movements and behaviors and what's going to happen.

So he predicted this huge fall of the Black Empire that would last like a dark age.

That would last like 30,000 years.

And so he took his groups of scientists and he gathered all the information, like encyclopedias basically.

And like he went to another planet for like 30,000, for like 10,000 years to see if they could prevent this.

Or like he knew the fall was going to, their dark ages were going to happen.

He wanted to shorten the span of the dark ages.

And so I think with all the data that Google has, like what do they want us to become?

Like they can literally shape humanity.

They want us to become mindless drones who just use their products.

It's like that movie, Idiocracy.

It brings me back when you mentioned the people working at Google where the ones are the ones influencing it though.

We use the word Google, it sounds like this evil empire government, you know, coercion.

They're real people who think they're smart, doing the right thing.

That's the part that's.

And their motto is, yeah, their motto is do no evil.

But it's like when you control that much data and you're influencing day to day behaviors of individuals, like, I don't know if God even like this, this is going to sound sacrilegious, but like, I don't know if he does God even have that much power over daily acts like I think God gave you free will to think for yourself.

And he's encouraging free will and sounds like Google or the people at work they're trying to do the opposite.

Just we're smarter than you.

So we've we'll figure it out.

Use our app.

It's pre-installed.

Just use it.

The movie, a last little point I want to make and we can do some final thoughts.

And that's no rush.

You have to plug your books to I'll do that real quick.

You've got Facebook.

Oh, yeah.

The book is Behind the Mask of Facebook.

I've got a copyright here.

So yeah, Behind the Mask of Facebook, a whistleblower shocking story of big tech, big tech bias and censorship.

So Kent Hacken Lively, my co-author, he actually just had an article come out from Los Angeles Times where they called him, my co-author, the Voldemort of, of literature because CNN would literally would not mention the name, his name or the name of his book on air.

So he's the Voldemort of.

I don't follow the Voltimer.

That's Lord of the Rings or one of those.

It's a Harry Potter.

So he was so evil.

He was evil wizard.

He was so evil, you couldn't even mention his name.

So you and Kent have been placed in the evil category?

Well, it was just kind of a funny comparison because Volta, yeah, because you can't name, they wouldn't, CNN wouldn't name Kent's book because it was too dangerous, I guess, for society.

I'm still trying to understand that CNN, why is he on CNN if CNN is not going to name his book?

Well, they were, they were, I don't know if he was on CNN, but they were mentioning his, his something to do with him and they wouldn't, they refused to name his book.

They didn't want to get in ruffles with Facebook.

And then you're the officer of the Social Media Freedom Foundation and Project Veritas.

Yeah.

So I worked with Jason Fick, who's done a lot with Section 230.

And then, yeah, in 2020, I went public initially with Project Veritas.

They shipped me a camera and that's when I filmed with a hidden camera at Facebook.

Oh, that's what that is.

Yeah.

But yeah, I went public in 2020.

Honestly, the last five years, I've mainly done customer service, call center work, working from home.

I'm married with two beautiful daughters, a four-year-old and a three-year-old.

And so, yeah, no, that's the book.

Yeah, Behind the Mask of Facebook.

Definitely check it out.

It's a great analysis of all Facebook's practices, where they would make countless exceptions to their own rules and just break all the rules and influence elections.

But yeah.

It sounds like, like, if I was, when you're working there, probably, like, every day you go to work, something different, like, yesterday, this was okay, today, it's not, tomorrow, I don't know, like, every day after go to work, I have to read the, it's not even common sense in what's vulgar or offensive.

It's sounds like it's what Facebook wanted you to do.

Yeah, lots of changes, lots of subjectivity, lots of breaking their own rules.

And so, yeah, the final point I wanted to make is, there's a movie called Idiocracy.

And when I interviewed with Tim Pool in 2020 on his show, he said, Ryan, have you seen the movie Idiocracy?

And I hadn't.

And it's about someone who, this really, kind of a dumb, just very average, basically dumb soldier, who gets put in a cryogenic freezing pod, and he accidentally stays in there too long.

He wakes up like 400 years in the future.

And when he wakes up, he has an IQ of like 100, baby.

And when he wakes up, he's like the smartest person in the universe, on the planet.

And in the future, everyone just like, they're basically like slobs.

They're with IQ of 50.

Everyone's eating potato chips, watching shows.

Put me back in the Chirogen.

Give me another sleep.

Wake me up in another thousand years.

Yeah.

But it's kind of like that movie WALL-E, I think, where in the future, people just like have a little, everyone has their little like wheelchair car and they just eat fast food all day.

So I feel like we're kind of evolving into that.

Oh, and there's a, I just saw a Netflix show about, what was it called?

Devolution.

There was a band in the 70s, you might know this, that was called Devolve.

Yeah, Devo.

Devo, yeah.

And it was kind of like the same message, that society is devolving.

All the PR and the publicity says that American society is great or amazing, but I think there's a lot of devolution.

How do we stop that, prevent that?

I think, I honestly think decentralization is key.

So, if we can get away from the dollar and get a gold back currency, that would help fight inflation, so people can actually earn a living.

And then having decentralized energy, reviving some of Nikola Tesla's energy projects, and I know some people who are doing that.

Because, and then decentralizing, so yeah, energy.

Okay, but the problem solution here is you're jumping to a lot of good solutions in general.

But the main problem, so we don't become potato chips in terms of IQ.

How do we keep people to keep thinking for themselves?

So they ask for Tesla's new energy project, so they ask for a better monetary system.

How do we keep people still, really to prevent it, thinking better?

It's a good question.

Yeah, as far as you're improving critical thinking, I think, well, getting teenagers off social media and off phone, off smartphones is probably a good step.

And just try to increase having a strong community, like raising your kids, having conversations, spending time in nature, just get basic stuff that is good for our mental health.

I love my brother to death.

He gives me some great ideas for asking questions on my show because he's an engineer like me, a scientist, but he's completely, help me with the words, but someone who's out to lunch in terms of what's really happening in the world, he doesn't believe in any conspiracy theories, he believes what's on the news.

I overheard him say some last time I was at his house, so it must be new in the news.

Oh, isn't it a good thing for the Federal Reserve?

Because if the Federal Reserve, if the government controlled the money, meaning he finally understood the Federal Reserve is not part of the government, it's private banks.

He's like, that's a good thing, because if the government was involved, there'd be politics involved.

I'm like, wow, somebody's smart.

And they somehow bought hook line and sinker, wherever you heard it on the news.

Yeah.

This was their explanation.

Oh, people are starting to find out that the Federal Reserve is not owned by the government.

So we better put something out there that convinces them it's a good thing.

How did you buy that and believe it?

A private bank is good for, has your best interest more than the government.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, that's a challenge, like waking up people who, and you can call it what you want.

Like people call it like the woke mind virus, brainwashing.

I mean, you could argue that people on the right are brainwashed as well.

But yeah, how do you wake people up?

It's kind of like from The Matrix.

Well, because he's not thinking for himself in that moment, it all happens to the best of us.

Yeah.

Somehow he got an information like we're speaking of in this podcast, came over his feed, his news feed, Google something.

He clicked on that article and it was basically misinformation.

Whoever put it there wanted him to think that way.

So it's basically preventing the misinformation, disinformation or recognizing it.

He didn't recognize it, so we need to prevent it.

Yeah.

So it's a lack of critical thinking.

Because I can hear lots of propaganda from either sides, but I can still take a step back and say, okay, this article on Telegram talking positively about Putin and Russia is probably propaganda.

And so how do we teach critical thinking in adults?

Yeah, teenagers, okay, we can shape them.

But if you're an adult and you're stuck in your ways and you don't have critical thinking, I'm sorry.

There probably isn't any hope for you.

Sorry to be pessimistic.

Now, imagine this.

If you really want to wake people up, turn off, shut off the Internet for a month.

That would wake people up.

I don't know.

That would be an extreme version.

My phone had a bug and I couldn't do text messaging for a month.

It was so refreshing.

Just dropping text, no text, staggering amount of relief, more time and feeling better.

Yeah.

So maybe there's some alternate reality in the future.

Maybe there's some fascist government that's going to force everybody to stop texting, right?

Because it's better for them.

Although that would go a contrary to my libertarian belief that you shouldn't force people.

But if you're looking at what's better for society, like maybe it's better to force people to not text or not use social media.

I don't know.

Like if you could delete one thing in the world tomorrow, right, that would benefit society.

I think he nailed it better right the first time, rather than especially as a libertarian, rather than tell people what to do, they just need to think better and second guess stuff and question everything a little, a little better.

That's why when I had the Flat Earth guy on my podcast, I just want to have a conversation.

I was curious how they think.

They beat me up by the way.

They thought I was out to get them.

So they didn't get, I was really honestly want to have a conversation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The critical thinking part, I guess.

Thanks so much, Ryan, for being on my show.

Yeah.

No, that was a great conversation.

I really enjoyed it.

I haven't, don't do podcasts too often anymore, and your content really stuck out, and I like your content.

So thanks for having me on.

Your books and organizations will be in the show notes.

Is there any last words, anything we haven't talked about, you think might want people to know?

No, just last, I mean, I'm on X right now, just Hartwig underscore free.

But yeah, no, just try to decentralize and live a privacy-focused life as much you can.

Thank you.

Have a great day.

Thanks.