2060: The Death of Free Speech & the Rise of Censorship with Amy Peikoff

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Welcome to episode 2060 and you know what that means. Today is a 10th episode show where we discuss a topic of great interest. However, it is not directly related to real estate investing. But I called this around January 6th of one of these prior years. I called this the most important topic, the most important really threatening facing humanity. And that is the thought police. Those folks out there who are trying to control what we see and what we hear, what we consume, and thereby control what we think. So we've got a special guest today. It is Amy Peacock. I met her actually just over 20 years ago in Helsinki, Finland. And we were on an investor cruise at the time and we spent some time together hanging out in Russia and fishing, Finland and some of the Scandinavian countries. And you may know her former husband Leonard is the sole heir to Ayn Rand's estate. So a really interesting person. Amy has a whole bunch of insights onto this topic. She used to be the chief policy officer at Parlor, or in French that's parle, which I believe means to talk. Right? Or something like that. Don't forgive me. For those of you who speak French out there, correct me, comment below. Give us the literal translation of parlay. Parlez vous francais. Yeah, okay, something like that. Anyway, so she was chief policy officer there at Parler, as we less informed People say. And then she is now with the censorship free platform Rumble. So we're going to talk about some very important issues today, so look forward to that. But today is actually my birthday, so, you know, I really rarely use it. I try not to go to this place because I do not recommend it. It's just another big evil corporation. But that is none other than Starbucks. But you know, in my app that happened to be on my phone that I forgot about, I got a notice that you get a free drink for your birthday. So I went in there this morning and I decided I would treat myself to something I also never drink, which is these disgusting, sugary, fatty drinks. But I got a pumpkin spice latte because I do love pumpkin flavor, and decided to get that with oat milk, but was out there sitting on the patio just enjoying it. It tasted so good. And I thought, why does this drink taste so good? Well, before I get to that, I got to tell you, the cashier rang it up and it was $6.90. And she says, hey, it's your birthday. Do you want an extra shot or something? I said, no, but $6.90. So I talked to her because I was shocked. You know, I usually just order a tall blonde, which is part of my creative visualization strategy. And I never actually get a tall blonde. Well, hardly ever. But I order that as a drink when I go there. And occasionally the, the cashier makes a joke about it. Oh, yeah, she's, she, she just came in and she just left, that tall blonde. But anyway, that's the drink I normally order. Right. But now I got a specialty drink because it was free, right? $6.90. And she said, the cashier said, that is nothing. Some people buy drinks that are 12, $13 all day long. How do you spend 12 or $13 on a drink at Starbucks? And she explained how they do that, and I thought, oh, my God. So anyway, moving on. I'm out there sipping the drink, and I just got to tell you, I looked up the nutritional information. This is absolutely shocking. I stopped drinking it after that. A pumpkin spice latte has 390 calories, first of all. So if you're having 2,000 calories a day, you just blew 400 calories on this drink. 14 grams of fat. 14 grams of fat, if you can believe that. It has 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 230 milligrams of salt sodium. Right. But 52 grams of carbohydrates, 0 fiber, and the carbohydrate makeup is 50 grams of sugar. Oh, my God. That is toxic. Why isn't there a warning label on this drink? It is seriously a toxic drink. Absolutely shocking. You wonder why your health insurance is so high. Because you're paying for all the folks that are drinking this poison. I mean, it is absolute poison. Like, why do cigarettes need a warning label? And a pumpkin spice latte does not require. Require a warning label. It is absolutely pathetic, shocking, disgusting. And the reason nobody seems to attack Starbucks, that is giving America or the world diabetes, cancer, and all these. All these horrible diseases, right? Because none of their stuff's organic either, by the way. So it's got tons of pesticides on it. You know, by the way, part of this is just my opinion. I want to say that Starbucks, don't get too mad at me. I am your customer, after all.

But, you know, like, how can they serve this? It's absolutely disgusting. 50 grams of sugar. So I was told that the amount of sugar you can, like, reasonably digest and process normally is 4 grams, and I think that's per hour. I might be wrong about that. Comment below if you're watching on a video platform. If not, go to jasonhartman.com ask and tell me what you think about this. Because you look at the obesity epidemic. What is it like? Two thirds of America now is obese, clinically obese. And that's not just a few extra pounds. That's obese. Clinically obese. And the diabetes problem is spiraling out of control. Cancer. I mean, you know, sugar is like gasoline for cancer cells. I mean, just research it, look it up, you know, learn about. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a health expert, but I know enough to read a label. And this is poisonous in my opinion. Okay. I mean, I just cannot believe this drink is like this. And it also says in the nutrition information that if you were to add whole milk, because I guess they don't do it with whole milk. It actually gets worse than all of this, right? So, wow. I guess I already had my birthday cake, so there you go. All right, enough of my rant. Hope you enjoyed it. Let's get on to our 10th episode guest, and let's talk to Amy about these critically important topics. I don't know, maybe the ingredients and the health and nutrition thing is the most important thing for humanity. I actually don't think so, though. I think censorship is the biggest threat facing humanity. What do you think? Tell me below. But let's listen into this interview.

It is my pleasure to welcome Amy Peacock to the show. She is the chief policy officer for Bitchute and formerly the chief policy officer for Parler. And we are going to talk about some very, very important topics. You know, many times since 2020 and what happened at the Capitol. I have called this the most important issue facing humanity, much more important than Covid or anything. Because without freedom of speech, we have nothing. We just have got to be able to communicate ideas freely. It is the most important issue facing humanity, in my humble opinion. And we're going to dive into that today. Amy, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing pretty well, thank you. I'm glad we finally got to speak. And in fact, I mean, I'm surprised that we met all of those years ago. It was interesting that we have that history.

So I'll tell you the backstory, folks. So Amy and I met in Helsinki, Finland, and hung out in St. Petersburg, Russia on a crystal cruise about 20 something years ago. And I remember that and told her about it and kind of refreshed her memory on it. So it's great to have her. It's good to have you, Amy. And you're coming to us from beautiful Austin, Texas.

I know it's still very hot here. So I'm done calling this beautiful. I'm ready for the next phase.

Not this time of year, I get it. But anyway, we're glad to have you. And we want to dive into this topic of censorship, but also surveillance. And these are different things. So let's maybe start with surveillance a little bit, because a lot of people really aren't aware of how they're being surveilled, both legally and illegally. Why don't we talk? Start there and tell us what you know.

So I always look at this topic from the fact that in our lives today, as we go about our daily lives, we are constantly sharing information with what is known as third parties in the law. So you're sharing information with your bank, you share information with Starbucks. If you buy with your little Starbucks card, you share information with social media networks, email service providers, cell service providers, et cetera, et cetera, Right? So in our law, since the 1970s, it has been the case that whenever you share information with third parties, you no longer have what is known as a reasonable expectation of privacy. And in that information, and that is due to something called the third party doctrine, right from third parties. What is the consequence of you not having this reasonable expectation? The consequence is that if the government obtains, is not considered a search within the meaning of the fourth Amendment, which means that the government can obtain it without A warrant, no probable cause, no particularized suspicion. So if we go back a little bit over 10 years ago and we think about the bulk surveillance programs that Snowden revealed and you know, he went to great risk, you know, personal risk, and he wound up in Russia and you know, made quite a sacrifice to do this right, to reveal this to the world. All of those programs are putatively legal. You know, they're considered legal. Why? Because of this thing called the third party doctrine. The government says it has, you know, it has enough of a need and then it can get this information without a warrant, even in bulk. And, etc. And so that doctrine, which, you know, by the time Snowden had made his revelations, I had already identified that there was a problem with it. I had a common law based solution for it. I ended up writing that up and publishing it. Thanks to Snowden's revelations, that doctrine is still in full force today. With a little bit of a caveat, which is you might remember there was a case called Carpenter in 2018 and in the Carpenter vs United States case, what was at issue was 127 days worth of cell site location data. So the telephone companies, your cell company keeps records of where you are in relation to cell tower locations, right? That's cell site location data. And what the court held in Carpenter was that, and this is a very narrow holding, right? And this is what the court does a lot. It's kind of maddening, a narrow holding saying that if there is 127 days worth of consecutive cell site location data, then the government needs to get a warrant to get that. That's the little carve out that we have of the third party doctrine so far. But otherwise, in my view, even though maybe they've passed a little bit of legislation here or there in all those 10 years since noted, revealed those programs, right. They have done nothing of real substance to address those problems. And I think, you know, when you and I think about, oh yeah, I share some information with Starbucks for the purpose of getting the discount or the free coffee after 10 or 20 or whatever, or I share information with Facebook in order to take advantage of their services, it's not as if I think, oh, I'm sharing this information and I no longer have any reasonable expectation of any privacy in that forever. At least it shouldn't be that way, right? And what I want to do is propose a solution whereby the court will again recognize that when you share something with a third party for a limited purpose, it doesn't mean that the government should be able to Obtain it without a warrant. The government should have to get a warrant before it can get that information, even from a third party.

Absolutely. So this is what I've been saying for easily 12 years on this show, and that is that the government is restricted, thankfully by our wonderful Constitution. Okay? And the government can't violate your first Amendment rights. It can't violate your fourth Amendment rights. Right? You know, the government has all these restrictions and that's a beautiful thing. But third party companies that are private businesses, especially when you accept a TOS A terms of service, they don't have these restrictions. So the government makes an end run around the Constitution by just getting in bed with these third party companies. And you know, of course, the third party companies are so overfunded and the, the way capital formation happens in this country and in the world is just pathetic. That's, that's really what needs to be revised, okay? Because these tech companies have too much money, they have too much leverage, and so they hire armies of lobbyists to go and trade favors with the government. And why do we think that Google and Facebook haven't been busted up under antitrust laws, which they should have been a long time ago?

Because that's used as a stick, right?

It's the leverage point. It's the lever that they're both trading with each other. The government is saying, look, we're going to ignore this so the DOJ won't attack them and they're going to return the favor by sharing information and restricting speech and so forth. And it is a big bad problem. Look at throughout history, everybody rails against fascism, right? They hate Mussolini. And this is what we have now. We have a new version of corporate fascism. Because these big companies are just proxies for the government. They are extensions of the government. They're so big where the revenue of a company, a private company, well, publicly traded company, but it's a private company, it's not a government. When it becomes the size of the GDP of country number 70 in the world out of, you know, 195 countries or so, that's not a company anymore. That, that's, that's a government. Okay? So you know, when we say, look, we're in favor of business, we want to be business friendly and have free trade and so forth. This is not free trade. This is the opposite of free trade. This is cronyism, fascism. It is super, super scary the way these companies are being used as extensions of government to violate our constitutional rights.

Right? Now I'm going to push back a little bit Because I don't think that the problem is the companies themselves, per se, but it's that our governments have too much power such that they can entwine themselves with these companies in the ways that we're talking about right now. So, for example, Vivek Ramaswamy, I don't know what you think of him as a guy.

He's been on the show. Yeah.

Okay. Has he? Has he? That's great. So I first crossed paths with him back in 2021, right around the time that Farler was deplatformed. He and Judd Rubenfeld had written this very intriguing op ed in the Wall Street Journal. It was Save the Constitution from Big Tech. And the whole point was that they brought into this context where you have fascist censorship is what I like to call it. The using the tech companies as a way to do what they couldn't do directly. They brought in something called the State action doctrine. And I don't want to get into the, you know, weeds on that one there, but people should go read Ramasami on that similarly, you know, so if you apply that doctrine, that was the point, if you apply that doctrine, then you're going to get rid of a lot of that fascist censorship. So that was my point in bringing him up. With respect to my solution about this third party doctrine, what it would do is it would require government to get a warrant even if the party that it's obtaining the information from is a so called third party. So if my solution were applied, and this is why I think Snowden retweeted it, because he realizes this too, it would render illegal all of these avenues that the government has been using for decades to obtain our private information from these third parties without a warrant. Those would be done if people wanted to investigate the subject. You know, someone like you, right, they say, okay, you know, Jason, we think he did something bad, they would have to present a warrant either to you, heaven forbid. Imagine, you know, actually telling you that you are under investigation. But if they were going to go to the third party, at least they would have to present them with a warrant based on probable cause. In particular, I suspicion.

Okay, so Amy, we've talked about sort of the esoteric theories here, but can you share any examples of why this should be so important? Like what has happened to some specific people? What has happened to their lives when the government abuses this, this power?

Well, so an example we might have in mind, right, is that the cell location data or other types of, what is called metadata that people have obtained because of the, the Phones, maybe pictures that they've taken there that were posted online or etc. Is the mere presence at a Trump rally at The Capitol on January 6, 2021 would get you in trouble. Right? And they would easily get this information without even a warrant, based on probable cause and particularized suspicion, and then start putting a whole bunch of people under different types of investigation. We've also seen how this sort of metadata and shared data was used in Canada against the truckers when they were protesting the vaccine mandates.

Before you go into that, let me just point out something. And this is absolutely disgusting. I mean, we've heard the stories about Airbnb canceling people's accommodations because they think they're all the people going to the Trump rally. Oh, wow.

I hadn't heard that one.

Oh, that has definitely happened. Airbnb literally will close accommodations around these, what they think are like, hot points. Right, Troy? And there's a Trump rally. You can't get an Airbnb suddenly. It's just these tech companies are so abusive. They are the new. They're the new monarchs, the new dictators, the new totalitarian governments, and they have the power.

You know, I'd like to think that my solution could solve everything, but the Airbnb example that you bring up, I'm thinking that all Airbnb, all Airbnb does is they know the location of the Trump rally. Its. And they just cut off, you know, rentals around it for a certain time period or something.

Think about it. It's so easy for, you know, Facebook not to display or, you know, the tweets or. They're not the tweets, but the post from those locations. Right? They know where you're located, they know what you're posting about. They make them so they don't show up in anybody's news feed. Whenever I post anything like that, you know, I get like 4 likes. When I post what I had for lunch, I get 62 likes. It's absurd. Right? You know, obviously they're not showing that in people's news feeds. Right. It's just clear as day that they're scamming the system. So I've got three solutions I want to share with you for that, but. But please go ahead with the truckers in Canada and so forth.

Oh, no, no, sure. So, I mean, those were just my concrete examples. Right. So these are times when government is using its power to obtain this information from third parties without a warrant. Of course, in Canada, it got even worse. And we saw that the truckers, banks, bank accounts were attacked, etc.

Would.

I'd love to hear your proposed solutions. Like I said, my proposed solution is out there. It's at a tweet on the top of my Twitter feed. You can find it. I've got a link to this article if people want to read it.

Give out your X feed or Twitter.

Sorry, I keep calling it Twitter. Yeah. So me, peacock. So it's M, Y, P, E, I, K, O, F F. And then you'll just find it. Right. Pinned there. I'm going to keep it there for the foreseeable future, maybe until it's implemented. Right. And then I could let it go. Yeah, no, I want to hear. I want to hear your solution.

The three things I've been talking about for easily a decade are these tech companies because they're protected because of the cda, the Communications Decency act, which of course is a completely ridiculous name for that bill. But the section 230 immunity that they are given is totally unfair. That needs to be repealed. And sadly, the Supreme Court just went the other way on it, you know, several months ago.

Double down.

Yeah, yeah, they doubled down on it, sadly. But the idea of this way back in, I think the early 90s, was that, oh, you know, this Internet thing is new. These, these tech companies, they need to have an advantage over regular traditional media like the New York Times or, you know, the news station or whatever. And so they get to claim that when someone posts something defamatory or damaging on their platforms, they get to claim, oh, you know, we're just a platform. We have no responsibility here. You know, it's just purchased a platform. So great. But the problem is that's a lie. They're not just a platform because they negatively edit their content. But the. One of the things you have to do to qualify to be a platform is to not be a publisher. Okay? And so the New York Times, the LA Times, all the news stations, they are publishers. They create content and publish it. And so Facebook just gets to go and say, well, we don't publish any content. We just let other people publish content. So we're just a platform. But that's not true. Because they censor certain content and because they have billions of users, you can literally be a publisher in the negative. I don't know how to say that. Right. But, you know, by deciding what gets shown and not shown, that makes you a publisher, even though you don't write your own articles. Right.

So I would agree with you in part and not. So I do agree that insofar as Somebody is just providing a platform and is not publishing content that, you know, the user generated content should not be treated as being published by that entity. Right. Whether section 230 is the correct implementation of that principle, I have a little bit of a doubt because it seems to give an automatic knee jerk, wider immunity than the company should enjoy. And in fact, Clarence Thomas has commented on this. There was a case called Malware Bytes versus Enigma, and he wrote a statement in which he actually laid out his guidelines for a narrower interpretation of section 230. And it's along the lines that I think would be correct, which is not that you say a platform is entirely, 100% a publisher or entirely 100% a platform. Right. That you look at each particular instance, you know, this removal of content or this, you know, featuring of content. Right. Because sometimes they boost content in order to increase engagement and that really by.

Choosing what gets boosted and what gets ignored.

Right, right. Well, and I don't know if you even want to call it publishing per se, because it's maybe not exactly the same as that. But what Clarence Thomas explained and what I think is right is that the. They should be held liable for whatever their contribution is to the creation and. Or the amplification or the de. Amplification.

The amplification.

So. So, yeah, so whatever their contribution is is what they should be held liable for. Yeah.

Right. Okay.

So that's, that's where I think they should go with this.

So here are my three solutions. Okay.

Okay.

Number one, these companies are way too big. They need to be busted up under antitrust laws. We have existing laws on the books that would separate them so they could have different management. And there was a marketplace of competition and a marketplace of ideas. These are basically monopolies. I mean, argue all you want about how they're not monopolies. They're fricking monopolies. Okay? They're just way too big. They are the public square and they should not have the control they do. Number two, they should be regulated under common carrier laws like utilities. If we're on the phone and you and I, Amy, are talking on the telephone about something the phone company doesn't politically agree with, as long as we pay our bill, they don't get to cut off our phone service. And then the argument's going to be, well, these platforms are all free. They're not free. You're paying with your data, which you explained earlier. Right. We're definitely paying with our data and our liberty. So that is the price we pay, which is much higher than 20 bucks a month. I'd rather pay $20 a month to Facebook than be paying with my data number three. Their algorithms need to be open source. They need to be made public so all the computer geeks in the world can see why is it that Amy's post shows up in Jason's news feed, but then when she makes a post tomorrow, for some reason Jason doesn't see it? It Google, their search algorithms are, you know, like the, the greatest national secret. Right? Facebook's algorithms are this, is this all should not be allowed to be a secret. And I know they're going to say, well, that's our trade secret. That's what makes us so great. You know, tough. If you want to be this big and you want to control 70% of the world's search traffic on your search engine, you don't get to have those same rights that a private company gets. If you got 15% of the market, sure, you should be protected because you're an up and comer, you're a startup. That's when you should get some protection. But not when you're this big. You're the public square when you're that big.

So can I give you three quick answers to your three solutions? Okay, so with respect to the antitrust, philosophically, I'm opposed to antitrust a lot.

Because of your Ayn Randian.

Well, sure.

Heritage.

With, yeah. But with, with respect to them in this situation, I actually do think that the government has contributed to them having monopoly power. A big example, of course, was the COVID lockdowns. Right. The COVID lockdowns had everybody glued to these third party platform providers, including Zoom that we're speaking on now. Right.

Netflix and all of them.

Yeah, right, right. And so I could see a surgical use of antitrust in order to take away, take back the advantage that government has given. Okay, so that's my exception for, for this particular situation.

Make a point on that. So I would argue that Covid is only a recent example. It happened long before that. It goes into the way capital formation occurs. The fact that government regulates Wall street so heavily and regulates banking so heavily is the reason we have a winner take all world. And if we didn't, if they were more deregulated. Listen, I love Ayn Rand too. I've taken all the courses at the Ayn Rand Institute when I lived in Irvine. Okay. I read Atlas Shrugged, it's a life changing book, et cetera, et cetera. But you got to have one way or the other way, right?

Yeah.

No, no, no, you're getting the best of all worlds. Right.

That is where I've had some disagreement with Objectivists recently. Not on the principles, but on whether the principles are fully applicable in today's context. Again with this creeping fascism that you.

And I agree about.

Right.

Ayn Rand live in a world where there was the sort of scalability that these tech companies have. When you're dealing with bits rather than atoms, scalability is much greater and much cheaper. Okay. You can reach the entire planet with one person at a laptop computer. Okay. That's a different world than arguing that, oh, GM should be allowed to be a monopoly. Right. Because, you know, when it comes to atoms, it's harder for GM to scale the atoms. It's not hard to scale the bits. And so it is a different world. And so I applaud your arguing with Objectivism on that basis.

Yeah. Now, I don't know if I'm going to say as a category that if the other things weren't right that I would suddenly be in favor of antitrust law. I don't think I would. But anyway, so let me do so. Common carrier. Right.

Before I forget common carrier antitrust and make algorithms public. Those are my.

And so with the common carrier thing, this is something also that Clarence Thomas has called for, by the way. I part ways with him there. And again, the reason is that I think government should keep hands off of business, telling business how to do business. Right. Now, what I'd much rather see is, again, on a case by case basis, you would use the state action doctrine that I referenced earlier from Ramaswamy and Rubenfeld, and you would address all of the situations in which there was censorship where you. Because you know, section 230, subsection C of whatever section of it. Right. Is the one that says that they are able to remove content in good faith. Right. Objectionable content. They can remove it in good faith. It is certainly not.

They have fact checkers.

Yeah, yeah. No, but it is not good faith for a platform to help the government do an end run around the Constitution. Right. So we can agree there. So I'd rather see that rather. Rather than a blanket solution dictating common carrier status. And then the third thing with respect to the algorithms, those are very interesting. Right. Because there's been a lot of revelations. I'm trying to remember her last name. It began with an H. Francis Hagen. Francis Hagen, who was the Facebook whistleblower recently.

Right.

Talked about the algorithms and how addictive they are, et cetera. And I come again, a lot of.

People think, by the way, she was a shill paid by Facebook. Just.

It's possible, it's quite possible because the.

Critics said, said she is far too perfect of a witness with far too perfect of a story. It just looks scripted, but whatever.

No, no, it's. It's quite, it's quite possible. And what, you know, what exactly the purpose was she sounded. And of course she was raising awareness of real problems, one of which is these algorithms. So when I started thinking about that, and I in particular thinking about children, you know, teenage girls were having very much trouble with the algorithm. Instagram. Yeah, Instagram.

Right. Yeah, it's terrible.

And so if I think of my common law background, I love the common law of contract, and that's a lot of my frame of reference for coming at a lot of these issues. There is not consent in these cases where we are dealing with manipulative, secretive, addictive algorithms like this. And so my rationale, it's the same.

As the tobacco companies. You know, it's like.

But at least with the tobacco company is, you know, it is nicotine. If you smoke this, it's addictive. Whereas with these algorithms, well, they denied that for decades. True, true. But with the algorithms, you're, you're sucked in. And what I wonder is, is there truly informed consent with respect to these algorithms? We could say, you know, that kids aren't even capable of making contracts anyway, much less a contract with a company that is manipulating them via these algorithms. So this is the sort of rationale that I have in. Explored to talk about. Yes. Maybe there would be a mandate for open source algorithms.

I totally agree. And you know, they do the same thing. They, they work the same way in, in some parts as slot machines do, which is called variable reward. Okay. And that's what makes us addictive. It gives us those variable reward dopamine hits. It's just a complete scam. These tech companies are disgusting. They just need to be held to account. And let me just go back though, Amy, to the capital formation issue and why that's so important. Look at, generally speaking, I'm in favor of much less regulation and much less government. And I know you are too, okay? Or at least I think you are. But the way the capital formation works, Think about Wall street and think about how little startup culture and how little innovation we really have on Wall street compared to other parts of business and product development. And so there's, there's tons of innovation everywhere you look, okay? It's incredible. It's because these big players like Goldman Sucks. They've built a moat around their business. Okay. And they, they openly talk about it and brag about it and nobody can compete with them because of the high regulatory barriers. And so they just don't have any competition. And if they had competition, the capital would be more widely dispersed and it wouldn't all go to Facebook and Amazon and Apple. There would be a much bigger Cambrian explosion of companies if there was allowed to be more startup culture on Wall street and in banking. And the way to do that is to deregulate it. That's when you'll see more startup culture and more innovation. But now, is there, is there one.

Particular regulation that's kind of your target that you know. Oh, if you got rid of this one. No, I don't know.

I'm not that knowledgeable. I just have a philosophical view. I don't have a technical view. Ask a lawyer.

I mean, my default with all of these over regulations would be you're peeling back the layers of the onion. So, you know, glassed in, first out or something, right?

Yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of things actually, now that I think of it, there are, you know, Glass Steagall would be one of them for the banking industry. That, that would help. You know, it's super complicated. I mean, I don't have the knowledge.

Okay. Yeah. And it's changing all the time besides.

Right, well, so tell me about what's going on at Bitchute. I mean, I'll give you an example. YouTube. Right. I interviewed Dr. Peter M. Okay. I don't even want to say his name because this will be on YouTube. And YouTube took down his video, gave me a strike and said that was medical misinformation.

I've had two strikes on YouTube for that.

Yeah, yeah, three. And you'll be banned for life. I know, be careful. But this is the kind of thing we're dealing with. These people are afraid of opposing viewpoints and frankly, they're afraid of the truth. Okay. Because they're, they're just bought and paid for. These companies are selling you down or.

Threatened by the government, right?

All of the above. Yeah. Well, and they're also supported by advertising dollars from big pharma companies and so on and so forth.

Yeah, yes, yes. And. And then I'm starting to learn that Google, same company, controls a lot of the advertising and other platforms as well. So that's an interesting space to navigate. So at bit you right now, what we're doing is we are navigating ways to monetize the platform while still remaining True to our values, which is, of course, to not censor at all. On Bitchute, that was one of the few places. Parler, of course, was one of them too, where you could discuss, question, criticize all the different aspects of the COVID policy. You know, what's the origin of the virus? Do masks work? Do masks not work?

Yeah, don't even say that kind of stuff. They'll. They'll take us off.

Okay, but, you know, every single issue, you could. You could have an open discussion about those things, and that has to remain true, because what are we doing? We're about to go into a new election cycle. We're about to go in maybe to 2.0 of the other. And what is so important is for people to decide for themselves what they're going to read, listen, to, discuss, and share all of their viewpoints. Because in the end, I mean, this is really the cash value for me is we're trying to find truth. We're trying to search for solutions to problems, or we're trying to make human life better on this planet. You know, we want to promote human flourishing. And you cannot do that if you are not free to think. And part of, you know, being free to think is also to express yourself. And if there's a mysterious algorithm that on one day, your content that you put out there might actually be shown to people, but on another day, it.

Won'T, and you lose fear of reprisal. I mean, these companies retaliate against people. They ruin their lives. Look at Alex Jones. I mean, look at their payment system. Systems are. They're cut off from the payment network. They're just ruined. They just destroy lives. Why is this allowed? These are like the new mafia thugs that basically say, you know, if you don't give us money, you're. The. The windows in your business will be broken every day. We're going to come and cut your fingers off. These companies are thugs. They're mafia thugs.

Yeah, so. So a bitchute. You will not be deplatformed for your views. If, for example, there are some laws overseas in the European Union and then soon to be in the UK, Et cetera, that demand certain types of content be blocked, our attitude at this point, while we can still speak out against these laws, is to comply and block the content, but be very transparent. We are blocking this only because the Digital Services act requires it, et cetera. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Instead of independent fact checkers.

No, no, exactly, exactly. So within whatever is legal content, you know, you're not initiating force against somebody else. You're not committing fraud, et cetera. You can post it on Bitchute and discuss it and have a full and fair discussion and know that you are not going to be censored. You know, again, you might be censored by government, but if you do, we're telling you it's government that's doing that. And in the United States, where we have First Amendment, you're still going to have free reign to discuss.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. What about, you know, we've talked about capital formation and I know that Bitchute is raising money. How is that company funded and why can't it be much larger than it is? Tell us about the business side of it a little bit, if you would.

Well, so some of that is actually being ironed out right now. We're saying how much of a raise do we actually want to do? Bitchute has been around for seven years and it has just grown organically, naturally without any significant investment. And now we have have plans to of course introduce live streaming. We have something called Payshoot that we're going to bring online pretty soon here that is going to offer different ways of monetizing on the platform. We're exploring, you know, a more sort of organized and I can't even think of the word right now, but we want to have more ads on the platform. Okay, I'm going to blame the concussion for that one, if that's okay.

That's okay.

I've done pretty well so far here. But anyway, so we're exploring all of these things and we're literally looking at our budget, you know, where can we most wisely spend money that is invested and how much do we really want to bring on at this point? So that is all really under discussion, but if people are interested, of course they should go ahead and approach us, you know, right. To support a Bitchute, if they're interested.

How was it initially funded? Was it just a, you know, a bootstrap business or just bootstrap business?

You know, Ray Vahey and Rich Jones, the two original founders, are still with us and they've just been building it incrementally with the small amount of revenues that they've generated so far. But we're about to take it to the next level.

Interesting. What about the competitive marketplace? What about the competitive landscape for the free speech oriented platforms? Like what's the difference between, you know, Rumble and Bitchute and Odyssey? And you know, there's this little ecosystem of small players compared to YouTube out there that are trying to change things. What Are those companies like. I mean, they're, they're all. They all have a different flavor to them.

Right, sure. So at Rumble, there is quite a bit of paid content, so they make exclusive arrangements with certain content providers. That's the model that they've chosen to use. Of course, they raised a lot of capital and that's how they're thinking. That is you know, best for them to spend it. They have chosen to be on the App Store, which I'm kind of chastened by having been booted off of app stores myself. So I'm pretty happy that Bitchute has chosen not to be on either Apple or Google's app stores, you know, not that I wanted those companies.

Do you have an app or are you strictly.

We have a sideload Android app. And as. And when I'm hearing that there's going to be the ability to have a sideload iOS app, at least in the EU at some point in the future, we would explore things like that.

We would, of course, side load app. Is that like, you don't have to jailbreak your iPhone for that or.

Yeah, so you wouldn't have to jailbreak. I don't, I don't know if there are apps that you can put onto an iPhone by jailbreaking it. I'm not that advanced.

Oh, no, you can buy jailbreaking.

Okay.

You can do all kinds of things. But nobody wants to do that because, of course, you know, the big dictators at Apple will void your warranty and everything else.

Exactly. Yeah. But. So I've been an iPhone user for a long time. I'm not so much in the Android space. But as I understand, with a sideload Android app, you can load it on, but you'll have to bypass a number of warnings. Well, they'll try to tell you it's not safe or whatever because they want everything to come from the Google Play Store. But no, there are plenty of apps that you can get out there that are perfectly good. Bitchute is one of them.

That's a form of free speech right there. The fact that the Apple App Store should have to take any app that is not somehow damaging or hurting someone directly. They should just be forced to. They're the public square, you know, you can't.

Well, so. So, you know, I have, again, sort.

Of a free market approach. I mean, it's just censorship.

Yeah, I have a free market approach and this is how I handle any of this stuff, by the way. Right. So, you know, I don't know exactly what Elon Musk is doing over at X with his freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. You know, I've written a bit about actually analyzing that in detail. We don't have to go into it here, but normatively, any of these companies, be it Apple or Google or X, normatively, I think that they should have their policies mirror as much as possible the American First Amendment and that would be great. Right, right. But I mean, I think this is, this is a moral issue. And so even if X has the legal right to, you know, Elon Musk ate the wrong thing for breakfast. And so Jason Hartman is going to be banned today or whatever it is, he's got the legal right to do that. Probably in the terms of service. It says, you know, if he has a wrong thing for breakfast, he could be banned. It doesn't matter. Morally, I think the right thing to do is to mirror policies on the American First Amendment so that again, there can be this free flow of information ideas. The fourth Amendment would be great as well. Apple's going to be better on that. Yeah. Not sure.

Yeah, absolutely. That's really interesting. Amy, anything else you want to say as we wrap it up? A question I didn't ask you or something? You didn't get to share your.

No, I mean, I, you know, I do invite people to check out bitshoot. One thing that we're aware of is that, you know, we, there is a brand awareness campaign that we're starting to work on because there are a lot of people who aren't even really aware of it as an option. If you are looking for a truly nonpartisan company that is not beholden to Apple or Google on the app stores, that has a completely independent stack so it's not on AWS like Parler, et cetera. Check out Bitchute. It's been around for seven years. Traffic growing organically. It is doing well. It's a thriving community and we'd love people who want to be able to access whatever they want and post whatever they want within the scope of the law to give us a try.

And you can see Jason Hartman's interview with Dr. Peter M. That was banned from this platform. You can see that on Bitchute.

Of course, of course. I'm going to go watch it now.

Good stuff. Amy, thank you so much for joining us and keep up the good work. I really hope that more people get on these platforms where they can get the information that descends from the mainstream narrative just so they can hear the other side. And you're reminding me in this interview of that great quote by I think it was Voltaire. And I know you know what I'm going to say. You know, I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death. You're right to say it. That's the way it's got. Got to be for the hope of humanity. I mean, it just has to be that way.

So definitely.

All right. Do you want to give out any other information or just bitchute.com or any.

Yeah, come come to bitshoot.com if you want to check out some of our musings. You can check out the blog under the menu there.

Excellent. Amy Peacock, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

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