In a CNBC interview, investor Kanyi Maqubela discusses the recent banning of former President Trump by Snap and the broader implications for social media platforms. He frames the bans as risk‑mitigation measures, noting that platforms have always removed actors who violate terms of service, but that recent actions highlight a reassessment of "special privileges" previously granted to high‑profile users. Maqubela then expands the conversation to the concentration of internet infrastructure, pointing out that a few companies (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube) dominate the underlying services that power most online experiences, which amplifies their influence over speech and policy. He argues that technology has become essential infrastructure for all sectors, increasing the responsibility and scrutiny of tech leaders. Responding to Jack Dorsey’s call for decentralization, Maqubela compares the current state to the early, open protocols like SMTP and domain name systems, and cites investments such as Namebase/Handshake that aim to rebuild decentralized web infrastructure. He acknowledges Bitcoin’s role as a speculative asset rather than core infrastructure but uses it to illustrate the broader push toward a less consolidated internet. The interview concludes with a reminder of the evolving power dynamics between platforms, users, and regulators.
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Snap banning the president as of the 20th. Where do you think— we talked to Heath Terry at Goldman about this yesterday. His view was that it's largely in aggregate an exercise in risk mitigation. Do you see it any different?
Well, I do see that and totally agree it is an exercise in risk mitigation for the simple fact of this. If you risk enabling further chaos in the name of free speech, that liability lies on your shoulders, and that's intolerable. I think it's important to note something different, which is that this isn't new behavior for social media. Social media accounts have been banning actors who have been breaking their terms of service since they've been created. This is actually something that's been totally normal. The thing that's been new is that there have been special permissions that have been given to certain types of actors because of their influence, newsworthiness, or political relevance. And so I think what just happened was because of the bright red line and because of the fact that the terms of service, in the views of so many of these, of these actors, were so, so badly violated, they had to think about how trial to sort of reassess the idea of special privileges. So I think that's the biggest thing that's new.
So where do you see it headed? I mean, we're already into the server area now with Parler, AWS. I mean, people subscribe and use email and software for all kinds of different areas. Do you see it bleeding that far?
Yes, I do, to be honest. And this is, you know, this is a challenging issue. And it's important to note that Twitter is the one that's making the news and obviously very important, but Facebook has an 8 times bigger audience. YouTube has a 6 times bigger audience. And of all the apps you see on your mobile phone, those almost all run through the duopoly of Google and Apple. 40% of the internet runs just on Amazon's cloud services. And so once you start to get into the infrastructure level of the internet, then you start to see even more concentration of, of power and influence. And when that power is used, it has an even bigger effect. But if anything, this just affirms honestly to me that technology is no longer simply a sector, but is increasingly infrastructure for every sector. And that's been a theme since the pandemic started. And so we just have to think about it that way. And I think that increases the responsibility of so many of these tech leaders to think about how to impose policy and where to draw lines around things like speech.
Kanyi, absolutely. I mean, not only does it increase the responsibility of those tech leaders, but it will also increase the scrutiny of them. I'm really curious for your perspective on this comparison that Jack Dorsey made between the power that social media companies have and the fact that he'd like that power to be decentralized and the comparison he made to Bitcoin. He said the fact that Bitcoin is— and cryptocurrency are decentralized is one reason he is such a fan of them. And he would like to see a similar thing happen with social media. I think it's worth pointing out that you are an investor in Snap, another social media company that has banned the president, and also an investor in crypto. What's your take on that, that comparison?
I think it's an apt comparison, and I wouldn't personally associate Bitcoin directly because I think Bitcoin has more value today as a speculative asset and is more interesting as an asset rather than a piece of infrastructure, though it speaks to the infrastructure story. But I do want to talk specifically about this idea of decentralized infrastructure. And so right now, SMTP, which is email, is not owned by anyone, and you can't shut down email. You can shut down email storage, you can shut down email servers, but you can't shut down the protocol, because it's an open decentralized protocol that's 40 years old. And so this idea of protocols is actually a very old and already widely distributed concept, but it's now taking on an increased urgency in terms of its need to be transmitted in different parts of the services that we use. And so top-level domains is another example. We all use .com, which is owned by the United States consortium called ICANN. .uk, .ly, .ga are owned by different countries and different sovereign entities. And so how do you think about decentralizing even web infrastructure? We have an investment called Namebase, which is a service using the handshake protocol explicitly focused on that as an example. And so I do think that Jack is pointing to a very important point, which is this idea that the promise of the internet was a way to sort of flatten this access point to everybody and decentralize the power so that everyone can have access. But what's happened is there's been so much consolidation over the course of the last 15 years, and the FANG companies obviously have been a big part of that. And so it is almost ironic, frankly, to see one of the most powerful people on the internet be such a loud champion for decentralization, but I think it speaks to the urgency of it.
Shepard Smith here. Thanks for watching CNBC on YouTube.
