E17: Big Tech bans Trump, ramifications for the First Amendment & the open Internet

**David Sacks** (0:00)
Hey, everyone. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the All-In Pod.
Your illustrious moderator, Jason Calcanis has been purged.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:13)
Canceled?

**David Sacks** (0:14)
He's been canceled. We canceled him for his constant interruptions and low IQ comments.
We decided that the minimum IQ required to be on this pod is 140, 150 He did not make the cut. So now, it is just me, Chamath and Friedberg.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:33)
Jason is away. He is actively implementing our Jerkoff to Win strategy to solve the pandemic and free speech.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:04)
Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It is an emergency podcast episode 16 hit number two in the rankings on the Apple iTunes podcasting store. Clearly we hit a nerve. It's been an insane week and the dictator dictated that he was not satisfied with doing our podcast once every two weeks.
And so here we are on a Sunday, the queen of quinoa, rain man himself, David Sacks and the dictator chopping it up for you, the loyal, confused, angry, infuriated audience of All-In. It's the craziest week of our lives.

**David Sacks** (1:46)
Jason, please don't ascribe to the audience the characteristics that describe yourself.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:52)
Okay, this has been a crazy 72 hours. Can anybody remember a week that has been more crazy in their life with the exception, I guess, 9-11, the financial crisis? I'm trying to think of this level of crazy.

**Erik Friedberg** (2:06)
I think we should start with what happened after the last All-In podcast between you and Sacks OverText.
We should get it all out there. We should share it publicly. No, no, no.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:19)
No, I think we should.

**Erik Friedberg** (2:22)
I think it's worth doing. We talked about this before you joined us.
Chamath and I are having an intervention. I'm going to say something real quick. I think it's worth highlighting that one of the things that I think we have the opportunity to do as a group is to kind of elevate the conversation a bit and not frame things as being black and white and not frame them as being one or zero or partisan or left or right. Everyone in this conversation has nuanced opinions about a lot of different topics. And when you sum up all those opinions, it doesn't define a left or a right person or Democrat or Republican. I think that's what makes us a compelling and interesting group to talk to.
Sacks has been characterized as the Trump guy. He took offense to that. And in particular, the heated conversation you guys had last time. And I do think it's worth kind of sharing that with everyone and letting you guys reconcile publicly, have a group hug and reframe kind of how we talk about each other. And how so that we can kind of set a bit of an example on how to do this well.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:24)
I can start. You can start, David.

**David Sacks** (3:26)
I'll start because I'm the one who has the objection.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:30)
You're the aggrieved?

**David Sacks** (3:31)
Yeah. I mean, so look, I think that that J Cal does an amazing job moderating the pod. And it's a difficult job.
And, you know, so I don't want to, you know, this is not something I'm trying to blame him for. But I do have an objection to being labeled in a certain way. I think anybody would, you know, we don't want to be misconstrued and we want to be able to characterize our own views. We don't want to be labeled in a certain way. Now, I think Jason has sort of branded me as a Trump guy because, frankly, it's amusing to him.
I think he's mainly trolling me. But the audience doesn't necessarily understand that. I mean, if you go back and look at my Twitter feed or my blogs, I haven't written about Trump for years. I mean, I haven't said anything really about it. But that's not my agenda, you know, and I think I don't have a pro-Trump agenda, but I also don't have a pro-resistance agenda. I've described my position as anti hysteria. Sometimes that means criticizing Trump like I did in the last pod. Sometimes it means criticizing the resistance. So I just don't like being labeled a certain way. And I think Jason, I sort of kind of resolve this.
If I were labeled my politics, Jason calls me the conservative. I think that's more accurate. But the question is, what am I conserving exactly? And I would describe myself more as like a 1960s style liberal. I'm a believer in free speech, ACLU style. I'm a believer in King's dream of a colorblind society. If I'm against all these foreign wars and interventions, if I had been around the 1960s, I would have been protesting Vietnam. That's kind of more where I'm coming from. And I guess the reason I'm a conservative now is because the political debate has moved so far away from that. But if I'm trying to conserve anything, it's really the liberal victories of the 1960s. So in any event, I don't think that qualifies me in any way as a Trumper per se.