Joe Rogan recently talked about Twitter’s dominance as a means of communication and a need for competition. During Friday’s “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast with fellow stand-up comedian Greg Fitzsimmons, the prolific podcaster said Twitter banning former President Donald Trump was a “terrible idea” and discussed what role Elon Musk will have on the social media platform after purchasing 73.5 million shares valued at just under $3 billion.
Rogan said he was interested in what effect Musk – who he called a “f***ing wizard” – will have on Twitter after purchasing 9% of Twitter’s stock to become the tech company’s largest shareholder. Rogan pondered if Musk will have input on a potential edit button, have a say on who the social platform will ban in the future, and whether or not the social media platform will “want to apply the principles of the First Amendment.”
Rogan noted that Twitter is “pretty ruthless” about banning and suspending users. Rogan voiced his criticism of Twitter permanently banning then-President Trump in January 2021.
“I don’t think Twitter should have banned Trump,” Rogan said. “I think that was a terrible idea. It’s a terrible precedent to set.”
“You can’t decide that you don’t like a guy who is the f***ing sitting president of the United States at the time, and kick him off your platform because you don’t like the things he’s saying,” Rogan declared.
Rogan said that people who are banned on Twitter simply move to new social media networks and make that platform toxic.
“But the problem is when they’ve got these s***ty people that they’ve kicked off of these other platforms like Twitter,” he expressed. “Then they go to these other places, and they run amok and then they’re like, ‘Hey, free speech, you need free speech.’ But then they’re organizing harassment campaigns and f***ing with people and targeting them all day long and constantly commenting on them.”
Rogan said social media users harassing others is “not good either” and would make him not want to visit sites where people are vicious.
But he noted, “I think we need alternatives that adhere to free speech.”
Rogan pointed out that “there’s great value in having competitors, whether it’s to Twitter or YouTube or to any of these giant, huge companies that have a massive pipeline to the consciousness of the world.”
He said there are concerns when massive corporations have control over who gets to distribute information on platforms with “unprecedented” reach.
“There’s never been a thing like that we’re a privately owned company has the ability to get ideas out there that can change the way elections are run, to change the way so many things are thought of in this country,” he added. “I think we need alternatives.”
Last month, the UFC color commentator slammed “woke” virtue-signaling big tech CEOs for censorship.
(WARNING: Explicit language)
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