Zucks to Be Us

Yesterday, in his farewell address to the nation, President Joe Biden warned Americans about the “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking shape in the country and the “potential rise of a tech-industrial complex” that is infringing on the future of democracy. 

Needless to say, he was clearly nodding to the entrenchment of tech CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg into the rising Trump administration. And that part of his speech made me want to talk about Joe Rogan.

Let me explain. Usually, there aren’t enough Nerds Gummy Clusters in the world to bribe me into watching The Joe Rogan Experience. Maybe it’s my aversion to vitamin supplements, maybe it’s the nausea I get when I’m mansplained too much blatant misinformation. Or maybe I just don’t like MMA enough. But this weekend, for the first time ever, I watched an episode from start to finish. 

As you surely know by now, Mark Zuckerberg went on the show last week. The interview was four days after Zuckerberg dropped the news that Meta would give up fact-checking for X-style “community notes,” and announced that the company would “allow more speech,” including claims that LGBTQ people are mentally ill. 

If you believe Zuckerberg, about half the world’s population uses his platforms every month, so no matter how annoying you (read: I) find his face, what he says and does matters. In the almost three-hour interview, Rogan tried to convince Zuck to stop listening to his doctors, Mark got schooled on tactical archery by Rogan (which was a little funny), and they spent a full 45 minutes discussing mixed martial arts. But they also discussed how Zuckerberg decides what’s “acceptable” speech on his platforms, his expectations of the US government, and his willingness to trade safety to avoid the “pain” of Meta accounts being banned. 

More than 6 million people have watched this interview. So while Trump administration confirmations begin, and the “acceptable” language machine spins up, we sacrificed our YouTube algorithm so you don’t have to. Here are our key takeaways. 

“If it’s okay to say it on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media.”

We’re starting with the big one. This is the line that made Meta’s off-the-wall new content guidelines make sense. 

The way Zuckerberg tells it, for the first 10 years of Meta’s life, moderation really just meant fighting off child predators, drug dealers, and terrorists. Then came the 2016 election and COVID, and “truth” and “safety” got political: “For the first time,” he said, “we just faced this massive institutional pressure to start censoring content on ideological grounds.” Zuckerberg did his best to describe himself as a babe in the political woods, saying he “assumed everyone was acting in good faith.” 

Zuckerberg told Rogan that he felt that fighting hate speech was “coming from a good place,” but that “these things are on a spectrum.” And he was very clear that he regrets working with the government to suppress rampant misinformation during those time periods. 

And then he said what he really meant: “Pete Hegseth is probably going to be defending his nomination for Secretary of Defense on the Senate floor, and I think one of the points that he’s made is that women shouldn’t be able to be in certain combat roles. And until we updated our policies, that wouldn’t have been a thing you could have said on our platforms, because it would have called for the exclusion of a protected category of people.” He continued: “If it’s okay to say it on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media.” 

So if you’d expect to hear it come out of Elon’s, Hegseth’s, or Marjorie Taylor Green’s mouth, it’s safe to say it’s allowed on Meta’s platforms. 

This helps contextualize the absolutely wild breakdown of “acceptable” speech that The Intercept reported on last week. Examples of speech that Meta announced internally were allowed to appear on their platforms include: “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit” and “Gays are freaks.” “A post stating ‘Lesbians are so stupid’ would remain prohibited as a ‘mental insult,’” The Intercept reported, “though ‘Trans people are mentally ill’ is marked as allowed.” I guess no one in Congress is talking about lesbians these days. 

Now, are you wondering if it’s just a coincidence that this is happening right after Trump was elected? It’s not. Zuck told Rogan that elections are great because they “take this cultural pulse,” he said. “We try to have policies that reflect mainstream discourse.” 

He thinks the “pain” of getting your Meta accounts shut down should be balanced against shutting down opioid dealers and, well, terrorists. 

Meta announced last week that it’s moving to a “more speech and fewer mistakes” model of moderation. What does that mean in practice? First, they’re giving up their third-party fact-checking model in favor of X-style community notes. But second, they’re going to require a way higher degree of confidence in their bots when they’re screening for possible violations. 

He wants to protect users from the “terrible experience” of getting their Meta accounts taken down. Because it’s more important to avoid censoring people than pull down posts from, say, opioid dealers or terrorists.

Zuck believes that the US Government works for him. 

Did you know that the world’s governments are victimizing the tech industry? Zuck knows. The entire Biden administration was gunning for Meta, Zuckerberg complained to Rogan. And “it’s global.” Outside of the US, he claimed, there’s an EU-wide policy to deal with American tech “almost like a tariff.” 

“The US government should be protecting its companies, not the tip of the spear attacking its companies,” he told Rogan. “When the US government does that to its tech industry, it’s basically just open season to the rest of the world.” 

Throughout the interview, it became clear that Zuckerberg expects the tech industry to be treated like the US’s golden goose. “The American technology industry is a bright spot in the American economy,” he said, and a “strategic advantage for the United States… I think it should be part of the US’s strategy moving forward to defend that.” 

It looks like he sees a potential champion in the incoming administration. “It’s one of the things that I’m optimistic about with President Trump,” he said. “I think he just wants America to win.”

Joe likes Mark’s neck.

There’s no love like MMA love. “You look like a jiu-jitsu guy now,” Rogan told Zuckerberg, with a twinkle in his eye. “Your neck is bigger.” 

Rogan and Zuck spent a solid 45 minutes talking about Mixed Martial Arts, which Zuckerberg has been pursuing for years (explaining MMA has become bizarrely intertwined with the Republican party). Trump’s first appearance post-election was at a UFC fight at Madison Square Garden, flanked by Elon Musk and UFC CEO Dana White (the New York Times’ Daily podcast did a really great explainer on the wild relationship that’s bloomed there). Rogan was effusively stoked that White—who is referred to in the MMA world as the Combatant-in-Chief—is on Meta’s board now. 

Zuckerberg celebrated White’s “strong backbone,” saying, “We have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting pressure on our company. And we need some strong people who are basically gonna advise us on how to handle some of these situations.” 

“Running this company is not for the faint of heart,” he said. So bring in a UFC fighter, naturally. 

Mark doesn’t know the difference between masculinity and aggression. 

Zuck made some very noisy headlines last week with his comments about needing more “masculinity” in the workplace. In the podcast, he repeatedly talked about how corporate America has been “emasculated” and “neutered,” and how being in an MMA environment helped him realize how important it was to reconnect with his masculinity. 

That’s gross to begin with. But it was also enormously clear that he was conflating “masculinity” and “aggression.” 

“A lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered,” he told Rogan. “I have three sisters, no brothers. I have three daughters. No sons. So I’m surrounded by girls and women my whole life… The masculine energy is good. Society has plenty of that, but corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. All these forms of energy are good. And I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.” 

Mark hunts wild pigs with a bow and arrow on his ranch in Hawaii.

That’s it. That’s the takeaway.