Honestly with Bari Weiss

How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom

Mar 29, 2022

David Sacks, an influential venture capitalist and member of the PayPal Mafia, discusses the troubling dominance of Big Tech over free speech. He highlights the rise of a social credit system and how a few billionaires dictate discourse in the digital realm. Sacks delves into the suppression of dissenting views, including the dangers of debanking based on political beliefs. He also critiques corporate coordination in censorship and the broader implications for civil liberties, advocating for a more open and democratic digital landscape.

01:14:03

Episode guests

David Sacks

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

The Right to Free Speech

01:20

Social Not Working

01:29

The Turning Point of Social Media

01:30

Social Networks Engage In Censorship Based On The New York Times

01:47

Intro

3min

Evolving Power Dynamics in Digital Communication

10min

Understanding the Speech Cartel in Big Tech

6min

Navigating Speech Regulation in Tech

19min

The Dangers of Debanking and Censorship

14min

The Economic Weapon: Sanctions and Corporate Withdrawals in a Time of War

4min

Surveillance, Sanctions, and Civil Liberties

15min

The Resilience of the American Dream Amidst Challenges

2min

David Sacks is a paradox. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist helped lay the foundations of the digital world we now live in: He was one of the members of what's known as the PayPal Mafia, alongside people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Max Levchin. He’s also been an early investor in some companies you may have heard of: Airbnb, Facebook, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber.

At the same time, he is something of a whistleblower from inside the world of tech. He believes that Big Tech has far too much power. He argues that the fact that a handful of billionaires get to decide what we are (and aren’t) allowed to say in the new, digital public square is something that the Framers would have been repelled by—and that all Americans should oppose.

Today I spoke to David, now a general partner at Craft Ventures, about the rise of America’s social credit system and how we can defend our civil liberties in the age of the Internet.

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