Social Media, Censorship & Freedom Of Speech | Guest: Yossi Schmidt

This is the Andres Segovia show I'd like to welcome on yoshi smiths from the yoshi smiths show on to the undress to go to show yahtzee Welcome to the program. It's good to have you on I want to toss this over to you because I want you to introduce yourself to the audience because you and I We connected through parlor and I want to give a special shout out to trinity over at parlor This conversation wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for her connecting both of us But for those who do not know you outside the world of parlor Can you tell us who you are and what you do? So my name is yoshi smith. Uh, I have my own podcast the yoshi smith show And I run team world supporter, which is a blog of sorts Yeah, and that's precisely what I uh wanted to ask you about because you recently started. Um, You recently launched like notifications for for whatsapp. This is a project that you've been working on. I saw uh For team world support for those i've never heard of what kind of topics do you generally cover on on the blog So on the blog I do different things on the blog I do social media platform reviews Because I am very much of the opinion that all these alternative social media platforms There's lots of questions and I wrote a whole statement on my blog actually About this because someone attacked me and said that these reviews are to collect data. I said no They're not to collect data. But what they do is They ask the hard-hitting questions that no one's willing to ask and you come across the article about truth social It's either a hit piece or a fluff piece. Yeah, there's no in between. There's no actual review for the consumer for the user And that's where I come in Cloud hub jeffrey the ceo the former ceo and founder of cloud hub reached out to me when I uh Just was talking about censorship And he asked me to check out his plat his platform And then I came across parlor 1.0. Oh, i'm like, hey, what's the difference? Yeah And then I did a comparison between the two of them Which was sort of a review And that is how the tws tmall supporter reviews were launched Then other platforms started reaching out to me asking me to review them. Oh good And then it turned into hey, I review platforms now. Let me reach out to getter parlor uh What else was there mumblin politichatter Gab, let me review them. And even if they don't answer that will be part of the review if they don't want to answer the questions if they don't want to Acknowledge that there's questions if they don't want to acknowledge censorship Then that will be part of the review and i'll give them a rating But as I always do I always encourage the readers to make their own mind I give the basics I give the outline of the platform if they follow the terms of services how they follow their own terms of services how they implement it And then you make your own decision But if you want my review, here's my review at the bottom of the thing now to my review because of this because of the lack of transparency because of being Filled with bots. This is what my personal review of the platform is Yeah, and For those who might not be aware, uh, because you do you put this on your in your bio on your x handle and being an orthodox jew You review platforms and you mentioned one of them being gab and when people search up gab It's always like this that the people stay away from it's a far white far right anti-semitic Platform and I saw your review of gab and I thought that was a very very fair review And you recently reposted it too and I and I thought that like, you know, what this is someone that's actually providing um the more The most unbiased approach to platform reviews out there because at least you're giving them all equal time of day you're not and you're telling them what's not just what they're known for but of What else is is there on the platform with feature set and things like that? So I think you've been from what i've seen so far. You've been pretty honest in your reviews on platforms thus far So especially when it comes to a platform like gab that has a stigma that people give it i'm on gab too at the Andrus ago, but you can follow me there folks. Um, and you know, it's just there are just let me stop right there that Piece on gab was not a review. It was a statement on gab saying the inconvenience with lagab Because lots of people label them as anti-semitic But if you look at them, they are the most pro free speech platform And to ignore them because they're labeled as anti-semitic That is not right. You have to give them the fair lighter today Now would I review them if they're willing to work with me then maybe? but Back when I wrote the statement They were putting out terrible things about israel and jews from the gab account and the gab telegram and I said I learned I have to learn the hard way how to separate yossi from team world sport The ceo of gab has to learn the hard way to separate him from Gab, he needs to make his own opinions from his own account He can't tweet out his opinions about jews. He's entitled to his opinion. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. That's the beauty of free speech. Yeah But don't make gab about that because then people are gonna say gab is anti-semitic No, gab is not anti-semitic He might be an anti-semite According to your personal views because you don't like his views but Gab is not anti-semitic Um, and I said is the thing if he separates himself And if he's willing to work with me i'd be willing to work with him on a review okay, and i'm glad you um you You provide that insight as to what a statement is versus a review on your site So when you review platforms, this is literally the platforms themselves, uh working with you on the review It's not just you know, okay. I used it and here's what I thought of it So actually I will be honest truth social did not answer any of my questions they Entirely Shut me down. Wow Uh one one user told me i'd faster jump off a bridge and point you in the right direction for a review One not user, um one Uh employee there. No way. Wow um And I said hey look I have a duty My duty has become to review platforms You don't want to work with me. That's fine, but you need to Answer x y and z You're not going to fine. Here's x y and z. Here's the fact that they're refusing to work with me Here's this this and this They're filled with bots or whatever I said in the review, I don't remember the exact Review, they're not working with me Parlor 1.0 did not work with me either And again, I have nothing against john matts, but something's went on with parlor john mattsy. I don't know if everyone has his name Something went on he actually went even as far as to block me on linkedin really wow, um Again john if you're watching this no hard feelings. I would love to know what happened what the story is I noticed something very interesting When he left or fired or whatever the whole story was He followed me On another platform that I was reviewed interesting He actually he followed three people the founder of that platform his friend He followed me and someone else and I thought it was unprofessional to reach out to him to ask him. Hey, what were you hiding? So I never actually did reach out Now he now he started another social media platform called hedgehog. Yeah, maybe I will review maybe I won't maybe i'll speak to him Maybe I won't But the case is I never brought it up. I could tell you one thing parlor 1.0 was definitely hiding things And I don't know what it is to this day Yeah, I don't think i've ever heard that perspective before I did join to the tail end of 1.0 before was taken down as of january 6 2021 um, then it was brought back under the leadership of george farmer, um, I say leadership loosely because what he did and now it's back, uh 3.0 so How how have you been liking the 3.0 experience at parlor? So I don't have enough interaction because I am really trying to build up my x account Trying to grow the roundups trying to grow the reviews trying to grow my influence trying to Reach I I am of the opinion that be uncancellable be all over. Amen be on every social media platform I spoke about it one of my podcasts Be everywhere. That's the only solution to this war on free speech. Yes, I agree But I have been focusing mainly on um X and I take that as a fault of my own because If you're saying be uncancellable be uncancellable be all over put your opinions all over Don't just focus on x So it's a fault of my own. Well, I won't and I won't fault you for it though I won't fault you for it because it is where the majority of the interaction is even though Instagram and facebook technically have more users than x the interaction engagement and impressions on x far surpass anything that instagram and facebook have I hear you for that. But what i'm trying to say is You asked me my opinion on parlor 3.0. Yes. I don't have that much interaction now. I can't blame parlor I can't say that it's bots like it was by truth social Because I have 700 followers all of a sudden like this on truth social And no interaction, that's true. I mean One plus one equals two You don't you don't got to be a genius to figure that out. Yeah And it was like whoa But parlor i'm not that active on i'm going to make it as an effort to try to be more active on there But as of now i'm not Gotcha But when you came back, there are some people that did remember you so and they were they were happy to see you active again um, and that's how Yes, especially trinity. That's how technically you and I got Connected there because I I didn't follow or connect with trinity before but these were names that I remember from the previous parlor days but uh, yeah, well It's interesting to see what parlor is going to do from here And I love what they've done with the web interface that they recently launched with uh, I guess it's update 3.0 I think they're calling it So it's interesting to see where it goes from there because there's some stuff happening in the background. I want to see Uh come to light finally it's been in the works for quite a while so Exciting stuff i've been in a parlor for sure and speaking about freedom of speech and I totally agree with you about being uncancelable Yeah, i'm across about at least 12 different social media platforms And there's some that I was on that are no longer around and it was sad to see because some of them had True promise there was one called. Uh, uh, they changed the name a few times at the end They were called float or floaty f o f l o t e Um, I forget what else they put in there and it was like a little sailboat I love what they were doing. I was live streaming there. I was having interactions and things like that, but they were Whoever was investing in it made miscalculations and investing in crypto. So it basically sunk the the platform And they never did a payout to the ones that they were supposed to do the payouts I'm like, oh what a bummer but they were trying to return as this platform that was going to be able to use Um more of a social media manager that's what's really lacking right now because there are a lot of open source platforms There are a lot of closed source platforms like the big dogs like a meta anything from meta is basically closed source But there are a lot of integrations with those closed platforms because that's how they track analytics and things like that but what we don't have is a social media manager that can basically Post to everything like I I like that minds is its own thing It's kind of its own sandbox, but at the same time it's semi open source Like because if you have a big enough account, you know, you can mirror your tweets over to minds But mines now has an integration with master. So you have your epub and private key. You can now post to master Uh in my case, I have not been able to get the master connection to work So I gotta physically post to to master But uh as as the concerning as it might be that threads is around the mere fact that meta is the financial backing for threads They've been able to surpass blue sky They've been able to pass places like minds to be able to get threads to be working with the fed The fediverse that's basically open source anything So now when I post the threads, it's just automatically fired off to the fediverse and I recently found out that Uh, I don't know which podcast Uh distributor it might be a podcast index. They are directly putting it to the fediverse now So now my podcast is on the fediverse and then I have to touch anything I just use podcasters for spotify and it does everything else for me. So it has been Um, it's a journey to get there for small creators like us To know what platform tools are out there. I really wish there was a one form solution. I use uh, I use buffer, um that one I can post to threads blue sky and um, Uh, what's the other one mastodon? Yeah, I use mastodon just because to get out there, you know, but I do And then uh, there's another one called, um Borden borden something like that. They're the only ones that have true social integration But you definitely got a like a pay to a higher account to be able to integrate to that So I like that I I've reached out to buffer to see if they'll do some true social integration But they didn't but they recently launched the the blue sky intraday integration, which is still pretty cool But in all this is to be uncancelable Um, it does take a lot of work That's why I say I don't blame you for trying to grow your channel where it's where all the fishes are and that's technically x Even though it's being censored here and being censored other places like recently taken down in brazil And as we record today the supreme, uh, was it the supreme court? The supreme court ruled in favor of the judge, yes Yes, that's the one because i'm like wait a minute isn't the judge the court? But yes, the supreme court ruled in favor of the judge to ban x from uh, brazil And the mere fact that they're that they're threatening over eight thousand dollars Uh a day if anybody uses a vpn to access x as a fine anybody using it. That's insane considering How low wages people make on a daily basis over there? It is crazy How they're trying to censor that speech and rumble? Uh, I don't even think rumbles in france because of that and I think they're being rumble rumble put out a statement Chris pavlosky put out a statement that he's not involved That they shut down in france Yes, and that that was earlier and I think uh, they were also that same thing happened in brazil or is happening in brazil So these attacks are happening in in many places And the only way to truly be uncancelable is to try to put your show everywhere as possible but the downside is Is well, where are the people and that's what makes it really difficult because there isn't really unless the people are doing the the footwork themselves It's become that much harder For the shows to be discovered without hopefully paying for some kind of ad um system that will get this in front of them, but if it's not google if it's not meta then it's Or if it's not amazon web services wow, you're really like It's like you're you're really doing it on your own at that point so it that that's why um I totally agree with you and i'm glad that you're doing reviews on these systems because every time there's like a place like x that's Being censored or banned people start looking for alternatives and a lot of people have been jumping over to blue sky And I posted on parlor. I'm like, well, they're gonna regret going to blue sky They should have gone. They should have come to parlor. So we'll see how that uh rollout goes up. But um With uh, we'll see if an x review comes i'm i'm trying to push a pwsx review That'd be nice. Uh, we will see if I get one i'm hoping And again, like I said If they if there is enough of a push Sorry x I gave you a chance. You're not answering Here's the x review Yeah, and I think it's fair enough like statement or no statement. Um, because People do need to know what x is all about especially right now There's a lot of hit pieces because of course there are because of elon but the mere fact that x is not what twitter was and that and not just the interactions and stuff and Actually standing up more for freedom of speech, but I even put out there on x whatever x is doing now gab did it first so I just threw out there because like hey, you guys are celebrating this but hey The one that paid the price first was gab. They're out there. They're not on any Um app store because they didn't bend the knee in the case of parlor they did that's why they're on it So yes parlor, there's still always that concern. Um, if you're if it's in the app store, it's not entirely freedom of speech, but gap isn't uh, but at the same time uh, they would they They left. Um, oh my goodness. What's the thing called? There's a particular integration That it has that it will connect to like the fediverse. It's the same code Oh my goodness, I forget what they call it though because for some reason gab walked away from that, uh To kind of close itself off from it. So that's interesting. Um that they did someone brought it up I forget what because like I said gap is the most pro free speech That statement needs to be made People could hate on gab from today to tomorrow That's why the title of the statement is the inconvenient truth People refuse to admit that they are the most pro-free speech but they are They don't bend the knee. They They have their own servers. They do everything they can and They do work with law enforcement when they need to they don't censor people because of Because law enforcement asks them to or ask them to But they do work with law enforcement when they need to And you know what? That is very commendable Yes, I agree And I might have personal feelings but as yusty schmidt from kingwood's quarter I need to learn how to disassociate my judaism from my job and Again, i'm willing to work with andrew torba if he is willing to work with me Yeah, and put our differences aside and let's sit down And help people understand what gab is all about And I totally agree and what gab is this year is not what it was last year. Um because of their stands um for freedom of speech because they've been hit by fines by these governments and things like that because they wouldn't They wouldn't capitulate to stuff that um x is standing up in brazil for so that's why I have posted out that whatever x is doing now gab did it first and they're paying for it whereas in the case of Uh x they have a lot of funds that can back them gab didn't which is why they moved to a subscription type service um, well they limited some features more to subscription services now because They it just couldn't be a bunch of people just logging in without contributing to the platform financially to keep it going The servers cost money and when you're running it from just a Basically like a small business it's uh, it takes it takes a toll but yeah, it's it's been interesting that I like that you that you want people to make up their own minds Um and freedom of speech is the the beginning of it But I think where it becomes really difficult is the access to information when you have these big tech oligarchs Controlling or gatekeeping a lot of the information flow. We've seen in real time google and microsoft google and facebook mostly erase The assassination attempt on trump in real time to erase any information about that And in some cases label it a fake false information that didn't happen And then meta having to respond to oh was a mistake on the algorithm. Oh interesting It's always those kind of mistakes And it's become harder for people to really make up their minds if they cannot get that information um What what ultimately would you say? Well, let me rephrase it here For you to do what you do In encouraging people to do it How would you go about encouraging them in this day and age where it becomes a lot more difficult to access that information? So that is where my other Aspect of teamwork sport comes into play the tws news roundup People need to go and yes, i'm going to say this people need to go to see it people need to go to All these left-wing sites And people need to go to bright bark and gateway pundit and everywhere because you need to learn how to read between the lines You need to learn how to verify news on your own you need to see and also if Meta and google and all these people go to such lengths to shut down a story one plus one equals two It must be that it's very verified true Yes Because just take a look. Yeah. Um I do the roundup every single day. I try every monday through thursday. I do my tws news roundup It's released on my website And I tweet out the top 10 stories It's like 25 stories a day and the top 10 get tweeted out and I also make sure Um little sneak peek for the andrew segovia show I am going to write a piece about crediting the actual Journalists who broke the story and crediting all that you need to give credit where credit's due. Amen, but um My point is that I go to great lengths to tag the reporters tag the sites And tag if you want to repost it great if you don't then great but I did my due diligence and I Tagged you because you are the person that broke the story. Yes and wrote the story Um, but the thing is you have to learn how to read Between the lines. Yeah, I think this and i'm not infallible. I could put a story in there. That's very very false And you know what if I do do that, I want people to call me out and say hey yassi You say you verified and story you did it. This didn't happen There was a story. I'm, I hate to be controversial. I'm gonna bring the story up There was a story that candace owens and ben shapiro Broke up. We um, we all know this. This is not false. This is this is 1 million percent true. They both confirmed. Yeah Um, but there was an interesting story Ben shapiro and can stones were publicly agreeing to a debate. Yes Publicly and then a story cropped up from verified sources keep that in mind that ben shapiro was going and taking a uh a gag order out on can stones i'm sitting there And I want to get this story out. I want to Because i'm very pro-free speech like we spoke about beforehand. Yeah But something wasn't adding up neither. Candace Nor ben shapiro were making any comment about it. Now. You might argue candace was under a gag order. She can't but ben shapiro and jeremy boring If they are pro-free speech like they claim they are They would have to come out and defend themselves if the story was true They didn't A week went by and they still didn't two weeks a month. They never actually acknowledged the story And i'm like, hey Put the brakes on over here Why not? You're getting heat if the story is true, you know, you have to defend yourself When what happened between them and steven crowder happened they defended themselves Anyone else they defended themselves. They didn't touch the candace owens because it was a false story And and I agree I never heard any other update other than that, uh That someone reported that supposedly there was a gag order and like that's interesting And but just like that it's like water under the bridge. Nothing ever came of it and That's that if there was an agreement between them to just let bygones be bygones and not talk about the whole daily wire controversy Um, I know that she hasn't technically addressed the previous employers, but the the gag order thing. I definitely agree. That was Um I know people wanted to make something out of it, but nothing ever came out of it Listen, I know that ben's a jew and i'm a jew and you're defending ben. No, I wanted to call ben out Because i'm very pro free speech I wanted to call the daily wire out because i'd call a spade a spade If you're doing something wrong, you're doing something wrong and I was ready to record a video for my whatsapp status for my For my ex for all my for my I was ready to call them out and I Was thinking about how I was gonna say what I was gonna say But I had to wait and see if it was true When two weeks went by i'm like, hey And i'm really getting a sense in this conversation that we've been having. I really been getting a sense of your passion for uh freedom of speech and I have to ask what um, what prompted you to I guess in a way be a defender of it Um, even if it might be a little unpopular, but what what made you was there something that you saw to say? You know what? That's uh That's not fair that's not true or that's wrong that kind of made you feel that you had to be the voice to speak up well As much as gab would like to say that they are the first ones to bring up this issue in 2016 They aren't the ones that spent Days with a daily tracker tagging jack back in twitter days Back before parag agrawal. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to insult him. I do not acknowledge his name I spent over a thousand days trying to Get twitter to acknowledge that they banned someone named ari friedman they refused No one ever And I even made a google form for people to submit their suspension and then When I hit a year i'm like, you know what yussie? Now is the time to make a video about it. And that's when the passion hit The passion where people can go ahead and shut down Conservative voices because we don't like what you're saying Hey, this is a constitutional right? Okay, so yussie what's your problem twitter is not a government entity Really? Let's talk about the new york post story let's talk about all these stories where the government covid However, you feel about the vaccine Look what happened with the vaccine you questioned the vaccine you got shut down And when I eventually did get my twitter accounts yussie s 1997 and world supporter accounts shut down It was because I called twitter out For banning an independent independent news outlet fcv news alerts within Split second both my accounts were gone. Wow And then when x when elon bull x those two accounts came back but That's what happened Yeah, I think everybody has like an inflection point or even a tipping point depends on who they are and where they are but Since 2016 you said yeah, because I know that 2020 was definitely that point for a lot of people where more of them were either waking up or They were pushed to extremes. So it's uh, it's that's the importance of what I call civil discourse What is called civil discourse? What is it's important to have an access to information because the more you censor something or somebody The more curiosity you're going to build as to okay. Why are their ideas so dangerous? I gotta go, uh, check them out because what's happening in england right now is just insanely heartbreaking but That's what happens when For whatever reason, uh, they're trying to control the flow of information over there They're arresting people for wrong think wrong speech And meanwhile, there are people That's on the islamic side that have been rioting and attacking police and all that They don't get as much as a slap on the wrist. So i'm like wait, what what is happening here? Yeah england is a fallen state for sure, but it really comes down to if we don't have that information people cannot, uh take action or upon it not even our Politicians that we hope are doing the right thing. We got to hold them accountable. You even posted on parlor this morning Uh, it's a good morning to hold everyone accountable And yes, then that's that's technically what freedom of speech allows us to do Everyone knows one of my catchphrases is hold everyone accountable everyone social media platforms the reviews Mainstream media outlets independent journalists everyone hold everyone accountable. You have a job You must be held accountable You're a politician. I don't think there's a single politician in there that actually cares about their constituents I'm, sorry to those that do you're free to come on reach out to me and tell me that you do and prove it to me because once you get that money you get that money and then the lobbyists You change your views in a heartbeat Yeah, look at how you vote you're voting against what the constitution says Yeah it sucks to see or hear like people getting the claws grabbed into them by these uh, This political monster and things like that. But yeah, and I definitely agree on that point But you know, we had some other topics that I want to touch on but I don't think it'll be a service to the audience um, I think that uh I think you introduced yourself in a way to the audience for anybody that wants to be a free thinker out there that anybody wants to have access to Information pertinent information because there's all 24 hour news cycle is insane and like well, did you miss something? Did you not who's to know but you've been doing the legwork and some people might just see like Oh just a bunch of links on the pistol No, do you know how much work it takes to just curate all that news? And source it properly that takes a lot of work as a content creator My hat's off to you man, because that is not an easy thing to do especially in this day and age And you're tell me about it with the news that's inundated with the news the news exactly so, um I think you're definitely providing a service and whatsapp is definitely a place that I know that people when you have what is I don't know almost a billion users at least on on whatsapp. It's definitely a big reach out there Um to be able well a big ocean for you to fish at. Uh, so I want to leave the audience with this Where can they tune into your stuff like You can give us your website Um how they can sign up for your newsletter. You got one and things like that and where they can follow you on social media Everything is on teamwillsupportive.com slash vlog the reviews more incoming hopefully my podcast when it returns will be Linked in every blog post that will be there Statements come as necessary My statement on gab my statement on the necessity of a independent free speech review, uh, uh platform review or whatever Everything is on the website You can follow me on x you can follow me all over like I said My main i'm at i'm at yasu show on almost every single platform uh besides for cloud hub Where i'm at tws because I had a personal relationship with the ceo and founder May he rest in peace um It hit me hard when he passed away um Yeah, that's it. Everything's on teamwillsupportive.com slash vlog All right And for everybody that's tuning in you already know the drill all these links will be available in the show as a company this episode At theandresagovia.com and i'll be linking to the major social media networks that uh, yasi mentioned there So I I think that's a good place to leave it for the audience man I I really appreciate you coming on the show take some time and and talk about this. I'm glad we finally connected So once again, thank you trinity because uh, it is relevant and it's good to know that because i'm assuming you're significantly younger than me Um that uh It's good to see that the torch for freedom of speech is still being carried upon and that it matters even to a younger generation When they're really lost on their phones nowadays, they don't really care But uh, tell me about I live on my phone all day long Yeah, but you do it for more for for your work as opposed to just walking around with three phones So people don't understand that yet and uh, it's definitely that's the thing and you heard it here first I might be starting to walk around with a fourth phone but Whatever it takes it might be a burner phone too You don't know where to come in And that's a great place to leave it Thank you so very much for joining me and who knows maybe we'll have you on again some other time when you have something else to plug in We will see and uh again t1s4.com slash blog