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Joe Rogan 'excited' over 'superintelligent, leader-type' Elon Musk's potential Twitter buy


LEFT:{ }Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience) & RIGHT:{ }Elon Musk{ }(AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
LEFT: Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience) & RIGHT: Elon Musk (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
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Comedian and podcast giant Joe Rogan says he's excited about the prospect of billionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest man. purchasing one of the world's leading social media platforms, Twitter.

During an episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" on Saturday, Rogan explained to his guest, actor and comedian Duncan Trussell, that he thinks of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as "superintelligent," and that Musk would make a great leader.

You have to understand... You’re alive in the middle of this experience, and it’s playing out, where no one feels comfortable, no one understands what’s happening, no one knows what life really is, no one, not a single person... We’re all calling upon other people for guidance and leadership and support...We look to powerful leaders," Rogan says on his podcast. "That’s why, me included, everyone is so excited that Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter. We’re like, ‘Yes! The great one!’

Rogan went on to praise Musk's stance on freedom of speech, and even says he believes the billionaire genuinely cares about bettering the social media titan known as Twitter.

“[Elon Musk is] concerned about censorship,” Rogan claims in the podcast. “He said, ‘Freedom of speech is someone you don’t like saying something you don’t want to hear... They have to have that right. It’s essential to a democracy.’
He’s the superintelligent, leader-type character that seems to have great ethics and morals, too," Rogan says about Musk.

Rogan goes as far as to compare Musk to the movie trope of a hero who is pure and right.

And he seems to be, like, a guy that if you had a movie character, and the movie character was, like, this super billionaire who didn’t give a f***, but he was super f****ing smart, and he was really, genuinely working to save humanity. That’s that guy," Rogan says of Musk.

Rogan has first-hand experience with Musk, having had him on his podcast back in 2020. The YouTube video of that podcast has garnered over 26 million views to date.

Musk shook the world when he first announced he owned more shares of Twitter than anyone else. Musk then proposed buying all remaining shares of the social media platform for a total of $43 billion. Today, Musk is no longer the largest Twitter shareholder.

The billionaire has been a vocal critic of Twitter's perceived flaws when it comes to free speech.

Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy," Musk tweeted in a caption of a Yes/No poll he put up on March 25. "Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?

Out of over 2 million Twitter users who voted in Musk's poll, 70.4% voted "No" while 29.6% voted "Yes." Following the closing and results of his poll, Musk asked Twitter users what should be done about the social media giant.

The answer he found apparently was to purchase as many shares of the company as he could.

I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk said in a SEC regulatory filing. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

Musk says he wants to be more judicious and lenient when it comes to deleting tweets and permanently banning users. this could also mean that Twitter could become more transparent about actions taken on tweets, such as the spread or even halting of spread of certain content.

I think we would want to err on the side of, if in doubt, let the speech exist," Musk muses during an interview at TED 2022 with TED's Chris Anderson, later saying " I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and be very cautious with permanent bans... You know, timeouts I think are better than sort of permanent bans.

Many Twitter users voiced their wishes for Musk to unban former President Trump, but the billionaire has yet to confirm or deny the possibility of that happening.

A potential change, proposed by Musk, would see Twitter's algorithm become "open-source," meaning data would be more transparent to users, which Musk hopes would aid with trust issues some have with Twitter.

Any changes to people's tweets... if they're emphasized or de-emphasized... that action should be made apparent... So anyone can see that that action has been taken so there's no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually," Musk proposes.

The billionaire even suggested making Twitter's underlying algorithmic code available on Github, an online code sharing platform, so that it could be inspected by the public. It's a topic he has brought up before, asking his Twitter followers if they'd want that. An overwhelming majority told him "yes."

Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal told employees Thursday at an emergency meeting that they are still evaluating the offer.

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