# Moderation rules expanded beyond illegal content

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/moderation-rules-expanded-beyond-illegal-content/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Marc Andreessen](https://realalpha.app/people/marc-andreessen/) · Marc Andreessen is an entrepreneur, investor, co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz. · Co-founded Netscape and co-created Mosaic, then co-founded a16z, a venture firm backing AI, crypto and frontier tech.
- Host: [Lex Fridman](https://realalpha.app/people/lex-fridman/) · Host, Lex Fridman Podcast · Robotics and AI researcher at MIT; started the show in 2018.
- Show: Lex Fridman Podcast
- Episode: [Marc Andreessen: Trump, Power, Tech, AI, Immigration & Future of America | Lex Fridman Podcast #458](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/), Jan 26, 2025
- Moment: 1:11:15 to 1:19:19 of the episode (8 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/moderation-rules-expanded-beyond-illegal-content/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4275

## Quote

> “**Hate speech was the original one**. And the hate speech conversation started exactly like you'd expect”
> — [Marc Andreessen](https://realalpha.app/people/marc-andreessen/) at [1:16:34](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4594) · Lex Fridman Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Platforms need some moderation for illegal content.
2. Rules can expand once a moderation system exists.
3. Hate speech and misinformation became major pressure points.

## About this segment

Marc Andreessen traces how platforms’ narrow bans on illegal material grew into rules on hate speech and misinformation. The account shows how a moderation system can become a tool for outside pressure.

From “Marc Andreessen: Trump, Power, Tech, AI, Immigration & Future of America | Lex Fridman Podcast #458”, Jan 26, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:11:21](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4281) and how censorship mechanism was used. So you are a good person to speak about the history of this because you were there on the ground floor in 2013-ish, Facebook. I heard that you were there when they invented or maybe developed the term hate speech in the context of censorship on social media. So take me through that history, if you can, the use of censorship. So I was there on the ground floor in 1993.

[1:11:54](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4314) three there's multiple floors to this building apparently there are yeah so i got the first ask to implement censorship on the internet um which was in the web browser that is fascinating yeah yeah 19 actually 1982 uh i was asked to implement a nudity filter did you have the courage to speak up back then i didn't have any problems speaking up back then um i was making six dollars and 25 cents an hour um i did not have a lot to lose um Um, um, No, I was asked at the time. And then look, I, you know, legitimate, you know, in some sense, a legitimate request, which is working on a research project actually funded by the federal government at a public university. So, you know, I don't think my boss was like in any way out of line, but it was like, yeah, like this, this web browser thing is great, but like, could it just

[1:12:34](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4354) make sure to not have any photos of naked people that show up? But if you think about this for a second, as a technologist, I had an issue, which is this was like pre-image net, right? And so I had a brief period where I tried to imagine an algorithm that I referred to as the breast detection algorithm um that i was going to have to design and then apparently a variety of other apparently body parts people are also sensitive about yeah and um and then i politely declined to do this for just the the technical difficulties well number one i did i actually didn't know how to do it but number two is just like no i'm not i'm not building i'm just not building a censorship engine like i'm a you know i'm just not doing it um and and in those days it was you know in those days the internet generally was you know free fire zone for everything it was actually interesting

[1:13:13](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4393) as sort of pre 93, the internet was such a specific niche community. Like it was like the million kind of highest IQ nerds in the world. Um, and so it actually like, didn't really have a lot of, you know, issues that people were like super interested in talking about like astrophysics and not very interested in, you know, even politics at that, at that time. So there really was not an issue there, but, um, yeah, I didn't, I didn't want to start the process.

[1:13:35](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4415) Um, so I think the way to think about this, so first of all, um, you know, yeah, so I was involved in this at Facebook every step, by the way, I've been involved in this at Facebook every step of the way. I joined the board there in 2007. So I saw, I've seen everything in the last, you know, almost 20 years, every step of the way. But also I've been involved in most of the other companies over time. So I was an angel investor in Twitter. I knew them really well. We were the founding investor in Substack. I'm part of the Elon takeover of Twitter with X. I was an angel at LinkedIn. So I've been in these, we were the funder of Pinterest. We were one of the main investors there. Reddit as well. And I was having these conversations with all these guys all the way through. So as much talk specifically about Facebook, but I can just tell you like the general

[1:14:12](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4452) pattern. And for quite a while, it was kind of all the same across these companies. Yeah. So basically the way to think about this, the true kind of nuanced view of this is that there is practically speaking, no internet service that can have zero censorship. And by the way, that also mirrors, there is no country that actually has limited free speech either. The US First Amendment actually has 12 or 13 formal carve outs from the Supreme Court over time. So incitement to violence and terrorist recruitment and child abuse. And so, you know, child pornography and so forth, they're like, they're not covered by the first amendment. Um, and just practically speaking, if you and I are going to start an internet company and have a service, we can't have that stuff either. Right. Cause it's illegal or it will just clearly, you know, destroy the

[1:14:53](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4493) whole thing. So you, you're always going to have a censorship engine. I mean, hopefully it's not actually in the browser, but like, you're going to have it for sure at the level of an, of an internet service. And, but then what happens is now you have, now you have a machine right now, now you have a system where you can put in rules saying, we allow this, we don't allow that. You have enforcement, you have consequences, right? And once that system is in place, like it becomes the ring of power, right? Which is like, okay, now anybody in that company or anybody associated with that company or anybody who wants to pressure that company will just start to say, okay, you should use that machine for more than just terrorist recruitment and child pornography. You should use it for XYZ. And basically that transition happened, call it

[1:15:34](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4534) 2012, 2013 is when there was this very, very rapid pivot. I think the kickoff to it for some reason was it was the beginning of the second Obama term. I think it also coincided with the sort of arrival of the first kind of super woke kids into these schools. It's the kids that were in school between for the Iraq war and then the global financial crisis. And they came out super radicalized. They came into these companies. They immediately started mounting these social crusades to ban and censor lots of things. And then, you know, quite frankly, the Democratic Party figured this out. And they figured out that these companies were, you know, very subject to being controlled. And they, and the, you know, the executive teams and boards of directors are almost all Democrats. And, you know, there's tremendous circulation. A lot of Obama people

[1:16:17](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4577) from the first term actually came and worked in these companies and a lot of. FBI people and other law enforcement, intelligence people came in and worked and they were all Democrats for that set. And so the ring of power was lying on the table. It had been built and they picked it up and put it on and then they just ran. And the original discussions were basically always on two topics. It was hate speech and misinformation. Hate speech was the original one. And the hate speech conversation started exactly like you'd expect, which is we can't have the n-word in which the answer is fair enough let's not have the n-word okay now we've set a precedent right and then but yeah and then the end jordan peterson has talked a lot about this the definition of hate speech ended up being things that make people uncomfortable right so

[1:17:01](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4621) we can't have things that make you know people uncomfortable i of course you know people like me that are disagreeable raise their hands and say well that idea right there makes me uncomfortable but of course that doesn't count as hate speech right so you know the ring of power is on one hand and not, not, not on the other hand. Uh, and then basically that began this slide where it ended up being that, you know, completely anodyne is the point that Mark has been making recently, like completely anodyne comments that are completely legitimate on television or on the Senate floor. All of a sudden our hate speech can't be said online so that, you know, the ring of power was wielded in grossly irresponsible ways. We could talk about all the stuff that happened there. And then the other one was misinformation and that wasn't as there was a

[1:17:38](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4658) little bit of that early on, but of course that really kicked in with, with Trump. Um, so, so the hate speech stuff predated Trump by like three or four years. The misinformation stuff was basically, it was a little bit later and it was the consequence of the Russiagate hoax. And then that was, you know, a ring of power that was even more powerful, right? Because, you know, hate speech is like, okay, at some point, if something offensive or not, like at least you can have a question as to whether that's the case. But the problem with misinformation is like, is it the truth or not? You know, what do we know for 800 years or whatever Western civilization. It's that there's only a few entities that can determine the truth on every topic. There's God. There's the king. We don't have those anymore. And the rest of us are all

[1:18:20](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4700) imperfect and flawed. And so the idea that any group of experts is going to sit around the table and decide on the truth is deeply anti-Western and deeply authoritarian. And somehow the misinformation kind of crusade went from the Russiagate hoax into just full-blown, we're going to use that weapon for whatever we want. And then of course, then the culminating moment on that that really was the straw that broke the camel's back was, we're going to censor all theories that the COVID virus might have been manufactured in a lab as misinformation.

[1:18:47](https://realalpha.app/v/OHWnPOKh_S0/?t=4727) And inside these companies, that was the point where people for the first time, this is like, what, three years ago? For the first time, they were like, that was when it sunk in where it's just like, okay, this has spun completely out of control. But anyway, that's how we got to where we are. And then basically that spell lasted, that complex existed and got expanded basically from call it 2013 to 2023. I think basically two things broke it. Um, one is Substack. And so,