Freedom of Speech on X w/ Ashley St. Clair @stclairashley

about your fighting for freedom of speech, absolutism. I mean, do you think you've chosen your home to be on X? Do you think we are reaching that point on X? Do you think we've made it there? Do you think we have a while to go? What are your thoughts on that? There is a battle, and we see that right now, with Elon's battle with the ADL. But this has been going on for a very, very long time. We saw this with the Twitter files. And I am a free speech absolutist. I think censorship tends to be contradictory towards even the censors own goals, right? If they want to stop radicalism, they want to stop hate speech. One of the worst things you can do is censor people and put them into these dark corners of the internet where they only become more radicalized. The solution to controversial or offensive speech is not silencing them, but more speech, more dialogue, more understanding. And especially when we're in this digital age and social media is undoubtedly the town square. And there was a lot of argument about that, but I don't think really anyone can argue that this is the public square now, social media, toward debates are held, toward we're talking right now. Movements are born, but what happens when you silence those voices on these platforms? Do they disappear or do they find darker corners to thrive in? I really liked what you had on your post earlier today where if you silence everyone, then eventually there's no one to come and help you when you get silenced. I think that really sort of sets the message for where censorship goes if you continue to follow down that path. But speaking of battles and Zuckerberg and other social media and Elon, what are your thoughts on their little feud? You think a fight will happen? Or is that something that you're interested in the viewing or what do you think? I hope so. I hope Elon clock Zuckerberg and he goes down faster than Threads. Threads just died. So unbelievably fast. I guess that's probably not a surprise to any of us here. Did you have an account on Threads at any point? I had one for a day. And then the next day I was like, I'm deleting my, every meta account I own, I deleted my Facebook, I deleted my Instagram, I deleted the Threads, I was tired of it. But they don't, what's interesting is too, they don't like you delete it right away. It's like a holding period. They're like, well, just in case you change your mind. So you're not really allowed to delete your account for a month. So it was in this weird holding pattern for a month. And then it was eventually permanently deleted. What are you going to do now that you can't talk to all of your high school friends on Facebook and view their baby pictures? I don't, you know, I was homeschooled in high school. So I wasn't talking to many of them on Instagram anyways. I think the question still stands. I think only our parents are still on Facebook. So I think it's only your classmates on there anyway. Do you think actually a platform that's ad revenue driven could truly have freedom of speech? So because right now, you know, we're at the point where Elon unfortunately has to make a lot of decision based on what the advertisers and the sponsors want him to do. You know, is it ever going to be possible or do you think he should shift away from ad revenue being dependent on it? Well, I think that's the goal of things like verification. And there's a lot of ways to make money besides ad revenue. But I think someone like Elon has the opportunity to change the landscape of the way that these certain companies have run mafia style and making these big tech platforms do their bidding. And we only want certain speech. So, but there's also an interesting conversation. So many people were like, we just want free speech. We want to be able to say things. And now the conversation is shifted to, we all want to get paid. We all deserve ad money. So it's very interesting to see that conversation shift. People went from just wanting to be able to speak and say things. And now they all think they have a right to a paycheck which is very interesting. But I think that X will eventually, they're, Elon is probably one of the only people in the position to pressure some of these advertisers and change the landscape. It's been interesting to watch so far because it appears he's pressured, not just advertisers, but the other social media platforms. I read an article that Facebook and Google have totally changed their content moderation policies because of what Elon's been doing here where they'll lean more towards freedom of speech now because he's loosened that up here. So it's really interesting to watch that. Are there any other major topics you're really concerned about going into 2024 and going into this election year, at least in America where you think it's not talked about because you talk about a very wide range of topics on your platform. And I'm just curious to this other things you care deeply about as we go into this. Again, I really think financial literacy, I think free speech absolutism is an important point but the election integrity is a big issue. And whatever you think about the claims surrounding the 2020 election, the reality is our elections should not be run the way they are. Our elections are run like a banana republic in so many ways and there's this push to have these electronic voting systems. Okay, fine, then make the code open source but they won't do that either. I think the best thing we could do is have paper ballots and vote the old school way and we should have voter ID laws. I mean, why on God's green earth are we not verifying the people who are voting in our elections? And we see this often here in New York City where I am, they tried passing a bill here to allow non-citizens illegal immigrants to vote in our local elections. And it was eventually turned over by a higher court here in New York. But there is a very real push for this for the voice to be taken away from the American people. We don't know who's voting in our elections. There are a lot of questions. And I think people have a right to ask those questions and it's very disheartening to see anyone who does have questions about the integrity of our elections being smeared as conspiracy theorists and some people are going to jail over it. Who are you voting for, Ashley? Have you figured that out yet? Right now, I think I'm going with the political prisoner. The political prisoner being Donald Trump. That's right. I've heard you speak on behalf of Vivic before. It seemed like you were sort of getting behind him when he was doing the M&M rap. Did he lose you or just, you know, not quite enough? No, I love Vivic. I think Vivic, and I think it's important. I really think Trump and anyone who wants to be a serious contender really should look at what Vivic's saying because Vivic is saying all of the right things. He's speaking to a lot of issues and the one that I really love that he's speaking about is the sense of purpose that's been lost. And I think that is the root of a lot of these issues. A lot of people feel lost. They don't have hope. And that's why so many people cling to Trump, right? That's why they clung to him in 2016. And he was really the last person to give so many Americans hope. And Vivic is speaking to that loss of purpose that so many people have now. They don't know what they're doing. They're working in this rap race every day for what, knowing that they're gonna own nothing and be happy as they say. And so many times Gen Z gets flack for their apathy. They're called apathetic. They don't care. Of course, they don't. They're seeing that they could work as hard in harder than their parents. And they still might not own anything. It's eight times more expensive to own a home now. So many of these kids are not gonna own homes. They're hardly gonna be able to own a car. They're still living at home because of how astronomical our prices are. So Vivic is speaking to them. Vivic is speaking to, like we mentioned earlier, BlackRock. The people actually running this country, their names aren't on a ballot. And they never will be. And so that is an important thing to call out. I think every candidate on the left and the right who wants to be taken seriously should be speaking to these issues. I really respect. I'm Vivic for coming on the platform and engaging. He was recently engaging with Mark Cuban on education, which is a topic that's really important to me. And I'm like super happy to have him actually debating issues in public. But I gotta tell you, even though he's saying all the right things, Vivic just doesn't rub me as authentic. Am I missing something? What is it? Like it just feels like he's pandering rather than speaking from the heart. You know, I understand that critique of him. And I've heard that a lot. People calling him the snake oil salesman. But the reality is, again, I'm not saying people's, you know, whatever. I think he's saying the right things. And that is the fundamental thing. We can't knock him for being too charismatic. He just seems like a very naturally charismatic guy. If you watch all the videos of him, it's like I tweeted that not that long ago that he came out of the birth canal and taught his mom how to speak. The guy does not say, um, or butt or paws. You know, he's just a very naturally charismatic guy. And I don't think people should knock him for that. And even all of the critiques of him, he has been very responsive. Almost every single critique of him, he has either addressed directly, addressed head on, he's made a video. He is one of the only people I've seen who will get on with people who immediately disagree with him, with people who have made very nasty attacks on him. And he's having these conversations with them. So that to me seems genuine. I know people just aren't used to seeing that level of charisma. So I think it can come off as disingenuous. But I really think his heads in the right space, his hearts in the right space. But I do think people should take a closer look at what he's saying. I think what he does best and impresses me the most is his kind of marketing strategy. I mean, over the last six months, he's been on every major podcast that people care about. Right? P-B-D, every other major one that people listen to. And you never, you know, DeSantis had so much momentum going into the cycle. And I haven't seen the space or name anywhere on any major platform that people truly care about. And so his marketing strategy is really, really smart. The challenge I have with him is he just refuses to say like one negative thing about Trump at all. And it makes me question like, okay, you're clearly have some very pointed strategy here where he's trying to get on the good side of another candidate which you've never really seen before, where one candidate's trying very, very aggressive to get on the good side of his competitor. Does that concern you at all? Do you think there's ulterior motives there where he might be gone for a VP spot? Like what are your thoughts on that where he just refuses to say one negative thing about his competitor? Well, he stated publicly that he wouldn't take a VP slot. I don't know that it's necessarily that, maybe there is some of that trying to get that mega base. But for me, I have personal critiques of Trump that I might not say because at the end of the day, he's a political prisoner. What's happening to him, both people on the left and the right should care about. And I don't think it does any good to slam, kick a guy when he's down. I mean, he's got how many charges now? What is he going to say that everybody else hasn't said already? So that's my opinion of it. And I will say on the vague too, he got into a controversy. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with Alex Stein. He went on Alex Stein's show. And the show gets an OK amount of use, but it's a relatively smaller show. And he got into, there were so many headlines about what the vague said on Alex Stein's show because he had said the government hasn't always told us the whole truth's about 9.11. And the media went into a firestorm. He had headlines all over. And any other candidate, I worked in politics for a very long time. I worked at the consulting firms and the fundraising firms, the swamp of it all, any other candidate. You know what they would have done? They would have said no more of the small YouTubers, no more of these small accounts. We're not having any more conversations with influencers. And you know what he's done? He's gone on even smaller shows. He's talked to even more people on the outskirts. So that seems very genuine to me again. Good, Penny. I was just going to say, so you have a lot of good things to say about Vivek. Why would you choose Trump over Vivek? Well, first of all, I don't think that the date would win the nomination over Trump right now. Look at the poll numbers. There's no way he's catching up to that lead over Trump. The only way that he would be the nominees of Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot. But secondly, I think what Trump speaks to is he gives people hope. I think he has a unique opportunity to actually go in there and get the job done because I think he learned a lot the first time. I think it was kind of shocking for Trump coming in and realizing that he couldn't undo a lot of this. I think he learned a lot from the first go around. And I think Vivek would come into similar issues that Trump had the first go around. It's not that easy to get things done your first term. So I am hopeful that he would go in and finish the job that was started. Is there any policy that Trump is running on or enacted when he was in that you disagree with? I like asking this question to people who are big fans of one candidate. And I like, what is a policy you disagree with him on or you would change? Well, one thing that he really shot himself in the foot over was not doing something about big tech censorship. And I spoke about this before the 2020 election. I said that was going to be his biggest issue going in. And certainly it was. So he got banned from every major platform. People who supported him were banned, suspended. They're still banned. Some of them from a lot of different platforms. And so he really shot himself in the foot there. And there was at one point he put out a statement saying, you know, I should have done something about Facebook, but Mark Zuckerberg was always very nice to me at dinner. You can still find this statement. And I was just appalled that he would say that. And then eventually he was banned by these people. So that really, I wish he would have taken a harder stance. I don't really think him or many people over the age of 40 understood the importance of social media being the digital town square. Ashley, I've seen you talk about both on different shows as well as on your own platform, the lack of babies that we're having and also like the career of motherhood.