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51 - Pluribus
1.5k Plays1 year ago
Pluribus is a crowd-funded "cancellation insurance" platform, where users can pledge to support their favorite writers and thinkers in the even that they lose a revenue stream (get fired from a day job, banned from Youtube, etc.)
Tyler came to EXIT almost two years ago, looking for a team to help him develop the concept, and last week, Pluribus went live. I interview Tyler about why cancellation insurance is essential to free speech, how he built his team, and why he chose to build it with EXIT.
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Transcript
Introduction of Tyler and Pluribus
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the exit podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett joined here by Tyler Redacted.
00:00:22
Speaker
Tyler is the founder of Pluribus, a cancellation insurance product.
00:00:26
Speaker
And we had him on the show a little over a year ago to talk about the concept and what he was working on.
00:00:34
Speaker
And just wanted to check in on his progress so far and see where things stand.
00:00:38
Speaker
So welcome to the show.
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey man, thanks for having me back.
00:00:43
Speaker
All right.
Pluribus Beta Release Update
00:00:44
Speaker
So when we left you in April of 2022, you were talking through the concept, talking through like why it needs to happen, why, you know, people should care about it.
00:00:56
Speaker
And you had built your team, but it was very much still in the idea stage.
00:01:02
Speaker
So tell me where things stand now.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, so after, you know, it took a little bit longer, and by a little bit, I mean more than that, to actually build the thing.
00:01:14
Speaker
But it's, you know, never been done.
00:01:15
Speaker
We knew that there would be, you know, kind of twists and turns along the way.
00:01:20
Speaker
But as of right now, we're maybe two to three weeks away from releasing the beta, just basically building the
00:01:29
Speaker
the foundational infrastructure and, you know, base level game theory to make sure that all the participants are pretty much on the same page with preparation later for additional updates and everything.
00:01:44
Speaker
But to at least get the baseline down was tricky.
00:01:48
Speaker
I mean, there's a reason why this doesn't exist yet.
00:01:51
Speaker
It's hard to do.
00:01:53
Speaker
But I mean, after a lot of time, we've done
How Pluribus Works
00:01:56
Speaker
it.
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:56
Speaker
So tell me, tell me what the product actually is.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, so as far as cancellation insurance, so the important thing to remind, it's the quickest way to communicate the purpose of this because that is, you know, what it is.
00:02:12
Speaker
It's mitigating damage for a future event that you don't want to happen.
00:02:16
Speaker
But it does not work like traditional insurance.
00:02:19
Speaker
You can't really...
00:02:20
Speaker
you know, have an actuary that can look at somebody's statements online and determine what the likelihood is that they say something, you know, on PC or it's it doesn't work like conventional insurance can't work.
00:02:34
Speaker
So the route that we took is to do crowdfunded
00:02:38
Speaker
cancellation insurance.
00:02:40
Speaker
Another reason for that is because creators, influencers, whatever term you want to use, are also the people who are most at risk for cancellation and have the most to gain.
00:02:49
Speaker
They also have the largest network of people on tap to potentially donate to them.
00:02:54
Speaker
So basically, the approach that we used is instead of
00:03:01
Speaker
you know, somebody has something bad happen to them.
00:03:04
Speaker
Like, oh, I broke my leg.
00:03:06
Speaker
I have $80,000 in medical bills.
00:03:09
Speaker
Could you, I need to raise $80,000.
00:03:13
Speaker
Preparing for that eventuality with live donations isn't really a great deal.
00:03:17
Speaker
Like if you asked me, hey, would you donate to me in case I happen to break my arm, which is not really guaranteed.
00:03:24
Speaker
Could you give me five bucks right now?
00:03:25
Speaker
It's not an ideal on my end.
00:03:28
Speaker
an ideal deal for me on my end.
00:03:31
Speaker
So basically what happens is you have a creator, influencer, again, whatever term you want to use, they can define the parameters of what counts as a cancellation for them.
00:03:42
Speaker
Obviously cancellation means different things to different people.
00:03:44
Speaker
For some people it can be, hey, I got, in case I get demonetized from YouTube, I would really want a safety net
00:03:51
Speaker
Or hey, in case I get booted from Patreon, that would completely screw my life up.
00:03:54
Speaker
So I'd like protection against that.
00:03:56
Speaker
So they would state the parameters of what will count as a cancellation for them and then invite their supporters to pledge to donate to them.
00:04:06
Speaker
in case that event comes to pass.
00:04:09
Speaker
So it's not a live donation, it's a pledge, also not just a verbal pledge, we're not just taking people's words for it, they'll take their payment info and everything.
00:04:18
Speaker
So there'll be a whole lot of latent donations on tap that can build over time until that event comes to pass.
00:04:28
Speaker
So,
00:04:29
Speaker
they'll invite their supporters to donate.
00:04:32
Speaker
If I'm a supporter, which I'm a supporter of many people, so I kind of have insight to the viewpoint of that party.
00:04:40
Speaker
And say, Hey, in case this happens to me, would you come through when I most need it?
00:04:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:04:47
Speaker
I'll pledge you $10 right now.
00:04:49
Speaker
I'm kind of spread financially thin as it is.
00:04:52
Speaker
I can't
00:04:53
Speaker
subscribe to every single person i like and pay out five bucks a month to dozens of people so yeah if you need me here's 20 bucks so a certain amount of time goes by and you know the worst comes to pass they actually do have that thing happened so in the meantime they'll have
00:05:09
Speaker
accumulating these pledges from people.
00:05:11
Speaker
They'll hit the proverbial big red button of hey, you guys, it actually happened.
00:05:17
Speaker
We're I'm in need of actually transferring the pledges that you made to me in the past.
00:05:24
Speaker
They're going to turn into live donations.
00:05:27
Speaker
And then after a or I'll just kind of stick with the baseline now.
00:05:32
Speaker
And then the funds would be transferred as far as the adjudicate adjudication of the legitimacy of the claims.
00:05:39
Speaker
I can go into that later, but that's at least kind of the baseline of how it works.
Fraud Prevention Measures
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:43
Speaker
So my next question would be like when I when I when my car insurance company gives me car insurance, they're not trying to encourage me.
00:05:51
Speaker
to get into car accidents, right?
00:05:53
Speaker
Uh, that it's sort of assumed by both parties that car accidents are an undesirable outcome.
00:05:59
Speaker
And in, in the case of this, uh, product, both parties sort of want to engage in riskier behavior.
00:06:08
Speaker
Like the, the purpose of providing this cancellation insurance is to, is to actually encourage people to speak more freely.
00:06:14
Speaker
And so I think a huge component of how this product would have to be designed
00:06:21
Speaker
is to give the... So for instance, I'm a content creator and I noticed that my pledges at this point are actually bigger than my YouTube income.
00:06:38
Speaker
And so I like spam the gamer word on YouTube so that I can get demonetized, so that I can get that bag.
00:06:48
Speaker
So tell me a little bit about like,
00:06:51
Speaker
how how you deal with that hazard and and yeah, what the what the what the donors recourse is.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, and that really is the after that immediate explanation, like the number one thing that should and usually does appear in people's minds is, well, what if they do the purposeful game or word like that's kind of the archetypal example of just kind of abusing a policy?
00:07:18
Speaker
So there's two things.
00:07:19
Speaker
So we have to balance the interests of both parties.
00:07:24
Speaker
One, people who pledge to donate obviously don't want to get defrauded.
00:07:28
Speaker
But then you can't, you also can't make it too easy for them to pull their pledge because creators that are in, you know, are good actors and are not deceiving anybody can't have the rug pulled out from under them too easily.
00:07:42
Speaker
So yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
Leaving it up to a vote kind of seemed a little bit too iffy each time.
00:07:47
Speaker
It almost kind of precedes doubt and mistrust, like there's going to be a future argument.
00:07:53
Speaker
So the middle ground that we arrived at is so they hit the proverbial big red button and the money isn't transferred immediately.
00:08:02
Speaker
There's going to be a seven day period.
00:08:05
Speaker
where if you as an audience member, because if you've supported them, you'll get notified, believe that either the claim, the rationale that they made for activating their claim fell outside of the parameters they set, like it just...
00:08:22
Speaker
maybe something real did happen to them, but it just didn't fit within the context of what you had agreed to earlier.
00:08:29
Speaker
Or if it does fall within what you agreed to, which is, hey, in case I get demonetized from YouTube, oh, look, I got demonetized from YouTube.
00:08:36
Speaker
But as per your example, just it's clearly just somebody, you know, just denying the Holocaust and saying the ad word a bunch of times.
00:08:47
Speaker
That's obviously grounds for people to say, hey, I oppose this claim.
00:08:53
Speaker
So it's not necessarily a vote, although the people's voice can actually get heard that way.
00:08:59
Speaker
So the default expectation or assumption is
00:09:03
Speaker
is that each claim is legitimate unless more than 50% of people go out of their way to oppose it under grounds of those two reasonings, which they will if they feel that they've been taken advantage of.
00:09:18
Speaker
For the most part, if everybody's kind of being more, you know, just normal people and, you know, they'll be self-selected to be on the same team to begin with, there really shouldn't be many issues.
00:09:27
Speaker
And also, I think that
00:09:30
Speaker
you know, the potential risk of a creator taking advantage of, you know, their supporters is a bit overblown.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's not nothing, but I think that, you know, the medium to long term social and financial costs of like, even if you got away with it and like fleeced your followers out of like 20 grand, like, I mean, where are you at now?
00:09:49
Speaker
Is it going to be worth 20 grand?
00:09:51
Speaker
Probably not.
00:09:51
Speaker
But even that said, you still need the perception of everybody to feel, you know, safe and that people aren't going to stab each other in the back.
00:09:59
Speaker
So that is the base layer mechanism for that.
00:10:03
Speaker
So if people think that they're being taken advantage of, they do have recourse to vote it down.
Monetization Strategies
00:10:08
Speaker
So how do you get paid?
00:10:09
Speaker
So the one tricky thing is, you know, we can't take the standard, you know, industry standard 5% platform fee for pledges because you can't take a cut of something that doesn't exist yet.
00:10:28
Speaker
Now, should those policies be exercised, you know, a couple of years down the line and then, you know, all the money gets transferred
00:10:35
Speaker
that we can take a cut of, but that's also not a great business model, just crossing your fingers, hoping that everybody gets canceled and they've raised a bunch of money in the meantime.
00:10:42
Speaker
So on the supporter end, when you make a pledge, again, kind of the whole unique value prop here is that
00:10:51
Speaker
it's not an immediate financial investment for you.
00:10:54
Speaker
And this is more of a supplementary thing that you can do for people who you just don't have the flexibility to necessarily subscribe to.
00:11:04
Speaker
So again, just like making a reservation for a future payment.
00:11:08
Speaker
But when you do that, you do have the option to tip us directly, just kind of the GoFundMe model right now.
00:11:15
Speaker
They used to take a cut of everything.
00:11:16
Speaker
Now they're huge and you can just
00:11:19
Speaker
have a tip on top of donations.
00:11:20
Speaker
So that's one way.
00:11:23
Speaker
And then the other way is that on the creator end of things, to accept pledges will be a $5 a month subscription.
00:11:34
Speaker
Now, with this sort of thing, the value will rise as the network grows.
00:11:42
Speaker
And, you know, obviously, you know, we didn't want to do anything like
00:11:46
Speaker
add a insurance payment or premium or just like anything super annoying.
00:11:50
Speaker
Like, you know, think of how much you pay for your insurance and all these other aspects.
00:11:54
Speaker
So it wasn't ever going to be anything like that.
00:11:56
Speaker
But in the opening days, there is not going to be that large of a network.
00:12:01
Speaker
That's just the way that it works.
00:12:02
Speaker
So started out with pretty much the bare minimum.
00:12:04
Speaker
Hey, everybody pay five bucks.
00:12:07
Speaker
will get data as this thing moves along.
00:12:10
Speaker
And then let's say, you know, a year or two down the road from now, on the other end of things, if, you know, if there's a creator making $1 million a year, then, you know, only charging them five bucks a month for something that's in jeopardy of losing $1 million obviously doesn't make sense.
00:12:28
Speaker
there, it can evolve down the line.
00:12:31
Speaker
But without having any sort of data or feedback, which is, you know, sort of the reason why, you know, we're releasing the beta in a couple of weeks and getting feedback from creators to say, Hey, actually, this thing that you thought would be good sucks, or vice versa, this is actually good, is the approach right now.
00:12:49
Speaker
So yeah, five bucks a month to start out with for creators, and then you can tip us if you want for supporters.
00:12:56
Speaker
I mean, that sounds like a really great deal, to be honest with you.
00:12:59
Speaker
It is a great deal, Bennett.
00:13:02
Speaker
It's a good point.
00:13:02
Speaker
It's a great deal.
00:13:07
Speaker
Legitimately, I mean, I'm thinking in terms of your team, right?
00:13:14
Speaker
Well, let's talk about that real quick.
Building the Pluribus Team
00:13:17
Speaker
Who's involved with this project?
00:13:19
Speaker
I mean, you don't necessarily have to name names, but you're not a code guy.
00:13:22
Speaker
This took some doing.
00:13:24
Speaker
What kind of skill sets did you go looking for in the group?
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, I've never written a line and don't anticipate doing so in the immediate future.
00:13:36
Speaker
I mean, the main reason I joined Exit in the first place was because, I mean, I had been working on this for quite some time.
00:13:44
Speaker
And then I had thought that I had a technical co-founder, let's see, a year and a half ago, or maybe even more than that.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, I joined Exit a year and a half ago, so shortly before that.
00:13:59
Speaker
And then I thought, you know, things were about to take off.
00:14:02
Speaker
And then, you know, because of the pandemic and fallout from that, and for a variety of other reasons, he really wasn't in a place mentally where it would, you know, be wise or practical to, you know, take on a new enterprise like that.
00:14:16
Speaker
So just when I had Ford momentum, like shit,
00:14:20
Speaker
And then that got taken away.
00:14:22
Speaker
But I'd been tracking exit for a while.
00:14:23
Speaker
So I joined just kind of crossing my fingers, having like an image in my head where I just want to join and then say, hey, guys, I'm working on this great project and then have a bunch of technical people volunteer.
00:14:35
Speaker
And not necessarily with the expectation that's the way it would play out, but that's exactly how it played out.
00:14:42
Speaker
It got put together pretty quickly.
00:14:44
Speaker
I basically just creeped on everybody's comments in the intro page.
00:14:51
Speaker
and just saw everybody's skill sets, reached out to them, said, hey, this is what I'm doing, and got a team of a couple of guys in exit to start putting this together and a couple of guys from outside exit as well.
00:15:03
Speaker
But it all congealed and started gaining momentum very quickly after joining.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't necessarily want to encourage people to like... Ideas are cheap.
00:15:16
Speaker
Right?
00:15:17
Speaker
Like having a good idea is worth almost nothing.
00:15:21
Speaker
And unless, number one, it has to be a great idea.
00:15:25
Speaker
And number two, you have to have the drive to build the kind of connections and the kind of network.
00:15:32
Speaker
And so like I was just really impressed with the effort that you put in to make this happen and to get the right people together.
00:15:41
Speaker
Um, as far as how, how did you, how did you assess like the, the, the partnership?
00:15:50
Speaker
Like how, how did you decide?
00:15:52
Speaker
Cause you didn't have cash to offer anybody.
00:15:54
Speaker
Like that's, that's a huge obstacle to, to somebody who's got a good idea, but they're not a code person.
00:15:59
Speaker
They're going to have to outsource a lot of things, um, or, or, or find a lot of help.
00:16:04
Speaker
How did you figure out like, Hey, what is this worth to all of us?
00:16:07
Speaker
How do we all feel bought in and, you know, sort of, uh, compensated by this product?
Challenges in Authenticity and Innovation
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:14
Speaker
So the short answer is just sweat equity for people who don't know what that is.
00:16:20
Speaker
It's, you know, when you're doing a startup and you don't have cash to pay people with, you say, you know, once this is, you know, becomes an actual company and we're off to the races, you guys get a stake in the company because I can't pay you.
00:16:34
Speaker
So you will own a part of the company.
00:16:36
Speaker
So
00:16:37
Speaker
That's how at least the compensation worked.
00:16:39
Speaker
Although we have had, you know, just a couple of guys who, you know, were just happy and like their careers and just were, you know, happy to like lend a couple of hours a week to the project just on a volunteer basis.
00:16:53
Speaker
But as far as assessing chemistry, suitability, like whatever, I...
00:16:59
Speaker
the only route that I could go was to be as honest as I could with people.
00:17:04
Speaker
Like, I don't really know how startup founders who are just like kind of snake oil salesmen handle the stress of just like pulling like dozens of different threads of lies a day to like keep things spinning.
00:17:17
Speaker
But just like, I basically just said, hey, this is my idea.
00:17:23
Speaker
I genuinely believe in it.
00:17:25
Speaker
I do not code.
00:17:27
Speaker
I need people to actually help me build this thing.
00:17:30
Speaker
We don't know how long this will take.
00:17:33
Speaker
I mean, here's my general estimate, but this is based on zero experience.
00:17:37
Speaker
But everybody has kind of known this also isn't like, I mean, I'm not, I mean, not to, you know, throw shade at the people that do, but I'm also not selling pillows here.
00:17:46
Speaker
Like, I mean, this is, it's a complicated thing.
00:17:49
Speaker
It's a,
00:17:50
Speaker
important thing.
00:17:52
Speaker
And I think that, you know, um,
00:17:56
Speaker
I mean, you can't even if you walk into a diner and strike up a conversation with a stranger, they're going to talk about cancel culture within seven minutes.
00:18:03
Speaker
Like, I mean, everybody is it's it's just kind of been hanging over everybody's head.
00:18:07
Speaker
So that's that played a role.
00:18:10
Speaker
But basically, you know, I said, you know, I don't have experience with this sort of stuff, but I've you know, I've done a lot of research and just like even out of like, you know, self-protection of just like, hey, if somebody else has this
00:18:24
Speaker
has a solution for this on lock, then that's a threat to, you know, if I'm putting all my chips on the table, like I looked around, man, it's not there.
00:18:33
Speaker
I think that this is the best chance that we have, at least as far as, you know, obviously there's various levels to that.
00:18:39
Speaker
This exit plays a tremendous role and so do other organizations and projects.
00:18:44
Speaker
But all I can say is I'm going to be honest and give it as much effort as I can.
00:18:50
Speaker
And and then also, you know,
00:18:53
Speaker
give you sweat equity at the end of it.
00:18:55
Speaker
And that's all I can promise.
00:18:56
Speaker
And it ended up working out.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, I've been really impressed by the quality of not free work, not volunteer work, but speculative work.
00:19:11
Speaker
The number of smart people who are willing to
00:19:15
Speaker
you know, go to a couple, attend a couple of your calls and, uh, you know, get a sense of what you need and, and, and think through what it would take with you and sort of explore the space with you.
00:19:29
Speaker
Um, I mean, with you on this project in particular, but just in general, in the group, lots of these projects, um, if you've got a halfway decent idea and you seem like a smart guy, um, a lot of these guys are really looking for, uh,
00:19:44
Speaker
an, an interesting project to, to chew on.
00:19:47
Speaker
Um, you know, there, there are guys who, who generate tons of projects and there are guys who sort of consume projects.
00:19:55
Speaker
Like they have these systematizing minds and it's almost like a, uh, it's almost like the way a beaver builds a dam.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's like, they just need, they need to build something.
00:20:04
Speaker
And, um, it's, it's really cool to see those things come together inside the group on the subject of, uh, cancel culture.
00:20:12
Speaker
And the fact that it's just on everybody's lips.
00:20:17
Speaker
Why do you think it is the case?
00:20:20
Speaker
I know you've sort of mentioned in broad strokes that like, hey, I know why this doesn't exist because it's hard.
00:20:26
Speaker
But can you be a little more specific about like what exactly about it is hard?
00:20:31
Speaker
Why hasn't this been done before?
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:34
Speaker
Like I was going to say, and I mean,
00:20:37
Speaker
like there's a lot of reasons why I think I'm just like, Hey, I'm perfectly positioned for, uh, addressing this issue.
00:20:46
Speaker
Um, like both to like whatever strengths I have and like, and my own like weaknesses and like,
00:20:52
Speaker
whatever, you know, shitty things have like happened in my life that kind of led me to this point.
00:20:56
Speaker
Like, I feel like I'm perfectly positioned.
00:20:58
Speaker
You know, it's like the most meaningful thing I've ever partaken in.
00:21:01
Speaker
So it's, you know, over the course of three years, I mean, the breakthroughs make it all worth it.
00:21:07
Speaker
But as far as the percentage of the time, it's just...
00:21:10
Speaker
staring at your laptop, like just with a problem with no answer.
00:21:16
Speaker
And just like a series of those, like over the course of like every week, you're just, you come up against another thing where it's like, okay, so now we run into this problem.
00:21:26
Speaker
There is no answer because this doesn't exist.
00:21:28
Speaker
So where there's nobody you can consult really.
00:21:31
Speaker
I mean, you can, you know, just have calls with as, you know, as many smart friends as you can find, which I've done and which was very helpful.
00:21:37
Speaker
But I think,
00:21:40
Speaker
The number one reason is just because the ambiguous nature of social relationships, like I mean, we touched on how can you tell if somebody said something on PC and are being persecuted for it, even though it was their legitimate beliefs and like whatever charges are being leveled against them are bullshit.
00:22:03
Speaker
versus, you know, just somebody saying the gamer word for fun and to cash in.
00:22:07
Speaker
Like, how do you how do you assess authenticity is like a very difficult thing.
00:22:14
Speaker
And, you know, we touched on the, you know, the base layer of how to do it.
00:22:18
Speaker
And I use that term whenever I say it, because
00:22:21
Speaker
Even after that, what you got is, well, what if scenario A happens and what if scenario B happens?
00:22:29
Speaker
And then what if outcome A1 and A2 happen from scenario A and outcome B2, B3?
00:22:35
Speaker
So like it just keeps on branching out.
00:22:38
Speaker
So but just the flip side of that is.
00:22:43
Speaker
you can't prepare for literally every single eventuality because you also don't have the real world data.
00:22:50
Speaker
If like if you over design solutions in a lab and then just introduce them into the wild for something that is as as complex as human relationships, it just shatters from fragility upon, you know, contact with complexity.
00:23:08
Speaker
So basically just mapping out the
00:23:12
Speaker
each intersection of, hey, here's where a problem could arise, and basically mapping out the landscape of here are some options available to us without actually picking them, because it would just be hubris to just be like, and this is the best way to go, just with no real world feedback and just talking about it over Zoom.
00:23:32
Speaker
But just at least have, yeah.
00:23:34
Speaker
I mean, so you're right.
00:23:36
Speaker
You can't commit all of your resources to like your elegant imaginary solution because you're right, it'll be wrong.
00:23:48
Speaker
But the process of gaining that market contact with your idea involves
Iterative Business Development
00:23:56
Speaker
putting some small investment out there.
00:24:00
Speaker
And I think part of the frustration that I...
00:24:03
Speaker
that it sounds like you're describing and that I totally share with what I'm trying to do is when a problem has no solution.
00:24:10
Speaker
And so you have to make significant investments in a bunch of wrong answers.
00:24:15
Speaker
Like you have to put at minimum quite a lot of time into building out a wrong answer and then have it just get
00:24:25
Speaker
you know, ripped apart in the real world.
00:24:28
Speaker
And then you have to not get discouraged and try the next thing and the next thing and the next thing until something clicks.
00:24:35
Speaker
And it's like, I think people have,
00:24:38
Speaker
that vision for like entrepreneurship in general, that like, Oh, lots of entrepreneurs try different business ideas and, and, and, you know, not all of them work, but even within a single business idea that, you know, is a good idea.
00:24:51
Speaker
There's like, just, it feels like thousands of these points where it's, well, it's not this way.
00:24:59
Speaker
It's not this way.
00:25:00
Speaker
It's not this way.
00:25:01
Speaker
And, and, and, and, and all the time you're like, I'm not sure this has an answer.
00:25:09
Speaker
So it's like, you don't necessarily have the confidence of like, oh, I just got to keep trying, keep trying and something will work.
00:25:15
Speaker
It's like, maybe I'll keep trying, keep trying and then nothing will work.
00:25:20
Speaker
And I'll just be screwed and I'll just waste it all this time.
00:25:23
Speaker
And you have to go back down the tree and try to find a branch with some workable solutions.
00:25:34
Speaker
But the fact is,
00:25:36
Speaker
If you're visualizing this tree and you've exhausted all the options on this node, it's totally possible that you find some blind alley down this decision tree that leads you all the way back to the core of your idea.
00:25:52
Speaker
And you go, oh man, this whole thing is screwed.
00:25:56
Speaker
Like the terror of like how much of your sort of weaving you might have to undo at any point is intense.
00:26:07
Speaker
But anyway, yeah.
00:26:08
Speaker
So on the subject of ordinary people having these conversations, I've actually found that like the number of guys who come to exit because they're actually like,
00:26:21
Speaker
they're actually saying things online and they're at risk is quite low.
Future Plans Beyond Creators
00:26:26
Speaker
Um, most of the guys who come to exit are not really shit posters.
00:26:34
Speaker
It's the, you know, maybe it's the VAX mandate or maybe they just like hate their, their job.
00:26:39
Speaker
They just hate these kinds of jobs, um, which I totally, uh, respect and, and, uh, and agree with.
00:26:45
Speaker
But, um,
00:26:48
Speaker
do you have any i i know that i know it's so you you're sort of in this situation where it is easier to meet the needs of a content creator because they have a ready-made audience that you can uh invite to make pledges do you have any uh plans or any models for how you might help somebody who's
00:27:10
Speaker
just a regular guy trying not to get canceled, say, you know, in the workplace or like, you know, these people who are like ordinary people and they make the news because that lady argued with the guy over a bike or, you know, just sort of these random confrontations.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yes, but not right away, but only because that's, or at least it appears to me to be pretty impossible.
00:27:43
Speaker
Just like the only way that I see to go about it.
00:27:48
Speaker
Sorry, you're trying to stay minimum viable.
00:27:50
Speaker
You're trying to stay like, what's the smallest bite I can take?
00:27:54
Speaker
I totally understand that.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, I like creators, but it's not like I have such special affinity for them.
00:28:02
Speaker
I want to help them out more than normal people.
00:28:05
Speaker
I mean, a lot of there's pretty much the model is that there's a certain...
00:28:13
Speaker
It can over time as the network scales, like wider and wider concentric circles of people who can take advantage of this, you know, pretty much qualify or become feasible.
00:28:26
Speaker
So, you know, you start with, you know, larger to midsize creators and then an update that we've talked about before that we can go to later if you want, can go to like midsize to smaller creators.
00:28:38
Speaker
And then that kind of expands over time to like, you know, professionals in hospital environments, which is basically an environment nowadays, but just like you can think of academics or like doctors talking about, you know, going against the narrative or anything like that.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then over time, it pretty much should be able to broaden to everybody.
00:28:57
Speaker
But that's another one of the benefits of starting with the creators because the whole zero to one issue of like, how do you bootstrap
00:29:05
Speaker
If the majority of people that you eventually want to help require a certain amount of numbers on this platform, how the hell do you bootstrap that?
00:29:14
Speaker
And the answer is that you start with creators because they bring their audiences and they're also self-selected to be pretty motivated towards the
00:29:23
Speaker
cause, issue, whatever you want to call it.
00:29:27
Speaker
And that's as good a foundational building block as any.
00:29:31
Speaker
And then you pretty much build it out from there.
00:29:33
Speaker
So I would really hope and again, this is like, there's so many different variables, it's I don't want to, you know, confidently give a firm date.
00:29:41
Speaker
But the idea is after you know, a year or two, this really broadens beyond, hey, this is cancellation insurance for creators.
00:29:49
Speaker
And then we have both the numbers and the finances at this time to be like, okay, we can really get creative and help out more normal people.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
And not to commit you to anything, but this is just an idea, a thought.
00:30:05
Speaker
It seems to me that you could almost...
00:30:09
Speaker
engage a group like Exit or a group like New Founding or one of these sort of vetted affinity groups.
00:30:18
Speaker
And your customer would be the group itself and the leadership of that group.
00:30:23
Speaker
But sort of what they would be offering to their, you'd be like a value add to their thing.
00:30:28
Speaker
where they would say, hey, if you lose a revenue stream, we've worked it out with Pluribus that we have some pledge reserve for just this purpose.
00:30:45
Speaker
And our audience and our donors are trusting us to do the work of vetting you in case you lose your job.
00:30:56
Speaker
Like that, that seems like maybe a way that this reaches normal people.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think, yeah, that's a thought that I had as well beyond the, you know, the whatever professionals in hospital industries, like the same model that I had in mind, I call it DAOs, but it's DAU, like decentralized autonomous unions.
00:31:18
Speaker
So the,
00:31:19
Speaker
The difference of that versus some other ideas that we've had, like, you know, creator guilds, where they get to pool resources from all of their followers.
00:31:30
Speaker
Those are from those are four people that have followers.
00:31:34
Speaker
But what if you have a group of
00:31:38
Speaker
12, 25, 50, 150 people who don't have followers.
00:31:41
Speaker
So you could do a sort of mutual aid fund deal where everybody pays into a pot and then there's an adjudication amongst themselves.
00:31:49
Speaker
And, you know, that doesn't work with if you just take 150 people off the street because they don't trust each other.
00:31:56
Speaker
like you said, these self-selected natures of these communities that for the same reason that I was able to get a team on board so quickly.
00:32:02
Speaker
And there's just a base level of like cultural and moral alignment.
00:32:07
Speaker
And also, you know, the communities are small enough to where, again, if you just scam everybody that you know in your online community, it's not going to work out well.
00:32:14
Speaker
But the, yeah, the mutual aid fund model is a way to build off of that.
00:32:18
Speaker
There's also some interesting instruments that can be layered on top of that, but I don't want to, you know, throw out every sort of, you know, speculative thing, no matter how shiny it is.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, I hear that.
00:32:32
Speaker
And for you, I want to talk about why this matters to you because you, you know, as far as I know, use your real name, if that is your real name.
Tyler's Personal Motivations
00:32:41
Speaker
Are you what made this the thing for you that was important to to get involved in and work on?
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah, I sort of asked myself this question, or at least, you know, nobody's a fan.
00:32:59
Speaker
I mean, some people are, but like no real person is a fan of cancel culture.
00:33:03
Speaker
Everybody's pissed off and it irritates them.
00:33:06
Speaker
So I was wondering what
00:33:08
Speaker
motivated me to go like to like a sort of extreme with it.
00:33:13
Speaker
And it can probably be, you know, traced down to the, you know, 2017, 2019 period with a bunch of the prominent cancellations of there was, okay, yeah, here are the core ones.
00:33:31
Speaker
So, um,
00:33:33
Speaker
There was the cancellation of Brett Weinstein at the whole evergreen scandal thing.
00:33:38
Speaker
There was a canceling of Louis CK for, you know, doing what he did.
00:33:44
Speaker
And there was also, you know, when Jordan Peterson first got on the scene and doing all he was doing, and just seeing how he was treated from the media and everything like that.
00:33:59
Speaker
And, you know, we don't have to go into like,
00:34:01
Speaker
necessarily like the recent developments of like, of anybody, but just again, that sort of, that sort of phase 2017 2019.
00:34:06
Speaker
So what that represented to me was, I mean, so there's an evolutionary biologist, a comedian, and then like, you know, those videos I was watching back then of just, you know,
00:34:18
Speaker
Peterson's like talking through parents of like their daughter committed suicide and like they need advice to, you know, get through it.
00:34:26
Speaker
And I saw all of those things being attacked.
00:34:30
Speaker
And I'm like, the only thing I really care about in life, I like learning.
00:34:35
Speaker
I like learning.
00:34:37
Speaker
comedy and I like, you know, basic decent.
00:34:42
Speaker
I mean, I mean, you know, just be a decent person.
00:34:45
Speaker
That phrase is, you know, obviously been ruined like many good things have been ruined lately.
00:34:48
Speaker
But like, I mean, just this is a guy talking like parents through their daughter's suicide.
00:34:54
Speaker
So I saw all these things getting attacked and I'm like, yeah, this is, you know, I think there's a lot of people who they have,
00:35:02
Speaker
their own sort of origin story of like whenever the line was crossed to them.
00:35:08
Speaker
And, you know, there's been, it's been years since then.
00:35:10
Speaker
And I had to track down, okay, like what's the force behind this, these events and you know, what the hell is going on here?
00:35:17
Speaker
But like, after those sorts of things happened, it kind of coalesced in my mind of just like, yeah, I hate this and I'm going to do everything in my power to end it.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:30
Speaker
On the one hand, it's this crusade, this ideological thing.
00:35:35
Speaker
But on the other hand, it's like you're just a founder who saw a need.
00:35:39
Speaker
Like you saw a value that was not being created.
00:35:46
Speaker
Yeah, another thing that I guess helped thinking about it now is like, again, I'm flipping through all these, you know, videos in that time period.
00:35:52
Speaker
And then there's Peterson doing his just like you need purpose in your life.
00:35:56
Speaker
Young man, I'm like in my mid to like late 20s and like not doing great myself.
00:36:01
Speaker
It's like you need something to motivate you and do whatever.
00:36:03
Speaker
And then I see what happened to Brett, and then I see Peterson get shit on, and then fucking I see a bunch of unfunny comics just talking about how Louis C.K.
00:36:11
Speaker
sucks.
00:36:11
Speaker
What a coincidence that the worst comic sucks.
00:36:13
Speaker
You definitely aren't trying to advance yourself.
00:36:15
Speaker
I'm like, oh, and that kind of helped coalesce my mind.
00:36:18
Speaker
I'm like, oh, I think I found my thing.
00:36:20
Speaker
Thank you for your assistance.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:36:25
Speaker
I have had this thought occasionally that –
00:36:32
Speaker
at least in my case, I had a, I had a partnership with the people who doxed me.
00:36:39
Speaker
Um, I definitely, you, you mentioned like, oh, thank you.
00:36:42
Speaker
Thank you for your help.
00:36:43
Speaker
Like, that's exactly how I feel about getting docs.
00:36:45
Speaker
It's like, I was in a situation and maybe we can talk about how this sort of the psychology of your potential customer
00:36:56
Speaker
But like I hated every minute that I spent in my job.
00:37:03
Speaker
And I was constantly, constantly on Twitter because I was running away from like the reality of my situation.
00:37:12
Speaker
It was the only way that I could escape.
00:37:15
Speaker
And I
00:37:20
Speaker
I started to take these risks and I knew what I was doing.
00:37:23
Speaker
I started to take these risks because it was increasingly, you know, I would, I would go home and I would, and I would have the love of my family.
00:37:31
Speaker
And, and that was, uh, that was deeply meaningful, but, but the, but the, the, the portion of my life dedicated to economics, uh,
00:37:40
Speaker
was incredibly, just completely meaningless to me.
00:37:45
Speaker
And so taking these risks with what I was saying and what I was reading and who I was following, first of all, it felt like I wasn't risking anything that I actually cared about because I couldn't justify to myself
00:38:06
Speaker
keeping my mouth shut so that I could stay a finance analyst forever.
00:38:10
Speaker
And then also it was like, this is the only thing that I'm doing that maybe means something because people would reach out to me like every month or so.
00:38:21
Speaker
And they'd be like, Hey, you wrote this thing about, um, dating, or you wrote this thing about religion or, and, and I, I, uh, you know,
00:38:31
Speaker
I went and asked a girl out or, or I'm getting engaged or I started going to church again or stuff like that.
00:38:38
Speaker
And those little DMS, uh, you know, one of those meant more than, than five years, um, at the defense contractor.
00:38:52
Speaker
And so it was like,
00:38:55
Speaker
I was sort of magnetized toward purpose, toward impact.
00:39:00
Speaker
And so, yeah, the people who doxed me, I'm boundlessly grateful for that.
00:39:11
Speaker
And maybe that, you know, I know we want to stay in this, like, friend-enemy distinction territory with these guys.
00:39:20
Speaker
And, like, obviously, they should not be doing what they're doing.
00:39:25
Speaker
But what I want to create and what I think you're trying to create too is a situation where you can undergo that transformation and that shedding of these things that are not of value without being destroyed.
Support During Cancellation
00:39:43
Speaker
Like I needed to get fired.
00:39:46
Speaker
I absolutely needed to get fired.
00:39:48
Speaker
But I also was very lucky in terms of like how that shook out in the long run.
00:39:55
Speaker
And I want everybody to have the kind of opportunities that I had, uh, and, and the kind of soft landing that I had.
00:40:03
Speaker
There's the famous, uh, Teal quote of, you know, we live in a world in which courage is in shorter supply than genius.
00:40:11
Speaker
And you can, you know, you can swap out courage for, you know, a whole bunch of different, uh, virtues and.
00:40:17
Speaker
one of the, if not the primary reason, is that there's tremendous cost associated with doing pro-social things.
00:40:28
Speaker
And that's what is inhibiting a lot of good things from happening.
00:40:34
Speaker
A lot of people could end up in better situations, but...
00:40:37
Speaker
You know, if you and that's part of the reason why we wanted to do like, you know, preemptive measures so early.
00:40:44
Speaker
Like, I mean, even setting aside for the fact that like, you know, GoFund, even if GoFundMe didn't take controversial funds down, what you could say is that, hey, if I'm big enough and I get canceled, I could just start.
00:40:58
Speaker
you know, a GoFundMe to restore my lost income.
00:41:01
Speaker
Like that's, that's easy to say to other people in theory, but that doesn't like, you can't just be like, Hey, your life is going to be miserable, but eventually it's going to be okay.
00:41:12
Speaker
Like you need something beforehand to know that whatever shitty event you might
00:41:18
Speaker
go through in the future, it's not going to be that bad.
00:41:22
Speaker
And then you can sort of pass through the membrane of the fake and gay world and then into wherever it
00:41:29
Speaker
you're meant to be basically.
00:41:33
Speaker
And I think that's at least since there's, there's, it's a very complex problem and it's not even one problem.
00:41:41
Speaker
It's a whole bunch of interlocked things, which means that there's a whole bunch of interlocked solutions.
00:41:45
Speaker
And what I'm doing is only a small piece of that, but mitigating that pain to go from where you shouldn't be to where you should be is really the role that I would hope to play here.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, and you're going to have an opportunity.
00:42:01
Speaker
I mean, there will be a community that's built around this.
00:42:06
Speaker
And, you know, I guess that's maybe a little cliche these days.
00:42:11
Speaker
Everybody's starting communities.
00:42:14
Speaker
But it matters a great deal to have people around you who have gone through it and who can tell you that it's going to be okay and tell you how it's going to be okay.
00:42:31
Speaker
I owe a lot to my friend Tanner Guzzi, who he had almost like a Me Too style cancellation.
00:42:44
Speaker
And this was like in the teens, the 2010s, where cancel culture was not really understood as a thing.
00:42:55
Speaker
It had started happening, but we didn't really have a label for it.
00:42:58
Speaker
And it wasn't necessarily understood as a bad thing.
00:43:04
Speaker
And so he kind of got canceled in the bad old days where people would hear stories about you and they would really just assume that it was true.
00:43:12
Speaker
There weren't these mimetic antibodies against it where people go, it's probably nonsense.
00:43:20
Speaker
It's probably motivated.
00:43:24
Speaker
But when I got fired, man, he was on the phone with me and he was talking to me about like,
00:43:30
Speaker
what I could do.
00:43:31
Speaker
I mean, really, in large part, the concept for exit was a result of conversations with him.
00:43:39
Speaker
And yeah, having somebody who can chart a course with you like that is tremendously valuable.
00:43:48
Speaker
And also just talk you through like
00:43:54
Speaker
hey, you probably feel like dog shit physically right now.
00:43:59
Speaker
And it's probably because you're not eating or sleeping.
00:44:02
Speaker
And like, here's how it's like, here's how getting canceled feels like in your tummy, like in your guts and your head.
00:44:12
Speaker
And so that's incredibly powerful.
00:44:17
Speaker
And you're gonna draw people like that to you.
Community and Psychological Support
00:44:23
Speaker
that I think it's going to be it's going to be incredibly powerful.
00:44:30
Speaker
Actually, if you don't mind a brief spurg out on this sort of stuff.
00:44:36
Speaker
So yeah, as far as the initial stuff that I just laid out, that's all great.
00:44:42
Speaker
But like you said, it's not just a monetary thing.
00:44:45
Speaker
It's psychological, it's social, obviously, like all intertwined.
00:44:50
Speaker
If you lose your job, you probably lose your social circle and your paycheck.
00:44:55
Speaker
So
00:44:58
Speaker
So like one pushback I've gotten is just like, yeah, but it's not just money.
00:45:02
Speaker
It's these other things that doesn't really solve it.
00:45:03
Speaker
It's like, yeah, but a great way to get people to cooperate is money.
00:45:08
Speaker
And all of a sudden you have a bunch of people in the same network who are sharing money and you are in great position to start sharing the, or start solving the social aspects.
00:45:20
Speaker
And it's very easy to layer in these sorts of, you know, social support structures.
00:45:25
Speaker
um that you kind of mentioned like uh even like and again this is just uh something that's just on the docket that will not be difficult to layer in but we can fast forward like a year from now or whatever one thing that we wanted to do is like have a sort of like mass shaming alert i haven't figured out the branding for it yet but it's just like to almost act as like a digital flare for anybody that's like under active attack because
00:45:49
Speaker
you know, if we're not wired, and this is one of the reasons why it's hold this power as you know, the chimpanzees that we are, we're not wired to have 1000s of people hate us at the same time, like our amygdalas can't handle it.
00:46:01
Speaker
It's fucking terrifying.
00:46:03
Speaker
So but like, like you said, like only a couple of kind words like, oh, those 1000s of people that tell you your piece of shit, it doesn't take many people to be like, Oh, actually, you're not don't worry, hey, you can reach me here.
00:46:15
Speaker
Like, so there's, so yes, the cancellation insurance, which again is not quite literally insurance, is de facto insurance through crowdfunding.
00:46:26
Speaker
But that also provides a good hook to get people in the same network to solve some other coordination problems where some other support is available.
00:46:37
Speaker
So Spurgout, over, sorry.
00:46:40
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, I think honestly, a lot of us that are working in this sphere can work together on a lot of that stuff.
00:46:47
Speaker
One of the problems with, and I've had this experience, and I know many of our guys on Twitter have had this experience.
00:46:55
Speaker
You see someone who's getting put through the ringer, and you want to support, but you don't want to signal boost the problem itself.
00:47:06
Speaker
Um, I rarely, I rarely talk publicly about people who've been doxxed precisely for that reason, because I don't want to make their problems any worse.
00:47:16
Speaker
Um, and I definitely had people.
00:47:19
Speaker
reach out to me when I was in the process of getting fired, be like, oh man, let's all talk about this.
00:47:28
Speaker
And this is such crap what's happening to him.
00:47:30
Speaker
It's not fair.
00:47:32
Speaker
And being like, just shut up.
00:47:34
Speaker
Please just shut up for a second.
00:47:37
Speaker
Let me handle this with my employer for 48 hours.
00:47:41
Speaker
And then we can all be mad about it.
00:47:46
Speaker
And I think one of the things that we can do with these kind of vetted closed door networks is provide some of that coordination in a way that doesn't make things worse.
00:48:01
Speaker
So yeah, it's a huge problem.
00:48:04
Speaker
And I'm really proud to know you and to have been part of
00:48:12
Speaker
of this story of building this thing, man.
00:48:15
Speaker
So you're saying you go live in a matter of a couple of weeks.
Pluribus's Launch and Philosophy
00:48:21
Speaker
How do people learn more about what you're doing?
00:48:26
Speaker
Okay, so you can go to becomepluribus.com.
00:48:30
Speaker
So by the time this comes out, we might already be live with the beta and you'll be able to sign up.
00:48:36
Speaker
But if not, there's a email at the bottom, sign up for the waitlist and it will be out shortly.
00:48:44
Speaker
You can also follow us on at become pluribus.
00:48:49
Speaker
Oh, I'll go into the name real quick.
00:48:52
Speaker
So the reason why it's pluribus, obviously not to e pluribus unum, but also just like the kind of direct translation is more pluribus.
00:49:00
Speaker
or many Latin kind of gets ambiguous, but I mean, there, there's, it's very odd that an overwhelming majority of people can be oppressed by a very small minority like this.
00:49:15
Speaker
It's very, it's a very bizarre phenomenon.
00:49:18
Speaker
So the idea is that, you know, there's always going to be a
00:49:23
Speaker
you know, not that many people who are willing to stand up and be courageous and do some other things, but there are a shitload of people as, and by shitload, I mean, in the tens of millions who would be willing to subsidize the risks of those people on their behalf.
00:49:41
Speaker
And I, that is my best idea of how to have the many reassert their will on
00:49:48
Speaker
over what the hell happens to the society that they live in and dominate numerically, but just are dominated by in reality.
00:49:59
Speaker
So anyway, so that's the name, but Twitter at become pluribus.
00:50:05
Speaker
And then you can also follow me at Tyson Berg.
00:50:10
Speaker
It's Harry Bergeron is the name.
00:50:11
Speaker
I wasn't sure which self aggrandizing fictional character I wanted to choose.
00:50:15
Speaker
It was going to be Heisenberg.
00:50:16
Speaker
Then I picked the other thing.
00:50:18
Speaker
But a couple quick things that I don't want to overconfirm, but this is pretty safe to say.
00:50:29
Speaker
Because now I know about this project.
00:50:33
Speaker
I know how much work has gone into it.
00:50:35
Speaker
I'm very confident that it will succeed.
00:50:38
Speaker
I have all the confidence in the world about it, but most people aren't me.
00:50:43
Speaker
Everybody except one person isn't me.
00:50:45
Speaker
So I think that joining, being an early adopter of this, when the odds do seem very low that this will actually work or be successful, I wanted to find out, you know, some way to recognize the people willing to, you know, show the courage to, you know, jump on board before this, you know, becomes obvious to everybody.
00:51:07
Speaker
So, you know, whether it's I'm not sure if we're going to break it down by ten, a hundred or a thousand.
00:51:13
Speaker
But, you know, the first people who join will have, you know, gold, silver or, you know, bronze ring around their profile permanently to show, you know, again, fast forward five years from now.
00:51:25
Speaker
I'm a millionaire.
00:51:26
Speaker
Everybody's doing great.
00:51:27
Speaker
Cancel culture is over.
00:51:28
Speaker
But that collar will be there of just, hey, I'm one of the first people that did this.
00:51:32
Speaker
And I think that that's important.
00:51:35
Speaker
There will also be a referral program for if you get people to sign up, you receive a portion of the revenue that is ultimately collected from their supporters.
00:51:45
Speaker
So those plugs were a bit messy, but it's the first time I've given them.
00:51:49
Speaker
So I guess we'll call that okay.
00:51:51
Speaker
But yeah, that's how they can reach us.
00:51:54
Speaker
Awesome.
00:51:55
Speaker
Awesome.
00:51:56
Speaker
All right.
00:51:56
Speaker
Well, it's great to talk to you, man.
00:51:59
Speaker
And best of luck.
00:52:00
Speaker
And we will be continuing to follow up with you as this thing progresses.
00:52:05
Speaker
Thanks a lot, man.
00:52:06
Speaker
I appreciate it.
00:52:08
Speaker
All right.
00:52:08
Speaker
And so if you want to learn more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.
00:52:13
Speaker
Follow us on Twitter at exit underscore org.
00:52:16
Speaker
Thanks, everybody.