Joe Rogan podcast - live: Zuckerberg stirs controversy discussing ‘perfect’ bots, Hunter Biden and Metaverse

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who oversees Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the Metaverse, made a surprise appearance as a guest on controversial podcast host Joe Rogan’s latest show.

Mr Zuckerberg’s three-hour interview touched on a variety of subjects as he touted the potential of Metaverse, discussed his favourite hobbies, weighed in on Hunter Biden’s laptop and revealed he doesn’t have time for social media sites despite having founded one of the world’s largest.

A standout moment came when he replied to a question on bot accounts and controversial content on social media platforms, saying he believes there weren’t going to be “perfect” artificial intelligence systems.

“I think it’s all trade-offs all the way down,” he said.

Mr Rogan has been a lightning rod since his Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcast, was bought by Spotify in a $100m deal.

Earlier this year Rogan found himself at the centre of controversy when he was accused of spreading Covid-19 misinformation and hosted a guest who claimed that Americans were “hypnotised” into wearing masks and getting vaccines.

Mark Zuckerberg makes surprise appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast

Thursday 25 August 2022 19:18 , Graeme Massie

This is a live blog covering the Meta CEO’s three-hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast.

Zuckerberg says new Metaverse equipment coming

Thursday 25 August 2022 19:25 , Graeme Massie

The tech entrepreneur told Rogan that the new equipment was being released in October and that it would allow avatars to mimic users facial expressions and allow avatars to make eye contact.

“Virtual reality really convinces your brain you are there. You have to convince your brain that this isn’t real and that you are not actually there,” he said.

Fully immersive VR suit?

Thursday 25 August 2022 19:27 , Graeme Massie

“I think there will be opprortunities to wear things to augment the experience further,” said Zuckerberg, highlighting gloves the company is working on that will allow the user to “feel” objects.

“But I want to design this where you do not need to do that. You don’t want a set-up where you have 10 pieces. Ultimately people will want versions of this they can bring around, take on anairplane, in the office or in a coffee shop.”

Metaverse aiming for glasses not VR headset

Thursday 25 August 2022 19:33 , Graeme Massie

“You want them to be a normal-looking pair of glasses,” he added saying they were working on “waveguide” technology that could be made out of plastic or glass.

He predicted that in five years they could be doing the interview using AI glasses and a hologram version of the Facebook boss would be talking to Rogan.

“So few of the physical things we have in the world don’t need to be physical. chairs and food need to be physical, but most entertainment, like TVs, don’t need to be physical, it will just be an app on your wall and you will snap your fingers and a hologram of a TV will appear.”

Zuckerberg admits he “hates” sitting at his desk

Thursday 25 August 2022 19:45 , Graeme Massie

“I hate sitting in front of my desk, I feel that if I’m not active I’m just wasting away,” he said as he predicted that VR headsets could change fitness regimes and said he enjoyed playing boxing games.

“My energy level and mood and how I interact with the world is based on...its so physical. I don’t believe we are just brains in a body, our physical being and actions we take there are as much of kind the experience of being human.”

Surfing during the pandemic in Kauai, Hawaii

Thursday 25 August 2022 20:01 , Graeme Massie

“I spent a lot of time down in Kauai early on. I got really into surfing and hydrofoiling and I would get up early and go and do that and then be really refreshed for my day of meetings,” he said. “That is not something I could do in Palo Alto.”

Zuckerberg says company spending $10bn on research this year

Thursday 25 August 2022 20:09 , Graeme Massie

“You go across all these things and it this incredibly wide amount of technology that needs to get built,” he said.

Zuckerberg says he does not have time for social media

Thursday 25 August 2022 20:39 , Graeme Massie

He was asked by Rogan if he limited his time on social media, or if he controlled his children’s access to it.

“Me personally I am just doing so many things that in practice that there are not (enough) hours in the day,” he said.

“My kids, I have not really had to think about it quite as much as they are pretty young, six and five, so they use it. I want them to use technology for different things, I teach them how to code, it is an outlet of creativity.

“Max likes building things and Augie thinks of it as art. I try to do bedtime with them religiously each night. I ask them what activity they want to do, read, or wrestle, and Augie says she wants to do code art, she thinks of it as making the computer make art.

“It is good for them to get that exposure, everything you are doing on a computer or screen is not the same. are you engaging with someone, building relationships, or just consuming?

“If you are just sitting there and consuming stuff, it is not bad, but it is not associated with the benefits you get for actively engaging with people and building relationships.”

He added that he does a “bunch of messaging” but that he does not watch much TV as it puts him in “a weird mental state”

Zuckerberg says he wakes up to ‘a million messages’ and ‘its usually not good'

Thursday 25 August 2022 20:51 , Graeme Massie

“My sort of day is, you wake up in the morning look at my phone, get a million messages that have come in, its usually not good,” he told Rogan.

“People reserve the good stuff to tell me in person, right? So it’s like what’s going on in the world that I need to pay attention to? So it’s almost like every day you wake up you are punched in the stomach.

“Then it’s like okay, well f**k, what do I need to do to go and reset myself and be productive and not stressed by this? How do I do that? I basically read I take in all the information and then go and do something physical for an hour or two and reset myself.

“I used to run a lot but the problem is you can think a lot when you are running, the last few years I have gotten into things that require full focus.”

Zuckerberg says that 3.5bn people use Meta’s platforms

Thursday 25 August 2022 21:03 , Graeme Massie

He told Rogan that “there is always stuff to work on” and that he had to “maintain control” of his time so he was not just reacting “to things that people throw at me.”

“You could spend all your time reacting to that but what creates the ability to be successful long term is carving out the time that is proactive, that is both taking care of yourself and being physical and getting out there and spending time with my family and my girls,” he said.

Zuckerberg criticises Twitter over Hunter Biden story

Thursday 25 August 2022 21:38 , Graeme Massie

“A lot of people were still able to share it,” Zuckerberg said of The New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. “We got a lot of complaints that that was the case.

“This is a hyper-political issue, so depending on what side of the political spectrum, you either think we didn’t censor enough or censored it way too much, but we weren’t as black and white about it as Twitter,” the tech boss said.

Mark Zuckerberg says he doesn’t have the time for Facebook: ‘There aren’t enough hours in the day’

Thursday 25 August 2022 22:50 , Graeme Massie

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg says that he does not have time to use social media platforms.

The Meta CEO was asked on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast if he limited his own use of social media and if he tightly controlled his daughters’ access to it.

Mark Zuckerberg says he doesn’t have the time for Facebook

Zuckerberg laughs off ‘robot’ Congress memes

Thursday 25 August 2022 23:45 , Graeme Massie

Joe Rogan teased the Meta CEO about how stiffly he had drunk a glass of water when he appeared before Congress in 2018.

“I don’t like the way you sip water though, you sipping water at the Senate, you were sipping water like a robot,” Rogan joked on the three-hour Spotify podcast, and asked Zuckerberg to take a proper drink.

Zuckerberg laughed and took a swig of water from a cup, before defending himself.

“The Senate testimony is not exactly an environment that is set up to accentuate the humanity of the subject,” Zuckerberg said.

“If you’re up there for six or seven hours you’re going to make some face that is worth making a meme out of.”

A ‘million messages’ that are ‘usually not good’: Mark Zuckerberg details Meta’s rough year on Joe Rogan show

Friday 26 August 2022 00:01 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: Each morning when Mark Zuckerberg wakes up, his phone is flooded with a “million messages” and they are “usually not good”, the Meta CEO said in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan released Thursday.

“People reserve the good stuff to tell me in person, right?” the billionaire Facebook co-founder said on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “So it’s like what’s going on in the world that I need to pay attention to? So it’s almost like every day you wake up you are punched in the stomach.”

Josh Marcus has the story.

A ‘million’ bad messages a day: Mark Zuckerberg tells of struggles on Joe Rogan show

Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with Joe Rogan was one of the most excruciating things I’ve ever seen

Friday 26 August 2022 01:30 , Graeme Massie

For someone who invented social media, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg did not appear a big fan of the monster he helped create during an excruciating interview with Joe Rogan.

More details below.

Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with Joe Rogan was excruciating to watch

Mark Zuckerberg reacts to memes calling him a robot on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast

Friday 26 August 2022 02:08 , Graeme Massie

Mark Zuckerberg laughed off Congress “robot” memes as he drank a glass of water for Joe Rogan to prove he is human.

The controversial podcast host teased the Meta CEO about how stiffly he had drunk a glass of water when he appeared before Congress in 2021, which sparked a string of memes about the billionaire.

Mark Zuckerberg reacts to memes calling him a robot on The Joe Rogan podcast

Zuckerberg says he ‘sees' people every day

Friday 26 August 2022 03:01 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: “You will never be able to do all things you can do in person but you will be able to do more and more. You will be able to work remotely, live wherever you want, and show up in any place, that is going to be pretty awesome,” said Zuckerberg.

Rogan said no one would ever want to be in an office again if that was the case.

“Being present with people and feeling a sense of presence is pretty important,” added Zuckerberg about having staff in an office.

He then told Rogan he physically sees people “almost every day.”

“I see people in person almost every day, sometimes I probably do more meetings at my house now than I would do before, but I do think that seeing people in person and having that sense of presence makes a big difference.

Rogan said that people preferred to work from home after the pandemic.

“Oh yeah, I agree with that too. Our company is pretty forward leading about remote work, some types of work, like software engineering you can do from many kinds of places. I have this thing where I will be in zone-flow concentration and my wife will ask me some basic question and I lose my flow, and from her perspective, it is not a big deal, but that is not how it works”.

Zuckerberg teases Elon Musk over brain computers

Friday 26 August 2022 04:05 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: “The super hard part is having a computer give you information straight into your brain,” he said.

“Some people, like Elon, and Neuralink and those companies, that is taking it super far-off and maybe it’ll be ready in a couple of decades,” he said.

“There will probably be interesting use cases in the near term for people with injuries, but normal people in the next 10 to 15 years are not going to want to get something installed in their brain for fun is my guess.

“You want the mature version of that and not have to get your brain chip upgraded next year.”

Zuckerberg denies social media is responsible for US divisions

Friday 26 August 2022 06:08 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: “I think there’s probably a media environment issue that predates the internet,” he told Joe Rogan on his podcast.

“Some of the news is so far left and some of it is so far right, there’s all this talk of filter bubbles on the internet, but even predating this, going back to the 70s or 80s, when Fox News and all these other cable and prominant media organisations were established, that’s had a long term effect and people have studied that.”

And he added: “A lot of people want to point to social media as being the primary cause of this, but when you look at how polarization has been rising in the US since before the internet, that makes it very unlikely that social media is the prime mover here.”

Bot accounts and controversial content are 'trade-offs,' says Zuckerberg

Friday 26 August 2022 06:23 , Vishwam Sankaran

Replying to a question by Rogan on bot accounts and controversial content on social media platforms, Mr Zuckerberg said he believes there weren’t going to be “perfect” artificial intelligence systems.

“I think it’s all trade-offs all the way down and you could either build a system overly aggressive and capture a higher per cent of the bad guys but then also by accident take out some number of good guys, or you could be a little more lenient and say the cost of taking out any number of good guys is too high so we’re going to tolerate having just a little bit more bad guys on the system,” he said.

“I didn’t get into this to basically judge those things. I got into this to design technology that helps people connect,” the Meta chief added.

Meghan Markle’s new podcast beats Joe Rogan in Spotify rankings

Friday 26 August 2022 07:11 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: The Duchess of Sussex has beaten Joe Rogan for the Number One spot on Spotify’s US podcast rankings.

On the first episode of her new show Archetypes, Meghan Markle interviewed tennis great Serena Williams, who was also a guest at Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry in 2018.

Amanda Whiting has the story.

Meghan Markle’s new podcast beats Joe Rogan in Spotify rankings

Zuckerberg says he can’t spend long time on Twitter ‘without getting too upset’

Friday 26 August 2022 09:01 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: The Meta CEO made the comment as he sat for a three-hour interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, and compared Twitter to using Instagram.

“I find that it’s hard to spend a lot of time on Twitter without getting too upset,” he said.

“On the flip side, I think Instagram is a super positive space. I think some of the critiques we get there is that it’s very curated and potentially, in some ways, overly positive... It’s easy to spend time there, and kind of absorb a lot of the positivity.”

Zuckerberg added that the design of Instagram was a deliberate one, saying “I don’t want to build something that makes people angry.”

The tech titan explained to Rogan that he thought the differences between the two platforms were because of “the design of the systems.”

“I think images are a little less cutting usually, and kind of critical, than text,” he said.

Zuckerberg says company spends $5bn per year defending against bad actors and nation states

Friday 26 August 2022 13:57 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: “We call this ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’. We have a team of hundreds of counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence people looking for these signals. Dealing with nation states is harder, they are sovereignty motivated, you have to be vigilant and it is an arms race and you have to develop technology for defence.”

He said that the company spends $5bn a year on “community integrity” work.

Zuckerberg finds Twitter ‘upsetting'

Friday 26 August 2022 15:30 , Megan Sheets

Discussing his own social media use, Zuckerberg told Rogan: “I find that it’s hard to spend a lot of time on Twitter without getting too upset.”

“On the flip side, I think Instagram is a super positive space. I think some of the critiques we get there is that it’s very curated and potentially, in some ways, overly positive... It’s easy to spend time there, and kind of absorb a lot of the positivity.”

Zuckerberg added that the design of Instagram was a deliberate one, saying “I don’t want to build something that makes people angry.”

Rogan teases Zuckerberg about robot memes

Friday 26 August 2022 16:00 , Megan Sheets

Despite saying he doesn’t have time for social media, Zuckerberg confirmed to Rogan that he has seen memes branding him a robot.

The memes stemmed from the Meta CEO’s testimony before Congress in 2021, where viewers noted how stiffly he drank from a glass of water.

“I don’t like the way you sip water though, you sipping water at the Senate, you were sipping water like a robot,” Rogan joked on the three-hour Spotify podcast, and asked Zuckerberg to take a proper drink.

Zuckerberg laughed and took a swig of water from a cup, before defending himself.

Read more:

Mark Zuckerberg reacts to memes calling him a robot on The Joe Rogan podcast

Republicans demand Zuckerberg be called to Congress

Friday 26 August 2022 16:15 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: Republicans are demanding that Zuckerberg be called to Congress to testify over his revelations on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

At the centre of the GOP outrage was the Facebook and Meta founder’s remark that a policy of “decreased distribution” was enacted in connection to a story by the New York Post stemming from Hunter Biden’s laptop in late 2020.

The Independent’s Gustaf Kilander has more:

Republicans demand Zuckerberg be called to Congress over Rogan podcast revelations

Zuckerberg weighs in on Hunter Biden’s laptop

Friday 26 August 2022 17:00 , Megan Sheets

Zuckerberg criticised Twitter’s prohibition of sharing a story about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter - saying his own social network “took a different path”.

Rogan asked Zuckerberg about the attention Twitter received ahead of the 2020 election for banning the sharing a story by The New York Post about the contents of the future president’s son’s laptop.

“We took a different path than Twitter,” Zuckerberg said. The Facebook founder said that the FBI approached Facebook’s team and said that it should be on high alert about Russian propaganda in the election.

The Independent’s Eric Garcia has more:

Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Twitter over handling of Hunter Biden laptop story

Conservatives continue to react to to Zuckerberg interview on Rogan

Friday 26 August 2022 18:15 , Graeme Massie

“Are we just going to overlook the fact Zuckerberg admitted that the FBI told Facebook they needed to censor posts during the election,” tweeted Jack Prosbiec.

Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg are basically the same person — that’s the awful truth

Friday 26 August 2022 19:03 , Graeme Massie

These two wealthy white men agree that they both deserve power and neither should be held accountable, says Noah Berlatsky.

Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg are basically the same person — that’s the dark truth

‘They interfered in the election’, claims Fox News guest

Friday 26 August 2022 19:46 , Graeme Massie

New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor Miranda Devine bashed Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook for his admission that the platform took action on the Hunter Biden laptop story after the FBI warned of “Russian propaganda.”

“So Facebook, Twitter, the FBI interfered in the election and they changed the course of history. And for Mark Zuckerberg to sit there with Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan to kind of happily accept what he’s saying with very little pushback is kind of sickening,” she claimed on Fox News on Friday.

Grimes calls Mark Zuckerberg ‘under-qualified’ to run the Metaverse

Friday 26 August 2022 20:33 , Graeme Massie

Grimes has dismissed Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to build a Metaverse, calling the Facebook founder “under-qualified”.

In a Twitter post, the musician – born Claire Boucher – wrote: “If Zuck ‘oversees the Metaverse’ it is dead and people who care about art and culture are building something else. Also this is bad art.”

Grimes calls Mark Zuckerberg ‘under-qualified’ to run the Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg reveals why he stopped running

Friday 26 August 2022 21:49 , Graeme Massie

Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that running is no longer a part of his exercise routine because it doesn’t help him keep his mind off work.

The Meta founder discussed his morning routine while appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Thursday, and noted how overwhelmed he gets when looking at all of the notifications on his phone.

Amber Raiken has the story.

Mark Zuckerberg says he stopped running because it doesn’t take his mind off work

VOICES: ‘One of the most excruciating things I’ve ever seen'

Friday 26 August 2022 22:34 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: The Independent’s Graeme Massie shared his reaction to Rogan’s interview with Zuckerberg in a column:

“For someone who invented social media, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg did not appear a big fan of the monster he helped create during an excruciating interview with Joe Rogan.

“Unlike fellow tech titan Elon Musk, Mr Zuckerberg did not allow himself to get too loose, smoke marijuana, or carry out any other antics that could have caused Meta’s share price to slump dramatically.

“Instead, the buttoned-up billionaire tried to play it cool with the controversial UFC commentator and eagerly discussed his love of martial arts, specifically jujutsu.”

Read more:

Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with Joe Rogan was excruciating to watch

WATCH: Zuckerberg says FBI warned Facebook about ‘Russian propaganda'

Friday 26 August 2022 23:15 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI:

Zuckerberg says VR could let people leave big cities that don’t ‘have your values’

Saturday 27 August 2022 00:01 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: The Meta CEO told Joe Rogan on his podcast that technology developments and the Metaverse could change working life forever.

“Imagine if you didn’t have to move to some city that didn’t have your values in order to be able to get all the economic opportunities, that would be awesome,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.

“So in the future where you can use AR, VR, and teleport in the morning to the office and show up as a hologram, I think that’s going to be pretty sweet, right? It will unlock a lot of economic opportunity, for a lot of people.”

Meta says ‘nothing new’ about Hunter Biden laptop story

Saturday 27 August 2022 00:25 , Graeme Massie

“As we’ve said, nothing about the Hunter Biden laptop story is new. Below is what Mark told Sen. Johnson in Oct 2020 and what Mark told Joe Rogan this week. The FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference – nothing specific about Hunter Biden,” the company wrote on Twitter on Friday.

What we learned from Zuckerberg’s interview with Rogan

Saturday 27 August 2022 00:47 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: During his three-hour interview with Rogan, Zuckerberg pushed his company’s Metaverse expansion and claimed that it was the future for offices as well as home entertainment.

The notoriously private tech titan also gave a rare glimpse into his own life as he discussed his love of martial arts, UFC, and surfing with Rogan on the Spotify podcast.

The Independent’s Graeme Massie recaps five things we learned:

What we learned from Mark Zuckerberg’s Joe Rogan interview

Mark Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Twitter over handling of Hunter Biden laptop story

01:45 , Graeme Massie

ICYMI: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticised Twitter’s prohibition of sharing a story about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, during an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Mr Rogan asked Mr Zuckerberg about the attention Twitter received ahead of the 2020 election for banning the sharing a story by The New York Post about the contents of the future president’s son’s laptop.

Eric Garcia has the details.

Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Twitter over handling of Hunter Biden laptop story