Facebook and Twitter Investor Shocks Joe Rogan With Reality Behind Misinformation in the Past

Misinformation is not a novel phenomenon unique to modern social media. The spread of false or misleading information has deep historical roots stretching back to medieval times. And this is something Joe Rogan and his podcast viewers recently learned. During the #2234 JRE episode, guest Marc Andreessen, the founder of Mosaic and an ardent investor on social media platforms like Twitter (now known as X) and Facebook, made a pretty shocking revelation.

He told the UFC commentator that misinformation began spreading as early as the introduction of newspapers, which often published questionable claims about religious preachers and priests. “That’s [spreading of misinformation] already happening even pre-AI, right? So I would say that’s a pre-existing problem,” Marc Andreessen told Joe Rogan.

“In the year 1500, it was all these like terrible rumors about like popes and the bishops and all these cardinals… the very first newspaper was in the Vatican… all the colonial newspapers were like that.”

Joe Rogan was left dumbfounded by this revelation, but in the meantime, Andreessen claimed to have a solution. He simply reasoned that people need to be made aware of the content they find online. But how do we do that? Well, Andreessen claims it’s up to the several platforms. And more importantly, the people who run them need to properly separate fact from fiction.

“What we can do is we can re-orient people to say, okay, now you’re going to have to, like, take seriously, this stuff is real,” Joe Rogan’s guest added. “And if you want to actually know what’s happening, this stuff is real. We can prove that it’s real. And if it’s not, it’s entertainment. Entertainment. And you can choose to believe it or not. But you should not rely on it.”

Besides, Joe Rogan has talked about misinformation many times on his podcast and even mentioned how this “culture” affects society. Let’s take a look at that front.

Joe Rogan once claimed that misinformation is “disheartening”

Social media platforms were introduced to ease people’s daily tasks and even take part in leisure activities. However, Joe Rogan claims that misinformation is destroying the whole ecosystem. Being in the social media space for several years, the 57-year-old believes that it’s difficult to get proper facts so that people can smoothly function in their lives.

“It’s stupid for our culture to be inundated with this nonsense and misinformation where we have to sort through it and try to do deeper research and consult people who actually understand what’s going on.” Joe Rogan stated in a July 2024 episode of the JRE podcast. “It’s so disheartening that we live in this world that’s so compromised by money that information about key things like your own health is so distorted.”

What do you have to say about the misinformation culture? Let us know in the comments down below.