YouSaid · the spoken record

Imran Ahmed

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68
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2026-01-12
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2026-01-12
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  1. “Just to be specific, we were very careful not to talk about things like lab leak. We were very careful not to talk about whether or not they're satanic. We actually looked specifically at is this information likely to harm someone's life or put them at risk of death?”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Think it's politically expedient for them to sort of now say that oh gosh, that was terribly harmful. And at the time, they were telling the Biden administration, look, what a great job we're doing on cleaning up disinformation. I think right now we're in a really odd moment in America where what has been bipartisan consensus on, and I still think there is bypartisan consensus, if you look at polling, that vaccines are one of the safest, most effective, most consequential inventions of the past 200 years in medicine is breaking down and has become infected in part because of the way that social media algorithms work. And you and I probably agree on this emphatically, that they forced us to the fringes of argument on every issue. And so we have this perception that there is a significant wing of the population who believe that vaccines are the work of Satan.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Yeah, lots of people, and Maria and I are friends, and we've talked about this. I work with people like Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her own life because of content, which was sort of flooded her timelines on Instagram. And her father tried to put pressure on these platforms. But you know, and I know that they don't give it.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I think platforms have the right to enforce their rules. I mean, like we all sign up to the rules of our platforms when we join them, right? We all agree to that. If you have a rule, that's your responsibility to abide by the rules. But you have a corollary right to expect others to abide by it too. And for there to be someone to enforce those rules. And again, the evolution of CCDH does include some of us kind of realizing, oh gosh, just putting moral pressure on these companies doesn't work. At the time, we still thought by arguing the point, by showing the evidence that platforms would change their behavior.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “With Biden and Harris for saying things like Harris was asked if she would take the vaccine. She said, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us. I will say I would not trust Donald Trump, which is an incredibly irresponsible thing to say. And I don't care that she's a Democrat. Like, it's an incredibly irresponsible. And, you know, Joe Biden has said things like, you know, who's going to take this shot? Are you going to be the first one to sign up once say it's okay? And Trump was pretty pissed about that. Correctly so, I think. In March 21, we put out this report, the disinformation dozen, which was an analysis of the hundreds of thousands of bits of disinformation circulating on social media platforms where they were linking to outside sites. We found that 12 people were producing 65% of the disinformation being linked to on social media platforms. However,”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Know, I mean, I set up CCDH in September 2019, and initially it was primarily about looking at anti Semitism and other forms of hate, the kind of hate that was taking lives in Britain. And it's only six months later the pandemic started in March 2020. And I had to make a decision as to what we did with our tiny team of people. And we said, well, actually, we can probably do most good by studying the spread of disinformation lies about vaccines and about COVID because COVID was, it was clear by then going to take more lives than any hate actor on the planet in the following couple of years. Now, at that time in March 2020, President Trump was the president. One of the things that was really interesting is that when we were talking to the Trump administration at the time, they were very worried about anti-vax rhetoric coming from Biden and Harris. And here's the truth, with some reason. Like they're actually kind of right to be a”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “I'm always bemused by his claims of censorship. The truth is that he's kind of scared. He's a scared little boy that people might hold opinions about him that he is an asshole. And as a result, he bought the playground and still can't make people love him. And he then manipulated the rules of the playground to benefit him. And even then, he couldn't get people to love him. He's done everything he could and yet can't. And what he's what CCDH does is essentially hold up a mirror to bad behavior.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “I mean, you know, one of the things the First Amendment fundamentally protects is not just your right to be false, but your right to lie. You have the right actually under, you know, apart from in certain circumstances, fraudulent activity, et cetera, et cetera, you have the right to lie to people. And of course, what the First Amendment doesn't say is you can't be ostracized for it. You can't be punished for it socially, economically, in other ways. People might decide they don't want to do business with a liar. You have the right to hold an opinion about someone. So I think the debate on censorship is become incredibly diffuse and dumb because really what it's been used for is some very thin-skinned people to say, please, please, please don't say mean things about me. And you will know this with people like Musk as well, is that the reason why, you know”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Right, by using the threat of overwhelming force. And that is to say, if you say something I don't like, I will punish you using the monopoly of violence that I hold. And so that's the fundamental truth of how censorship works. And accusing a nonprofit or even a platform of censorship is frankly legally meaningless.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Advertisers can't censor people. They can reward content with money. So you produce great content and advertisers come to you and you earn money off the back of that. Forcing an advertiser to reward content they don't want to reward is also contrary to the First Amendment and the right of free association. Only government's consensus.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Fundamentally, private individuals can't censor anyone. Private individuals hold opinions. They may think that you're a scumbag, but that's not censoring you. That's a First Amendment protected opinion that they have on you. Private publishing platforms can't censor anyone. They have editorial lines and standards. Algorithms may make the decision, but it is an act of mathematical editing of timelines for billions of people. That is also their First Amendment right. So whenever someone sued a platform, for example, saying, I need to be let back on this platform, they got rid of me that breaches my First Amendment rights. The judges have had to remind them, no, darling, actually, it's the platform that has a First Amendment right to decide not to have you on there.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Well, I can explain it both at a fundamental philosophical level. The truth is, Kara, and you and I have been circulating in circles where these debates have been happening for a long time, the censorship industrial complex.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “It is unsurprising that my first reaction when someone does something which I believe to be fundamentally immoral and wrong, that my first reaction was Fight.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “In one respect, the stakes are Relatively low for me because they're talking about deporting me to London. You know, I get to live in Marlabone again. You know, go to my favorite restaurants for one place I've spent 20 years living in. But the real stakes are that, well, first of all, I mean, it's complete disruption of our life. I'd moved to America six years ago on an 01 visa, so an extraordinary ability visa given by the Trump administration for the work I was doing with the Trump administration on digital anti-Semitism, ironically. I met my wife here. I love this country. I've been making my life here. We bought a house. We've had our kid and we want to have more kids. And this is the place. But the other thing is it's An enormous sense of this is not right. And given what I do.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Well, I saw this tweet from, or I was sent. I'm not on X. I was sent a tweet from a lady, an undersecretary in this State Department who said they were targeting me. And because they'd already trailed this in the news, we'd already organized ourselves, is the truth, Cara. I'd spoken to Robbie Kaplan, who's my longtime attorney. Great lawyer and to Chris Clark, who's a phenomenal litigator and has represented, he's actually represented Elon before, and he'd agreed to come on board if the government, you know, we just thought when we read the articles, we thought this is never going to happen. Anthony Romero from the ACLU called me and said, look, I've seen this. What do you need? And a guy called Norm, who runs something called Democracy Defenders called. And so Norm called as well and said, like, what do you need?”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “The first thing that comes into your head is why I think there's been a lot of people who've said that it's because of X or Y or Z, but to me it was really obvious. This is about Elon and the wider problem of big tech, big money, and the incandescent anger of thin-skinned plutocrats like Musk and Zuckerberg that we have been effective at holding them accountable. They're angry that we've helped to pass legislation, that we're listened to by their advertisers, that we've driven action that impacts their bottom lines.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And I mean, at the time, I just thought, well, that's got to be nonsense because everything that you've just cited is First Amendment protected advocacy activity and the State Department can't take action for that. But then on the 23rd, they announced it. And this sort of minor political appointee in the State Department specifically named me and said I'm one of the five. And the only one of the five who's here in America. I'm married to an American citizen. My daughter is American.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “So, yeah, I mean, as you say, on the 23rd of December, I got a text message from someone saying that the State Department had issued a press release saying it was going to deport or ban five people from the United States. And this has kind of been trailed for a couple of weeks beforehand. There'd been a few articles in odd outlets like the British Telegraph with a State Department source and Zeteo, which is a very left-wing online site saying that they were going to take revenge on some people, including me for the European Commission's decision to fine X and also to stop people who are targeting X Corp in particular.”

    2026-01-12 · On with Kara Swisher · Imran Ahmed Researches Online Hate. Trump Wants to Deport Him · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT