“You don't own YouTube, buddy. Okay, YouTube can change your monetization. They can suppress you when they want to. That is not a business. … Social media is not a business. You don't have a business. You just have a platform that somebody can take from you anytime they want to.”
Pivot Podcast · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · September 2026
Charlamagne is talking about ownership in media and why he is happy to be partnered with a large company that funds the infrastructure. He contrasts that with creators who brag about being independent while living entirely on a platform they don't control.
Transcript
I'm going to say something else, Brad. I'd rather spend other people's money so much easier. So good. Like, I don't think people understand that aspect of ownership when it comes to being partnered with somebody. If you're partnering with somebody and you got equity in the company, that whole, yo, spend your own money, they're not spending their own money. You know what I'm saying? So it's like if you are partnering with somebody and they're the big multi-billion dollar company and they're funding what it is that you're doing, it don't matter as long as that paperwork has you as the equity owner in the situation. I actually love that. I actually love being partnered with a multi-billion dollar company and we're able to have the staff that we have and we're able to pump the money into other podcasts that we do to be able to use iHeart sales team to go out there and bring in these advertising dollars to our network. Like, why wouldn't I want that? Like, that is what you have infrastructure for.
Bro, getting it from the bottom is overrated. Like, from the mud. Yeah, getting it from the mud, that's, that is overrated. Yo, nobody wants that. Nobody wants
to make up shoes. Yo, Jay-Z said the realest thing on Heart to Heart with Kevin Hart,. He was just like, what's the point of owning 100% of nothing? You can have, I know plenty of people that are bragging about it. Like, y'all actually have a multimedia company. You three individuals. Y'all can take this anywhere and set up shop. There's a lot of people online right now that cannot do that. They're on YouTube. You don't own YouTube, buddy. Okay, YouTube can change your monetization. They can suppress you when they want to. That is not a business. That's real. Social media is not a business. You don't have a business. You just have a platform that somebody can take from you anytime they want to. That's something I peeped a long time ago. That's why I didn't have any problem with, yo, thankful for YouTube and all of the discovery that it caused with the Breakfast Club,. But when it came time to go to Netflix, I already saw where that was going. I'm like, yo, we're on a platform that can demonetize us anytime. They suppress our content when they want to. Like, I can get, I remember one time I gave Donkey of the Day to, after January 6th, to the Capitol Rioters, right? Like Vanilla ISIS, as I call them, right? Gave them Donkey of the Day. And they suppressed it on YouTube and sent us a notice that said, this content doesn't necessarily violate our guidelines. We just deem it inappropriate. Why? Right. For what reason?
Who in the room made that decision?
For what? Yeah. Forgiving these guys that committed an insurrection? Donkey of the day? And so I knew from there, I was like, yeah, we got to figure something else out of it.
Who wins the argument? That's a better way to say that. But the owner, Charlemagne,
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