Website, what would it be . Guest our Mission Statement would be to create a town square for free Speech Discussion and to protect peoples privacy while doing it. Host so why a need for yet another social media site . What is motivating you and others to start this . Guest well, lately i am sure you have seen a lot of the present surrounding what is going on politically and people feeling like they have been censored in the United States. Theres a lot of people that feel that they cannot reach out on social media, and they think that they are going to get ba attacked for their point of view, and they are looking for another place to go. And actually, this is a lot broader than the United States. This is happening all over the world. I spoke to people in israel, brazil, the middle east, the United Kingdom, and some in europe as well. People feel and this is not just the United States people genuinely feel that the platforms are trying to censor them. Host one who believes that his texas senator ted cruz, who had this to say about free speech, social media, and parler. Com. [video clip] ruz big tech is out of control, filled with hubris in flagrantly silencing those with whom they disagree. From conservative media organizations, to the president of the United States, and millions of americans in between. These actions do not just threaten our First Amendment rights and our free speech. They threaten the integrity of our election and future of our democracy. With another president ial election just months away, i am working in the senate every day tohold big tech accountable the American People and to make sure that your voices are heard. That is why i am proud to join parler. This platform gets what free speech is all about, and i am so excited to be a part of it. Host that is from texas senator ted cruz. John, what makes parler different from, say, twitter . Guest there are a few different aspects, technically come about what has been getting the most press right now is the Community Guidelines. It seems it is very popular. People are talking about what we are doing differently, um, and what we want to do is create rules that are based in law rather than rules that are more or less arbitrary, and so the idea is that if you go onto the platform, you dont have any ideological bias of the platform itself. Everything is supposed to be very straightforward and candid, you know, like no pornography, no nudity, but things like having a debate or having discourse is encouraged. So it is a different take, um, ofthe tech world for Terms Service and privacy as well as what you can cannot say on the Community Guidelines. It is a little bit different in that regard. Host why the name parler . Guest there are a few reasons. Parler in french is parlay, which is to speak, but parler in english has the same association, and actually when youre on parler, you create par ley, a discussion between two people with different, opposing viewpoints to come to a consistence. Consensus. Host for those who want to join parler, are there guidelines, rules, and regulations . Guest yes, there are. In order to sign up, you just need an email and a phone number. Having these two things keep the conversation more real. People are limited to one account, so they cannot spam and bot the platform, like you find in other places. And once you are on, you are free to have discussions with whoever you would like. Host and what is the Business Model . Do you take advertising . Do you have to pay to join this site . Guest right now, we started with generic advertising, which is something very standard, similar to other sites. In the future and where we are going with advertising and revenue in general, the concept is going to be that people who are on the platform, creating content, are going to be the ones who benefit from the advertising, alongside the platform. As in we recognize that we could not exist without content creators, and content creators should be rewarded as well. So we are going to be doing a dualinfluencer advertising model in the future. Host with a degree from Political Science from the university of denver, what is your background . Guest like you mentioned, i graduated from the university of denver. Right out of school, i went into the defense industry. We were working on the predator drones. I started a consulting business, building iphones for people, and i also had a brief stint at amazon in their web services department. Host what is the projection for parler. Com . How many users do you have right now, and what do you expect to get in the months ahead . Guest well, we continue yearoveryear, we have had two minutes growth. Over 2ar, we have Million People that have joined, just this year, and we are passing over 3 million total users very shortly. And i think this is going to continue, especially as this election starts heating up. Things are going to get more and more partisan. People are going to feel that their media is being manipulated or it is being, you know, it just seems like propaganda. That is going to happen more and more as the election approaches, and they are going to feel a need to come to a platform who has been open about being unbiased and not messing with content and not, you know, changing the way things are displayed. Host there is this, though, from mark sullivan, a writer for a fact company, and he writes in particular about your website, parler. Com. Here is an excerpt. Host i dont think he has looked very hard on the platform. A lot of people look at three posts and then make a judgment call. I do think it is fair to say there are a lot of conservatives on the platform because it is primarily right now, if you are in the u. S. , you are going to see mostly conservatives on the platform. U. S. , you are going to see mostly conservatives on the platform. That is a large chunk of the audience. But there is debate. There is a lot of debate, especially among conservatives, of different viewpoints. You will see it is not a big kumbaya, but you have to look, you know, you cannot just take it at face value. And, you know, like i said, you ted, you mentioned 1 cruz, senator mike lee, and others who were on there, there is debate, there are people who disagree with them. I think that is a really premature outlook on the site, for what it is worth. Host john matze is going is from las vegas. Our phone lines are open. We would love to hear from you. 202 7488000. That is the line for democrats. And 202 7488001 for republicans. We have a line for independents, and we are also taking your tweets cspanwj. In terms of this election year, what kind of feedback have you had so far from those running for office. Are they using your site as a way to get their message out . Guest a lot of people seem to be using it on the conservative side of the aisle to get their messaging out. I have also heard that we are doing very well, in terms of fundraising, on our platform. It seems that people who are advertising or are posting about fundraising on our platform are doing far better than twitter. Some people are seein reporting they are seeing 2x donations on parler instead of twitter, so they are seeing huge returns. But we are also seeing, you know, a lot of people making posts, a lot of topics, discussions that they do not feel comfortable talking about on twitter as well. Host the conservative criticism of twitter and facebook, is that fair criticism . Guest uh, i think it depends. Some of it is, and some of it isnt, for what it is worth. When it comes to what they are doing in the, you know, freespeech space, i think it is pretty warranted. I do not think it is appropriate that the president had his tweets censored. Even if they are uncouth, i think they should go out. I do not think they should be censored, especially in an election year, especially before they hit the polls. Host the president in the last hour with this tweet, saying quote, i know many in business and politics that worked out endlessly to the point of exhaustion, it is their number one passion in life but nobody complains. My exercise, he says, is playing almost never during the week, a quick round of golf. Obama played more and for much longer. Mer president obama played fake news, cnn and others part themselves anywhere they can to get a picture and then scream president is playing golf. Actually i play very fast, get a lot of work done on the golf course and also get a tiny bit of exercise, not bad. The president this morning with one of a series of tweets. Your comment about the president using this media platform, many say very effectively during his campaign and now during his presidency to get the message above the heads of the mainstream media. Guest i think it is important that speech isnt filtered. You think of what about different Media Outlets he is talking about, the concept that all speech and all voices and what everyone has to say has to filter through a few of the elites, i think that is not a very good president , especially in a country founded as a democratic republic, where people are supposed to have debate and make decisions on the behalf of everybody in this country. That is the power we have all been given and we should all have the power to speak directly to other people as well, without it needing to go through a filter. I think that is really important, and that is why you see so many people who like the platform. It will become more than just a group of conservatives, especially as this continues. Host our caller joining us from tulsa, oklahoma. Caller i was hoping to have caught you with the gentleman but i will before, try to put my thoughts together in relation to what you are speaking about. Especially platform, what this gentleman is on here right now is attempting to do, would be an advantage to u. S. Citizens that want to know the truth about things. Fact checking wouldnt hurt. Sometimes people get on and talk pizzathings like the restaurant fiasco a few years ago that was rated based on comments made on a media outlet, but in relation to the gentlemans text you read a few minutes ago about his platform, you seem to be where only older people come in and comment to one another back and forth on their likes and dislikes. Lets not forget that they were the Largest Group that there was one of the reasons we are in the position we are in right now is because of the baby boomers, of which i am one. I have a sister that has been banned three or four times just for expressing views from someone else that she had received facebook notices from and then recounted them to someone else and was barred off the platform for repeating something somebody else said. It is obvious congress would not be checking into breaking them up such as roosevelt did with steel, oil and banking a long time ago. It has reached the point to orre that needs to be done, stop the censorship and allow people to say what is on their minds. Host thank you. To that point, john matze, Newsweek Magazine says parler, the ted cruz approved freespeech app is already banning users. To the callers point, are you banding some users on your site . ,uest there have been bans yes. Asn as people announce soon as ted cruz made that announcement and the presser to picking up what was going on, we saw huge influx of people posting pornography and pictures of fecal matter and we did ban those people. It is clear in are committed to guidelines that isnt allowed in our Community Guidelines it isnt allowed. Postjournalists decided to that we were banning liberals even though that was complete false. We were only banning people who are posting repetitive pornography. I dont think anybody wants to go on the internet and see that and that is why it is in our committee guidelines, that you cant put nudity on the site. I think that is a very fair statement. What carl was saying was true, people feel that they crossed the line on these other platforms and have gone too far with ideological suppression, and that is just not what we are doing here. It is very different and clear. Host we should point out that you post those Community Guidelines on your website. This is what it looks like as we go to our next caller joining us from indiana. Thank youod morning, very much that you are taking my call. I have a question about this gentleman. Venues when media you listen to this media, the guys who finance black lives financing allre the people from the communist party and at the head of them is Susan Rosenberg and you dont on cnn, especially on cnn or msnbc. They dont follow that. I am a strong supporter of mr. Trump and i am a republican and i just want to know what is his opinion about all these media because right now there is something going on and black lives matter go around and they do everything they want and in my opinion they dont care about black people, but it is a bunch of communism. It is all over the internet. You dont have to take my word on it. You can go online and see the name of these guys. They are a bunch of communism and they are financing and are directing and all these demonstrations. Host thank you for the call. John matze. Guest i think it is important to get access to all news so you can see with the level of transparency what is happening. Whether you believe something is happening with that group or you doing, in what they are either way, you should be able to talk about it and get the message about any evidence you might find and have a discussion within the community, because we believe that most people are good and that the community as a whole could make a decision about what is going on if they can talk clearly and freely about it, rather than relying on talking pink talking points from the media. Host carl sending us this text message, he is from michigan, please ask john if his platform will flag misleading information or put facts up to obviously untrue statements made their and decide that is not censorship. Guest we dont have any Fact Checking. What we do is we are going to rely on the comments of the community to do that. I dont think it is right for us to come in and say what is and is not true. Fact checking is something that publications do. That is something you might experience on more of a biased website. We believe that you cant have Fact Checking without bias, especially in politics. What might be true for one person is false to another when it comes to political opinions and statements, especially with misleading headlines and things of that nature. With thick it is best for the community to have a discussion about it, and the community to be able to, in the comments section effectively just disprove it and we have seen that happen when you have very fake, even things that you think blind supporters of somebody might want to say is true, you have seen commenters in support of those individuals actually calling out that content and saying this is false, stopping it in its tracks. I think the community has the power to do that on our platform. Host this from randy in South Carolina with another text message, saying the only people i see touting matze are conservatives, many farright, does not sound good for our political discourse. What do you say to that . Guest we have had these censorship platforms for 10 plus years now, and i say the country has only gotten more partisan and more divided and seems to hate each other more every day. It seems worse and worse. I think it is time to try something new like having freespeech when it comes to your online interactions. There are a lot of rightleaning individuals. I dont think it is primarily an extremist group. I dont think there are very many extremists at all on the platform. There are rightleaning figures, and eventually the lead and eventually the left will have a need for this. I believe both sides of the partisan spectrum, what is in their favor is that is why we are here in the middle to not get involved. Host to that point, how would you define your politics . Guest me personally . I am more of a libertarian. What anyonely care believes or does politically. I dont have much faith in either political party. Host cenet is writing about you cnet is writing about your site. Is the president on your site . Guest he is not. His campaign is, his son is. There are a lot of other people on but he is not. Host one person getting a lot of attention, laura blumer who uses your site. Who is she . Guest she is a congressional candidate in florida, and she has been banned on about every social media platform out there, but she isnt banned on parler. She is very active on parler, and a big supporter. Host with nearly 600,000 followers. Our next caller out of ohio. We appreciate you waiting. Caller i appreciate your being on this program. I think you are opening up a very wide subject that needs to be addressed, and i think it has to really be affecting both parties, that we are dealing with currently. The reason i am concerned about this issue is because i was an avid Facebook User for some time, and i have been on certain sides of the fence about politics, which i dont consider a problem but i was very concerned how censorship was happening on sites like facebook and i feel like the reason that happenappen is bans when president barack obama got in and many people credited his election with the use of social media. We have seen how republicans have turned it on the Democrat Party and basically attacked or went after social media sites to turn those messages around to support their side of the story. That is not my whole concern on this call. My concern is something i felt very personally threatening and attacking to me. I have gotten two messages either Text Messages either Text Messages that came into my phone, not the internet but my phone, which i dont have registered in many places, regarding my son, a convicted felon. These two calls came from Newt Gingrich. My son never voted republican. I dont know why Newt Gingrich had the right to attack social media to find his phone number to text that phone number about my son to vote republican this fall. I find that very offensive