I went to the woods of Washington to talk to Rob Monster, the CEO of Epik, which supports InfoWars, Gab and Parler.

"If you wanted to cast a villain who was going to be the Lex Luther of the Internet, Rob Monster is about as good as it gets," he told me. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965448572/meet-the-man-behind-epik-the-tech-firm-keeping-far-right-websites-alive

Part of the reason I sat down with Monster was to understand his motivations & belief system.

He's making little money off the alt-social-media sites, so that's not his incentive.

He claims he's countering "draconian censorship" by tech companies & furthering free speech...

But harassment, hate, disinfo and all manner of otherwise offensive & conspiratorial material can be easily found on the sites he backs

He says his bright lines are incitements of violence, porn & hateful content

Yet he says his clients ultimately have their own sovereignty...

So there's some real distortion btwn the values he espouses and what plays out on the sites Epik supports

As proof that he has rules, he points to severing ties with the Daily Stormer & 8Chan and telling BitChute if it didn't take down a "genocidal" channel, he'd cut them off...

Yet even after finding that channel, he wouldn't just dump BitChute. He says that's because the site "provides safe harbor for content that is being jettisoned from YouTube." He claims some of the content is "funny" and "genuinely useful."

He's a devout Christian (Dutch Reformed) and talks about rehabilitating people, including self-proclaimed Nazis, who he says are "shock jocks" and "don't have hate in their hearts," but it's unclear to me how being on Parler or Gab will help them find salvation...

Even though there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary, Monster says these alt platforms can self-govern and stay civil with the right policies and enforcement.

He argues that just because there's a "bad actor" doesn't mean it's a "bad platform that is inherently bad."

He's a big believer in the largely aspiration idea that platforms can correct themselves. He told me "the system is inherently self healing" when peoples' views are "cross pollinated" and sees his calling as showing Big Tech that its "draconian censorship" is unethical.

But as @davidakaye told me, pointing to the Capitol siege:

"He can say they're just 'shock jocks,' but what we actually see is real world harm coming from the platforms. So how much is somebody who is allowing that content to be hosted operating in real good faith?"