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May 12, 2021 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
32:50
Clouthub founder Jeff Brain interviewed by Mike Adams on social media freedoms vs. censorship
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Welcome, everyone, to a Brighteon.com special podcast.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.com.
And you know independent media platforms are really exploding in popularity.
A lot of wonderful options that are launching right now.
And one of the most popular platforms that people are talking about is CloudHub.com.
And I've got the founder here, Jeff Brain, with me.
He's the founder and CEO of the platform.
We're here to talk about free speech, independent media, and the future of sharing ideas digitally.
Thank you for joining me.
Mike, thanks for having me.
It's great to be with you.
Here we are.
We both are kind of founders and owners of platforms, so tell our audience about your platform.
I know a lot of our people are using it because I hear it all the time, but just give us the rundown.
Yeah, so I felt that social media was being misused, that there was an opportunity to use social media in a different way.
Most social media, you post in exchange for likes and follows, and they really have us focused on things that don't matter.
And I felt that there was the ability to use the power of social media to bring people together and give them the tools and features they need to be able to connect, collaborate, and influence the issues that matter in their lives, their communities, society, and our country.
When I started in 2018, I had no idea we'd be A couple years later, locked in our homes, our businesses closed, and election stolen.
And so I think even more important today is to have a platform where people can speak freely about the issues that matter.
Now, did you start CloutHub specifically as thinking it would be more of a political speech platform, or what was the vision behind it?
Well, I originally did, actually.
What my original focus was, was, you know, Twitter and Facebook were never designed to be the center of political debate.
They had different purposes.
Twitter was supposed to be about what you're up to throughout the day, right?
Microblogging.
And Facebook was meeting girls in college.
It's evolved into much more than that.
But I created CloudHood from the ground up to be a place where you discuss the civic, social, and political issues you care about.
But as now it's developed, we're seeing an opportunity to go much broader than that.
People want a place.
You know, we live in a digital society.
You know that as well as anybody.
We wanted to create a social media platform that connects you to the people and things in life that matter most, whether that's faith, whether that's a civic hub, an education hub, an entertainment hub, sports.
When you go to Facebook, there's a lot there, but it's really jumble.
And it's not organized in a way to benefit me.
It's organized in a way to benefit Mark Zuckerberg and the advertisers.
That's right.
So what we're doing is creating a platform that benefits our users and society.
Well, give our listeners an overview of how CloudHub works, what kind of content they can post there.
What's the basic feature set at CloudHub for those who aren't familiar with it yet?
Yeah, so at this point in the juncture, it's a journey, so there's more to come.
But at this point, we have an alternative to Twitter.
We have actually three public timelines where you can discuss issues.
We have groups like Facebook has, and we have very significant groups.
Even Parla has 57,000 people in a group on our platform.
Candace Owens has a group of 60,000 people.
Is that right?
Yeah.
That's wonderful.
But there's even bigger ones than that.
But people are organizing in those groups, like Defend Florida organized, and now there's a Defend California, Defend Arizona.
And my platform is a place where people come to do.
And so they're organizing in response to what happened last year in November and wanting to take back their communities, take back their states.
So there's groups for that.
And anybody on our platform can come and create a group.
If they're a homeowner's association, a chamber of commerce, or just some golfing buddies, they can create Then we have channels, and we have at this point over 100 channels.
It's almost like Blaze TV. We have personalities like Steve Bannon, X22, Brendan Dilley, Deneen Borelli.
We have many, many channels.
Now we have Right Side Broadcasting, Epoch Times is coming.
And this is a place where they can, you know, most of them have been either hindered or shut down completely from YouTube, and they wanted another place to come.
Like LifeSite News needs to use your platform as well.
Yes, yes.
In fact, they're on it, but they haven't set up a channel yet, but we would love for them to have a channel.
Well, we need to use your platform more, and I'm so glad I've had a chance to meet you and we're talking because the question in my mind, just as someone who's been heavily censored, is...
I always want to know the philosophy of the people behind the platform before I want to invest time and effort into that platform.
So this is a revolutionary moment to be able to meet you and also to introduce you to our audience because you care about many of the same things that we care about.
Well, and that's why here at this forum today, I asked specifically, I asked numerous people, how do I get to meet Mike Adams?
Oh, yeah.
And then you walked right past, your assistant walked right past, and he goes, oh, let me help.
Because I've heard good things about you and your platform, and I hear that our values are the same.
And so I wanted to find out and be able to meet you.
And I feel, you know, we saw what happened to Parler.
And we see what happens to others.
It's very hard to break into this industry because those that we're working against, in a way, control this industry.
And so for us, I've actually suggested that we form an association.
We're the second generation.
We're solving the problems of the first generation and that we should have maybe a second generation association where we all work together in a way to assist each other.
And stand up for each other.
I think what happened to Parler was unfortunate.
And I actually had reached out to them even before that happened to suggest this idea because, you know, it's not easy.
People don't realize this is not easy business to break into, but it's a very important business to break into.
And getting into this business, and I know this from personal experience, when you have a sudden success, when people suddenly start to use your platform, you as the owner, you get massive bills for bandwidth and more servers or more R&D or network admin and so on.
So I think a lot of people would ask the same question.
What's your revenue model?
Sure.
And how are you sustaining your system and other opportunities for honest, values-matched businesses to advertise, for example, on your platform?
How does that work?
Yeah, so our business model is multi-tiered.
We're sort of the LinkedIn model, which is free to use, but if you want certain bells and whistles, premium features, you'll pay for that.
Now, at this point in time, we've not implemented any revenue on our platform yet.
We're still pre-revenue, but we are starting to move towards revenue in the next couple of months.
that's one way we make money now we do we will have advertising but we're not advertising in the timelines it we're so we're not data mining you to find out you know you have a promo room you go to where you can find discounts to local businesses restaurants and services right but we're not trying to figure out who you are like they are we will ask you some of your interests voluntarily straight up you know like adults right what's your interests and And we can help you introduce you to people and things that you're interested in.
Instead of listening through the wall, like, what are you talking about?
They're actually talking to you face to face while they're actually looking around on your desk to find out who you're talking to, what are you interested in, right?
But we don't do that.
And I'm sure you agree with that.
We don't go into people's phones.
We don't look at what...
Apps they're using.
We don't geotrack them to the mall to see what stores they go to.
We don't do any of that, and we certainly don't share or sell data, so it's very private.
The other thing we did is we used neuroscientists to design our platform to avoid some of the mental health issues that are affecting our children on those other platforms.
I want to talk about that because there is a reshaping of the neurological ecosystem that's taking place, especially among younger people when their brain morphology is really taking shape.
And if they're exposed to these addictively designed social media rewards...
Well, actually, we know that.
It affects their ability to learn.
It affects their attention span.
It affects their ability to even have a long-term view of an Life and an issue.
Because they're being trained almost like Pavlov's dog, with the notifications to have their thoughts interrupted.
And it's very dangerous, and it's affecting them very negatively.
And then, of course, there's the comparison issues, right?
Billy got this many likes, I didn't get that many likes.
We see that having some very severe consequences in some younger people, even taking their lives because of that.
So it's very important to deal with those issues.
I was thinking the other day, thank God there was no internet when I was in high school.
Is that true?
It's so true.
Because to be a 17-year-old or 18-year-old today must be brutal.
Well, it was already hard enough when we didn't have internet, right?
I mean, we were already self-doubting and questioning.
It's hard enough.
Yeah, exactly.
But now think about...
Every detail of your life might be mocked, or shared, or criticized, or exploded beyond your intention.
How can a young person navigate that?
Right, absolutely.
We actually made a 16-year limit on our platform.
We want 16 years and older at this point on our platform to try and help with that.
I'd like to go younger, but I don't want to go younger until I have 24-7 moderation in those younger groups for them.
That makes great sense.
Let me ask you about your moderation.
So, of course, censorship is the big issue on everyone's minds.
Everyone in this space has very little tolerance for what's called viewpoint discrimination, of course.
So I believe your platform does not engage in viewpoint discrimination, but you must have some basic rules.
Yeah, great question.
So we believe that you're free to talk about issues.
I think that's what most people want.
Whether you're conservative or not, you want to be able to talk about an issue without having to think before you post it, oh, is this going to give me trouble?
Is this going to give me a strike?
And we should be able to talk about issues, right?
Bring the issues and let the public decide what's right for them and what they believe.
But we're not the Wild West.
I think some of the earlier platforms, like Gab particularly, went too far.
I think they hurt themselves because no politician would go to that platform now because of the hate and the porn on that platform.
Was there porn on Gab?
Yeah, there was.
There's a lot of porn.
I don't know if they've cleaned it up lately, but there was.
Wow.
I thought it was mostly anti-Semitic type of groups or comments.
When we were designing our groups, they had groups.
I had my team of engineers and we went into one of the groups and it was all Wow.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
I didn't even know that.
And there was no even warning.
There was no even, you've got to be 16 or older to get into this group.
Right.
Not even to join their platform.
And I felt that was wrong.
I have five children.
I wouldn't want them going on a platform like that and having that access.
Right.
Because you don't drag young children into downtown to go watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show, right?
You have to exercise some discernment.
So where we draw the line is discussion of issues versus behavior.
And we also felt that a lot of people complained about other platforms, you know, not being clear on their rules, right?
And then arbitrary implementation.
So what we decided to do is be extremely clear on our rules.
So in our terms of service, we actually list a thousand terms that you cannot use on our platform.
A thousand terms?
Yes.
And it's mostly racial slurs.
Well, there's lots of deviations.
It's amazing.
Give us all the examples.
So, you know, there's a lot of racial slurs in graphic sexual terms, which we don't allow on our platform.
So, for instance, if somebody was writing a post and used the N-word, our artificial intelligence would pick it up.
When they go to post it, it actually doesn't post it.
They get a pop-up that says this is not appropriate for our platform.
You know, edit or delete it.
And the same thing when they're putting up images or videos.
It's viewed for porn.
So there's no porn allowed on our platform at all.
And we think that's It's a public town square, and you're not going to use the N-word in person in a public town square.
You shouldn't use it on digital town square.
And we find that it works.
And we find that people have accepted that balance between behavior and issues because they're free to talk to the issues.
Now, of course, we also don't allow the incitement of violence.
Sure.
Or like stalking kind of threats.
Or doxing or anything like that.
And people seem to be happy with it.
Well, it seems like you've really thought through this in great detail.
I really admire the fact that you've done that because we've struggled with these decisions.
And there have been times where I've disagreed with my own moderators on what they thought was inappropriate or the other way around.
But they would bring me cases.
My moderator staff would bring me cases like, hey, this person had a bad marriage breakup and now they're hating each other and threatening each other and posting videos.
And I said, you know what?
If they're doxing each other, delete them.
Because that's not appropriate.
This is not the place for them to dispute their bad marriage.
Right.
What's interesting is as we go through these journeys, we learn different things that you never thought probably you had to do when you started your platform.
I mean, I don't know about you, but on our platform, when we hit, we added about two million people in three months.
Wow.
And then we suddenly, you know, we're building, you know, features and stuff.
Suddenly, the spammers show up.
And they start spamming nonstop.
They had every second, you know, they're putting out the same thing, same thing.
And so we had to develop software to fight that.
So, I mean, it's expensive.
You know how it is when you're building software.
And suddenly, what we thought we were going to be building, we had to pull the coders off of and build anti-spamming software for a month and a half.
And we were finally starting to get them under control.
We're fortunate.
We have a...
I had a team with some people as advisors, one was employee 30 of Twitter, who was there when they dealt with spamming, so he was able to tell us exactly where to go, what to do, and he said hit it hard because Twitter didn't hit it hard when they got visited by spammers.
They didn't take it serious and it really infected their platform.
It took them a long time to get it under control.
But yeah, it's all these things.
Now, of course, there's the scammers that show up.
They're trying to sell, or women meet the guys and stuff like that.
So you just don't realize, and the issue you just explained, people don't realize that these are issues we have to deal with.
And it's difficult sometimes because a person may say, I'm a whistleblower, when they're really a vengeance-seeking individual against someone else who happens to have a government job, let's say.
Right?
These things cannot be algorithmically perfected.
Sometimes there has to be a human judgment call about this.
But at least I would say it's wonderful that we're talking in this space of what should be common sense versus big tech saying, well, you just can't talk about risks of vaccines or you can't talk about alternative treatments for cancer or what have you.
That's their stance, and that's completely unacceptable in my view.
And I agree with you.
And I think you've probably found in your business and I found a lot of it is common sense.
You know, what they're doing is completely outside of the norm and out of common sense.
They're just basically saying, hey, you doctors who are talking about treatment for COVID, we're not going to let you talk about it.
And that's wrong.
And I think that hurts people.
People should be able to hear both sides of issues and then decide what's right for them.
And it's not big techs.
Or our decision to shut down the discussion.
What would they have done in the time of Martin Luther King?
Would they have said, Martin Luther King can't lead his...
We're not going to promote his bus boycott?
Are we going to shut his group down?
We can laugh about that, but that's exactly what they're doing when we form a group that says businesses should be reopened.
They're shutting those groups down.
Or if we're talking about the vaccine, they're silencing and deleting accounts.
Yes.
Or today, people quoting scripture, that's considered, quote, hate speech.
And let's talk about hate speech for a second, because, wow, this opens up a big, nebulous area.
But I appreciate you being willing to just navigate these issues with me.
You know, hate speech can be twisted to mean anything.
And so, for example, Let's say some person, and this is true on the left, believes that, what's it called, man-child love, which we might call pedophilia.
So an older man wants to have an intimate relationship with an underage boy.
And in the left, they would argue that that is...
Love.
And that's their argument.
And then if you say, well, that's inappropriate, then you're guilty of hate speech.
See, so how do you navigate this idea of, well, what are your thoughts on how they're applying hate speech?
Yeah, so I think they apply hate speech arbitrarily.
And I believe that, first of all, I'm not a 27-year-old, so I have my own values that I've developed in my lifetime.
And so I'm comfortable as a platform owner to say, these are my values.
If you want to be on my platform, and you know this right up front.
And so for me, I'm a person of faith.
Also, I think that there's just basic rules.
Right now, it's against the law to have in a relationship with children, and we don't allow that on the platform.
We don't allow any of that on the platform.
You know, I consulted with Ron Coleman, who's a free speech attorney, and Harvey Dillon when I developed my platform and also discussed some of these issues with them.
And basically what they said is, as long as I'm consistent with everybody, I can set rules.
But the key is to be consistent.
What the problem is with Twitter and Facebook is, you know, if you're a conservative, maybe you can't say this, but if you're a liberal, you can get away with saying that.
That's what many conservatives feel, and I think there's some truth to that, of course.
That's why we've created our own platforms.
But if you're consistent, you're okay.
It's like having a store.
What do you sell?
Do you sell bread or do you sell auto parts?
You decide.
And when we develop platforms, it's okay for us to say, this is what we're about, and if you believe in it, then come to my platform.
If you don't believe in it, then there's other platforms.
I love that free choice, free enterprise approach that you're taking.
So could you give us an overview?
What are your values and how are these values expressed through the platform, I suppose, or in your terms?
So, the no porn.
I've decided that for Clotib, I would not like to have porn on it.
I think that in a digital town hall, I don't think that's appropriate.
Right.
But photos of a breastfeeding mother.
Because we've had this discussion with our team.
Natural breastfeeding that's not gratuitous.
It's not...
Made in a way that is intended to invoke sexual attraction by the viewer.
But it's depicting a woman's breast and nipple.
Is that porn?
It's not porn to me.
Porn is people having sex or, like you said, promoting sexual thoughts and interaction.
But a mother breastfeeding her baby to me is not porn.
Right.
Well, I agree with you.
I'm just curious.
And I hear different answers from different people.
And when Congress tries to define porn, it's a nightmare.
Well, that's an important issue, right?
Section 230 and what's going to happen to 230 as platform owners, you know, that'll impact us.
It's true.
First of all, I think it should be modified.
I think it should not be repealed.
I think it should be modified to say that, because right now all it says is, if you're a platform owner, you are excluded from liability.
But it doesn't say if you're a platform owner behaving in certain ways, you're excluded from.
And a lot of the platform owners now are acting like publishers and deciding what content and what content doesn't go there.
And then they should no longer have that liability exclusion.
There's a phrase, I believe, in Section 230 that says, or offensive material or something like that.
The word offensive is in there.
Well, then that's a blanket that can cover anything.
And they can say, well, it's offensive to me to talk about America being a good country.
You know, the founder, like Zuckerberg maybe says that, or Jack Dorsey says, it's offensive to me that you talk about Trump.
Right?
So, I agree with you.
Section 230 does need to exist, but in a revised form.
Well, it was written, what, 1996?
Yeah.
You know, that was bulletin boards, right?
Right.
At that time.
And the issues weren't the same kind of issues we're dealing with, and not at the same scale we're dealing with them now, you know, with the number of people on the Internet.
So, I think it needs to be modified.
Right.
But I don't think it's going to happen, actually.
You don't?
No, I don't think this administration is going to change it.
Do you think the state-level legislative actions will be effective against big-tech censorship?
Well, I think that's where it'll have to be, right?
The changes will have to happen at the state level, like we see in Florida, or we see in Texas, starting to come, where they're going to make...
See, I also think that 230 protects you and me from what our users use, but it doesn't protect you and me from our actions.
I don't believe it really does.
It's designed to protect us from what our users say, If one of my users' members says something slanderous against you, I'm not responsible for that.
But if I was a publisher and I put that in my magazine, then I am responsible for it.
But if I, as a platform owner, am mistreating people on my platform and buy a censorship against them, I don't feel that 230 protects me.
I see.
And I think that's a part of the law.
So I think the state efforts to say that you are responsible for your behavior as a platform owner, if you are choosing people based on their political beliefs or religious beliefs or gender, then you should be responsible for damages.
Yeah, that's very interesting.
And again, I really appreciate the depth of your thought and the detail, even the structural hierarchy of how you're thinking about this.
What's your background before this?
I'm really curious.
So I've been a business person all my adult life.
I was CEO for Smokey Robinson, the singer.
Really?
Yeah.
He's a great guy.
That's great.
And a wonderful man.
But I was also CEO for other companies as well.
I decided to do this.
I'm 61, so I'm not a young guy.
I decided to do this because I felt that as a person of faith, I attend Rick Warren's church in Orange County, California, and he always talks about leaving a legacy bigger than ourselves.
And I felt that...
My background, too, in addition to being a business person, was as a civic leader in Los Angeles.
I was a commissioner under Mayor Reardon.
I did some fairly significant things in the city to force them to reform the city, reform their charter, things like that.
I felt that there was an opportunity.
You know, social media has transformed commerce, right, with Amazon and so many others.
It's transformed relationships.
On Facebook, we can go find somebody we haven't seen in 10 years.
That's transformed business networking on LinkedIn.
But it didn't transform that public process of how we interact on issues as a community, and then how we as a community interact with our decision makers.
And that's really where I'm going with this.
And if you can imagine, down the road, when I was in L.A. and I had to go to City Hall, I would have to take off the day from work, I'd have to pay $30 to park, and I'd sit there all day for my two minutes to speak, because you don't know when it's coming up on the schedule, and then I'd lose my day.
And I was fortunate that I could do that.
But most people can't.
They're working nine to five, maybe even two jobs, and they don't have that ability to go down.
And those are the people who most need to have their voices heard.
So if you could take this to the next level, you should be able today, perhaps even through your platform, be able to attend those meetings through video and be able to interact through video.
When it's your turn to speak or you have a thing on agenda, you push a button.
Well, this is what we're going to have on CloudHood is that ability to be able to interact, whether it's a school board meeting, a city council meeting, or a state meeting, and give people that two-way ability to interact.
It's your turn to speak.
They open up the camera.
You speak.
You could even pass a PDF through to them, and you don't have to lose your day.
Working with Smokey, actually, I've traveled to places, South Chicago.
We spent a lot of time there.
We spent time in South Central LA. And I know a lot of people there.
And they tell me, Jeff, this is perfect because we can't go out at night.
We won't go out at night to a meeting.
It's not safe.
Plus, also, we're working hard to feed our families.
But with this...
We can participate.
And this is a community that actually needs to participate more because their needs are dependent on what the decision makers are making.
I love it.
I love your experience with civic participation and then applying the digital realm to reduce friction in that with people.
That's wonderful.
Thank you.
Let me ask you a possible skeptical question that I think our listeners might ask you, which is suppose in CloudHub it begins with your values, which you've shared some here, and then it becomes very successful, and then somebody whose last name begins with Z comes along and says, I'll buy CloudHub for a billion dollars.
How do users know that that's not where you want to take this?
Sure.
So I'm, like I said, 61.
I've raised my five children.
I'm not looking to be Mark Zuckerberg rich.
I'm building this to give the public a platform that they can use to interact in a positive way.
And make change.
I often say there are platforms where people go and post in exchange for likes, and then there's platforms where people can come and do and change the world.
And I want to make CloudHub a place where people change the world.
I love it.
And do you support multiple languages as well?
We don't currently, but we will eventually get to that.
As you know, it's a journey.
You just have to keep building and crossing those bridges.
And have you been able to...
I'm curious, because our apps have been banned by Apple and Google, are you able to have apps that aren't yet banned by those providers?
We've been very open with them.
I made a point early on to meet with them and show the vision of what I'm trying to do.
And we are not considered a red platform.
We have...
In our channels, we have a trucking channel, we have all kinds of different channels, so it's not all politics.
And they actually like the vision of what we're doing, which is trying to create social media that contributes to society.
Wow!
Well, you are really brilliant in being able to explain your vision in ways that don't anger totalitarians.
Maybe I'm not big enough yet.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I admire what you're doing because, of course, I'm known as kind of the more outlandish voice in this space, and I just can't help it.
I have just very low tolerance for tyranny, and it gets the best of me sometimes.
But I think your approach is actually more wise, and I think your platform is going to be very successful.
I look forward to joining it and participating more.
Well, and I think, like we talked about, I think we should work together, you know, if you're open to that.
Yes, absolutely.
And, you know, help each other.
I'm sure we have maybe technology that you could benefit from, and maybe you have ideas or thoughts we could benefit from, and we're all in this together.
We are.
We're really trying to give people back the power, right?
You're trying to get video to people that they need to see, and that's a very worthy cause, and anything we can do to help you, we're happy to do.
Well, it has been quite a journey, and you're one of the few people who I can speak to about this who understands some of the challenges of what we go through in order to do this.
But I think we both share the common desire to help others exercise their freedom to think.
Yes.
And it's not just about building a platform for you to speak or me to speak, but building a platform for others to express their ideas.
And I'm with you.
Brighttown also welcomes people who disagree with my political beliefs.
We don't censor based on viewpoints at all, because that's the contradiction of what I stand for.
Right.
Well, thank you.
It's been great.
I appreciate meeting you and being able to chat with you like this.
It's nice to meet you.
It's great.
I mean, really, you made my day because I always had a question mark about who's behind the Cloud Hub.
Now I know.
Now our audience knows.
And folks, you can go there and sign up and get an account, start a group, you know, a homeschooling group in your local town or a home Bible study group in your local town.
Absolutely.
That's a perfect application of it.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Jeff.
Thank you, Mike.
All right.
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