and supreme court candidates who are dedicated and are clear that they stand up against this red system known as gerrymandering. wet is the way, in the end, will get rid of the super divisive politics we see out of people like jim jordan, who just feel like they are not accountable to anybody, because under a rigged system, they are. host: on twitter, they can find you @davepepper. in a sentence, the book "the voter file" says what? guest: "the voter file" is a large database of all the voters in the country, which really exists. the democrats have one. republicans have one. "the voter file" is a story of what would happen if someone got their hands on it and wanted to do some damage. and the sad truth is, they could do a lot of it. that is the story. host: david pepper, joining us from cincinnati"washington jour. host: our focus -- social media

and free speech. the website is parler.com, and joining us from las vegas is the ceo of that website, john matze. thank you so much for being with us. guest: thank you. host: if you were to put a mission statement to your website, what would it be? guest: our mission statement would be to create a town square for free speech discussion and to protect people's 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. there's 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 presidential 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 don't 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 you're 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 dual-influencer 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 drone's. 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 -- year-over-year, 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: your reaction.

guest: i do not think he looked very hard on the platform. a lot of people who write things like that spend about three seconds on the platform, look at a couple of posts, and then make a judgment call pure i think there are a lot of conservatives on the platform, because it is primarily can the right now, if you are in the 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) 748-8000. that is the line for democrats. and (202) 748-8001 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 isn't, for what it is worth. when it comes to what they are doing in the, you know, free-speech 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 isn't 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 wouldn't 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 gentleman's 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. let's 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 free-speech 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 isn't allowed -- in our community guidelines it isn't 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 don't think anybody wants to go on the internet and see that and that is why it is in our committee guidelines, that you can't 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 don't on cnn, especially on cnn or msnbc. they don't 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 don't care about black people, but it is a bunch

of communism. it is all over the internet. you don't 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 don't have any fact checking. what we do is we are going to rely on the comments of the community to do that. i don't 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 can't 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 far-right, 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

free-speech when it comes to your online interactions. there are a lot of right-leaning individuals. i don't think it is primarily an extremist group. i don't think there are very many extremists at all on the platform. there are right-leaning 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 don't 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 isn't 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 don't 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 don't have registered in many places, regarding my son, a convicted felon.

these two calls came from newt gingrich. my son never voted republican. i don't 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. never ever took information about his phone number and the fact that he was associating me and my son to their campaign for the election concerns me deeply. host: thanks for the call. we will get a response. importantt is really is that people's privacy is expected is respected online. these other companies -- privacy is respected online. these other companies, we have had a lot of press historically especially concerning the last election and afterwards, for giving away information. this is something we think is really important, to keep all user data, anything that is

personally identifiable, keep it in a format that can't be read, even by us unless extensive effort is put in, so it is not easily shared, and we don't share information, especially personally identifiable information. it is in our terms of service and committee look -- community guidelines. it is important, especially for the reason you brought up. it is very scary and creepy when your information gets out there, and it is important that we keep it confidential. host: you are perfect -- you are currently a private company. will you go public? guest: i am hoping we can remain private as long as possible. itwe were to become public, might have a bit of a conflict of interest with the free-speech guidelines, but we will see. i hope you stay private as long -- i hope to stay private as long as possible. testify before

congress. the headline from politico, republicans invite the parler ceo to rumble with silicon valley giants. will you testify and will you rumble? guest: i don't know what they mean by rumble. and i accept the offer, will be honest and transparent about my experiences in the tech space and how difficult it has been. host: we will go to carolyn in tennessee on our republican line. caller: good morning. how are you? host: we are great, how are you? caller: thank you. i am calling to tell my story. i live in tennessee, and i am old and i can't even work a computer. i get everything i get off the tv. love when president trump tweets out what he thinks, because if it wasn't for that,

cnn, msnbc, even the local channels around here, you would never know what the man is thinking or what he plans for the united states. they don't want him out there telling what he thinks. they want it to be what they think. i appreciate the text and fox news for what we hear about what he has to say. host: here is what the president texted in the last hour, his route -- is twitter saying no radical left an artist agitators, looters or protesters will be knocking down or harming the washington monument, lincoln or jefferson memorial or any other federal monument. he missed spelled monument. or statue. if they try, automatic 10 years in prison. that is the president about 45 minutes ago.

your reaction to what carolyn said and another tweet from the president? guest: she is exactly correct. we shouldn't have arbiters of information. it should be transparent. to your point about the tweet, everyone asks for an edit button because everybody always seems to screw up a text sometimes. i kind of like the grammatical failures once they go out in parler. i think it is fun to see it is real. it is a reminder that everybody israel. host: we have all done it. we will go to gym in missouri, republican line. caller: good morning. thanks for starting parler. i haven't been on it yet but it the firstd and amendment is definitely the for -- definitely the most important. the reason why there might be more conservatives at this site -- theyse it is clear are probably white christians too.

clearly the liberal media and hollywood and everything hates christian white people and they have an agenda against them. riling up black lives matter and anti-foot to hate white people. it has been going on for 50 years or so, ever since the civil rights movement, and it is all organized by certain groups that want to monopolize all the social media. they own the media before with hollywood. i don't know if it should be censored. of what is part behind hating white christians. it always has been. host: the website is parler.com. john matze, your reaction to that caller. guest: i think everyone's point of view is important, and that

we have a discussion about it. as you can tell from a lot of the people calling in, they feel victimized in other places. i don't think that people should feel victimized for who they are online. host: from los angeles, douglas, good morning. caller: yes. independent, and a vet. been around for a little bit. i remember when california used to be considered one of the best states in the nation, but like the rest of the world or the rest of this country, it seems to have gone down the tube along with both parties. decents they can't get a individual to run. i am talking about trump or biden. figureone of them can't out what they want to do. trump can't make a proper decision.

biden can't make a decision, period. i far as black lives matter, always thought all lives matter. it doesn't matter who it is, what color it is. the people that talk about the individual, the black lives matter, i saw the representative for that say i would like to get one of those cops and put my knee on his neck for nine minutes, and everybody in the crowd, black-and-white started cheering. this is ridiculous. this country is don't know what way they are going, and somebody with some sense needs to get up again, like a us reagan. host: thanks for the call. john matze. guest: thank you. i agree. everything is hyper partisan.

everything is extremely hyper partisan right now. a lot of it is to blame on the sensors because you have extreme opinions on one side or the other, and nobody is really in the middle anymore. is we can have some actual debate and come back to the middle and get some leadership again. that is the goal. host: this from another viewer, saying how does your site deal with the issue of fake news from other countries? are there lessons from 2016? guest: when it comes to fake news, we covered that earlier. i like to leave it to the people to have a conversation about all of this, and that is our concept. when it comes to international fake news, there is a lot of international fake news, even in the mainstream right now. news everywhere is manipulative by somebody with an agenda.

it would be best if we could talk about it and recognize it and if we do that, the community should be able to recognize what is going on. host: michael from connecticut. good morning. make a i am trying to comment, the fake news is blown up by trump but what he said earlier about the pornography and people not wanting to watch pornography on the internet. what is the internet for? 70% of what goes on the internet is pornography. good luck with your website. i think it will probably work good as long as it is not ones that -- as long as it is not one-sided or the other, but it will have a lasting effect and b take over facebook. thank you. guest: thank you. you are right. 70% of the internet is out there for that and that is why we prefer to keep it off of our site, because i think it is well protected elsewhere. host: it has been reported that you are willing to pay to have more voices, even progressive

voices on your site. is that true? guest: we did have a progressive challenge for a while. we started with $10,000 and then $20,000 for prominent progressive self-declared progressives to come join the site and get into the debate. we haven't had any takers. we had some interest, but no takers yet. we really want to get more people on there. we have a confirmed it is legitimate yet but it seems we have a left-leaning publication that we are going to be able to put up in the news section with all the other conservative publications. we are excited to see that, so you can see the contrast. host: here is her chance. if you want to make some news this morning and release the name of that publication? their we have a confirmed identity yet, so we are not sure it is an imposter yet. we are close, but not sure. host: our next caller joining us from florida on our line for democrats. caller: good morning.

ask -- yourng to that, if he thought fascism in this country is a serious domestic threat. host: why do you ask the question? caller: i am asking the question because i do believe it is a serious threat, and i wonder, being a libertarian, whether he feels the same way. host: thank you for the question and the comment. guest: me personally? there is a lot of those kinds of tendencies all around with both political parties, and i don't think it is right. i think that central points of authority are not good. we should have weaker central points of authority so people can have more power. that is me, personally. it has nothing to do with the company. that is part of our mission statement and not be arbiters of the truth. i guess you can kind of see

where i am coming from. i don't like the kinds of central points of power and i don't think it is right, so i agree with the caller. host: are you on other social media sites or do you limit yourself solely to parler.com? guest: i have a twitter, but it only has one post and it just says join me on parler. i don't have anything other than parler. host: we will go to houston. good morning. caller: it has been quite a while. the internet is global. what are we doing to identify arele, foreigners who talking about domestic politics, and also, why not open this up to the world? why not let people from around the world talk about their politics? let's say china? you can't have any discussion about politics over there. what would you do to conceal those identities so that they are allowed to speak?

guest: great question. what do you think would happen if president trump adopted a consumption tax for his second term? host: a couple good points. guest: great points about international. we have seen tremendous support for our platform in brazil right now. he hadzilian president, experienced some kind of censorship on twitter and so he joined parler and bought a lot of people in brazil over. we have seen the same thing in the united kingdom. we have 20 members of parliament in the united kingdom on our platform. we also have a lot of people from saudi arabia and iran. iran, specifically because they want to speak out against the regime and were unable to do so on other platforms. it is an international movement, to answer that question. host: if somebody does post

something that would be objectionable, if it is not the symbols or things -- if it is nazi symbols or things like that, do you take something like that down or leave it on the site? guest: anything that is a direct threat of violence and we use the term, fighting words, something intentionally used to create a fight or that would lead to violence is removed. anything that will lead to violence will be removed. if that answers your question. host: let's go to roger in virginia. caller: good morning. i am a little nervous this morning. i would like to know your communion --rump's commuting of roger stone's sentence. it seems like everybody who stuck with him is free. those who don't are gone.

do you think america is great again now? host: the commutation of the sentence of roger stone that took place late friday evening. do you have an opinion on that? guest: i don't have an opinion directly on that. roger stone is on our platform. it is the only place he still has a voice online. he has been censored on every other platform for the most part. arlaying yesterday on the platform. you can hear his views on the matter on parler. host: mark from michigan, good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. about six or seven callers ago, there was somebody that came out and openly said they thought jews were responsible for all the white christian problems, and your caller did not have any rebuttal for that, did not criticize that. it sound like some been that could create hate. with your platform, it seems

like something like that would be able to go through. why did you not say anything to rebut that and if somebody did have a viewpoint where they stereotyped an entire culture of people, what would you and your ortform do to debunk that make sure that doesn't happen? point, ands for the also as a follow-up from rebecca who has this tweet, does parler fact-check or is it a free-for-all? i realize we addressed some of these issues for but how do you go after those points? guest: to mark's point, there are some people who have opinions that are extreme and to your point, sometimes people need to get checked. frankly, when i heard the comment it, --, -- when i heard the comment, it was at the end so it went over my head but thanks for bringing it up so we can address it. there are people who have extreme opinions out there, and on one hand, the current status quo is that if they have extreme opinions, you banned them.

in my opinion, if they are not violent and are using rhetoric or using something of that nature, then people should confront them in the comments section and they should have a conversation, because my viewpoint is if you ban somebody and get rid of their voice, they are still going to vote that way at the polling booth. they will still think that way and they might come out and do something horrible. the only way to solve that problem is through discussion and keeping them engaged with the community. i feel that the good majority of people will change the opinions of those who are extreme in the minority. new: our last call is from york, outside of buffalo. you get the last word. caller: i do have a question, because i am not a major big anythingresearcher or in the one thing i do know is like facebook and twitter. if you make a comment, people

just really, there is a lot of blowback from it. quite honestly, if i were to say something like i would not vote for a person that is narcissistic sociopath, doesn't matter on which side that person fell, democrat or republican, there is suchit is kind of liket a discussion, but that right there is a major influence across-the-board politically. it affects everyone. to make that person and then get are you just offering people to have a conversation, but it is solely based on their opinion? am an independent, but because democrats -- neither party really is specific for what they would like. right now, who we have is

causing great harm. this is where i see this. for me to say something like that, i'm going to put my name out there and get blowback. i don't know. i would like to check your site out. host: thank you. . guest: great question. you don't have to use your real name on the platform. you can even get verified as a real person with your identity, but keep it confidential and secret. they can see u.s. whatever name you want. in general, people online can be rough. that is true of everyplace out there today. nobody has a solution to that. our goal is to give people the option to have that discussion. i understand your point, i get blowback all the time for things i south there, especially from people who disagree. i understand. host: john mason from las vegas.

website, parlor.com, a social media site. we thank you for being with us. guest: thanks for having me and >> c-span's washington journal. we will discuss policy issues that impact you. coming up monday morning, will discuss tax policy and economic recovery with carl smith. also, a look at the biotech industry and the biotech organization innovation share. watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern monday morning. be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. forum hosted by the

hill, health and human services secretary alex azar talked about developing a vaccine for the coronavirus. we will also hear from illinois representative lauren underwood who spoke about equipment for health-care workers and health disparities among minorities. >> >> hello, and welcome back. i'm steve clemons. we are delighted to have you join us for the second hour of the future of the health care summit. i would like to thank the support for today's great program. we are going to expand our lens in the session to look at policymaking breakthroughs and innovation in the face of seen and unseen challenges. before we get underway, a few housekeeping notes. you can tweet us at #thehillhealth. if you experience a problem with the livestream, refresh. it should be a quick fix.