Hello everyone. My name is Andrew Torba. I'm the CEO of GABcom. Welcome to the Parallel Christian Society podcast.
Speaker 1:So authenticity in today's world has become a rare commodity With the advent of AI and its ability to replicate human behavior in text-based conversations, social media posts, comments. This has led to this flood of inauthentic content and interactions online, and the sad thing is most people don't even realize it. And so X is sort of notorious for this, and it has been for a number of years, where a lot of the comments, a lot of the engagements, are being driven by AI, and they have been for quite some time. And so people don't even realize that their social media experience. They think that they're getting all these views and all this interaction and all this engagement and all these comments from real people, when in reality it's from a machine. And that's how good these large language models have become at imitating social media users. And if you look at GAB AI as an example, you can sort of play this out right. So our AI platform is built around this concept of creating characters, and so you can create a character and have it be any persona you want it to be. And that's what a lot of these botnet operators on X and other platforms have done is they've created these sort of personas to act a certain way, respond a certain way, seek out certain content to engage with, and they're just writing 24-7 nonstop.
Speaker 1:And so what this is going to do is it's going to force the social media companies to do exactly what GAB is doing, which is very controversial in our community, but creating this paywall right, and Elon is also moving towards this. They have an initiative where they're charging $1 to join X, and this is only live right now in New Zealand and the Philippines. You have to pay a $1 annual fee to unlock basic features such as posting and interacting with other users, and this makes it significantly harder for bots to manipulate the platform, while maintaining relative accessibility for real users and so existing X users. They weren't impacted by this, but any new users signing up were, and so this is a part of his broader strategy to revamp X as a subscription-focused platform, after suffering the same challenges and facing the same challenges that GAB has faced for a number of years, with advertiser boycotts, and implementing these changes is tough, especially at a platform like X's size, and also at a platform like GAB's size, which is obviously why all the controversy has been breaking out over this move that we've done.
Speaker 1:That's starting on March 1, where, in order to post media on GAB, you need to either be a GAB pro subscriber or a verified account or a donor, and essentially it's just like a real person and not a bad actor or a robot. And so we did this for a number of reasons, as I explained in previous episodes. We were having storage problems. We want to generate more revenue from the subscription model in order to survive. The advertising market, as I said in the last episode, really has taken a major hit over the past year, and subscription is sort of the way of the future because of AI.
Speaker 1:You go on Facebook now and the feed is just flooded with these AI-generated images of celebrities and really anything that you could think of, and you read the comments and the users have no idea that they're looking at an AI image. That's how good these AI generators have become. These image generators have become is that people can no longer tell the difference, and so this is going to create a situation in social media where nobody knows what to trust and nobody knows what is real and what isn't anymore, and so that's going to create an environment and a need in the market for authenticity and for an actual human community. And the way that you do that is through a paywall, because what it does is it creates the significant barrier to entry for the bot operators. Because if you're going to spend the time setting up an account, an AI account, and getting that all set up and jumping through all the hoops to create the new account and verify it and all that stuff and then upgrade and pay for it, and then you get banned, how many times are you going to do that? How much money are you going to spend before you eventually stop? Whereas now it's like if anybody can just create, can keep creating free accounts and doing it all day long. There's really no barrier to entry there, and that's why Twitter has flooded with these AI bots.
Speaker 1:That's why Facebook has now flooded with these AI images. There's very little barrier to entry there, and so this move that we're making I understand it's very controversial, but when you're doing something radically different and when you see where things are going, we are solving a lot of problems here and a lot of problems that are only just now starting to pop up Our own internal problems of data storage and of a decline in revenue from the advertising market, sort of tanking over the past year. Those are two things, but this is also solving a third problem, which is people are going to be seeking out authenticity. They're going to be seeking out like-minded communities of real people that they know for certain are real people, and that's something that GAB has been building up for a number of years. That's why it was an interesting thing for us to turn this on, because we already had all these verified people, all these people who were pro, all these people who were donors. So we had this base of people on GAB that we knew were real people, right, and not bots and not bad actors and all this stuff, and so it made it a little bit easier for us to make this move.
Speaker 1:But that is sort of the authentic core community of people that we know are real people and that we've either verified that they're real people or they've upgraded to pro and therefore we know that they're a real person or they've made a donation. We know that they're a real person and while this isn't 100% perfect, there are obviously still bot operators that could upgrade to pro or make a donation or whatever then, when we catch them through other means that we have to catch them and ban them for running a botnet. It's going to really disincentivize them to come back and pay again and then just get banned again, right? Whereas if it's a free account, they could just keep coming back over and over and over again with no cost to them outside of their time. And so, again, people are going to be looking for authentic interactions, authentic communities of real people that are posting real things. That is going to become a big commodity going forward, and I think that's something that we've already laid the groundwork for over the past couple of years and we're continuing to lay the groundwork for right now.
Speaker 1:And so that's just another angle of this situation, of sort of the vision here of where things are going, in that we want Gav to be a social network of real people, an authentic network, an authentic community of real people, and the best way, and the only way that I can think of and that you know, all these these smarty pants people in Silicon Valley can think of is a paywall, if anybody else has any other ideas. For you know, and you know Elon is taking it one step further and he's verifying identities, verifying, you know, ids and using an Israeli company to do so. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be collecting people's IDs at all. You know, that's one thing that he's doing.
Speaker 1:I think that the paywall is probably the best option, because it disincentivizes the bot operators and it makes their operations far more costly, it makes them far less effective and it creates this authentic community of real people, which I think is going to be a huge demand and huge demand going forward, and so I think that's another outcome of sort of what we're trying to build here. And, you know, perhaps the community gets smaller, but if I know that those are real people and if we get rid of the bots and you know some of the bad actors along the way, so be it. If we have a higher quality, you know, community of people that are real people, you know, that share our values, I think that's a great thing. I think that's a fantastic thing, and so I think that's this is just another outcome of sort of where things are going, where AI is sort of flooding all these platforms right now and people are not going to know what is real and what isn't, and it's. You know, there's a lot of people that are just going to stop using social media all together because of this. And then there's others who are going to be seeking out authentic communities of real people, right, and so I hope that GAG could be one of those communities and one of those places.
Speaker 1:And so, you know, we're evolving. We've been doing this for eight years and things have changed. There's new technology out right, this large language models are incredibly powerful, and they have totally changed and upended the entire internet and really our entire world, and so we have to react to that. We have to respond to that, and one of the best ways to do that is by ensuring that we have a community of real people, of real living, breathing human beings, and the best way to do that is with the paywall, because a robot is not going to spend money. Robot doesn't have money to spend. Robot is not going to spend money to be able to post and infiltrate the network, right, and so, even if there's a human operator behind it that pays the money and then it gets caught, well again, how many times are you gonna continue to do that Right now, if there's no cost and you could just, you know, get banned and then create a new account and do it again, over and over, and over and over again. You know, it becomes next to next to near impossible to stop. Right, and why would they stop? But if they got to pay, you know, ten bucks every time they do this, it's much less likely that they're going to do it for too long, right, maybe a couple of times tops, but then they're going to stop or it's going to get expensive for them. Real quick, right? So this is sort of another outcome of you know where we're going with this and where things are going with social media in general.
Speaker 1:Social media, as we know, is dead. The old social media is done, it's finished and, frankly, it has been for a few years, because, you know, these AI models have been out for a few years, sort of behind the scenes, and there have been bad actors that have been using these and state actors that have been using these for a number of years to infiltrate platforms like X and, by the way, platforms like GAB. Right, we're not immune to it either. And so this paywall strategy that we're doing and that we've had for quite some time by the way, gab Pro is not something that's new. We've had it since the early days of GAB. And now we see Elon with this $1 charge to stop the bot accounts as well, and I bet that will. That's going to inevitably have to expand to other countries. Right now it's only in New Zealand and the Philippines. It's going to have to be everywhere and that's going to be sort of the new norm.
Speaker 1:And especially, as you know, the ads market continues to get hit. I talked about this little bit in the last podcast. But, like, if you want to have a free speech platform, you cannot. The advertising model is just not going to work Because activists like the ADL and others you know target the advertisers and threaten them. And you know it's like the mafia going to shake down these businesses and threaten them. And you know they do the same thing to Elon and that's why they can sort of walk him around like a puppet on strings, even though he's one of the richest man in the world and effectively run his platform and like he knows it. And so I think that's maybe why he's playing ball a little bit with them to buy himself some time to move to a subscription model and move to payments. He's also going into payments, right, and so you know we're going to see these evolving business models based on a reaction to those two things to the advertising market being attacked and controlled and manipulated by the same people who are controlling and manipulating and destroying you know, our country and the West.
Speaker 1:You think they're not. You know, behind all the advertising dollars too, hello, right, and so that's not. That's not the way forward. What they can't do is Go after. You know Millions or hundreds of thousands of people who are subscribing, you know, to, to gab or to a platform like X or whatever social social network has subscription based models. Telegram is also doing a subscription based model. They have sort of you know, their own version of gab pro, like. Even Facebook has a Subscription, monthly subscription option for getting verified. So all the platforms are going down this path and you know it's. It's just sort of inevitable and so people need to get used to it.
Speaker 1:And again, the this, this changing landscape with the stuff with AI and With the change in business model, being from everything is free to now you're gonna have to start paying to access certain features, which is happening across the board. Again, telegram does this, x does this, facebook's doing it for verification gas been doing it almost since the, you know, seven years ago and we eight years ago, when we launched All the platforms, are going down this model right, and so that that, combined with the, the flood of AI Across these platforms and people not knowing what is real and what isn't in their feeds, it's gonna a Drive a lot of people off social media for good, which maybe is a good thing. And then B is going to Create a market for authentic human communities. That that is sort of gonna be the next move in social media is Authentic human communities and what's the best way to do that? It's sort of like a private membership association in the real world, or Sort of a digital Country Club, if you will, and I hate using that example, but you know it's the best thing I could think of right now. A private membership organization, a PMA, is probably a better example, you know it's it's sort of it's creating this, or maybe another example, too, could be like an HOA, you know, like a housing, housing community. That's another good example there, but more or less it's it's sort of creating a filter to weed out inauthentic and AI type content and AI type usage on the platform and ensure that it's only real people, and so that's where things are going and these are some of the outcomes of, you know, this new technology, and so we want God to be an authentic human Centric community right, and so that's that's another outcome of this, this decision that we've made and and that others are making too.
Speaker 1:You know, again, telegram has a subscription model, x has a subscription model, and they're they're moving more and more towards this right, more and more towards this. You know, gabb sort of has had it for a long time. We made a big, big move and big, big push into it out of necessity, by the way out, out of necessity, to keep the platform alive and not run out of storage space and and and generate revenue to survive and keep the lights on. So we did it out of necessity, but you know others are also going to do it on necessity, because you know Elon, unless they do something, the, the amount of interest that he has to pay on these I think it's 13 billion dollars in loans that he took out to purchase Twitter Combined with the massive dip in advertising revenue, is that it's only sustainable for so long and if he's not paying those interest payments, he has to pay those interest payments. You know they're in, they're in a similar position.
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't be surprised if Elon starts limiting certain features and making them exclusive to subscribers. Right, I do not be surprised that this happens, and you know telegrams doing the same thing. There's a bunch of features that you can only get if you're subscribed. I think we're gonna see more and more platforms start to go down this path, because the ad market just isn't cutting it anymore. Number one, and you know, in the case of us and at least Elon has the guise of free speech you know you cannot offer free speech platform and have it be dependent on advertisers, because the activists are gonna go after the advertisers and they're gonna threaten them and use you know sort of mafia tactics, and They'll do the same thing to you too. And so you know that's.
Speaker 1:That's why the subscriber model is really the only option here, because you know the ADL is not gonna go after a hundred thousand people that are subscribed to, you know, twitter or to gab, right, the. The volume is just too high, it's just not feasible. But you know, if there's a coke and a Pepsi and an Intel and an Apple, four or five companies that you know have tens of millions of dollars in ad spend, you know, every month on Twitter. They could pretty easily make a couple of phone calls and and and get those people to pull their ad dollars right. So subscriptions are the way forward, the path forward to both protect free speech and protect authentic human communities and stop, you know, botnet operators with with AI. So that's where things are headed and I just I wanted to talk about this because this is another outcome of Of our path here that we're going down, and I just want to Express some gratitude to all those who upgraded to gabpro or donated over this past week.
Speaker 1:It's it's really humbling and we're very grateful. You know we've hit 50% of our operational costs in, you know, the first five or six days of the month here, which hasn't happened in a very, very long time, and so we're very, very thankful to you guys and we're thankful to those of you who also stuck around. We're thankful For everybody that's on gab and we want we want our community to be real human beings, and I want to thank gabbards who pushed us on that, like when we, when we pushed, you know, the AI and we were experimenting with the different AI Accounts on gab, a lot of gabbers really didn't like it and gave us a lot of pushback and I want to thank you guys for that, because I think that definitely was the right decision. I'm so glad that we separated the AI accounts off of gab and onto its own platform. That was better, both for gab social and for the AI platform itself. It was, it was the right move, and so thank you guys for the feedback on that.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this, appreciate your time. I know your time is valuable, but Thank you for tuning in. Remember to speak freely. Christ is king.