By John B Nevin
Mike Lindell has announced the Apr. 20 launch of FrankSpeech.com, a new social media platform that he says will be able to handle a billion people.
On the Mar. 26 WarRoom Pandemic, Lindell described his new FrankSpeech social network as “A YouTube with a Twitter Feature” and told Steve Bannon: “since I bought all my own servers and got all my own stuff—no Amazon, no Apple, no crooked YouTube, no crooked Google—none of these guys are going be able to take this down.” He also told viewers, “keep going to LindellTV.com… we’re going to dump stuff there daily,” and mentioned plans to launch his own online merchant to rival Amazon.
In another talk with Bannon on Apr. 9, Lindell said, “I have everything covered for safety… I put in another couple million dollars into just the security, because we know we’re going to get attacked… people are not going to have to worry about their information going anywhere… going to a Jack Dorsey or a Mark Zuckerbuck…it all focuses on free speech… this isn’t just about an election or the vaccine or anything, this is about getting our freedoms back and being able to talk about it…”
VIP pre-passes will be available soon, and a round-the-clock telethon stream will start at 9 am on Apr. 19 to usher in the official launch of the site on Tuesday, Apr. 20, called a “Frankathon.” This “Frankathon” will include information about the platform along with a premiere of Lindell’s new documentary ‘Absolute Interference’, which he promises will contain “the most mind-blowing evidence you’ve ever seen in history.”
FrankSpeech currently links to LindellTV.com, whose recently added announcement has for many been their first notice that the platform is “Coming April 20th.”
The static placeholder landing page at FrankSpeech.com at the time of this writing states:
“Free speech is one of the hallmarks of our Constitutional Republic, as enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It is no coincidence that nations with free speech also have a free enterprise system and freedom of religion. Inversely, nations that deny free speech tread upon the free enterprise system and freedom of religion. Americans want to remain free. Americans are craving news and information that is not filtered through the radical worldview of today’s liberal media intelligentsia or deep state actors. Frank, the voice of free speech, will be the platform for Americans who want to defend life, liberty, and all the freedoms that have marked America as the longest-running Constitutional Republic in the history of the world. You can post videos, Livestream television, distribute news and information, and find community and fellowship with like-minded Americans on this platform. Frank will be a home for major influencers, to micro-influencers, to average Americans wanting to share in the constitutional right of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. We hope you will join our community and let freedom ring.”
Because a social network’s usefulness is exponential, startups face the challenge of the user adoption paradox–who will join a network without users? ‘My Pillow Guy’ Mike Lindell may be in a unique position to overcome this problem. On Mar. 26, he said, “We’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of influencers come there… we’ve given them all a demo… anyone you think about out there, radio, TV, newspaper, podcasts… you’re gonna have a one-stop-shop.” And on Apr. 9, he stated, “…all the influencers are going to come over there… all these people that can’t say on their podcast the word ‘Dominion’ or they can’t say ‘vaccine’ ‘the vaccine is bad for you’ or they can’t say… the border… what are they doing… what is this stuff in Washington right now—they’re going to be able to speak out and speak freely… it’s going to be a stream of information of podcasts, influencers, people talking.”
Social startups also lack the ‘first-mover advantage’ of their established rivals. For the startup, providing superior technology is not necessarily enough to win enough market share to be competitive. Because Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube own space in the user base’s minds and daily routines that a new website does not yet have, changing platforms carries an additional cost for the user. In the case of Lindell’s FrankSpeech, the switch may be cheaper. Though details were sparse, it sounds like influencers will be incentivized to join with a promise that their existing followers from other platforms will be auto-added upon signup.
On the origins of the network, which he said has been 4 years in the making, Lindell named his ‘Absolute Proof’ documentary partner Brannon Howse and “his guys,” who he says are well focused on security due to their own controversial work.
Ironically, a WhoIs search shows that FrankSpeech.com was privately registered through GoDaddy.com, LLC on Mar. 12. Former CIA Bin Laden taskforce expert and Ron Paul foreign policy advisor Michael Scheuer had his personal writing website taken down by GoDaddy, presumably for word choice alone. Of the takedown, he wrote: “…the destruction of my blog site by what seem to be aspiring communists at GoDaddy has been useful in helping me to understand—first-hand—the power of such tech giants to destroy the constitutional rights of targeted individuals who annoy them and their Democratic partners—or is it puppets?”
There is a growing number who have been banned elsewhere or fear the possibility and thus lack a safe and permanent home to root down. Lindell has said that FrankSpeech will court these digital nomads in part by providing a ‘bonus’ for anyone who has been kicked off of YouTube. “Everybody [is] coming over, and they will be able to talk without worrying about getting kicked off YouTube. On my platform, if you get kicked off YouTube, you are going to get a bonus,” Lindell said during an interview on the Eric Metaxas Show on Mar. 30. “We give bonuses if you are kicked off YouTube. You know why? That means you are actually speaking your mind again.” The details of the bonuses those ex-YouTubers will receive have not been released yet.
Lindell’s good friend President Trump has hinted at a new social network for himself and his supporters. Trump was banned from Twitter at the height of election season, and efforts to silence him continue. NY Post reports that Facebook and Instagram removed his March 31 interview with his daughter-in-law Lara for the cited reason it featured Trump speaking. In the interview, Trump blasted social media and news outlets for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop series published by The Post during his re-election bid this past fall.
On 3/31, Trump’s advisor Jason Miller told Fox News viewers, “I do think that we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about 2-3 months here, with his own platform and this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, I think it’s going to completely redefine the game…”
