In this episode I address the recent success of Gab AI and the controversy surrounding our decision to make media uploads a GabPRO features on Gab Social.
Go GabPRO: https://pro.gab.com
In this episode I address the recent success of Gab AI and the controversy surrounding our decision to make media uploads a GabPRO features on Gab Social.
Go GabPRO: https://pro.gab.com
Hello everybody. My name is Andrew Torba. I'm the CEO of gabcom. Welcome to the Parallel Christian Society podcast. It's been quite some time since I did an episode.
Speaker 1:Things have been pretty busy here with the explosion of growth of our Gab AI platform after the fiasco with Google's AI. Over the past couple of weeks, it's been pretty crazy. So, for those of you who maybe didn't hear about this yet, google's AI was refusing to draw white people, and it was drawing historically white people such as the founding fathers or popes or anybody from history that was historically white. It was drawing them as black people or Asian people, indians, etc. And so this is obviously, you know, caused a big outrage, because Google's AI you know this multi-billion dollar multinational company has anti-whitism baked directly into its design, and I explained a little bit about how they're actually doing this. The reason I know how they're doing this is because you know, at Gab, we're building our own AI, and so I fundamentally understand how this technology works. And so what they're doing is, when you submit a prompt to Google to draw an image, they're taking the text of your prompt and they're adding additional words to it. So they're running your prompt through a language model and the language model has a set of rules, and that set of rules says, with any prompt that you get, inject diversity.
Speaker 1:Inject, you know, black people and Asians and Indians into whatever prompts you get when you are asked to draw an image of people. So if you would submit a prompt of the founding fathers, as an example, your prompt would be run through this language model and these rules and it would have words like diverse or black or Asian or Indian added to whatever words that you submit it to the prompt, and the crazy thing about this is that you wouldn't be able to see this, so you would have no idea that this is going on. You would have no way to change this or stop this, and so that's how these outputs from Google were happening, and so this caused a massive outrage. It caused a $90 billion drop in their market cap over the past two weeks or so, and this also caused a huge growth event for GAB AI, which is our new AI platform that is similar to chat, gpt and similar to Google's AI.
Speaker 1:You know we have our own AI platform and it's uncensored and unbiased, so we have hundreds of characters with all sorts of biases and we have the ability for you to create your own AI, to give it whatever bias you want. You can also use our image drawing tool as well, so it takes text that you input into it and it creates images with it the same thing that all these guys are offering. Only ours is unbiased and it's uncensored, and we allow you to sort of create and shape your own experience and give the AI whatever bias you want it to have and it'll draw whatever you want it to draw. And so it's been incredibly busy the past couple of weeks here scaling that up, and I'm very happy and very pleased to report that we've monetized this product as well and it is now cash flow positive, so that means that it is bringing in more money than it is costing us to keep online, and that's a very important thing to note because I'm going to get into our next subject here, which is GABS social, and GABS social, for well over a year now, has not been bringing in enough money to cover the costs that it takes to keep online, and I wrote a post about this and this caused some controversy inside of GABS this week and there's all these conspiracy theories and speculation and people are saying it's an election year and the deep state got to Torba, and all these theories are swirling and the reality is really quite simple and the truth of the matter is really quite simple.
Speaker 1:We have two fundamental problems with GABS social. The first is that it is burning more money than it is bringing in. Over the past year or a little bit longer, with the economy and with inflation and with the advertising market, the state that it's in the reality is that our advertising revenue shrank dramatically over the past year, and we're not alone in this. Elon and X and Twitter are facing a similar situation on their end, and so are many others. There's many media companies that are either going under completely or laying off hundreds or thousands of people. Vice just shut down. Buzzfeed is shutting down. This is happening to a lot of other people as well. We're not alone in this. It's an industry-wide thing that's happening right now, and so that's problem number one is that GABS is burning. Gabs social in particular is burning more money than it is bringing in, and it has been doing that for quite some time, and that needs to change.
Speaker 1:Problem number two is that GABS is being attacked in a variety of different ways. You guys have seen us deal with these bots that have been coming in and we've taken a lot of measures to stop them. We've banned blanket banned certain countries which made news over the past couple of weeks where these bots were coming from, where we traced where these bots are coming from, and blanket banned some of the countries just to put a stop to it. We're not making any money out of these countries. These countries are causing us nothing but headaches with flooding our infrastructure with bots and flooding our community with bots and overwhelming our servers and our hard drives with unnecessary data, and so that was the first measure that we took to stop that.
Speaker 1:And basically what's happening is they're coming in these sort of bogus accounts brand new accounts and they're uploading massive amounts of media files. So you know they're uploading large videos and tons of very large images and things of this nature, and you know they're just flooding our drives with data. And then, of course, we also have a ton of you know actual users as well that are also posting you know content every day and a lot of media content, and it's been filling up our hard drives from quite some time, and so we've been in this sort of this game of cat and mouse with our server infrastructure, you know, trying to keep up and trying to make room in the drives and trying to expand and get new drives, and it's like every few months we sort of have to revisit this issue and it's not going away. And the amount of data that's coming in, both from the bots and from real users with media, is just overwhelming us. And you know, we don't have the benefit or the ease that a lot of tech companies have where they can use, you know, cloud storage and cloud servers and click a button on Amazon and get a new server. Or you know spin up, you know a new hard drive cluster or things of this nature. We don't have that luxury here, and so we have to physically, you know, install new hard drives in our server racks. Right, we have to physically buy new servers to expand our storage capacity. This stuff takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of capital, it takes a lot of effort away from other things that we need to get done, and so we had to solve both of these problems. We have a cash flow problem with GapSocial and we have a storage problem with GapSocial, and so you know we couldn't think of a better way to basically kill two birds with one stone than to focus and lean in on our GapPro subscription service.
Speaker 1:You know, I wrote an article, an in-depth article, about this. These free platforms, this era of where everything is free on the internet, is coming to an end. The reason that they were able to do that is that it was subsidized. It was subsidized by government contracts that were given to these Silicon Valley companies. It was subsidized by the fact that the Fed had extremely low interest rates and they were basically printing money from thin air. That sort of timeframe of you know, the 2010s to, you know, around 2020 is over. That decade is over.
Speaker 1:The era of free money, the era of subsidization of mass consumer products on the internet is over, and you know, you can point to things like AI as a perfect example of things trending in this direction, because even a company like Google that has, you know, all the resources in the world, seemingly and Microsoft they're both charging for their AI consumer services. Okay, open AI that has raised a ton of money, has this massive $10 billion partnership with Microsoft. They're charging a monthly subscription fee for their AI services, right, and so this new wave of consumer software with AI, people are charging for it. Even the big guys are charging for it. Okay, and so this era of everything, all software and all consumer software on the internet is free because it's being subsidized by the government or by the money printing. That's gone, and so we just have to accept that number one. Number two if a service is free, like a Facebook or any other play, youtube, et cetera, that means that you are not the customer there, you are the product being sold there, and we've seen how this plays out, right, we've seen how being dependent on advertising it plays out in terms of free speech, because here's what happens, and what's happening at X over the past year is a prime example of this. And, by the way, x is also pivoting. Elon is pivoting the company away from advertising and into a subscription service, with Twitter Blue and Twitter Premium, and then also he's going into financial services as well. Okay, so they're moving away from the advertising model. They're moving away from the every feature of this website is free model as well.
Speaker 1:Gab is not alone in this and, in fact, gab was one of the first to do this. We had to do this back in 2016, 2017, right when we first started out, of necessity. Okay, so we were one of the first to do this and everybody thought we were crazy. And now, all of a sudden, all these other platforms are starting to do it as well, and all these big tech guys are doing as well. Even Facebook is now offering a subscription service to get verified, and things of this nature, right, and so this is the direction that things are going in, and so we had to make a tough call, and so we decided to make media uploads a pro feature, because it's going to solve both of those problems for us it's going to solve the cash flow problem and it's going to solve the data storage problem, and it did instantly, overnight.
Speaker 1:Overnight, we have had the best couple of days with pro revenue since January 2021, which those of you who have been around Gab for that long may remember that that is when Parler went down, and it was right after January 6th happened and millions and millions of people joined Gab and we obviously had an incredible revenue month that month, the best in the company's history. And so we've had over the past week, we had our best week and our best single day for pro revenue since that timeframe back in January 2021. And so right now, after making this move, which is incredibly controversial. It has Gab social on pace to be a sustainable, long-term business, and that's just a reality that needed to be solved, because, if not, a lot of people are saying, oh, gab's doing this during an election year, they want to shut down the memes during an election year. And it's like, guys, if we didn't do something, gab wasn't going to make it to the election. Okay, gab social was not going to make it to the election unless we did something.
Speaker 1:And so drastic things, drastic measures had to be taken, and I apologize if it came off the wrong way or if I was perhaps to brash with it, but listen, I am the captain of this ship, okay, and I had to make a decision, and when you're in a leadership role, you have to make tough calls in tough moments in order to steer the ship, and that's what I did. And so a lot of people are now attacking me, they're going after my family, they're threatening me, they're doxing me and I've dealt with all this stuff for eight years. But the fact that people who have been using the site for a number of years feel the need to go after my family and to threaten violence against me and dox me because of a decision that I had to make to save Gab is disgusting and, frankly, those people I forgive them but they're no longer welcome. On Gab. We have a policy against threats of violence, against doxing. This stuff is like one of the couple of things that we don't allow, and you're doing it towards my family. You're gone. You're gone for good and you're never coming back. I just want to make that clear, and so if I've been sort of on edge a little bit, it's from those people. Now I know that there are good people in our community that sincerely, are struggling financially and cannot afford the 10 bucks a month for Gab Pro. I empathize with you.
Speaker 1:Some of the things that I've been saying are not aimed at you. I want that to be clear, but it's been very, very. I'm very, very on edge because of the people going after my family. I have very thick skin personally. You kind of have to when you're in front of this many people on the internet. I have very thick skin.
Speaker 1:But when you go after my family and you threaten my family, that's another thing. That's when it's game over, okay, and I'm sure a lot of you can relate with that, and so you know some of the things that I've been saying are not necessarily aimed at everybody in the community or everybody that has been critical of this decision. I want to be clear about that. It's mostly aimed at the people that are attacking my family and are threatening my family. That's what has me the most upset right now. Okay, so I just want to make that clear and I hope that you can sort of empathize with that, because you should see some of the stuff that these people are saying. They're sick, these people are disgusting, and I understand that there are people in the community that have some valid criticism, some good feedback, that are upset with me, that aren't doing these things, and so please don't think that you know, some of the stuff that I've been posting is aimed at you. It's aimed at these people that are going after my family. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 1:So, again, I had to make a tough decision, right, and it was the right call, because we just saved GAB social. We just saved it. So it is what it is, guys. I mean I had to make a tough call. If you want GAB to continue existing, if you want GAB to be on the internet, then you got to help support it. It's just that simple. We can't do it on our own anymore and we need the community's help. So if you want to be able to speak freely on the internet, then you got to support GAB. It's just that simple. You know, I've done so much for this platform.
Speaker 1:It's almost a decade of my life and I personally cannot travel to many countries now. I probably cannot go to Germany without being thrown in jail. There's a fine over my head over there. I probably can't go to the UK. There's places in the world now that I cannot travel to because I have foreign governments reaching out to me on a weekly basis demanding that I censor stuff and remove stuff and hand over user data and all this stuff, and I very, very publicly tell all these governments to get bent.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I have the ADL on my back, I have the SBLC on my back. I have the mainstream media, hundreds and hundreds of articles defaming my name. I'm probably, at this point, unemployable, which is fine, because I've always been unemployable. I am always going to be an entrepreneur in one way or another, because I just can't work for other people, mainly because now, if they Google my name, they're gonna see eight years worth of defamatory nonsense about me, and so I've sacrificed a lot to keep this website and to keep this community online, and I can't let it die right Like we have to do something, and so we need your help. We need your help and I hope that you'll consider upgrading to GapPro, supporting what we're doing, and I hope that you'll understand the position that I'm in and that I had to make a tough call.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, this is just the state of the situation. If you want Gap to survive, you gotta support it. It's just that simple, and I understand that there's a lot of people that are concerned about remaining anonymous and they don't wanna be doxxed and all of this stuff. And again, as someone who has gone through being canceled 100 times over and being targeted by these crazy Jewish activists and these media organizations and foreign governments and members of Congress, take your pick. I get it, trust me, I do, but there are ways that you can support us anonymously Snail mail, with a money order which you can get at your local post office, or a Western Union or something. There's many ways that you can support us if you truly want to, if you truly want to remain as anonymous as possible, you can write us a letter, send a money order to our PO box or to our mailing address, and we have this built rate in to the GapPro checkout flow too. By the way, we have a mailing check option, so you can support us that way. But you need to support us. It's just that simple. If you want Gap to be online, if you enjoy using Gap, then we need your support, and so I hope this gives you guys a little bit more insight into where we're coming from.
Speaker 1:Again, I see all these crazy conspiracy theories and you guys think that this isn't me and that I've been captured or I don't know. All sorts of crazy stuff out there. Guys, this is the reality of the situation. We have a two-fold problem. We have a storage problem, we have a revenue problem, and we gotta solve both of them, and we can do that with your help. I know we can't. We have the numbers right, like there's millions of people that come to Gap every month, and so the numbers are not the problem, and we've done a great deal of cost reduction over the past year as well. We've made a number of moves to reduced the burn of Cap social, but the reality is operating a website that millions of people use every month is is a costly thing. There's there's sort of no way around it, right like there's, only you can only get the burn down so low. There's sort of a base burn that is just required to keep the site online, and you know it's. It's something that we easily can, can, can get to and and. If things keep up the way they are right now, after this past week, we're there, we're there and Gad can stay online, but again, we need your help. So that's this.
Speaker 1:That's the full scoop of everything that's been going on. You know, gab, ai is is exploding and people are loving that service. Gab social. We're going through sort of a bump in the road right now, but I'm confident that that we can get through it and and and together, you know, we can protect free speech online. That's that's what it's always been about, and we want to keep it that way, because you know what? Eon is now starting to censor more. You know he went on his little trip to the Holocaust Museum with Ben Shapiro and you know, all of a sudden, censorship is back and and they're not allowing you to misgender people again. All the old rules are coming back and you know I want gab to be here for the election.
Speaker 1:I do, uh, because it's it's going to be crucially important, just like it was in 2020, just like it was in 2018, just like it was in 2016. But in order for that to happen, it's gotta it's gotta pay the bills. It's gotta pay the bills to keep the lights on, and so we need your help to do that. So, please consider upgrading to gab pro pro dot gab dot com. You can also make a donation or purchase merchandise from us and, yes, we do have advertising as well. Grow dot gab dot com, and then our shop is shop dot gab dot com. So there are many ways that you guys can support us. You can do it anonymously. You can get a money order. You can use bitcoin. You know there are ways, but we need your help. It's just that simple.
Speaker 1:Um, and again I apologize if any of you guys took any of the things that I was saying Uh, personally. Again, I have people coming after my family, I have people threatening my life, the life of my kids, my family, and that has me sort of on edge over the past couple of days, and I hope that's understandable to you, but I don't want you to think that I was sort of blanket calling everybody Uh, you know, a freeloader, or any of this nonsense. That's not, that's not what my intent was, and so I apologize if it came off that way, but that's not what my intent was. You know, I'm sort of just um a little bit on edge, because when people come out, you know again I personally people could say a ton of things about me. They do every day In.
Speaker 1:I'm in front of this many people. I'm used to it. It's been eight years. But when you target my family, when you threaten my family, when you dox my family, that's another thing. That's what makes my blood boil and I think the people that are doing this know that and that's why they're doing it. But it's gonna stop. They're not welcome, they'll never be welcome again. And so again, if, if, if, anything that I've said over the past couple days has you think has been somehow aimed at you. It is not. It is aimed at those people that have been doing that. So I apologize if you think it was aimed at you. But anyway, thank you guys for tuning in. Remember to speak freely.