The Daily Signal - RightForge Offers Internet Solutions With a Promise to Protect Your Free Expression

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Martin Avila taught himself how to be a computer programmer and started a website development company when he was in high school. Even then, his politics didn't mesh with the dominant far-left ideas of California's tech hub. Today, he's offering customers an an alternative in the marketplace of internet services—from application development to web hosting. His company is called RightForge, and it's a much-needed alternative at a time when Americans increasingly find themselves deplatformed and censored by Big Tech. "I've got friends who are like, 'We need to rebuild Salesforce. We need to rebuild MailChimp.' And I said, 'That's exactly right. We do.' But in order to stand up those things, we needed the hard infrastructure," Avila says. "And that's what RightForge is. It's the ability for those companies to be created on the hard assets distributed across the globe." Avila spoke to The Daily Signal about his plans for RightForge and why he's optimistic about marketplace solutions to Big Tech behemoths. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at go transit.com slash tickets. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, June 28th. I'm Robert Blewey.

And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, we feature Rob's interview with Martina Havila, the CEO of Wright Forge. It's a full-service technology infrastructure company that supports the rights of a free America. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story to kick off your Monday morning. Before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to tell you about our favorite way to get the news. every morning. It's called the Morning Bell. In each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the top news and commentary directly to your inbox for free. You'll be able to read about the policy debates shaping the agenda, analysis from Heritage Foundation experts, and commentary from

leading conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Cal Thomas. It's easy to sign up. Just visit dailysignal.com and click on the connect button in the top right corner of the page. We'll start sending you the morning bell tomorrow. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up for Next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Martin Avila, the CEO of Right Forge. Martin, thanks so much for joining us. It's great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me, Rob. Let's begin by talking about your mission to make the internet a place that values free expression and diversity of thought. It seems like a big challenge in this day and age of cancel culture and woke mobs. Tell us about Wright Forge and what you're offering.

Sure, yeah. We looked at this whole situation. I mean, last year, what you saw, with the Hunter Biden laptop story. And just, you know, all the culture. I'm actually, I live just outside of Silicon Valley. I grew up here in Santa Cruz, California. And we just have been seeing the culture shift in these companies really pulling away from American values and saw a need to develop an internet that, and what I mean by that is the hard assets, the even an ISP that connects, you know, various data centers and the hardware

and getting basically down to the power. And we said, well, let's get started on this. You know, we'll start small. And then what happened with Parlor really took this to the next level. And we got a lot more interest in our mission. And that is kind of how Right Forge came to be. We actually brought companies together that were already doing pieces of what you need to stand up on Internet.

And now we're live in 30 plus data centers around the world, mostly here in the United States. And, you know, we can do enterprise infrastructure services for large companies. And what you're going to see here in the next few weeks is us launching a thing where you're a registrar, where you can register your domains, where you can host your WordPress sites. And so, and there's other services that go along with the level of capacity that we have. But that's, that's what right forage is, is the building blocks of the internet, the hard assets that can't be taken away. That's great. Well, let's get into some of those things in just a moment.

But you mentioned a couple of examples there of censorship. and I wanted to ask you how urgent you see this problem of censorship, a limiting of speech for conservatives or libertarians or classical liberals, whatever you may be. Essentially, anybody who values free speech seems to be in a position now where some of these tech companies are cracking down really hard in various ways. It's not just suspending somebody from Twitter anymore. It's, you know, AWS pulling the plug on hosting for parlor. So what is the, how urgent is the threat and what are some of the solutions that you hope to offer

to counter that. I think it's a huge threat. Early on in the process, I was talking to my dear friend Chris Bedford. He was asking me, Martin, what's the extent of which a tech company could just decide to remove someone? And we got into, you know, okay, yeah, sure, you can go from, if you get removed from Twitter, you can go somewhere else and still have a voice. It gets bigger when you start thinking about the implications of a company like Salesforce, who has, you have a, you. It gets bigger. access to a bunch of the means of production and commerce. And what if Salesforce decided to remove a political party from the platform? What if even certain applications within Salesforce and the infrastructure around that? You know, a lot of you're familiar with it. A lot of our enterprise,

you know, listeners will be familiar with Salesforce. You know, the CEO of Salesforce is a very, very close relationship with Nancy Pelosi, very, very close relationship with, you know, a lot of the Democratic Party leaders. If Salesforce, was to remove an organization from their infrastructure, it would be nearly impossible for those companies to reconstitute in a quick manner. And you would be losing potentially millions of dollars. Now, you know, you might say you might have recourse through legal action, but, you know, they could just choose to not re-up your contract. And I think broadly, that means the market itself is looking at, and I've got friends who are like, we need to rebuild a Salesforce. We need to

rebuild MailChimp. And I said, you know, that's exactly right. We do. But in order to up those things, we needed the hard infrastructure. And that's what Right Forge is, is the ability for those companies to be created on the hard assets distributed across the globe so that entrepreneurs can respond to this problem that I think is massive. I think a lot of people think it's massive. Now, in your own personal case, you taught yourself how to be a computer programmer and started a website development company back when you were in high school. You've also worked in politics. How did those two worlds intersect and lead you to the creation of Wright Forge? Well, you know, growing up in Santa Cruz, with a mind towards libertarian ideas, you see the insanity of the state.

I mean, even at this point, right, they've all but banned logging companies, but now they have a, now Gavin Newsom has a $500 million plan to go out and log because there's too many trees, literally, you know, furs, redwoods, pines that they need to remove. Just looking at things from work and standpoint, you know the government doesn't work. You know, kind of got involved in politics here in Santa Cruz, you know, ended up working for Ron Paul in his 2008 campaign involved with Freedom Works and actually did contract work for Heritage Jackson at one point. So just involved in this market marketplace of ideas as a technologist and, you know, kind of developed relationships in that space and, you know, grew some other companies and then just saw this problem and just was in the right place and right time to be able to then go and build this. infrastructure company. So that's kind of the genesis of it. Well, and we're so glad you did. As you mentioned before, Wright Forge provides businesses, government, nonprofit organizations with an alternative on a range of services from application to development to web hosting. I would imagine, you know, our listeners are familiar with some of those, but there's a lot of things that you offer that,

you know, probably are even beyond my scope of understanding from a technology perspective. Can you explain how you plan to cut into the big tech behem this market share at kind of all levels of the surfaces you're offering. And I think that's the key here is we're not actually trying to do everything. What we're saying simply is that if you have a hosting agreement with a company, if you have a website hosted somewhere, you can quickly bring that to Right Forge. If you have an application that you're developing, you know, with Rackspace, with, you know, in Google, in Azure, Google Cloud or AWS, we can actually migrate that and you can be on

servers at the exact same cost, if not less, then you're developing right now. And then you can just know that you're living on the real estate of the internet that's not going to pull you down. And so that's that's really where we can make referrals to application development companies and all that sort of stuff who are actively looking to solve these other problems. And so, but we just start where we started with the real estate and the ability to build tools and you know, have access to servers, have access to internet service providers just like Amazon would and just like rack space would and these other companies. So that's what we're doing, but what we're doing is building it of a freedom first, an internet that's dedicated to the

entirety of Bill of Rights. And those applications and are developed on top of it are going to be done by other people. And that's what's really exciting is the economy is shifting because people know and they see what's coming. And they know they just kind of want to get back to just doing business and get away from a politicized internet, a politicized even commerce. Well, following up on that, you've written about and used the term second internet, which will provide users with the freedoms that they are lacking elsewhere. Can you explain what you mean by that term and why you want and it's so important to create this internet with these values? I think, well, because the internet is everything, right? I mean, it's in our barbecues.

It's in our doorbells. You know, it's in our pockets at all times. You wouldn't believe how many people come up to me and they say, hey, Martine, you got to start a bank. And I'm like, well, what I'll do is I'll stand up a much of server infrastructure so that bank won't get pulled by the internet provider. And then we're talking to people who are starting banks. We're talking to people that are thinking about, you know, stripe and how much power it has or square and that company, like, you know, point of sales. And there's entrepreneurs that are just beelining to create solutions because they see the enormity in the market. And what Right Forge can do is support those things where they won't be taken down.

So one of the things that I often hear from our listeners or daily signal readers is their own personal interactions with big tech companies and some of the challenges that they face themselves. As you look at the landscape, what are the greatest threats that Americans and perhaps conservatives or libertarians specifically face on the internet today? Where do they have to be worried the most about maybe losing their voice? I mean, obviously social media platforms, I think the scariest thing for me is the speed of which these companies precautionarily remove content, what we're seeing right now with the debate around the origin of the virus. There are people asking basic questions last year about, you know, John Stewart's on Stephen Colbert the other days. The virus is, this place is named after the virus. Don't you think maybe it could have been done there? It seems like it should have.

It probably was. And people are just asking basic questions about that. The same exact thing that now John Stewart is saying on Stephen Colbert. And they're being told that that wasn't true. And so they're getting into people's heads before, right? And they're changing these behavior. You know, Rob, I bet you might even have written a piece yourself and Twitter saying, Are you, do you want to read that before you retreat it from Heritage?

Right. Yes. That's the fear, right? Like that is, so you know that you want to retweet this, but you got this action put in front of you that says, are you sure, Rob? I've gotten that for nearly everything I've written in the last, you know, six months. Are you sure you want to retweet that? I know this person.

I wrote the article. Of course I do. So it's that soft second layer, things that we're not even talking about when we're talking about regulation. I think DeSantis Bill starts to get into definitions there, which I think is important so we actually can think about what the implication is. For people, you know, they don't do that to content that they agree with. It sure seems to only be things that we're writing about.

And because that's what I'm seeing flagged on the Internet. It's like, I wrote this piece. You know, my friend wrote this piece. And it's that sort of soft censorship or the routing of content. Or just that you'll never see whether or not the distribution of what you, shared, did it get in front of the people that follow you? And so I think it's those definitions of what is the value that you're engaging with on these platforms in terms of what your reach and your followers.

And they have so much control there. And I think that's for me where I think people should be going back to controlling more of their assets and doing what you guys do here at Daily Signal and just getting content out from places where they don't control it. Because I think they right now, until an entrepreneur comes in and creates a, platform, something like Rumble, right, which is great, competitor to YouTube. You know, Congressman Nunes has half a million followers there, right? And he's got next to none on YouTube.

That's weird. There's a lot more people on YouTube. So that's the kind of power. That's what I think people need to be most worried about. Are those types of things where you just look at it, obviously, shouldn't Congressman Nunes have more than a million? I mean, there's still conservatives on YouTube who would love to hear from him. He just happens to not be distributed.

Well, as a as a tech company CEO, I want to get your opinion on some of the solutions that have been proposed. I mean, we hear a lot in Washington about reforming Section 230. Of course, the House is moving forward on these antitrust bills. Do you have an opinion on how conservatives are libertarian should deal with this from your perspective, from where you sit in California? Yeah, I actually worked for Senator Lee on his first campaign for Senate. And I agree with everything he said this week. Isn't it shocking that the only people who are opposed to the regulation right now happen to be paid by big tech? People who are libertarian-minded or conservative-minded who are thinking about the broader implications right now, I think it's important to be doing that.

And I think, you know, certainly that does interface with regulation, but I think it's totally disingenuous. And in his words, this is why we can't have nice things when you have the only conservative and libertarian organizations that are lining up behind to, protect big tech are literally being paid. And they're throwing their principles out, out the window right now. And I think that's really what's important right now, because whatever we're going to talk about with regulation, you know, we have to be calling that out so that we can have a reasonable discussion. I'm a business guy, right? I'm a political guy. So of course, I know that there's a role for government at some point. I'm not openly calling for any piece of regulation, but I think that Senator Lee is doing right now is hugely important because the

discussion needs to be had. And I think that's when we start actually having a fair discussion is when we start calling out where the money's come from, right? So. Well, and obviously, it's also the interaction between the big tech companies and government officials as well. We see that that has a big influence. And one of the alternatives that we've noticed is you mentioned the Florida bill, Governor Ron DeSantis, states, what role do you see states having here? Might these laboratories of democracy be an opportunity to try some things that maybe Washington can't get done? And if you have a thought specifically on the Florida bill, but in the absence of federal legislation, do you think the states might be have a role in this debate? I absolutely do.

I just think we should not do whatever California does. I live here and it's just, I mean, it's a mess. And, you know, I think that there's been some good proposals, you know, Abbott's, you know, the ideas are the core ideas are so important, right? And the states are incubators of democracy. And they should be experimenting with these things. And I think, you know, that's, you know, our first podcast was that we ever on, talking about right forge was on the federalist.

I think that's a great way to go about it. You know, the, you know, the big tech lobbyists are like, this is going to be a total mess and all stuff. You know, but, you know, states have every right to protect the rights of their citizens. And sure, it's going to be challenged. Some of it, you know, the Desantis himself even said, you know, this bill, of course, it's going to get challenged and pieces of it are going to, you know, fall apart as it goes up. But here's what we're going to make. We're going to start here. So I think that's, that's important.

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think people sometimes hear are Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, talking about user empowerment or Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, coming to Washington and giving a big speech on free expression. Do you think these companies are capable of giving users more control over their digital life and giving them an opportunity to speak freely? Or is it going to be up to companies like yours to really push them in that direction and create kind of that marketplace that gives people that alternative or, or, or, provide some competition. What's it going to take to fulfill those promises they themselves have made? Yeah. I actually, you know, I have huge respect for the people that created these companies. You know, they've created incredible products. You know, Rob, you and I, they both know that movement-based candidates wouldn't exist, right? Donald Trump, Ron Paul, even Barack Obama,

you know, Bernie Sanders, they're powered by people being able to connect together. and push out information. You know, what you're seeing right now, GameStop, right? A huge market shift in terms of people being able to connect and share information and get it out there rapidly and get around this before the media interferes with it

or, you know, these big tech companies, you know, get their hands on these pieces of things. What I look at to that question is Google ads used to be an enormously effective tool at micro-targeting, advertising, down to what people were, what they were searching and when. And they've continued to abstract the ability for people to put direct advertising in and actually target specific variables.

And they kind of tell you, well, now we'll just do it. We'll let our AI do it. We're going to take away this really useful tool that you had where you were measuring these specific, you know, I'm very proficient at Google Ads. And so I've just been watching this abstraction of my control, even as someone who's placing advertising. And it's going more to the TV model where, it's okay, just broadly pick audiences and we'll pick that for you.

So I think that there's there's a reason why they're doing that, right? It makes them more money, right? It's easier to just kind of market this as a one-click tool. And I think that's what's happening. It's the money and the profit and the ability to put advertising in front of things. That's what these companies are driven by, that profit motive. So, yeah, more free expression, but more opportunity to put ads in front of things equals easier buckets for advertisers to place those things in. And there's just that user control,

that one-to-one connection, you know, photos of your grandchildren, you're going to get hit with more ads between them. You're not going to have that direct connectivity because there's not as much opportunity to monetize that. And so they're always kind of pulling that away and trying to get value put between that. And that space between two people connecting is the algorithms. And that's Because that's money, because that's how they're making the money. So, sure, more free expression, but more advertising, more space to put TV ads or, you know, whatever the way that they make money, right? So those things are two, they're contrasting outcomes.

It certainly seems to be that way. You're absolutely correct on that. You know, you recently spoke at the Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank meeting, which brings together a broad range of conservative leaders. What was your message to them? what can they do in their own organizations to make sure that we're pushing forward with with these ideas that you spoke about? And what does success look like to you if they adopt those ideas that you spoke to them

about? Well, I mean, for our company, it's being able to just move folks over and say, hey, look, start doing business with a company that can take you standard website up and get your infrastructure up on a company that believe in these values because we are going out and trying to help other entrepreneurs and other tech companies stand up infrastructure at the same cost as Amazon and those sorts of things. The success means creating an ecosystem whereby eventually we can have entrepreneurs with the technologies of tomorrow solving problems that Salesforce and companies like that solve today. Big tech companies that control a lot of our livelihoods through just being the

apparatus by which we connect with each other. But there is a market force here where there are a ton of entrepreneurs who care about the things that we're talking about today who want to solve those problems for tomorrow. And so success to me is that ecosystem of all these companies succeeding and growing and then being able to offer alternatives to groups like yours for, you know, video streaming or, you know, customer relationship management or even connectivity, even texting and those sorts of things. And I have a lot of optimism for tomorrow because, you know, people are right. The free market folks are right. The internet's going to change. there's going to be new tools available.

But, you know, today we're dealing with these big behemists. But there are people that are responding to it in an entrepreneurial way, in an, you know, in the American way, frankly. Martine, one more question for you. For our listeners who are asking what they can and should do, how do they learn more about Wrightforge and how can they get involved and connect with you if they themselves are running a nonprofit or business and want to utilize your services or, you know, just are an individual who wants to contribute in a positive way. Absolutely. Rightforge.com. We're going to be launching a new site here in the next few weeks, which will have a lot more features.

But just for now, sign up and we'll get in touch. We've got our team. We have an office space in D.C. And so we're based in D.C. and Raleigh and have a spot out here in California, Northern California and L.A. and building one out in Florida. So, you know, we're there for you. We're going to be launching some really cool tools.

You'll be able to just register domains, launch your WordPress sites, and then we're continuing doing our enterprise. So, you know, medium to large nonprofits, you know, getting their infrastructure moved over. So, yeah, that's rightforge.com. It's fantastic. Martina Vila, thanks so much for the work you're doing at Wright Forge and being a guest on the Daily Signal podcast.

It's great to talk to you about this. Thank you for everything you guys are doing. I really appreciate it, Rob. Thank you. I'm Zach Smith, and I'm John Carlo Canapara. And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast.

We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you find your podcasts. It's SCOTUS 101. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? In response to the Daily Signal's recent story on the organization's second vote, Kiki Hendren writes,

Thank you so much. I have wanted one place to go. to see what companies support and don't support. You'll hear things here and there like the Georgia issue with Major League Baseball. I've stopped buying Coke products and won't fly Delta, but that was easy to discover because it was showcased on Tucker and Hannity. I am excited about second vote, and it has inspired me to do more than just stay away from certain stores.

Love the Daily Signal, my number one news source. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you so much for that letter. We certainly appreciate it. In response to my interview with Pastor James Ward Jr., Brenda Lee Allure writes, I agree that we need a new perspective on race. The Bible and our Lord and Savior has given us the best guide to live together as one. I have ordered Pastor Ward's book and look forward to reading it and sharing it with my family and friends.

May God bless you. Thanks so much for sending your letters to the editor. Your letter can be featured on next week's show. So send an email to Letters at DailySignal.com. Conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true, we do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called

feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy, and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. There is something about basketball that has a way of bringing people together. And in one Chicago community, the sport has done just that. Police officers from Chicago's 6th District recently noticed a group of young people playing basketball with a milk crate for a hoop. The officers decided that that was a problem they could fix. So the department came together to buy the kids a brand new basketball hoop and new basketballs. Last week, a group of officers delivered the new hoop to several very

excited young boys. Chicago Police Superintendent David O. Brown shared a couple videos on Twitter of the memorable day, writing not only did this make the kids happy, but it made my day too. All right, go ahead and look. Go ahead and look. Thank you. I'll put the thing together. The officers assembled the hoop for the kids and then stuck around to shoot some hoops with the young boys. You got to come to the edge. Uh-oh.

I'll come over here. Come on to the edge. It was a very good day in Chicago, and it's certainly encouraging to see our men and women in uniform making such an impact on. the next generation, even through something as simple as a hoop and a few new basketballs. Virginia, thanks so much for sharing. We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network. All of our shows are available at dailysignal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. You can even find us on IHeart Radio. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal

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