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Robert W. Monster (born 1966 or 1967) is a Dutch-American technology executive and the founder and
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...
of
Epik Epik is a right-wing American domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to alt-tech websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist materials. It has been described as a haven for the far-right because of i ...
, a domain registrar and
web host A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...
known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and extremist content. He has received media attention in relation to Epik, particularly surrounding his 2018 statements about Epik customer Gab, a social network known for its far-right userbase. He has also received attention for controversial statements, including some in which he has promoted various
conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * * * * The term has a nega ...
.


Life and education

Monster was born in to a Dutch American family, and he grew up in
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
,
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
. He holds
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
and American citizenship. He earned his
bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
and
MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...
at
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
. In 2007, Monster became a Christian. He is married to Jill Monster, a naturopath. They have five children, and live in
Sammamish Sammamish ( ) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 67,455 at the 2020 census. Located on a plateau, the city is bordered by Lake Sammamish to the west and the Snoqualmie Valley to the east. Sammamish is a resid ...
, Washington.


Career


Marketing (1991–2007)

Monster began working for
Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...
in 1991, and spent years working in Japan and Germany in this role. In his last year, he was the global product development manager for
Pampers Pampers is a brand of baby and toddler products marketed by Procter & Gamble. History In 1961, P&G researcher Victor Mills disliked changing the cloth diapers of his newborn grandchild. He assigned fellow researchers in P&G's Exploratory Divi ...
, a brand of baby diapers. After eight years at the company, he left in 1999 to move to
Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
,
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
and found Global Market Insite (GMI), an online
market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mar ...
company. He served as the CEO for seven years, until he was ousted by the board in 2007.


Technology (2009–present)


Epik

Monster founded Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company, in 2009 in Sammamish, Washington. he continues to serve as the CEO of the company. Monster has been an outspoken defender of Epik's choice to host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other
extremist Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied share ...
content that other web hosts have refused, saying that the company is committed to protecting "lawful free speech". He learned about Gab, a far-right social network, in 2018 when the company received media attention after it was discovered that the perpetrator of the
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was an antisemitic terrorist attack which took place at the Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The congregation, ...
had used the service to post extremist content. After it was dropped by its registrar, GoDaddy, he met with Gab CEO Andrew Torba and agreed to register the website. The ''
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
'' reported Monster as saying that Gab's founder Andrew Torba was "doing something that looks useful", and that Gab's removal from the internet was "digital censorship". He subsequently became an active user and defender of the network. He has received media attention for publicly defending violent neo-Nazi Gab users, maligning people who criticize the site and call for stricter moderation, and making unevidenced claims that racist users are fake accounts created to hurt the site's reputation. Monster also previously defended the idea of hosting 8chan, a far-right
imageboard An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of ...
known for its hateful content, connections to multiple
mass shooting There is a lack of consensus on how to define a mass shooting. Most terms define a minimum of three or four victims of gun violence (not including the shooter or in an inner city) in a short period of time, although an Australian study from 20 ...
s, and hosting of
child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a ...
. Epik briefly hosted 8chan after
Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in Sa ...
terminated services for the site, after the perpetrator of the
2019 El Paso shooting On August 3, 2019, a mass shooting occurred at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, United States. In the terrorist attack, a far-right individual killed 23 people and injured 23 others. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the sh ...
allegedly used it to post his justification for the shooting. The following day Epik was banned from their primary hardware provider Voxility because of their services to 8chan, taking 8chan, ''
The Daily Stormer ''The Daily Stormer'' is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the al ...
'', and other Epik customers offline. Monster wrote the day after the ban from Voxility that he had changed his decision to provide services to the imageboard site, although '' Ars Technica'' noted in August 2019 that the company had only stopped providing 8chan with content hosting services, and had taken on providing the site's DNS services. ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...
'' described Monster in 2021 as "a key figure in the far-right's battle to stay online". Michael Edison Hayden, a researcher with the
Southern Poverty Law Center The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white s ...
(SPLC), has said that many harmful websites would not be on the internet if it were not for Epik, and that "No one is saying that Rob Monster himself is going out there and making terroristic threats, but if he doesn't want to be associated with this brand, he can certainly step up and say, 'absolutely, I don't want anything to do with this material. But he's not doing that.'" Monster himself has joked that he is the "
Lex Luthor Alexander Joseph "Lex" Luthor () is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Lex Luthor originally appeared in ''Action Comics'' #23 (cover dated: April ...
of the Internet".


Other companies

In 2015, Monster became the interim CEO for DigitalTown, a company that provides community-building platforms. He resigned from this position in 2018 in what was described as a planned departure to allow him to focus on Epik. Monster founded Toki, a company which provides servers to be distributed in Africa and Asia. It's built on
Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...
, an inexpensive single-board computer and runs a Linux-based operating system named TokiOS. The servers are powered either by a wired electrical connection or battery power; they connect to the Internet, but if no connection is available, they allow users to access preloaded digital content including educational resources, books, maps, and religious content. The servers use technology that Toki says could filter content to avoid some sources of information, or bypass local censorship rules. They also run a search engine which they say is "censorship-resistant". In 2019, Monster founded the company eRise, which will distribute the devices created by Toki. The servers are still in development, but the company plans to begin distributing them in 2022 or 2023.
Joan Donovan Joan Donovan (born 1979/1980) is an American social scientist researcher and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, an affiliate at Data and Society, and is research director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project ...
, the director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, has compared the goals of Toki and eRise to the controversial Internet.org project: "We've seen a similar tactic by Facebook, to provide digital access points that can also serve the purpose of delivering favorable content and ensuring that these groups become dependent on your benevolence... It becomes that much harder later on to change the power dynamics when the ideology is in the infrastructure." Mark Harris writing for ''
TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...
'' observed that, "The Toki devices' selectivity, if practical, could raise its own content and censorship concerns; for example, if eRise allowed extreme content similar to that seen on Epik's clients like Gab and Parler, or ignored scientific advice on
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...
or other health issues."


Views

Monster's political beliefs were described by ''
HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'' in 2018 as "at times... almost indistinguishable from those of the neo-Nazis he's defended on Gab." ''The Daily Telegraph'' said in 2021 that "his comments veer between free speech protectionism and implying support for the type of content his clients carry". Monster describes his own views as Christian libertarianism. Monster has said he is not a free speech absolutist, pointing to his and Epik's decisions to deny services to 8chan as an example of his unwillingness to service companies that cross a "bright line", in this case the "possibility of violent radicalization on the platform". Bobby Allyn wrote for NPR in February 2021: "Yet his self-professed boundaries become squishy upon examination", giving an example where Monster "demurred" on questions about Epik's choice to platform Gab, where white supremacist founder of ''The Daily Stormer''
Andrew Anglin Andrew Barret Anglin (born July 27, 1984) is an American neo-Nazi and conspiracy theorist, and editor of the website ''The Daily Stormer''. Through this website, Anglin uses elements of Nazism combined with Internet memes originating from 4cha ...
had 17,000 followers as of the story's publication. William Turton and Joshua Brustein wrote in ''
Bloomberg Businessweek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...
'' in April 2021 that Monster had "been radicalized during the Trump years, subjecting his staff to florid conspiracy theories in staff meetings and spending more and more of his energy on politically charged work at Epik." In December 2018, Monster shared on Gab a video created by Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, in which she described migrants as bringing "rape epidemics, sharia law, and the spectacle of terror." In January 2019, Monster appeared as a guest on ''The People's Square'', a podcast hosted by pseudonymous white nationalist Eric Striker. The SPLC criticized him for appearing on the show and for comments he made about
white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan
David Duke David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, far-right politician, convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a membe ...
, including "He's actually a pretty clever guy, he's articulate. He knows history. And I don't know the body of his work, but have a feeling that many people grew up with this mindset that you shouldn't listen to anything David Duke says." Monster later told the SPLC in an interview that he did not know who Striker was when he agreed to speak with him, and that he "disagrees with Duke's racist worldview but respects his intelligence". In an interview with NPR in February 2021, Monster suggested that leaders in the white supremacist movement are "
shock jock A shock jock is a radio broadcaster or DJ who entertains listeners and attracts attention using humor and/or melodramatic exaggeration that may offend some portion of the listening audience. The term is used pejoratively to describe provocative o ...
s" and should not be taken seriously. David Kaye, law professor at the
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...
and an expert in online speech, said of Monster's comment: "He can say they're just 'shock jocks,' but what we actually see is real world harm coming from the platforms. So how much is somebody who is allowing that content to be hosted operating in real good faith?" Monster has been accused of antisemitism, which he has denied. In a 2018 Gab post he wrote, "Are there a lot of 'Jewish' people who are in a position of power or influence and favor other 'Jewish' people, Ashkenazi, or otherwise? Sure. Do I think God is impressed by that? No, I do not.... God will deal with them and in His time and His way regardless of hoaxes and conspiracies along the way." He also replied to a Gab user who referred to him using the antisemitic slur "rat
kike The word ''kike'' () is an ethnic slur for a Jew. Etymology The earliest recorded use of the word dates to the 1880s.
" to say he was "not a 'kike' nor governed by one. :-)", and reassured a person who expressed disapproval that two members of Epik's board were Jewish that "having a Jewish person on Epik's board may be somewhat helping with keeping certain forces at bay." By 2020, both Jewish board members had resigned from Epik over ideological differences. In a 2018 comment on an Epik blog post explaining why the registrar accepted Gab's business, he wrote "I have many Jewish friends, and have been called ' Mensch' many times". Monster was widely condemned in the wake of the 2019
Christchurch mosque shootings On 15 March 2019, two consecutive mass shootings occurred in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacks, carried out by a lone gunman who entered both mosques during Friday prayer, began at the Al Noor Mosque ...
for uploading video of the shootings to
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and Gab. He posted on Gab that he had uploaded the file to the
InterPlanetary File System The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace ...
(IPFS), and wrote that Epik was working on a tool to make it simpler for people to create IPFS files, describing IPFS as "crazy clever technology" that makes files "effectively uncensorable". ''The Washington Post'' later wrote that Monster had "used the moment as a marketing opportunity" to promote Epik's products. Monster also shared the link to the video on Twitter after Twitter announced it would be removing any video of the incident. His tweet was removed by Twitter after several hours. Monster made claims that the video of the Christchurch shooting was not real, and that the shooting had been a hoax. A former Epik staff member alleged that Monster had begun a company staff meeting by asking employees to watch the video of the shootings, saying that it would prove to them that the attack had been faked. Monster has promoted several other conspiracy theories, including that the 2018 death of an American missionary who had traveled to North Sentinel Island was a " psyop" intended to discourage Christians from doing missionary work. Monster has also suggested that the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and other mass casualty events were " false flag" attacks.


Published works

*


References


External links

* {{authority control 1960s births American business executives American chief executives American conspiracy theorists American founders American people of Dutch descent American technology executives Businesspeople from Philadelphia Businesspeople from Washington (state) Christians from Pennsylvania Christians from Washington (state) Cornell University alumni Dutch business executives Dutch chief executives in the technology industry Dutch Christians Dutch conspiracy theorists Far-right politics in the United States Living people Market researchers Procter & Gamble people Critics of Wikipedia