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- MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said he plans to launch a social-media site called "Vocl" within weeks.
- He said it's going to be a cross between YouTube and Twitter meant for "print, radio, and TV."
- He declined to say where it's headquartered and who has helped him create the site.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Wednesday revealed new details about a social-media site that he plans to launch in the next three weeks.
In an interview with Insider, Lindell said he plans to call the site "Vocl" and he described it as a cross between Twitter and YouTube.
"It's not like anything you've ever seen," he said to Insider in a Wednesday interview. "It's all about being able to be vocal again and not to be walking on egg shells."
Lindell, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, was banned from Twitter in January. The site began cracking down on misinformation and extremism following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and barred accounts, such as Trump's, citing the risk of further violence. Then in February, YouTube and Vimeo took down a three-hour film Lindell had made about the election.
YouTube is "the biggest culprit out there that takes people down … It's just sad that a platform can do that," Lindell said.
Vocl, he said, isn't like Gab or Parler, two far-right social-media sites. It's a cross between Twitter and YouTube meant "for print, radio, and TV," he said.
He said he's not relying on the cloud market leader Amazon Web Services, which kicked Parler off its servers following the insurrection, to host the new site. Lindell said he will use his own servers, and he said the platform has "some of the highest security ever." It's "space-age stuff," he said.
The website is "going to be the most attacked; I expect that," he said. "I'm attacked daily by bots and trolls and hackers. My company gets attacked all the time."
He said he's been working on his new social media site for four years and estimated it would launch in three weeks, at the latest, though it could be as soon as 10 days. Lindell, who is planning to be the site's CEO, said he doesn't have any potential investors and declined to say how much money he invested in Vocl.
As Parler's recent struggles have shown, running a social media company focused on unlimited speech comes with serious challenges. Lindell, who does not have any significant background in technology or in building a social media platform, declined to share several of the details about the planned site.
He said about 10 people have been working on building Vocl, but he declined to name them or provide details about them "for their safety." The Vocl headquarters, which are in the US, are also confidential, he said.
Lindell, who has accused Dominion Voting Systems of tampering with the 2020 election results, said he's launching the site because of "all the election machine fraud."
Dominion, an election-technology company, has sued Lindell - and other Trump supporters such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell in separate cases - for $1.3 billion in damages, alleging that he spread baseless claims that its voting machines were used to steal the 2020 election for President Joe Biden. Lindell has said the company has zero chance of winning.
Since November, Lindell said he's gone "all in" on proving election fraud, a claim that has been disproven in dozens of lawsuits. Since then, his company has taken a hit as multiple big-box retailers such as Kohl's and Bed Bath & Beyond cut ties with MyPillow.
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