MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said in an interview published Wednesday that he plans to launch a social media site called Vocl that he described as a cross between YouTube and Twitter.
Lindell, a strong supporter of former President Trump, told Business Insider that Vocl would be meant “for print, radio and TV” and differ from conservative platforms Gab and Parler.
“It’s not like anything you’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s all about being able to be vocal again and not to be walking on eggshells.”
The MyPillow CEO, who was barred from Twitter this year after spreading unfounded claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, said he’s worked on Vocl for four years and plans to be the CEO. He predicted it would launch at the latest in three weeks.
Lindell told Business Insider that he didn’t have any potential investors but about 10 people were working on Vocl. He declined to name any of those people “for their safety.” He also declined to identify the location of Vocl’s headquarters in the U.S. and reveal how much he invested.
The CEO noted that he would rely on his own servers to run the platform instead of using Amazon Web Services, which removed Parler from its servers after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Following the raid on the Capitol, Twitter and YouTube have gotten more aggressive with regulating election misinformation, with Twitter banning both Lindell and Trump from the site. YouTube and Vimeo also both removed a film Lindell created that made election fraud claims.
Dominion Voting Systems has taken on Lindell in a lawsuit requesting $1.3 billion in damages for making allegations that the company’s voting machines took the election win away from Trump.
Lindell filed a countersuit asserting the company interfered in the election and noted to Business Insider that he was starting Vocl due to “all the election-machine fraud.”