Our 1st Amendment is under attack during this election cycle. Kamala Harris wants to shut down your voice and we need to stand up for our rights. On this live edition of THE CRUDE TRUTH, Amy Robins stops by the studio and we cover key sponsorship issues around social media and news channels.

Amy has been on Fox News, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and the National Spokesperson for Parler, and CEO of Alexo Athletica.

Also joining me will be Kristy Kerns, Podcast Host and VP of Pecos Operating.

Highlights of the Podcast

01:24 – Parler and Freedom of Speech

14:48 – Shadow Banning and Instagram Experiment

17:16 – Alexo Athletica

20:39 – Censorship & Freedom of Speech

24:24 – Concerns about Authoritarianism

27:39 – Alternative Media & Platforms

28:46 – Legal Loopholes

31:36 – Critical Thinking & Media Literacy

37:09 – Religion & Censorship

38:21 – Freedom of Speech

42:03 – Election and Media Influence

46:56 – Closing Remarks

Please reach out to Amy Robbins on LinkedIn

Please reach out to Kristy Kerns on LinkedIn

Check out StatusJet HERE

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Rey Treviño [00:00:00] This episode.

Narrator [00:00:01] In 1901 at Spindle Top Hill near Beaumont, the future of Texas changed dramatically as like a fountain of fortune. Thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky. Soon Detroit would be cranking out Model TS by the millions, and America was on the move thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas. Now, more than a century later, the vehicles are different, but nothing else has truly changed. Sure, there may be many other alternative energy sources like wind and solar and electric, but let’s be honest, America depends on oil and entrepreneurs. And if the USA is truly going to be independent, it has to know The Crude Truth.

Rey Treviño [00:00:48] Well, hello again and thank you all for tuning in to this live episode of The Crude Truth. As always, we always with me is my co-host, Kristy, how are you?

Kristy Kerns [00:00:58] Really excited today.

Narrator [00:00:59] I’m super excited. I don’t know if anybody will be seeing this while we get ready. Thank you all so much. Our guest today is not only the founder of Alexo Athletica, but also the national spokesperson for Parler Social. Amy Robbins.

Amy Robbins [00:01:14] Hey. It’s so good to see you guys. I feel like this is just we’re going to have a lot of fun on this show. Probably too much. Fun for a. Crude truth like conversation, but I’m ready for it.

Rey Treviño [00:01:24] I agree. And we have it. Just build it up now for goodness, 20 minutes, you know, just just anticipating to be here. And already the thoughts that we’ve been discussing and really the actions that people are taking to censor freedom of speech are ridiculous. You know, obviously after our last episode, I was like, I got to have you back on. But now is more apparel than ever. Now, do you Back when I was like, You got to meet Kristy. Yeah. And that was.

Amy Robbins [00:01:52] You. Did you saw that the first time? Yeah. You’re going to get you back. Kristy. Got to be here. Has got to hear this conversation. And so I’m glad to be here.

Rey Treviño [00:02:01] And now with everything going on with Parler coming back out. It’s amazing how many people actually. Yes, I knew of Parler. And you now being the national spokesperson. Yeah, it was just the time was right. They don’t do a quick shout out to David Blackmon, who got banned last week. No. On off the league did. No, no. Nothing. No anything. It was like he was off for five days. No warning, no anything. And that was like, okay, we got to be.

Amy Robbins [00:02:27] They pinpoint it back to a specific post or conversation that he was having that got him to that point.

Rey Treviño [00:02:34] You know what? I think if you go back and we answer might be 1 or 2.

Amy Robbins [00:02:37] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:02:39] But no, let’s jump into Parler real quick. Yeah. Why that is so interesting and so awesome.

Amy Robbins [00:02:45] Well, I mean, it’s a very important solution, an antidote to what is going on with other big tech platforms. So for those in the audience that may not be aware with what happened to Parler 1.0, let’s kind of back up just a little bit and remind everybody what happened. So in 2000, the first Parler started years and years ago, but it really came to the forefront of everyone’s mind when the president at the time was Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump got kicked off of Twitter. Do you remember that day? It was like a precedent, a day. If you would have asked anyone in America, is the president of the United States going to get kicked off of a big tech social media platform? Nobody would have believed you, right? They kick him off, they censor him. And then a lot of other people had been noticing this censorship, a lot of it on the conservative influencers side or the conservative media side, but other people, too, that had some differing opinions during Covid about the vaccine, about medical freedom, really started to see their reach was declining. They were starting to see that they were getting warnings, that they were spreading false information or misinformation. They would get sensitivity warnings. People couldn’t see their posts. So people were waking up to this idea that, you know, we had been ringing the alarm for a while saying, hey, this is happening to us, this is happening to my company, and people don’t really believe us. But after that moment, everybody’s eyes kind of awakened. And Parler was there to be the solution. They were the only free speech platform at that time. That said, for those of you that want to come and share your opinions freely, express what you believe and come to our platform, you have a home. So overnight they went from I don’t even remember what the starting number was, but like tens of millions of followers overnight became like one of the largest and fastest growing apps on the App Store. At that point, we move forward to January 6th, and a lot of what happened during that time got pinned on Parler. So even though there were people that were utilizing other platforms to coordinate or discuss or have conversations, Parler is the one that got basically blacklisted. They got taken off of US Cloud server, which that means they can’t operate anymore. And then from there, Google and Apple decided to use their ever changing community guidelines, ambiguous community guidelines, to say, Well, you’re allowing what we deemed to be hate speech on our platform and they took them out of the app store. So overnight the app dies. So I don’t know if you guys remember I got on Parler and I think I was on it for maybe a week or two, and then I went one day to go get on it. And it just kept refreshing, like it didn’t do anything. And then the word got out that they’ve been banned. They got taken off of their cloud server, they’ve been taken out of the App store. And it was really kind of the first time that people said, okay, like big tech is colluding with somebody. Like something’s going on here. They don’t want competition and they definitely don’t want the ability to not control the information that’s getting out. And that is what Parler was really set up to do from the very beginning, was allow people to come share information that they want to share, and then allow us, the user to decide which part of that you want to listen to. Doesn’t sound horrible, right? Falls falls in line with our First Amendment. And so then the app itself basically just stayed dormant. It didn’t do anything for a couple more, probably not three more years. And that’s when other other platforms popped up and they said, you know what, there’s actually something to this. Elon buys X, tries to turn it into this huge freedom of speech platform. So they noticed there was a marketplace for it and there was a market for people that really wanted to not be censored and not have their voice shut down.

Rey Treviño [00:06:44] Yeah. And you know, you talk about Elon, I like I saw a Twitter post that he put the other day that he responded to, that somebody put a post on Twitter that said all 100 top CEOs support Kamala Harris. And I guess he’s one of the 100 shoppers who responded going, That’s that’s false. I like. So

Amy Robbins [00:07:04] that’s actual misinformation. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:07:07] That’s true. Listen.

Amy Robbins [00:07:08] Yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:07:09] But you guys now have been Parler is blowing up again.

Amy Robbins [00:07:13] Yeah, Parler is back. Parler came back in December and back online in February. So we are back. I will tell you this, though, that we have four really under the radar intentionally. So we have some really big plans and are unveiling some really neat things. But mainstream media, you know, what they want to talk about. They just want to talk about how they, you know, put out the flame, how they how they won. But they didn’t win. At the end of the day. They did it when Parler is rising from the ashes. And what we’re doing in this space is really incredible.

Rey Treviño [00:07:45] Well, you know, what I think is really neat is you do Parler and you’ll come back with Parler and wouldn’t you know it, somebody gets fired from Fox News gets paid Boo Cruz of money for saying something that was probably true information Yeah and gets fired for that and all of a sudden he goes on a tour and Parler is right there with us about that.

Amy Robbins [00:08:08] We have a wonderful partner in Tucker Carlson. So Tucker has been a big fan. He really used the first version of the app a lot when it first came out. And then when we resurged and how to resurfacing, he got back on the platform. We’ve a partnership with him or he reads ads for us on his podcast, which is really been awesome. And then we heard that Tucker was going to go across the country and at first we said, What is this? What is this? Why life tour that a political pundit is going to do? No one has ever done this before. Really. No one can draw crowds anymore. You know, the former president, honestly, like how many people could fill a stadium of tens of thousands of people just to hear them have a conversation? Well, Tucker has a very strong voice and he’s very powerful in this movement talking about just how important it is to protect our freedom of speech. And so he wanted to go across the country and have these uncensored conversations because he says, you know what? It’s hard to censor a live event.

Kristy Kerns [00:09:11] Exactly.Yeah. Smart.

Amy Robbins [00:09:11] And I loved that. Yeah. Yeah. Like it. He was spot on, let me tell you. Like, it is hard to censor a live event. The media might try to take the clip city posts and keep it suppressed, but you can’t stop that. And Jim, you guys were there. You were at the Fort Worth show with Parler. So, yeah, we’re glad to have you.

Rey Treviño [00:09:29] It was awesome. And thank you all again for the course to go. It was there at the Dickies arena and that thing holds thousand feet. It was packed and

Amy Robbins [00:09:38] packed. Yeah, the Fort Worth one was a very well, they’ve all been really well attended and that is what I’ve been so excited about that, you know, the media wants us to think that we are so divided that the country is in this this state. I mean, like both sides of the media really do, like it is just an injustice and a disservice to the American people making us think that everyone hates each other. Everyone is so divided. And when you come in a room like that and the energy is actually really happy, people are so kind and you’re just in this room knowing that you’re with other like minded people. I thought it was really important. I tried to get everyone I know to actually go and participate and hear the speakers because let me tell you, that was a very diverse group of speakers ranging from Russell Brand to who spoke a lot about faith in the spiritual battles that we are seeing in this country, all the way to Roseanne Barr, who’s just Roseanne Barr, you know, a different Roseanne Barr thing. And were the and and all of that just show that there are so many people that we’re getting to hear this message and then to wake up and realize. This might be a bigger problem than anyone really knew. And so it was great. And I was going to I was going to share some, like, information about Tucker. This was just something I observed while I was there that I thought was so neat. He had a different speech in every single city. And not once did he use a teleprompter. And, you know, he got up there and talked for like 30 to 45 minutes on a just just talking about the state of the country and very specifically tailored to each city. And I just thought that was amazing. And I shouldn’t be shocked because there’s a reason why he’s like number one in media. So we were really just proud to sponsor. We were proud to be a part of that. He picked us as a sponsor to be there with him. And so we were really proud to just be there on that journey with them.

Rey Treviño [00:11:32] Well, I thought it was really neat how one he was he was doing everything that he wasn’t, like you said. Yeah, he spoke for 30 minutes. No teleprompter. Yeah. But also that he brought on a gentleman named James O’Keefe.

Amy Robbins [00:11:45] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:11:46] And the reason why I want to bring this guy up is he did a journey for those out there from the very bottom of Mexico all the way up with the migrants. And I’ve been thinking now for months. And Genevieve Collins, you know, I know we are going to the border. And I’m like, who’s going to be the person to actually do the actual journey? And he did it. I hadn’t heard about that at all. And talk about media suppressing. Yeah. Yeah. That’s just.

Amy Robbins [00:12:13] Well, he yeah, he unveiled he said he was going to unveil something big live at that tour. And he did. And so they’re they’re going to be streaming that we hope to. So that’s one of the neat things that’s coming up with Parler is we are actually this week launching what’s called play TV. So we knew not only does there need to be an alternative in the public forum space when it comes to social media, we really need this entire alternative ecosystem to everything that’s out there. We need a good, viable alternative to YouTube. When there’s Demonetized platform and censor people, we all can go through a list of people that we know who have gotten their YouTube channels taken down for whatever reason, speaking out about something that Google doesn’t want them to speak out about. And we need a platform that is not going to do that. And that is why we are launching play TV. So it’s really neat. So we will actually be able to integrate the long form video format and short form videos converse into one app. So you have the ability to toggle between all three of them all within your Parler app, and that is that’s coming soon. It’s all available on the Web version right now, but it is coming soon will all be integrated into one place. You can watch your videos right there on your Parler app. You can watch your birth. If you’re a content creator, you can share and promote your videos from your Parler account. That’s powerful. It’s very powerful. Wow. We are so just providing alternative distribution places for people who have traditionally had their voices silenced.

Rey Treviño [00:13:39] You know.

Kristy Kerns [00:13:39] We had our voices silenced here on LinkedIn recently and we are trying to figure it out. And we figured it out

Amy Robbins [00:13:49] And you start talking about more about politics, you know, anything like that. As long as it doesn’t align with the powers that be, you will notice that your like your views go down, the engagement is going down, everything.

Kristy Kerns [00:14:05] It’s just.

Amy Robbins [00:14:05] Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:14:06] I mean, that’s it. We have a business to run and we’re allowed to speak on this forum.

Amy Robbins [00:14:10] But let me share a little story with you guys about something that just happened to me recently. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about this.

Rey Treviño [00:14:16] Yes.

Amy Robbins [00:14:17]  like how they have been doing this to my company, which is in the two way space for several years now. People always tell us we cannot get to your store and the shop, our shop, our link in our bio. Yes. All right. And I’m like, okay, this is where we’re following all the all the rules. I don’t know what else. I don’t know what else to do. There’s not like a customer service number. They just call it Instagram and get a hold of anybody. No. So I decided to do a little experiment. And you have the video?

Rey Treviño [00:14:48] I do, yes. I got a good video on that.

Amy Robbins [00:14:50] Awesome. Is it ready for people, especially in a toy space like myself and my own company, It looks less than it does if there’s a little experiment to show you exactly what’s going on and you’re not going to believe your eyes. So when I say I am being shut up and let me show you exactly what’s going on right now, I’m going to type in the link to my website. Alexo athletica.com. Let’s go back to my profile. Let’s actually click on the link in my profile and see what it says here. It says, the site security certificate is not trusted. Okay. Well, that’s a little unusual. People may try to refresh it, but let’s go and see if I can open it and an external browser and then let’s see what happens. So here is Instagram once again keeping people from getting to my website by trying to scare you into thinking that we’re stealing your information. Okay, Well, let’s go back and let’s try a different link, just a link to my personal website. Amy shopping.com should be safe and simple enough, but why would they be shadow banning? Let’s see if they do. Same thing. The site security certificate is not trusted, even though we have everything that we are supposed to have on our website. So let’s refresh the page tells you the exact same. Thing and then. Let’s go and add a link just to see for fun if it will let you get to cnn.com. This will be fun. Let’s see what happens. I go back to my profile here. Let’s click on the link. What do you know Instagram allows you to get to cnn.com.

Amy Robbins [00:16:19] Yeah. Can you believe that?

Kristy Kerns [00:16:23] Kind of

Amy Robbins [00:16:24] That was real time, too. So there was no editing? I was not. That was literally me screen. Just doing a screen record of my actions, what I was doing. And I could not believe my eyes because I’ve known it, because our traffic has totally decreased from Instagram and this is why I wanted to partner with Parler. So Parler is going to be creating their own marketplace. That’s going to be this is so amazing because, you know, once you’re integrated onto the Parler marketplace, which our company will be, then there you can use the platform to actually promote it. So I’ve never been able to get my products into the Facebook and Instagram store. They always tell me that it’s flagged or banned. They say because we’re selling weapons, which. Well, not true.

Rey Treviño [00:17:10] Yeah. If you don’t mind real quick, for those who may not know who.

Amy Robbins [00:17:14] Yeah. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:17:14] What is what is your product real quick.

Amy Robbins [00:17:16] Yeah,.

Rey Treviño [00:17:17] I know, I know.

Kristy Kerns [00:17:17] It’s amazing.

Amy Robbins [00:17:20] Of course. I mean, but it really does tie into what? Why I so wanted to partner with Parler and do this job because they are out there fighting the good fight. And for companies like mine, there’s a lot of people in the space who have seen their engagement or like go down, but then also be completely deplatformed. Parler really is a wonderful place for people in the space to go in, to share just what they believe, the ability to train, defend, protect yourself, whatever it is. Those videos get completely shot open on Instagram. And so, you know, our stuff actually allows women to be able to carry on body and for whatever reason, that is not allowed in the marketplace there, but it will be allowed on the Parler marketplace. And so I encourage everybody who is looking for an alternative place to get in touch with our team over at Parler [email protected] because we can help you get integrated into that marketplace. And then when we roll out our really robust features like our reward system that we’re very excited about, you’ll be able to use those rewards and our marketplace. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:18:22] Wow.

Kristy Kerns [00:18:22] Changing America, Basically.

Amy Robbins [00:18:25] The world. Yeah. The world changed. Changing the world. Giving people alternatives and the ability to utilize, not not just get. This is one thing that we’re doing that’s very different than any other platform where actually how many times you sit and scroll and spend endless amounts of time on your on your phone. Does Facebook reward you in every way? It does. Yeah. Does any of these platforms give you anything back or do they steal your data, sell it and they make billions of dollars off of you?

Kristy Kerns [00:18:54] Steal that and your energy and your message. All of it.

Amy Robbins [00:18:59] All of it. It is. It’s dopamine. Scrolling is what it is. And they intentionally manipulate it through their algorithms. How to keep you mindlessly scrolling because.

Kristy Kerns [00:19:09] They listen to you and then everything pops up.

Amy Robbins [00:19:12] And so that is one difference with Parler, is we will not be building in that algorithm that makes you just dopamine scroll. We actually want to use social media for good. We want to create new positive interactions on social media because the mental health crisis in our country is is just so big. The amount of teens that are bullied, the amount of children that are trafficked and groomed. The FBI has recently put out a report that says over 500,000 predators are online social media every day looking for their next victim. That’s terrifying. So first and foremost, Parler is committed to being the platform that is going to fight human trafficking. We are a porn free site where the first free speech porn free site because we know that that is a gateway to human trafficking and we are putting our foot down with it. That is something that we are not going to be standing for because we want people to have a safe, secure and positive experience on our platform. So from there, how do you really change behavior on social media? Well, we’ve got to reward them somehow. So we are going to be having a wonderful rewards program that actually rewards you as the user, not just the content creators. They will get rewarded as well, but you will get incentivized for the work that you do by liking, sharing, commenting, and actually participating in positivity. You’re going to get rewarded for that. And that’s something that’s extremely different than any other platform right.

Kristy Kerns [00:20:31] Now in the community. Yeah, exactly. And you’re able to interact with people on this?

Amy Robbins [00:20:37] Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:20:38] I love it.

Rey Treviño [00:20:39] I know you’ve touched on so many different things just now from child trafficking to, you know, how they’re censoring things. Yeah. So and I’ve got another clip that was just done the other day, too, where they’re saying that we’re the fake people and we’re coming up with a conspiracy. So I’ve got this video of John Kerry at the World Economic Forum. And I want to I don’t know if these people are getting old and slipping or. Well, we’ll play the clip and I’ll get to the minute.

Video Speaker [00:21:10] Play hard to govern today. You can’t you know, there’s no the referees. We used to have to determine what’s a fact and what isn’t a fact that kind of, you know, been eviscerated to a certain degree. And people go and that people self-select where they go for their news or for their information, and then you just get into a vicious cycle. So it’s really, really hard, much harder to build consensus today than at any time in the 45, 50 years I’ve been involved in this. And and, you know, there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have, you know, some accountability of facts, etc.. But look, if people go to only one source and the source they go to is sick and, you know, has an agenda and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammered out of existence. So what you need, what we need is to is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to to implement change. Now, obviously, there are some people in our country who are prepared to implement change in other ways. And that’s what Washington is really for. Democracy can survive. And I do media. I think democracies are are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing. And to me, that is part of what this race, this this election is all about. Will we break the fever in the United States?

Rey Treviño [00:23:00]  Okay. Okay. There’s so much there’s.

Amy Robbins [00:23:03] So much there. Like first and foremost, what I think someone needs to create is what’s called a tyrant translator, where they’re actually translating at the bottom of the video what he actually means and says so when he says things like, what was he saying? That basically basically he’s saying like, we don’t have the control anymore. We don’t have the power anymore. That is what this freedom of speech thing is doing is it’s taking away our ability to control the information that people are here hearing and then deciding for themselves as if that’s a bad thing. Self-select him Talking about being able to self-select the information that we consume is no different than what Nazi Germany did. The Soviet Union. China. Like, that’s what they do is they suppress information and only allow one form and one stream of information to be consumed by the people, because that’s when dangerous ideas happen. Then you get dangerous, crazy ideas and you can hold the government accountable for what they say. When you can criticize your government, you know, they actually kill people in other countries that criticize the government. But that’s what we should be able. That is the definition of democracy. Being able to debate, criticize freely, go out and express better ways to do things. That is the definition of our democracy.

Kristy Kerns [00:24:20] Yeah. Talk about mind manipulation.

Amy Robbins [00:24:22] Absolutely.

Rey Treviño [00:24:24] You know, not only are they saying that that on ways to curtail and control the First Amendment, freedom of speech, but the thing in there that really concerned me the most is where he says democracy may not be fast enough to get where we need to go. Let’s say that again, democracy may not be fast enough. Wow. Here we go. So that means we need it all again. Translate underneath it all. All of a pretty call. One, one person, one government Ontarians.

Amy Robbins [00:24:58] Yeah. Authoritarian.

Rey Treviño [00:25:00] Yeah. We need to be in an authoritarian state to get done what we need to get.

Amy Robbins [00:25:04] So we need enough votes. We got to find find the people that will give us the ability to make decisions for you. And that is so scary. And I just sit here and they’re not even. They’re so uninhibited because they’re surrounded by other leaders that think the same way as them that absolutely hate freedom of speech. And it’s not just in America. There’s an uprising across the entire world of people wanting to speak up and to speak out. And you’re seeing this censoring and this trying to suppress free speech all around the world. You see it happening in the UK. You see it happening was Ireland was in Ireland. Prime Minister that said we’re going to shut X off here in our country if you don’t censor the conversation, the conversation between you and Donald Trump. Like what? Are you kidding me? They said because if you don’t curtail that misinformation, well, who is deeming what is misinformation or not? That is always what’s really important is to actually see who is this that’s pushing the the stopping of misinformation and who’s defining misinformation,

Kristy Kerns [00:26:11] who’s. Making the choice for.

Amy Robbins [00:26:12] Who is making the choice.

Kristy Kerns [00:26:13] And what we what we can say or say or anything.

Amy Robbins [00:26:16] Yeah, well, you guys heard about the Supreme Court ruling that just how well, they didn’t even rule on the First Amendment. They punted it back to the lower courts. The the issue came up is the government, by putting pressure on a private company like Facebook or a social media company. Are they infringing on our First Amendment? Well, the Supreme Court decided not to rule on that case. They pushed it back to the lower court. So there hasn’t been a decision made. So in the interim, they can back door, put pressure on social media companies to come and say, look, if we say this is misinformation, you better do what we say. You better put this out there. But God forbid you bring up the Hunter Biden laptop, which that was completely suppressed and that was deemed as false information, even though the FBI has not come back. Actually, that was pretty white when.

Kristy Kerns [00:27:05] It was suppressed to interesting and suppressed. Yeah. What is it, 23 Me, The DNA. Yeah.

Amy Robbins [00:27:12] Yeah, I have. It just happened with all that.

Kristy Kerns [00:27:13] But who took over the the news platform?

Amy Robbins [00:27:17] That’s a great question. Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:27:20] So why did everybody resign from that? From the board? There’s something with DNA going on, and then. Nobody speaks of that, but they’ll pretty.

Amy Robbins [00:27:29] Yeah. Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:27:31] Well, I’m just saying. Yeah, I know.

Amy Robbins [00:27:34] It really is crazy what we’re seeing unfold right before our eyes in.

Rey Treviño [00:27:39] Front of us. Yeah.

Amy Robbins [00:27:40] They’re not even hiding. They’re hiding in plain sight. And they’re. They’re. They’re actively working against our rights. And it’s starting with our freedom of speech because we can’t criticize any of the other rights that are going to be taken away if we don’t know when they’re fighting against or trying to pass legislation to suppress your Second Amendment right or your freedom of religion or whatever it is, if we don’t have the ability to hear that information and get it out, then we can’t have a debate and a discussion on what we, the people, would actually like to see. And that is why we have to have alternative forums and alternative places to have these conversations. That is why it is important for places like Parler to exist that are not going to go in there and censor what you’re saying. If you have an alternative idea about something, well, guess what? We believe that you are adult enough to be able to make the decision. Go and do more research. If you think something is not true, then you can actually go and dig a little bit more and find out for yourself what you want to do with that information.

Kristy Kerns [00:28:39] And this is just a random question Is somebody going to monitor like anything abusive or something?

Amy Robbins [00:28:46] So great question. Because let me tell you what has happened in the past under the guise of complete free speech. Right? So you have on some of these other platforms hundreds and we’ll go down to pornography, hundreds of millions of pornographic, including child pornography and including non-consensual intimate images. There is no law on the books because they’re covered by Section 230, article to 30, which basically protects Internet service providers from the content that’s being shared and passed on their platform.

Rey Treviño [00:29:15] You had a bartender for serving. Somebody can go, Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:29:18] Yeah, and we can speak

Amy Robbins [00:29:21] So what has been happening under the guise of free speech is that they’re allowing illegal activity to run rampant on their platform, including some of these human trafficking violations. And so what Parler has said is that we are we still think that there is an adult in the room and we still want to be able to say like, look, our stance, we’re very clear and transparent in our community guidelines, though, about what we’re actually looking out for. So like true hate speech, actually inciting actually inciting violence against people, well, that is illegal. So we don’t allow that illegal activity to take place on our platform. We we block all and any pornographic images that come across. So, you know what? You’re only fans account like it’s just not going to take off on on Parler so.

Rey Treviño [00:30:07]  that’s a good thing.

Amy Robbins [00:30:08] but other there are plenty of other platforms out there that will promote that for you. Just not going to happen on Parler. And again, because it goes back to wanting to create a safe and secure environment, everything we do is centered around that From your data and how we store and how we track it inside the app. Like we do not take and sell your information to advertisers. If you in the future decide as we get advertisers on the platform that you want them to advertise to you, guess what? You’re going to get rewarded for that. So now you’re becoming a beneficiary. You’re not the product anymore. We aren’t taking all of this and selling it to the advertisers and making the billions in other platforms are we actually want you to be in control of your experience and control of of what you’re doing. So that that is in a nutshell what. People don’t really understand what is happening under the name of free speech. And I always fall on the side of luck. Freedom comes with the good and the bad. That is. I mean, that’s what we believe, that we understand that. But I am under the impression that a private company needs to be the one that sets those rules. It does not need to be coming down from the government. It does not be it does not need to have a backdoor way for the government to suppress information by them telling us what we need to hear. But you know, what? If a if a private company wants to have their own community guidelines, which they need to be able to stay in the App store, they could to set those rules. As long as there’s transparency and users understand and know what what that is and what they need to follow, that is extremely important to us. And so transparency is very important to us.

Rey Treviño [00:31:36] It really is. And kind of going back to the fact checking, you know, I remember that whenever you wrote a report, I had to go back and show where I got these facts from. What book? Who published the. Book?

Kristy Kerns [00:31:48] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:31:49] Yeah, right. Yeah. And and it’s like, you know, now after that, did I go, you know, you could still even continue to go back. But these days of real fact checking, they’re not there anymore.

Amy Robbins [00:31:59] They don’t exist.

Rey Treviño [00:32:00] They’re not teaching children how to or even, you know, college kids anymore, how to do something. APIs can be very useful. I mean, yeah, I guess I get it. But when all you’re doing now is typing something in and you’re pulling the data you got, you don’t know where that’s coming from. Yeah. What source.

Kristy Kerns [00:32:18] Yeah. Who is monitoring. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:32:19] Who’s monitoring all this information. Yeah. So it is just something that’s been scary. And in fact, it’s.

Amy Robbins [00:32:25] Almost like when you do educational courses on that to even teach people how to do critical thinking, because I think we’ve lost that ability to critically think in our in our country anymore. We read headlines in both sides are guilty of.

Kristy Kerns [00:32:37] Both sides

Amy Robbins [00:32:38] Both sides of the media are guilty of headlines because they know that we’re busy. They know that they get like five seconds of our attention and that’s it. And and both sides do it. And so we really need to retrain people on how to read the article critically, think through that article, see if there’s a slant, see what’s going on, read multiple sources. You know, if John Kerry had his way, we wouldn’t be able to self-select our sources. We would be given a government funded source of all what they call as accurate information, China and Russia. But just sit down and be quiet because this is what you get. Yes. Yeah. So, no, John Kerry, we actually that’s a whole reason why we have our First Amendment so that we can self-select what we why

Rey Treviño [00:33:16] we’re here. Yeah, that’s why there’s groups like Real News, Sandstone Group. So thank you all for your. And the podcasting has changed the game.

Amy Robbins [00:33:26] Absolutely. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And that is what’s so exciting is that this independent media is popping up and they’re getting more views. That’s why it’s scary to the legacy media outlets. No one’s watching them anymore, but they still have a lot of power and these independent places for you to go and to share your message. I just encourage people not to be fearful, just to stand up, to start taking a stand, to start sharing your opinions, to start sharing your beliefs. No matter if you’re thinking it’s going to get suppressed or not, come to Parler and do that.

Kristy Kerns [00:34:01] Yeah, sure.

Amy Robbins [00:34:02] You’ve got a home. They’ve got a place to come do that.

Rey Treviño [00:34:05] Parler You guys just put out a response statement to the. John Kerry Yeah.

Amy Robbins [00:34:10] Yeah,

Rey Treviño [00:34:11] a lot. Of things. Yeah. And we’ll put that up and we’ll talk about it while people can see

Amy Robbins [00:34:15] Awesome. Yeah. So it’s really great because so we put this up because that was ridiculous. Like that has got and it’s not getting enough traction and it’s not circulating. I wonder what people. Yeah, you sent it to me and luckily I had already got me op ed before. I hadn’t seen the clip yet. Okay. You sent me the clip and I was like, Well, this is perfect timing and exactly what we need to talk about today because it’s not getting circulated and people aren’t seeing it. And so what we did was we put out a response to it, a very straightforward, very powerful op ed that we put on our website and what we would love for people to do. You can go and actually find the like the headline basically on our Instagram page, you’ll see John Kerry’s picture on there and then the link is in the bio. What would be really helpful is just go share that. They can’t stop people from sharing it. They can stop and suppress the masses from seeing it. But what helps all of that and what helps move the message boards when we when we share each other’s messages, when you find information like that that you find important. So I would love for everybody in this audience to to go to our Instagram to find that link. Or you can go to parler.com. It’s in our newsroom and you’ll see the article the opinion right there and pass that along. Our everybody needs to know this if they are not on social media or in politics every single day like we are, they might not know that this is going on. It is important. And so we are a resource. We have wonderful resources with our news articles and our OP Ed’s on our website that speak directly to this. And so you can actually go in and share it with all your friends and we would love it. Text I text. Texting full time to my parents, then shared in the platform. You know, you got that little share button in Instagram that you can share with people. But the article itself is is hosted on our website and it’s a really great one to share with everybody.

Kristy Kerns [00:36:03] I love that.

Amy Robbins [00:36:04] Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:36:05] Sharing is caring. Well.

Amy Robbins [00:36:06] Also, if you don’t feel like you are really well-versed on a topic, especially when it comes to free speech, you don’t really understand why is it that important? Why do we really need to fight to protect that? You know, is it really that bad that we’re getting suppressed on social media? Our resources on our website are so good to just help you start to formulate your arguments and to understand why our rights being under attack is actually important.

Kristy Kerns [00:36:32] My church is actually doing its politics, but GA GA GA of six or something like that. And so yesterday I was going about the freedom of speech and people don’t understand whether you’re on this side, that side, it’s the power of coming together in community and do your research with whoever you choose and you understand who you’re choosing and stick to those barrels, your morals, your values, everything. And that, Yep. If you believe in God, then that will take you where you’re supposed to go. It’s not red or blue. And you know how who came up with the red and blue in the States and all this? That that was it.

Amy Robbins [00:37:09] You know, And a lot of people talk about the politics that gets suppressed. Like one political view tends to skew towards certain conservative views. Right? But there’s other people, too, that I get messages now that I’ve really been speaking out about this and sharing this. They’re like, Man, how has anything political online? But I post a lot about God. I post a lot about my religion, and it’s usually Christianity that that’s getting suppressed. And so it’s happening. That’s just on the. Yeah, not just on the conservative media side. It’s happening and you want to talk about like freedom of religion actually falls under that. And so like in our Constitution, we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about Christianity getting suppressed. You know.

Rey Treviño [00:37:50] Yeah, that’s, that’s a whole.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:52] That’s a whole nother platform.

Rey Treviño [00:37:54] Because at the end of the day, the Constitution in America.

Amy Robbins [00:37:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:37:58] Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t come here and believe.

Amy Robbins [00:38:01] No, we actually have freedom of religion.

Rey Treviño [00:38:04] Religion, yes. But the, the laws made for this country were based off of Christianity beliefs. And that’s something else that.

Kristy Kerns [00:38:13] God we Trust.

Rey Treviño [00:38:14] God we trust. It’s all our money. It’s yeah, it’s in my opinion. In my belief. Yeah. Importantly, that’s very important.

Amy Robbins [00:38:21] Yeah, of course it is. But you should still be able to disagree with it. Yeah, you should still be able to go and worship and choose. You should also be able to choose to not worship anything at all. Yes. If you don’t want to. And you know, that’s these are the things that are under attack. And it’s just right now freedom of speech is on spotlight.

Kristy Kerns [00:38:39] But

Amy Robbins [00:38:40] they are. Trying to do by trying to separate. And that’s why it’s so it’s more important than ever that you find a place for community. You find people, whether or not you like everybody on the platform or you agree with them. I actually like reading. I actually follow different media outlets. I don’t just follow conservative media. I follow all them because I want to hear both sides and I want to have conversations with people. What I don’t enjoy are the bullies and the trolls that just come on there just to say mean things that have nothing of value to add to the conversation. Like why I’m here. We have a conversation. That’s where progress is made when we can sit down with one another. So if you want to go and spew whatever you want to on my Parler account, I have an account, the Amy Robbins on there. You can go and you can disagree with me all day long, but like called, let’s have a conversation about this and.

Kristy Kerns [00:39:30] That’s how outlets adult and communicate.

Amy Robbins [00:39:33] Exactly like now don’t.

Kristy Kerns [00:39:34] Get my hands in the trolls.

Amy Robbins [00:39:35]  yeah like that’s going to be everywhere and falls under freedom of speech like sure or do you have the freedom to go and do that with your time? And you absolutely do. But I also appreciate the people who will leave comments and say like, well, like have you thought about this? Or what about this? Like, I disagree with this. Like I’m always doing that on post, especially when it comes to things in the Second Amendment community. I’m like, Have you guys ever thought about, you know, how do we harden our schools? Well, let me tell you, posts like that do not get a lot of traction on big tech platforms, but they do on Parler. That’s why I like Parler. I can have this conversation with people about what do we actually do to make our schools safer, that we lock our doors, Should we like? There’s things we can do besides infringing on law abiding citizens rights right off the bat, and that being the only topic of conversation. But you will actually be able to have those conversations on Parler. That’s the difference. You don’t always get to have this conversation. You might not even see it. You might not even see an alternative or opposing view on any of the other platforms. But you will.

Rey Treviño [00:40:38] And Parler, you know, and that’s something that we were talking about beforehand and that Kristy mentioned while we’re on is like for this episode today that that we put out that’s live, you know, put it on LinkedIn Instagram and. You know, I’ll see it on the air. I’m nobody special. But for this, this only get maybe 300 impressions. Yeah, that’s not a lot. Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:40:59] It’s like that is not normal for me. I’m get. I get a thousand. I’m like, what the hell?

Amy Robbins [00:41:04] I mean, look at Kris Kristy got thousands.

Amy Robbins [00:41:09] They want to know what you have to say. It’s very important.

Kristy Kerns [00:41:12] No no no.

Amy Robbins [00:41:14] Yeah. Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:41:14] I have nothing to do with it. Yeah. Stick in the ground that we’re getting ready to drill our new drill, our new project. And that one didn’t get as many as it normally does.

Amy Robbins [00:41:24] Well, once. Once you kind of have that shadow man, so to speak, this ambiguous shadow, you got to. Call. It that. From there, even though Zuckerberg did just come out and admit that the government put pressure on them regarding certain topics.

Rey Treviño [00:41:38]  that didn’t get much play.

Amy Robbins [00:41:40] Of course not. I know I’m an people. We talked about it until we were blue in the face, you know? But you’re right. Like overall, that just is not really going to be. That’s not the story that most legacy media companies. And right now, with everything around the election, it’s just really hard to kind of insert other things in there.

Rey Treviño [00:42:03] Yeah. You know.

Kristy Kerns [00:42:04] That’s what I said. I think it’s because elections coming up that we’re getting banned because we do a lot of people.

Amy Robbins [00:42:11] Yeah. Yeah. But we’re going to have to just do like oil based only. We’re going to have to trick the system with different hashtags. Okay. This is what you’re going to have to do. You know, you’re going to have to find some crafty way to circumvent that with CNN is my favorite. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:42:30] But I. Do have big government. And

Amy Robbins [00:42:33] I love Facebook. That. Circulate. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:42:41] Amy, with this tour, the job done, what gives you hope? What was. Maybe I’ll just tie it up. What was something that gave you hope? What was something that you really liked? Because you. And do you think Tucker Carlson would be as a media person, But what give you hope and what what was exciting about this tour that you just went on this this, this, this can I want to use the word conservative tour, but I probably could have a better if I would have had time had a better word than conservative. Yeah, it was a very fun thing with a lot of people. Yeah. And you went across the country.

Amy Robbins [00:43:14] Across the country. I think that’s what I love the most about it was to see the energy across the entire country, people hearing this, the same general themes and messages. And then to see, okay, I think that people are really energized about this election. I think that they are going to go out, they’re going to do their part, hopefully more so than even came out last election and participated and let their voices be heard. And I think for me, that was really one of the most exciting things, was that, look, you actually got in a room with thousands and thousands of people and you saw that you’re not alone. Like I said, a lot of times the media wants to keep us divided. They want us to think that everyone hates each other. And that was just not the vibe.

Kristy Kerns [00:44:01] You guys bring on community.

Amy Robbins [00:44:02] And that’s the arena. That was a community. People do love each other. People are concern for the direction, the future of our country. But people want to do something about it. And they were really energized afterwards, I believe, to go out to tell their friends, to take their friends with them, to participate and participate in democracy, you know, and be a part of history.

Rey Treviño [00:44:21] Yeah, I think so. I think that was something there. I think it is history. And what I mean by that is just because of the fact that things are now being shared in a pot like that weren’t being able to shared like the James O’Keefe thing or Roseanne Barr, who millions of Americans can relate to. Okay. And and I think maybe that’s why like you know because in the 1980s and early ninety’s middle America was. Was that. Yeah. And then when she came back on middle America was right. It’s all it’s all cycle right back there. And they saw it real quick we got it.

Amy Robbins [00:44:57] yeah. And that was her moment, too, because she was not I would not say politically on one on this side before that.

Rey Treviño [00:45:07] dude. Speaking of. Yeah, not to get into it, but she even talked about like, how she feels like she’s like a grandma. How young that. Yeah that was.

Amy Robbins [00:45:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:45:16] That was just. She kind of talked about how things that were happening to children there in California.

Amy Robbins [00:45:21] yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:45:22] That they would come up to talk to her about it. Wow. Rosie or not. You know. Hey, can I talk to you about real quick? Like, like Kristy said, you go sometimes just talking to a complete different person. Yeah. And opening up. Sometimes it gives.

Kristy Kerns [00:45:37] You a different perspective.

Amy Robbins [00:45:38] Yeah, it absolutely does. So I do want to end with this. I would love for your audience. If you’re not already on Parler, come back and join us. Just go to parler.com. Whether you have iOS, whether you have an Android, you can download it straight for. Straight from the website and come join the conversation. We need more people having these conversations. Wherever you fall on the political aisle, whatever you believe. We welcome all of it. On Parler, you’re going to able to test out the play TV app here. Very soon. We do have a Web version right now where you can start watching some of the videos. Hopefully we get you guys get your podcast over there on TV as well, but just come and join us. This is such a critical time and we really want and value everybody’s opinions.

Rey Treviño [00:46:21] Perfect. Well, Amy, I cannot thank you enough for doing this. This was awesome. I was very excited.

Kristy Kerns [00:46:27] Not enough time.

Rey Treviño [00:46:28] Yeah. And just a case for all the women out there that are that need that safety without running to work that way.

Amy Robbins [00:46:36] I wish we were in the Parler marketplace right I would say go. And use your rewards and go and buy it. But for right now, you have to go to Alexo athletica dot com and pick up you some they’re called gun pants.

Kristy Kerns [00:46:47] Yes I know that it’s actually kind of really cool.

Amy Robbins [00:46:50] I love it.

Kristy Kerns [00:46:51] I can. Talk anywhere.

Amy Robbins [00:46:53] Yeah, you can check about Alexa athletica dot com.

Rey Treviño [00:46:56] Well, Amy, thank you so much. Christi, as always. And everybody out there that tuned in today’s episode, we cannot thank you enough again. Quick shout out to Parler for all the work that they’re doing. And again, thank you to the team effort today of Real News Communications and Sandstone Group for putting this live episode together. Thank y’all all and we’ll see you again on another episode of The Crude Truth.

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