Rob Monster

Rob Monster
Born	Robert W. Monster 1966 or 1967 (age 56–57)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Cornell University (BS and MBA)
Occupation	Chief executive officer
Employer	Epik
Spouse	Jill Monster
Children	5

Robert W. Monster (born 1966 or 1967) is an American technology executive and the founder and chief executive officer of Epik, a domain registrar and web host known for providing services to websites with far-right content. He has received media attention in relation to Epik, particularly surrounding the company's decision to register the far-right social media network Gab, about which he has been outspoken. He has also received attention for controversial statements, including some in which he has promoted various conspiracy theories and some which have been described by HuffPost and the Southern Poverty Law Center as espousing antisemitic or white nationalist sentiments.

Life and education

Monster was born in 1966 or 1967 to a Dutch American family, and he grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned his bachelor's degree and MBA at Cornell University. In 2007, Monster became a devout Christian. Monster is married to Jill Monster, a family physician. They have five children.

Career

Monster began working for Procter & Gamble 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, a brand of baby diapers. After eight years at the company, he left in 1999 to move to Seattle, Washington and found Global Market Insite (GMI), an online market research company. He served as the CEO for seven years, until he was ousted by the board in 2007.

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. 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 has been an outspoken defender of Epik's choice to host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist 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 had used the service to post extremist content. After it was dropped by its registrar, GoDaddy, Monster met with Gab CEO Andrew Torba and agreed to register the website. Monster subsequently became an active user and defender of the network.

Monster 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.

Politics

Monster's political beliefs have been described by HuffPost as "at times... almost indistinguishable from those of the neo-Nazis he’s defended on Gab." In December 2018, he shared on Gab a video created by Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, in which she described migrants as bring “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. He was criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for appearing on the show and for comments he made about white supremacist and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke, 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 has denied being sympathetic towards white nationalists. He 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".

Monster has been accused of antisemitism because of some of his writings on Gab, where he has said "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 has replied to a user who referred to him using the antisemitic slur "rat kike" 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." He has also suggested that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a "false flag" attack. Monster has denied being antisemitic. In a 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 has promoted several other conspiracy theories, including that the death of an American missionary who had traveled to North Sentinel Island was a "psyop" intended to discourage Christians from doing missionary work.

Monster was widely condemned in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings for uploading video of the shootings to Twitter and Gab. He posted on Gab that he had uploaded the file to the InterPlanetary File System (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". 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.