[JustTheNews] Founder Erik Finman cites the marketing tagline that encapsulates his new device's inspiration: "The Freedom Phone: finally a phone that won't put your voice on silent."Erik Finman, the youngest Bitcoin millionaire, has created the Freedom Phone, which protects users' privacy while promoting free speech and preventing censorship.
The 22-year-old founder told the John Solomon Reports podcast that with the Freedom Phone he was "basically creating something that is 'unbannable,' that is 'uncensorable,' that isn't reliant on, you know, the Apple or Google app stores or ... left-wing infrastructure."
The Freedom Phone has "its own app store, which has all the apps your phone normally has, plus banned ones as well," Finman said. "And we feature apps that promote free speech and promote patriotism. And you know, we put a huge focus on privacy features, as well."
The Freedom Phone runs on Android but completely gutted of Google, with added security features to protect users' data from Big Tech.
"[W]e built it on top of Android, so that way you can have all the apps you have, but we Hillary-Clinton-acid-washed all the Google stuff out and really went top to bottom," Finman explained. "It was a dirty job, but we got rid of all that junk out ... because we wanted you to be able to still run on traditional apps, like if you have a banking app, or if you have a ADT security or whatever, and all that, plus have the banned ones, as well."
Finman had created a startup with $100,000 he made off of Bitcoin cryptocurrency and moved to Silicon Valley before selling the company and moving to Florida, where he then started the Freedom Phone.
Finman saw the increasingly brazen viewpoint discrimination practiced by Big Tech as both social injustice and market opportunity: "I just saw the problem that, you know, they say, 'Oh, well, you know, if you don't like getting banned off pretty much every mainstream social media platform, create your own.' And then you know, you see, 'Hey, we created our own with Parler, amongst others, and then they got banned' ... and that's terrible."
The pro-free speech Parler social media app was taken offline by Amazon Web Services, Apple and Andriod app stores following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. Parler has since been added back onto the Apple App Store.
The Freedom Phone is centered around conservatives "because if I made it less conservative-centric, I would have to compromise on what the ultimate vision and purpose of this phone is, which is to get people ... out there and expanding and get people the truth," Finman explained. "That's the real goal. And I think, you know, if it was just security-encryption-centric, I wouldn't be able to get people the truth the same way."
Declaring that "the most powerful tool that we all have is our right to have a voice," Finman explained how safeguarding those voices is what ultimately inspired the Freedom Phone. "[T]hey can ban software," he acknowledged, "but hardware, with its own uncensorable app store and privacy — you know, one of the cheesy marketing lines that we say is ... 'The Freedom Phone: finally a phone that won't put your voice on silent.'"