i2Coalition Member Spotlight Q&A: Patmos

Patmos provides scalable, reliable, and “cancel-free” hosting based on the belief that every idea—regardless of whether or not they agree with it—has a right to be heard.  

Patmos is also a member of the i2Coalition, taking part in the Cybersecurity and Privacy Working Group, Technology and Trade Working Group, and DNS Issues Working Group; working with other member companies to address global policy issues that are important to the Internet’s infrastructure. We caught up with Joe Morgan, Chief Infrastructure Officer at Patmos, to discuss where hosting, self-regulation, and government oversight interact.

i2Coalition: Can you give us the elevator pitch for Patmos?
Joe Morgan: We are trying to guarantee businesses hosting specifically around freedom of speech and hosting as a service. We live in an age where consolidation in the industry has made it so there’s only a handful of providers, and there is also a current trend for people to have their voices shut down if their opinion is unpopular. We’ve seen people who get de-platformed or de-hosted just because they don’t fit the regular mold, and the large monopoly IT providers just say, “We don’t want to mess with you, and so you’re not allowed on our platform.” So Patmos, as a company, is providing cancel-proof hosting. Obviously you can’t break the law or violate standard terms of service when it comes to spam and that sort of stuff. But if you’re just a person out there, or a politician or a media influencer, we will host you without the risk of you being canceled based on ideological reasons.

i2Coalition: Could you describe “the parallel economy”?
JM: The parallel economy is essentially a group of people who feel that the monopoly-driven companies are not serving the interest of the people in the way that they should be, and so they’re trying to find more local, smaller companies to do business with; and we want to be a part of that.

i2Coalition: What impact do you think geopolitical events have had on your more recent growth?
JM: We’re at this precipice of political change that could rewrite how the Internet works.Right now, the current right feels like they’re being targeted when it comes to specifically deplatforming. I think Parler was a very popular kind of alt-right messaging channel, and because they thought there was unpopular speech in there, whether it be, you know, people who were very inflamed around the previous presidential election, and differing views on the scientific opinions of Covid. So, you know, there’s that kind of political element on the right side, and then there’s kind of this extreme on the left side where there’s people who are basically saying, “Hey, we we want to voice our opinions, and if we’re not heard, we’ll boycott,” and that causes some of those cancellations as well. Then also the platforms themselves have not done a good job of self-governing, and when the platforms don’t govern speech, then it goes to Congress—which doesn’t understand the technical issues of today. If I were to make a post on Facebook that’s illegal hate speech, I’m solely responsible for that. But there are politicians who are saying, maybe we should change the laws to make the platforms themselves be legally liable for the content that’s being put on their platform, even done by a third person. This would fundamentally rewrite the way that the Internet works, right? And so you’ve got self-policing that’s now started to happen, and it’s actually caused the opposite effect. 

So now all of a sudden, Google and Facebook have said, “You know what? If It even smells like it’s dirty, ban it.” So the political atmosphere is very, very difficult to navigate, and it’s perpetuated by these extremes, very large companies that don’t want to mess with it, and very political groups that want to get their message across or feel like they’re being targeted. So the political aspect of the Internet that people must navigate is extremely difficult. But my bigger issue is, do we want the government regulating the way that the Internet works in the United States?

i2Coalition: Has the explosion of generative AI changed what customers are asking for? Have you leveraged AI differently in your own operations?
JM: Internally we are looking at ways we can integrate AI into a lot of our different workflows, especially when it comes to content creation. Our coding team uses it as a tool to help them quite a bit as well. From a hosting standpoint, we have gotten a huge amount of customers who want to host with us as data-center operators who can handle high density workloads. So we actually have quite a bit of GPU activity now. We’ve partnered with Hydra Host, which is a broker for systems that are designed specifically for AI machine learning using GPU-backed workloads. We also are going to be announcing shortly a potential new data-center build that is going to be specifically for AI workload. So there’s massive movement in the industry there, but because this has happened with Bitcoin, and then it happened with Blockchain, then it happened with Web3, you also have to be skeptical of anything where you’re outbuilding the demand, which is what’s happening with AI. So I don’t know that I’m 100% as sold as the media is right now on the long-term impact that AI will have, but it’s definitely good for small data centers, who can be crafty and build quickly. 

i2Coalition: Why did your team find it important to join the i2Coalition?
JM: We knew we had to start joining like-minded businesses, listen to our peers and what issues they’re struggling with, and start making sure that we’re advocating for the freedom of speech on the Internet in these groups, strategically—not necessarily as a marketing thing, but to establish ourselves as industry experts in this space. 

i2Coalition: Which i2Coalition initiatives connect most deeply with your team’s ethos?
JM: The initiatives facing the physical Infrastructure of the Internet: anything that has to do with decentralization, democratization of the Internet itself.

i2Coalition: Where does government policy interface with your work on a daily basis?
JM: Pretty much only if we get sent a subpoena or a warrant for customer data. The government has very little interaction with the hosting space right now. I’m usually on the side of regulation by the government as a good thing—which is, maybe not me speaking for the company, but speaking personally. But I don’t think there’s the expertise there for the government to do that in such a way that’s going to be favorable to the Internet itself. Also I think something has to happen to counter the consolidation that’s happened in the industry, but I don’t know that the government is the right entity to do that. I’m not making a statement to their intelligence. I’m just saying that the technical intricacies of this particular debate are too high to leave to the current Congress, who are only normally getting the voice of the biggest players in the industry.