Bill Ottman is the co-founder and CEO of 📝Minds.com, the open-source, free-speech social network. He is an internet 🏷️#entrepreneur and information-freedom advocate who has spent over a decade building an alternative to mainstream platforms.
Ottman co-founded Minds in 2011 as a transparent, decentralized counter to the data-mining and algorithmic control of incumbent social networks, positioning the platform around free expression, privacy, and user revenue sharing. His free-speech stance led him to collaborate on the 📝Censorship Effect research, which examined how deplatforming and censorship intensify radicalization and harden echo chambers rather than defusing them. He appeared alongside deradicalization activist 📝Daryl Davis on Joe Rogan Experience #1792 to discuss the findings.
Who Is Bill Ottman?
Ottman co-founded Minds in 2011 alongside John Ottman, Jack Ottman, Mark Harding, and Ian Crossland, and has served as its CEO throughout. The platform opened to the public in June 2015. He has held the mission line consistently, describing it in a 2018 interview as "Internet freedom with privacy, transparency, free speech within the law and user control," and has kept the codebase open source so the platform's moderation and ranking behavior can be audited by anyone who cares to look.
Minds by the Numbers
- Founded — 2011, with a public launch in June 2015
- Funding — $350,000 in 2013, roughly $1 million through Regulation CF equity crowdfunding, and a $6 million Series A from Medici Ventures in October 2018
- Users — 1 million registered by 2018; over 2.5 million registered and roughly 300,000 monthly active by May 2020
- Model — users earn ERC20 tokens on engagement, spendable on boosting posts, crowdfunding other users, or conversion to currency
- Stack — PHP and TypeScript, open source and independently auditable
FAQ
What is Bill Ottman known for?
Founding and running Minds, an open-source social network built around free expression, privacy, and revenue sharing with users — and for arguing, with research behind him, that deplatforming tends to intensify radicalization rather than reduce it.
What is Bill Ottman's net worth?
No verified figure is public. Minds is privately held and has raised comparatively modest outside capital, so the estimates that circulate online are speculation rather than disclosure.
Did Bill Ottman appear on the Joe Rogan Experience?
Yes — episode #1792, alongside deradicalization activist Daryl Davis, discussing the Censorship Effect research.
The Censorship Effect collaboration put my research in front of a far broader audience than academic channels ever could. Bill's willingness to test his platform's free-speech convictions against rigorous social-science scrutiny is rare, and our work together on radicalization and moderation models is some of the most consequential applied research I've been part of.