- Gab is a social media platform that has become a hot spot for far-right figures like Infowars founder Alex Jones, as well as white supremacy and anti-Semitic rhetoric since its launch in 2016.
- That’s because it does not moderate content like Twitter – Gab markets itself as a vehicle for freedom of expression and does not suppress posts that would be considered hateful or that contain false information.
- Since launching in 2016, Gab has been suspended by Stripe, PayPal, Amazon’s cloud hosting service, Google’s cloud platform, Apple’s app store and its former domain registrar GoDaddy for hate speech violations.
- And in 2018, the sniper from the attack on the Tree of Life Pittsburgh synagogue took Gab to express anti-Semitic rhetoric before killing 11 people.
- Now, after Facebook and Twitter banned President Trump from their platforms after the siege of the United States Capitol, many on the right are switching to sites like Gab – the company said it is seeing 10,000 new users every hour, but Apple and Google long ago banned it from their app stores.
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As major social sites deplore President Trump and other far-right users for spreading misinformation and inciting violence, smaller networks appear to be absorbing runoff.
Gab is one of them – it was founded in 2016 as an alternative social platform to Facebook and Twitter. Its founder sought to build a place where users can embrace freedom of speech and post without moderation at a time when major sites began to crack down on misinformation, efforts that coincided with Trump’s rise to the presidency.
After pro-Trump extremists violently invaded the United States Capitol last week, the speech reignited around how social media services can be radicalized and provide platforms for those looking to carry out violence. The troublemakers were found to have organized themselves weeks ago on Twitter, Facebook, Parler and TheDonald.
Since then, Facebook has blocked Trump’s access to the site and Twitter has permanently suspended the president, and smaller sites like Parler have been banned by Google and Apple’s app stores, as well as removed from Amazon’s AWS service, for not moderating threats of violence.
Apple kicked off Gab in 2016 because of hate speech violations, as did Google and Amazon, and yet the platform has grown in popularity since it was launched as one among a handful of online ecosystems that attracted those who were on the sidelines.
It is gaining 10,000 new users every hour, the company said over the weekend.
See how Gab became a favorite among the alt-right.
Gab was created by the desire to escape Twitter’s moderation policies on false information and hate speech
Co-founder and CEO Andrew Torba told Buzzfeed News in late 2017 that he was fed up with how major social media sites censor people’s posts. “What makes Big Social’s left-wing monopoly qualified to tell us what ‘news’ and ‘trend’ are and to define what ‘harassment’ means?” Torba said.
Gab looks a lot like Twitter and Reddit, as the New York Times reported, and the posts – called “gabs” – are at most 300 characters long.
The site quickly became a cesspool of white supremacists, anti-Semites and other users who were kicked out of mainstream technology platforms like Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and white nationalist leader Richard B. Spencer. The site intends to be committed to anyone who shares “the common ideals of Western values, individual freedom and the free exchange and flow of information”, but the far-right ideologies are what largely populates the small community. It had about 1 million registered users in April 2020, according to Fox Business.
Alex Jones, the founder of the right-wing media group Infowars, addresses pro-Trump protesters at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.
Jon Cherry / Getty Images
Torba posted a feedback on Monday morning showing an illustration of President Trump with an eagle perched on his shoulders next to a lion. Irish far-right YouTuber Dave Cullen, who runs Computing Forever, posted a farewell video on Monday after YouTube banned him for violating his policies. He said that it will not affect the way he operates.
The biography of Cullen’s Office says “If they don’t let you say that, it means it MUST be said. #AllSpeechMatters.”
Like other far-right alternatives, like Parler, Gab advertises himself as committed to freedom of expression. Gab’s online rules prohibit certain types of posting, such as threats of violence and illegal pornography. In addition, it uses little moderation and does not restrict posts that can be widely considered misleading or qualified as hate speech. This gives users the option to mute posts that they find offensive.
The sniper in a 2018 attack on the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue climbed onto the platform to post a series of anti-Semitic messages before killing 11 people. The site went offline for a short time after the shooting, which was considered the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in American history.
The shooter falsely claimed that a Jewish refugee organization “likes to bring in invaders that kill our people,” according to an archive of his messages in Gab. “I can’t sit and watch my people being slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Pittsburgh and Squirrel Hill community members pay tribute at the memorial to the 11 victims of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre on Saturday, October 27
Matthew Hatcher / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Gab has been banned by major technology companies regularly since its launch in 2016
Big tech companies have restricted Gab in the past, just as Google, Amazon and Apple took action against Parler after pro-Trump protesters invaded the United States Capitol.
In 2016, Apple blocked the Gab app because of pornographic content and hate speech, and Google also banned it from its Google Play store. Gab filed a lawsuit against Google before giving up.
In 2017, the site’s online domain registrar threatened to expel Gab for violating hate speech laws with more racist and anti-Semitic posts. A company spokesman said he removed the author of the posts, but that he was “looking for a domain name registration provider that would support legally and politically incorrect freedom of expression”.
In August 2018, Microsoft threatened to expel Gab from its Azure cloud computing service because of anti-Semitic posts calling for “revenge” against Jews and the vandalism of Holocaust memorial museums. The user Gab who wrote the posts later deleted them.
After the 2018 Pittsburgh sniper was discovered posting anti-Semitic posts to Gab, PayPal announced that it was banning the platform from using it as a payment option. Stripe did the same soon after, as did Medium, Shopify and GoDaddy, Gab’s domain registrar. Gab soon found a new domain registrar with the company Epik.
And in 2019, Amazon announced that it would stop allowing Gab to raise money through its Amazon Web Services platform because the site “promotes content that constitutes hate speech”. He tried to solicit up to $ 10 million from investors in advance.
The far-right may spread more lies on Gab because the site doesn’t moderate much content – and is rapidly gaining new users
These sites often claim to be defenders of free speech and say sites like Twitter are breaking the First Amendment by cracking down on misinformation. But, as Tyler Sonnemaker of Business Insider reported, it is within the rights of Twitter and Gab to moderate their platforms as they see fit, as they are private companies. The First Amendment prevents the government from censoring citizens and private companies, not the other way around.
As traditional sites like Twitter and Facebook increase the implementation of moderation policies, which resulted in President Trump being permanently suspended, experts told Insider in a previous interview that Parler and Gab can grow in popularity, where users will be able to more easily spread conspiracy theories and false information.
In fact, we are already seeing this happen – Gab said on Twitter on Saturday that the platform is gaining 10,000 new users every hour.
“Gab has gained more users in the last 2 days than in our first two years of existence,” said the company tweeted Domigo.
And Parler jumped to the top spot on Apple’s App Store after Facebook and Twitter unveiled Trump.
However, Parler is now offline after Amazon broke ties with the service, and Parler CEO John Matze said the platform could be inactive for up to a week. Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon for antitrust violations, claiming that the e-commerce giant’s ban was politically motivated and anti-competitive, since it did not take similar measures against Twitter.
Troy Wolverton contributed to an earlier version of this report.