The Truth About Gab
This is an edited version of the transcript for Counter Points Media's video 'The Truth About Gab.' The information might be old or outdated, and the author might not hold the same opinion today.
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Gab.ai has been around since August 2016, and was launched publicly in May 2017. However, you may not have heard much about it until October 2018, when a Gab user committed a mass shooting in a Pittsburg synagogue. As usual, the typical left-wing fake news reporting rushed to blame guns for the shooting, but when they wanted to take a break from that, they began blaming Gab, forever tarnishing its reputation and filling search engine results with unbased slander against the site. Why? There’s a quick and simple answer, but a long story, so it’s best to start at the beginning.
Gab was originally launched as a free speech competitor to Twitter. After harsher and harsher censorship rules imposed by Twitter, Andrew Torba created Gab as a free-speech Twitter clone. The interface and methods of interaction were similar. There are hashtags, topics, @ symbols for mentioning certain users, and so on. But there were differences too, like the inclusion of groups, as well as, you guessed it, protections for free speech. According to their current Community Guidelines, Gab allows all speech that is legal under the United States’ First Amendment, which protects free speech. The only content not allowed on the site is piracy, threats of violence or terrorism, illegal pornography, and using Gab for the illegal sale of various products and services. Their policies for account management is similar to Twitter’s, however, banning spam accounts, duplicate accounts and account squatting. Gab’s policy on content, meanwhile, seems to be “if it’s legal, it’s fine.†This is in stark contrast to Twitter, which bans content that is racist, so-called “homophobicâ€, or just supposedly “hatefulâ€.
When the site launched, Andrew Torba made an announcement on the blog site Medium, and the tech blog Wired rushed to condemn the site, calling it “alt rightâ€, which flies in the face of a direct quote from Torba where he said “we want everyone†and “if there are any centrists, progressives, libertarians, or apolitical people interested in trying something new, I say, please join us.†Of course, Torba (who hold multiple online accounts using the name of Gab), eventually got banned from Medium.
However, coverage of Gab since its launch was few and far between, except for when their apps were blocked by Apple and Google’s app stores because of “hate speech.†Things were relatively peaceful, until one dramatic moment that would change everything for Gab, forever.
A Gab user shot people. While Gab never condoned the attack, and never directly supported the shooter or his ideology, many blamed Gab for inspiring his hate. While odd, this is quite typical of the over-tolerant left. In the leftist’s often psychotic mind, if one does not support a message or idea, they do whatever they can to silence the opposition. If you don’t like conservatives, you ban them. If you don’t like Christian bakers you put them in jail. If you don’t support Nazis, you punch them.
This line of thinking leads the leftist to believe racism is far more widespread than it actually is; it sees a lack of virtue signalling as a clear case of racism that must not be tolerated. However, one underlying factor in the case of Gab is that they are doing nothing wrong. They simply host a website where people can post stuff. They aren’t breaking the law, so the only way to take them on is through tarnishing their reputation. So, the lamestream media barrages Gab with slander whenever they cover it. This is one reason why Gab is viewed as alt-right.
However, there is another major factor at play: the vast majority of Gab’s users are alt-right, and racist. At first, this seems to validate claims that Gab is an alt-right website, designed for racist white Nazis. (Okay, black ones too, but I’m not going over that today.) It’s true that most of Gab’s users are racist; however, this is not due to Gab’s prioritizing certain views over another, nor rules banning anti-racist speech, but two major factors; the first is that the first users to switch to Gab were mostly people who had been banned from Twitter for racist or incendiary speech. The disproportionate and discriminatory nature of Twitter’s bans and censorship have led most of the Twitter exiles to be people from the far-right. Ironically, the far left forces alt-right social media users off their site and drives them to Gab, and then blames Gab for having an alt-right userbase. Then, of course, their loud proclamation that Gab is racist dissuades non-racists from joining the website and condemning the hatred, leaving the alt-right and racism as the predominant voices on the website. Obviously Gab isn’t an alt-right site, designed for neo-Nazis, like the media says they are. Rather, it serves as a haven for free speech and freedom of expression. Several progressives have joined the website, after all. But the media focuses only on the fact that the alt-right can use the site without being afraid of getting banned. That is the reason they are attacked, because in the end, some people want only their voices and perspectives to be heard.
Written by Casey Rollins.