On Monday night, millions of Parler users suddenly found that the site was no longer available. Amazon had followed through on its threat to purge the site from the internet.
Parler is suing, of course (and looks to have an excellent case against the corporate giant), but in the meantime, Parler’s loss is Gab’s gain.
Social network Gab is benefitting from the suspension of several Twitter accounts – including Donald Trump‘s – and the taking offline of rival Parler, its CEO said Monday.
Between 600,000 and 700,000 internet users are registering on the platform every day, Andrew Torba, who is also a co-founder, said in a video posted on Twitter.
Gab registered more than 40 million unique visitors over the past week, Torba added, quadruple the site’s total traffic in December, according to analysis company SimilarWeb.
“This is our moment to shine,” Torba said in another video posted on Friday.
Gab has certainly earned its stripes. Ever since its launch in 2016, Gab has fended off every attempt by the tech monopolies to crush it out of existence. Kicked off servers? They bought their own. Banned on app stores? Download the app direct from the website. Time and again, Gab has proved the adage that “conservativism is the new punk rock” by living out the punk rock ethos of DIY and working around the mainstream to directly appeal to users.
The greatest coup for Gab would be to secure the endorsement of President Trump.
Torba said he was in contact with Trump’s team about opening a real account on Gab, which the platform has already prepared.
Gab’s twin millstones have been, firstly, keeping up with its own success, and secondly, living down its reputation.
On the first front, the site is experiencing a significant slowdown and frequent outages at present, as it is swamped with new users fleeing Twitter and Facebook.
As to the second: it’s mostly a media-concocted lie. Mostly.
Only a fool would deny that genuine extremists are a dismayingly loud presence on Gab. A quantitative survey of its users in 2019 showed that its userbase skewed heavily to the centre-right; only a very small percentage of users were genuinely “far-right”. But, just as the Twitter conversation is dominated by a small but very vocal and persistent clique of extreme leftists, Gab’s real Nazis are a yammering pack making a noise out of all proportion to their numerical presence.
As Gab user Johann Cater says:
You may have heard Gab is a Far Right Nazi site. I’ve been here four years and it really isn’t. There are a small percentage of Jew bothering Nazi socialist types but the vast majority here are just normal centre-right conservative folk. Some of the NatSocs like a nutter called Socrates are hilarious. He’s convinced Der Jews did 9/11 as well as sank the Titanic and they’re hiding the fact that Earth is flat from us too. They have their official National Socialist group you can join if you like. But don’t post “The Jews are great aren’t they lads” as I did or they’ll boot you out.
Johann Cater/Gab
Gab is also repeatedly linked by the media to Pittsburgh synagogue attacker Robert Bowers, who posted his intention to carry out the massacre on Gab. Yet Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant broadcast his atrocity live on Facebook – so, logically, Facebook should also be condemned by the media as a “hate site”.
“They’re trying to frame Gab as a place where violence is organized which is absolutely not true, we have zero tolerance for the promotion of violence,” said Torba.
“There’s no place for illegal activity on Gab.”
Gab in fact does monitor and report genuine incitement to violence on its platform to the appropriate authorities.
For new users, the clue to using Gab without getting yapped at by extremists is to realise that Gab does not proactively censor speech, like Facebook or Twitter. Instead, Gab leaves it to users to decide what they don’t want to hear. So, get on Gab and hit that Mute button if you have to. For every neo-Nazi cretin, there’s a hundred centre-right free-speakers. There’s even some leftists who aren’t completely bonkers.
“We’re going to save our country, folks, and Gab is going to help do that by saving free speech on the internet,” Torba said.
International Business Times
A word of warning: Gab is a victim of its own success just at the moment. If the site is running painfully slow, give its team time to catch up with all the new GabFam.
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