Gab (social network)
Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service known for its far-right userbase.[2][3][4][5] Widely described as a haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon,[6][7] Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms.[8][9][10] Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017,[3][11] Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values.[12][13][14][15] Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem.[13][16] Antisemitism is prominent in the site's content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory.[13][14][15][12] Gab is based in Pennsylvania.[17]
Type of site
English
2016
Andrew Torba
Gab, Gab AI, Gab News, Gab TV, Gab Chat, Gab Ads, Gab Trends, GabPro, Dissenter (web browser), Dissenter (browser extension)
Yes
Required to post
100,000 (estimated active)
5 million (total) as of 2022
August 15, 2016 (private beta)
May 8, 2017 (open registration)
July 4, 2019 (switch to customized Mastodon fork and relaunched)
Active
Researchers note that Gab has been "repeatedly linked to radicalization leading to real-world violent events".[18] The site received extensive public scrutiny following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018. The perpetrator of the attack, Robert Gregory Bowers, had a history of making extreme, antisemitic postings on the platform, as well as messages indicating an immediate intent to cause harm before the shooting.[19][20][21] After the shooting, Gab briefly went offline when it was dropped by its hosting provider and denied service by several payment processors.[22][23][24] In 2021, Gab was among the platforms used to plan the United States Capitol attack on January 6.[25] Also in 2021, Gab suffered from a data breach called "GabLeaks".[26]
Gab's functionality is similar to that of Twitter.[27][28] Users of Gab can publish posts, initiate private chats, join groups, livestream and buy products.[17] The company also maintains an email service, cloud service, text messaging service, advertisement sales system, server farm, marketplace website, news aggregation website, advertising platform, video-conferencing platform, blog, video hosting, web browser, and browser extension to allow commenting on third-party websites.[13][29][30][31][32][33][34] In July 2019, Gab switched its software infrastructure to a fork of Mastodon, a free and open-source social network platform. Mastodon released a statement in protest, denouncing Gab as trying to "monetize and platform racist content while hiding behind the banner of free speech".[35][36]
History[edit]
2016–2018[edit]
Gab was founded in 2016 by chief executive officer (CEO) Andrew Torba and chief technology officer (CTO) Ekrem Büyükkaya, who had previously worked together at advertising technology company Automate Ads (formerly Kuhcoon).[1][3] Torba started working on the site in May 2016 and on August 15, 2016, Gab launched in private beta, billing itself as a "free speech" alternative to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.[37][38][11] Torba has cited "the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly", "social justice bullying", "the rise of online censorship during the 2016 election." and an alleged bias against conservative articles by Facebook as his reasons for creating Gab.[39][37][40][17] Gab AI, Inc. was incorporated on September 9, 2016.[41] Utsav Sanduja later joined Gab as chief operating officer (COO).[14]
Torba said in November 2016 that the site's user base had expanded significantly following censorship controversies involving major social media companies,[42] including the permanent suspensions of several prominent alt-right accounts from Twitter after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[43] During November 2016, Gab gained 5,000 new users per week.[44] By mid-December 2016, there were 200,000 people on Gab's waiting list.[45] At the time, Torba claimed that Gab had about 130,000 registered users.[46]
On May 8, 2017, Gab exited private beta.[11][47]
During August and September 2017, immediately following the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Gab experienced another increase in new users, gaining around 3,300 per week.[48][44]
In early September 2017, Gab faced pressure from its domain registrar Asia Registry to take down a post by The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, giving Gab 48 hours to do so.[49] Gab later removed the post.[49] Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation commented that this pressure was part of an increase in politically motivated domain name seizures.[50]
On August 9, 2018, Torba announced that Microsoft Azure, Gab's host, had threatened to suspend the site for "weeks/months" if they failed to remove two antisemitic posts made by Patrick Little, a U.S. Senate candidate who had been ejected from the Republican Party for his antisemitism.[51][52] According to The Verge, the posts "express intense anti-Semitism and meet any reasonable definition of hate speech".[52] Little said in the posts that Jews should be raised as "livestock" and that he intended to destroy a "holohoax memorial".[53] In response to Azure's threat, Little posted on Gab that "I'll delete the posts, but this is a violation of our rights as Americans".[53] Gab's Twitter account also asserted that Little had self-deleted the posts, but this was contradicted by Torba who said Gab itself had deleted the posts which "unquestionably" broke their "user guidelines".[54] On the same day, Alex Jones interviewed Torba on The Alex Jones Show during his coverage of his own permanent ban from YouTube.[55] Little was suspended indefinitely from Gab in late November 2018 for encouraging harassment of private individuals; Gab claimed that although Little's account had posted hate speech, it was not the cause of the ban.[56]
According to Gab's filings with the SEC, around 635,000 users were registered on Gab by September 10, 2018.[57] On September 12, 2018, Gab purchased the Gab.com domain name from Sedo for $220,000 (~$262,972 in 2023) on Flippa, an online business marketplace; it had previously been using the domain Gab.ai.[58][59]
During the 2018 Brazilian presidential election from September to October 2018, many right-wing Brazilian political pages were banned from Facebook for breaching the site's hate speech rules. In response, many administrators of these pages began promoting Gab as an alternative platform; subsequently, Brazilians became the second-largest demographic of Gab users. Jair Bolsonaro's party, the Social Liberal Party, has an official Gab account.[60]
In December 2018, Gab sponsored Turning Point USA's 2018 "Student Action Summit" in Palm Beach, Florida. Days before the event, Turning Point USA removed Gab from the list of sponsors without explanation. Gab later posted a press release protesting the unexplained removal.[61]
Users and content[edit]
Users[edit]
The site has attracted far-right or alt-right users who have been banned or suspended from other services. Since its foundation in 2016, high-profile participants have included former Breitbart News writer and polemicist Milo Yiannopoulos;[154] citizen journalist Tim Pool;[155] conservative commentator Dave Rubin;[155] former British National Party leader Nick Griffin;[77] Australian neo-Nazis Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson and Australian MP George Christensen;[156][157] Republican Party representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Paul Gosar;[158][159] former Republican Party of Texas chairman Allen West;[155] former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon;[160] Dutch politician and Leader of the Party for Freedom Geert Wilders;[161] and white supremacists Richard B. Spencer,[8][39] Tila Tequila,[42] Vox Day,[162] and Christopher Cantwell.[163] Far-right political parties and party candidates, including Britain First,[164] Spanish Vox,[165] and UKIP candidates such as Mark Meechan[27] and Carl Benjamin,[166] have also been participants. Following the Christchurch mosque shootings and a reduced tolerance on other social media for hate speech, several members of United Patriots Front, an Australian far-right extremist organization, urged their supporters to follow them on Gab after being banned from Twitter and Facebook.[167] On January 24, 2021, the Republican Party of Texas made a post on its Twitter account asking their followers to join Gab.[168] In March 2021, the Republican Party of Texas voted to delete their Gab account.[155] The Germany-based far-right disinformation outlet Disclose.tv maintains an account on Gab.[169][5]
Former Gab users include white nationalist political candidate Paul Nehlen, who was removed from the site for doxing the man behind the "Ricky Vaughn" Twitter account;[170] and hacker, internet troll, and former Daily Stormer writer Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, who was banned for calling for genocide against Jews and endorsing terrorist Timothy McVeigh.[50] Auernheimer's activity prompted threats from Gab's then webhost Asia Registry to remove the comments or they would refuse to host the site.[50] Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi activist who "once drove a significant amount of interaction on the small site",[83] was banned from the site in March 2019 after using the site to advocate in the wake of the 2019 Christchurch shootings that future mass killers should target and murder left-wing activists, instead of "random people in mosques and synagogues", in order to effectively silence left-wing activism.[171]
Torba has described the average Gab user as "a Conservative Christian with a family and interests in hunting, fishing, cars, camping, news, politics, rural living, homeschooling, privacy, free speech, cryptocurrency, guns, and cooking".[75] Torba stated in 2016 that Gab is "not designed specifically for conservatives" and has stated that "we welcome everyone and always will" and "We want everyone to feel safe on Gab, but we're not going to police what is hate speech and what isn't", although he admitted that Gab was attracting "a lot of people on the right because they are being censored, so it's understandable they are migrating over".[42][8] In November 2016, Torba told The Washington Post that "I didn't set out to build a 'conservative social network' by any means ... but I felt that it was time for a conservative leader to step up and to provide a forum where anybody can come and speak freely without fear of censorship".[43] In filings made with the SEC in March 2018, Gab stated that its target market is "conservative, libertarian, nationalists, and populist internet users around the world" "who are seeking alternative news media platforms like Breitbart.com, DrudgeReport.com, Infowars.com".[3][14] In an interview with Vice News in August 2019, Torba acknowledged that Gab was right-leaning, saying that "any online community that is explicitly pro-free speech will inevitably become right-leaning" and claimed that "this is because in the free market of ideas right-leaning ideas win".[32]
In early 2018, a cross-university group released a research study on posts made to the site. According to that study, the site hosted a high volume of racism and hate speech,[172] and primarily "attracts alt-right users, conspiracy theorists, and other trolls".[173] The study listed Carl Benjamin, Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern, and Paul Joseph Watson as some of the more popular users of the site. The authors also performed an automated search using Hatebase and found "hate words" in 5.4% of Gab posts, which they stated was 2.4 times higher than their occurrence on Twitter but less than half that found on /pol/, a political discussion board on 4chan.[16] The authors of the study stated in their conclusion that while anyone can join Gab, the site is aligned with the alt-right and its use of free speech rhetoric "merely functions as a shield for its alt-right users to hide behind".[16][172]
A 2018 paper authored by behavioral researchers that was presented at the 2018 SBP-BRiMS collected and analyzed "several million Gab messages" posted on the Gab website from the platform's launch in August 2016 to February 2018. The researchers then divided the posts into 33 groups, including topics such as pop culture. The researchers found that the largest category of posts on Gab was politics, comprising 56% of all posts collected and analyzed. The researchers also found that the largest subcategory within politics was "Ideology, religion and race", comprising 10.23% of all posts. According to paper co-author William D. Adler, a political science professor at Northeastern Illinois University, the subcategory "Ideology, religion, and race" "includes topics such as changing racial demographics, threats to Christianity, and concerns about Jewish influence", adding "It's a lot of what you might think of as white nationalism". Other subcategories within politics included conversations about "Trump, Clinton and conspiracies", comprising 5.10% of all posts, and "Globalism", a dog whistle for antisemitic conspiracy theories, comprising 1.95% of all posts. The researchers also linked Gab's growth to the far-right. According to Alder, Gab's free speech rhetoric is "part of the game here, of course", adding that "They don't want to say [what they're really doing] out loud, so they say 'free speech, free speech.'"[44][174] Based on the results of the paper, Noah Berlatsky of The Forward noted: "In contrast, there is little discussion of left topics that might be considered to push the edges of acceptable discourse. There are no Stalinist apologia, for example, nor calls for violent Communist revolution. More, there is not an equivalent on the left for Gab, or for the other right wing social media networks like WrongThink (modeled on Facebook) or GoyFundMe (a right wing Kickstarter, which even has an implicitly anti-Semitic name.) Extremist social media bubbles are not a both sides problem; they are a right-wing phenomenon".[44]
A report issued by the ADL and the Network Contagion Research Institute on March 12, 2019, found that when Twitter bans "extremist voices", Gab's user base grows.[175] Researchers from Northeastern Illinois University publishing in First Monday wrote in August 2019 that many of the sites shared by Gab's users "are associated with state-sponsored propaganda from foreign governments".[10] Researchers publishing in e-Extreme wrote in October 2020 that many of Gab's users are Trump supporters who feel they are being censored on mainstream platforms, and "this sense of persecution is the reason why many join the platform, while an overarching shared sense of victimhood – whether as members of a 'white race', free-speech absolutists, or Trump supporters – unites the broader community".[176] In 2021, a study published by an international team of researchers titled "Understanding the Effect of Deplatforming on Social Networks". found that being banned on Twitter or Reddit led those users who were banned to join alternative platforms such as Gab or Parler, which have more lax content moderation. The study also found that while users who move to these platforms have their audience potentially reduced, the users exhibit increased activity and toxicity than they did previously.[177] Also in 2021, researchers found that Gab users are "united by a shared sense of techno-social persecution at the hands of 'Big Tech', a commitment to the ultra-libertarian values of the platform, and in many cases, a material investment in Gab as an Alt-Tech project."[3]
In June 2021, the Lowy Institute noted of Gab's userbase that "Regardless of which narrative a user in Gab's far-right community ascribes to, a shared sense of techno-social persecution is what draws them in and unites them. These users feel safe in the knowledge that they can "speak freely" on the platform, with little fear of being banned or even critiqued, regardless of how extreme their views are".[48]
On October 11, 2021, researcher Sefa Ozalp published a report for the ADL's Center on Extremism (COE) titled "For Twitter Users, Gab's Toxic Content is Just a Click Away", which analyzed how many links to Gab's website were shared on Twitter between June 7, 2021, and August 22, 2021. The report found that, during this time period, more than 112,000 tweets were posted that linked to Gab's website (shared by more than 32,700 users) with a potential reach of more than 254 million views. The report also found that the fifty most shared links to Gab on Twitter "were rife with conspiratorial content and misinformation, some promoted by Gab itself via its verified Twitter account". Out of these fifty most shared links, sixteen "promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories about Covid-19" and twenty-one "contained conspiratorial content by Japanese-language accounts", including false claims about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and QAnon. Ozalp said that the ADL was not advocating for Twitter to completely ban Gab or links to Gab from its platform, instead advocating in favor of Twitter more effectively enforcing its current policies against misinformation and hate speech. Ozalp also said of Twitter that "Even if they are not acting like a knowing or willing contributor to anti-vax or anti-Semitism stuff, they are still playing a part in [the] dissemination of these conspiracy theories or hate, probably without wanting to do so". Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby responded to the report by claiming that Twitter takes action against links to third-party websites that "would otherwise violate our policies if their content were posted directly on Twitter", including COVID-19 misinformation. Busby also said that "As ADL's report acknowledges, we continue to improve our approach to mis- and disinformation". Later on October 11, Torba criticized the ADL's report in a blog post, claiming that it was created in an attempt to "pressure Twitter to censor us". He also accused the organization of being an "anti-Christ, Anti-American, and Anti-White hate organization". In a statement, the ADL said that Torba's response "is consistent with other statements from Gab" and that they "speak for themselves". According to Ozalp, the report is part of a "longer running research series" by the ADL that will include more studies on other social media platforms.[178]
In December 2021, researchers at the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences found that Gab users who shared similar moral values and beliefs with members of their immediate groups were more vulnerable to radicalization, including a higher likelihood of dissemination of hate speech and the use of language intended to dehumanize or threaten violence against users outside of their immediate groups.[179]
A June 2022 report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found that "The deplatforming events following January 6 were a huge boost to Gab, and may have resulted in millions of dollars of income for Gab, potentially keeping it solvent." as well as resulting in "a massive spike in new users" and "thousands of new 'Pro' subscriptions and donations". This helped Gab "fund real-world activities such as the white nationalist AFPAC conference." Gab's growth in users had previously been stagnant with "increasing monetary losses". Secondly, the report found that in 2021 and 2022, Gab "had significant growth in anti-vaccine protest organizing, with 'trucker convoy' groups having tens of thousands of members and high post volume." Thirdly, the report found that "Extreme anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic content is rife [on Gab], with open praise of Nazism, encouragement of violence against minorities, and 'Great Replacement' narratives.", with "such content appear[ing] even in 'mainstream' user groups." Lastly, the report found that "Gab contains much of the same toxic content as "purpose-built" neo-Nazi sites such as Stormfront".[180]
A 2023 study found that there was less polarization of its user base than on Facebook, as well as more open discourse about a variety of topics.[181] The authors of the study believed the major contributor to the lack of polarization was the lack of diversity in the site—essentially being an echo chamber.[181]
Donald Trump[edit]
In early February 2021, multiple media outlets falsely reported that former-President Trump had joined Gab under the handle @realdonaldtrump.[182][183] The Independent speculated "that confusion arose from the presence of a blue check mark indicating the account was verified" and Vice News speculated that the bio of the account, which read "45th President of the United States of America. Uncensored posts from the @realDonaldTrump Feed", had also caused confusion.[184]
The Gab post that was mistaken to be from Trump was actually from Torba and featured a copy of a genuine letter sent by Trump's lawyers to Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who had called on Trump to testify at his second impeachment hearing.[182][184] Thousands of users on Gab were also led to believe after the post was made that Trump had joined the platform under the handle.[183][185] Torba responded to the false reports in a blog post, saying that "@realdonaldtrump is and always has been a mirror archive of POTUS' tweets and statements that we've run for years. We've always been transparent about this and would obviously let people know if the President starts using it".[123] He also criticized the media outlets that falsely reported that Trump had joined the platform.[182] Also in response to the false reports, the @realdonaldtrump Gab account made a post that was pinned saying that the account is reserved for Trump and urged users of Gab to send messages to Trump asking him to join the platform.[185]
In March 2021, Forbes reported that representatives of former Senior Advisor Jared Kushner in January had asked for equity in Gab in exchange for Kushner's father-in-law Trump joining the platform. Torba declined the offer, saying "No, I'm not entertaining that".[186]
In a June 2021 interview with far-right conspiracy theory website TruNews, Torba claimed that Kushner wanted Gab to remove antisemitic content and users from its platform before Trump could join, saying that "He called them Jew-haters, I called them Jew criticizers" and that "It's a free-speech platform, so as long as you're not saying anything illegal, as long as you're not making threats of violence, you're allowed to speak your mind and have an opinion about things, and I was not going to compromise on that position". No independent confirmation has been made that such a negotiation took place.[40]
In August 2022, Adam Bies, a man in rural Mercer County, Pennsylvania, was charged with making death threats against FBI agents on Gab after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.[187][188] Torba had given data from Bies to the FBI, including an email, IP addresses, and chat logs. In response, Gab users accused Torba of betraying Gab's userbase and commitment to free speech, as well as likening Torba to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Many users criticized Torba for giving the data to the FBI without a subpoena. In response, Torba did not apologize for cooperating with the FBI, said that "threatening anyone—federal agent or not—is not the right way to do it", and said that Gab is dedicated to upholding "lawful speech and lawful speech only." While some Gab users accepted the response from Torba, others continued to criticize him. In response to the continued criticism, Torba said that "People who threaten to murder people on the internet are not my 'pals.'"[188]
COVID-19 vaccine avoidance and disinformation[edit]
In late July 2021, Torba claimed in a Gab post that he was "getting flooded" with text messages from members of the U.S. military who claimed that they would be court-martialed if they refused a COVID-19 vaccine.[189] The post amassed 10,000 likes and shares.[189] Torba also posted documents on Gab's news site that contain misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and claimed in an email in response to The New York Times that "I'm telling the truth" and "Your Facebook-funded 'fact checkers' like Graphika are wrong and are the people peddling disinformation here".[189] Torba also posted a conversation he had with the Times reporter, saying "I am sharing this all with you now to let you know how these wicked people operate and to shine a light on their lies, deception, and anti-Christian attacks. They aren't just attacking me, they are attacking any and all dissent and opposition to their libido dominandi (lust for power)".[75]
In August 2021, Alex Kaplan of Media Matters for America noted that Torba "is trying to use his platform to sabotage coronavirus vaccination efforts".[190]
In October 2021, John Gallagher of LGBTQ Nation wrote that "A visitor to Gab will find misinformation about COVID, calls to arrest NIH [NIAID] head Dr. Anthony Fauci, and lies about the 2020 presidential election. One post, liked by more than 4,000 people, shows a gloating Trump under the line, 'Show me a pic of pregnant Michelle Obama, and I'll concede the 2020 election.'"[191]
On March 14, 2022, Torba shared a baseless QAnon conspiracy theory claiming that Trump was mispronouncing the word "China" on purpose to secretly signal that Ukraine was behind the development of COVID-19.[143]
Userbase estimates[edit]
In November 2021, when asked by The Washington Post about Gab's Brazilian user base, Torba responded in an email on November 8, saying "Ya my comment is 'God bless Jair Bolsonaro and Jesus Christ is King.' No further comment."[192]
As of March 2021, Gab has 4 million registered users. According to Micah Lee writing for The Intercept, the "vast majority" of registered Gab accounts are inactive, and the number of active users on the site is closer to 100,000.[193] In 2021, Torba claimed that Gab has 15 million unique monthly visitors.[75] As of August 2021, Torba has more than 3 million followers on Gab,[75] with all Gab users following him by default.[142]
As of the summer of 2022, Gab had over 5 million registered users.[34]
Antisemitic content[edit]
Rita Katz, a researcher and analyst of terrorism and extremism, wrote in Politico Magazine in October 2018 that Robert Bowers' extreme antisemitic postings were "anything but an anomaly" on the website, and, "[they highlight] concerns about its growing facilitation of white nationalism and other far-right movements". She found that Gab user profiles often contained Nazi symbolism, and Stormfront users had praised the site as a place to post antisemitic content. Katz found that many Gab users were celebrating immediately after Bowers' massacre against the Tree of Life synagogue, and wrote that far-right communities' rise to popularity on Gab is "remarkably similar" to the rise of ISIS on social media.[194] In November 2018, Twitter user Jason Baumgartner, who owns a website dedicated to detecting hate speech on social media, found that using the search term "oven" on Gab brought up the terms "Jews", "Holocaust", and "Hitler" the most among thousands of analyzed comments.[195]
Joshua Fisher-Birch of the Counter Extremism Project said in 2019: "Gab has always been attractive to fascist and neo-Nazi groups that advocate violence".[36] The same month, non-profit left-wing media collective Unicorn Riot discovered that individual Gab users led by alt-right figure Brittany Pettibone organized on the video game chat and VoIP platform Discord and that some of the discussions centered on antisemitism and achieving "ethno-nationalism".[196] The Jewish Chronicle reported in January 2019 that they had found material on the site accusing Jews of responsibility for the September 11 attacks. After setting up a fake account on Gab, the newspaper's journalist Ben Weich was quickly "presented with a steady stream of Holocaust denial, antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories – as well as those venerating Adolf Hitler". Posts he discovered included at least one user who used a swastika as their profile picture and stated: "The parasitic Jews will fully deserve the genocide that's coming upon them" and "They do not deserve mercy, expulsion will never fix a rat problem, extermination does".[197]
In addition to allowing Holocaust denial and other forms of antisemitism, Gab has been used as a recruitment tool by several neo-Nazi and alt-right groups, including Identity Evropa, Patriot Front, and the Atomwaffen Division, a terrorist organization tied to a number of murders.[194][198]
Cultural Marxism, a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory, is a popular topic on Gab.[199]
Hosting and termination of services by web services providers[edit]
On December 14, 2016, Apple Inc. declined Gab's submission of its app to the Apple App Store, citing pornographic content as the reason. Also on December 14, Twitter cut off Gab's access to the Twitter API after Gab introduced a feature to its social network that allowed users to share their Gab posts directly to Twitter.[211] In response, Torba said in a December 15 Periscope livestream that "This is targeted, and we believe that we're being singled out" and that "This is the nonsense from Silicon Valley. This is the monopoly and level of control that they have".[211] On January 21, 2017, a revised version of the app that blocked pornography by default was also rejected due to "objectionable content" including "references to religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, or other targeted groups that could be offensive to many users".[212] In response, Torba accused Apple of "double standards and extreme scrutiny" "while allowing Big Social apps to display the same and arguably worse content in their own apps".[212] Gab launched its Android app for the Google Play Store in May 2017.[11] Later that year, on August 17, Google removed Gab's app from the Play Store for violating its policy against hate speech, stating that the app did not "demonstrate a sufficient level of moderation, including for content that encourages violence and advocates hate against groups of people".[213] On September 14, 2017, Gab filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, but dropped the suit on October 22, 2017, in favor of lobbying Congress to take action against "monopolized tech giants".[214][215][216] In early October 2018, Gab's Stripe account was suspended due to adult content on Gab.[217] On October 3, Gab tweeted in response: "We've had this content and a NSFW setting for two years with no issues from them until now".[217]
On October 27, 2018, the day of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, PayPal, GoDaddy, and Medium terminated their relationship with Gab,[66] and PayPal released a statement that it had done so based on its review of accounts that may engage in the "perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance".[67] Later on the same day, Gab announced on Twitter that Joyent, Gab's hosting provider, would terminate their service on October 29 at 9:00 am ET. Gab also said on Twitter that they expected their site to be down for weeks.[68][70] Stripe and Backblaze also terminated their services with Gab after the shooting.[71][72] On October 29, Gab claimed in a tweet that they "took the site down early on purpose last night because we knew the media would take the bait and have stories on it for this morning".[73] After the site was taken down, Gab's homepage was changed to a message saying it was down due to being "under attack" and being "systematically no-platformed",[77] adding that Gab would be inaccessible for a "period of time".[78]
Gab returned online on November 4, 2018, after Epik agreed to register the domain, and Sibyl Systems Ltd. began to provide webhosting.[218][24] Epik is an American company that provides domain registration and other web services, and is known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist content.[219][220][221] Sibyl Systems was founded on October 22, 2018, days before the shooting that resulted in Gab's termination from their previous webhost, and according to the SPLC, was possibly based in Norway or England.[86] Sibyl was later acquired by Epik[222] in the second quarter of 2019.[223]
In August 2019, Amazon Web Services ceased serving Gab's fundraising site due to Gab violating Amazon's policy on hateful content.[224] In response, Torba said he welcomed Amazon's decision, claiming that media coverage of the decision had only brought more attention to Gab and resulted in investment offers.[32]
As of January 2021, Gab was still using Epik as a domain registrar. Instead of hosting its service in the cloud, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gab had been renting hardware in an undisclosed data center. Gab was also using services from Cloudflare.[225]
Company[edit]
Gab was founded by CEO Andrew Torba and CTO Ekrem Büyükkaya[1] and the company was incorporated on September 9, 2016.[41]
Torba, who described himself in 2016 as a lifelong "conservative Republican Christian", was previously removed from the Y Combinator alumni network in 2016 because of harassment concerns, starting when he used "build the wall" on Twitter alongside a screenshot of a post by a Latino startup founder that read: "being a black, Muslim or woman in the USA is going to be very scary".[252][253] He also made a post on Facebook that said "All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it" and "I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks".[252] Until 2016, Torba was registered as a Democrat, although he voted Republican in presidential elections.[228] In 2017, Torba described himself as a "cultural libertarian", a classical liberal, and an "American nationalist patriot".[228] As of 2021, Torba says that he lives in a "forest in Pennsylvania", where he is plotting a "Silent Christian Secession".[120] As of 2021, Torba has a policy of "not communicating with non-Christian and/or communist journos".[120][159] In April 2021, Torba endorsed accelerationism, a term used by white supremacists to mean intensifying social conflicts and collapse.[254] In 2022, Torba described himself as a Christian nationalist.[17] In November 2022, Torba wrote that "The Jews in positions of power do not care that you have the freedom of speech in this country, they care that people like Ye have the freedom to reach a lot of people and criticize their power and oversized influence in our culture, government, and society."[254] In January 2023, Torba called ChatGPT "satanic" and advocated for Christians to build an artificial intelligence "for the glory of God."[255]
Utsav Sanduja later joined Gab as COO.[14] Sanduja left the company in June 2018. In an interview with ABC News, Sanduja said that his wife, who works at a synagogue, had been doxed and received death threats while he worked at Gab: "apparently some of her personal information was found out and my family and I went through quite a lot of abuse, a systemic targeting from really vicious people, and honestly it just took a toll on us mentally".[256] On October 28, Büyükkaya announced his resignation from Gab the day after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, citing "attacks from the American press" that "ha[d] taken a toll on [him] personally".[14][76] In November 2020, former Facebook software engineer Fosco Marotto joined Gab as CTO.[134]
In December 2016, Gab was headquartered in Austin, Texas.[235] In September 2017, Gab moved its headquarters to Pennsylvania.[257] U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, as late as March 2018, stated that Torba operated Gab out of a WeWork coworking space in Philadelphia.[256] A WeWork spokesperson said that Torba had become a member under his own name, not Gab's, and that his time there had been brief.[256] In late October 2018, a Gab spokesperson told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Gab was no longer based in Philadelphia.[256] As of January 2019, Gab is headquartered in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania.[41]
Design[edit]
In 2016, Gab's color theme was a minimalist combination of black text on white panels with pink hashtags and usernames. Pro users had a contrasted top bar in dark blue. The interface displayed messages in a Twitter-like vertical scroll timeline with an option to upvote or downvote each post. The site also aggregated popular posts and trending topic hashtags.[42][230] As of 2017, users could sort comments and posts in a subject by time or score. Default biographies for new users displayed a randomly chosen quotation about the importance of free speech.[228] Users also had the option to "mute" other users and terms.[2] As of July 2020, Gab's user interface was similar to that of Twitter, having a dashboard in the middle of the page with trending content on the left and menus on the right.[30] As of 2021, posts on Gab are limited to 5,000 characters.[264][265]
In early 2017, the option to downvote posts was temporarily removed from Gab, with the company's then-COO Sanduja explaining that they were removed due to them being used to troll and to harass women, and also stated that: "there were a lot of social justice warriors and members of the far left coming into our site essentially trying to start a brouhaha".[228] In July 2017, Gab implemented a system where people who downvoted others (through spamming) would have their accounts downvoted as well and their ability to leave downvotes would be revoked.[266][267][268] As of 2019, Gab uses a scoring system, which allows users with more than 250 points to downvote posts, but users must "spend points" in order to do so.[269]
In 2018, the default profile picture for new users to the site featured NPC Wojak, a meme popular on far-right websites.[270]
A frog named "Gabby" was Gab's logo from 2016 to 2018.[39] The logo has been compared to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character used by the alt-right.[226] Torba denied that the frog logo was a reference to Pepe and stated that the logo was inspired by Bible verses (Exodus 8:1–12 and Psalms 78:45) and various other traditional symbolic meanings.[235] Sanduja said that the frog was meant to symbolize the "revenge against those who went against mainstream conservative voices on the internet".[172] As of September 2018, the frog logo is no longer used.[77]