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politics and politicians Title: New social network Gab.ai preaches freedom of expression for internet users [pro-Trump] Founded by Andrew Torba, an open Trump supporter, the site follows the coattails of Facebook and Twitter’s recent battles with user censorship, including perhaps most notably, Twitter’s banishment of controversial conservative Internet personality Milo Yiannopoulos for his harassment campaign against actor Leslie Jones. Torba sees the alternative to sites like Twitter and Facebook, and while it has a long, long way to go, Gab.ai has garnered “more than 2.7 million pageviews on 240,000 posts, with people spending an average of 12 minutes on the site each time they log in,” according to Buzzfeed News. The site has the basic functionality to follow other users, and, like Reddit, features an upvote and downvote system on posts that appear in their feed. The most upvoted posts appear in a popular, or trending tab. The creators’ beliefs regarding the First Amendment aren’t tucked away in a privacy or site policies section. Rather, the home page flaunts a quote from British Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie: “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” While the site’s initial popularity is impressive, the potential is most likely short-lived, following the life cycle of social networks like Ello or Preach, which faded over time. Torba expressed to BuzzFeed News his frustration with current social networks like Facebook and Twitter and their ability to determine right from wrong, and moderate content for their users. This, he said, was a large factor behind the creation of Gab. “What makes the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly qualified to tell us what is ‘news’ and what is ‘trending’ and to define what ‘harassment’ means?” he said. “It didn’t feel right to me, and I wanted to change it, and give people something that would be fair and just.” While there are some limits to freedom of speech on the site — threats of violence, illegal pornography, or the release of personal information without consent — Gab aims to put the onus on users to handle harassment. Through keyword filtering, user muting, and the ability to only see content from verified users (the process involves presenting a valid form of ID), Gab removes itself from the moderator role, which it sees as the problem on social media today. While the site feels like a conservative chatroom, as Buzzfeed News observed, Torba insisted that Gab is meant for people of many ideologies. “Gab is not for any particular group of people, political leaning, race, beliefs, or anything,” he told Buzzfeed. “Anybody is welcome to express themselves on Gab.” Poster Comment: If you wanted to try a free-speech pro-Trump social networking site that doesn't sell your data, this would be the one. The owner was openly pro-Trump way before anyone thought Trump was a real candidate. A lot of the social media celebs on YouTube and Facebook are migrating to Gab.ai as they get demonetized on other leftwing-dominated social media platforms. It is a real experiment in how much free speech you can tolerate on a public social media site. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tooconservative (#0)
I'm on Gab.ai.com and have been there for long time. I much prefer it to Twitter/@Jack. The site has come a long way. It has a way to go, mostly user friendly structure. But, it works and the people are much nicer than those on Twitter. It also enables you to produce your own content, vids, etc. and a decent tv/radio set up. Not bad for a new site. GAB inherited a large number of Twitter refugees....10,000 in one week alone. Trump has a membership. He has only posted there 2 times tmk, but it's there. Many other vip are there as well. Torba knows Bannon, so the Trump team is well aware of the site. Come check it out.
Thanks for the input. I posted this old review of Gab to highlight their policy consistency as a site. I was kind of kicking myself for not finding a more recent review of how the site has changed since 2016 but I wanted to emphasize its total free-speech aspect and its owner's pro-Trump politics. And a belated welcome to LF. Don't be a stranger.
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