'Free speech' social platform Gab has gone offline

mashable.com ^ | 10/29/2018 | By Johnny Lieu

[Red Badger]

Gab has gone offline.

The self-described "free speech social media platform" is taking time off the internet, after landing under the spotlight when it was discovered the suspect involved in Pittsburgh's synagogue shooting was a poster and user on the site.

SEE ALSO: Gab, a racist-friendly alt-Twitter, has been banned by PayPal and others

Gab posted a message on its homepage, announcing that the site will be "inaccessible for a period of time" as it works "around the clock" to transition a new hosting provider.

The platform has been banned by PayPal, and fellow online payment service Stripe is looking to cut off the site. Gab's new hosting service, Joyent, reportedly will suspend the site from 9 a.m. ET on Monday, Oct. 29.

pic.twitter.com/MR39HQflIE

— Gab.com🍂 (@getongab) October 29, 2018

Gab's domain registrar, GoDaddy, has also asked for the platform to take its business elsewhere.

"We have informed Gab.com that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service," GoDaddy told Mashable in a statement.

"In response to complaints received over the weekend, GoDaddy investigated and discovered numerous instances of content on the site that both promotes and encourages violence against people."

BREAKING: @GoDaddy is threatening to suspend our domain (which is worth six figures) if we do not transfer to a new provider by tomorrow. This is madness. @realDonaldTrump @parscale I hope you are paying attention. pic.twitter.com/5hsXKW5NvB

— Gab.com🍂 (@getongab) October 29, 2018

Publishing platform Medium has also recently suspended Gab's account, under which the social site had made a statement stating that it "unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence." This statement has now been made unavailable.

Mashable has reached out to Medium for comment.

Gab is now banned from @medium, they are silencing our statement on the shooting. Here is an archive of it. You are pathetic @ev https://t.co/NJoT22v7WU https://t.co/m0AtHsBp4Q

— Gab.com🍂 (@getongab) October 29, 2018

[Perseverando]

Hey guys, mind if I join the conversation? Can I share this from Matt Bracken that he posted on Freezoxee.com ?

"To FreeZoxee visitors: if your overriding concern in life is to grant the right to anyone to post “GAS THE JOOOOZ!” memes with a Hitler avatar and swastikas and SS top banner theme, then it’s true, you would not be happy or welcome on FreeZoxee.com.

Like Gab, FZ is private property, not a public utility. Your house, your rules. Our house, our rules.

If Torba at Gab had not been such an idiot and allowed a happy clubhouse for nutjobs like Bowers to meet and reinforce their genocidal fantasies, Gab would still be operating. Now it will be known forever as the place where genocidal maniacs were free to post “funny” memes showing Zyklon B canisters, with the promise to finish what Hitler started.

On private property like FreeZoxee, we are not so consumed by “free speech uber alles” that we will permit genocidal anti-American Nazi freaks to take a shit on our cake. It’s our bakery. Communists, National Socialists and Islamo-fascists are not welcome. They don’t come to add to an honest discussion, but to hijack it, drive out normal people, and destroy free speech. They are not part of free speech in the frame of freedom and democracy. They are killers of free speech like all fascists are. I thought we settled this issue in April of 1945 but I guess not. We will not give a microphone to guys like Robert Bowers. There are still dozens just like him on Gab, the only difference being he said “screw the optics, I’m going in.” And he did “go in.” Right after posting his intentions on Gab.

Torba made a very bad decision to allow those freaks a happy clubhouse on Gab. An analysis will show how this Nazi freak clubhouse reinforced and amplified their individual pathologies. These Nazi freaks should be shunned by all Americans and not given a cozy meeting room. This does not mean you can’t post anything critical about Jews. It has to be substantiated. You just can’t goose-step into FZ under a Swastika and take a Nazi shit in our punch bowl. Torba did this, and now he’s paying for his mistake.

And you are welcome to start or join any Nazi-loving website that you like. It’s still a free country. (Of course, if these neo-Nazi freaks ever came to power, America would not be free anymore, but just another Hitlerian nightmare with gas chambers and ovens for people like me, who believe in freedom.)"

I believe this Freezoxee meme is Matt's creation:

[Boomer]

You really don’t understand the concept of freedom of speech!

I went to that site you posted and won’t be going back. It looks creepy and weird.

You have all the earmarks of leftist thinking.

If a conservative doesn’t like something on the Internet he doesn’t look at it.
If a leftist doesn’t like something on the Internet he wants it banned.

You fit the latter category.

[Skywise]

Because it doesn’t stop at the extremeists - antifa is hate speech but they’re supported along with their violent actions which are buried or accepted.

Only ONE side is getting attacked here and you’re happily supporting deplatforming and silencing SPEECH because “whatcha gonna do?”

It’s one thing for gab or twitter to decide what kind of posters they want.

It’s another for hosting services and payment processors to cut off whole businesses because one guy (who didn’t even talk about shooting people up) went off on a rampage.

But hey buddy - keep fighting the good fight.

[i_robot73]

>
Does Free Speech include Hate Speech?
>

Please define “hate speech”

>
Does Free Speech include anger and rage?
>

Ask our Founders. Was the DoI considered anger/rage? How ‘bout any of the fliers\sermons from the pulpit of the time? (Anti)Federalist papers?

>
This is mental illness on display.
>

This is why the (C) moniker has as much meaning as ‘hate speech’: Anything you want it to mean == means nothing.

[Skywise]

There are plenty of leftist trolls on here and you can tell who they are from their postings.

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “There are plenty of leftist trolls on here and you can tell who they are from their postings.” <<

Double dittos on that!

[Salgak]

Actually, there’s a PayPal alternative in the works.

“Initiative Q”. The idea is to set up a payment network outside the current banking structure. . . .

I’m giving it a try. Won’t be up and running for a while, but what they’re saying makes technical sense to **this** techie.

Anyway, I have invites. Take a look, see if it looks interesting. At worst, you’ll get another newsletter you can unsubscribe from. . .

https://initiativeq.com/invite/Sm6-8O4nm

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “after landing under the spotlight when it was discovered the suspect involved in Pittsburgh’s synagogue shooting was a poster and user on the site.” <<

I am betting that “his posting” on the site was contrived by the same people that actually planned the fake bombs.

(Brennan & Co.)
.

[Salgak]

Allowing speech nobody finds objectionable is easy. It’s allowing what people find object-able, is the true test of both free speech and Liberty.

“I may not agree with what you say, but will fight to preserve the right for you to say it. . .”

And that’s the nice thing about Gab. . . if I don’t want to hear or see them. . . .I “mute” them, and never see them again. They can speak all they want. Doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to them. . .

[z3n]

I am actually sympathetic to the ‘slippery slope’ aspect of defining hate speech. It’s why I decided to chime in here on this thread. It’s the reason why I say it’s hard to try to draw a thin line. It’s not just the people who get moderated that give you lots of blow-back. it is also the people who want more moderation and object to people’s opinions that will give you tons of flack too. It’s really bad when you feel like you need to put a team of lawyers on full time retainer just to have a website, or an app or whatever. It never felt like it was supposed to be that way when the internet was young. But alas here we are, and you are right, it’s only going to get worse.

But there are two sides to this coin.

You are worried about freedoms diminishing and it’s a valid fear.
Others are worried about radicalization. When you make a haven (even if it’s unintentional) that doesn’t discourage fanaticism and hate, you’re going to get more and more of it and less and less of anything else.

[Skywise]

So he’s anti-Islamic.

He’s next on the list.

You just don’t get it do you? This isn’t about “right speech” this is the deplatforming and silencing of ANY speech that is right of socialism.

[CodeToad]

You don’t support free speech if you also try to define what you liberals call ‘hate speech’, which is simply anything you don’t agree with.

[TexasGurl24]

What is “hate speech?” Do you want the government to define that?

Who gets to define it, if not the government?

There are numerous sites that classify FR as “hate speech.” Why doesn’t their definition carry the day?

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “The idea is to set up a payment network outside the current banking structure.” <<

Not sure that is legal.

If it is, why are not all of the systems “outside the current banking structure?”
.

[Perseverando]

If a conservative doesn’t like something on the Internet he doesn’t look at it. If a leftist doesn’t like something on the Internet he wants it banned.

You fit the latter category.

Seriously? In your quest for perfect free speech, tell us, do you defend child pornography (for example) this vigorously?

I'm surprised you're not boycotting FR and Jim Robinson since they block trolls, NeoNazis, and hate speech (whatever that may be, as determined by the mods).

No, I guess you don't, do you?

[Leep]

Why would the internet be any different than the rest of the leftist infesred media, Sanctuary Cities,Hollywood or anywhere you find lawyers,and or perverts,working over time to subvert the USC and ROL?

[Salgak]

Ever pay a kid for doing your lawn ? That’s not inside the banking network. Barter isn’t inside the banking network.

There are several problems with banks: massive, established overhead, entrenched bureaucracies, and utter lack of privacy. Which is why many people prefer to deal on a cash-only basis. . .

[BlueLancer]

And that’s the nice thing about Gab. . . if I don’t want to hear or see them. . . .I “mute” them, and never see them again. They can speak all they want. Doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to them. . .

Like the scene from "Zorro, the Gay Blade" where the suffragette is trying so speak against the Alcalde in the village square and he tries to have her arrested. She reminds him that, by law, anyone can speak their mind in the square. His response is classic: "The woman is right! She can speak! But the rest of you will not listen!"

[Perseverando]

You just don’t get it do you? This isn’t about “right speech” this is the deplatforming and silencing of ANY speech that is right of socialism.

I get it. Per my tagline: For Progressives, Islamonazis, Statists, Commies & other Democrats: It's all about PEOPLE CONTROL!

And they to that through indoctrination, control of the media and determining what they deem is "politically correct" which is Bolshevik terminology from at least 1918.

[rdiaz1966]

Free Speech is an illusion, a badly executed magic trick.