Gab (network)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Globe icon of the infobox
Gave
Website logo
Microblogging service
Registration Yes
On-line - (currently active)
https://gab.com/

Gab is a social network and short message service based in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , United States . The messages with up to 3000 characters are called "gabs" (from English to gab "chatting"). While Gab asserts the right to freedom of expression, the site is accused of providing a platform for racists and right-wing extremists.

history

The website was founded in August 2016 by Andrew Torba ( Managing Director ), Ekrem Büyükkaya ( Product Management ) and Utsav Sanduja ( Management of Operations ), initially based in Austin , Texas , and has been open to the public since May 2017. The top-level domains used are .ai from the state of Anguilla and .com . Technically, it is considered a mix of Twitter and Reddit . It offers limited multimedia functionality. Gab said it had around 525,000 users in August 2018. The second largest user group are Germans.

Gab's logo shows a frog named "Gabby". Gab founder Andrew Torba denied an allusion to the Internet meme " Pepe the frog ". This is often used by right-wing extremists, so the Anti-Defamation League classifies it as a hate symbol. Instead, the logo is a reference to the biblical frog plague and a metaphor: Gave the frogs loose on Silicon Valley to expose its "corruption, censorship and information monopoly on the Internet".

Gab wants to promote "free speech for everyone" and rejects censorship. The terms of use prohibit illegal pornography , advertising of terrorism and violence, and the publication of confidential information. Otherwise everything is allowed ( anything goes ).

Criticism and countermeasures

Gab has been referred to as "Twitter for racists" and a "hateful echo chamber for racism and conspiracy theories". Much of the news contains racism , conspiracy theories , the gun cult and Trump glorification. Several protagonists of the right-wing extremists ( Alt-Right ), who were blocked on Twitter, migrated to Gab, for example the former Breitbart author Milo Yiannopoulos , Alex Jones , Richard Spencer and the founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer , Andrew Anglin. German-speaking Twitter users also occasionally switched to this platform when they were blocked. Right-wing extremist groups like Patriot Front and Atomwaffen Division are said to have organized themselves openly through Gab. According to critics, "the freedom of speech granted on the portal is often turned into hate speech and terrorist propaganda".

In December 2016, Apple banned an iOS version of Gab from Apple stores due to pornographic content. A version that was re-submitted a little later, which was supposed to block pornographic content, was also rejected. In August 2017, Google removed the Gab version for Android devices from the Google Play Store on the grounds that Gab violated Google's guidelines against hate speech .

The assassin, who killed eleven people and injured six others in an attack in the Pittsburgh synagogue on October 27, 2018 , is said to have announced his plan on Gab. As a result, Gab was banned from the payment services PayPal and Stripe , banned from the blog host Medium and received cancellations from the cloud provider Joyent and the web hosting provider GoDaddy . Apple, Google and Microsoft also announced steps against Gab.

While Torba portrayed the platform as a victim of the media and Silicon Valley , Büyükkaya resigned from Gab. The attacks by the American press for two years have become too stressful personally.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c Garance Franke-Ruta: Gab, the social network of the 'Alt-Right' fights to stay online . Yahoo News. September 22, 2017. Accessed October 30, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Gab: Free speech haven or alt-right safe space? In: BBC , December 14, 2016. Retrieved October 30, 2018
  3. ^ Andrew Torba: About to pass 525,000. In: GAB. August 10, 2018. Retrieved August 12, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c Karin Janker: Where hatred is courted on the net . In: sueddeutsche.de . October 28, 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed October 28, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Amanda Hess: The Far Right Has a New Digital Safe Space . In: The New York Times . November 30, 2016, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed August 22, 2017]).
  6. ^ A b Thor Benson: Inside the “Twitter for racists”: Gab - the site where Milo Yiannopoulos goes to troll now. In: Salon . November 5, 2016. Retrieved June 26, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Online Portal Gab.com - "Twitter for racists" . In: Der Spiegel , October 28, 2018. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
  8. ^ A b Andrew Anthony: Inside the hate-filled echo chamber of racism and conspiracy theories. In: The Guardian. December 17, 2016. Retrieved June 26, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Philip Banse : Gab.ai - A new platform for the right? In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . Retrieved June 26, 2017 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e After attack on US synagogue: Hoster pulls the plug on Twitter alternative Gab. In: Heise online , October 29, 2018. Accessed October 31, 2018
  11. ↑ Michael Moorstedt: Gab.ai: New online home for Alt-right movement. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . November 21, 2016, accessed on June 26, 2017 : "Meanwhile, Twitter has laboriously resolved to block several prominent profiles of the so-called alt-right movement, which is notoriously inciting against women, minorities and other supposedly helpless people."
  12. ^ Peter Mühlbauer: FDP: election campaign with freedom of opinion. In: Telepolis . June 1, 2017, accessed June 6, 2017 .
  13. ^ Far-Right Site Gab Ditched by Cloud Host Joyent, Suspended by Stripe Amid Synagogue Massacre [Update: GoDaddy Yanks Domain] . In: Gizmodo , October 28, 2018. Retrieved October 31, 2018
  14. ↑ Apple Rejects Gab from App Store over Content Posted by Users - Breitbart . In: Breitbart . December 17, 2016 ( Breitbart.com [accessed December 25, 2017]).
  15. ↑ Google's app store has banned Gab - a social network popular with the far-right - for 'hate speech' . In: Business Insider . ( businessinsider.de [accessed December 25, 2017]).
  16. ↑ Attack in Pittsburgh - right online portal apparently goes offline. The alleged assassin from Pittsburgh is said to have spread anti-Semitic messages on the Gab.com news service. Now the site has to suspend its operations from Monday. In: Der Spiegel , October 28, 2018. Retrieved October 28, 2018
  17. ↑ Philipp Vetter: GAB.com. Anti-Semite and racist Twitter now has a problem. In: Die Welt, October 28, 2018. Retrieved October 28, 2018
  18. ↑ What is Gab, the social network apparently used by Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect? In: abc13.com, October 28, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2018
  19. ^ After Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, Gab banned by PayPal, suspended by two other platforms . In: Fox News , October 28, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2018
  20. ↑ Suspect in synagogue slayings spewed online hate for Jews. In: APnews.com , October 27, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2018
  21. ↑ Gab, the white supremacist sanctuary linked to the Pittsburgh suspect, goes offline (for now) In: Washington Post, October 29, 2018. Retrieved October 31, 2018