Gabba Gabba Nope

I've said many times that social media networks have to get their stuff together before people get killed, but they're too lazy to self-police.  Now that eleven are dead in Pittsburgh, maybe people will start paying attention to people announcing they are going to hurt people on services like Gab, a social media platform for people kicked off other social platforms for being too bigoted.

Before Robert D. Bowers opened fire on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday morning, he posted a threat to the Jewish community online.

“HIAS [a Jewish non-profit organization] likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” he wrote. Just hours later, he killed at least 10 people and wounded others in what the Anti-Defamation League declared the deadliest against the Jewish community in the history of the United States.

Bowers didn’t make his anti-semitic statements on Twitter or Facebook or even Reddit, but rather on a small social network called Gab. It was founded in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter and other large social platforms, and indeed looks and operates similarly to Twitter, allowing users to follow and reply to each other, and to reshare short status updates.

But while Twitter, Facebook, and other mainstream social networks abide by ever-evolving sets of community standards, Gab allows users to say pretty much anything they want. Andrew Torba, the Silicon Valley Trump supporter who created it, said that he wanted to offer an alternative to mainstream social networks which he and others feel are biased against conservatives.

“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 told to BuzzFeed News in 2016 explaining his decision to create the company. “It didn’t feel right to me, and I wanted to change it, and give people something that would be fair and just.”

Since then, Gab’s maximalist approach to free speech has made the network the de-facto home to extremist figures who have been booted off mainstream social networks for threats, inciting violence, or promoting racist, sexist, and anti-semitic ideas. While Twitter has banned extremist figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Alex Jones, and Andrew Anglin, Gab continues to welcome them and their followers with open arms. It has been called a “hate-filled echo chamber of racism and conspiracy theories” and “Twitter for racists.”

This has led to tension with some of the platforms hosting Gab amid increasing pressure for web companies to “deplatform” extremist groups and individuals. In 2017, the Gab app was banned from the Google Play Store for violating its policy against hate speech and in August of this year Microsoft threatened to stop hosting the platform on its servers over similar concerns. (Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday afternoon.) Shortly after Saturday’s shooting, Gab tweeted what appeared to be a notice from PayPal, saying that the payment-processing platform would be terminating its relationship with Gab “pursuant to PayPal’s user agreement.” Opponents of deplatforming argue that censoring extremist speech, actors, and platforms doesn’t stop, and in fact might incite, violence. “Free speech is crucial for the prevention of violence,” the Gab account tweeted Saturday. “If people can not express themselves through words, they will do so through violence. No one wants that. No one.”

That's the argument that Gab makes, that if Gab's not allowed to not only exist but to prosper, then crazies like Bowers will go straight to the violence part rather than just post anti-Semitic Pepe the Frog memes online, therefore you should want Gab around as a social media lightning rod, and also you should give the platform and guys like Andrew Torba lots of money, because they're effectively babysitting America's lunatics.

It's a fantastically cynical argument, and of course it insulates Gab from any possible culpability as an aside.  Pure glibertarian nonsense of the highest order.

Only of course, this time eleven people died.

I'm not stupid enough to think the Trump regime will lift a finger against Gab, but "monetizing hate speech" is nothing new, and the beast can be starved if all the sponsors and advertisers refuse to do business with them.

We'll see.