Renegade Editor’s Note: Please show
me one shred of evidence this event even took place. It is quite a coincidence
they ran an active shooter drill at a synagogue in Squirrel Hill 9 months
prior, right next to Tree of Life. By the way, a gabbai is a synagogue helper.
By Whitney
Webb
(MPN) — In the wake of
the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday, action
has been taken to remove an alternative social media network on which the
shooter responsible for Saturday’s massacre, Robert Bowers, had posted. The decision comes not long
after a
coordinated effort by Facebook and Twitter that deleted
hundreds of anti-establishment accounts and pages.
Gab, a Twitter alternative that has thus far been largely dominated by
“alt-right” users and those that have been “banned” or “shadow banned” on
Twitter, has now been booted by both its hosting
company, Joyent, and the domain registrar GoDaddy, after both companies stated
that the posts Bowers had made on the social network violated their terms of
service. Bowers allegedly posted just minutes before the shooting on the Gab
platform, writing “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw
your optics, I’m going in.” Bowers had allegedly blamed the Jewish people for
“committing genocide” against white Americans.
Upon learning of the shooter’s account on the platform, Gab deleted the account and backed up the
data, which it also provided to the Department of Justice and FBI. In addition,
via a statement, Gab disavowed “all acts of terrorism and violence” and said
its mission is “to defend free expression and individual liberty online for all
people” by offering an uncensored social networking platform.
Gab later noted that its coordination with the DOJ and FBI regarding the
shooter’s account helped provide law enforcement with “concrete evidence” and a
“clear motive” for the crime, adding that “more speech is always the answer.”
Nevertheless, despite the extent of the cooperation between Gab and the
legal authorities, Gab subsequently posted on Twitter that
it was “being forced off the internet for the disgusting actions of one man.”
Notably, Robert Bowers also had accounts on other social media platforms including Twitter, but those social networks
were not targeted for those accounts or any of the posts created by those
accounts.
Breaking: @joyent,
Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have
given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for
weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending
free speech for all people. pic.twitter.com/YvnBOFoQQn
- Gab.com (@getongab) October
28, 2018
Media reports on the shooting have noted that Gab’s minimal restrictions on
user-posted content are related to the decisions from Joyent and GoDaddy to
deplatform Gab. In a statement sent to Gab by GoDaddy, the domain name
registrar stated
that it had “discovered numerous instances of content on
your site that both promotes and encourages violence against people.”
Gab’s removal from its hosting provider and domain name registrar could
result in the site being down for several weeks, according
to posts made by Gab on social media. Currently, the site
is inaccessible for users, as the main homepage now only displays a message
from Gab’s CEO, Andrew Torba.
In addition, PayPal also severed ties with Gab after the shooting, stating
that the company was invoking its right to terminate an
account “for any reason and at any time” contained within the PayPal user
agreement. Notably, PayPal did not state that Gab had violated any terms of
service. Instead, it appears that PayPal had unilaterally decided to terminate
Gab’s use of the platform.
BREAKING: https://t.co/J3Rfto6fi3 is now
banned from Paypal "just because." pic.twitter.com/VA1NhY5zhr
- Gab.com (@getongab) October
27, 2018
The effort to deplatform Gab followed similar threats from
Microsoft levied against Gab in August. At the time, Microsoft was providing
hosting services to Gab and threatened to cease those services over two
anti-Semitic posts it had identified on the social network. Gab subsequently
deleted the offending posts and chose Joyent as its new hosting provider.
Beyond Social-Media Pruning: Pulling out Alternative Content by the Roots
While Gab’s current user base and its uncensored approach to content are
bound to result in controversial content being hosted on the site, the larger
context in which its deplatforming occurred has chilling consequences for the
public’s free access to information via the internet.
On October 11, Facebook deleted
more than 800 pages from its platform for “inauthentic
behavior,” even though it admitted that the targeted pages had produced
“legitimate” content. Facebook defined “inauthentic behavior” as using
“sensational political content – regardless of its political slant – to build
an audience and drive traffic to their websites.” In other words, the pages
were removed for publishing and promoting controversial political content.
Soon after, Twitter deleted many of the accounts of pages that had been
deleted by Facebook, suggesting coordination between the two largest social
networks in silencing alternative voices and perspectives. Following these
events, some concerned internet users turned to Gab as an uncensored
alternative to Facebook and Twitter.
However, the events that have followed the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
show that alternative platforms like Gab – even if they are committed to
uncensored content – can still be silenced through pressure from hosting
providers and domain name registrars. The deplatforming of Gab sets a
disturbing precedent, as it shows that websites can now be targeted outside of
social networks if pressure is applied via the very companies that enable a page’s
presence on the internet.
Concern over these precedents will likely only grow, as establishment
censors recently announced that efforts to silence voices on the internet have
only just begun. Indeed, on October 15, Jamie Fly of the German Marshall Fund,
a think tank funded by the U.S. government and NATO, announced,
“we are just starting to push back” against alternative media and independent
voices, adding that the recent Facebook/Twitter purge of users and pages was
“just the beginning.”
With the deplatforming of Gab, the self-appointed censors have now shown
that their ability to censor spreads far beyond censorship within the dominant
social networks to the very internet presence of the sites themselves.
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