Gab.ai faces loss of domain over hate speech

"Extremist content" is a vague term. According to the article, the Australian registrar is taking action because of national laws that "prohibit public vilification on the basis of race, religion, or ethnic origin." That's pretty much the definition of hate speech, so I thought that this title would be more precise.

If the mods disagree, they can change it back!

Would you mind translating your comment to plain English? Dogwhistles of what, disguised as what, directed at whom by whom? Plausible deniability of what on whose part?

The alt-right really understands the attention economy. Their media strategy is to troll, provoke outrage, and then leverage that outrage to dominate the media in terms of attention and airtime/space.

This isn't a new strategy per se. Everyone's heard the famous quote:

"Any publicity is good publicity as long as they spell my name right."

Thing is: this is a much more powerful strategy today. Information is cheap, attention is expensive, and there are no gatekeepers to set a ceiling on just how offensive or controversial one can be. Look at the campaign. Trump himself obtained billions of dollars in free media airtime by saying goofy, silly, and offensive things. The Twitter "cuvfefe" gaffe alone probably bought attention worth several hundred million dollars if purchased directly.

I'm not saying it's all an act. The alt-right is indeed a racist fascist movement. I'm just making the point that trolling is the strategy and the intended result is to provoke responses like this. I'm sure every article calling them out as a cesspool of hate and every attempt to ban them grows their user base quite a bit.

Banning them is exactly what they want. It will create controversy. It will get them attention and attention is everything.

I'm not sure how to counter it. They will provoke a response. If racism isn't enough they will escalate and escalate and escalate. You saw it with Charlotesville where they escalated all the way up to mocking murder victims and calling for protests at their funerals. I've recently seen examples of them escalating up to praising Timothy McVeigh and calling for another Oklahoma City bombing. They'll crank up the offensiveness and volume until they get the backlash they want.