I’m not saying I disagree, since I haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other, but maybe you or jtr1 could provide some evidence for those who haven’t been following Gab?
You can argue that this type of trolling is bad because helps normalize white supremacy, but that doesn't mean their motivation is actual white supremacy.
- @OldEarthNeoFash, whose description literally says they're a Nazi
- @AlexanderVI, who posts about how gay men should not be allowed to be President
- @Reality_and_Truth, whose description boasts about "exposing Leftist scum 300 chars at a time"
- @cashmoneyglock, whose posts reference Stalin "marrying Jewesses" and a conspiracy theory about MLK being a rapist
- @BruceKenneway, whose description references Jews and white genocide
- @AnthonyBoy, whose posts insinuate that Robert Mueller commits bestiality
Try it! I'm sure you'll get a similar collection of terrible people.
Remember, this is apropos of nothing. I don't have a Gab account, so they're not personalizing these for me based on accounts with which I've interacted before. It's just a random sample of people on Gab.
You can, but it's a tiny minority of people on Twitter. When I load this page on Gab, literally every single recommended account is like this. A random sample of Twitter users will be basically the same as a random sample of Internet users and brands; a random sample of Gab users seems to be entirely alt-right, white supremacists and Nazis.
Of course people who tend to get deplatformed will tend to congregate on a platform where they don't. But Gab actively courts this userbase. See for example https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384
Not to say that Gab isn't a cesspool, and Mr. Torba, when he shows up here, appears to be a rather unpleasant character, but Gab being full of bad people is a function not only of Gab being bad by definition, but also of bigger players' policies as well.
I'm not saying Andrew Torba shouldn't have built Gab; I am lamenting its existence, insofar as I don't want anyone to be a white supremacist. But white supremacists do exist, and as long as they do they'll make spaces for themselves, whether on Gab or 8chan or some dark corner of Twitter. All we can do is push those spaces as far away as possible.
And in any case I just am not sure if pushing undesirables (especially if it is undesirables only of a certain political bent, but not the others) into some dark corner is a good strategy. Both sides end up in even stronger filter bubbles, and banned people get good recruiting tools and feed theior persec ution complexes -- because the "lamestream media" and "libturds" actually are out to get them.