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Comment by jakelazaroff | Hacker News Reader

Let's not whitewash Gab, which was created specifically to be a white supremacist social network under the veneer of free speech. We can argue whether or not Google should have removed it from the Play Store, but let's be honest about what it is.

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I signed up for Gab about 1.5 years ago. It pegged itself as a "free speech platform", which I found pretty interesting.

The concept of a wild west free speech utopia sounds great (and I would still like to see that), but it's filled with repetitive white nationalist bullshit. That's the early adopter group.

Because of that early group, it's a horrible experience for anyone else.

It's not just their early adopter group; Gab has actively cultivated a white nationalist userbase. See for example https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384

I am skeptical of the "wild west free speech utopia" as a lot of people seem to conceive of it, because some forms of speech have chilling effects on others. For example, if I pass a group of angry people chanting "blood and soil", I'm certainly not going to say or do anything that makes me legible as Jewish.

Which is sad. Because if everyone tolerates abuse, whether from governments or corporations, we get creeping authoritarianism.

Also, I think you bith are exaggerating a bit about Gabhere is obviously a lot of alt right though.

Any early adopter of a technology promising freedom will be the groups who need it the most, which tends to be the groups who are most at odds with current social norms. Just look at who the early adopters are for tor or bitcoin.

It's no surprise that people banned from other platforms end up on a platform that accepts them. That doesn't mean Gab was specifically made to promote any specific group or viewpoint.

It's the other way around. Gab was created specifically as a safe haven for white supremacist speech, and so white supremacists flocked to it.

> "Gab welcomes everyone, but sees a unique opportunity to carve a niche in a massively underserved and unrepresented market. We estimate that there are over 50 million conservative, libertarian, nationalist, and populist internet users from around the world who are seeking an alternative to the current social networking ecosystems. These users are also actively seeking out alternative media platforms like Breitbart.com, DrudgeReport.com, Infowars.com, and others," Gab stated in a company filing dated July 11, 2017.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/tech/gab-anti-semitic-speech-...

This is in addition to white supremacist statements made by the company's official social media accounts: https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384

You seem to be confused about what white supremacy is. It's a small subset of nationalism. There are many other types.

And white supremacy is more authoritarian than libertarian. And it's not conservative in the current political sense and it's populist.

I'm not sure what to make of that Twitter link except that there's a whole bunch of folk so embedded in their own political bubbles that they're incapable of communicating with anyone beyond.

I'm not confused about what white supremacy is. The sites listed are instructive: Breitbart has explicit white supremacist and Nazi ties [1], whereas InfoWars is often a gateway into white supremacy [2]. The Twitter link is a bunch of examples of Gab's official Twitter account making anti-Semitic comments.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-h...

[2] https://www.revealnews.org/blog/the-hate-report-infowars-is-...

Buzzfeed and Reveal are every bit as ideology-laden as Breitbart and InfoWars. I happily disregard most of what they all have to say.

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