Gab’s Response to Senator Mark Warner | Hacker News Reader

Gab’s Response to Senator Mark Warner

news.gab.com

92 points_etyf94 comments

> Gab exists to promote freedom of speech, by which we mean all speech which is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. No more, no less.

I'm a free speech absolutist, but violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine. Free speech isn't some carte blanche that allows anyone to say anything at any time. That's not how it works†. I've argued in favor of free speech here on HN (and got the downvotes to prove it) more times than I can remember.

But this letter by Gab is absolutely disingenuous. Eric Coomer, a Dominion executive, for example, is not a public person. He has received death threats and is currently in a secure location due to credible threats to his family, children, and parents. At this very moment, on Gab TV, we have a live channel discussing his alleged fixing of votes (featuring Lin Wood). I mean, this is a blatant attack on a private person that has been proven to incite violence.

This has nothing to do with free speech, and Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies, anti-vaxxers, and adjacent movements. They're going to have a hard time monetizing (just as 4chan did).

† See Mill's Harm Principle.

> violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine

They address this in in the letter.

> Accordingly we have a zero-tolerance policy towards threats of violence and unlawful speech. As to controversial but nonetheless legal speech we believe, as Justice Brandeis did, that “sunlight is the best disinfectant, electric light the most efficient policeman.

This would be a reasonable policy if it were actually adhered to. In practice, as mentioned by the grandparent post, users posting threats against people like Coomer run rampant. This is an argument made in bad faith.

> Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies

I see a lot of people say this but I've never seen anyone back it up with sources.

What is the metric for "absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies" and what makes Gab fit that metric better than Facebook or Twitter?

If I had to bet, most people who talk about Gab, never had a Gab account, and got his info from your average political commentator threads in Twitter and your average media pieces.

Right-wing people has the right to exist, and should have a place to discuss their stuff. If you want to close every platform they have because you find they host people with extremist views, then close all the social media all together.

If anyone here presumes that the conditions that allowed Donald Trump in office will disappear because you can deplatform such people, then good luck.

Amen. Just wait until someone who just doesn't care runs something out of a basement. (Like the Chans were for a while).

Then what? Throw law enforcement at them? This is what causes radicalization to escalate. The stakes get higher and higher, and people's worldviews further and further apart, guaranteeing contradiction and misunderstanding. Call me a discordian malcontent, but good lord, these events were painted on the wall years ago. You'd have to be dead to have not felt it.

The material conditions on which Trump was allowed in office still exists. Unless the Democratic party has some quick solution to prevent large swaths of the american population to decapitalize, lose their standard of life and become poor, the only thing that's happening is that they removed a venue where this anger and resentment can transform itself into political action.

So, let's wait for what's gonna happen, because this people will not just sit quiet and wait for their families and their means of life to be destroyed.

If anyone thinks this is a top-down phenomena then I invite him to review it, because that's a very narrow view.

You've "never seen" such evidence because you didn't look for it. Search for "Gab Hate Corpus" for a meticulously labeled set of tens of thousands of Gab post and natural language analysis thereof. According to that paper, 6% of all posts on Gab contain an explicit call for violence, examples given include "The ZioJesuit cultural marxist anti-white Christian killers now working within our white governments globally should be shot for espionage and treason with their non-white invaders expelled from within our nations immediately for the sake of our future white Christian posterity. Anything else is cowardice, self-eradication & continued genocide." as well as "i hate milo because hes a degenerate faggot [N-slur] fucker. he should be deported and sent to a muzzie country and get thrown off a roof" among many others.

Gab is the neo-nazi Twitter, founded and funded by those advocating for the violent overthrow of American democracy and the establishment of a white ethnostate. The people who defend Gab using 1A slippery-slope arguments are themselves sympathizers with white violence.

I mean, fwiw they explicitly welcomed QAnon once they were banned from Twitter. Granted, they spun it as "Patriots who think for themselves and do their own research" or some such.

>I see a lot of people say this but I've never seen anyone back it up with sources.

Well, out of the top 20 largest groups on the site, 4 of them are dedicated entirely to Q-anon, so that's not very difficult to back up:

https://gab.com/groups/2043

https://gab.com/groups/393

https://gab.com/groups/408

https://gab.com/groups/324

>what makes Gab fit that metric better than Facebook or Twitter?

I would imagine the fact that Facebook banned Q-Anon entirely from the whole site for spreading conspiracy theories?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-qanon-a...

Conspiracy theories that might drive someone to violence are protected speech in this country. Many “conspiracy” theories have proved true, e.g. the CIA’s insane antics in the 50s-80s.

We don’t have a Committee of Truth that determines what is true and therefore legally speakable.

If facts or alleged facts drive people to violence, that is the responsibility of those engaged directly in violence (or actually inciting it).

Incitement in America is basically: “let’s go burn down that building right now”. “As a moral matter, someone ought to burn down that building” is protected speech.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. Under Classical Liberalism (which I am a proponent of), if your speech violates the Harm Principle, it's not protected. Conspiracies are indeed protected speech (e.g. "CIA killed Kennedy"). If your conspiracy incites to violence ("CIA killed Kennedy, let's storm Langley" -- and people actually do it), it's no longer protected speech.

I said exactly what I meant to say. Saying that the government ought to be overthrown is a long protected American right. The book stores are full of books arguing just that. People taking you up on it is not your problem.

>protected speech in this country.

Protected from interference by the government. Private corporations are not yet the government.

Gab’s position is that they will censor no more than the law requires.

In which case they fail twice over - there is no legal requirement to remove speech that promotes violence, or porn, yet Gab actively removes both.

Violent speech is pretty strongly protected under modern First Amendment law. Direct incitement to imminent violence isn't protected, but that's a very narrow exemption; even statements like "we need to get violent here" aren't going to be over the line. (One of the canonical free speech cases is Watts v. United States, where the defendant's statement that he'd try to shoot then-president Johnson if he were drafted was ruled to be protected speech.)

> Violent speech is pretty strongly protected under modern First Amendment law

I should clarify that by "violent speech" I just meant it as a colloquialism of the more technical Fighting Words Doctrine. That is, "speech is violent speech IFF it disturbs the peace."

> That is, "speech is violent speech IFF it disturbs the peace."

Disturbing peace? Isn’t that very much under the scope of the BLM associated rioting?

Like we’re talking many buildings public and otherwise burned to the ground. Billions of dollars of damage.

That's a common perception, and I tend to agree it's a moral standard we should hold people to, but the fighting words doctrine prohibits only speech which will immediately disturb the peace. There's no exception in current law for speech which will inevitably but nondeterministically cause something bad to happen.

> I'm a free speech absolutist

No you are not. Why lie? A free speech absolutist means that you believe any speech is acceptable. You comments clearly show you believe in limits to speech.

> but violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine

"Insurrectionist speech". You just gave yourself away. It's not "free speech doctrine" that prevents it. It's a supreme court ruling. The US was mostly free speech absolutist until the courts ruled direct threats to be illegal.

In case you think america limited free speech before the 20th century...

Politicians could threaten each other and duel each other...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel

> I've argued in favor of free speech here on HN (and got the downvotes to prove it) more times than I can

As someone who has been downvoted defending free speech, I commiserate. But you don't strike me as a free speech guy. You have the strangest way of being "in favor of free speech".

> Free speech isn't some carte blanche that allows anyone to say anything at any time.

But you just claimed to be a free speech absolutist. That's exactly what a free speech absolutist believe. That you can say anything anytime.

> This has nothing to do with free speech, and Gab is an absolute cesspool of delusional QAnon conspiracies.

But you are a free speech absolutist. No?

Why do propagandists always do this? They pretend to be the other side and argue against the other side. It's like a meat eater pretending to be vegan and saying bad things about the vegan diet. And you have the gall to accuse gab of being disingenuous.

Just as logical point, you can't really be a de facto "absolutist," as any kind of reductio argument would obliterate your position. But I'd say I'm as absolutist as one can get.

You claimed to be an absolutist though. And yes, you can be a free speech absolutist. Take a class in philosophy and educate yourself.

There are plenty of free speech absolutists who believe any speech, including direct threats, should be protected speech. That you should have the right to threaten anyone and everyone. Of course, acting out and carrying out the threats is illegal.

For example, if you said "I am going to kill you", free speech absolutist believe that should be allowed. Now if you actually killed someone, then you should go to jail. Meaning there differentiate the words "I am going to kill you" with "murder". In other words, murder is illegal, but saying you will commit murder is not. There is some nuance to it, but there are free speech absolutists out there.

But you are not a free speech absolutist. You lied about it. You aren't even pro-free speech. You comments clearly show that you align with the pro-censorship crowd because you use their terms and their logic.

Like I said, you are a meat eater pretending to be a vegan talking shit about veganism. But why?

This kind of response is the exact reason AWS dunked Parler. Picking that image to start with? I wouldn't even read the rest of it.

2 police and 4 citizens die, and your response is to open with something cute? That's your choice?

Sure, I'm excited to see what happens next.

> violent speech, "fighting words," insurrectionist speech, etc. are not protected under any free speech doctrine

This is not true, assuming you're talking about US 1st Amendment. "fighting words" was once an exception to free speech, but the Supreme Court really has narrowed that exception in more recent decisions. It's not really a thing anymore. As for violent speech, the standard is "incitement to imminent lawless action" not just "advocates violence". Nor "insurrection speech" for that matter

Citation needed here. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is still studied in law schools as a watershed case.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Post-Chaplinsky

Yeah, not gonna. If you know enough to cite Chaplinsky you should know that later decisions have watered that down.

Not to diminish the danger of weird rabbit holes, but it seems you moved your standard from "insurrectionist speech" to "claims that I'm very certain are so removed from reality as to lead people to insurrection if they were to believe them". What does "free speech absolutism" mean to you?

A "free Speech Absolutist" would never come to the conclusion that someone discussing vote fixing, even when it is completely outlandish and false is an "incitement to violence"

If you are going to ban anything and everything that many case a person, or persons to react with violence then your speech codes will be VERY VERY VERY narrow indeed and no where in line with anything resembling free speech.

I mean hell if that is the standard than all religions in the world are instantly banned, just for starters.

You are not a free speech absolutist, and that's a complement. Absolutism is poison in (almost) all forms.

https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/0/f/0f7317...

The letter Gab is responding to.

As expected, they don't respond to the letter, but just take the opportunity to climb up on their free speech soapbox. Warner's letter doesn't suggest anything that would further threaten Gab's platform, just asks them not to shred the evidence of crimes that were committed on their platform.

>As expected, they don't respond to the letter

They did, if you recognize that they're playing the exact same game as Warner.

If Warner's office wanted to most rapidly and effectively ensure records are preserved by Gab, what would he have done? How many steps are there on the spectrum between (e.g.) contacting the capitol police to ensure that they have/will send such a request, and writing an open letter from a senator?

If gab were to respond to the body of Warner's letter, rather than play the game, it would say "Dear Senator: If you think there is any chance we didn't already get this request two days before you got around to sending your letter, you should focus the power of your office on fixing your federal law enforcement agencies."

>In their zeal to bend to “woke” political agendas or outside pressure groups, our contemporaries in the Valley forget the social importance of letting off steam and of exposing bad ideas, and bad people, to public scrutiny.

I just have no time for this. You aren't exposing people to "public scrutiny" when you both give them the anonymity of the internet, and gleefully create an echo chamber where things like racial superiority and violence against others are glorified and re-affirmed.

The message of "poor me" has been fine-tuned. It falls apart pretty quickly if you spend 10 minutes actually looking at the content on the site.

Furthermore, if your end goal is truly "public scrutiny" to the ideals being posted on your site, why are you complaining that the public scrutiny has resulted in everyone in the valley telling you to go away? Isn't that EXACTLY what you claim the site is fostering?

We have written to Google, Microsoft, and other companies in the Valley to advise them that their shortsighted boycott – one motivated by partisan political considerations and pressure campaigns – has had the side effect of denying us access to technologies we need such as PhotoDNA.

This is a problem. If you don't like gab, fine, but any social network running at scale is going to need assistance in keeping child sexual abuse material away. When your partisan poo-flinging contributes to the victimization of children, it's time to step back and reassess.

Well played. The “think of the children” trick is almost always effective and difficult to counter.

This is no "play". I hadn't known until now that SV's ideologically-motivated hatred of alternative social networks had kept Gab from having decent CSA mitigation tech (I thought this was something you could get under more-or-less FRAND or as-needed terms), but apparently you need their blessing to do so.

Forget partisan politics for a moment. How is that not anticompetitive?

They are welcome to build their own system, or find an ideological peer that built a system to partner with.

Why should I, as a business owner, be required to do business with those I find repugnant?

Section 230 makes them not liable. So, not really.

> our contemporaries in the Valley forget the social importance of letting off steam and of exposing bad ideas, and bad people, to public scrutiny.

Interesting. Within this screed, Gab laments that other Silicon Valley forces have distanced themselves from it. One could argue that public scrutiny of ideals also involves reactions to those same ideals.

Why is the distancing and refusal to do business with Gab (by individuals or businesses) not seen as valid by Gab? It seems hypocritical.

I don't have any particular affinity for Gab, but TFA pretty clearly addresses your concern: namely, they never claim that free speech compels SV companies from associating with Gab, rather that the lack of cooperation makes it difficult for Gab to police illegal speech. I don't know the extent to which that claim is true, but it's a different claim altogether than the one you are perceiving.

That makes moderation Gab’s responsibility. Wanting a space that operates outside of the accepted norms means that you have to maintain that space on your own. If you can’t do that to the legal requirements, you shouldn’t exist.

Is the implication that Gab is falling short of legal requirements, or merely that Gab isn't able to do as well as it could?

The implication is that none of the other Silicon Valley companies have a responsibility to help gab police its platform, that responsibility is gab’s.

If gab truly valued its ability to police its site, and requires tools and help, then it would be a better citizen to ensure that help.

“I’ll do what I want, and you must enable it.” isn’t a valid argument.

That seems to be a straw man argument. There’s a difference between saying “SV companies are required to help” and “We could do better if SV companies helped”. Gab appears to be saying the latter and to be clear, it appears to be meeting the standards of the law, so we’re talking about going above and beyond what the law requires.

I believe the point is that it denies them the tools they could use to put an end to the sort of behaviour SV is actually boycotting. You'll see in the 'screed' they referred to PhotoDNA by microsoft which is used to detect, disrupt and report child abuse material.

Can you defend denying Gab the tools it needs to efficiently remove material of that nature?

Nobody owes Gab. It’s owners saw what they saw was a gap in a consumer need, and decided to fill it. With that come responsibility. If they can’t moderate or fulfill all their legal responsibilities, with help or at worst on their own, they shouldn’t exist.

Forget "legal responsibilities" - they meet them in whole by deleting CSA (and other literally illegal material) when it's found and ideally alerting the proper authorities.

Now, let's talk about CSA in general. Microsoft and friends might not have any legal obligation whatsoever to help Gab out, but I'd argue they have a moral one.

I love how the grandstanding of pointing out they don’t make public remarks becomes a public remark. Get real. Gab is allowed to operate how they wish, and we are allowed to ignore them and not engage them. Let them die out as the only online island of neo-nazism and nationalist white pride. Good luck with that.

The whole crusade to make ANY published content ANYWHERE to be classified as free speech is misguided and twists what the first amendment says.

> twists what the first amendment says.

Quote it, and I'll explain what it means to you.

I know what it means to me. I also know it’s limits, shall I explain what those are to you?

> Let them die out as the only online island of neo-nazism and nationalist white pride.

GAB is a well known honeypot, and it doesn't even break the top 20 of White pride/Nazi sites.

This whole thing is marketing by them, Torba is using the exact same playbook as he did in 2018 ( https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/gab-the-alt-right-so... )

Parler was getting the attention, now GAB is.

A bit of an odd letter, since Warner’s letter isn’t asking for documents but rather establishing a “duty to preserve” [1] due to high likelihood of impending litigation. IIUC, the senator’s letter is about all that can be done while the Senate is not in session.

Insurrections are not protected free speech, and Gab may have liability. No doubt this will be litigated, and if Gab were to delete content now (as opposed to removing access), this might constitute obstruction of justice.

[1] https://www.kramerlevin.com/images/content/2/5/v4/2562/Reaso...

I wonder if Warner actually will read this... Most likely not. Unfortunate because Gab actually cares about handling malicious situations correctly.

If section 230 is upheld, this would protect Gab, but it seems like certain groups just want to shutdown anything that does not conform to their views.

Gab claims to provide "what appears, after this week’s events on Twitter, to be the last place on the Internet where the First Amendment exists."

The First Amendment constrains the US government; it does not address the conduct of private companies like Gab.

The first amendment does not exist in a vacuum, it is based on an ideal so prevalent and powerful at the time it was literally the first thing they thought to include.

Supporting freedom of speech is a moral imperative, and if your only defense of companies that suppress free expression is “well, it’s not technically illegal” maybe it’s time to take a long look in the mirror.

It was not the first thing they thought to include, it is an amendment -- literally something they did not bother to include when the wrote the original constitution. It is also very clear from the context and time at which it was written that the "speech" referred to in the first amendment is political discourse, not speech in general. Plotting a violent overthrow of the government is not what the Founders had in mind, something that they themselves made clear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_sedition_act

See the part about making false statements critical of the US government? Funny how Gab was created in response to Twitter taking action to stop people from doing exactly that on their platform. Whatever free speech ideal Gab stands for is not what people who ratified the first amendment had in mind.

If you think supporting free speech is a moral imperative even for private companies, why do keep posting on a heavily moderated forum like HN that regularly bans people for trolling and being rude? Is that a tacit admission that censorship is sometimes desirable? If you were consistent about applying your principles you would boycott HN too.

Because absolutism is infantile?

Part of supporting free speech is accepting that private companies are not compelled to publish or support political leaders or their followers. It would be a bigger threat to free speech if Twitter etc. were required to publish the president's tweets just because he's the president. Of course it might end up being a bad idea for tech companies to deplatform the president and his cronies, but doing so is excersizing free speech rights, not restricting them.

In general where two entities free speech rights are in conflict I would suggest it's best to make sure the less powerful entity gets the right of way. As powerful as social media platforms are, they're still not at powerful as the U.S. President.

Compelled? No. Financial orgs are not compelled to be moral.

But as the left loves: freedom from prosecution is not freedom from consequences

Technically it’s not illegal is a big deal when the law in question is the 1st amendment of the US constitution.

Moderation is the exercise of free speech by the companies. It is government regulation of their moderation policies that would be censorship and violation of their first amendment rights.

Should the government be able to force Twitter, Facebook, or you personal blog to carry spam ads for “natural male enhancement” pills under force of law?

Again, what you are advocating for are penalties levied against private enterprises by the government. I do not understand how this is a better than the status quo where someone is banned from a website and faces absolutely no legal repercussions. Please help me understand.

What they and Parler don't get is that inciting violence is not in any meaningful way 'speech' because it conveys no information or ideas.

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/89jan/dershowit...

Did you read the letter? Gab specifically said that their efforts to block calls to violence and help authorities investigate suspects have been hampered by big tech's blacklisting of them from services (such as PhotoDNA).

I believe he may be referring to incidents of Twitter and Facebook caving to unlawful, perhaps unconstitutional pressure from government to remove speech, and to gab's resistance to this

Excellent letter. Worth reading.

Not to mention their branding. Great picture.

For people unfamiliar with Gab, from Wikipedia:

> Gab is an American alt-tech social networking service known for its far-right and extremist userbase. (...) Gab claims to promote free speech and individual liberty, though these statements have been criticized as being a shield for its alt-right and extremist ecosystem.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

Something I've been wondering... so let's say I want to put a social media platform that I dislike out of business. Perhaps the platform is full of my political opponents, or maybe it's a business competitor of mine. What's to stop me from just posting a bunch of incitements to violence on the platform through a series of proxies (human and/or technological) until they get nuked?

Here's an old article by Dershowitz that everyone concerned with the limits of free speech should read

https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/89jan/dershowit...

Can someone provide context for this letter? I am out of loop.

Gab is a free speech-oriented social media platform similar to Parler. They position themselves as a home for users censored by mainstream social media platforms. In practice, Gab tends to attract racist, far-right, and extreme anti-government users.

Many people who stormed the capitol on January 6 discussed their plans ahead of time on Gab. US Senator Mark Warner wrote an open letter [0] to Gab in which he asked them to preserve all posts related to that attack.

Unlike Parler, Gab has a robust technology stack and operates independently of major cloud providers and payment processors. They were kicked off all those platforms years ago [1], just as Parler is getting evicted from them now. I suspect Gab will replace Parler as the platform of choice for QAnon proponents and the more fervent Trump supporters. For this reason, as well as for the extreme test case Gab represents for the 1st Amendment, I think Gab is worth watching.

[0] https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/0/f/0f7317...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)#2019%E2%8...

Memeing quite close to the sun with that one.

And now this article has been flagged.

Ironic, given that the subject matter is the suppression of speech in online platforms.

Given the diminishing appetite for free expression in most of the online platforms these days, this letter is particularly refreshing.

I've been thinking a lot about what a modern suppression-free platform would look like.

I recall fondly the wild-west crazy freedom of the early IRC in all its magnificence and horror.

I wonder if something could be done with inspiration from Mastodon and IPFS over WebRTC. I've also been thinking a lot about what a distributed web index/search platform would look like with indexeddb and WebRTC.

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