Published 14:57 IST, February 6th 2021
Gab is the latest platform for Trump and his allies, read about the Twitter competitor
After Trump’s ban from Twitter and disappearance of Parler from internet, the Former US president and scores of his follower have now switched to Gab.
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After Donald Trump's ban from Twitter and disappearance of Parler from the internet, the Former US president and scores of his followers have now switched to Gab, a self-declared "free speech social network". In a tweet last month, Gab revealed that it was gaining more than 10,000 users an hour and received 12 million visits in 12 hours following the suspension of Trump's Twitter account. "Gab gained more users in the past two days than we did in our first two years of existing. In very short order Gab will be bigger than the entire legacy media combined,” the company had said in a now-deleted tweet.
What is Gab?
Much like Twitter, Gab.com is a microblogging platform that, as per the company, “strives to be the home of free speech online”. The social media platform invites everyone who wants to exercise their right to “freedom of speech” protected under the first amendment of the US constitution, according to the website. It was launched by "Christian technology entrepreneur" Andrew Torba following what he says was the rise of big tech censorship during the 2016 US Presidential election.
Speaking to Washington Post earlier, Torba had stressed that he didn’t want to “build a conservative social media network” by any means. However, he stressed that he felt the need for a conservative leader to step up and provide a platform where anybody could come and speak “freely” without fear of censorship. In 2018, Gab attracted global ire after it was found that the man who led the Tree of Life Synagogue shootings had posted Anti-Semitic comments on the platform before going on a killing spree.
However, Gab, despite getting banned from more than 25 service providers, app stores and payment processors, survived. Last month after Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms banned Trump and his allies, Gab accepted them with open arms. It resulted in the creation of “alternate reality” with an exodus of radicals, conservatives and Trump supporters to the platform. Currently, the account of Donald Trump has over 1.4 million followers and 2.9 thousand gabs.
14:57 IST, February 6th 2021