Where do you go for free speech now?

If you’re unaware, Gab.ai was created as an alternative social media platform for those of a conservative mind or, more importantly, an actual free speech mind.

It was devised to be the alternative to Twitter and Facebook — mostly Twitter, as it has a Twitter-like feel to it and limits the number of characters per entry.

Initially it took, literally, a few months for me and others to register for Gab.ai due to its popularity. Once on, however, I was a bit chagrined by its klunky interface and what I considered to be its less-than-intuitive interface. Resultingly I wasn’t as active there as I was on Twitter. Gab needed then and now to update its interface and make it more intuitive. There. I said it.

That written, however, there’s a new threat from the Left. The GatewayPundit.com writes:

Twitter Rival GAB Served Notice its Registrar Will Seize its Domain if Not Changed Due to GAB Promoting Free Speech

by Jim Hoft

Twitter rival GAB was served notice by its domain registrar that it has 5 days to transfer its domain or they will seize it.

View image on Twitter

At the same time GAB is suing Google for anti trust violations.

According to David Z. Morris at Fortune magazine, GAB supports Milo Yiannopoulous whom Morris slanders by calling him a white supremacist who was banned from Google for his racially offensive harassment of a black actress –

According to David Z. Morris at Fortune magazine, GAB supports Milo Yiannopoulous whom Morris slanders by calling him a white supremacist who was banned from Google for his racially offensive harassment of a black actress –

Gab, a social media platform that touts its openness to any and all forms of speech, has sued Google for refusing to list the Gab Android App on the Google Play store. Gab claims, according to Ars Technica, that Google denied its listing to protect a data-sharing agreement with Twitter, potentially violating antitrust rules. But the stakes here may be more about perception than the law.

Twitter used to think of itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” But the internet obviously took that as a challenge, breeding dozens of professional trolls like Milo Yiannopoulous, who was banned from Twitter after organizing a racially offensive harassment campaign against actor Leslie Jones.

Yiannopoulos, along with many white supremacists and other prominent figures of the so-called “alt-right,” have since migrated to Gab as their primary public platform. Antitrust lawyer Mark Patterson told Ars Technica that if Google could show that they chose not to allow Gab into the Play Store because of possible reputational damage from that strong association with hate groups, the antitrust claim would have little chance of success.

Even if it is summarily thrown out of court, Gab’s suit will help the nascent platform further establish itself as an alternative to Silicon Valley’s center-left cultural norms. Those have been on display recently in Google’s move to silence critics at think tanks and internally, and in a broader tech-world crackdown on formerly-tolerated hate speech.

Is this nothing more than the Left — AGAIN — doing its level best to remove free speech from the internet? Of course it is. From “complaints.”

Morris is not correct in his outrageous allegations about GAB and Milo and he should be ashamed.  More likely Milo was kicked out of Twitter because he was a successful conservative gay man.  Liberals hate successful conservative gay men.

Twitter over the past year terminated the accounts of  numerous successful conservatives like Milo during the election and prevented tweets from conservative outlets like this one from being wide spread.  Twitter decides which groups are hate groups through their own fascist interpretation of what is a hate group.  Any successful conservative apparently fits their definition of a hate group.

The crux of the biscuit is this.

GAB capitalized on the left wing bias of social site Twitter and now is being attacked for allowing free speech on its site by Google and the alt left mainstream media (MSM).

Gab.ai’s owner, Andrew Torba, wrote at Medium.com:

We knew this day would come and now we have entered a crossroads with a very binary decision: remove one post or lose our domain and thus the entire website.

Our choice was very clear to me. The post needs to come down. If it does not, we lose our domain. To my knowledge there are no pro-free speech domain registrars and that is a massive problem. Our only other option now would be to play a cat and mouse game by transferring our domain to another registrar. Others who have attempted to play this game have failed and even had their domain seized completely from under them. We will not play these games. We have little choice, for now.

The free and open internet as we know it is under attack. It is centralized and controlled by no more than a handful of companies who provide these services:

  • Hosting

  • DDoS protection

  • Payment Processing

  • Domain Registrars

  • Mobile device hardware and software distribution

This is called a clue as far as I’m concerned. But read on.

Without any of these things an individual website can not possibly compete and operate at scale. If left unchecked, these centralized platforms will continue their dominance and control the means of all information, personal data, and communication on the internet.

It’s not too late to save the free and open internet. Decentralized platforms built on the blockchain (including Gab in the near future) will inevitably give the power and control to The People and make the internet censorship-proof.

Gab wants to lead the creation of the next level of the internet. If Web 2.0 was about centralized, social, and mobile networks: Web 3.0 will be a decentralized, blockchain-based, radically transparent, people-powered internet infrastructure.

We are actively looking for a new registrar. This post will hopefully inspire other teams to start building or attract talented engineers to Gab who want to help us protect the free and open web. Until then, we will continue to build and fight for the freedoms we cherish.

What is it, then, that Conservative speech truly needs? Easy answer: sufficient cash to own and wield its own domain registrar, its own hosting, its own DDoS protection, payment processing, and mobile device hardware and software distribution.

I see this as an absolutely enormous vacuum.

Which needs to be filled with Conservative cash.

BZ

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8 thoughts on “Where do you go for free speech now?

  1. “A internet big enough to give you everything is strong enough to take it away…” or words to that effect. An internet powerful enough to give one instant access to information and news (be it correct or not), store personal info, facilitate money transactions, foster social networking and on and on is too powerful to not be a temptation to authority figures.
    An alternative web is needed. I tried to educate myself about ‘blockchain’ to no avail. My eyes just glazed over. But my ignorance compels me to ask: should a domain registrar such as you mention come into being, what would prevent the powers that be from declaring it, oh, I don’t know, a hate site and pressuring Internet providers to block it?

    • Not necessarily. But power is in numbers. If you have a site/domain/social media that is utilized by millions, you start to have the true power of a Facebook or a Twitter.

      I submit THAT is what is needed.

      Power in numbers.

      BZ

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