Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
The alt-right, which is really just a bunch of white supremacists, thinks any moderation looks like censorship.
Their anger at being supposedly sidelined and silenced has spawned hashtag campaigns, think pieces, and now, a social media platform, Gab. Its primary schtick is promising an end to censorship. But by sequestering itself, Gab has managed to sideline members into an echo chamber so far removed from the rest of the conversation that its message has no chance of reaching unfamiliar ears.
Gab is barely a month old, so it may well flame out like Peach or Ello. But for now, the platform looks like an artifact from a dystopian universe where the alt-right completely took over Twitter.
Gab has over 42,000 people on its waitlist, more than 11,000 active members, and among them are nearly all the alt-right’s online kingpins, including Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who was recently banned for life from Twitter.
Gab’s appeal for that crowd is obvious.
The only posting guidelines are no underage sexual content and no doxing.
Sound familiar? The alt-right copied JPP.
Gab is less a censorship-free utopia than an alt-right safe space—which is ironic, considering how much the alt-right loathes the very idea of safe space.
“We promote raw, rational, open, and authentic discourse online,” says Gab CEO Andrew Torba. "People say we’re an alt-right echo chamber,” says Torba. “But if there are any centrists, progressives, libertarians, or apolitical people interested in trying something new, I say, please join us.” Thing is, so far, few seem to have answered that call. In the #GabFam, as Gab users call themselves, #Trump seems to always chart. The word “deplorable” is getting a lot of play after Hillary Clinton used it last week, and Gab’s logo is a distinctly Pepe-ish looking frog.
Another irony of Gab is that despite being anti censorship, users have the option to deploy what are called “self censorship settings.” (The idea possibly being that Gab won’t censor you, but you can censor yourself if you really must!) You can mute people and posts that contain keywords of your choosing, without triggering a notification that lets the poster know you blocked them.
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/gab-alt-rights-twitter-ultimate-filter-bubble/