Gab, the racist-friendly social media platform, banned by PayPal

Gab, the self-described “free speech social media platform” that’s provided a home for people like the suspect in Pittsburgh’s synagogue shooting (as well as a lineup of noteworthy racists), is losing support.

PayPal has banned Gab, while hosting company Joyent has reportedly given the site until Monday, Oct. 29 to find a new home. Stripe, another well-known online payment service, is also apparently in the process of severing its relationship with the site. 

The moves all come in the wake of the Saturday synagogue shooting that left 11 dead. PayPal confirmed the decision in a statement provided to Mashable. (Comment requests have also been sent to Joyent and Stripe.)

“PayPal has been closely monitoring Gab and was in the process of canceling the site’s account before the tragic events occurred,” a PayPal rep wrote in an email.

“The company is diligent in performing reviews and taking account actions. When a site is allowing the perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance, we take immediate and decisive action.”

Word of Stripe’s and Joyent’s actions against Gab comes from the social network’s own Twitter feed. In the case of Stripe, there’s an investigation underway to determine whether or not “Gab actually prevents violations of [Stripe] policies,” though the social network’s own tweet makes it sound like a lost battle.

Andrew Torba, Gab’s founder, would have you believe the site is simply a social network that promotes free speech. The difference between it and Twitter, Facebook, or virtually any other platform you can think of is Gab doesn’t draw a distinction between free speech and hateful speech.

I created a dummy account on the site just to see it for myself (not something I’d recommend for the faint of heart or easily offended). The first thing I saw at the top of the “popular posts” feed was an anti-Semitic utterance from Chris Cantwell, a known white supremacist who doesn’t like it when you call him “the crying Nazi” (even though he earned that nickname).

Gab launched in Aug. 2016 and has been operating ever since as a 4chan-like safe haven for sharing extreme views. It looks and functions like Twitter, but with only minimal safeguards in place to protect the user experience.

The site’s guidelines prohibit users from making overt threats of violence, sharing illegal pornography, or doxxing — in short, you can’t engage in illegal behavior. Anything short of that, though, is perfectly fine.

Torba himself defines the service’s view on sharing ideas that people might find offensive in a pinned post at the top of his own Gab account.

Let’s be clear about what he calls “protected classes” here. On one side you have groups that have historically faced harsh discrimination for their skin color, religious background, and sexual orientation. On the other side, you have those who perpetrate such discrimination.

Those who subscribe to Gab’s perspective would have you believe that white supremacists and neo-Nazis are the right’s version of a “protected class,” because the hateful bigot of 2018 faces daily discrimination and threats of being de-platformed. But that’s not how free speech in America works.

Gab’s defenders will also tell you that the actions taken by PayPal and others amount to censorship. That’s also not right. Gab users are free to post whatever they want, within the site’s rules, but third-party interests are under no obligation to maintain a business relationship. Even if severing such a relationship deprives the site of its platform or means of income.

Them’s the breaks when you provide a platform for hate; rational-minded individuals on the left and right both don’t want to associate with that mindset, and they often expect the same from the businesses they patronize.

Although PayPal’s statement makes the point that the company was already in the process of ending its relationship with the social network, Gab became the focus of scrutiny on Saturday after it was discovered that the synagogue shooting suspect in Pittsburgh had been a frequent user and poster on the site.