Wednesday, July 18th, 2018, 7:54 am
Gab Isn’t “Free Speech” But a “Safe Space” for Bigots That Censors Innocent Accounts Without Warning and Without Explanation for the Censorship
used to complain that Twitter was shadowbanning and suppressing my account. As an act of protest, even though I wasn’t leaning towards the political worldview of most Gab users, I then opened an account there. I later opened another account, one for TuxMachines, in order to separate my GNU/Linux postings from more political ones (some people just want the technical news, not opinions).
The TuxMachines account has been in Gab for a long time, well over a year, and earned hundreds of followers (almost 500 people last I checked). I didn’t post anything controversial and didn’t do anything abusive.
More than half a day ago the account was terminated along with its 10,000+ posts! No prior warning was given and no reason is being given for this. They’re stonewalling. Even some followers of the accounts have enquired about it, but Gab isn’t answering. Curiously enough, as soon as I spoke out about it other people came out stating that they too had been banned by Gab, citing some truly ridiculous reasons.
Make no mistake; Gab isn’t some politically-correct hyper-sensitive site. The site has many accounts of literal Nazis, people who even call for genocides. For some reason, Gab appears to have no issue with such accounts. They cite “free speech”, but as the above comes to show that’s just a facade for tolerating extremely intolerant views, bordering glorification of violence (e.g. lynching black people) and condoning genocide.
Gab cannot really use the “free speech” card (or excuse) to rationalise having that cesspool among its userbase. They use terms like “free speech”, but they don’t actually believe in free speech. It’s a site for “snowflakes” who can’t stand leftist views and ‘gang up’ on those who express such views. Nazis? OK. GNU/Linux news? Get out!