There was a blue check mark next to Robert Bowers&apos;s name, meaning that the social media account was verified.<\/b>
\nThere was a blue check mark next to Robert Bowers\u2019s name, meaning that the social media account was verified. His bio said that \u201cjews are the children of satan,\u201d his banner image a clear reference to a white supremacist meme. His last message, posted Saturday morning, read, \u201cScrew your optics, I\u2019m going in.\u201d
The account is believed to belong to the same Robert Bowers who is suspected of opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding six others.
The profile, which has since been removed, lived on Gab, a social media platform that has become a haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other adherents to extreme ideologies that have found themselves increasingly unwelcome on Twitter and Facebook.
Founder Andrew Torba has long said Gab is simply a \u201cfree speech\u201d platform for anyone who wants to join, and has responded aggressively to characterizations otherwise. But the platform\u2019s history is tied to the white supremacists and other far-right figures who joined in its first months and have contributed to Gab\u2019s growth.
In the wake of the Pittsburgh attack, Gab and Torba have girded themselves for war. On his Gab account, Torba criticized mainstream media stories about his site and promised users that it would survive the increased attention. After Gab was banned from PayPal and received notice from Joyent, its hosting provider, that it would pull their service, Torba wrote early Sunday that \u201cGAB IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE I don\u2019t care what we have to do, I don\u2019t care what it takes. We will build everything from the ground up if we have to. \u201d
Torba\u2019s updates have kept Gab\u2019s users in the loop on the drama: Gab\u2019s chief technology officer Ekrem B\u00fcy\u00fckkaya announced Sunday that he was stepping down because the \u201cattacks from the American press have been relentless for two years now and have taken a toll on me personally.\u201d Later that morning, Torba said he\u2019d secured a new host for his site.
Medium, the publishing platform, has suspended Gab\u2019s account there, according to Gab. And GoDaddy informed Gab that they had violated their terms of service, giving them 24 hours to move their domain to another provider.
On Monday, Gab went offline. Visitors to the network were instead greeted with a short message, saying that Gab had been \u201cno-platformed by App Stores, multiple hosting providers, and several payment processors,\u201d and \u201csmeared by the mainstream media.\u201d
\u201cAs we transition to a new hosting provider Gab will be inaccessible for a period of time. We are working around the clock to get Gab.com back online.\u201d Meanwhile, Gab\u2019s verified Twitter account continued to retweet supporters and argue with critics.
Gab, through Torba, has always pitched itself as an alternative to Silicon Valley social media sites, attracting a user base of people who believe companies such as Twitter and Facebook are deliberately censoring their views. In 2016, when Twitter strengthened its policy against \u201chateful conduct\u201d and banned a number of far-right and white supremacist accounts, Torba said Gab gained 60,000 users in eight days.
The platform itself is a combination of many of the sites that Gab would like to replace. The site works like a hybrid of Reddit and Twitter, where users can post character-limited messages, and respond, comment and vote other users\u2019 posts up or down. Alex Jones, who has 55,000 followers on Gab, often promotes his live broadcasts there because he has been banned from YouTube and Twitter.
But Gab is more than a platform. It\u2019s also positioned itself as a key figure in the right-wing response to online crackdowns of extremist views, and has benefited directly from the white supremacists who flocked to Gab on the promise that their views would not be censored, according to Joan Donovan, the media manipulation and platform accountability research lead at Data and Society, who has followed the site\u2019s growth.
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Migrant caravan takes a break in southern Mexico before pushing on to U. S. Torba has become a charismatic leader of the \u201calt-tech\u201d movement which, among other things, dedicates itself to protecting and building tech to house \u201cfree speech\u201d \u2013 including extremist ideologies that are increasingly unwelcome on mainstream sites. When James Damore was fired from Google in 2017 for writing a viral memo about women in tech, Torba capitalized on the case\u2019s media attention to promote an \u201calt-tech revolution,\u201d where conservative tech workers would rise up and topple Silicon Valley giants. Gab, of course, would be there to take their place.
Although the revolution did not come to pass as predicted, Torba managed to raise $80,000 for a crowdfunding campaign to support his website in the days after Damore\u2019s story published, The Washington Post reported at the time. He also gained the currency of media attention, giving interviews to several mainstream outlets \u2013 including The Post \u2013 promoting his site as a mainstream technology alternative.
Donovan noted that Gab has used crackdowns such as the \u201chateful conduct\u201d rule enforcement on Twitter to recruit for his own site. Gab \u201crode the wave of attention to white nationalists after Charlottesville to populate its social media platform,\u201d Donovan said in an interview Sunday. In the wake of the deadly Charlottesville protests in 2017, major companies such as Apple, PayPal and Squarespace began removing white nationalists from their platforms, leaving them with fewer options for making money and hosting their views online.
Gab was there to pick up the slack. \u201cOver the past year, Gab has been able to grow and add new features, premium features, streaming features,\u201d Donovan said, \u201cbecause of the fusion of the white supremacist need for platforms\u201d and the website\u2019s promise of a free-speech haven.
In the Pittsburgh attack\u2019s aftermath, Christopher Cantwell \u2013 one of Gab\u2019s most prominent anti-Semites who achieved notoriety during last year\u2019s Charlottesville rally \u2013 began trafficking in anti-Jewish statements and conspiracy theories that the gunman was a plant from American spies to foment anger against conservatives before the midterm elections.
Cantwell, known as the \u201cCrying Nazi,\u201d made a name for himself during the Charlottesville rally when he pepper-sprayed counterprotesters and was featured in a viral Vice documentary. On Gab, he frequently bashes Jews and African Americans and encourages followers to listen to his podcast, \u201cRadical Agenda.\u201d
He also attacks the news media, though he seems to have an affinity for Fox News. \u201cThe one good thing about this . shooting is that I know I\u2019m not missing anything by turning off Fox News,\u201d he wrote this weekend, using an offensive term for Jewish people. \u201cThis is all they\u2019ll be talking about from now until election day.\u201d
But he also let his followers know that he was worried Gab might be shutting down soon, and shared links where people could still follow and interact with him. \u201cI know Gab is the only way some of you keep up with me, and it looks like that might be a problem,\u201d he wrote.
Although Gab\u2019s relationship to the white supremacists who congregate there can be contentious at times, Torba is extremely good at turning criticism of the platform \u2013 and the extreme views it houses \u2013 into calls to action and attention. Months ago, Torba started declining all mainstream media requests for interviews, a fact that Gab promotes on their social media accounts. In response to questions about Bowers\u2019s account, The Post was sent a statement on Medium that said Gab had removed it and was cooperating with law enforcement. The site didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for an interview Sunday.
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Victims of synagogue shooting remembered: \u2018The loss is incalculable\u2019\t Meanwhile, Torba appears to be hoping for the ultimate attention intervention as Gab faces scrutiny. Torba posted a plea on Gab early Sunday for a word of support from the president:
\u201cI don\u2019t brag about this, but in 2016 across all of my accounts I had BILLIONS of impressions supporting and defending him and America. Can we get one tweet defending Gab.com, our work with law enforcement to bring a terrorist to justice, and our defense of free speech online for all people?
Is that too much to ask?\u201d<\/p>\n

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