Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service. Widely described as a haven for far-right and alt-right users, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem. Antisemitism is prominent in the site's content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory. Gab is based in Pennsylvania.
Researchers note that Gab has been linked to radicalization leading to real-world violent events. The site received extensive public scrutiny following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018. The perpetrator of the attack, Robert Gregory Bowers, had a history of making extreme, antisemitic postings on the platform, as well as messages indicating an immediate intent to cause harm before the shooting. After the shooting, Gab briefly went offline when it was dropped by its hosting provider and denied service by several payment processors. In 2021, Gab was among the platforms used to plan the United States Capitol attack on January 6. Also in 2021, Gab suffered from a data breach called "GabLeaks".
Gab's functionality is similar to that of Twitter (later X). Users of Gab can publish posts, initiate private chats, join groups, livestream and buy products. The company also maintains an email service, cloud service, text messaging service, advertisement sales system, server farm, marketplace website, news aggregation website, advertising platform, video-conferencing platform, blog, video hosting, web browser, and browser extension to allow commenting on third-party websites. In July 2019, Gab switched its software infrastructure to a fork of Mastodon, a free and open-source social network platform. Mastodon released a statement in protest, denouncing Gab as trying to "monetize and platform racist content while hiding behind the banner of free speech".
History 2016–2018 Gab was founded in 2016 by chief executive officer (CEO) Andrew Torba and chief technology officer (CTO) Ekrem Büyükkaya, who had previously worked together at advertising technology company Automate Ads (formerly Kuhcoon). Torba started working on the site in May 2016 and on August 15, 2016, Gab launched in private beta, billing itself as a "free speech" alternative to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook. Torba has cited "the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly", "social justice bullying", "the rise of online censorship during the 2016 election." and an alleged bias against conservative articles by Facebook as his reasons for creating Gab. Gab AI, Inc. was incorporated on September 9, 2016. Utsav Sanduja later joined Gab as chief operating officer (COO).
Torba said in November 2016 that the site's user base had expanded significantly following censorship controversies involving major social media companies, including the permanent suspensions of several prominent alt-right accounts from Twitter after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During November 2016, Gab gained 5,000 new users per week. By mid-December 2016, there were 200,000 people on Gab's waiting list. At the time, Torba claimed that Gab had about 130,000 registered users.
On May 8, 2017, Gab exited private beta.
During August and September 2017, immediately following the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Gab experienced another increase in new users, gaining around 3,300 per week.
In early September 2017, Gab faced pressure from its domain registrar Asia Registry to take down a post by The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, giving Gab 48 hours to do so. Gab later removed the post. Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation commented that this pressure was part of an increase in politically motivated domain name seizures.
On August 9, 2018, Torba announced that Microsoft Azure, Gab's host, had threatened to suspend the site for "weeks/months" if they failed to remove two antisemitic posts made by Patrick Little, a U.S. Senate candidate who had been ejected from the Republican Party for his antisemitism. According to The Verge, the posts "express intense anti-Semitism and meet any reasonable definition of hate speech". Little said in the posts that Jews should be raised as "livestock" and that he intended to destroy a "holohoax memorial". In response to Azure's threat, Little posted on Gab that "I'll delete the posts, but this is a violation of our rights as Americans". Gab's Twitter account also asserted that Little had self-deleted the posts, but this was contradicted by Torba who said Gab itself had deleted the posts which "unquestionably" broke their "user guidelines". On the same day, Alex Jones interviewed Torba on The Alex Jones Show during his coverage of his own permanent ban from YouTube. Little was suspended indefinitely from Gab in late November 2018 for encouraging harassment of private individuals; Gab claimed that although Little's account had posted hate speech, it was not the cause of the ban.
According to Gab's filings with the SEC, around 635,000 users were registered on Gab by September 10, 2018. On September 12, 2018, Gab purchased the Gab.com domain name from Sedo for $220,000 (~$ in ) on Flippa, an online business marketplace; it had previously been using the domain Gab.ai.
During the 2018 Brazilian presidential election from September to October 2018, many right-wing Brazilian political pages were banned from Facebook for breaching the site's hate speech rules. In response, many administrators of these pages began promoting Gab as an alternative platform; subsequently, Brazilians became the second-largest demographic of Gab users. Jair Bolsonaro's party, the Social Liberal Party, had an official Gab account.
In December 2018, Gab sponsored Turning Point USA's 2018 "Student Action Summit" in Palm Beach, Florida. Days before the event, Turning Point USA removed Gab from the list of sponsors without explanation. Gab later posted a press release protesting the unexplained removal.
2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
Robert Gregory Bowers, the shooter in the attack against a Pittsburgh synagogue on October 27, 2018, maintained an active, verified Gab account where he displayed the neo-Nazi code-phrase "1488" and a bio that said, "jews are the children of satan". Just prior to the shooting, he used this account to post "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in".
After Bowers was arrested, Gab suspended his profile, gathered all user data for the account, and contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). On October 27, 2018, the day of the shooting, PayPal, GoDaddy, and Medium terminated their relationship with Gab, and PayPal released a statement that it had it done so based on its review of accounts that may engage in the "perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance". Later on the same day, Gab announced on Twitter that Joyent, Gab's hosting provider, would terminate their service on October 29 at 9:00 am ET. The tweet said that the site expected to be down for weeks. Stripe and Backblaze also terminated their services with Gab after the shooting. On October 29, Gab claimed in a tweet that they "took the site down early on purpose last night because we knew the media would take the bait and have stories on it for this morning".
Following the shooting, Gab received substantial media attention, having been relatively unknown by the general public prior to the attack. The New Republic noted that prior to the shooting: "Despite some attention in the mainstream tech press, Gab was essentially considered a sideshow, an also-ran in the social media wars, destined to fade away like Yo, Ello, or other mostly forgotten platforms that could never hope to compete with Silicon Valley monopolies".
Gab had defended itself from criticism as a result of the shooting, saying that they: "refuse to be defined by the media's narratives about Gab and our community. Gab's mission is very simple: to defend free expression and individual liberty online for all people. Social media often brings out the best and the worst of humanity". Torba called the shooting "a clear act of terror", adding that he "fundamentally believed in freedom of expression", but did not tolerate threats of violence. Torba also said that "I do think that more speech is always going to be the answer to combat bad speech or hate speech".
Ekrem Büyükkaya, Gab's co-founder and CTO, announced his resignation on October 28, citing "attacks from the American press" that "have taken a toll on me personally".
After the site was taken down, Gab's homepage was changed to a message saying it was down due to being "under attack" and being "systematically no-platformed", adding that Gab would be inaccessible for a "period of time". Also after the site was taken down, Torba accused the media of demonizing Gab while ignoring similar problems on mainstream social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Gab returned online on November 4, 2018, after Epik agreed to register the domain. Rob Monster, the CEO of Epik, had defended Gab's neo-Nazi users and also baselessly claimed that neo-Nazis on Gab are "liberal trolls" looking to "give enemies of freedom an excuse". On Gab, Christopher Cantwell replied to Monster's claims, stating: "We're not liberals, nor are the people trying to get us censored. The people trying to censor Gab are (((communists))), and the Nazis are the only ones willing to take them on... Eventually, everyone will have to pick a side". The use of triple parentheses, according to the HuffPost, was code to label the people he referred to as Jews. Monster also said of Gab that "I do believe the guys that are on the site are vigilant".
After Gab returned online, the site was immediately flooded with antisemitic posts and comments, including one comment in response to a post from Torba welcoming back users of Gab and asking users to be nice to each other that said "Fuck that, name the Jews who are trying to shut us down". The comment was later deleted. In response to these posts and comments, Torba claimed that "a lot of people are creating brand new accounts and breaking our guidelines on purpose tonight". Torba also called on users of Gab to help police the site for posts that break Gab's user guidelines, including threats of violence.
2019 Gab turned to cryptocurrency payment processing services after being rejected from PayPal and Stripe in the aftermath of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. In January 2019, Coinbase and Square, Inc.'s Cash App closed the accounts held by Gab and Andrew Torba. On January 22, 2019, Gab announced that it had partnered with Second Amendment Processing (SAP), a Michigan-based payment processor. Gab removed SAP's credit card payment functionalities in March 2019, only accepting payment via cryptocurrency or check. The same month, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published an investigation that found that SAP's founder had been convicted of financial crimes in 2007. Gab has not said why it removed the payment processor.