This is a pretty good example of "you have the right to free speech, not consequence free speech" IMO.

Not..really.

Gab has denounced violence from the beginning. Twitter STILL has many more instances of ISIS accounts, Muslim brotherhood members, and people like Louis Farrakhan..who regularly call people of the Jewish faith 'termites'.

Why no de-platforming??? Where is the outrage????

It really makes no sense to me why one crazy person person having an account on Gab means that they have to be de-platformed by so many providers.

The only logical conclusion is political bias. Gab is known for allowing conservative/right-leaning view points and this is one more way for people on the Left to ban them.

I also find it a little ironic that so many people on HN are pushing corporate rights for not doing business with anyone for almost any reason. Yet, if it was a Christian baker not baking a gay wedding-themed cake, it should somehow be illegal.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well.

What twitter has or does is inconsequential and almost counter to the whole stated point of GAB. As you mention it though, there is a lot of negative feedback regarding Twitter's handling of extreme views.

Surely though, you see the irony in denouncing twitter for not removing enough posts, when GAB was formed because twitter removed posts?

The thing is, this is generally not about 'one person'. It's just a tipping point. GAB is well known to be the preferred platform for a lot of people holding extreme right view points. They are free to hold those views, but that doesn't mean companies have to agree to do business with them to discuss it.

If the famous cake had the two guys fellating each other on top, you'd have a point. But it didn't. It's just a fucking wedding cake. They didn't ask the baker to be involved. They didn't ask the baker to attend. They just wanted a fucking cake. Their wedding would affect no one but themselves.

The extremist viewpoints being expressed on GAB expressly affect other people, when enacted.

If those people were all getting together to discuss how they're not going to visit Africa or Israel or Asia because they don't like those races, no one would care.

What they discuss (and sometimes act on) expressly affects other people - "keep them out" "kill them" etc.

Have you read Gab's twitter feed? The whole "We're just for free speech" spiel would be a whole lot more believable if they weren't also constantly spewing reprehensible rhetoric.

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1056266704148262912 https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384?...

(Note, they started deleting a lot of their own old posts)

Like it or not its free speech, I don't see why this shouldn't be allowed... You can talk shit about "white people" on twitter all day, but you can't say goy (unless you are a jew of course) and you can't say jews are fragile?

We need to go out in the sun more, we have all become so thin skinned.

> Like it or not its free speech, I don't see why this shouldn't be allowed

Like it or not, a platform choosing not to relay it is free speech as much as the originator choosing to express it.

How is no-platforming even speech? I guess when china shuts down access to websites, they are just expressing their free speech as well?

When a handful of companies can hold power over what is allowed to be online and what is not, without a court ruling, its about time to regulate the hell out of the sector.

"Gab is known for allowing conservative/right-leaning view points and this is one more way for people on the Left to ban them."

Gab is only known for allowing crazy lunatics to spew bullshit. Right-leaning viewpoints would have some basis in reality. The stuff on Gab.ai is brainwashed lalaland for bigots and crazy people.

I will gladly take "lalaland" any day over twitter, that down right banned me for expressing concern during the european refugee crisis in 2016, it was obvious how a one sided agenda is helped along by this inorganic farce of a social network. The moment you step out of line in the "liberal" lala land that is silicon valley, you get put down like you were caddle.

Free speech is about the marketplace of ideas, you are free to go to gab.ai and express your voice, let it be heard, im sure they even have APIs so you can post on both sites with one click.

The trouble with echo-chamber platforms is they preach to the choir by reinforcing biases, beliefs and wedge issues, further dividing and conquering society into various polarized, separate subcultures. There ought to be a microblog platform that supports written debate of every belief, such that arguments can be settled online rather than spill over into the real world. The powers that be love it when the "little people" argue over abortion, climate change, separation of church and state, criminal justice, the War on Drugs, et cetera ad infinitum. Without civilized debate, a civilized society is impossible.