I use Twitter because the people I like are on there. They often get banned for dumb reasons, and I'd prefer they didn't, but the general network effect of Twitter is strong enough that people will just make new accounts and/or avoid posting stufff that trips the censors.

Plus, as some other comments mention, Gab does not in fact "not delete anything unless it is found illegal by a court", their TOS[0] says they can ban you for posting obscenity. Why would I want to go on a website full of white-christian-nationalists if I can't send them goatse?

[0] https://gab.com/about/tos

My wish list for such an ideal Gab would be:

- only illegal content should be banned and by legal process only;

- the moderation should be decentralized and placed in each user’s hands. My blocking you should mean I won’t see you, but all others will.

That way you may post all goatses you like, but the “suprematists” (and me) wouldn’t see them. Unless you’ll post some clever things from time to time, not only goatsees, then I would rather read you. But my decision to see or not your posts should not affect other readers.

I would even pay for such a platform.

"When you vote in favour of a person, you are making that person a moderator for yourself, regardless of whether they win the vote or not.

There is no such thing as becoming a candidate. You just flip the mod switch on from Preferences. This will enable the mod UI in your client, and you can start modding. This will generate moderation graph entities originating from you. These will only be valid for you, and the people who chose you as a mod (i.e. voted for you) in that community. This will also make your name appear on the elections list. From there, people can check your past actions without applying it onto their own client first, and your reasonings for them (Mod actions provide an optional ‘reason’ field to be filled in). If they like what they see, they will vote for you, and for the person voting, you will become a mod. That means your mod actions from that point on will start to affect what that user sees.

Election makes it so that the people who come into a community, who have not chosen or disabled that particular mod by themselves, will use the mod list shaped by the elections. If a user has explicitly chosen a particular person to be a mod in that community, that takes precedence. Likewise, if a user has disabled a mod, that person will never be a mod for that user, regardless of the results.

That is all being a mod is: some people liking your curation enough that they decide to apply your curation to their own view as well."

I don't think this is the reason. I've never used Gab but Reddit 10-15 years ago was a lot more free than it is today and it was great. I'm sure there were some people who were displeased with moderation, but in general, most users enjoyed the freedom and diverse(in the real sense) communities that existed there. The change on Reddit and similar websites came from the top. There is no way to be sure about how they did it, but I'm certain it wasn't freely chosen by the users.

Why don't such sites have a similar fear that the measures that they consider to apply to appease the press will scare away users/visitors?

Be obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic. Note that mere nudity e.g. as a form of protest or for educational/medical reasons will not fall foul of this rule.

And in exchange for that, you get to deal with inconvenient access.

Yeah, of course it's shunned. Based on what you've said, it doesn't represent any kind of practical improvement over the status quo, so the question of whether or not it's associated with / frequented by distasteful people doesn't even factor into this.

Gab created a shit platform for shit people to post shit content and you're blaming everyone else for its failure.

In contrast, Reddit was plenty successful long before they started censoring to appease their corpo-overlords. The difference was that A) shit wasn't the only content available and B) average users weren't automatically subjected to the shit content that they were hosting.

I absolutely loved your hate speech. I do not agree with it but will always defend your right to say it.

Let me clarify just a couple of points.

1. Here’s what Gab’s founder tells about the purpose of Gab: Gab’s mission is to be the home of free speech online. It seeks to export American values and freedom to the maximum extent permitted by American law to Internet users around the world. Gab concurs with the Committee’s view that these values protect offensive and unpopular speech, but not illegal speech, such as threats. Unlawful speech is not and has never been allowed on Gab.

2. I am pointing at Gab as an example of definite *success*. It survives and functions despite being no-platformed and banned by 25+ service providers over the years including both App Stores, multiple payment processors, and hosting providers. The example of *failure* in this context is another free-speech platform… forgot it’s name - it was deplatformed in 2020 and stopped functioning for a long period of time. Very unprofessional.

(Edit: Parler of cause. Parler was deplatformed by Amazon and both app stores - and immediately went down. That’s what failure looks like)

So, you may think that they are shit people. Ok. But you’ve failed to silence them, despite trying heavily. Doesn’t it provoke your professional interest - how they managed to do it?

In that sense, that makes Gab a failed platform. But you're right; the fact that it is up and running, in spite of getting blacklisted by big corpo, could be seen as a sort of success. I'm all for technology that can't be taken down by overzealous governments.

You kinda got me wrong too. I'm not for silencing anyone. I'm just explaining why no one is using Gab. Again, its not because its uncensored (as you bemoan). It's because Gab doesn't offer anything people want. Time and time again its been proven that users simply don't care about privacy / censorship / decentralization / some-other-high-minded-ideal. They care about convenience and content.

According to this Buzzfeed article from around the time Parler started, that is not the case.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/new-soci...

No.

> Because that Buzzfeed article very much supports my statements about Gab

Please expand on that.

> and doesn't mention Parler at all

I know, and it doesn't need to for it to be a valid response, so you might check my comment again in light of that.

> To quote sabergirl278 (the only commenter on that page)

Why is the quote from a commenter relevant? It's not, not in any universe where logic holds sway.

"...but Gab.ai is attracting conservatives as an alternate social platform."

"At the moment, Gab feels like a conservative chatroom..."

"It also appears that Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative writer who was permanently suspended from Twitter in July after his attack on actress Leslie Jones, has joined Gab."

"... Gab’s early, ideologically-narrow success plays into a larger trend in social media..."

> Gab (like Parler) was created in direct response to the deplatforming of white supremacists.

and you say that the article backs that up. Now you have provided quotes, let's see.

> The article used a picture of Pepe the frog as Captain America

Not a good start, as this is utterly irrelevant, for many reasons which I would think are as blindingly obvious as why using a comment beneath the article is irrelevant.

> ...but Gab.ai is attracting conservatives as an alternate social platform.

conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

> At the moment, Gab feels like a conservative chatroom...

conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

> It also appears that Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative writer who was permanently suspended from Twitter in July after his attack on actress Leslie Jones, has joined Gab.

- conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

- Even if Yiannopoulos is or was a white supremacist, Gab was launched *before* he was kicked off of Twitter and was no doubt in development beforehand.

> ... Gab’s early, ideologically-narrow success plays into a larger trend in social media...

ideologically-narrow here meaning conservative. Drum roll, please…

conservative is not a synonym for white supremacist, hence, it does not support your claim.

What I'd like to see from you is something that evidences your claim. For example, one of the founders saying they set it up to help white supremacists, or they had a secret meeting with white supremacists about setting up Gab for them and it was leaked… not some specious nonsense that conflates conservative with white supremacist, or points to the choice of image that some sub-editor chose to go along with the article. Is that too much to ask? Just a crumb of factually accurate, relevant, evidence that isn't based on redefining basic terms or smearing entire groups of people - massive groups - as being something they are clearly not.

Can you manage that? Because this is HN, not Twitter, so I'd appreciate that you put in the effort.

No, because that's not the hard part. Anyone can host a niche community "off grid" and make it profitable. It being niche is what enables that. It's not hard to get 2000 dedicated people to fuck around with crypto and side loading apps. It's basically impossible to get a critical mass of average people to do it.

Visa and Apple control their platforms by "offering" usability to the average person (mostly by taking away other easy options or out competing them with a moat). The only way the current crop of sites can fail now is if it becomes so bad that the censorship itself is more inconvenient than the difficult steps to work around mainstream infrastructure.

If something like Gab got to like 20-30% the size of Reddit and 99% of it's userbase was normal people doing normal people stuff then I'd be interested. Because before that point we're not going to see any real effort from the incumbents to stop them.

As far as I can tell, Gab is still losing money and not gaining users (100,000 estimated active as of now, despite 6 years of existence), so it's hard to call it a success. It, like previous alt-right responses to mainstream platforms such as Parler, will likely die the same death for the same reasons: not enough money or users to be sustainable.

>I absolutely loved your hate speech.

It's the opinion shared by a significant part of the population, and the content is crap. I tried each of the "alternative" platforms, and on each one am bombarded by the stupidest scams, "buy gold" idiots, and such ignorance and stupidity I dropped each one.

The userbase trends far-right so most people will never join unless the userbase is more central, which will not happen. The CEO has engaged in the most nonsensical anti-semitic screeds on Twitter and elsewhere, having to repeatedly delete his own content. It's no wonder people don't like the platform or it's content.

Researchers, analyzing random samples of millions of posts on the site, find many multiples of hate speech more than other platforms, find the majority of posts are political (and right leaning), that people moving to this site after being banned elsewhere increase in toxicity because Gab lets them (as long as they have the "right" viewpoint), and on and on. The academic literature on the platform content and behaviors is spot on in my opinion. These are empirical reasons that most people will not join. Want some good reading on what the site actually has? Look no further than Google Scholar [1]

If most people did not share the opinion that the content is bad, more people would use those platforms.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=gab...

And my guess is based on some observations. I named one - GOP branch deleting their account.

Here’s the second observation, if you wish. Even more bothering to me. Not so long a go there was a mass protest at SF medical center. About a thousand of hospital workers were demanding that Zuckerberg’s name (paid by him at $25 mln) was removed from the plates. Reason - he is not doing enough to censor Facebook posts.

I was born and grown up and have a nice “living experience” in a totalitarian country. This popular demand for more censorship looks to me like people asking authorities to hang them - and bringing their own ropes and soap to the execution site. Not a nice picture to watch.

So, you will use only a platform that does not provide a safe space for white supremacists/conspiracy theorists/whatever ?

But also yes, I’m not a fan of white supremacists and I won’t voluntarily use a platform that caters to them. Just like I wouldn’t eat at a “Hitler was great”-themed cafe.

a) have some users who've been censored elsewhere

b) be accused of catering to them, as you have done

c) meanwhile, the majority continues to use censored platforms

Whereas if you and the majority used an uncensored-yet-legal platform:

1) White supremacists would be a tiny minority

2) Everyone could speak freely

3) That would not be catering to white supremacists

Or would it? Based on what you've written above it seems you might claim it would be catering to them by not censoring them.

You've created a circular argument and a vicious cycle on top of it. That does support censorship and it shows that the majority does prefer censorship. Freedom of speech will necessarily entail having speech the majority don't like being around. That's the price of it but it's better than the alternatives.

I was also banned from Twitter, and I’m not out crying about it as nothing of value was really lost there either.

I've no idea if Gab censors or not as I don't use it but that's different to your argument holding water. I also wonder that if you're banned from Twitter and Gab then you're the one with the problem, and this thread might be a clue as to why.

I never said white supremacists were censoring me. I said Gab is full of them and that as a platform, they too censor views that dissent from their majority. So it’s not some free speech wonderland like OP implied. He suggested it as an alternative. I said it’s not really an alternative. The content of what I said to get banned from Twitter or from Gab is irrelevant to my point.

I wasn't suggesting anything of the sort, but your belligerence and unwillingness to accept any other point of view is what I was suggesting, along with the bannings you've brought up.

> I never said white supremacists were censoring me.

Really?

> Did you not see where I said they censored me? > How are they not catering to white supremacists

If you didn't write it then you suggested it to the point where to now claim anything else undermines your argument, as does the goalpost moving.

So, which is it? They're catering to white supremacists or Gab isn't really a free speech paradise. Once you've picked one then perhaps you can form a cogent argument for it. Let me know.

Also, if I’m belligerent for disagreeing with you, then clearly you are also belligerent for disagreeing with me. You can accuse me of moving goalposts or whatever makes you feel better about it, but i am not meaning to. English is not my first language and it sometimes my point does not shine through the way I would like.

Let's get this out of the way, I wasn't suggesting you're belligerent for disagreeing with me, there's plenty of belligerence from you in this thread long before I commented.

> English is not my first language and it sometimes my point does not shine through the way I would like.

As an immigrant who struggles with the local language where I am, I sympathise, I genuinely do. Still, I'd be amazed if I could reach the level you have. Shall we resume disagreeing now?

> I think people who saw a way to make money by catering to that demographic are not practicing the “free speech paradise” that they preach

I'm not sure who censored you now, I've heard talk of community moderators on Gab, was it them? It was not white supremacists that censored you but they're catering to white supremacists? Wouldn't that just cater to conservatives? It's strange because research (from Pew) shows that those on the American left, at least, are less likely to tolerate opposing viewpoints on social media[1].

You also seem to conflate banning with censoring, which it can, but to go straight to a ban seems strange to me - does Gab ban people straight away for left wing comments? I'm almost tempted to post one there and see what happens.

This Forbes article[2] mentions Parler (which is also being accused of catering to white supremacists elsewhere on this page):

> One reason that conservatives may feel at home is because the service has been quick to ban those who joined just to "troll" or otherwise harass those with right-leaning views.

At the moment, regardless of language skill, that would appear to explain your anecdote very well.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-...

[2] One reason that conservatives may feel at home is because the service has been quick to ban those who joined just to "troll" or otherwise harass those with right-leaning views.

Edit: typo

Like you said, you can always go to Gab.

Then they came for the internet registrars, I did not speak out because I didn't have a website.

Then they came for the payment processors, I did not speak out because I didn't have an online business.

When they came for my bank account there was no where left to speak.

Give me your car. I want to key some stuff into the side of it. If you don’t you’re censoring me.

Now, the constitution of California provides positive right of speech to it’s citizens: Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. See this dot here? no exception for Zuckerbergs. Or your car.

Then, there is courts’ interpretation of this right. It was as following (by memory): if you created a public forum, then you can’t remove people from it for their speech contents only . That’s why California malls can’t remove beggars soliciting money (you car is ok, it’s not a public forum).

Now, as in now, California becomes a one-party state (feels like home, sometimes). The same Supreme Court (but with nowadays judges) decides: is Facebook a public forum? You can guess the answer.

Nice. I’ve got my knife. Let’s meet up! Afterwards, we’ll swing by the television station and make them broadcast us live, free of charge or control, a six hour lecture about our novel interpretation constitutional law.

Otherwise you'd be making an argument in bad faith.

Also, since you seem to be new I'll let you know. This isn't bad faith. It's reductio ad absurdum.

Yes, I can see why your argument is absurd.

Moderation is probably needed. But it should be decentralized.

Malign activity (bots and trolls) are organized and at scale, the only way to fight back is at the same scale. Individual users would be helpless.

Why can't I, for example, set a filter that removes bots based on some confidence value? Or that orders my feeds in the order of my choosing?

Right now I have to use ridiculously blunt instruments and trust in moderation that is well known to be biased and, frankly, useless.

This is pretty obtuse as a response to the comment above you:

>>>>>> You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there.

What could "Not enough censorship there" mean other than that people want more censorship than Gab provides?

There's normal people on Gab as well. It's nice if you want to talk about taboo topics during controversial times like lockdowns, certain laptops, certain vaccines, etc..

Basically if you want to escape western propaganda.

They are all lumped together in the mind of your average CNN viewer as "white supremacy" unfortunately. Sometimes there are weird glitches in the issue lumping, like when people say that Trump is anti-vax even though Trump has been an advocate of the vaccines.

He tried to argue that without the millions of illegals in California, taking atleast a million housing units, rent would be cheaper. But everyone was shocked he could even say that.

Things are getting comical. As if the actual race or color of the millions of people taking up housing is the actual issue.... Not their legal status. If they were a different color or race he's be ok with it?

The skin color thing was always a strawman. There's slightly different physiology, behavioral tendencies like cultures, which may simply be different (intelligent adaptations by group from their geographical origins).

Nobody thinks an albino African is "White". And when the Tanzanian albino gets chopped into a potion by his non-Albino brothers -- an actual crime predicated upon skin color alone -- would we call it a racial hate crime? We barely even talk about that issue internationally.

they do put in a serious effort though because of how ostracized they are, i can't help but think it will come in handy someday

Me scrolling through gab won't make visa more accepting.

https://help.gab.com/article/gab-pay-overview

- no fraud protection

- no e-commerce integration

- a couple months old

Maybe it'll catch on and grow, but this is not currently a solution.

Hate speech is not speech, banning it is not censorship.

What does sex have in common with the actively and directly harmful Garbage that people go on Gab for? Nothing if you're not a troll.

You're welcome to argue that not all speech is good and some deserved to be banned by censoring it. But please at least be honest about what you're trying to do.

But when I call for censorship, I don't pretend that it's something else.

Now, I want to be clear. While many people when they give the examples of blasphemy and heresy, they mean those as things that they think are actually good, but which people in power in the past thought were bad and therefore censored/punished. That’s not how I’m thinking about these. Blasphemy and heresy are things I view as actually bad.

As such, what I’m not saying is not “you supporting restrictions on hate speech is just enforcing your own dead dogma over an actual critical eye!” . No, that’s not what I’m saying.

So when I oppose censoring blasphemy/heresy, I am opposing censoring some things which I think are actually bad.

Likewise, even though e.g. racism is bad, I don’t conclude that expressing racist fact-claims is “not speech”. It is clearly speech, just bad speech. And as speech, it should be permitted(in some senses of the term “permitted”) in some venues.

(Whether the use of slurs needs to be permitted, when there are ways to express whatever claims without using slurs, may be a different question, due to it being a restriction on how something is expressed rather than on what is expressed. However, on the other hand, I do find the definition of “slur” to be, hm, something to ponder? Something that can be initially confusing.)

Though, of course, there should also be venues where it is not allowed, just as there are venues where spouting heresies can get one banned.

What on Earth makes you think so??

For instance : https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/hate-speech-is-not-free-...

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. That was said in 1750s. My “living experience” of growing up in a totalitarian society tells me that it is not only true, but vital - vital for having a free and prosperous society.

American Fathers agreed with Voltaire. But my feeling (which I do not like) is that an easily observable slice of native Americans have forgotten what exactly makes their country so nice to live in. “The lubricant oil is stinky and greasy - let’s get rid of it, car rides will be much more pleasant”.

Let me ask you a question in my turn. Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them.

> Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them

Glad you asked. The presence of racists on Gab makes me unwilling to be "guilty by association" (in the eyes of others) for being on the same site as them. Simple as that. This is a reality in the world, and until you find a way to stop people from instinctively applying the "guilty by association" principle, I'm unwilling to be on the same site as Nazis. Sorry.

That is also false. It is a majority that chooses. The majority , also called a mob , has figured out that it's more profitable to weaponize their votes rather than increase human dignity.

1. Most people like censorship, or at least certain kinds of censorship. They don't use Gab because Gab doesn't censor the things they want censored.

2. Most people don't want to be in a forum that's all crazy evil people all the time. They don't use Gab because they think most of the people on Gab are crazy and/or evil.

3. Most people just want to use whatever social network their friends and family use. Maybe also other people they admire or find interesting and want to follow despite not knowing them. They don't use Gab because hardly anyone they know or admire is on Gab and everyone they know is on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever.

You are claiming it's all about #1. I actually suspect #3 is much the most important effect. The other two may look alike but they are different and I think #2 is much bigger than #1.

A hypothetical version of Gab that didn't censor white supremacists, QAnon groupies, people who think the COVID-19 vaccines will enable Bill Gates to control you with 5G networking, etc., but that somehow wasn't (perceived to be) dominated by those people might actually be pretty attractive. It probably still wouldn't get much use because everyone's on other social networks and no one is on Gab, but it would be in with a chance of success.

But, of course, if everyone else is running full-scale witch hunts and you make a space that doesn't do that, then all the witches will go there, whether or not that was your goal. I think in Gab's case it was actually their goal, though. They may say that they're all about freedom of speech, and maybe they believe that, but I'm pretty sure that what motivated the creation of Gab was wanting freedom for certain particular kinds of speech.

(Note: wanting a space not dominated by X is the same thing as wanting X to be censored, even if it turns out that not censoring X inevitably leads to the space being dominated by X. Someone who leaps off a tall building because he delusionally thinks he can fly doesn't want to fall to the ground and die. Someone who tries to avoid accidental death and fatal diseases doesn't want to suffer gradual decay as a result of aging. Etc.)

Anyway: if you want to argue that Gab's lack of success shows that people want censorship, you need to show some actual evidence that it's #1 rather than #2 and #3 that causes it, and so far you haven't.