Pittsburgh Synagogue Attacker Posted on 'Social Network for the Far-Right.' It's Gone Offline, Founder Says It's an Attack on Free Speech

Gab.com is considered the "social network of the American far-right." The service was founded in August 2016 as an alternative to Twitter. Users can write messages ("gabs") up to 300 characters long; in just a year and a half of its existence, the service, according to the founders, has attracted 465 thousand active users. At the same time, Gab.com does not have any rules regulating acceptable statements - instead, users are asked to mark posts that they find offensive. The founder of the social network, American Andrew Torba, claims that in this way Gab supports freedom of speech. However, as The Washington Post writes , the service has become a haven for neo-Nazis, the " alt-right " and other radical groups.

Robert Bowers, accused of attacking a synagogue in Pittsburgh, also had a blog on Gab.com. In particular, he posted photos of his collection of guns on his social network account. He made his last post a few hours before the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, which killed 11 people. After the attack, Bowers' profile on Gab.com was deleted, but, as The Washington Post writes, the deleted posts contained anti-Semitic statements. In particular, Bowers wrote that organizations helping Jews are "killing his country," and in the "about me" section he called Jews "children of Satan."

The day after the synagogue attack, Gab.com temporarily went offline. According to the founders, this was due to pressure from the domain provider: the service provider demanded that the service move to another provider. A representative of the provider Joynet confirmed that the owners of Gab.com were given 24 hours to move the site. In addition, according to Reuters, some American Internet providers began blocking access to Gab.com after the attack in Pittsburgh.

Other large companies and services have also announced their refusal to work with Gab.com. In particular, after the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, PayPal and Stripe payment systems stopped working with the social network. At the same time, as Business Insider writes , Apple and Google have long been blocking the Gab.com app in the App Store and Google Play. Apple blocked the app back in 2016, stating that the posts by social network users incite hatred and contain pornography (both of which are prohibited by the App Store rules).

The founder of Gab.com declared the events an attack not only on the social network, but also on freedom of speech. On Monday, October 29, Gab.com was down again. The service’s official Twitter account posted messages promising that access would be restored soon, and Gab “will continue to protect free speech and personal freedoms for all people.” Andrew Torba announced in his blog on Gab that the service could remain unavailable for several weeks. “I don’t know what will have to be done, but I’m ready for anything,” the Gab founder wrote . “If necessary, we will build it all over again.”

Konstantin Benyumov