Is Gab Shifting Towards Censorship?

Summary

• Gab is as an ad-free social media network with a premium membership option, but they've been operating a loss for quite some time.
• Many of Gab's content creators no longer use the platform and it seems Gab is making an effort to bring them back.
• Gab has ditched their Topics and Categories, which many users enjoyed, in favor of Groups.
• Gab has a lot of antisemitic content that reaches its Topics and Categories, which many speculate was the reason to drop it.
• Add it all up, and it appears that Gab is going to begin censoring in order to become mainstream.

Introduction

With the announcement from Gab that it will do away with Topics and Categories in favor of Groups, many have begun to wonder if this is a form of censorship in an effort to become more mainstream.

Revenue Problems

Before anything, we don't want to make it seem like there's major problems at Gab. However, we have noticed that they do operate at a loss. According to Andrew Torba's own gab, in April 2018, they lost $18K and are expected to only last about 2 years at this current rate.

After one year of being live, they can't continue to operate like this forever, so they need to either introduce ads or broaden their base, and be able to post their app on iTunes and Google Play. As we'll explain later, this is gonna be tough for one major reason and may force them to compromise on their core principle of free speech.

Declining Content Creators

When Gab started out, it had quite a few right-leaning content creators, as many of them were looking to get away from Twitter due to all the censorship. But these days, their accounts have been abandoned, with not much explanation given.

Rather than list all the accounts I've seen that are abandoned, I'll just link to the list of people who Mike Cernovich is following on Gab to give you an idea of the inactivity of those accounts which are popular on Twitter. From my time on Gab, I've only been able to find three popular right-leaning content creators who are still active: Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Roger Stone, Styxhexenhammer666, and Stefan Molyneux. But even then, they're nowhere near as active on Gab as they are on Twitter. They mainly just post their latest content, whereas with Twitter, they interact more.

This isn't as much an indictment on Gab as much as it is the cuckoldry that has been plaguing the right. All these so-called quote "leaders" only view their followers as monetization and the Big Tech platforms are still their best methods of generating revenue. Rather than take a stand, they'd rather cry to the government to fix Twitter/Facebook/YouTube so they don't lose any revenue. Gab even offers a "Post to Twitter" option, so there's no reason to be posting exclusively on anti-speech platforms such as Twitter.

With that said, if Gab is going to grow, it needs to attract content creators, and right now, it's struggling just to keep the ones it has.

Elimination of Topics and Categories

On May 21st, 2018, Andrew Torba stated that they will be removing Topics and Categories from Gab. This was met with a lot of dismay, as many people enjoyed it, including us.

The reason given by Andrew Torba was because it became a "wild west of spam, off-topic trash, and noise. They were confusing and turned away many new users who got no value from them and didn’t understand them."

As one user pointed out, this comes as a surprise because Andrew Torba once said that he's "loving" Categories and bragged that it was one of the features that Twitter was lacking.
 
Even if you agree with Mr. Torba's decision and reasoning, isn't that what free speech, which Gab prides itself in, had produced? And isn't getting rid of speech, that didn't produce the intended effect that you wanted, the same as regulating speech?

Antisemitism To Blame?

Andrew Torba stated that they want to shift the focus to Groups. Many users view this as a way to quarantine alt-right discussion so that the site can attract a more diverse group of users and remove the stigma placed on it by leftists. Andrew Torba lent credence to this by regabbing a user who said it would help bring in "normies".

Jared Wyand, one of Gab's most popular users, believes that the move to get rid of Topics and Categories was the result of the antisemitism on Gab. One user claims that Andrew Torba replied to a woman that something would be done about the antisemitism, however, we were not able to verify the claim. Edit: we believe this was the interaction that the user was referring to.

One of Gab's developers, Utsav Sanduja, stated that he invited Dave Rubin to come back on Gab. This comes just four hours after Andrew Torba announced that Gab will do away with its Topics and Categories.

One can't help but wonder if it this was more than just a coincidence. Dave Rubin is Jewish, which got us thinking: was the amount of antisemitism on Gab the reason that the majority of its content creators abandoned it? While we can't be certain, and even if it were, it's probably not even the entire reason, but it's not crazy to think that it may have played a part.

Jared Wyand even got into a dispute with Gab developers, Andrew Torba and Utsav Sanduja, and raised the issue of the changes being due to antisemitism, which ended up with the developers making some strong remarks towards him.

Conclusion: Gab Will Go Mainstream And Begin To Censor

After assessing the situation, it's not crazy to think that Gab wants to become more mainstream and thinks that it's carrying a stigma of antisemitism that prevents it from broadening its userbase.  Remember, it's operating at a loss, it's losing content creators, and it can't even get approved on iTunes or Google Play partly due to the content it allows (Apple and Google are more to blame, though). They've even had problems with their domain name registrar because of some of the content that its users post.

Jared Wyand also believes that Gab is looking to go mainstream, and thus, this was the reason they did away with Topics and Categories.

Being a defender and advocate of free speech isn't easy in today's world, as the history of Gab has proven. The developers of Gab may be hitting a breaking point, and they probably think that they could stand to benefit a lot if they just give a bit less leniency to free speech.

We'll wait to see how it plays out, but right now, it's looking like the beginning of censorship, in the form of quarantines, and a shift towards the mainstream.

Editor's Note: Gab has reinstated Topics due to popular demand.