Several companies have banned Gab, including PayPal, Visa and the Apple and Google app stores. In 2018, when an assault on a Pittsburgh synagogue claimed 11 lives, investigators discovered earlier anti-Semitic posts by the shooter on Gab. Launched in 2016, Gab positions itself as a platform promoting “freedom of expression,” but has become known above all for its far-right - even neo-Nazi - user base. He reported 12 million visits in 12 hours, adding: “Exploding growth right now.” Gab saw “record traffic” on Friday night and Saturday, and had to add computer servers to handle it, founder and chief executive officer Andrew Torba said. In a quickly deleted tweet, the president himself on Friday spoke of creating his own platform “in the near future,” without providing any details.Ĭonservative platforms popular among Trump’s fiercest supporters, like Parler and Gab, have drawn growing numbers of users. The question now is where Trump and his supporters will turn next.ĭonald Trump Jr, himself fearing exclusion from Twitter, has asked his followers to send him their e-mail contacts - hardly the most reactive form of communication - so that he can keep them abreast of news. Reddit, a news and discussion Web site that is normally fairly permissive, on Friday closed a forum popular with Trump fans, saying that it was inciting hate. It was taking the rare measure, it said, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”įacebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitch joined in suspending the president’s accounts. However, on Friday, amid widespread fury after he encouraged the supporters who forced their way into the US Capitol in a bloody and chaotic melee, Twitter banned him permanently. “Why should a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires have a monopoly on political speech?” he asked.Įvery one of the above messages was posted on Twitter, the social network that for years has been Trump’s preferred means of communicating with the public - and sometimes even with other world leaders.
For US Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, the decisions by Twitter and some other social media were “absurd & profoundly dangerous.”
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