Social network Gab.ai, known as an anything-goes haven for the far-right, is seeing blowback from the past months online white supremacist crackdown. CEO Andrew Torba writes that last week, domain registrar AsiaRegistry told Gab to take down a post by the founder of neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. Torba complied, but in the process, he set off a debate over the platforms free speech bona fides and the state of moderating online hate speech.
.Gab promotes itself as a non-politically affiliated anti-censorship platform, but it hosts several high-profile far-right or alt-right users who have been banned from other services over hate speech or harassment, including the Daily Stormers Andrew Anglin. According to Torba, AsiaRegistry said that one of Anglins posts, which mocked alleged Charlottesville murder victim Heather Heyer, violated the registrars abuse policy. After receiving a formal complaint, AsiaRegistry gave Gab 48 hours to remove the post. (AsiaRegistry and its parent company CentralNic didnt immediately reply to a request for comment.)
Torba told Anglin to take the post down, but he didnt mention the registrar at first. Instead, he justified it on the technicality that Anglin hadnt appropriately tagged his comment as not safe for work. Anglin responded by castigating Gab as a fraud platform with an interface like a fucked up version of AOL in 1994, labeling Torba a free-speech hoax artist. Other users joined him in criticizing, or threatening to leave the site
Amid these protests, Torba published the email with the registrar complaint, saying hed compromised to keep the site online. Anglin reversed course and described his detail-free takedown request as brilliant, since the resulting controversy proved that free speech is Gabs vital selling point. But that hasnt placated everyone, including users who say Torba should have immediately laid out the situation and those who say Gab cant deliver on its core promise if a company can order it to take down posts.
There's more in the source about domain registers and all that if you're interested.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/6/16259150/gab-ai-registrar-andrew-anglin-daily-stormer-crackdown
Censor me if old.