What is Gab, the "social media of the far right"? | Now

American social media Gab was taken offline by GoDaddy domain name manager Sunday after it appeared that the suspect of the attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue had broadcast antisemitic messages. What is "social media for the far right"?

Gab was founded in August 2016 to protest against existing social media. The platform is especially seen as an alternative to Twitter, giving users the ability to write messages of up to three hundred characters (called gabs). It also uses a system similar to Reddit that allows users to rate a message by voting it

The logo that social media was using until recently, a frog bearing the name of Gabby, is primarily considered as a reference to the Internet company Pepe. frog. This cartoon character, originally from the comic Boy's Club has been hijacked by the far right and associated with the movement since 2015.

Gab defines itself as a sanctuary for freedom of expression. Aside from a number of legally prohibited cases, such as terrorism and the spread of child pornography, no subject is taboo

. This made the social media attractive for far-right comments that are not allowed in traditional social media. The American racist nationalist Richard Spencer, the thinker of the far right plot Alex Jones and Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, have a profile.

More hate messages than Twitter, less than 4chan's

Seven researchers Several universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece and Qatar found in February 2018 that 5.4% of all ABCs contained a word of hatred. They analyzed 22 million messages from 336,000 users

This means that Gab messages contain 2.4 times more a word of hate than a message on Twitter, according to the researchers. Another comparison: according to a survey conducted in 2017, 12% of posts on the sub-forum "politically incorrect" / pol / forum online 4chan contained a hateful word.

The spread of hate messages prompted Google to launch the application in August 2017. remove Gab from its Play Store. For similar reasons, the application is also prohibited in the App Store of Apple.

"Gab is a breeding ground for the far right"

"Gab stands as a platform for freedom of expression, but it's mainly a matter of dog whistle (concealment to be able to express controversial views, ed.) for fair activism, "says Ico Maly, lecturer in digital media and politics at the University of Tilburg and author of the book New right . [19659003] "In theory, it is open to everyone, but you see that Gab is mainly visited by supporters of the new right, and that there is not really a moderate voice on social media," says -he. "It's a breeding ground for the right-wing extremist."

Maly does not think that the blockade of the domain name manager, GoDaddy, will definitely keep the social media offline. "It also depends a bit on Gab's ability to find another service provider and the extent of public controversy around this problem."

"Experience shows that this kind of party usually manages to come back online," he says. "You've also seen this on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, which can be found on the Internet via other domain names."