Robert Bowers Account Gab: How Gab has become a paradise of white supremacy

There was a blue check next to the Robert Bowers name, which means that the social media account has been verified. His bio said that "Jews are Satan's children", his banner image is a clear reference to a meme of white supremacy. His last message, released Saturday morning, was: "Go in your sights, I'm going."

The account is believed to belong to the same Robert D. Bowers, who is believed to have opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue during prayers, killing 11 people and wounding six others.

The profile, which has since been removed, has been living on Gab, a social media platform that has become a haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other followers of extremist ideologies increasingly unwelcome on Twitter. and Facebook.

The founder, Andrew Torba, has long claimed that Gab is simply a platform for "freedom of speech" for anyone who wants to join and has reacted aggressively to characterizations formulated otherwise. But the story of the platform is tied to white supremacists and other far-right figures who joined the EU in its first few months and contributed to Gab's growth.

After the Pittsburgh attack, Gab and Torba prepared for the war. On his Gab account, Torba criticized the mainstream media reports on his site and promised users that he would survive the increased attention. After Gab was banned from PayPal and Joyent, his hosting provider, told him that he would use their services, Torba wrote Sunday morning: "GAB is NOT going anywhere. I do not care what we have to do. what is needed. We will build everything from the base if it is necessary. "

Torba's updates have kept Gab users abreast of the drama: Gab's chief technology officer, Ekrem Büyükkaya, announced on Sunday that he was pulling out because "attacks from the US press have been ceaseless since two years and have personally affected me. Later in the morning, Torba announced that he had found a new host for his site.

Gab, through Torba, is still touted as an alternative to Silicon Valley's social media sites, thus attracting a base of users convinced that companies such as Twitter and Facebook deliberately censor their point of view . In 2016, when Twitter tightened its policy against "hateful behavior" and banned a number of right-wing and white supremacist accounts, Torba said Gab had gained 60,000 users in eight days.

The platform itself is a combination of many sites that Gab would like to replace. The site functions as a hybrid of Reddit and Twitter, in which users can post messages containing limited characters, respond, comment and vote other users' posts, whether in height or down. Alex Jones, who has 55,000 subscribers on Gab, often advertises his shows live because he's been banned from YouTube and Twitter.

But Gab is more than a platform. He also positioned himself as a key figure in the right-wing response to the extremists' online repression of extremist views and directly benefited from white supremacists who rallied to Gab with the promise that their views would not be censored, according to an expert monitoring the growth of the site.

Torba has become a charismatic leader of the "alt-tech" movement, which, among other things, is dedicated to protecting and building technologies to house "freedom of expression" – including growing extremist ideologies. more unwelcome on mainstream sites. When James Damore was fired from Google in 2017 for writing a memo on women in the tech sector, Torba capitalized on media attention to promote an "alternative technology revolution" in which conservative technology workers would rise up and overthrow the giants of Silicon Valley. Gab, of course, would be there to take their place.

Although the revolution did not happen as planned, Torba raised $ 80,000 for a crowdfunding campaign to support his website a few days after the publication of Damore's story, the Washington Post reported. at the time. He has also attracted media attention by giving interviews to several mainstream media – including The Post – to promote his site as a mainstream technology alternative.

Joan Donovan, Head of Media Manipulation Research and Platform Responsibility at Data and Society, said Gab had resorted to crackdowns such as enforcing the rules of "hateful conduct" on Twitter to recruit his own site. Mr. Gab "drew attention to the wave of attention paid to white nationalists after Charlottesville to populate its social media platform," Donovan said in an interview Sunday. As a result of the deadly Charlottesville protests in 2017, large corporations such as Apple, PayPal and Squarespace have begun to pull white nationalists out of their platforms, leaving them with fewer opportunities to earn money and money. host their opinions online.

Gab was there to take over. "Over the last year, Gab has been able to expand and add new features, premium features, streaming features," said Donovan, "due to the merging of the need for white supremacist platforms" and the promise of a website conducive to freedom of expression. .

As a result of the Pittsburgh attack, Christopher Cantwell – one of Gab's most prominent anti-Semites who gained notoriety at the Charlottesville rally of last year – began to make the traffic of anti-Jewish statements and conspiracy theories that the armed man was a plant of American spies to foment anger against the conservatives. before the mid-term elections.

Cantwell, nicknamed the "Crying Nazi," made his name at the Charlottesville Rally when he screened pepper spray and was featured in a viral documentary Vice. On Gab, he frequently strikes Jews and African Americans and encourages his followers to listen to his "Radical Agenda" podcast.

He also attacks the media, although he seems to have an affinity for Fox News. "The only good thing about it. . . In shooting, I know I do not miss anything by disabling Fox News, "he wrote this weekend, using an offending term for Jewish people. "That's all they will talk about until the day of the elections."

But he also told his supporters that he feared that Gab would close soon and share links allowing people to follow him and interact with him. "I know that Gab is the only way for some of you to follow me, and it seems like it can be a problem," he wrote.

Although Gab's relations with the white supremacists who gather there are sometimes controversial, Torba knows very well how to turn critics of the platform – and its extreme views – into calls for action and action. l & # 39; attention. A few months ago, Torba began to refuse all requests for interviews from the mainstream media, a fact that Gab is promoting on its social media accounts. In response to questions about Bowers' account, The Post received a statement on Medium stating that Gab had kidnapped and co-operated with the police. The site did not immediately respond to an interview request on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Torba seems to be hoping for an ultimate attention intervention as Gab faces scrutiny. Torba issued a call to Gab early Sunday for a word of support from the president:

"I do not brag about that, but in 2016, on all my accounts, I had billions of fingerprints supporting him and defending him, as well as America." Can we have a tweet to defend Gab.com, our work with law enforcement to bring a terrorist to justice and our defense of freedom of expression online for all people?

Is it too much to ask?