Why Gab is vitally important in the social media sphere

 

I've mentioned on several occasions that I'm a member of Gab, the social media network that emphasizes personal responsibility and free speech.  Gab does not censor its users, apart from violations of the laws and constitution of the USA.  It expects its members to clean up their own online environment by blocking or muting voices they don't want to hear.  I do that on a daily basis, whenever I come across anti-Semitic or Nazi sympathizers and/or propaganda.  Their ideas are invalid in the most fundamental sense, and are alien to any Christian worthy of the name:  so I block every one of them that I find, and even some of the borderline cases.  It's up to me to keep my timeline free of their nonsense.  It's not Gab's responsibility, or anyone else's.  That respects free speech and online freedom at one and the same time.

Gab is open and honest about not censoring its members when it comes to lawful speech.  It rejects demands from elsewhere to shut down users who have committed no crime under US law.  Yesterday it did so again.

Gab is going to begin publishing the purely censorship-based inbound requests that we receive from governments. These are the cases where for the most part European bodies like the Met and Europol send us transparently political takedown requests with no law enforcement purpose. Essentially they’re trying to silence a person that they’ve already thrown in prison or are about to. If they don’t want us to talk about these frivolous requests, they can stop sending them to us.

Welcome to the Gab Files.

Today we received one such request from the UK government.

They cited Public Order Act 1986 which says the following:

(1) A person who publishes or distributes written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting is guilty of an offence if—(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby

They didn’t tell us who the person is who allegedly broke this dystopian nonsense law, they didn’t tell us whether the content which they convicted him of was found on our site, and they didn’t specify which posts, if any, actually violated UK law.

They simply told us that they imprisoned someone for expressing wrongthink online, that person had a Gab account and the UK government expected us to unperson this person from the Internet at their behest when no violation of our TOS was found.

Gab is an American company which operates its business in accordance with U.S. law. Gab has no business or operations in the United Kingdom of any kind, nor does it inquire as to, or log, the residence or criminal records of its users or readers.

Gab’s policy is to not remove material unless it violates Gab’s terms of service which was drafted in accordance with US law, in particular the First Amendment.

“Hate speech” or “offensive speech” as such is not illegal here and in fact benefits from unambiguous constitutional protection backed by a half-century of precedent.

Our response to the UK is the same as it is to Germany, France, China, and every other country who tries to remove lawful content from the American Internet: get bent.

Let's hear it for Gab!  That's precisely what their response should be.  No violation of US law?  Then no interference with free speech.  I wish other social media companies followed the same policy.

Peter