A number of sensational and controversial figures are urging people to join them on the controversial social media site Gab Parler go offline as expected.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Trust has apparently said Parler‘s CEO, John Matze that this will stop shutting down the social media site, which is used prominently by conservatives and far-rightists after a number of accounts promoted violence before and after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
In response Matze warned users Parler will go offline for a week and said it will be “rebuilding from scratch.”
“It was a coordinated attack by technology giants to destroy competition in the market,” Matze written on Parler. “We were successful too quickly.”
In response, a number of popular uses on Parler—a haven for conservatives and far-right bowheads banned on other platforms – is urging people to join an equally controversial social media platform Gab.
What’s Gab?
Founded in 2016, Gab is proud to be a “free speech” platform with almost no censorship rules, and has a similar layout and function as Twitter.
The site describes itself as a “social network for creators who believe in freedom of speech, individual freedom and the free flow of information online.”
It is known that it is used by neoNazis and other white supremacists can not post their hate speech on other platforms.
In 2018, Gab temporarily shut down after his hosting provider GoDaddy dropped out when posts related to the alleged Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, who killed 11 people in Pittsburgh, appeared on the platform.
In addition to sharing a number of anti-Semitic and racist comments and images, Robert Bowers allegedly wrote “Screw your optics, I’m going in” during an attack on the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society before carrying out the attack.
For this, Google removed the far-right social network from its app store in 2017 for violating its ban on hate speech.
Gab says he hosts his website on his own servers and has reported issues with the recent increase in traffic.
The site was founded by Andrew Torba. He created Gab because he felt the existing options of social media were too liberal and even biased around the 2016 election.
“I did not want to build a ‘conservative social network’, but I felt it was time for a Conservative leader to act and provide a forum where anyone could come and speak freely without fear of censorship,” Torba said. said the Washington Post in November 2016.
“Every major communication point, every major social network, is managed, owned, controlled and managed by progressive leaders, progressive workers in Silicon Valley.”
Do Parler users join Gab?
The social media site is now reporting a sharp increase in new users and visits following the apparent planned strike of Parler and other social media sites that suspended a number of accounts, most notably those of Donald Trump, following the attack on Congress.
“Today there are 500,000+ new users. 18 million visits. You do not need an account to use the site,” Gab tweeted to his 223,000 Twitter followers. “The Silicon Valley exodus has begun. Climb into the ark … The best is yet to come.”
The account also claimed on Saturday that the site gets more than 10,000 new users per hour. Newsweek could not verify this claim.
A Texas congressman, Representative Michael Cloud, is among those who have urged his Twitter fans to join Gab as well as Parler since the riot took place in Capitol.
An influential QAnon supporter, known as Joe M, shared his Gab handle on Parler and wrote: ‘They struggle to cope with the traffic, but this is where you can find me when Parler becomes dark. Geronimo. ‘
Attorney Sydney Powell, the QAnon lawyer who helped try to overthrow a number of election results with fellow Trump-supporting conspiracy theorists Lin Wood also encouraged her followers to join her in front of Gab Parler is taken offline.
Gab was contacted for further comment.
ERIC BARADAT / AFP / Getty