4 ms·

Gab (and Voat, and, er, Hatreon) were open attempts to create far-right versions of existing websites. I don't think they're good examples of the inevitability

by strken 8y ago

Gab (and Voat, and, er, Hatreon) were open attempts to create far-right versions of existing websites. I don't think they're good examples of the inevitability of hatred. I'd hazard a guess that many more people are angry about hate speech on Reddit than about hate speech over email. The difference is that one is a company and the other is a federated standard. If I've understood Tim Berners-Lee correctly, he wants to replace Twitter with a million Mastodon instances rather than a hundred different versions of "Twitter, but for the far-right/far-left/radical-centrists".

hannasanarion 8y ago
They were not created as such (well, maybe with the exception of hatreon). They were created to be similar platforms, competitors or clones, with a promise of better management/operation/features. See also: Vidme. When you compete with a monolith, your early adopters will be the people thrown off the bigger ship, and most of those people were thrown off for a reason. Very few alt-repreneurs seem to understand this
- int_19h 8y ago
  Gab was very much created with that kind of content in mind. Its creator was specifically concerned with "left-leaning Big Social media monopoly", after Facebook and Twitter started censoring alt-right accounts. Which is not surprising, given his past history: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-from-y-combinator/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...
CzechTech 8y ago
What a word salad. Just because a website decides to censor unlawful and only unlawful content doesn't make it "openly far-right". Within the United States, hate speech is free speech and it's perfectly legal (except for calls for violence resulting in an immediate physical danger). Also, what the hell is a "radical centrist"? Is that what the progressives call any true liberal disagreeing with their intersectional vomit?
paulddraper 8y ago
They were created to be uncensored versions of existing websites. (I don't think there're any examples of Gab limiting left views.) It happened that the existing websites were censoring far-right viewpoints. So...by default the predominant users were far right.

by strken 8y ago

hannasanarion 8y ago

They were not created as such (well, maybe with the exception of hatreon). They were created to be similar platforms, competitors or clones, with a promise of better management/operation/features. See also: Vidme. When you compete with a monolith, your early adopters will be the people thrown off the bigger ship, and most of those people were thrown off for a reason. Very few alt-repreneurs seem to understand this

int_19h 8y ago
Gab was very much created with that kind of content in mind. Its creator was specifically concerned with "left-leaning Big Social media monopoly", after Facebook and Twitter started censoring alt-right accounts. Which is not surprising, given his past history: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-from-y-combinator/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...

CzechTech 8y ago

What a word salad. Just because a website decides to censor unlawful and only unlawful content doesn't make it "openly far-right". Within the United States, hate speech is free speech and it's perfectly legal (except for calls for violence resulting in an immediate physical danger). Also, what the hell is a "radical centrist"? Is that what the progressives call any true liberal disagreeing with their intersectional vomit?

paulddraper 8y ago

They were created to be uncensored versions of existing websites. (I don't think there're any examples of Gab limiting left views.) It happened that the existing websites were censoring far-right viewpoints. So...by default the predominant users were far right.