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GAB is a type of bubble, and definitely a (US politic) right-leaning discussion forum, but my ears perked up when you used the term "Far Right". Is there such

GAB is a type of bubble, and definitely a (US politic) right-leaning discussion forum, but my ears perked up when you used the term "Far Right". Is there such thing as a moderate-right social media platform? Does far-right mean "not supported by a majority of right-leaning people", or does it mean "extreme from the perspective of an average left-leaning person"? I'm not going to either defend Gab or put it down, but even if you deconstruct your statement, it's the product of an information bubble. And it can have different meanings depending on what type of information bubble you live in.

Forgeties79 4y ago
>Is there such thing as a moderate-right social media platform? I mean the knee jerk response for me is Facebook, though I’d say it’s solidly right overall and not moderate-right.
- lupire 4y ago
- danpalmer 4y ago
  This is the one that came to mind for me too. In North America and Europe, Facebook skews older, and older people tend to be relatively moderate-right. Gab is certainly "far right", but that doesn't mean those views are uncommon. Centrist viewpoints have shrunk, pulling what was previously considered "far" viewpoints into the mainstream. I think it's undeniable that a website where many (most?) of the userbase would advocate against the peaceful transition of power in the US should be labelled "far right".
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    > Gab is certainly "far right", but that doesn't mean those views are uncommon. I don’t think anyone said those views were uncommon, just that they were far right.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Facebook is a bunch of bubbles. If yours skews right that says more about your friends and acquaintances than it does about Facebook in general.
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    I think you'll find this experiment really interesting: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en
- tomjen3 4y ago
  Facebook, like reddit, is a group of groups. /r/ukraine is very, very different from /r/russia and /r/news has nearly nothing to do with /r/conservative.
  - dexterdog 4y ago
    Then why is /r/politics such a left echo chamber?
    - tomjen3 4y ago
      Because mods permit that.
ryanmcbride 4y ago
Most people understand that "far-right" in this context means that it allows white supremacists and nazis to use its platform. It's a far right platform in the same sense that any bar that doesn't kick out nazis on site becomes a nazi bar, or a bar where cops feel comfortable becomes a cop bar. Regardless of creator intention a single customer base can shift the entire purpose of a product. As for what a moderate-right platform would be, I'd actually point right here at hackernews. It allows discussion around more right-leaning topics, but draws a clear line at outright hate. There's progressives too (hi) but you'll find no shortage of right leaning people either (like OP apparently). The sheer number of libertarians here alone is enough to move the needle right of center.
- brobdingnagians 4y ago
  How are libertarians "right-wing"? Some libertarians could be described as extreme "left-wing" depending on being social or economic libertarians. I think it is better to not have such a simple dichotomy of "left" vs "right". People have political beliefs, those beliefs can be very complex, and the consistency of the beliefs depends largely on the perspective of the person. Having a simple "two sides" lined up against each other is overly simplistic and has lead to people being shoehorned into "us vs them" and feeling pressured to adopt the beliefs of the group they are closest to, which results in less diversity of political beliefs. I don't think even a circle of beliefs is enough, the degrees of freedom in political beliefs is enormous, which literally encompasses most of the things people believe about the world. It can't really be boiled down to a spectrum of two sides.
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    Libertarians are funny because most other ideologies can find some reason to view them in a bad light, but I think the reasons to view them as right wing is that they commonly have attitudes like, "regulations are bad," "taxes are theft," "leave me and my guns alone," "fuck the poor" etc. They're often proponents of private roads, private schools, private emergency services, and so on. This all offends the left. And of course, they offend the right with their lack of interest in policing people's personal lives. I sort of consider myself a libertarian who sees the need for a social safety net, regulations, strong consumer protection, education, infrastructure, emergency services, and healthcare. You know, a democrat. :D
nerdponx 4y ago
Moderates tend not to have their own platforms.
- celdon25 4y ago
  The one we are on right now feels pretty moderate to me.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    HN is extremely pro-text (excellent, in my book), and pro-tech (not too bad, in limited doses). And pro-Science, which a depressing fraction of Americans might regard as extremely bad. ...and saying that HN is "our own" - vs. "one modest Province in our Benevolent Overlord Paul's Empire" - is a bit of an issue.
    - beachy 4y ago
      This comment inadvertantly encapsulates nearly all that is wrong with the world today, and from which much evil flows. "Pro-science" is not a position, and being anti-science means being anti-humanity.
      - delusional 4y ago
        You can say that here, because we're all in a space where science is unquestioned, but try and say that to my mom over the Christmas table and you won't get very far in that conversation.
        someguydave 4y ago
        > we're all in a space where science is unquestioned Please consider the contradiction in this quote
        delusional 4y ago
        That was intentional. From the other comment I figured I should probably point that out clearly.
ramraj07 4y ago
The front page is just posts making fun of the president (acceptable), and tweets from Donald Trump (a patently treasonous figure, by any sane means of logic and reporting including the report made by mueller, who’s not a journalist), and Dinesh DSouza, a felon out and about only because of a pardon from above mentioned treacherer. I’m not American BTW. Just an external observer who’s just flabbergasted how much a developed country can revolve into questioning of such obvious facts in the name of “both sides.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mwint 4y ago
  The “out and about only because of a pardon” bit is false. From Wikipedia: > In 2012, D'Souza contributed […] Two years later, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony charge […] He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine.[29][30] In 2018, D'Souza was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump.[31] Some simple math reveals the pardon came long after his “incarceration”, and the sentence including probation would have been fully served by now (2012 + 2 + 5 < 2022).
- leereeves 4y ago
  > including the report made by mueller Where are you getting your information? The report concludes that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
  - tomrod 4y ago
    A better way to phrase that would be: "could not recommend prosecution of a sitting President and associate members for conspiring or coordinating with the Russian government in its election interference activities, but did lay out how prosecutors not under prosecutorial restrictions would do so in great detail."
dangus 4y ago
Yes, Gab is far-right, whether you judge it by its owners or its users. If we say that Gab isn't far-right, it's kind of like saying Grindr isn't just for gay men. That may technically be true, but in practice it's not. Also, judging Gab by its ownership, if you look at the Wikipedia page for Gab, and go to the Antisemitism section, Gab has made multiple antisemitic statements officially. Straight from the company. The owners of the site are far-right. Gab only exists because far-right people get banned on other platforms for breaking hate speech rules. The far-left as a group barely exists compared to the size of the far-right. Far-left would be advocating for violence to dismantle the neoliberal system, these would be your anarchist-types. In real life, I've never met anyone on the "far-left" when you describe it this way, while I've met plenty of openly racist and LGBT-phobic Republicans who are pro-violence: the kind of people who want to, I dunno, be a part of a coup and enter the Capitol building? The kind of people who cheer when Donald Trump tells police to rough up the suspects a little more. What Republicans call "far-left" is just progressive center-left people nonviolently advocating for equality. They don't get banned from the generally non-political platforms because their speech isn't hateful and it isn't violent. Facebook/Twitter/TikTok happily take their money and call it a day, they don't care about politics beyond the money those politics bring in. Platforms like Parler are much more blatant than Gab about banning liberals who join simply for existing. I guess you could say that Gab stays true to its policy against censorship, but that policy is there to benefit the far-right over anybody else, and I think that's an important detail. And, by the way, if you head over to Gab’s homepage it’s all right-wing political stuff. None of the suggested homepage topics are non-political. It isn’t teenagers dancing or funny skits or cat videos like TikTok. I think that’s evidence showing that Gab isn’t just some impartial algorithm. It’s curated.
- jfengel 4y ago
  I don't disagree about Gab being far-right, but antisemitism is an equal-opportunity form of xenophobia. There's both left-wing and right-wing antisemitism. In the US, the right wing is often bound up with co-opting Jews via the term "Judeo-Christian" and supporting Israel, even it its worst abuses of the Palestinians. They often call-out left-wing antisemitism, which often tries to take the form of "anti-Zionism" (but whose information is often traced to antisemitic channels). So antisemitism doesn't by itself demonstrate far-right leanings -- even though the far right is also full of literal Nazis and those who call them "very fine people". But Gab is certainly happy to play host to those, too.
RC_ITR 4y ago
Assuming you’re asking in good faith: In the US, platforms that do not feel the need to moderate calls to violence against Jewish people are generally considered “far-right”. The site received extensive public scrutiny following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018. The perpetrator of the attack, Robert Gregory Bowers, had a history of making extreme, antisemitic postings on the platform, as well as messages indicating an immediate intent to cause harm before the shooting.
nevereveragain 4y ago
https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/doug-mastriano-consultant-and-gab-ceo-andrew-torba-reposts-attacks-jews https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/doug-m...

Forgeties79 4y ago

>Is there such thing as a moderate-right social media platform? I mean the knee jerk response for me is Facebook, though I’d say it’s solidly right overall and not moderate-right.

lupire 4y ago
danpalmer 4y ago
This is the one that came to mind for me too. In North America and Europe, Facebook skews older, and older people tend to be relatively moderate-right. Gab is certainly "far right", but that doesn't mean those views are uncommon. Centrist viewpoints have shrunk, pulling what was previously considered "far" viewpoints into the mainstream. I think it's undeniable that a website where many (most?) of the userbase would advocate against the peaceful transition of power in the US should be labelled "far right".
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  > Gab is certainly "far right", but that doesn't mean those views are uncommon. I don’t think anyone said those views were uncommon, just that they were far right.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nicoburns 4y ago
Facebook is a bunch of bubbles. If yours skews right that says more about your friends and acquaintances than it does about Facebook in general.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  I think you'll find this experiment really interesting: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en
tomjen3 4y ago
Facebook, like reddit, is a group of groups. /r/ukraine is very, very different from /r/russia and /r/news has nearly nothing to do with /r/conservative.
- dexterdog 4y ago
  Then why is /r/politics such a left echo chamber?
  - tomjen3 4y ago
    Because mods permit that.

ryanmcbride 4y ago

Most people understand that "far-right" in this context means that it allows white supremacists and nazis to use its platform. It's a far right platform in the same sense that any bar that doesn't kick out nazis on site becomes a nazi bar, or a bar where cops feel comfortable becomes a cop bar. Regardless of creator intention a single customer base can shift the entire purpose of a product. As for what a moderate-right platform would be, I'd actually point right here at hackernews. It allows discussion around more right-leaning topics, but draws a clear line at outright hate. There's progressives too (hi) but you'll find no shortage of right leaning people either (like OP apparently). The sheer number of libertarians here alone is enough to move the needle right of center.

brobdingnagians 4y ago
How are libertarians "right-wing"? Some libertarians could be described as extreme "left-wing" depending on being social or economic libertarians. I think it is better to not have such a simple dichotomy of "left" vs "right". People have political beliefs, those beliefs can be very complex, and the consistency of the beliefs depends largely on the perspective of the person. Having a simple "two sides" lined up against each other is overly simplistic and has lead to people being shoehorned into "us vs them" and feeling pressured to adopt the beliefs of the group they are closest to, which results in less diversity of political beliefs. I don't think even a circle of beliefs is enough, the degrees of freedom in political beliefs is enormous, which literally encompasses most of the things people believe about the world. It can't really be boiled down to a spectrum of two sides.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  Libertarians are funny because most other ideologies can find some reason to view them in a bad light, but I think the reasons to view them as right wing is that they commonly have attitudes like, "regulations are bad," "taxes are theft," "leave me and my guns alone," "fuck the poor" etc. They're often proponents of private roads, private schools, private emergency services, and so on. This all offends the left. And of course, they offend the right with their lack of interest in policing people's personal lives. I sort of consider myself a libertarian who sees the need for a social safety net, regulations, strong consumer protection, education, infrastructure, emergency services, and healthcare. You know, a democrat. :D

nerdponx 4y ago

Moderates tend not to have their own platforms.

celdon25 4y ago
The one we are on right now feels pretty moderate to me.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  HN is extremely pro-text (excellent, in my book), and pro-tech (not too bad, in limited doses). And pro-Science, which a depressing fraction of Americans might regard as extremely bad. ...and saying that HN is "our own" - vs. "one modest Province in our Benevolent Overlord Paul's Empire" - is a bit of an issue.
  - beachy 4y ago
    This comment inadvertantly encapsulates nearly all that is wrong with the world today, and from which much evil flows. "Pro-science" is not a position, and being anti-science means being anti-humanity.
    - delusional 4y ago
      You can say that here, because we're all in a space where science is unquestioned, but try and say that to my mom over the Christmas table and you won't get very far in that conversation.
      - someguydave 4y ago
        > we're all in a space where science is unquestioned Please consider the contradiction in this quote
        delusional 4y ago
        That was intentional. From the other comment I figured I should probably point that out clearly.

ramraj07 4y ago

The front page is just posts making fun of the president (acceptable), and tweets from Donald Trump (a patently treasonous figure, by any sane means of logic and reporting including the report made by mueller, who’s not a journalist), and Dinesh DSouza, a felon out and about only because of a pardon from above mentioned treacherer. I’m not American BTW. Just an external observer who’s just flabbergasted how much a developed country can revolve into questioning of such obvious facts in the name of “both sides.”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mwint 4y ago
The “out and about only because of a pardon” bit is false. From Wikipedia: > In 2012, D'Souza contributed […] Two years later, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony charge […] He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine.[29][30] In 2018, D'Souza was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump.[31] Some simple math reveals the pardon came long after his “incarceration”, and the sentence including probation would have been fully served by now (2012 + 2 + 5 < 2022).
leereeves 4y ago
> including the report made by mueller Where are you getting your information? The report concludes that the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
- tomrod 4y ago
  A better way to phrase that would be: "could not recommend prosecution of a sitting President and associate members for conspiring or coordinating with the Russian government in its election interference activities, but did lay out how prosecutors not under prosecutorial restrictions would do so in great detail."

dangus 4y ago

Yes, Gab is far-right, whether you judge it by its owners or its users. If we say that Gab isn't far-right, it's kind of like saying Grindr isn't just for gay men. That may technically be true, but in practice it's not. Also, judging Gab by its ownership, if you look at the Wikipedia page for Gab, and go to the Antisemitism section, Gab has made multiple antisemitic statements officially. Straight from the company. The owners of the site are far-right. Gab only exists because far-right people get banned on other platforms for breaking hate speech rules. The far-left as a group barely exists compared to the size of the far-right. Far-left would be advocating for violence to dismantle the neoliberal system, these would be your anarchist-types. In real life, I've never met anyone on the "far-left" when you describe it this way, while I've met plenty of openly racist and LGBT-phobic Republicans who are pro-violence: the kind of people who want to, I dunno, be a part of a coup and enter the Capitol building? The kind of people who cheer when Donald Trump tells police to rough up the suspects a little more. What Republicans call "far-left" is just progressive center-left people nonviolently advocating for equality. They don't get banned from the generally non-political platforms because their speech isn't hateful and it isn't violent. Facebook/Twitter/TikTok happily take their money and call it a day, they don't care about politics beyond the money those politics bring in. Platforms like Parler are much more blatant than Gab about banning liberals who join simply for existing. I guess you could say that Gab stays true to its policy against censorship, but that policy is there to benefit the far-right over anybody else, and I think that's an important detail. And, by the way, if you head over to Gab’s homepage it’s all right-wing political stuff. None of the suggested homepage topics are non-political. It isn’t teenagers dancing or funny skits or cat videos like TikTok. I think that’s evidence showing that Gab isn’t just some impartial algorithm. It’s curated.

jfengel 4y ago
I don't disagree about Gab being far-right, but antisemitism is an equal-opportunity form of xenophobia. There's both left-wing and right-wing antisemitism. In the US, the right wing is often bound up with co-opting Jews via the term "Judeo-Christian" and supporting Israel, even it its worst abuses of the Palestinians. They often call-out left-wing antisemitism, which often tries to take the form of "anti-Zionism" (but whose information is often traced to antisemitic channels). So antisemitism doesn't by itself demonstrate far-right leanings -- even though the far right is also full of literal Nazis and those who call them "very fine people". But Gab is certainly happy to play host to those, too.

RC_ITR 4y ago

Assuming you’re asking in good faith: In the US, platforms that do not feel the need to moderate calls to violence against Jewish people are generally considered “far-right”. The site received extensive public scrutiny following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018. The perpetrator of the attack, Robert Gregory Bowers, had a history of making extreme, antisemitic postings on the platform, as well as messages indicating an immediate intent to cause harm before the shooting.

nevereveragain 4y ago

https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/doug-mastriano-consultant-and-gab-ceo-andrew-torba-reposts-attacks-jews https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/doug-m...