Twitter has long been criticised for its hateful interactions, but it鈥檚 not the worst. A look inside the alt-right鈥檚 answer to Twitter, called Gab, shows just how disturbing online echo chambers can be.
Created by Andrew Torba in response to claims that mainstream social media suppresses right-wing debate, Gab has a similar design to Twitter, with users limited to 300-character posts. Gab also claims to champion free speech. But the platform has evolved into a haven for hate speech, according to an 18-month analysis of more than 22 million posts by 336,752 users.
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at Cyprus University of Technology and his colleagues set up an account on Gab, then cross-checked posts against terms in , a database used by governments and non-governmental organisations to track the spread of hate speech. One in every 20 posts the researchers analysed included words in the Hatebase corpus 鈥� 2.4 times the rate on Twitter. However, hate-filled posts on Gab were only half as common as on 4chan鈥檚 /pol/ message board, a notorious home of internet trolls.
Despite being touted as an alternative to mainstream social media, Gab allows users to interact with the best-known social networks. The researchers found that YouTube and Twitter account for nearly one in every 10 links posted to Gab; Breitbart, the alt-right news website, is the fourth most popular site Gab users linked to. The Daily Stormer, an avowedly neo-Nazi outlet, is more popular with Gab users than The Washington Post.
Hate speech crackdown
Sites like Gab have sprung up in the wake of traditional social media platforms cracking down on hate speech 鈥� after politicians threatened them with massive fines.
There鈥檚 PewTube, an alt-right YouTube, where more than 10,000 users upload videos without censorship; and WrongThink, similar to Facebook. Hatreon allows people booted off Kickstarter and Patreon for hate speech to seek crowdfunding, while Infogalactic is an alt-right Wikipedia clone. All provide a platform for individuals to express thoughts they can鈥檛 put forward on mainstream social media due to stringent anti-hate-speech laws, and exist firmly outside of the mainstream: Gab鈥檚 app has been banned from Apple鈥檚 App Store and Google Play for fostering hate speech.
The rise of fringe platforms raises questions about the best way to tackle hate speech online. of the University of Arkansas, who has investigated what the alt-right believe, is equivocal. 鈥淐ountering hate speech in the open can communicate a norm that certain kinds of speech are not tolerated,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also possible that excluding hate speech users from public spaces could breed resentment and make their attitudes more extreme.鈥�
鈥淏roadly speaking, Europeans have a more caveated understanding of free speech; in America, it might be seen as inappropriate or inoffensive, but isn鈥檛 considered something that should be barred,鈥� says Matthew Feldman, a UK-based independent researcher of the radical right. 鈥滻 tend towards the idea of sunlight acting as a disinfectant,鈥� he says.
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