人兽性交

We reported at the end of January that the social media platform adopted by the racist 鈥渁lt-right鈥� is embroiled in chaos.

This is the same site where white supremacist Robert Bowers posted antisemitic conspiracy theories before he was charged with murdering 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 鈥斅燼nd where another pair of users were accused the very next month of .

Payment processors and web-hosting companies that work with Gab with the platform. It was a huge blow.

Gab reported 鈥渁 90% decline in payments for our subscription services,鈥� according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings it submitted in December. Since its launch in August 2016, the site has .

But Gab was still limping along until our Hatewatch investigation went public last month.

We found that Gab鈥檚 founder, Andrew Torba, might be in trouble with the SEC; that Gab鈥檚 crowdfunding page is heavily promoting a feature it hasn鈥檛 actually had since the summer of 2018; and that the platform appears to be wildly inflating its user count.

To reach Gab鈥檚 reported number of 835,000 鈥減ersons,鈥� or users, for example, it would have had to have gained thousands of new users every day in November and December. That鈥檚 unlikely.

鈥淲e reached out for an analysis of the number of active users of Gab 鈥� accounts who actually logged in and posted content to the site over a span of a week in January 鈥� and received a number that was below 20,000 unique users,鈥� Intelligence Project Director Heidi Beirich The Daily Beast. 鈥淭hat would be a massive difference in community size from what the company is advertising to the public and government regulators.鈥�

In the days following our report, Gab locked, then unlocked its Twitter account. It announced it would no longer be supporting an Android app (its only option after Apple rejected the app outright). It went offline. It came back online only to lock down its member registration; the site is now either invite-only, or is , depending on who鈥檚 asking.聽

Gab advertises itself as a 鈥渇ree speech鈥� alternative to Twitter or Facebook, but it would be more accurate to call it what it is: a haven for dangerous white supremacists. Racist memes, 鈥渨hite genocide鈥� conspiracy theories, and conversations about violence typify the kind of hate speech that litters the platform.

We鈥檙e proud of our role in Gab鈥檚 decline. We鈥檙e continuing to monitor the platform 鈥斅燼nd other sites like it 鈥斅燼s well as the role that the internet at large is playing in the radicalization of people like Robert Bowers, Dylann Roof and other extremists.

We鈥檙e working hard to expose hate, and we鈥檙e proud to have you with us in this fight.

The Editors

P.S. Here are some other pieces we think are valuable this week:

• by Jamelle Bouie for The New York Times
• by Brooke A. Lewis for The Houston Chronicle
• by Brooke Jarvis for The California Sunday Magazine
• . by Will Meyer for Longreads

人兽性交's Weekend Reads are a weekly summary of the most important reporting and commentary from around the country on civil rights, economic and racial inequity, and hate and extremism.聽Sign up to receive Weekend Reads every Saturday morning.