As a conservative I got annoyed with the way that the big tech oligarchs had a political affiliation agenda mostly directed at silencing conservative voices. While I rarely participated in Facebook anyway, I was kind of excited when alternatives to it started popping up and even with what appeared to be some good financial backing to it rather than just some fledgling support that was going to die quickly.
Gab had a lot of hype surrounding it and they claimed to be the "free speech alternative" to Facebook or Twitter. I signed up not because I was really all that interested in having another Facebook and I've never liked Twitter, but just because I wanted to pump their numbers.
I check in every now and then to see what is going on over there and if people are actually participating but unfortunately it has already turned into a mostly conservative echo chamber.
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When the media talks about Gab it is almost always to present it in a negative light but of course they go too far and say that it is "exclusively far-right" and filled with racism, anti-Semitism, is responsible for January 6th insurrection and also Covid misinformation. There's no doubt some of that in there but it's not like you have to prove you are right-wing to gain membership. Anyone can join but it appears as though the only people that actually did so are people fed up with censorship on other platforms... by creating a platform that also censors but in the other direction.
I'm all about people being able to say whatever they want and Gab isn't really as free-speech as they claim. They will still ban people for various violations of the rules and I don't really care what that is, I'm sure it's buried in the EULA that nobody reads somewhere.
The reason why Gab sucks is that there is no actual discussions in there, it is just a very one-sided approach to common social and political issues and even though I actually am conservative, I don't believe that ONLY looking at your side of the story is a good thing for anyone. This is the problem that I have with friends of mine that appear to get all of their information from CNN or Fox. They aren't getting the whole picture and therefore they are not informed, they are being lead down a path of conformity.
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It doesn't help very much when the CEO and founder of Gab, Andrew Torba is extremely Christian and has made a lot of the policies of the site / app to promote this and will personally go after users who are critical of Christianity. When you do that, you are not a free speech company, you are a free-what-we-want-you-to-agree-with-speech company.
I don't think that very many people use Gab. A good indicator of this is the fact that Trump only has 2.3 million followers on there and I think his presence is the main reason why most people joined in the first place. I don't read his feed either.
I tried it out for a little while in order to see what it was going to be like and whether or not it could actually be a viable alternative for FB / Twitter. Unfortunately, it just isn't very good and I don't think their userbase is very large nor is it going to grow.
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I think a great alternative to FB and Twitter would be to replace them with nothing. Just get those things out of your life and I think people will be a lot happier in every way!