As if twitter promotes peace and harmony.
Via NBC News:
The social media site favored by a Pennsylvania man accused of gunning down nine people at a synagogue on Saturday has become the latest focal point in a battle over online hate speech and the platforms that host it.
The site, Gab, said Sunday that its domain registrar, GoDaddy, was severing ties with it — an announcement that came one day after the social network said two payment service companies, PayPal and Stripe, and its web host, Joyent, were also dumping it.
“When a site is allowing the perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance, we take immediate and decisive action,” PayPal spokesman Justin Higgs said in a statement.
Gab, which says it has 800,000 users, bills itself as a champion of free speech. But it has also been criticized as a haven for the alt-right and a hotbed of racism, one that gained an audience hungry for extremist content after more mainstream platforms, particularly Twitter and Reddit, began to push hate speech off their services.
And as some social media companies have cracked down on the “worst of Facebook and YouTube,” said Jason Kint, CEO of the trade association Digital Content Next, Gab “welcomed them with open arms.”
In an email Sunday, a GoDaddy spokesman said the company had given Gab 24 hours to find a new domain provider after finding “numerous” instances of content that promotes and encourages violence on the site. PayPal, meanwhile, said it was already in the process of canceling Gab’s account before Saturday’s shooting.
“When a site is allowing the perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance, we take immediate and decisive action,” a PayPal spokesman said in a statement.
Citing privacy concerns, a spokesman for Stripe declined to comment. The CEO of Joyent, Scott Hammond, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.