The world of alternative social media mostly sucks, but it now sucks even more thanks to some of the things going on over at Gab. Gab’s CEO Andrew Torba made a decision to charge users for posting images and videos which has effectively rendered the site useless for spreading memes organically. This was literally the primary function of the site and now it is gone.
This image from The Krypto Report’s Azzmador pretty much describes the situation.
You literally now have to pay Gab to post images and videos. No other social media site makes these basic social media functions premium features and for good reason. It vastly limits the spread of content and interactions which is the opposite of what you want running a social media site.
Torba claimed that he could no longer afford the storage for all these images and videos that were being posted. While that excuse is highly questionable to begin with, if he legitimately could not afford storage, there are ways around this. You could set file size limits or purge older data etc.. He comically said that purging older data would be wrong because he views Gab like a modern day “Library of Alexandria.”
He claims this even though Gab’s search feature is the absolute shits. You can’t find anything with it. Plus, the primary function of social media is to discuss current events. The historical component of it is a secondary function. Besides, if he really viewed Gab as some type of “library” he would have made proper investments in storage before any of this became an issue.
On top of that, Gab fully admits that free users are now shadow banned. As one of the reasons they claim you should buy a Gab Pro account, they say that your posts will get extra exposure.
In other words, they are shadow banning free users by elevating paid users with the algorithm.
There have also been a number of Gab users banned who have been critical of Torba’s management decisions. This came after he talked about taking “subversive trash” out.
He later offered a clarification claiming that he wasn’t targeting people who have been critical of the decisions being made.
This does not appear to be true.
One of the banned users Judge Dread said that Torba’s post was posted simultaneously with his ban. He also rightly remarked how there was no way Torba has 4.2 million followers based on the number of reactions and interaction he received.
Judge Dread has moved to another alternative social media site called Poast and is offering some interesting commentary on the situation. Other users who have been banned from Gab are there also.
There’s of course other issues like all the lame posts artificially promoted by bots etc.. but the things that have transpired over the past week are the most problematic of issues.
My Gab account is still active but I have no idea how much longer it will be in service considering I will not buy a Pro account and I have a variety of issues with these very poor decisions. I have also been directly criticizing Torba in public using the account.
Regardless, it does seem as if Gab is self-destructing. These policies they are implementing are just absurd and utterly ridiculous.
