What is Gab? The Alt-Right Social Network Linked to Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter Goes Dark
*By Alex Heath*
Gab, an online haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right, is facing an increasingly uncertain future.
Over the weekend, Gab was linked to Robert Bowers, who is accused of open-firing in a Pittsburgh, Pa., synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding six others. Bowers had a verified account on Gab and used the social network to post hateful, anti-Semitic messages up until the morning of the shooting. Federal officials have [charged him](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdpa/pr/statement-filing-federal-charges) with 29 criminal counts, which include committing a hate crime and using a firearm to commit murder.
On Gab, Bowers was one of the roughly 800,000 people who used the platform as a so-called “free speech” alternative to larger social networks like Facebook ($FB) and Twitter ($TWTR). But thanks to the vile posts by Bowers on Gab, the platform has been taken offline by its web hosting and domain providers for violating their terms of service.
Both GoDaddy and web hosting provider Joyent banned Gab on Saturday, shortly after the shooting occurred and Bowers’s account surfaced in the media. Just hours before the shooting, Bowers had posted a threatening send-off message on Gab that read: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Gab’s PayPal ($PYPL) and Stripe accounts were also banned. As of Monday, a message on Gab.com said that the service is transitioning to a new hosting provider and working “around the clock to get Gab.com back online.”
“Gab has spent the past 48 hours proudly working with the DOJ and FBI to bring justice to an alleged terrorist,” the statement said. “Because of the data we provided, they now have plenty of evidence for their case.”
Gab was created in 2016 by CEO Andrew Torba as an answer to what Torba called “the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly.” The service quickly turned into a safe space for provocateurs of the so-called alt-right movement who were banned from other platforms, like ex-Breitbart staffer Milo Yiannopoulos and “InfoWars” founder Alex Jones.
Now Gab’s future is murky as it looks for a cloud service and domain provider willing to host the kind of vitriolic content that was posted by Bowers. Gab’s CEO has remained firm that the service won’t be sidelined.
On Monday, Gab’s stripped website featured only a message from Torba that said the company had “been no-platformed by essential internet infrastructure providers at every level.”
“We are the most censored, smeared, and no-platformed startup in history, which means we are a threat to the media and to the Silicon Valley Oligarchy,” the statement continued. “Gab isn’t going anywhere.”
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
