Gab's days are numbered
The owner of Gab is now charging pro membership to post images and this change heralds the end of Gab
Gab was once considered to be a real free speech alternative to tech tyrant sites like old Twitter, Facebook, etc. When it first launched, it had an idealistic glow about it, as people thought it might become a viable community that could challenge old Twitter, etc. But the glow wore off quickly, and Gab has been in a downward spiral for years. Recent events have made it clear that the final end of the site is drawing near.
Andrew Torba, the owner of Gab, recently announced that a pro membership would be required to post images on the site. This comes after the end of Gab TV and other initiatives that didn’t generate significant revenue for Torba. The announcement about the image posting likely indicates severe financial problems for Gab.
Here is Torba’s post:
Some prominent Gab users, such as Vox Day, weighed in with support for Torba:
While I agree with Day’s sentiment that giving everything away for free isn’t a viable business model, I do not think that Torba’s decision is an indication of Gab’s long-term survival and success. It reeks of desperation to me, and it seems that perhaps some sort of funding situation has changed for Gab that necessitated this sudden change.
I am not alone in thinking this; other prominent users on Gab have also expressed similar sentiments, including Trevor Goodchild and Judge Dread, both of whom have large followings on Gab. You can also find Trevor and Dread over on Poast.
Here are some of Dread’s takes on the changes at Gab:
And here are a couple of Trevor’s takes:
Torba’s decision to push hard for pro membership revenue also didn’t sit well with regular Gab users:
And here’s one from Poast, skewering Andrew Torba personally:
Will Torba shut down Gab while keeping Gab AI?
Another interesting wrinkle in this story involves Gab AI. Torba said in a post that Gab AI is already profitable and is supporting the site:
But Judge Dread noted that the regular Gab login is separate from Gab AI, and speculated that it might have been set up that way to make it easy for Torba to scuttle Gab while keeping Gab AI:
The great Gab exodus to Poast begins
Torba’s decision to begin charging for image uploads has infuriated some of Gab’s base, and an exodus from Gab to Poast recently began. Poast is an online community that features lots of anime, as well as freewheeling discussions about many topics. Poast is also part of the Fediverse that Gab used to be connected to, before it closed itself off.
The arrival of Gab users has caused some headaches for Poast users, as some of the Gab people stupidly did not lurk to understand Poast’s unique culture before they started running their mouths off. That has resulted in at least one banning I know of, and probably more are on the way, as the Gabtards careen around Poast like bulls in a china shop.
PRO TIP: When you go into an unfamiliar online community, it’s best to keep your mouth shut for a while and lurk to take in the culture. You don’t go into somebody else’s home and then begin acting like you own the place. Such behavior is likely to get you dragged and possibly booted.
I have an account on Poast, and I can tell you that my finger is on the block button, and I am ready to zap any idiot from Gab that crosses my path and assumes that Poast is the same as Gab. Such people are not worth correcting and need to be cast “into the retard chamber,” as Trevor Goodchild does with them regularly on Gab.
If you are thinking of joining Poast, I caution you to lurk before posting anything. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Poast is like Notes, X, Gab, or other social media communities. Poast has its own unique culture, and you should understand that before posting there.
Graf, the admin of Poast, also had a few things to say about the exodus from Gab to Poast:
Gab is in trouble and will likely disappear in due time
After reading all the messages on Gab and Poast, my feeling is that Gab is in serious financial trouble. The site has been going downhill for years, and there are already few reasons to visit it. I once had an account there but deleted it because of the lack of engagement and overall poor environment.
I suspect that the plug will be pulled on Gab sometime in the near future. Perhaps Gab AI will survive, but I don’t see Gab being able to create enough value for users to get them to pay for Gab Pro or other services. The company has had years to do so, and it has never delivered on its promises in that regard.
However, I also think that Gab won't be missed either. When it was first begun, there was a positive buzz about it, but that died slowly over time, and now the site has mostly faded into irrelevance (except for a few accounts like Dread and Trevor). There hasn’t been much of interest going on on Gab for years, and so its slow decline has not even been noticed by much of the Internet.
When the plug is finally pulled on Gab, not many people will notice, and not many people will care either. A sad and pathetic fate for a site that once held the promise to be a beacon for free speech on the Internet.
Gab could have been and should have been so much more than what it turned into over the years. But for that to happen, someone else would have had to own it instead of Andrew Torba.
UPDATE: Somebody on Poast posted a link to this story about Gab. It’s a must-read. I thought I knew how bad Gab was, but that story was an eye-opener! Wow! 😳
Since Gab’s inception, Torba has shapeshifted and rebranded himself many times in order to attract any group that would promote Gab and give him money. Over the course of Gab’s history, Torba has pandered to nearly every fringe online community on the right-wing spectrum; ranging from 4chan lolicon connoisseurs and edgelords to the QAnon and MAGA cults and beyond. If one looks past Torba’s conservative christian veneer they will find an affinity grifter who says and does everything in his power to keep the façade of Gab being a viable alternative to Twitter going and keep the money flowing. Torba relied on making misleading claims about the user base and utility of Gab in order to rip off millions of dollars from investors, many of whom he swindled using his conservative christian affinity grift.
Gab’s notoriety is mainly due to Torba fostering a drama producing environment on the site by not moderating terms of service violations like doxxing and threats of violence. Why does Torba purposefully leave some of the more unhinged elements of Gab unmoderated? What has Torba done to improve Gab with the millions of dollars he raised? What happened to those millions? Why hasn’t the SEC done anything about it? Does Gab’s seeming immunity from legal consequences and purposeful lack of moderation point to it being a honeypot, especially considering Torba’s frequent willingness to report his own users to the Feds?
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I watched the exodus from Twitter in 2020 when so many were deleted/banned. We all went to Parler for a bit and then it tanked too. S’ok cuz I was tired of hearing the same pundits on the same topics. Nothing new happened.
Then came Gab. It was a nightmare site to use at the beginning with frequent crashing and bouncing layout. I noticed it was all the same talking heads from Parler, but only the worst of them. It seems all the decent channels went to Telegram or video.
Telegram was just a behemoth of scammers, bots and fake channels. But served its purpose in the interim.
I shed no tears for Gab. The constant pushing to buy into GabTV, the non reader friendly format and lack of decent (varied) content had me dropping out quickly with no regrets.
RIP Gab.
Methinks a paid service should be completely ad free. One upside of a paid only service is that it cuts down on the bots.
The problem with Gab is the same as with Twitter, Parler, etc.: lack of engagement. Everyone is talking past each other trying to get attention. The format of having a true post to comment on increases engagement even for a popular blog because the post sets the subject.
As for the numbers cited by the complainers above, I disbelieve. A site with millions of users is going to get expensive to run. It's not just the raw storage. It's the Fanout Problem. A site which simply allows people to post stuff is much cheaper to run than a site that manages followers. With the latter, a signal needs to go out for each post to all the followers. If a popular poster has 40,000 followers, that's 40,000 events for each post. Ordinary SQL databases bog down under such loads and so you need to do some real coding and NoSQL databases to handle the problem.
And then there are the notifications for replies to comments, new comments on a post you are following, private messages, etc.