It can't be that hard to make a generic social media site and pay for some advertising without totally losing your grasp on normalcy and moderation
Drawing the line is extremely difficult. Not one government in the world has been able to figure out where to draw the line on free speech. Dunno why you expect some guy with a relatively microscopic budget to succeed.
I think Gab.ai's premise is fucked anyway. The sjws will never go to Gab and the people that love to make fun of and interact with sjws have no reason to sign up or even be active. It's doomed to be a place of barely active users that occasionally post edgy stuff.
The sjws themselves have a pull factor and to get the sjws you either need to have no competition or at least a facade of censorship.
Worse, normalfags watch advertisements, not edgy people that are interested in tech and free speech.
Its still alarming though. There needs to be a realization among Libertarian minded people that the issue is not Government specifically. Its Power generally. Concentration of power is a danger to liberty no matter where it chooses to concentrate. Traditionally, this has been in Government. But we are now living in a happy neo-liberal society where large corporations are gaining power that Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller could never have dreamed of in their wildest dreams. As more and more of our civic life moves from the public square to these curated platforms, the risk to liberty grows exponentially, because just like an authoritarian government, the common good is not a concern for these corporations. Their concern is money, and protecting their brand recognition. And just like Dear Leader will smash anyone who would make him look bad, these corporations will do the same.
A true free speech platform would allow everything and Torba has went down the path of cracking down on what he considers degeneracy. He has a far-right platform because of his actions and because his site attracts third rail politics, IE, Nazism. The far right has no more a right to carry the banner of free speech than the far left.
To carry a cause you at least have to be consistent in supporting it. What is the end goal of Torba? Forcing websites to allow offensive opinions and post things most people find heinous? Which websites? All websites? Having the government subsidize free speech platforms? How do we define a free speech platform and how do we regulate the platform so that discussions can happen? Is spam protected? Torba doesn't even allow absolute free speech on his platform since he cracks down on spam and things he personally finds offensive.
First it was Nazis, now its things (most) Nazis dislike.
Correct me if I’m wrong and haven’t been paying attention, but I thought that is what you have been doing here all along. Unless there is so much irony on top of irony that I have called completely lost the plot, I’ve seen a decent contingent of moderates here... myself included.
This site isn't even pretending to be a free speech platform. Its a site to make fun of retarded people.
It's made pretty clear that you can be banned at a whim.