First, since it's a way shorter list and is an example of some shit they really can't do anything about, let's start with the issues Gab has that
aren't its fault:
1. Agitators for Deplatforming:
Let's be fair here, and not use hyperbole - we know for a fact that there are dozens of organizations and individuals out there that quite literally do
nothing but aggressively try to get any viewpoint they don't like permanently shut down. The most aggressive and egregious of these, naturally, are far-left, as indicated by the fact that
one such group ran a fucking campaign of terror against Gab targeting Stripe for months, but this is not a requirement, and there's
a few especially notable individuals who are willing to wage a one-man war against a website to shut it down need be. These groups and individuals have no concept of restraint and are completely amoral, and will not rest until whatever it is that they have a bug up their ass about is
shut the fuck down, or becomes somehow immune to standard interdiction tactics. And since they have no responsibilities and no jobs or life off Social Media, they have
plenty of time to do it in. Bear in mind as well that
some of these zero-life fucktards also happen to work at some of the platformholders' companies, and you have a situation where anything that can be tamped down on will.
2. Open Monopolization of Platforms:
Twitter hasn't made money in almost a decade. Facebook is mediocre. Youtube gets worse all the time. All three platforms seem to be on a years-long crusade to fail as much as humanly possible, and that's a situation that's begging to be exploited by those who know what they're doing. Yet despite the fact that all three of these platforms fucking suck, no alternative platform ever manages to last for too long against them, even when the alternative is infinitely better. While there's many other factors into this happening (such as the new platform being run by idiots, which Torba nicely proved, and I will be covering below), a massive problem they face is that these companies can and will throttle any competitor. How they do so varies, from subtle (altering search results) to blatant (openly breaking the law and/or financing category 1 above). Don't pretend this isn't happening when
Google just paid out 2.7 Billion in an antitrust suit just last year over this shit. Fuck, we saw during recent documents from Google and shit during the Damore case that they were actively trying to strangle out alternatives. The big three have de facto control over Social Media, and, surely by coincidence, they're all headquartered in the same area,
staffed by the same psychotic bumblefucks,
push the same agenda,
pay for the same ideologues, and have the same vested interest in seeing any competitor crash and burn.
Only legislation or a newcomer platform getting so big they can't interdict it (ideally during a particularly hard fail cycle from the big three) is gonna help here, I'm afraid. Worse, the latter is completely unlikely to happen so long as payment processors are getting pressured.
Now let's talk about the ones Gab
did have the ability to do something about:
1. Being Run By A Blithering Idiot
Andrew "Everything I don't Like Is Libel" Torba is, if not an out-and-out Lolcow, certainly a Lolcalf. Between constantly engaging in Twitter and Facebook slap-fights, showing Bob's Game levels of Autism in regards to sparring with Apple and other sites that removed Gab from their stores, and basically acting like a dick and completely disregarding common sense, the dude practically was
begging for a thread. This is, ironically, not a rare trend. Many otherwise-solid platforms get undermined or fucked over solely because someone bug-fuck insane was at the helm. Many times these insane idiots at the helm also help make the platform easier to attack, and that also happened in the case of Gab.
How this Could Have Been Mitigated: Hiring people who knew what the fuck they were doing and allow them to do their fucking jobs, for one. Learning to take criticism and staying the fuck off Social Media was another. Firing Torba would have also helped.
2. Failing to Heed Proper Warnings
Null warned Torba about some of the shit he could have expected when Gab was operating, and if anyone has a fucking right to give advice about the sort of assholes who might try to interdict a website, it's fucking Null after the whole shit with Vordy and friends. However, Null wasn't the only one giving warnings, nor was the deplatforming brigade the only thing to give warnings about; fucking countless people warned Torba of hundreds of different issues Gab was facing, and Torba took took steps to correct
approximately none of them. While I'm sure that this plays into Torba being a fucking massive egoboo, the dude was infamously bad with security problems Gab had. Between shit like having multiple glaring site vulnerabilities (which Torba denied, banned anyone who brought them up, then attempted to patch them out, badly, before rinsing and repeating), giving Gab access to your Twitter application if you ran it via mobile (smooth), and giving any moron with a basic knowledge of scripting being able to farm the personal information of its userbase, Torba repeatedly failed to heed any warning given and deny that anything was wrong allthewhile. Yes, even when Gab had the payment info of countless users stolen. Don't worry, it gets funnier; Gab's security was so fucking incompetent that it
culminated with the entire verified donor list being leaked on Pastebin.
How this Could Have Been Mitigated: As covered above, Torba's massive ego and complete incapacity to deal with issues helped wreck Gab's reputation
long before the deplatforming brigade shut their ass down. A common joke among people who experimentally used Gab was "try to find the logout button," and that persisted for
over a fucking year. Hiring additional staff, listening to user complaints, working backup systems into the mix, and focusing on improving the platform as a whole would have helped, as would have firing Torba.
3. Correct and Incorrect Marketing
Torba marketed Gab as "Twitter, but for free speech." This was a fucking terrible idea. The second you announced that, the deplatforming brigade knows that they can frame you as a Nazi, and considering that said individuals think
Jack Dorsey is a fucking Nazi, Gab wasn't wriggling out of this one. As a consequence, Gab wound up mostly absorbing the castoffs from Twitter that
nobody wanted in the fucking first place. Every /pol/tard too Autistic for 4chan, every Homer who's been banned dozens of times for skirmishing with Twitter Feminists, and every asshat who thinks they're the next big name in SJW opposition flocked there, overwhelming most of the platform with horse-shit that then proceeded to echo-chamber until it dominated the fucking platform. By the time Gab ran aground, it was 70% /pol/ hugbox and 20% Twitter Expats who'd been banned. Even under the best circumstances, "Gab is for Nazis" had struck, and with Torba doing basically nothing to instill confidence, shit snowballed.
How this Could Have Been Mitigated: Messaging was critical here, and the second Gab had "Twitter, but free speech" as its tagline, it was going to be billed as a hate-site. Constant policy changes that only eroded its claim to be pro free-speech didn't help. Again, this is an area Torba fucked up. Billing the site as "Twitter, but with an actually accountable staff and better features" would have been nice, but again, Torba fucked that up too by making Gab a downgrade. Ultimately firing Torba would have helped a lot.
