Gab restores and uploads all of Donald Trump's tweets, sees over 700% jump in traffic in 24 hours
Gab seems to be the new hangout spot for conservative Americans, especially after President Donald Trump and a number of his allies were suspended from Twitter and Facebook along with a host of other social networking sites and Parler — the only popular alternative — was pulled from existence following the storming of the Capitol building by a 'pro-Trump' mob on January 6.
The platform's popularity sky-rocketed after the company's CEO Andrew Torba took it upon himself to recreate Trump's entire list of tweets on Gab, according to The Gateway Pundit. He apparently backed up President Trump’s Twitter account before it was deleted and restored the same on his company's platform. Soon, the site saw its traffic increase by 700% and was being subjected to relentless attacks by liberals.
Gab is currently upgrading its servers to handle the large influx in traffic and should stabilize soon. On Monday, January 11, the platform saw 600,000 new users in a single day. “Our traffic is up 753% in the past 24 hours. Tens of millions of visits,” Gab said in response to slow loading speeds on the platform. In order to alleviate the congestion, Gab said it would add ten new servers to its platform. Users can curate their own experience on Gab by creating custom filters. The company claims to take a hard stance against illegal content and incitement of violence.
According to Fox Business, Gab is gaining 10,000 users every hour. “The traffic just keeps growing. Hang tight, even more servers on the way today,” Gab CEO Andrew Torba wrote on the site Saturday, January 9. Gab, which launched a few years ago, calls itself a "social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the new free flow of information online.”
CNN recently reported that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, and senior adviser, stopped the president from joining Parler and Gab after he was banned from Twitter. While Trump's chief of personnel Johnny McEntee was all for his boss to join the conservative mediums, Kushner and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino were dead set against the idea, an outside adviser and an administration official told CNN.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League released an open letter on Wednesday, January 13, calling for the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Gab and its CEO, saying they "may well bear a measure of criminal responsibility for the attack" on the Capitol. The ADL cited a report that Gab commenters exchanged "directions for which streets to take to avoid the police and which tools to bring to help pry open doors," while "multiple people posted about carrying guns into the halls of Congress."
On January 6, Torba himself wrote a post where he said that "in a system with rigged elections there are no longer any viable political solutions," according to ADL's letter. "The phrase 'there is no political solution' is used in online accelerationist white supremacist circles to further the idea that the US government system is rotten, democratic processes for change are futile and therefore the system should be destroyed," the ADL said. "The phrase embraces political violence as the only valid response."