To the effect that Mr. Torba is right to end the "freeloader access" to the Gab platform. Basically, our old pal Teddy Spaghetti's[1] reasoning is correct and I don't find much fault with it. Mr. Torba is perfectly within his rights to ask people using his service to help shoulder the load if they are addicted to uploading media. After all, he's not running a charity or getting taxpayer subsidies (that we know of) like the Big Tech firms.
My objection to Mr. Torba and why I would not elect to pay for Gab is more a matter of character. Namely, I think he's a bait and switching scumbag. He marketed his site as a "free speech" site, and continues to do so, but he also made statements that he would prioritize Christian Fundie content and downgrade alternative spirituality or even secular posting. The latter is also fine since it's his site, but lying about it in marketing is a crime as well as a low thing to do. It makes me wonder if he is any better as regards moral fibre than Mr. Musk, who is a sociopath.
Basically as a Heathen, Polytheist and Occultist, Torba is a de facto enemy at the very least. I also suspect that he might be a controlled opposition and honeypot director. The leftist regime love them some "salami tactics" and Mr. Torba has shown a remarkable, and obsequious, tendency to cooperate with authorities even in cases where he was within his rights to resist. And I have a strong feeling that this latest Christian Fundie push is an astroturf movement so the Feds can get in on the ground floor of rising religious sentiment, and Torba could easily be a part of this.
[1] - Note that I can't use his pseudonymous identity's name here, which has the same initials as venereal disease, because he was banned from Google's services some time ago.
I note with some amusement that there was a comment on Mr. Beale's blog this morning about how Gab could be a honeypot. Obviously, I'm not the only one who thought so. It's not as if we haven't seen such things come and go over the years. Voat comes to mind. Honeypots always operate on comparative shoestring budgets compared with mainline projects. So Torba's financial issues aren't surprising if that's what he is.
ReplyDeleteI think if Torba is what he says he is, that he would've been smart to keep his site as a free speech site rather than a Christian Nationalist site, which limited its appeal. He might not be having the problems he is today if he had done that. I'm also willing to at least entertain the possibility that he's not a Fed, and just a fallible entrepreneur. But I also have seen way too many sites that seemed to be legitimately "alternative" media turn out to be obviously controlled sites to be overly trusting.