Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Friday November 02 2018, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Doge-coin-in-my-wallet dept.

From the very richest Forbes Magazine (reprint) come news of a nefarious plot:

There's no better example of the power, and the terror, inspired by blockchain than Gab.com, the social network used by the accused Pittsburgh synagogue gunman to threaten Jews.

About a month and a half before the alleged gunman made good on those threats by opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue and killing 11 people, Gab submitted paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $10 million via an initial coin offering (ICO). The offering, dated September 18, 2018, has so far received commitments to raise $5.6 million in capital for the "free speech" social network, which is a favorite of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other members of the "alt-right."

Since the shooting on Saturday, Gab has been shut down by a host of mainstream services including payment processors Stripe and Paypal, Web-hosting company Joyent and briefly, domain registry GoDaddy. But that might not matter, because Gab has already taken the first step toward freeing itself from dependence on traditional infrastructure and support mechanisms, thanks to its funding via the ethereum blockchain. Ultimately Gab's goal is to build an entire ecosystem beyond the reach of centralized authorities—whether Facebook, Twitter or venture capitalists—making it nearly indestructible. On this, the tenth anniversary of the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper, which gave birth to bitcoin, Gab epitomizes the darker consequences of his vision.

[...] Gab can also use other blockchain services if mainstream providers try to kick it off the internet by refusing to provide critical services. If Gab needs to replace GoDaddy for domain service (the addresses people use to find websites), Ethereum Name Service provides domains for decentralized applications built on the ethereum blockchain. Web hosting? No problem. Ethereum's Substratum provides a decentralized alternative to Joyent. Others have already pioneered the idea. PeepEth is a nascent ethereum-powered social network, and Mastadon is a blockchain-based Twitter.

Previously: Social Media and the Pittsburgh Shooter: Gab.com Going Down


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @10:39AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @10:39AM (#756784)

    What I don't get is why anyone needs $10M to keep a discussion site going. Per their charter, Gab doesn't censor, doesn't create "original content", what do they spend all this money on?

    Or, is the hidden agenda the enrichment of the small group of founders?

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @12:19PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @12:19PM (#756802)

    Well, hosting and bandwidth aren't free, and neither are programmers, DB admins, support staff, or executives. And those pesky overhead items like office space, utilities, etc.

    The ad model is hard for a site like Gab. Based on the type of content that appears on Gab many advertisers don't want their products associated with it. Seeing "I want to buy the world a Coke" ad next to a post advocating the extermination of <insert any group here> is not what Coke wants. A screen shot of an inflammatory post that includes their ad is even worse. An ad for a more right-leaning organization like the NRA (for example) next to that post would be used against the NRA, so they want to avoid that type of association as well.

    Business need money to operate, and business owners want to pocket the biggest piece of the pie.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday November 02 2018, @01:25PM (7 children)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Friday November 02 2018, @01:25PM (#756825) Homepage Journal

      This is all true. Gab is ad-free, meaning that they need to earn money in other ways. They offer some sort of premium subscriber model, and I'm sure they had some takers. However, they mainly seem to get money through various forms of "investment". I put that in quotes, because I read through the investment documents when they did their first round of equity. The provided only part-year results (iirc, these were unaudited). Their annual projected turnover was shockingly low, way under $100k. Based on that, they self-declared a valuation of $10 million, so something like two or three orders of magnitude more than their turnover.

      I posted a question on the investment site, asking for some justification for this nutty valuation. The reply, I think it was from Torba himself, was basically "because we need the money". Um...no, that's not a basis for equity investment, that's what venture capital is for. ICOs are even less respectable than their previous, haphazard attempts at raising equity. Next, they'll be panhandling in train stations.

      My impression - purely subjective - is that the Gab founders want to simultaneously (1) run a startup, (2) avoid diluting their majority stake, and (3) live the lives of successful entrepreneurs, without going through that bothersome stage of long hours for no pay. I like the concept of Gab: an uncensored social media platform needs to exist. Sadly, the wrong people are running it.

      That said, this shutdown has gotten them more free publicity than they could ever dream of. Whoever is behind the shutdown clearly does not understand the Streisand Effect. If Torba & Co. are capable of getting a clue, this may be the opportunity they need.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 02 2018, @02:31PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 02 2018, @02:31PM (#756857) Journal

        Next, they'll be panhandling in train stations.

        Well, I'm not moving to make space for them. And, I'm holding Mud Duck's place, just in case he decides to live after they chop up his posterior parts with the associated plumbing.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @04:39PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @04:39PM (#756909)

        >I like the concept of Gab: an uncensored social media platform needs to exist.

        Not really. Twitter is extremely tolerant toward terrible people, so you have to be a monster to get kicked off and wind up on Gab.
        Gab itself is not uncensored. You just have to be too awful for the other monsters to get kicked off of Gab.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 02 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 02 2018, @06:13PM (#756978) Journal

          Twitter is extremely tolerant toward terrible people, so you have to be a monster to get kicked off and wind up on Gab.

          Twitter has become much less tolerant of what they consider bad behavior. It released anti-harassment tools starting around November 2016, and has been more responsive to user reports and bans more users. Your characterization of Twitter and what you need to do to get banned there is subjective, and probably outdated. Of course, not everyone is satisfied by Twitter's responses and level of commitment to free speech. It may become even easier to be kicked off Twitter in the future.

          Twitter has also been demanding phone verification from some users, which could prevent trolls from making too many accounts and give Twitter a way to throw unlawful users to the police.

          Gab itself is not uncensored. You just have to be too awful for the other monsters to get kicked off of Gab.

          Then Gab is not an uncensored social media platform, and is not the end goal. Only a decentralized platform can truly take on this role.

          Of course, with an actually uncensored platform you run the risk of being exposed to a lot. Unless it has a text-only mode and you don't click any links.

          A voting system based on sending small fractions of cryptocurrency might be able to determine post quality (according to users, so it could be skewed depending on what the users want to see).

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @08:46PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @08:46PM (#757069)

            Twitter has become much less tolerant of what they consider bad behavior.

            Heh, coulda fooled me. Trump still has an open account.

            What's cool about the internet is that if twitter censors with a heavy hand, people will seek out alternatives, and there are plenty, better than gab. Obviously the best ones are decentralized and as close as peer to peer as you will ever get when you have to go through an ISP... but there they are, so complaining about twitter is kinda dumb.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @09:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @09:13PM (#757078)

          He had both Twitter and Facebook accounts.

          Why didn't Twitter and Facebook get shut down? It's only fair. They should lose their DNS, their data center cages, their merchant accounts for financial transactions... just that same as gab.ai suffered.

          This whole thing smells like leftist/globalist corporate executives waiting for an excuse. They had this planned, just as they did for Alex Jones. Who else are they planning to eliminate?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @08:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @08:31PM (#757060)

        this may be the opportunity they need.

        Could be the opportunity they made... Whatever. I hope the idea works and makes them bulletproof. We all need this to protect us all from censorship.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @10:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @10:08PM (#757103)

        Sorry Bradley, but you just don't seem to "get it".

    • (Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday November 02 2018, @01:33PM (3 children)

      by stretch611 (6199) on Friday November 02 2018, @01:33PM (#756829)

      Maybe they can put a funding goal on their home page and allow users to subscribe/donate?

      If that is not enough, maybe they can add their logo to t-shirts and coffee mugs as "Gab Swag" and put a link to purchase them under said funding goals.

      --
      Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @02:14PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @02:14PM (#756841)

        Who will process the payments? Should I make out a cheque and mail it to them?

        Subscription/donation is how I'd understood their funding model when I checked out Gab some time ago. I registered an account and browsed for all of about 5 minutes before I realized that the only thing there were fresh instances of jmorris-class NPCs. Regardless, I will be interested to see what the Gab folks come up with.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @02:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @02:28PM (#756853)

          Who will process the payments?

          Why do they need a payment processor? They will only use Ethereum to take payments/donations, and only services that take Ethereum as payment.

      • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 02 2018, @05:48PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Friday November 02 2018, @05:48PM (#756960)

        They had a store with swag. The usual. Of course it was also deplatformed. They also had a direct donate button. But they preferred subscriptions of course, and gave out some fairly useful plums to encourage it. The 300 character limit is lifted up to 3K and you can use some basic formatting like bold, italics and underline. And subscribers can become "premium content creators" and charge viewers to see their "premium posts". Until they solve the payment processor bottleneck all of those things will be on hold.