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Gab cries foul as Pennsylvania attorney general subpoenas DNS provider
Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro is probing Gab's relationship with its new domain name provider, Epik. A subpoena sent to Epik, dated Wednesday, seeks "any and all documents which are related in any way to Gab." In a statement to Ars, Gab described the investigation as a "baseless, political, and emotionally-driven witch hunt."
[...] Eric Goldman, a legal scholar at Santa Clara University, told us that the law is clear that Gab would not be liable for hosting content from the Pittsburgh shooter. Not only are the posts likely protected by the First Amendment, but a law called Section 230 gives service providers like Gab—not to mention upstream service providers like GoDaddy and Epik—an extra layer of protection against liability for user-submitted content.
So then what is Pennsylvania's attorney general investigating? Shapiro's office hasn't returned emails and a phone call asking about that. But two legal scholars I talked to for this story couldn't think of a legitimate reason for seeking these kinds of documents. "I struggle to see a legit basis for this," said Ken White, a First Amendment attorney and the proprietor of the popular Popehat blog. Seeking information about Gab's DNS provider "doesn't make any sense at all," legal scholar Eric Goldman told us. In another now-deleted tweet, Gab described the subpoena as a form of harassment. Could this be an attempt to punish Epik for doing business with Gab? Goldman described this as plausible and said that this kind of tactic could raise First Amendment issues. [...] Goldman doubted that an attorney general sending out subpoenas would be enough, on its own, to violate the First Amendment. But if it were part of a broader campaign to discourage providers from doing business with Gab, that could raise significant free speech concerns.
Previously: Social Media and the Pittsburgh Shooter: Gab.com Going Down
Gab's Plan To Use Blockchain To Make Itself Indestructible
Gab is Back
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 09 2018, @05:07AM (4 children)
Nah, you only get banned on Gab for outright illegal crap or doxxing. That is the extent of their bannings to date. Except for Weev, Torba got tired of his antics and everybody knew Weev lives to be banned anyway, it is his thing, so give him his martyrdom before his "edginess" brings the Feds.
We WANT more Proggies and Normies to join. Much like this place wouldn't be any fun without the range of users we have, Gab still has too much an echo chamber amongst the "Legions of the Damned" who are there because they can't get fresh Twitter or Facebook accounts anymore. Too many posts are reposts of a tweet with commentary that can no longer be said on twitter.
But Gab isn't even close to the most "out there" on the Internet. Before the paywall went up MyPostingCareer was insane in every sense of the word. Now? Who knows, ain't IDing myself to what is probably a honeypot just to read the funny nuggets in amongst the crazy. There is a gab account that posts a few daily "nuggets of wisdom" from MPC though, so there is apparently still some zany goings on behind the wall.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 09 2018, @05:39AM (1 child)
Somehow I doubt this. Someone should do the obvious experiment: have a bunch of unreconstructed Marxists, or people pretending to be such because I've honestly never met one, sign up. Get the "all PiV sex is rape!" woman in there too. Let them post all over the place, not to spam or troll, but to match the "kill the kikes!" types in volume and stridency. And see what happens. I bet the banhammer comes out so quick it leaves a trail of Cherenkov radiation (think about the phrasing of that for a moment...).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by jmorris on Friday November 09 2018, @06:03AM
Nah. All those banned twitter trolls would LOVE to have people to trigger. Nothing stopping ya from making an account and stirring up the frogs. Go see if you can get yourself banned. Or at least stir some crap. But beware, there be some fell monsters lurking that are hard core experienced Internet trolls, you might find yourself fleeing in tears if ya really piss some of them off.
Pick yer flavor of Nazis you would like to tangle with and go for it. They got em. Actual Nazi-Nazis, Neo-Nazis, Neon-Nazis, Anime-Nazis, Ironic-Nazis, LARP-Nazis, Wannabe-Nazis. They got sexists of every stripe if you would prefer mud wrestling them, homophobes, general bigots, nationalists of a half dozen flavors, etc.
Of course they also got basic bitch Republicans / Conservatives, Reactionaries of every sort, Moderates, Christians of very stripe, a few Jews, Muslims, etc., and there ARE already a few Progs. Just not enough to make it fun and most are obvious plants, bots and shills. In short they are growing thousands of accounts per day and accelerating as all this publicity has driven in the curious and twitter keeps sending over new recruits daily. "Hi everybody, I was finally permabanned by Jack so checking this place out." is a common introduction post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:13AM
So much for the freedom of speech, then.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday November 09 2018, @11:39PM
Curious, such perspicacity is unusual among the truly depraved and delusional deplorables. Damned legions, you say?