Gab responds to new report of rampant antisemitism by sending users on hunt for secret Jewish influence
Christian nationalist Andrew Torba, founder and CEO of the alternative social media platform Gab, insinuated on Tuesday that Jews are sabotaging his website.
In a post to his profile, Torba alleged that a recent report from the World Jewish Congress, which described Gab as a proliferator of "virulent antisemitic rhetoric and content," has led to an influx of fake accounts.
"There is an operation in process to try to get us further deplatformed that started shortly after the World Jewish Congress put out their bogus 'report' last week," Torba wrote. "We’re seeing a pattern of newly created Gab accounts posting threats of violence and then being reported to some of our business partners."
The report, co-authored with the organization Fighting Online Antisemitism, labeled the platform and its use of AI chatbots, as a "breeding ground for anti-Jewish hate speech and conspiracy theories."
Specifically, the report continued, chatbots launched by Gab, including one known as "Talk to Adolf Hitler," have been trained to actively spread antisemitic conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial.
Torba went on to suggest that the Jewish state was to blame for the alleged uptick in threatening comments, noting the site's policy of blocking IP addresses from Israel after it saw previous "psyops" on the site.
"We noticed a pattern of repeated inauthentic psyop behavior like this," Torba said. "Just a heads up if you see any accounts like this posting threats of violence please report them to our moderation team using the reporting tool on posts."
Although Torba has not presented any technical evidence to back up his claims, the site's users were quick to defend his assertions.
"Threats of violence, signs of desperation," one user said in response.
"OMG will these dirtbags never stop harassing you and the Gab platform?" another asked. "This enrages me. The fact Jews are involved enrages me even more. I'm praying for you and this platform every morning."
Some tagged specific Jewish accounts to get Torba to take them down.
But others argued against Torba's call to action by accusing him of previously ignoring other threats of violence and extremist content.
"Dude you asked for user monitoring before over calls to violence and did NOTHING as people taught others how to make bombs and make online death threats," one user said. "Sorry but the whole site is built around using users against each other. So these sort of periodic posts fall completely flat as the lipservice they clearly are."
Others complained about Torba's alleged failure to deal with the prevalence of supposed bots on the platform.
"you also have a ton of accounts that are literally just some profile with a female picture on it that joins same day, follows like 100, 200, 300+ people with zero engagement that are bots more than likely just scraping information from posts and God knows what else," another said.
"I keep a running tally of all the bot/troll accounts here, and is consistently ignored," wrote another. "I understand the need for money, but when your 'pro' accounts are actively trying to destroy your platform, you have problems."
In its report, the World Jewish Congress likewise noted that Gab had blocked IP addresses from Israel, resulting in a significant challenge "for watchdog organizations to monitor antisemitic activities."
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