Tucker Carlson defends Gab, a social media app dubbed “a haven for white nationalists”

Gab was banned from Google and Apple app stores for “hate speech”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Fox host Tucker Carlson invited Andrew Torba, the founder of “Gab,” a social media app called a “haven for white nationalists” and a “magnet for the alt-right,” to attack Google and Apple for removing his app for promoting racist “hate speech.”



Gab was recently removed from the Google Play Store and was rejected by Apple “eight of nine times” that it submitted an application to the Apple store because of the “objectionable content” found on the site. Wired described Gab as a “platform that looks like an artifact from a dystopian universe where the alt-right completely took over Twitter.”



On the September 5 edition of his show, Tucker Carlson ignored Gab’s obvious appeal to white nationalists and invited the platform’s founder to defend the social media platform’s right to promote hate speech using Google and Apple app stores:


TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Gab is a ad-free social media platform that operates in a way similar to Twitter. It presents itself as a pro-free speech platform so it’s been popular with Milo Yiannopoulos and other figures who have been censored on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites as well people who just believe in free speech. Tech giants can’t abide it though because it’s an uncensored platform so recently Google banned Gab from the Google store, claiming that company was “engaging in hate speech” simply by refusing to censor people who use it. Andrew Torba is the founder and CEO of Gab and he joins us tonight. So Andrew, did I just mistake that? According to Google you have a responsibility to police the political views of people who use your app and because you don’t, they’re kicking you off.



ANDREW TORBA: Correct, yeah Tucker. So when we founded Gab about a year ago, we founded it specifically to avoid this purpose. I didn’t want to police speech, I believed in free speech for everybody, individual liberty for everybody, and the free flow of information for everybody.



CARLSON: But they don’t.



TORBA: Correct, yes. So what's happening in Silicon Valley right now is they are using these arbitrary hate speech policies which is stemming right out of Germany and out of the E.U., and they’re applying these to the entire internet. And the left likes to say if you like the hate speech policies of Facebook and Twitter why don't you go build your own? So that's what we did and now what they’re doing is they’re saying you’re not allowed to do that either. We’re not going to let you have your app in our app stores.