Advertisements for online gun retailer Guns.com are appearing on a social media website favored by white nationalists, with the ads encouraging users to “load up and support Gab.”
Gab was founded in 2016 by Andrew Torba in reaction to social media companies’ pledges to remove hate speech, extremism, and harassment from their platforms. The website’s explicit goal was to provide safe haven to those whose extremist rhetoric had gotten them removed from platforms like Twitter. While Torba insisted Gab users are merely exercising their First Amendment rights, the website quickly become riddled with anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi statements.
For instance, the gunman who carried out the anti-Semitic 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was a frequent Gab user who routinely posted anti-Semitic images, suggested President Donald Trump was “was too accommodating of Jewish influence,” and called Jewish people “children of Satan.” Shortly before he carried out his attack, the gunman posted on Gab, “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Originally, Gab was a self-described “ad-free social network," but on February 12, 2020, it announced that the platform would be accepting “political advertising” from “both the left and the right.”
Viewed on March 17, Gab’s “trends” page repeatedly displayed advertisements for online firearms retailer Guns.com. The ads read: “Load Up and Support Gab.”
