Elijah Schaffer, host of the “Slightly Offens*ve” and “You Are Here” podcasts for the Blaze, endorsed Gab as the “last bastion of free speech” online.
Andrew Torba, the CEO of free speech platform Gab, appeared with Elijah Schaffer on Thursday evening, following the “crazy” episode of TimCast IRL the night before, featuring GETTR CEO Jason Miller.
As National File reported, Miller had gone toe to toe with Tim Pool on Wednesday, with Pool raising various issues, including the fact that GETTR does not allow “hateful” content, and that Miller could not specify which terms of service Nick Fuentes broke before he was banned from the platform.
Schaffer kicked off his interview with Torba by noting that he has his “doubts” that “GETTR, the app that we’re all supposed to trust and love and know [is] going to protect our free speech.” Instead, Schaffer publicly endorsed Gab, which he described as a “free speech haven,” and the “last bastion of free speech” online.
“This is the only one that I’ve found personally that actually holds true to their Terms of Service, meaning that you don’t find yourself magically deleted, you don’t find your account disappears, messages get throttled or whatever you’re trying to do,” Schaffer continued, who had previously been shadowbanned by GETTR. “This is a very important place.”
The Blaze host further slammed GETTR as “another Big Tech Chinese app masquerading as a safe haven for the right wing.” Torba, who has had to build his own infrastructure in order to not rely on Big Tech, said that anything on the app store can never be a fully free speech platform.
“I wouldn’t have a problem if they came out and said we’re going to be the conservative alternative to Twitter,” Torba argued. “They’re de facto owned and controlled by Big Tech, because their servers are hosted on Amazon… They’re built on the back of the app stores, and therefore they answer to Apple and Google, and Gab doesn’t have any of those problems.”
Schaffer later raised with Torba one of the biggest criticisms of Gab, in that it ends up being a potential echo chamber for only traditional Christians or those on the right, with Torba often citing the influence that Christ has on his work with Gab, and in public messaging around the site.
“We have plenty of people who are atheists and from different religions,” Torba responded. “What they recognize is that Western society and Western values are built on top of Christian values. What we’re doing is we’re preserving and we’re conserving Christian values and American values, which are Christian values, for the world.”
Torba argued that free speech and free association are some of those key values created by Christianity. “Anybody is welcome to join and you can dissent,” he added. “I have plenty of dissent in my comments section from atheists and from pagans and from people of different religions, and that’s okay and that’s welcome, that’s what free speech is about.”