Gab Shows Resilience and Sees Record Growth Occurred on 10 Jan 2021

Amid the increased censorship that followed the US capitol riot, many users began the migration to alternative platforms (AltTech). Parler, a Twitter / Facebook alternative, saw so much increased traffic that Google, Apple and Amazon all deplatformed Parler, which temporarily took the entire platform completely offline.

On the other hand, Gab (another Twitter / Facebook alternative), had already been targeted and mass deplatformed a few years prior. Their Android app was first removed from the Google Play Store in August of 2017 and then (after rebranding, reengineering, and gaining reentrance into the Google Play Store) was once again removed in July of 2019 shortly after trending as the #1 app. Not only that, but Gab’s CEO Andrew Torba, as well as his family, have been financially blacklisted by major payment platforms and processors.

Therefore, Gab did not get taken offline as Parler did. Gab did the work years ago by building out their own infrastructure so that a small set of corporations couldn’t just take Gab offline at the snap of a finger. The site did, however, see so much new traffic during this censorship frenzy that the it was unusable at times. In a blog post a couple of weeks later, Torba mentioned Gab’s recent record growth:

In the past 30 days the Gab community has grown by millions of people from around the world. We’ve seen over 24 million visitors and 177 million page views over the past few weeks alone. Our business is growing and quickly.

Additionally, applications for Gab Pro (Gab’s premium membership which allows for, among other features, verification) spiked as well, numbering in the thousands:

To those who applied for Gab verification: please be patient. We are backlogged by thousands of applications which we are working diligently to process. We have a small, but growing team dedicated to this. Thank you for understanding!

– gab (@gab) 20 Jan 2021