Why was Gab banned by payment processors and hosts?

In October 2018, Gab was simultaneously dropped by its hosting provider, its domain registrar, its payment processors, and both major app stores. Political opponents used the moment to execute a coordinated deplatforming campaign that took Gab offline for several days — one of the most significant deplatforming events in the history of the internet.

What happened

Within 48 hours, PayPal, Stripe, and other payment processors terminated Gab's merchant accounts. GoDaddy removed the domain registration. Joyent, the hosting provider, suspended service. Apple and Google had already removed the app from their stores in prior years (Google in 2017). The combination was an attempt to take the platform permanently offline.

Gab cooperated fully with law enforcement and its position — consistent with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — is that a platform is not legally responsible for the actions of its users based on their speech on the platform.

The response

Rather than complying with deplatforming pressure and changing its moderation policies, Gab rebuilt its infrastructure to eliminate every chokepoint that had been used against it. New hosting, new payment infrastructure, new domain configuration — all chosen specifically to avoid the single points of failure that made the 2018 campaign so effective. Gab came back online within days and has operated continuously since.