Free Speech Social Network Gab Secures Payment Processor Following Financial Blacklisting

Free speech social network Gab has secured a new payment processor following its blacklisting from major payment services, including PayPal and Stripe, which left accepting mailed payments the site’s only recourse.

Gab announced the new payment processor in a statement on Tuesday.

“Gab.com operates on one rule: if political speech is legal in the United States, that speech is allowed on Gab,” the company declared. “Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix, Patreon, Square, and Stripe disagree with this proposition, and believe not only that it is morally correct to dictate to Internet users what opinions we are and are not allowed to hold, but that it is morally correct to deplatform any company that disagrees with the California consensus, and actively suppress opinions, as well as the people who express them, where their users’ beliefs don’t accord with corporate interests.”

“The only thing censorship accomplishes is the elimination of reasoned argument and self-sorting into filter bubbles. Accordingly, Gab does not censor controversial opinions that are protected by the First Amendment, and we never will,” Gab continued. “People everywhere are waking up to the significant danger of allowing banks and large technology companies to police their opinions and what they are and are not allowed to see. Companies like our own, like our DNS hosting provider epik.com, and our new payment processor, 2nd Amendment Processing, recognize both the danger of kowtowing to online mobs and the significant upside potential of serving as the backbone of the free and open Internet.”

Gab then concluded, “We are immensely pleased to be working with 2nd Amendment Processing, a company that recognizes that freedom of speech is not a means to an end, but an end unto itself, and we recommend 2nd Amendment Processing to any company with difficulty securing payment processing services for political reasons.”

In his own statement, 2nd Amendment Processing CEO Thomas Troyer declared, “When I heard Gab’s story on Breitbart News Daily of how they were being blocked by many financial services companies and banks, I knew instantly I had to fight for them and their 1st Amendment rights just like we fight for our customers within the firearms industry and the protection of the 2nd Amendment. We, after all, believe the 2nd Amendment protects the all other Amendments, so this just made sense to us.”

Gab CEO Andrew Torba added in a statement to Breitbart News, “To our critics, we say this: the best way to combat hate speech is persuasion, not repression; more and better speech, not censorship. We welcome our critics on the far left to join the site and exercise their First Amendment rights, which we will always protect.”

In October, Gab was blacklisted by its payment processors, web host, and Go Daddy, prompting the social network to temporarily go offline.

Gab has also been blacklisted by Apple and Google, which have repeatedly rejected Gab’s mobile app from their stores.

Gab is not the only alternative social network to have faced blacklisting, with YouTube alternative BitChute being blacklisted from PayPal in November.