Free Speech Platform Gab Launches Political Advertising Service

Gab, the First Amendment-based social network offering a free-speech-friendly alternative to increasingly censorious platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, has launched a political advertising service.

The move by Gab comes as other companies face pressure from Democrats to regulate political ads. Twitter recently banned political ads altogether, while disclosures from YouTube have revealed that over 300 of President Trump’s political ads have been censored by the Google-owned tech giant.

In a post on its official blog, Gab, which has attracted a userbase of over 3 million people, says that attempts to censor political ads are a part of the establishment’s campaign to suppress political populists.

“The elites realize that online advertising is empowering anti-establishment populists and their supporters to break through the narrative control of the mainstream media,” wrote Gab.

In the post, Gab said the feature would be ready in time for the 2020 election:

Today Gab is excited to announce that we are launching a political advertising offering and will be piloting this offering with several 2020 Congressional candidates on both the left and the right over the coming months. Free speech is inherently political, especially given that political speech is being censored around the world online.

There will be no invasive and creepy tracking across the web with Gab’s ads. Just some simple old school banner ads, promoted posts on Gab, and good old fashioned emails.

We have been experimenting with several placement options on Gab Trends and Gab Social to promote our own merchandise and our GabPRO subscription service. We are now ready to bring the power of this system to political candidates just in time for the 2020 election cycle.

Gab promises to “accept mainstream political advertising from the right and left. Eventually we will accept mainstream advertising from organizations that have been wrongfully deplatformed en masse by Silicon Valley companies including e.g. pro-life groups, firearms companies, and advocacy groups.”