The Technological Affordances of ‘Alt-Tech’: Uses and Users of Gab.com

In response to crackdowns against white supremacist content on social network platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the far right has increasingly sought to develop its own digital support infrastructure in the ‘Alt-Tech’. The most important platform for the Anglo-sphere far right has been Gab.com, a microblogging website that functions as an unregulated alternative to Twitter. Using qualitative content analysis, we analyse the technological affordances of Gab in terms of building a far-right community online. We also map the ideological makeup of the far right on the platform to better understand the extent of the far-right’s embrace of Alt-Tech. Hindered in part by platform architectural features, Gab’s utility for mobilising and recruiting activists is limited. Instead, we find it functions primarily as a site for the construction and dissemination of far right narratives, and the maintenance of social boundaries. In addition, while the most popular accounts on the platform belong to “Alt-Right”, Neo-Nazi and white supremacist users, their followers (and hence a large portion of the platform users) present as more generic Trump supporters. We conclude by arguing that Gab - and the Alt-Tech movement more generally - is a significant development in the techno-sophistication of the Anglophone far right, but it is nevertheless a poor substitute for mainstream social media in the near term, given its limited reach and design issues.