A website meant to be a free speech alternative to twitter.
Basically amidst a lot of these platforms' more recent tendencies towards censorship, and complaints about them on both free speech grounds and on the grounds of the censorship being executed with an obvious political violence.
People complained about this, and the response was "well just make your own platform." So Gab was created as a free speech platform where anyone can say or post anything as long as it doesn't violate the law. The idea was to create a space on the internet governed by the same free speech principles as the American public square, and as mentioned earlier it functions similarly to twitter in its structure, just without the censorship.
It's been repeatedly smeared as some alt-right/far right website... even though it's an open platform that doesn't express support for the alt-right or only allow the alt-right, but merely extends something of a universal free speech principle to anyone who uses it. The media has in large part attacked Gab because Gab doesn't employ the use of censorship as a tool for what the media consider their political agenda.
Well it turns out the recent synagogue shooter posted on Gab, and so attacks on Gab from the press have pressured the domain hosting them into deplatforming the website as a whole. Never mind the fact that the owner of Gab immediately took the initiative in going to the FBI to provide everything they had on the guy without being asked to do so. Never mind the fact that this guy had also posted shit on facebook and facebook is facing no repercussion or outrage for it.
There was also some outrage over the fact that the shooter was verified on Gab. Though the people complaining about it either don't understand or won't be honest about the fact that verified status on Gab doesn't work the same as verified status on Twitter. Rather than being a badge of honor or prestige like Twitter's blue checkmark, verification on Gab literally exists for the purpose of serving as evidence that the person whose posting under a name is actually that person, and all that's required to be verified is providing proof of identity, so anyone can do it. It's not some mark of endorsement or prestige or some shit, it's literally just verification that the person posting is the person who they claim to be.
Gab's account on medium also posted a statement on medium after the mass shooting happened, a statement which categorically condemned the mass shooting... and then medium decided to deplatform Gab's account and remove their statement. Far be it from me to understand why a denouncement of terrorism should be deplatformed... maybe Gab condemning terrorism and violence is not convenient to their narrative that Gab is evil?
Thus far it seems like Gab is under a coordinated attack, and have had to juggle the hosting of their website through Microsoft, Joylent, and Godaddy, all of which have deplatformed them. They have been banned from online monetary transactions by GoFundMe, Paypal, and Stripe. And they have been banned from Google and Apple's app stores.
Fundamentally they have come under multi-corporate assault for the moral crime of acting as a free speech platform operating under the same principles as the first amendment, with everything from their app sharing, financial transactions, website hosting, and a post condemning terrorism and violence having been revoked, banned, or deplatformed.