Gab is back a week after Pittsburgh shooting controversy forced it offline

Gab, the “free speech” social media site that’s popular with the alt-right, is back online.

“We will never get [sic] up, we will never give in,” founder Andrew Torba wrote in a Sunday evening post on the site. “Free speech and liberty will always win.”

Gab was forced offline in the wake of last month’s deadly shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The shooter appears to have been a Gab user, and his final Gab post prior to the shooting attacked the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a non-profit refugee resettlement group: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

When the shooter’s apparent ties to Gab came to light, GoDaddy gave Gab 24 hours to find a new domain provider. Gab wasn’t able to transition to a new provider immediately, so the site was down for about a week. But a domain provider called Epik agreed to host Gab, allowing the site to come back online this past weekend.

The new site includes a subtle branding change. “When we go back online this weekend our logo of the month will include a dove in honor of the Tree of Life victims and their families,” Gab wrote on Twitter.

Gab has vowed to continue its free-speech policies, and it continues to be a popular online watering hole for noxious antisemitism.

“Please remember it was the Jews who tried to shut this site down,” wrote Christopher Cantwell, a Gab user with 11,000 followers, in a Sunday evening post. “You can call them ‘big tech’ or ‘liberal elites’ or ‘the media’ or ‘the globalists’ or ‘the bankers’ but it is always the Jews.” The post appeared on Gab’s front page under the “popular posts” header and as I write this it has been reposted (Gab’s equivalent of a retweet) 134 times.