About
What Gab Is, Who Runs It, and How It Works
Gab is a social network built on a single commitment: that speech which is legal should not be removed because it is unpopular, political, or religious. Around that sits a parallel economy — a marketplace, a business directory, video, live streaming, groups, and curated feeds — built so that the people using it are not dependent on companies that have shown they will remove them.
Gab is owned and operated by Gab AI Inc., a private American company. Anything public on the platform can be read without an account: posts, profiles, groups, video, the marketplace, and the business directory. A free account is what you need in order to post, reply, follow, join a group, or sell something.
What you can do on Gab
The core of Gab is a social timeline: you follow accounts, post text, images, and video, and reply in public. Groups are member-run communities with their own rules and moderators, covering everything from Bible study and homeschooling to firearms, homesteading, and local politics. Feeds let you assemble a chronological timeline from a specific set of accounts instead of leaving the order to a recommendation algorithm.
The commerce side is Gab Marketplace, where independent sellers list products directly, and the business directory, where companies publish a profile so customers can find them. Gab Video handles long-form uploads, Gab Clips covers short vertical video, and Gab Live carries real-time broadcasts. All of it belongs to one account — there is nothing separate to sign up for.
- Gab Groups
- How to start a group
- Gab Marketplace
- Business directory
- How to go live on Gab
- Curated feeds
- Every Gab feature
Who owns and runs Gab
Gab is owned by Gab AI Inc., a private company founded and led by Andrew Torba, who is chief executive and controlling owner. Gab launched in 2016. The company is not publicly traded and is not backed by venture capital, which is a deliberate choice: institutional investors are a pressure point, and a platform whose speech policy is unpopular with advertisers and processors is exactly the kind of platform investors ask to change.
Funding instead comes from the people who use it. That is the structural argument for the whole arrangement — a platform paid for by its members answers to its members, and a platform paid for by advertisers answers to advertisers.
Why Gab runs its own infrastructure
Gab has been removed by payment processors, web hosts, domain registrars, and both major app stores. The response was to stop renting the critical parts. Gab runs its own servers and processes its own payments for Gab products such as GabPRO, rather than depending on a provider that can withdraw service and take the platform offline with it.
The same reasoning explains how you install Gab on a phone. Gab is not in the Apple App Store or Google Play, so the mobile app is a progressive web app you add from your browser — it gets a home screen icon and a full-screen window, and no app store approval sits between you and access to the platform.
- How Gab stays online
- Gab’s infrastructure
- Why was Gab deplatformed?
- Install the Gab app
- What is deplatforming?
What free speech means here in practice
"Free speech" on Gab means speech protected by the First Amendment, and it is worth being precise about that rather than implying there are no rules at all. Gab’s Terms of Service prohibit illegal content, threats of violence, doxxing, and pornography, and accounts that break those rules are removed. What Gab does not do is remove lawful speech because it is politically controversial, religiously unfashionable, or uncomfortable for an advertiser.
Most day-to-day moderation happens at the group level rather than centrally. Group admins set their own rules and enforce them in their own communities, so a theology group and a firearms group can run very differently on the same platform. You also have individual controls: you can block accounts, mute them, and filter words out of your own timeline, which is a different thing from having content removed for everyone.
- Gab’s moderation policy
- What is not allowed on Gab
- What gets you banned on Gab
- How to block someone on Gab
- How to report content
How Gab makes money
Three sources: GabPRO subscriptions, advertising sold directly by Gab, and investment from the community. Free accounts see advertising in the feed. GabPRO is the optional paid tier that removes those ads and adds features such as higher upload limits.
Gab does not sell user data to data brokers. That distinction is worth stating carefully rather than claiming the platform has no tracking whatsoever: advertising on the free tier uses industry-standard measurement, and the Privacy Policy sets out what is actually collected.
Privacy, identity, and leaving
Creating a Gab account takes a username and an email address. There is no real-name requirement and no phone verification, and connecting over a VPN is allowed — all three matter to people whose employment or safety depends on not posting under their legal identity.
Leaving is a control too, and one worth checking before you join anything. Gab provides a self-service archive export of your account, and deleting your account is something you do yourself in settings rather than by asking permission.
Open source
Gab Social, the software running this site, is free and open-source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3. It was originally forked from Mastodon and has been developed separately since.
The practical consequence is that you have a choice. You can use your account here, or you can run your own Gab Social server that you control and still communicate with users on other federated servers. Publishing the source is part of the same argument as owning the servers: infrastructure nobody can quietly take away from you.
Getting started
You can read most of Gab without signing up, so the easiest way to judge it is to look first. Browse the groups, read a few profiles, and see what the conversation is actually like before deciding.
When you do want to take part, an account is free and takes a couple of minutes. On a phone, install the progressive web app from your browser so Gab behaves like any other app on your home screen.
- How to sign up for Gab
- Using Gab without an account
- Install Gab on your phone
- Frequently asked questions
Reading is free and needs no account. Creating one takes a username and an email address.
Frequently asked questions
What is Gab?
Gab is a social network and parallel economy platform owned by Gab AI Inc. It combines a public timeline, member-run groups, a marketplace, a business directory, and video and live streaming, on a platform that does not remove lawful speech for being politically or religiously controversial.
Who owns Gab?
Gab is owned by Gab AI Inc., a private company founded and led by Andrew Torba, who is its chief executive and controlling owner. It is not publicly traded and is not backed by venture capital.
Is Gab free to use?
Yes. Creating an account, posting, and browsing are free, and free accounts see advertising in the feed. GabPRO is an optional paid subscription that removes feed ads and adds features such as higher upload limits.
Is Gab moderated?
Yes. Gab’s Terms of Service prohibit illegal content, threats of violence, doxxing, and pornography. What Gab does not do is remove lawful speech for being politically controversial. Most day-to-day moderation is handled by group admins within their own communities.
Do I need an account to use Gab?
No, not to read. Public posts, profiles, groups, video, the marketplace, and the business directory can all be browsed without logging in. A free account is required to post, reply, follow, join a group, or sell something.
Your people are already here.
Free to join, free to read, and nobody is going to put a label on what you said.