Gab Funding Includes Alt-Right Donors and Investors

All of our records of Gab users who are funding Gab are now PUBLIC by Open Measures in Excel/CSV formats, but those fields (is_pro, is_donor, is_investor) are also available through our API. This article summarizes some of the key findings and the data itself.

What is Gab?

Research cluster iDrama (whom Open Measures has previously worked with) first published a scholarly paper on the “alt-right echo-chamber” Gab in February 2018. Since then, Open Measures has collected around 63 million posts on Gab over the last five years. 

Our Gab activity peaks in the month surrounding the US Capitol coup attempt with around 1.3 million posts from Dec. 3 to Jan. 10. We found extensive calls to violence, both targeted and more general, against politicians, minorities, and journalists, among others. Previously, Gab has also been host to many violent white supremacist paramilitary networks such as The Base.

By far the most active group in the election period was the QAnon group administered by Neon Revolt, with “thedonald” and “Stop the Steal” close behind. In DMs released by DDoSecrets, we also found Neon Revolt seeming to offer users free pro accounts in addition to other insider behavior, alluding to power in the organization. There were also various real world shout-outs to Gab in election worker intimidation demonstrations, such as one in Phoenix, Arizona.

Caption: Snapchat screenshot from pro-Trump election worker intimidation demonstrations stating “Get on GAB.com.”

After various deplatforming efforts against Gab, following its connections to the Tree of Life Synagogue attack, the platform adopted a more decentralized or P2P approach, using the Mastodon server federation technology in order to maintain resilience. This approach makes the platform even less accountable to public or political pressure, though it is still hosted by Cloudflare (as is Kiwi Farms, another extremist site).

Gab Financial Analysis

From public documents and recent Gab leaks (of which Open Measures analyzed everything public in addition to our own data), we can now release a preliminary analysis, from which our researchers gleaned some financial information. This release was compiled from user profiles and should be nearly complete as of the time of the leaks.

Gab had a tiered investment phase, during which — according to our records — they raised over $1.7 million from only 486 investors (whose accounts have been linked to their investments), though even their supporters have seemed dubious of the company's future financial success:

“Statistically, the company will not succeed. Legally, the owners could dilute your shares to such a worthless level that even if Gab does succeed, you would still have lost money.”

Gab raised an additional and approximate $6 million in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) (and on on Start Engine, a fundraising platform giving non-accredited investors access to private markets). The platform filed for an ICO with the SEC in 2018 but later withdrew (though they have some recorded crypto earnings, which could be compared against all associated wallets). All of Gab's investors were already public.

Caption: SEC filings showing around $30,000 in cryptocurrency earnings in 2018–2019.

Additionally, through studying Gab's most recent SEC filings, our researchers were able to gain greater insight into their massive and continuing revenue losses — the entirety of their filings can be found here.

Caption: SEC filings showing a net loss increase to nearly $750,000.

We also found over 3,946 accounts marked as donors and around 18,000 paid “Pro” accounts. These included numerous white supremacist organizations and individuals, such as VDare and Stefan Molyneux, as well as pro-rape “activists” such as Roosh V.

The paid Pro accounts, while not specifically donors, nonetheless account for part of Gab’s income and as such are included in this investigation. Of curious note is that more than 50 of the paid Pro accounts were linked to @reagan.com email addresses.

The data is composed of accounts with fields that show whether an account is an investor, donor, or Pro account. This can also be confirmed on the accounts' actual timeline on Gab. 

Caption: Gab Pro tiers starting at $99/year, with “Lifetime Patriot” costs drastically reduced from $7,500 to $500.

All of our records of Gab users who are funding Gab are now PUBLIC by Open Measures in Excel/CSV formats.

The data in the chart below (representing 21,160 users) does not show how much each Gab user paid into Gab; rather, it is sorted by how many followers a given donor, investor, and/or Pro account has (i.e., the chart sorts accounts by popularity). Though the accounts below are sorted by followers, please note that Gab does sometimes offer free Pro accounts to aligned users.

Caption: Chart of Gab users with Pro accounts, sorted by followers.

While the first three Gab accounts above are Pro accounts unlikely to be donors, the rest each tell their own interesting stories:

• The Donald Trump account was made by Gab and “held” in case he wanted to join.

• Neon Revolt is, of course, an infamous QAnon leader whose account is marked as Donor, Investor, and Pro. The Prison Planet and David Knight accounts are both Alex Jones-linked conspiracy accounts.

• The account called “Ron” is linked to Ron Watkins, former 8chan linked administrator who was later linked to QAnon and various election “fraud” movements. The sign-up details link Ron Watkins to the corporation Bytesec Limited.

• National File is a conservative conspiracy website.

• Revolver News Official is a conservative media account that has a “Gab TV” account. Their account has sign-up information suggesting it is run by the white supremacist and Trump supporter Darren Beattie.

• Mike Lindell is an infamous QAnon supporter and founder/CEO of My Pillow (who is reportedly on a "divine mission" to overthrow Biden’s election, per Politico).

• RedPill78 is a QAnon talk show who interviewed a QAnon-aligned congressional candidate and discussed his involvement in the January 6 coup attempt; the account is listed as a Donor and Pro account.

• Other accounts — such as Joe M, IPOT1776, and TRUNEWS — are all QAnon conspiracy accounts.

  
  

Caption: Chart of Gab users with Donor accounts, sorted by followers.

Among donors (above) and investors (below) alone, the accounts and their associated figures are less recognizable (though among them is Bob Torba, father of Gab founder Andrew Torba).

Caption: Chart of Gab users with Investor accounts, sorted by followers.

Our Gab data is available through our API, tagged with the same funding fields as those listed above.

Conclusion

Open Measures is making this information public amid the spread of harmful white supremacist and conspiracy-theory-oriented content on Gab and elsewhere. In doing so, our intention is to empower researchers to uncover more information about Gab's funding streams and prevent any potential harms that content on the platform might otherwise cause.

For more information on our research methodologies, contact us at info@openmeasures.io.