Mailgun, an email service for developers, has terminated its partnership with Gab after three years of working together. The ban is the latest of many that Gab has faced as it continues to grow its free speech focused social network.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba says that Mailgun emailed Gab “out of the blue” and said that it no longer wants to provide service.
The email reads:
“Thank you for your interest in Mailgun.
At this time, we have made the decision that we do not wish to continue our partnership together. Our decision to terminate an account is not taken lightly, and we do everything we can to assist customers in bringing their account in compliance with our terms of service.
If you’d like to read our Terms of Service, they are readily available on our website.”
The email from Mailgun doesn’t say why the company has decided to stop working with Gab although it vaguely alludes to unspecified terms of service violation.
Torba responded by saying Mailgun has banned Gab for no reason and added: “We’ve done nothing wrong. To my knowledge, we haven’t broken their terms of service in any way.”
He also said that Gab is now building its own mail delivery system which will make it less reliant on third-party services like Mailgun.
Torba went on to suggest that the ban is likely related to a recent Vice article which highlighted that Gab’s traffic has almost doubled in 2019 but framed this growth as “a worrying sign of the spread of hateful ideologies and radicalization online.”
This news from Mailgun makes it the latest in a long line of companies to deplatform Gab. Most recently, the Android repository F-Droid censored Gab for being a “free speech zone” that will “tolerate all opinions.” Other apps have also attempted to censor Gab over the last few months after it joined the Fediverse – a decentralized collection of blogging and social networking projects.
However, despite the censorship and deplatforming, Gab is continuing to grow and becoming less reliant on third-party services. Earlier this month, Gab reported that it had 1.8 million visitors over the previous 30 days and it’s continuing to build new products, such as its upcoming mail delivery system, which allow Gab to stay online even when it’s deplatformed by service providers.
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