This morning, as Gab prepared for another day of defending free speech online, we received a formal legal notice from the French government. It’s the kind of thing that would make most Big Tech CEOs fold like a cheap suit, but not here. Not on Gab.
The letter, straight from a French administrative authority in Nanterre, is written in both French and English. They demand that Gab remove “specific content” and ban certain users within 24 hours. Fail to comply, and they’ll block access to Gab across France. The justification? Vague citations to France’s Law for Trust in the Digital Economy (LCEN) and the EU’s Terrorist Content Online Regulation (TCO or TERREG), which gives governments the power to play digital thought police.
I’ve attached the full notice below for transparency. It’s all there: the threats of “immediate measures” if we don’t censor, and the usual boilerplate about protecting “public order” and fighting “terrorism.” But let’s be real: this isn’t about terrorism. This is about control. It’s about silencing voices some foreign government doesn’t like.
One of the accounts the French government is demanding we ban hasn’t even posted a single thing on Gab not a word, not a post, nothing. It’s a ghost account, inactive and harmless, yet these foreign bureaucrats in their ivory towers think they can waltz in and dictate to an American company like we’re their colonial outpost. This isn’t about enforcing any real law; it’s about raw overreach, trying to force us to purge random users who haven’t violated a single one of our guidelines or U.S. law, all under the guise of their flimsy “trust in the digital economy” nonsense.
It’s insane, it’s tyrannical, and it’s not happening, not on our watch. Gab stands for American sovereignty and free speech under God, not bowing to every petty demand from overseas elites who hate liberty. If they want to play games with empty profiles, let them chase shadows; we’ll keep building the uncensorable internet for the people who actually use it.
Gab was built for exactly these moments. Back in 2016, when the thought police at Twitter and Facebook started banning conservatives, nationalists, and anyone who dared question the regime, we said enough. We’ve faced deplatforming from payment processors, app stores, and even our own hosting providers all because we refuse to police speech based on what offends the powers that be. We’ve been called everything from a “haven for extremists” to a “threat to democracy.” And guess what? We’re still here. Stronger than ever.
France’s move is just the latest in a long line of European censorship crusades. Remember the EU’s TCO Regulation? That gem from 2021 that lets any “competent authority” in the bloc order platforms to nuke content in one hour flat no judge, no trial, just blind obedience. It’s been challenged in court by groups like La Quadrature du Net and ARTICLE 19, who rightly call it a “dangerous techno-solutionist police censorship” that chills free expression. Smaller platforms like ours get hit hardest because we don’t have the resources or the will to build the surveillance machines Big Tech uses to preemptively scrub anything that smells like dissent.
Gab complies with the law. We ban illegal threats of violence. Child exploitation? Gone. Direct calls to murder? Banned. But “terrorist content”? That’s a slippery slope the French (and their EU overlords) define to include political speech, memes, and even historical discussions that trigger their fragile sensibilities. Banning users for wrongthink?
We will not comply. Gab is a platform built for free speech, built by Christians for everyone who values liberty under God. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5:1, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” These governments want to yoke us to their digital gulags, but we’ll stand firm. If France bans Gab, so be it. Our users are global. Our mission is eternal. And frankly, losing a country that’s already knee-deep in censorship might just be a blessing in disguise.
To the French government: Your threats don’t scare us. To our users: Keep posting. Keep building. The future of free speech doesn’t bend to bureaucrats.
Support platforms that fight for you.
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab
Christ is King
