This is concerning because of its Chilling Effect . Gab is an app and, like twitter, does not generate it's own content. (Obligatory: fuck hate)
Here's an interesting related article from 2016: Gab's Trump-Supporting CEO Kicked Out Of Y Combinator Startup Incubator for harrassing Y Combinator's community members
edited for spelling & grammar (Sorry, first post)
Twitter is a shithole of dog-piles and character assassination. Why is Twitter not banned? I state the opinion that Twitter is the most vile, hate filled, narcissist enabling toxic social site on the net. Jack Dorsey and Larry Page are buddies, or at least they run in the same circles and support the same charities, but that cannot have anything to do with why a twitter competitor was booted.
This is concerning for all non-mainstream social network apps that allow user-generated content. Google is essentially punishing Gab for the behavior of their users, not for anything they've actually done as a platform. If this trend continues, the only social network apps allowed will be those that uphold the same type of overbearing, politically-correct censorship policies that Google's own sites already employ. What's their next target, reddit and 4chan apps? Twitter is full of racists and Nazis as well.
I heard someone talking on the radio yesterday that while what's going on at the moment makes sense, this whole scenario illustrates really well how much control tech companies actually have. Everything from companies like Visa, Paypal, and Amazon stopping transactions from going to certain websites to GoDaddy revoking services, to Facebook scrubbing hate speech to Google removing apps shows that it's very easy for companies to, in a way, scrub groups out. When, how, and why they do it or might be tempted to do it are all things worth pausing to consider. Edit: Naturally, I don't have any answers.