It began when I created the dump for Gab posts and made the data searchable via Pushshift and made this tweet. I made a few cursory observations about Gab content. My original tweet was here:

https://twitter.com/jasonbaumgartne/status/1057560986163515392

Earlier tonight, Andrew Torba (CEO of Gab) then fired off these three tweets:

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1057824511414853632

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1057825891785465856

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1057828151693176833

This set off a chain of events where I got alerted by another data scientist who is a good friend that I was currently getting some insane traffic on my page. When I checked, I was receiving hundreds of notifications every 5 minutes.

A majority of the responses from the Gab posts were negative towards my work, but this also generated some other tweets from users in defense of the work.

Keeping it Classy:

https://twitter.com/IsraelAnderson/status/1057868686969602049

https://twitter.com/DarkHorse048/status/1057864595489148928

https://twitter.com/HeterodoxianMax/status/1057849205564174337

https://twitter.com/boilingbutter/status/1057842423500587008

I received a few strange responses from unknown people, but nothing serious as of yet -- but I've enabled 2FA on my Twitter account and gmail accounts and locked down some other accounts just to make sure.

Going Forward:

Gab.ai / Gab.com is expected to be back online in the next couple days according to Andrew.

I will continue to collect Gab data and make it available for research while documenting future actions from Andrew towards me in the event that it leads to targeted harassment. At the most, it is currently an effort to twist the work I am doing in defense of Gab (as he made clear in his tweets).

If Andew is Torba is truly serious about preventing future violence from users on his platform, he will allow an open and transparent analysis of the content and messages being sent across that platform.

I just wanted to alert others of this and give a summary of events for future reference should things get more extreme.

Currently, the traffic is dying down (it's late), but I'm still receiving approximately 100-200 notifications per hour.

Thanks for your support!