Image: Gab / Protocol
Gab’s brand new internet

Good morning! This Tuesday, Gab wants to build a free-speech internet, RingCentral has a plan to take on Zoom and tech companies are stopping their campaign contributions.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day. And you can text with us, too, by signing up here or texting 415-475-1729.)
Gab launched in 2016, and was fairly effectively deplatformed two years later after it was used to plan a shooting in Pittsburgh. Joyent stopped hosting it, GoDaddy forced it to change domain providers, Stripe stopped collecting its money, PayPal turned off its API. Gab seemed dead in the water, just like Parler does right now. But Gab figured it out.
And now? Gab seems to be on fire. The service is getting up to 700,000 new users a day, according to CEO Andrew Torba, and has gotten more than 40 million unique visitors in the last week.
The company is bent on seizing its moment. In a response to The Atlantic, Gab said (in a tweet that now seems to be deleted) that it's working on a smartphone "free of any and all Big Tech trackers."
Gab's moderation policies use the same "anything goes if it's legal" approach as other similar services. (Though the company does have a slightly unusual and very aggressive anti-porn stance.) Even as the service has been associated with horrible speech and more horrible acts, Torba has stood by those rules. And absent government regulation or an unlikely change of heart from one of Gab's vendors, there's not much anyone can do about it.
RingCentral has seen competitors come and go in its 21 years. The cloud-based communications tool provider knows how to plan for the long game, and its leaders are unfazed by what they see as flash-in-the-pan enthusiasm for Zoom. Protocol's Joe Williams unpacked why RingCentral might have a long and bright future, and how it could successfully take on Microsoft and Zoom.
It all starts with partnerships. Because of its long-standing relationships with legacy companies, RingCentral has agreements with Vodafone, AT&T, Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent, among others, guaranteeing its products will be used when these companies and their customers switch to the cloud. That's hundreds of millions of future users in the bag.
Planning ahead doesn't hurt, either. The company spent years developing a videoconferencing tool that it launched in April, and its recent acquisition of AI-backed DeepAffects signals a future with intelligent tools on top of productivity software (think instant meeting transcripts and task assignments at the end of a video chat).
CEO Vlad Shmunis wants RingCentral to grow from a $1 billion company to a $10 billion company. To do that, he recently hired three Microsoft veterans for his exec team, as well as several others from the company's competitors.
Did we mention that Protocol launched its newest vertical (and newsletter) this week? You should really subscribe to Protocol | Enterprise.
Emily Birnbaum writes: A number of tech companies are rethinking where they donate their money after facing pressure over their contributions to members of Congress who tried to undermine the legitimacy of the election last week.
In light of the violence on Capitol Hill, a number of companies say they will now suspend or rework which candidates their PACs support. Here's a list of the tech giants that are so far pausing or rethinking their political spending entirely.
Verizon and Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Twitter dissolved its PAC last year. Apple and IBM do not make contributions to political parties or candidates.
For Raj Hazra, who is senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications at Micron, there has never been a more thrilling time than this golden age of data. In this interview, Hazra describes how "we are now at the doorstep of taking things that we thought were science fiction and making them real, and it's only going to be exponentially faster going forward". Read more from Micron's Raj Hazra.
The laws governing tech companies should be decided by lawmakers, not CEOs, a spokesperson for Angela Merkel said:
Facebook isn't a neutral platform, Adam Mosseri said, because there's no such thing:
On Protocol: The last week has shown how important Section 230 really is, said TechFreedom's Berin Szóka:
Intel CEO Bob Swan said the company wants to remain an integrated device manufacturer, but could license other companies' manufacturing tech:
An anonymous former Alibaba executive had thoughts on China's Jack Ma crackdown:
Roy Austin is Facebook's new VP of Civil Rights and deputy general counsel. He's a longtime civil rights lawyer, and the kind of hire Facebook seemed petrified of making in the Trump era.
Manny Rivelo is the new CEO of Forcepoint. Dave Stevens is also the company's new SVP of strategy and execution, and John DiLullo is the CRO. All the changes come as Francisco Partners closes its deal for the company.
Musa Tariq is GoFundMe's new CMO. He was most recently running marketing for Airbnb Experiences.
Jim Lucier is leaving SAP Concur, after more than a decade with the company.
David Martinez, better known as TheGrefg, absolutely destroyed Twitch's record for most-watched stream ever. He had more than 2.4 million people simultaneously watching him reveal a Fortnite skin. The previous record for an individual stream was 635,000 viewers, just to give you a sense of how big this was.
For Raj Hazra, who is senior vice president of corporate strategy and communications at Micron, there has never been a more thrilling time than this golden age of data. In this interview, Hazra describes how "we are now at the doorstep of taking things that we thought were science fiction and making them real, and it's only going to be exponentially faster going forward". Read more from Micron's Raj Hazra.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Anna Kramer and Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day; see you tomorrow.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.