On 4th July this year, Gab social network joined the fediverse and immediately became the largest instance or social network in the fediverse. In an email to the Gab community, the CEO of Gab AI Andrew Torba wrote:
"After three years of work and after being banned multiple times by both App Stores, Gab finally has dozens of mobile apps for our users to choose from. Recently we moved to an open source and decentralized version of Gab that makes your Gab account compatible with a variety of different apps "
Right from when Andrew Torba announced his plans to fork the mastodon open source software and join the fediverse, far left activists in the fediverse community have been protesting and denouncing the Gab CEO's plans. And soon after Gab joined the fediverse, the lead developer of the mastodon project Eugen Rochko has been mobilizing other developers and mastodon instance administrators to block the Gab Social network. Many of them did, essentially blocking their small groups of users from interacting with much larger user base on the Gab network.
In one of his many protest posts on his mastodon social account @Gargron@mastodon.social , Egen said:
"....This is an early warning to fellow admins to be vigilant and domain-block them[Gab] on sight, when/if they appear (unconfirmed whether they intend to federate), and to app devs to consider if blocking Gab's domains from their app is necessary."
Despite all the protests Gab, CEO seemed amused and optimistic. He thanked all the mastodon developers who made the open source project possible in the first place.
As of the time of writing this piece, many fediverse instancesand developers have blocked Gab. But that does not seem to have any negative effect on the Gab network and it's active user base. Instances based on the Gab social software have started appearing in the fediverse. It is possible that Gab social instances may dominate the fediverse in the future. Gab AI developers and their CEO Andrew seem to be determined and on a mission. Time will tell.