If you're the deep-state type who likes to prevent online discussion, or control who gets to post and what they post, you're probably not going to like Gab's new commenting service named Dissenter.
Conceptually, it's very simple. With Dissenter, every website on the internet now has a commenting system. To post, you need a Gab account. You can use the product through the Dissenter portal, or through their browser application. When you're on an article, or any web page, you can click the app icon and you can jump into the conversation if one is going, or start it up.
On the portal, just copy and past the URL, and you're in. If you're familiar with Disqus, it's similar in that you can comment on the Disqus side and not directly on the website. I'm sure other commenting systems have the same concept, but I've only used Disqus. When you comment off-site, on the Disqus side, your comments are visible to those on the site's commenting section. This requires an installation on the website to keep in sync with the Disqus servers.
With Dissenter, there's no on-site commenting. It's all off-site on the portal, or through your browser app. Apparently, the digital media writers are not fans.
Have you ever hated journalists so much that you wanted to create an online commenting system just so you could complain about them behind their backs? Well, we have good news for you. If you’re a card-carrying member of the far-right, you can now shout into the void with Gab‘s new social media platform Dissenter, the self-described “comment section of the internet.” It’s basically StumbleUpon for people who voted for Trump.
Dissenter lets posters share a URL, comment on it, and see if others also have opinions. While the site essentially lets users discuss articles in a centralized place, it also doubles as a stomping ground for randomly complaining about things on the internet. Tweets, YouTube videos, and articles discussing Dissenter regularly flood the service, with very little constructive discussion actually going on in the site. It’s mostly just an echo chamber for conservative users who want to complain about feminism or Democrats. Hell, you can even install a browser extension to see what your right-wing buddies are saying while you browse through Breitbart.
They call themselves "journalists". That's cute. This one went down the list: "Trump", "far-right", "Breitbart". I think this one has a "Coding for Dummies" book in her future. Here's Vice, another one that posts pretty much the exact same thing as the others: "Trump", "far-right", etc. This one posts a scene from Charlottesville. They really, really don't like this whole freedom thing.
They're (Gab) working out the kinks with the browser app. In my Firefox browser (I didn't install it on my Brave browser yet) I have to re-install it after I exit my browser instance. However, I can stay logged into the portal, and that's what I've been doing.
I've been critical of Gab, especially for not having an API so we can embed posts and build a halfway decent interface, but I've been using them more and more. I'm going to keep supporting them as they grow and continue to improve the platform, and continue to innovate like they did with Dissenter. They're staying ahead of the fight, so I'm going to continue to support that. Dissenter just makes it more fun and viable.
This commenting system also gives them a strong foothold if they roll out the site-side commenting (like Disqus). The more I think about it, I can't imagine them not growing exponentially.
Good job, Gab. Now, just build an API so we can embed posts into our websites.
