Gab.com, the controversial "free speech" social site, has gone offline

Gab.com has officially gone offline for the foreseeable future.

After it was discovered that Robert Bowers, the suspect in the shooting death of 11 individuals at a synagogue near Pittsburgh on Saturday, had a decent following and was known for posting anti-Semitic content on the conservative social networking site, companies began to immediately cut ties.

PayPal, Stripe, and Joyent were among the first to cut ties with Gab; Google and Apple refused to host the app this summer while Microsoft had already cut ties last month. Not long after the others announced they were dropping Gab, GoDaddy stated that Gab.com was given 24 hours to find a new domain host. Gab has stated, via Twitter, that they anticipate a forced exit from both Facebook and Twitter shortly.

Founded by conservative Andrew Torba about two years ago, Gab is touted as the home of free speech; it hosts an avid user base of primarily conservative and some alt-right personalities including Milo Yiannopoulos, Andrew Anglin, Richard Spencer, and Alex Jones. The site has faced scrutiny for its controversial rules, clientele, and content from the beginning with its "free speech" mantra inviting hate speech and violent speech including several posts by Bowers.

It remains to be seen how long Gab.com will be offline as they search to find a new domain host. As for other services, PayPal has given no indication if they will return services to Gab while Stripe has stated they will withhold services until an internal investigation could be completed. For now, it appears Gab.com users will have to find another social networking site that may be a little more heavy-handed on its content monitoring.