This hasn t stopped other platforms like Gab from growing as it seemed to target disillusioned conservatives by similarly calling itself the free speech social network. Nothing in U.S. law makes it explicitly illegal to give a certain group a platform, even at the risk of hosting smaller, domestic extremist groups, said Alex Stamos, director of the Cyber Policy Center’s Internet Observatory and former chief security officer at Facebook. You re going to continue to see the separation from the companies that are trying to go after the (extremist) groups versus those that aren t, which is not something I think we actually have a good history of or demonstration of what s going to happen, he said.