If a three letter agency wants to target us, they need only increase the noise to such an extent that the signal is lost (i.e. fill the site with so much low value content/bait without substance, it becomes a chore to find anything worthwhile).

There are two ideas in your statement here.

The first is the idea: we must self censor or government will shut us down. Tyranny doesn't shrink, it grows when the people capitulate, compromise, and acquiesce to it. It doesn't matter how much we self censor, it will never be enough. Lies beget more lies. That's why the establishment and the left are in a self defeating purity spiral, why their narrative is accelerating well past insanity. If you compromise truth with a lie, if you censor truth in the name of a lie, if you capitulate and acquiesce to tyranny, you only defeat yourself. It is wrong in every situation.

The second is the idea: all speech devolves into meaningless speech. This is outright false. There are other considerations involved. The right prioritizes, or at least it should, traditional values and virtues. One of the most foundational, necessary, requirements for civilization to exist is merit. Merit means that bad things are overcome by good things, that inefficient things are overcome by efficient things, that good things are overcome by better things. If one doesn't believe in merit, they don't belong on the right. The globalists are antithetical to merit, as a foundational philosophy and as a means to control us. It's why they push affirmative action. Weak and stupid people are put into positions they don't deserve, pushing good people out of those positions, and degrading the infiltrated institution.

I imagine you wouldn't disagree with this, but it's relevant to the discussion, and you didn't include this consideration into your argument. Specifically, here, we have upvotes and downvotes to praise the good, worthy, efficient, virtuous, and good comments and ideas, and downvotes to castigate things that are the opposite. Furthermore, the adage "the left can't meme" holds true. It's ridiculously easy to spot feds, leftists, and their shills. I highly doubt they could effectively infiltrate a genuine forum if people held to merit, and all other virtues taught by logic. The disingenuous more effectively infiltrate and subvert by subtlety. However, beyond teaching everyone what the left's foundational philosophies are, what their effects are, how they act, and how to spot their signs, there will almost always be such infiltrators. There will also always be useful idiots using the same tactics and arguments as the left. Even then, the best course of action is to hold to merit, because then their bad ideas, posts, and comments will be properly downvoted.

It's easy to suck all of the mods' time into deleting child porn, that there's no time to manage the content. If your first impression of a site is that it's a lot of meaningless content, or looks like an echo chamber of one type of ideology (eg: every other post is about "niggers") that you don't hold, you're not likely to visit again.

All forums are echo chambers. Why do people congregate in the first place? It's to pursue shared goals. That means all communities, by their very nature, necessitates homogeneity. In some way or another, all communities of people are more alike to each other compared to the people outside that community. While the people may be different beyond their shared goals, they only work together because of their similarity. Websites, hobbies, jobs, countries, peoples, forums, they all follow this rule. A forum may exist to talk about Star Trek, and it can allow all discourse about Star Trek, making it an echo chamber about Star Trek. Or, a forum may exist only to praise Star Trek, and only allow discourse which praises Star Trek, making it an echo chamber about praising Star Trek. The same goes for any topic and forum.

Forums with large scopes can be host to a wide range of related topics (i.e. politics, science, conspiracy theories, etc.), and they can also change over time. For instance, TheDonald.win changed to Patriots.win, because the scope changed. Lots of discussion, most of it now, doesn't even involve Donald Trump. Even though we mostly agree politically, there is wide range of opinions on certain topics, actions we should or shouldn't take, what the causes are, what's related, and so on.

A site is vulnerable when it is small, because it doesn't take much manpower to derail it. See Voat. Once you're past a certain size, it becomes increasingly expensive to keep the signal-to-noise ratio low. Perhaps Gab was there at the right time and the right place to get enough real users to avoid becoming Voat. Who can say Voat wasn't trying to get the truth out there as much as Gab? IIRC, Gab ran for years without being known for conspiracy theories, while Voat was doing pizzagate etc. from the beginning (like us). Thus Voat attracted more attention from 3 letter agencies, like we will.

I agree that a small force is more easily attacked and conquered than a larger force, but that's not the only consideration here, especially since this isn't war, it's a forum. There are important differences. More important than size, is the strength, wisdom, and virtues of the leaders of this site, and its users. If both the leaders and the users are strong, the forum will grow, that is of course if there are people who would belong on that forum who haven't found it yet. That's why Voat failed. The leaders were weak, and they were the ones that shut it down. They said "one of our investors backed out and we can't afford to run it anymore", but most of the user base said "run a funding campaign, we'll donate", to which the Voat leaders refused. That's why Voat failed. That's also why Gab is growing, even with all of the discussion of "niggers", "jews", and conspiracies, even with how much backlash they've gotten from the mainstream, and from banks and money lenders, and from infrastructure providers. The Gab leaders are strong, and thus were willing to tackle the obstacles in their path, and they've succeeded. Have you been there? Lots of people talk about conspiracy theories. Most modern conspiracy theories are related to politics, and vastly shape understanding of the modern world. Gab is growing because its leaders are strong. Andrew Torba and all the other Gab devs haven't capitulated to the globalists, or compromised, or acquiesced. They fought. That's why people flock to them. We're in such dire straights because of weakness. People are seeking out strength, and will support anyone that shows strength in adversity, especially for those that show strength against the people ruling over us.

Gab is not a threat as much as we could be, because we're hyper-focused on dismantling the establishment's foundations (very high signal-to-noise ratio for getting the red pilled).

I disagree strongly. This site has already acquiesced, not allowing its users to discuss plans to overthrow the government. It may not be "legal", but it's right. We live in the United States, a country founded by righteous men that talked about, organized, and violently fought against tyrannical government. For us to say we're not "legally allowed" to discuss such things is a compromise with lies, evil, and tyranny, a betrayal to the very country we live in and how it was founded. THAT'S why participation in this forum has dropped so drastically after January 6th. People want to act, but they're not allowed to talk about it here, or organize here. You don't defeat tyranny with peace. That's why shills are so quick to yell "glowie" any time someone wants to fight back or organize. It's a means of control to keep us peaceful and apathetic, thinking we can win this war with memes online, and not actually fighting. Sharing information is the first step, action is the necessary next step.

Furthermore, Gab is more successful than us because it allows people to more openly discuss all topics, including the most verboten topics: differences between the sexes, racial disparities, and Jewish involvement in globalism. Regardless of how you feel about the topics, the very allowance of the debates enables, over time, to expose more people to truth, whatever side is proven right or wrong. That's why the globalists must censor, curate, and control so much, to control what people see and don't see, to make us think, speak, and act how they want us to. That is why free speech is so vital: to pursue truth.

I never advocated for lying. Come on. And not all censorship is bad. Censorship that improves the signal-to-noise ratio improves efficiency of information dissemination. The only issue is having well defined rules for removal. A post that does race baiting with no useful information is just noise without substance. A community that values it's right to exist on par with a post with lots of useful information, for the sake of free speech, is a community that values noise on par with the signal for the sake of free speech.

I never said you advocated for lying. It's relevant to the larger topic at hand, which is why I included it. The very core tenet/philosophy of globalism, of evil itself, is lies. That's why globalism is evil, and why evil is what it is. It's why good people prioritize truth above all else. This distinction, more than any other, helps differentiate good versus evil. Furthermore, truth (logic) will tell us what is virtuous, right, moral, ethical, efficient, and good, and what is not. Logic dictates that some censorship is good. For example: porn. Also, as I said above, all forums must censor certain topics that are beyond the mutual shared goal of the people on that forum. A Star Trek forum should censor discussion of football, if it's not relevant to the discussion at hand, or if it's being done intentionally to sow discord in the forum. Even if censorship wasn't used, or if it didn't catch everything, as I said above, the simple use of upvotes and downvotes can dissuade discussion that's irrelevant, in bad faith, or with ill intent. Again: merit.

There are many people, even here, that are making bad faith arguments, especially over censorship of certain topics. When a certain topic is brought up which they don't like, instead of debating in good faith to "defeat" their opponent's argument, they yell at them, call them names, and advocate for censorship. Such actions don't disprove anything a person says, it doesn't teach any bystanders the nuance of the different sides, and it doesn't further anyone's understanding of truth. That's why the left is so apt to use logically fallacious arguments and censorship. It's the only way for their ideas to remain, unchallenged.

The goal of debate, of speech itself, is the pursuit of truth, even above our own preconceived ideas. If you prioritize truth above all else, even if you're proven wrong in a debate, you still win. It's better to be proven wrong and realign with truth than to forever hold onto bad ideas or lies. However, for this to occur debate must be constructive, meaning it must be civil, honest, and logical. Anything outside of these bounds solves nothing, and usually makes the situation worse. If people enter into a discussion or debate without truth as their highest priority, it means they're denying their own humanity. With a few important exceptions (not relevant for this discussion), we're imperfect, mortal, finite, and have free will. We don't know everything. We can't know everything. Some or much of what we know is wrong, partially or totally. Even if everything we knew was right, it can be taken out of context because we don't know all the other relevant information, making us reach the wrong conclusions. That's why half truths are so dangerous. Without someone telling us, or experience to teach us, or questions to seek it, or debate to find it, we'll keep believing things that are wrong, we'll keep believing the lies and propaganda we've been taught, and we won't change and align closer to truth. To intentionally participate in destructive debate is to deny the purpose of it, and in so doing is to deny our own humanity. It's a proclamation that "I am God, I am not wrong".