The digital safe space for the far right has brought on someone from the allegedly biased SV giant. In an email to its users, Gab, the social network well-known as a safe haven for neo-Nazis and the far right, announced that its newest CTO is a former software engineer who spent more than seven years at Facebook. “Gab is happy to introduce our new CTO, Fosco Marotto,” said the statement from the company, released earlier this week. “With 23 years of industry experience, he brings extensive backend infrastructure knowledge and insights from across the stack that will help Gab scale into the new media giant it is quickly becoming.” The news that Marotto, who worked as a “production engineer and developer advocate” at Facebook, is joining Gab and bringing the expertise of an industry leader to a fringe app illustrates how right-wing social media companies can attract people from the same talent pools the Silicon Valley giants draw from. It also shows how companies like Gab are trying to professionalize at a time when conservative media pundits and President Trump himself are clamoring for alternatives to services like Twitter and Facebook, which they claim discriminate against the right. Despite the popular narrative that Silicon Valley companies are dominated by liberals, there are people with further right viewpoints in important positions. Marotto was a key member of a team who developed Parse, a backend toolkit for mobile developers that has gone open source and is used to develop apps. Marotto presented Parse at Facebook’s F8 conference in 2015. Marotto already helped develop Gab’s “free-speech web browser” Dissenter, and by his own admission has maintained direct links to the company for years, while he was employed at Facebook.
via vice: Gab’s New CTO Is a Former Facebook Software Engineer