The social network Gab, used by the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, is now offline.

The site, which has about 800,000 users, prided itself for embracing “free speech and expression.” It has also been criticized for offering a soapbox to disseminators of hate speech.

An account belonging to the alleged killer, Robert Bowers, had posted anti-Semitic messages in the past. Prior to the synagogue attack, that account’s final message read, “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Domain provider GoDaddy later told Grab that it had breached its terms of service and gave the platform 24 hours to move to another provider. “In response to complaints received over the weekend, GoDaddy investigated and discovered numerous instances of content on the site that both promotes and encourages violence against people,” GoDaddy told The Verge on Sunday.

Gab issued a statement saying that it “wasn’t going anywhere” and was working with the Department of Justice and the FBI in the investigation of the shooting. The company said it was the last bastion of free speech in what is an era of heightened censorship.

“You have all just made Gab a nationally recognized brand as the home of free speech online at a time when Silicon Valley is stifling political speech they disagree with to interfere in a US election,” said the company.

Other tech companies also distanced themselves from the platform following the shooting. On Sunday, PayPal Holdings Inc. banned Gab from using its services, saying that it had to take action against a platform used for the “perpetuation of hate, violence or discriminatory intolerance.”

Payment processing platform Stripe was next to ban Gab, followed by cloud hosting company Joyent. Google LLC and Apple Inc. had already banned the Gab app from their app stores. In September, Microsoft Corp. stopped hosting Gab on its Azure cloud platform.

Blogging platform Medium joined the purge over the weekend, just after Gab had used the site to issue a statement. “We have nothing but love for all people and freedom,” said Gab. “We have consistently disavowed all violence. Free speech is crucial for the prevention of violence. If people cannot express themselves through words, they will do so through violence.”

Critics, however, have said such a haven for hate speech is part of the problem. “No-platform us all you want. Ban us all you want. Smear us all you want. You can’t stop an idea,” said Gab, adding that it’s “working around the clock” to get back online.

Image: Oliver Dodd via Flickr