Leading figures on the far right, including Ukip candidates in the upcoming European elections, are encouraging their followers to join a new hate-filled social media platform. The network, called Gab, has no restrictions on antisemitic, misogynist or racist content, and has been used to promote terrorism.

Gab, launched in 2017 by tech entrepreneur Andrew Torba, describes itself as a vehicle for “free speech” and is similar to Twitter in that it allows users to send messages of up to 3,000 characters, called “gabs”.

However, unlike Twitter, its user base mainly consists of people on the far right, many of whom joined after being banned from mainstream networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The site gained notoriety following the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in October 2018 that left 11 Jewish worshippers dead. The perpetrator of the massacre, Robert Bowers, had made frequent antisemitic postings on the site, including one saying he was about to carry out the attack. After a backlash from hosting service providers, Gab went offline briefly, but it is now accessible again.

Carl Benjamin, the prospective Ukip candidate for south-west England in the European parliamentary elections on 23 May – who refused to apologise for tweeting “I wouldn’t even rape you” to Labour MP Jess Phillips – joined Gab after being banned from Twitter.

Benjamin, who calls himself “Sargon of Akkad” on Gab, recently used the platform to post “Batten is a legend” in response to Ukip leader Gerard Batten’s defence of Benjamin’s tweets as “free speech” and “satire”. He wrote “I stand by every word” in reference to his comments on rape. He went on to ‘joke’ this week that he might rape Jess Phillips saying: “With enough pressure I might cave”. Three female Ukip MEPs – Jane Collins, Jill Seymour and Margot Parker – have already quit the party to join Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party over the handling of the issue.

He also posted: “Answer only if you are alt-right please: If you had to choose, would you choose to have either Muslims or Jews in your country?”

Mark Meechan, Ukip candidate for Scotland in the European elections, also has an account on Gab, where he wrote: “looking forward to the day sites like this finally take over”. Meechan, who goes by the online pseudonym “Count Dankula”, was fined £800 last year for teaching a dog to do a Nazi salute to phrases such as “sieg heil” and “gas the Jews” and then uploading videos of it to YouTube.

Another active user is Jolene Bunting, who served on Belfast city council as an independent unionist councillor until losing her seat in the local elections on 2 May. She has frequently posted in support of Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, in addition to posting a meme that mocked the Irish famine.

Following his recent ban from Facebook, along with 11 other far-right individuals and organisations, Nick Griffin, the former leader of the BNP and self-described “lifelong white rights fighter” tweeted: “How much longer before Twitter follow suit? Join me on Gab and Telegram and help build the free speech resistance.”

The former deputy leader of Britain First, Jayda Fransen, who was also banned from Facebook, recently used Gab to refer to the prime minister as “Treason May”, and then hours later shared an image calling for treason to be “punishable by death” accompanied by the caption: “if only!”. Fransen also used Gab to call Theresa May a “treacherous old hag”. She was sentenced to 36 weeks in prison for anti-Muslim hate crimes last year and Donald Trump had previously attracted criticism for retweeting some of her posts.

Two teenagers recently pleaded guilty to terror offences that included distributing propaganda on Gab for Sonnenkrieg Division, a neo-Nazi group. It that said among other things that Prince Harry was a “race traitor” who should be shot. Michal Szewczuk, 19, of Leeds, also used a separate account on Gab to post links to articles he wrote that called for the “systematic slaughtering” of women and the rape of babies.

We condemn any social media platforms that allow themselves to be used to spread extremist propaganda Home Office spokesperson

The migration of far-right figures to Gab has been mirrored in other countries, including America and Australia. Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist – who claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 children and six adults were murdered, was “staged” – has maintained an active presence on Gab since being removed from YouTube and Twitter. Australian far-right activists Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson also turned to Gab after being recently banned from Twitter and Facebook.

Many far-right groups, including Britain First, have also relocated their accounts to the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where groups of up to 200,000 people can be managed. Similar action was taken by accounts that were banned from Facebook and Twitter for promoting Isis in 2015.

The government has taken strong action against online Islamic extremism: last year the Home Office announced the development of a tool that could “automatically detect 94% of Islamic State propaganda with 99.995% accuracy”. However, Bharath Ganesh, of Oxford University’s Internet Institute, told Prospect magazine: “I have not seen any evidence that technology is being deployed to counter the extreme right in the same way it is applied to jihadism.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is illegal to share terrorist content online and we condemn any social media platforms that allow themselves to be used to spread extremist propaganda. We continue to work with international partners and tech companies to tackle online terrorist and extremist propaganda, but we are clear they must go further and faster.

“That is why we are introducing a statutory duty of care to make companies take responsibility for the safety of their users, and an independent regulator to take enforcement action where they fail to do so.”