If the people getting kicked out, are being kicked out for completely legal behavior, that isn't disrupting the datacenter service, then it very much could be a good idea.
To stick with this bar analogy for way to long, if there were a bar in the 1950s that served black people who weren't allowed into the "regular" bars, I could see that being a good business, in some areas.
I think what the GP was trying to get across is that you’re making an argument from moral principles that doesn’t necessarily translate to situations without the same moral stakes. Opening a business to serve a minority excluded from mainstream establishments could be a morally righteous decision (as in the example you provided), a savvy business decision (e.g., mob-run gay bars in NYC in the early 1960’s), or both (like thriving businesses run by and for the black community during segregation).
Given the current state of what’s on Gab, it’s difficult to see how running a social network that caters to users & content banned from FB and Twitter could be a sound business decision —- what company wants their ads to run in a sea of vaccine disinformation and hate speech? —- so you need to justify it on moral grounds. And in that sense, I’m sorry, but it’s a bit insulting to compare Gab and Truth to businesses that deliberately bucked segregation or apartheid.
I just checked the Gab front page and the feed is filled with heavily biased political content, anti-vaccination memes, and false claims about the 2020 election. This is not an exaggeration, it's every single post. And several of them are just screen shots of twitter posts too. I don't know if I would qualify that as working well.
It actually has very little to do with me and everything to do with Gab losing the fight against misinformation/disinformation. This doesn't benefit their users at all and doesn't work well for them as a startup, it prevents the network from growing as well as a number of other bad effects. Twitter (and even Facebook) have them beat significantly there. Edit: And even if they didn't then I'm sure you can understand, it's still very possible for a company to make a product that customers say they're happy with but that's also harmful and damaging. Tobacco products come to mind, but vaccine misinformation is also something that can get you hurt or killed.
Well, is it possible to run a profitable social media site that caps out at 10M users? Twitter with its vastly larger user base, just this quarter broke out of continuous losses. Consider also the demographics of Trump's base -- older, less tech-inclined. Not the target demographic for most advertisers. And the site will be radioactive for most vanilla companies.
