I wonder if you're being obtuse, but I'll try to explain anyway (I'm not parent commenter, but let's see if I can capture why they think this statement is spin.)
Gab claim they're being smeared for "defending free expression and individual liberty" AND "working with law enforcement".
People and organisations attempting to shut Gab down, and/or be critical of them, are assuredly not doing so because Gab are working with law enforcement.
That renders Gab's claim spin, as per parent commenter.
Your argument is mistaken on both counts. The smear and de-platform campaign began when Gab reported the details and profile of the synagogue murderer to law enforcement, providing them with "concrete evidence for a motive that they can use in a case to seek justice against this awful monster."
As for the 'people and organizations attempting to shut Gab down, or and/or be critical of them', they are 'assuredly not doing so' on the grounds Gab hosted violent anti-Semitic and extremist material. Otherwise they would express equal outrage at the violent anti-Semitic tweets from Louis Farrakhan, one example among many, who uses the exact same rhetoric as the Pittsburgh shooter. The 'mail bomber' Cesar Sayoc Jr. also made numerous violent threats on twitter. In neither case are there calls to shut Twitter down.
Because the criticism by mainstream media obviously isn't that they're cooperating with law-enforcement (if they are), but that they're very willing to host a lot of the awful stuff.
Details matter. They alerted law enforcement to Robert Bowers' profile before the police or the public knew about it, and certainly before criticism from the mainstream media. They could quite plausibly covered this up seeing Gab.com does not have a wide user base.
The profile had been discovered before they removed the contents. A few people / journos downloaded the contents. So no, they couldn't have covered this up.
The full profile had been given to law enforcement before its removal from public view. It was removed, as is routine for such profiles, in order to prevent copycat murders.
Yes, I do. They discovered the murderer's profile and reached out to law enforcement with the details, including his chilling statement of intent. They could have silently deleted the profile and deflected criticism from themselves.
I am not aware of anything resembling 'archival links' other than screenshots of only the most recent posts, and verbal reports from others as to past posts.
One single page of vileness. No 'likes' to his posts, so not very popular. Notable is the anti-Trump sentiment. Not enough to confirm that this profile actually belonged to Robert Brower since names and profile pictures can be misappropriated.
Meanwhile, Gab was able to provide a complete profile of this individual and confirmation of his identity to the authorities.
Gab claim they're being smeared for "defending free expression and individual liberty" AND "working with law enforcement".
People and organisations attempting to shut Gab down, and/or be critical of them, are assuredly not doing so because Gab are working with law enforcement.
That renders Gab's claim spin, as per parent commenter.