Gettr: The Conservative Twitter That Is Already Attracting the Worst Kinds Of People
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Gettr launched in the public eye on July 4th to much fanfare. The press immediately picked up on the story with gusto. “Team Trump quietly launches new social media platform,” wrote Politico on July 1st. The initial welcome post on the site has over 150,000 comments, and the Gettr app has quickly been downloaded millions of times the world over.
Immediately, however, it was clear that there were problems. The product that rolled out was confusing and eerily similar to Twitter. It was plagued with trolls and lax security easily exploited by said trolls. Worst of all, it attracted the very types of people it intended to — far-right reactionaries hell-bent on carving out space for themselves on the internet.
There are many problems with this app, some of which are sure to plague any startup venture this political in nature. Since Gettr was pitched to the public as an alternative social media platform for conservatives (the app’s slogan is literally “The Free Speech Network”), right from the start, it was plagued by trolls looking to trigger the intended user base.
That welcome comment we referred to earlier had far more comments than likes or reposts — a practice referred to in Twitter culture as “ratioing.” This is when people drag a post with funny or negative comments hoping that they will overtake all other engagement. When we peruse that comment section of that initial post, among the routine thank yous and spam, many posts are devoted to gay erotica and homoerotic anime.
In fact, trolls are posting this type of content all over the site. As David Gilbert writes in Vice’s Motherboard: “Unfortunately, whatever protections the site has in place to filter out such content aren’t working right now, and as a result, one of Gettr’s biggest potential user bases has sworn off the platform after it was flooded with porn and ‘bad words.’”
Some of these trolls (or social justice activists, depending on your perspective) have performed far more serious sabotage than just posting some salacious pictures. Several high-profile accounts were almost immediately hacked by a user who redirected people to their Twitter handle, along with the statement “free Palestine.”
Gettr has many unaddressed security concerns and appears to have lifted much of its code directly from Twitter. More of these hacks will likely continue in the future, especially since the foundation of this app is so shoddy.
However, one of the largest business problems for the platform is that, as of right now, the former 45th President of the U.S. is not on it. Donald Trump does not appear to be directly linked to the project.
Jason Miller, a former spokesman for Trump during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, is one of the forces behind the site, and he has so far been unsuccessful in getting his boss’s support. He claims that he has Trump’s former Twitter handle reserved for him, and yet the President still seems committed to working on some unidentified project of his own.
This lack of the former president has hilariously led to a situation where multiple accounts are competing to be the top “real” Donald Trump account. One of them — “@presDonaldTrump” — has nearly 100,000 followers at the time of writing this article. We know this account is fake because, unlike the white “v” and red background given to Gettr’s verified accounts, this account is unverified, placing a fake checkmark reminiscent of verified Twitter accounts.
And yet, despite the deception being rather obvious, @presDonaldTrump still posts consistent content that makes it seem like they are real. “Will be speaking live about our First Amendment Rights at my Bedminster golf club in New Jersey in 2 hours…” they posted on July 7th to thousands of likes.
Sometimes the interactions between these fake accounts can get hilariously pointed. “look at this f@cking liar,” the user @pres_trump wrote of user @DJT45Official. The former is a satire account poking fun at the obviously fake @DJT45Official account, which has less than 500 followers. There are a lot of these fake accounts circulating in the early days of Gettr. It’s easy to find fake or parody accounts of Dave Rubin, the video game platform Steam, and even Gettr’s own verification handle.
This is not to say that anything flies on the platform (although much does). As is standard on many platforms nowadays, keywords such as the n-word and “nazi” are hidden from search results. These efforts, however, seem less to do with removing hatred on the site and more about keeping on the good side of Apple and Google so they can remain on their app stores.
Gettr takes a very hands-off approach to content moderation. While Gettr reserves the right to modify or delete content in its Community Guidelines, it explicitly emphasizes that it does not “have any obligation to.”
As a result of this lax stance, the platform also attracts the very people it’s intended to — far-right conservatives. Among typical conservative pundits like Ben Carson and Dinesh D’Souza, are far-right fascist figures who have tentatively started to make Gettr their home.
Director of the anti-Muslim hate group Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, has established a small presence here, using it as a backup repository for their Twitter. I also see small accounts for hate groups such as the Asatru Folk Assembly and the Proud Boys.
Additionally, the fascist Steve Bannon was verified on the platform as well as his podcast The War Room. “Speak truth to power on the Twitter Killer,” Bannon posted on July 4th, referencing a comment by xenophobic commentator Peter Navarro encouraging people to start downloading Gettr. Bannon, a man, banned on Twitter and YouTube, has mostly kept his account to reposting episodes of The War Room, but he may be directly involved with this project behind the scenes.
According to Miller, the family foundation of exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who co-owns G-TV Media Group with Bannon, allegedly contributed seed money to the app. However, there is evidence that this may not be true (or at least not the whole truth). Bannon and Guo seem to have been involved in building this app from the get-go.
According to reporting from Politico, the app appears to have initially been an anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) platform that was then retooled as a pro-Trump one. In the words of reporter Tina Nguyen: “A POLITICO review reveals that prior to it being revealed on Thursday, GETTR had existed for nearly a year as a Chinese-language social media network linked to Guo and G-TV Media, and on which anti-CCP content had been promoted on a regular basis.”
The app has now pivoted to pro-Trump content, but it was always going to exist somewhere in the proto-fascist or fascist ecosystem. Since its inception, the G-TV Media Group is an organization that has notoriously been plagued by accusations of fraud, with a federal probe into the company initiating just last year.
Guo has been described as being at the head of a vast disinformation network. We have every indication that that energy will continue with this latest venture as well. Bannon and Guo clearly wanted to provide members of the alt-right a space to avoid the alleged “persecution” they claim exists on other social media apps.
As of right now, there doesn’t seem to be any major fascist organizing on the platform. The app is still growing, and most people are setting up their accounts and feeling things out, but the potential for extremist activity is very much there.
We don’t know what will happen to Gettr as it evolves in the days and months ahead. There are some pain points that could cause it to stagnate or fail completely.
Like Parler before it, Gettr could get pulled from Google or Apple app stores. It will have to manage a balancing act between the “free speech” it desires to maintain and the tech industry’s standards surrounding hate speech and violence. Many businesses also just fail. There are countless dead social media sites out there, littering the virtual graveyard.
It’s also possible, though, for Gettr to become a permanent fixture in the conservative media ecosystem. Its growth thus far has been explosive. As of right now, it remains on the top free apps list in the Google app store for one of the most downloaded applications in the past few days.
We do not know what this app will become, but given the large and growing alt-right presence on Gettr, it is definitely worth monitoring. Hatred always is.