GETTR founder Jason Miller hits back at Politico ‘hit piece’ over extremist content

In an article on Monday, Politico reported that jihadists have overrun the social media platform with beheading videos and extremist content.

Politico claimed: “The social network — started a month ago by members of former President Donald Trump’s inner circle — features reams of jihadi-related material, including graphic videos of beheadings, viral memes that promote violence against the West and even memes of a militant executing Trump in an orange jumpsuit similar to those used in Guantanamo Bay.”

“The rapid proliferation of such material is placing GETTR in the awkward position of providing a safe haven for jihadi extremists online as it attempts to establish itself as a free speech MAGA-alternative to sites like Facebook and Twitter,” it continued. “It underscores the challenges facing Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.”

In response to the article, Miller took to The National Pulse to argue that Politico had “left out, and purposely obfuscated” parts of its reporting, which would tell “a different story” if left in.

Miller claims that Gettr, which “is fast approaching two million registered users,” saw around 250 individual accounts cited by the Politico article. In singling out these accounts, the publication was able to “write a story that fit their narrative. Incredibly, they used the word ‘inundated’ to describe the content this tiny number of accounts produced, even though regular users would most likely never even encounter their posts.”

Anecdotally, I have no personally seen any of the jihadist content on the platform. Crucially, a search for the term “jihad” brings about the account of Robert Spencer, who runs the website Jihad Watch. Spencer, who runs an organization that documents extremist jihadist activity and its sympathizers in Europe and North America, is also active on Twitter.

The popular search, which appears to be somewhat broken, results yields nothing more than imported Twitter posts from Newsmax and conservative media personalities unrelated to the term.

As detailed in Politico, the story was the work of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think-tank that “tracks online extremism,” per the publication. “The writers of the article admit this organization supplied the research that was the basis of the GETTR hit piece,” writes Miller.

Miller writes: “But what readers were not told is that the “Institute for Strategic Dialogue” is funded by a list of GETTR’s Big Tech competitors. It’s a team of heavyweights, with Audible, Facebook, GIFCT, Google, Google.org, Jigsaw, Microsoft, and YouTube listed as private sector funders of the Institute.”

“In short, POLITICO failed to disclose that the primary detractor in their story is funded by GETTR’s competitors in the tech and social media marketplace,” he added. “Readers of POLITICO’s piece were also left with the clear impression that social media giants Twitter and Facebook have dealt with the problem of Islamic extremist content and no longer have an issue with it. But even a cursory search of the Internet reveals that the struggles are ongoing.”

Crucially, Miller claims that Politico declined to include his full statement in the story, which reads:

“ISIS is trying to attack the MAGA movement because President Trump wiped them off the face of the earth, destroying the Caliphate in less than 18 months, and the only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies. Buried beneath a misleading and inflammatory headline, however, even POLITICO acknowledges GETTR has a robust and proactive moderation system that removes prohibited content, maximizing both cutting-edge A.I. technology and human moderation.”

To that end, Miller says that combating Islamic extremist content is an ongoing, continuous battle – and one waged by both Gettr as well as its competitors.