“It’s very clear now that Big Tech and mainstream media aren’t going to stop with just people who might be perceived as being center right,” Miller said.
A new social media platform has been making serious headway this year. After launching in July and branding itself as a free speech alternative to Twitter, GETTR has been picking up new accounts and making serious news. Twitter's latest high-profile bannings of conservative media accounts, including some of sitting Congressmen, media companies like Project Veritas, The Babylon Bee, and broadcaster Charlie Kirk, and changing seemingly vague rules have made GETTR an attractive alternative.
President Joe Biden has called numerous times for social media and media outlets to "deal with the misinformation and disinformation," saying "it has to stop." This administration has been demanding compliance to their narrative, from COVID-19, to race, to gender, and now to Ukraine. Democrats and leftists couch their calls for censorship as the suppression of disinformation and misinformation, which is in part why Jason Miller launched the platform in the first place.
Right from the gate, Biden and his administration have determined that one of the biggest threats facing American democracy, or maybe just their power, are the contrary views promulgated by media companies and individuals that provide data, information, or simply opinions that run counter to the White House's message. And those messages often skew toward the extreme fringe of social justice.
For the Biden administration, men can become women just by saying so, racism is a public health crisis, climate change is more important than genocide and could end the world in nine years, COVID-19 guidance and contagion risks are whatever they say they are at any given time, and Americans must be censored if they disagree. That censorship includes sitting members of Congress, censored for telling the truth.
The Post Millennial sat down with GETTR founder Jason Miller to find out more about the platform and its place in the emerging conservative ecosystem.
TPM: One of the great things about Twitter before all the purges was that there was the ability to see and interact with people you disagreed with. There was a lot of ideological diversity. Is GETTR working on achieving that?
Miller: Yeah, absolutely. And we've already started to see a big broadening of that, whether it be feminists from the UK, mainstream media journalists in the United States, people who, quite frankly, don't even necessarily identify with a particular party or care more about, say sports or culture or entertainment.
One of the things to keep in mind right now is a lot of the passion for the free speech movement is in the center right to the base at the moment. That's really only been the case over the last maybe five years or so. Prior to that, most of the passion in the free speech debate was much more on the center left.
But as the Big Tech companies clamped down even more on people who don't identify as being center right—think of Nicki Minaj who they sent to digital jail for her comments on vaccine effectiveness, or think of Dave Chappelle who they attempted to try to cancel simply for his recent comedy special on Netflix.
There, it's very clear now that Big Tech and mainstream media aren't going to stop with just people who might be perceived as being center right.
So I do think the pendulum will swing back, but we're making a very aggressive effort to pull people in from all backgrounds and whether it's very ideological backgrounds or even people who consider themselves not even partisan, we're making a big effort on that. And I think also, when you look at our international reach, the fact that our US base is only about 40 percent of our overall reach and the international components about 60 percent, you definitely get a lot of international diversity of thought.
TPM: How is GETTR disrupting the social media space? What is the new thing that GETTR is able to offer that we don't see on the other big platforms?
Miller: One of the big appeals that we have as we start expanding out the platform, is we're launching Vision, which will be our short video format. That will be part of the platform and right now let's say we're very much a competitor to Twitter and Facebook. When we launch vision, our short video format, that'll also make us more of a competitor with TikTok and Instagram Reels, for example. That will help us attract an entirely new demographic and user base.
As we start expanding into our GETTR Pay platform, in the middle of this summer, we introduce our two coin ecosystem, with a stable coin and a fluctuating coin. That will help pull in a lot more crypto enthusiasts, people with much varied backgrounds in that as well. So a couple of new additions that we have coming up will also help with an effort.
In addition to be able to have freedom of speech, freedom of self-expression with the short video clips, also having that freedom of financial control, I think will be a big appeal to many people.
TPM: Were you at all taken by surprise as to how many high-profile bans, suppressions and censorship there has been on Facebook and Twitter and how quickly that meant that people migrated over to your platform?
Miller: Not really just because I saw the passion there.
TPM: So I just really had one question left for you, and I appreciate you taking the time—
Miller: You guys have a growing voice so definitely. I've got all the time that you need.
TPM: The Biden administration has made combatting domestic terrorism a focus of their national security plans. Big Tech turned on Parler and basically eliminated it as competition for Facebook and Twitter by falsely claiming that Parler users were domestic extremists. Claims have been made that parents are domestic terrorists for speaking of at school board meetings, and there's this new idea about anti-authority and anti-government domestic extremism. What does it mean that a domestic extremist or domestic terrorist could be defined as someone who is anti-authority and anti-government in the United States where being anti authority is basically our national nature?
Miller: It's telling when the political left, when their most desired means to push it back is to try to change the definitions of things, to try to brand anybody in the center right as being somehow racist. This is an age old trope that the political left throws out. Quite frankly, I think most people are tired of it. I think most people in the public really see through it.
The political left cannot defend on its own merits the fact that they do no do not want any dissension from law abiding citizens. And so whether you look at whether it be COVID-19 management efforts, whether it be people who want to go and raise questions around voting fraud, irregularities, the answer from the left all the time is just to say racist, racist, racist. And fortunately, I think most people realize that's a false flag from the political left.
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I think we have that common objective of providing an alternative to Big Tech and showing that we can have something where it doesn't discriminate based on political ideology.
