Gettr: alternative far-right platform?
Although new alternative platform Gettr’s CEO and founder Jason Miller has claimed that he wants to create a place to share ideas from all parts of the ideological spectrum, a look at the reality of Gettr makes it clear that the platform, which has already attracted many conservative right-wing radicals, has features which can easily be weaponised by the far right.
What is Gettr?
Gettr is an alternative social media platform which was launched in July 2021 by Jason Miller, who was chief spokesman for former US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and presidential transition, as well as a senior adviser to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. Gettr markets itself as promoting free speech and rejecting censorship and cancel culture. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is: alternative social media platforms Gab and Parler market themselves in similar terms.
On Kushal Mehra’s Cārvāka podcast in March 2022, Miller said his main motivations for launching Gettr came from Trump’s ban from Twitter in January 2021, and wanting to create and the inconsistency of Meta’s (company in charge of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) guidelines. As an example for the latter, Miller cited the fact that high-profile Taliban spokespeople, such as Zabiullah Mujahid, are allowed on Twitter while Trump was banned.
Far-right use
Unsurprisingly, considering its foundations, the US remains Gettr’s biggest market, with an August 2021 study finding that Trump, patriot, American, and conservative were among the top 20 words in user bios. Similarly to fellow alternative platform Parler’s trajectory, Brazil follows close behind the US, with the top three recommended users upon registration including Brazilian Christian singer Andre Valadao (5 million followers), populist politician Eduardo Bolsonaro (2.3 million followers) and his father, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (649,300 followers). Miller has made clear his ambition to make Gettr as international as possible, with the inclusion of features such as in-app translation. Accordingly, Gettr has been enthusiastically embraced by the far right in Europe. Between July 2021 and March 2022, mentions of Gettr on three high-profile far-right Telegram channels show a clear increase
The three channels, Austrian activist Martin Sellner, German anti-Islam group PEGIDA, and UK activist Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley), direct their followers to Gettr for live streams and news updates. They speak generally positively about it, praising the lack of censorship and free speech. Tommy Robinson has even met up with Miller.
Due to its similar interface, Gettr is generally considered an alternative to Twitter by the three channels. Tommy Robinson and PEGIDA founder Lutz Bachmann also occasionally use it for livestreams instead of YouTube.
How Gettr is weaponised by the far right, and could be in the future
Like Twitter, Gettr is easy to search by person or by hashtag, making it accessible for users looking to discuss a particular topic. Although the platform claims to be a “marketplace of ideas”, a cursory search of big topics such as #immigration, #covid etc, produced overwhelmingly conservative, right-wing, and Christian content. Gettr also has a right-hand column featuring Gettr news, which includes posts in different languages posted on Gettr. Even though Miller has said previously that he doesn’t think Gettr will become an “echo chamber” for the US conversative viewpoint, the news stories that appear tend to show otherwise. Examples include Trump-focused news stories, stories on a Christian fundraising platform, cancel culture, and episode announcements from Gettr-affiliated web series, such as the French Les Incorrectibles (The Incorrigeables). Miller has also reportedly shared that Gettr will soon include a feature to donate to or tip favourite users. This could become an alternative means for far-right activists to receive funds. Finally, even though Miller has said that, as opposed to Parler, Gettr has a “robust” moderation system to delete illegal content such as child exploitation, Stanford University found “very few, if any” mechanisms to detect this kind of content.
Thankfully, it seems unlikely that Gettr will become a “mainstream” social media platform, at least not any time soon. Although there was plenty of media hype regarding a sharp increase in users shortly after its launch in July 2021, as of January 2022, Gettr has 4 million users. For reference, social media platform Telegram had 35 million users in 2014, the year after its launch (it currently has 500 million). So, despite Miller’s efforts, Gettr will likely stay on the fringes for now.