GETTR

GETTR

After Trump got suspended from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and virtually every other major platform after he incited the deadly Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, Team Trump reportedly strained itself looking for some kind of place he could register an account without getting banned.

Trump never joined Parler, a supposedly censorship-free network for conservatives that has not yet recovered from reports many of its users took part in the Capitol assault, nor did he join Gab, a site popular with far-right extremists such as violent neo-Nazis. Eventually, Trump launched a blog titled From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, which he promptly shuttered weeks later after it attracted humiliatingly little attention. Longtime aide Jason Miller quit his team in June, teasing some kind of next-generation social media project for conservatives with the clear implication Trump would join up.

That turned out to be GETTR, which holds the distinction of being almost as horribly broken and incompetent as Frank. GETTR is bankrolled by a fugitive Chinese billionaire who has worked to build a cult of personality and ingratiate himself with prominent figures on the U.S. right, Guo Wengui, and prior to its launch in July seemed to serve mostly as a vehicle for Guo’s fans on social media. Its code was full of bugs and security holes, and it was promptly hacked on its official launch day of July 4, compromising the profiles of MAGA personalities including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former White House chief strategist, and Breitbart executive chairman CEO Steve Bannon, QAnon-loving Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene, pundit Harlan Hill, and Miller himself. At the same time, it was flooded with trolls posting anime porn and pictures of men in diapers, which site management appeared either unwilling or unable to control. (Miller claimed the situation was quickly rectified.)

Last we checked, GETTR was primarily in the news courtesy of a Politico report that found Islamic State supporters had registered hundreds of accounts to post propaganda and beheading videos. (In response to their report, Miller told POLITICO that ISIS was attacking the MAGA movement because Trump had destroyed the group militarily.) Trump never registered an account, instead choosing Rumble as his platform—a former clearinghouse for licensing viral videos that has since rebranded as a sort of YouTube knockoff for conservatives.