July 20, 2021 by David Marcus
GETTR has gotten some big gets.
The social media platform launched last month by former Donald Trump adviser Jason Miller is boasting a host of high-level Republican officials joining its site.
Among the major names in Congress who have signed up are House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY), as well as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and an array of others.
GETTR has been pitched as a competitor to Twitter, which has been criticized for broad censorship and blocking access to legitimate news stories, such as The Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Many Republicans and even Democrats have pushed using regulatory changes to force Twitter to operate with more transparency — while other lawmakers have argued that it is a private company and the answer is for others to build new platforms, which is exactly what Miller did.
Miller told The Post that the platform now has 1.5 million users, with 45% in the United States, 15% in Brazil and the rest across a mix of countries.
The launch of GETTR comes at time when the Biden administration has been criticized for trying to influence social media networks like Facebook to censor what the White House deems “misinformation.”
“Social media giants are working with Joe Biden,” Miller said, “and this is dangerous.”
He went on to say that “free speech only matters to them if they like it.”
Though currently viewed as primarily a platform for conservatives, Miller said GETTR is working to broaden the site’s ideological appeal and is looking to hire a director of democratic engagement in the near future.
Former President Trump has not joined the new platform yet, but this month he filed suits against Big Tech titans Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for shuttering his accounts and taking similar actions against other conservatives in what he called the “illegal and shameful censorship of the American people.”
The class-action filings seek unspecified damages for alleged First Amendment violations that Trump said could total “trillions” of dollars.
Trump is also asking federal judges to overturn the controversial immunity protections granted to internet companies in 1996 by declaring Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional.
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