Social Network GETTR, Which Promised To Support 'Free Speech' Now Full Of Islamic State Jihadi Propaganda
from the have-fun-with-it-folks dept
When last we checked in on GETTR, the latest in the Gab-Parler trend of very naive people setting up a new social network they hope will become the "MAGA central" social network by claiming, ridiculously, that they "won't censor," it was overrun by furry porn and My Little Pony porn. The site, that is run by former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller, has struggled to understand how content moderation actually works, and is now facing yet another new kind of content moderation challenge: jihadi propaganda from the Islamic State.
Politico has an article about how GETTR is now being flooded with such propaganda.
Islamic State “has been very quick to exploit GETTR,” said Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism, who first discovered the jihadi accounts and shared his findings with POLITICO.
“On Facebook, there was on one of these accounts that I follow that is known to be Islamic State, which said ‘Oh, Trump announced his new platform. Inshallah, all the mujahideen will exploit that platform,’” he added. “The next day, there were at least 15 accounts on GETTR that were Islamic State.”
As the article notes, the Islamic State quickly urged its followers to build up a big GETTR presence:
“If this app reaches the expected success, which is mostly probable, it should be adopted by followers and occupied in order to regain the glory of Twitter, may God prevail,” one Islamic State account on Facebook wrote on July 6.
And thus, we quickly learned that Jason Miller's commitment to free speech on GETTR isn't as absolute as he would have you believe:
Some of the jihadi posts on GETTR from early July were eventually taken down, highlighting that the pro-Trump platform had taken at least some steps to remove the harmful material.
You don't say? And then this statement is pretty funny as well:
“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,” Jason Miller, CEO of GETTR, said in a statement. “GETTR has a robust and proactive moderation system that removes prohibited content, maximizing both cutting-edge A.I. technology and human moderation.”
Huh. So now you're admitting that any social media site needs a combination of technology and human moderation in order to remove prohibited content? You mean, just like Facebook, Twitter, and basically every other site that has to set up policies for what's allowed and what's not and then enforce it? So very, very interesting.
I am curious, of course, whether or not our regular commenters, who still keep insisting that Twitter and Facebook must be forced to allow "all" speech on their platforms feel that GETTR is a problem as well. Or is that somehow different?
Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, free speech, isis, islamic state, jason miller, propaganda, social media
Companies: gettr
