Former Trump Aide Launches Twitter Clone, That Seems To Yank A Ton Of Data Right Out Of Twitter; Already Has First Content Moderation Crisis
Furnished content.
Just as more news of what Trump wanted from Parler breaks, comes the news that his somewhat infamous former aide, Jason Miller, has launched a social media site called GETTR. It should be noted that through all of the rumors about Trump starting his own social network, it was usually Jason Miller who was claiming that it was on the way.Apparently, though, Miller stepped down from his role as Trump spokesperson to run GETTR -- and there are reports claiming that the originator of GETTR is someone trying to build "an important link between China and the West" with GETTR and a series of related apps.
"Trump Team launches new platform" seems ahead of its skis. Miller's "new" thing, GETTR, is part of the Guo Wengui G-ecosystem. Used to be "getonme," according to Guo's older videos. Guo's goals for the Twitter clone are ... lofty. https://t.co/5UdePX3Yf9 pic.twitter.com/S96J9UlknY— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) July 1, 2021
GETTR holds freedom of speech as its core value and does not wish to censor your opinions. Nonetheless, GETTR may, but will not have any obligation to, review, monitor, display, post, store, maintain, accept, or otherwise make use of, any of your UGC, and GETTR may, in its sole discretion, reject, delete, move, re-format, remove, or refuse to post or otherwise make use of UGC without notice or any liability to you or any third-party in connection with our operation of UGC venues in an appropriate manner, such as to enhance accessibility of UGC, address copyright infringement, and protect Users from harmful UGC. Without limitation, we may, but do not commit to, do so to address content that comes to our attention that we believe is offensive, obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, pornographic, violent, harassing, threatening, abusive, illegal, or otherwise objectionable or inappropriate, or to enforce the rights of third parties or these Terms or any applicable Additional Terms. For example, this may include content identified as personal bullying, sexual abuse of a child, attacking any religion or race, or content containing video or depictions of beheadings. Such UGC submitted by you or others need not be maintained on the Service by us for any period of time, and you will not have the right, once submitted, to access, archive, maintain, change, remove, or otherwise use such UGC on the Service or elsewhere, except that certain users may have certain additional rights as provided for in the Privacy Policy.I like how they take phrases directly from Section 230 and insert it there. Though it's also amusing that they add "inappropriate" to "otherwise objectionable," seeing as Trumpworld has been trying to delete "otherwise objectionable" from 230 entirely, and limiting 230 to just a specific list of "bad" stuff. Yet, GETTR seems to be claiming even broader rights to moderate.And, not surprisingly, the company is already, on its first day, dealing with some moderation issues as it appears that people trolling the site are flooding it with junk:
QAnon fans were initially excited about new MAGA social app Gettr, but they're growing irate as moderators fail to keep lewd anime pics and the "pig poop balls" meme out of the QAnon hashtag. One of the top results now features Sonic the Hedgehog crushing a guy with his feet.— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 1, 2021
GETTR's app also claims to offer new users the ability to import copies of your content from Twitter to GETTR. And evidence on the site indicates that the new platform is also allowing users to import their actual Twitter followers who somehow end up with GETTR accounts of their own.For example, Republican Senate candidate Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania, had over 175,000 followers on GETTR as of Thursday afternoon, despite only joining the platform Thursday. His follower count on GETTR is identical to his follower count on Twitter.The same goes for Murtaugh, Trump's former 2020 communications director, who had amassed over 220,000 followers on both GETTR and Twitter as of Thursday afternoon.Tweets are up to the point you join, it won't continuously suck them in. The idea is we want people to move from Twitter to Gettr, said the person involved with the app. The person added that the app does not harvest the users current Twitter followers for the app, and again noted it is in Beta.I do wonder how Twitter will feel about that. Of course, to some extent, this is somewhat like the vision Twitter has for Bluesky, but that hasn't been implemented yet. And just pulling out all of someone else's data raises... quite a few questions. It does seem worth mentioning that the ACCESS bill that was introduced in Congress recently would require Twitter and others to allow such exporting of data to other services.But GETTR seems to be going, well, to a fairly extreme level. To get images from Twitter... it's hotlinking images DIRECTLY FROM TWITTER. In other words, it's not grabbing those images, it's just displaying them as hosted by Twitter. That's... bold. In some ways it's just reskinning Twitter.
Trumps Gettr website didn't just copy old Twitter posts it hotlinks to Twitter images! pic.twitter.com/848G6zTXuS— zedster (@z3dster) July 1, 2021
ToS has the wrong domain for DMCA claims. That will end poorly. pic.twitter.com/DLKf6KHL4C— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) July 1, 2021
edit: Policy/auto___former_trump_aide_launches_twitter_clone__that_seems_to_yank_a_ton_of_data_right_out_of_twitter__already_has_first_content_moderation_crisis.wikieditish...