ISIS Posts Pour Into Trump Site

GETTR now contains violent memes, including some of beheadings
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 2, 2021 6:55 PM CDT
ISIS Posts Beheadings, Propaganda on Pro-Trump Site
Jason Miller, shown in February, runs the social media site GETTR.   (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Promised to be a free-speech social media option for Trump supporters, GETTR is proving popular with ISIS. The month-old site already has jihadi-related material such as posts calling for violence against the West, videos of beheadings, and memes of former President Trump being executed while dressed as a Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Politico reports. The site bills itself as a haven from the potential censorship of Facebook or Twitter; Trump himself is barred from those sites until at least 2023. Extremists kicked off the major sites took note of the pro-Trump platform's policies. ISIS "has been very quick to exploit GETTR," said Moustafa Ayad, of a think tank that monitors online extremism. At least 250 accounts have regularly posted extremist content on GETTR in the past month, Politico found. The former president isn't officially connected to GETTR, which is run by Jason Miller, once Trump's spokesperson.

The site got off to a bumpy start; it was hacked on Opening Day, per Reuters. Posts on other sites have encouraged ISIS followers to sign up on GETTR, partly to face MAGA supporters head-on. Miller said ISIS attacks the MAGA movement because of Trump's military success against it. "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," an ISIS account wrote on Facebook days after the GETTR launch. GETTR did take some early jihadi posts down, but the site doesn't work with others on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a nonprofit that alerts host companies to extremist content. Another nonprofit said material that Twitter and Facebook remove automatically still appears on GETTR and other small platforms. (More social media stories.)

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