Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Former President Donald Trump\u2019s team quietly launched a new social media platform on Thursday, billing it as an alternative to Big Tech sites.<\/p>\n
The platform, called GETTR, advertised its mission statement as \u201cfighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s former spokesman, Jason Miller, is leading the platform, he confirmed via text. A person familiar described the site as similar to Twitter.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s involvement with the project is unclear as is whether or not he will set up an account on GETTR and use it, though his proximity to Miller suggests that this may be the latest attempt to get him back in the churn of social media<\/p>\n
The former president has been looking for alternative ways to engage with his base online after having been booted off Twitter and suspended from Facebook after encouraging the Capitol rioters on January 6. And his prior effort to engage online\u2014through the launch of a professional blog\u2014ended quickly amid widespread ridicule and poor readership.<\/p>\n
GETTR is one of the highest-profile projects in a larger ecosystem of pro-MAGA tech and social media platforms that have blossomed on the right, largely fueled by a sense that Big Tech is attempting to silence conservative and pro-Trump ideology from being disseminated online. In recent months, it was widely reported<\/a> that the Trump team was searching for a platform on which to re-establish his online presence, either by buying a company outright and rebranding it as his exclusive platform, or becoming a featured draw.<\/p>\n The app first went live on the Google and Apple app stores in mid-June and was most recently updated Wednesday. It\u2019s been downloaded over one thousand times on each, drawing positive reviews from users.<\/p>\n A description for GETTR on the app stores calls it a \u201cnon-bias social network for people all over the world.\u201d The app is rated \u201cM\u201d for mature, meaning it is recommended for users 17 and older.<\/p>\n GETTR\u2019s user interface appears similar to that of Twitter. Initial promotional materials for GETTR on the app stores displayed posts of users celebrating the House of Representatives no longer requiring masks on the floor of the chamber.<\/p>\n Initial trending topics on the app included the hashtags \u201c#trump,\u201d \u201c#virusorigin,\u201d \u201c#nra\u201d and \u201c#unrestrictedbioweapon.\u201d Those tags refer to the newfound and still unproven refrain from Republicans that China created the Covid-19 virus in a lab as a bioweapon.<\/p>\n Whether GETTR will succeed is dubious at best. Their last attempt to replicate his twitter feed, a site called \u201cFrom The Desk of Donald Trump\u201d, was widely derided as nothing more than a blog, barely received any web traffic, and shut down less than a month later. <\/p>\n