The free speech-centered, MAGA-inspired Twitter alternative Gettr, led by former Trump advisor Jason Miller and bankrolled by a Chinese fugitive billionaire, has hit some turbulence.
The ardently pro-Trump social media site has been under attack by white nationalist “groypers,” avid followers of Unite the Right attendee Nicholas Fuentes since the platform booted him earlier this week.
“The user in question violated GETTR’s clearly defined terms of use and has been suspended from the platform,” a Gettr spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning following the suspension.
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Yet that move by the platform left Fuentes, fellow far-right allies, and his loyal white nationalist “groyper” fans fuming and spamming Miller’s forum. On Thursday night, Gettr started to block users from posting the word “groyper,” which originates from a variation of the Pepe the Frog meme with extremely racist undertones.
“Oops! There was an error submitting your post,” a notice read when The Daily Beast attempted to post the word “groyper” on the site Thursday night. “Whoops! You already said that” another note read when The Daily Beast tried to post the term again on Friday morning.
While posts sent by the Beast with the words “tree” or “test” showed up, ones with “groyper” generated a series of error messages, including on the platform’s mobile Apple application.
“Gettr has banned use of the word ‘groyper,’” the white nationalist leader wrote on Telegram Thursday night. “Lol,” he said, “Lets gooooooooooo!”
While neither Miller nor a Gettr press representative returned The Daily Beast’s multiple requests for comment, Fuentes allies took note of the alleged “ban” of the racist term from the free speech site.
Far-right Arizona State Rep. Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff), an ally of Fuentes’ “groyper army,” further got in on the trolling of Gettr, writing, “Grooooyper,” which appeared with the additional “o” characters not to be blocked from being posted.
Responding to the news of the alleged term ban, one verified right-wing Gettr account posted, “The most interesting thing I’ve ever seen on gettr is Groyper War II, happening right now.” Others tolled the website by posting the term countless times, over and over again.
“Apparently, my Gettr ban, some are saying Steve Bannon did it, some are saying someone else did it,” Fuentes said Thursday on his nightly show, “but that is bad news either way.”
Trouble on the Gettr website isn't a new phenomenon. When the platform launched in July, it was immediately hacked. The social platform geared towards the MAGA set has since become a goldmine for hackers.
"These new platforms have to try and learn all of the lessons of running a social network in a compressed time scale, so they tend to miss a lot of stuff,” David Thiel, the chief technical officer at Stanford Internet Observatory, told The Daily Beast in late October. “And a lot of times the people that are implementing this haven't been at a company that has had a significant trust and safety operation, so they just don't know the things they're going to be facing."
