Podcast host Tim Pool grilled GETTR’s Jason Miller over his explanation of his platform’s censorship policy, calling it “complete bullsh*t.”
Miller, the former advisor to President Trump, appeared on the Timcast IRL podcast with Tim Pool on Thursday, where Pool, a strong proponent of free speech, quizzed Miller on what and was not allowed on GETTR, an alleged free speech social media platform.
The statements from Miller prompted Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab, the biggest free speech social network, to appear on Pool’s podcast the next day.
The GETTR CEO explained that their moderation system “treats everyone the same,” and that their is no political discrimination, but some things, such as “hateful” content, was not allowed on the platform, and that certain words would be automatically blocked, but that they need to be “pretty darn strong” for that to happen.
Pool started off his grilling of Miller by highlighting that GETTR bans “hateful content,” something that is editorially defined, accusing GETTR of simply using the same language “as all the other Big Tech, Silicon Valley platforms.”
“Your free speech rights for the most part extend up until the point where they infringe on someone else’s rights,” Miller said in response. “If we’re going to have a platform where we allow people to come on and keep it very real politically, to keep it very politically incorrect, if that’s where they want to be, there have to be some standards in place to make sure that people don’t think it’s a threatening or potentially illegal environment,” with those including the banning of “racial or religious epithets” from the platform, in order to make sure people feel “welcome.”
As National File previously reported, Nick Fuentes, the host of America First, was banned from the supposed pro-free speech platform GETTR repeatedly for seemingly no reason:
Fuentes attempted to rejoin the platform multiple times, but was banned shortly after each time, even as viewers watched on his live stream. “If I go on there, and they ban me for being me, well what is that? It’s arbitrary, it’s discretionary, and when they ban groyper, that takes it to a different level,” Fuentes said on his stream, referring to previous reports from the Daily Beast and others that GETTR had banned the term “groyper” from their platform, a name used to describe supporters of Fuentes.
“It’s funny cause I wasn’t even told that I was banned,” Fuentes said on his show on Wednesday evening. “I didn’t get a strike, I didn’t get a warning, and when I was banned they didn’t even e-mail me,” he noted, adding that even Twitter would give you 12 hour, 24 hour, 7 day temporary bans, and then sometimes not even permanently suspend you at all.
Pool quizzed Miller on Fuentes’s banning, where he noted that nothing Fuentes had posted seemed would be a bannable offence. “We disagree on that,” Miller said. “There was a post he put on GETTR which was interpreted from our position as recruiting people from the white nationalist space, and that’s not something… we’re going to allow to happen on GETTR.”
The post in question turned out to be simply asking if there were any other “groypers” on GETTR. “Groypers” are known to be fans of Nick Fuentes, and supporters of the America First, who while may often discuss white identity, are fervent American nationalists, not white nationalists, an assessment Jason Miller and GETTR disagrees with.
Pool asked Miller how he came to that conclusion, with Miller claiming that he had seen “seen a number of writings” where groypers had been labelled white nationalists. “So you’re saying because the media has called them white nationalists, you’ve banned Nick Fuentes?” Pool asked. “Bro I don’t think you have an argument here man,” he continued. “It sounds like complete bullsh*t. I don’t think you know anything about this group… This is just talking in circles.”
“It’s really difficult for me to understand exactly what I did wrong,” Pool added. “The issue for me is when I ask you, you don’t seem to know either… You don’t know [what a groyper is]. You just read something in the media that was bad about him. Is that justification?”
Tim Pool absolutely drags Gettr CEO Jason Miller pic.twitter.com/NhaPdRFcGP
— Gab.com (@getongab) January 20, 2022
The podcast host said that while he still thinks GETTR would be less likely to censor people than Twitter, “if you can’t give us a direct quote from Nick Fuentes that got him banned, explain to us in detail what a groyper is or how you know what it is, then it seems to me that the moment the media piles up on me or Luke or anybody else, then you’ll ban us too.”
After more back and forth with Pool, where the GETTR CEO refused to specify twice which Terms of Service Fuentes broke, Miller declared that along with terrorists, anyone who is “part of a group that their only reason for existing is to try and cause harm to others” are not allowed on the platform.
Following the trail of logic, Pool questioned Miller as to whether he would ban leftists who are racist or discriminatory to white people, such as BLM, or CRT advocates like Robin di Angelo and Ibram Kendi from GETTR. However, Miller said that BLM was “a little bit” of a different case, and that the leftists on platforms were just being “jerks and idiots,” not preaching hate, but after being pushed, said he would ban leftists for attacking white people.
Miller further said that images and video of people dying, such as those being blown up by terrorists, would not be allowed on GETTR. However, due to the strictness of the interpretation of this rule, Miller confirmed that the assassination video of JFK would not be allowed, and neither would the murder of Trump supporter Aaron Danielson, an example Tim Pool raised.
JUST IN: Gettr will ban you for posting a clip of the JFK assassination, per @JasonMillerinDC on Tim Pool.
Historical material considered too sensitive for the free speech platform
— Tom Pappert (@realTomPappert) January 20, 2022
“If you restrict that, people won’t believe it,” Pool said, noting that the need for accurate news was very important. “If someone like Andy Ngo is on the ground and he films this, you guys would ban it.”
Despite the very restrictive policies, Miller argued that GETTR was “by far the best free speech platform” out there, adding that it is “so much smoother and so much better than anything out there that strives to provide free speech,” when asked about Gab. “We are the one company that has the technology that is as good or better than anything that Big Tech is doing.”
When asked why GETTR couldn’t be a totally open free speech platform like Gab, which bases it’s ToS off the First Amendment, Miller talked about the fact that GETTR was a global platform, and would make sure they were abiding by the local laws of countries that they didn’t want to get banned from, which could include countries with strong censorship laws like Germany.
“It sounds like you’re way more strict than Twitter,” Pool said. “GETTR has decided this is the only acceptable world view. You are not allowed to do these things on our platform, period. That’s the big issue. If you say it’s about free speech… then the only speech that should be banned is when it crosses a legal threshold, not an opinion threshold.”
“Banning that just leads us down a slippery slope of authoritarianism, and if conservatives who are creating alternatives still uphold Silicon Valley’s world view, even if it’s a little bit less, in 10 years it will just keep getting worse,” Pool concluded.