Ever since former President Donald Trump's lies and attacks prompted a deadly failed insurrection against the United States Capitol, he's been banned from a host of social media outlets—most notably, his Twitter account, his preferred platform for broadcasting deranged conspiracy theories, petty insults, and incoherent boasts to his 80 million followers.
After these bans were enacted, Trump and his allies falsely claimed the private company was in violation of the First Amendment right to free speech, opening up a new social media market for conservatives who felt silenced. So-called "free-speech" social media outlets like Parler and Gab leapt to present themselves as the right-wing alternative to Twitter, as did a number of popular conservatives.
Among those was former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, who launched the platform GETTR earlier this year.
According to its mission statement, the outlet is focused on
"fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas."
But though it touts itself as a free speech outlet, it unsurprisingly still reserves the right to remove content it finds "offensive, obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, pornographic, violent, harassing, threatening, abusive, illegal, or otherwise objectionable or inappropriate[.]"
Convicted felon Roger Stone, the pro-Trump ally who was pardoned by the former President for lying about his contacts with Russian government officials, has learned this the hard way.
This past Tuesday, Stone announced on Gab (another far-right outlet) that he'd been banned from the site :
"GETTR Actually suspended my account while allowing multiple Roger Stone imitators to continue posting on there [sic] social media site. Steve Bannon buttboi Jason Miller shall sleep with the fishes, figuratively speaking, of course."
He doubled down on the attacks later that night:
"If you were under the illusion that the new social media website Gettr set up by Mueller informant Steve Bannon and his criminal confederate Jason Miller does not engage in censorship, perhaps you can explain why they just suspended my account. Bannon is a criminal who's indictment for stealing money will be renewed shortly in New York State. I hear the New York state prisons are particularly rough."
For his part, Miller said the ban was accidental in comments to Salon:
"Multiple fake Roger Stone accounts were suspended following user complaints, but his real Gettr account was inadvertently suspended too. His correct account is currently active, and the imposter accounts have all been removed."
Back on Twitter, critics relished the infighting.
Another instance of Republican cancel culture?
To be fair, Miller likely has his hands full combatting the wave of ISIS propaganda that's been inundating GETTR.
