FREE WHITEWATER

Miller’s Gutter on Gettr

Jason Miller, former Trump spokesman, deadbeat dad, and accused harasser is behind a Twitter alternative called Gettr. Having explored it briefly, one can say the site is a poorly designed social-media gutter. See also The Latest Pro-Trump Twitter Clone Leaks User Data on Day 1 and The Pro-Trump Social Network Has an Anime Porn Problem.

Gettr has low-quality (or disgusting) content because it attracts subscribers who write low-quality (or disgusting) posts. Trumpism tends toward the gutter, morally and expressively. A Trump-oriented network or website will only head in one foul direction.

Free people have (and should have) rights to a wide continuum of lawful speech, even if it’s low-quality or disgusting. Those rights don’t, however, compel private parties to host that speech.

For those committed to a better discourse during this time of vulgar Trumpism, a few reminders —

1. For private organizations with dedicated domains or Facebook pages: it’s their private property. They don’t need to permit right-wing trolls or Trump shills to mar their publications. They can either ban comments or moderately properly (as happens at FREE WHITEWATER). No normal person would let someone vomit on his shoes; private publishers shouldn’t allow Trumpists to diminish their websites.

(For government organizations, First Amendment principles more closely constrain, as they should, public action against comments. First Amendment principles don’t, however, apply to private speech, no matter how often Trump and his ignorant horde insist that they do.)

2. For publishers that offer, mostly, comment forums open to all: that’s no easy position in times like these. They’re going to catch some Trumpism on their sites. (Along with occasional comments that amount to defamatory speech.) If comment sites decide against moderating, they should at the least avoid entering some conversations or promoting others selectively.

The best course is to hold one’s position, refusing Trumpists’ efforts to transform worthy efforts into unworthy ones.

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2 years ago

[…] If the conservative populists don’t like Twitter, for example, they could and should create their own alternative rather than insisting that a private platform is required to endure their terms of service violations perpetually.  (As it turns out, the Trumpists’ efforts to create their own version of Twitter have been going… poorly. See Miller’s Gutter on Gettr.) […]