This highlights the difficulties facing Trump and his supporters in the aftermath of his ban on mainstream social media platforms after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill Riots.Islamic State has been quick to exploit GETTR," said MoustafaAyad, executive vice president for Africa, Middle East, and Asia at Institute for Strategic Dialogue. He is a think tank that monitors online extremism and first discovered the jihadi accounts.One of the accounts I follow on Facebook was known to be Islamic State. It said Oh, Trump had announced his new platform. He added that all mujahideen would exploit this platform inshallah. The next day, GETTR had at least 15 Islamic State accounts.POLITICO discovered at least 250 accounts who had been posting regularly to the platform since July. GETTR doesn't provide access to its data for tracking the spread or virality of extremist material. Many of these accounts followed one another and used hashtags in order to spread the jihadi material to their growing online community.Trump has tried to find other ways to interact with his base online in the months that have passed since he was banned from Twitter and suspended by Facebook. His supporters moved to other online venues, including Parler, where they could express their opinions without being subject to increased scrutiny. Trump's attempt to make an internet bullhorn failed to materialize.He launched a blog called From the Desk Donald J. Trump in May. It was quickly removed amid ridicule from many and poor readership.GETTR is the most prominent pro-Trump platform launch. This is due to the names behind the site: Jason Miller, ex-Trump spokesperson, is its chief executive and Miles Guo is partly funding the site, the business partner of Steve Bannon. Trump is not involved in the operation and has not signed up for the platform. According to the social network, there is a free speech policy which allows users to express themselves freely without being censored by tech giants.Extremism experts say that this MAGA exodus from fringe social networks that promote free speech has attracted the attention of Islamic State supporters and other jihadist groups.GETTR didn't respond to repeated requests for comment on jihadi material being posted on its network.Similar removals have been made to these terrorist groups by the largest social networks. These companies have promoted their crackdown on Islamic extremists as an example how they are policing global platforms for harmful material.Islamic State supporters quickly responded by looking for new online spaces where they can spread hateful material and piggyback on platforms and tactics first used in the United States.A profile photo of an account that featured the Islamic State flag account (using the Arabic acronym for the jihadi movement) was asked "Is Daesh there?" Many people responded positively, while others praised the social network for hosting such content.Several days after GETTR launched on July 1, Islamic State supporters started urging their followers to join the pro-Trump network. This was partly to direct the jihadi fight to MAGA nation.If the app achieves the expected success, which is most likely, it should be followed and occupied by its followers in order to regain Twitter's glory, may God prevail. This was the message that one Islamic State account wrote on July 6.Some of the jihadi posts from GETTR in July were finally removed, highlighting the fact that the pro-Trump platform had at least taken some steps to remove the dangerous material.Larger platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, now use the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. This industry-funded non-profit shares terrorist content among companies through a database of extremist materials accessible to its members.GETTR is yet to sign up.The terms of service outline how offensive and illegal content, including those related to terrorism can be removed from GETTR. It could include personal bullying, sexual abuse, attacking any religion, race, or content that contains video or depictions beheading.Although the site was initially unable to moderate users, it has been plagued by a lot of pornography. Miller has drawn a line at doxxing or sharing the addresses of others or encouraging physical harm.Interviews with GETTRs chief executive have highlighted the site's content moderation policy. It is primarily based upon a combination human monitoring and algorithms.Many of these videos and accounts are still available four days after POLITICO made several requests to GETTR for comment.POLITICO only found a fraction of the terrorist propaganda on GETTR. This includes the proclamation of the Proud Boys white-supremacist movement. The platform is regularly updated by policymakers and mainstream conservatives like Mike Pompeo and Sean Hannity.Nevertheless, such jihadi material was easily available on the social media network and GETTRs failures to crack down on it, highlighted the challenges that the company faces in balancing their free speech ethos with increasing demands to prevent terrorist-related material finding an audience online.Adam Hadley, director at Tech Against Terrorism (a non-profit organization that works with smaller social media networks but not GETTR) said that the content being displayed on small platforms was very similar to that which is being removed from Facebook and Twitter.He said that many smaller platforms don't have the resources or the ability to remove such content. His organization membership includes Wordpress and Tumblr, which are both blogging platforms.POLITICO's extremism analysts reviewed the findings and concluded that Islamic State supporters using GETTR seemed to be an initial test to determine if their content would be detected or subject to moderation.Jihadi groups are constantly evolving their strategies to keep ahead of online removals in the ongoing battle with Western national security agencies, Silicon Valley platforms, and Western governments.Terrorist organizations are constantly trying new things because they want to be able to continue having access to public spaces to distribute their propaganda. Emerson Brooking is a senior fellow at Digital Forensic Research Lab, and the author of LikeWar. The Weaponization of Social media.The Islamic State supporters have been enjoying their intrusion into GETTR so far and the potential new audience they might reach. We will attack you with slayings and explosions, you worshippers on the cross," wrote the account, whose name was a reference to the extremist group. He also added: "H]ow great freedom of expression."Rym Momtaz contributed from Paris to this report.
