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--:-- Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Today, we've got a bonus episode. It's Casey Newton's discussion with the CEOs of Parler and Getter. Casey spoke with George Farmer and Jason Miller on Wednesday, February 16th, at Pivot MIA. It was quite the event. Have a listen and stay tuned for more bonus episodes in the feed.
--:-- Casey Newton: Let's start with a little bit of news. Jason, last night it was reported that Guo Wengi, reportedly a big financier of Getter, filed for bankruptcy. What does this mean for Getter?
--:-- Jason Miller: Well, it doesn't mean anything for our plans. Miles is someone who's an ideological ally. He does not have any financial stake in the company, something we've said pretty clearly from the beginning. We have multiple international investment funds who have contributed and give us our seed money to get going. We have great capital, good standing position, just starting to get out and start to add additional investors. So that's pretty exciting. As we're approaching 5 million people signed up for the platform, the sky's the limit.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right. So the runway is still as long today as it was yesterday.
--:-- Jason Miller: Absolutely. In fact, today we just rolled out Getter Vision, which is our short video competitor to TikTok and Instagram Reels. So new products, new features, it's pretty exciting.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right, so for folks in the audience who may not have tried out Parler or Getter just yet, I would love for each of you to give me the elevator pitch. What are these apps?
--:-- George Farmer: Well, Parler is a free speech oriented social media network with a nascent NFT offering. It has been labeled as the conservative haven of Twitter. From our perspective, we like to view ourselves as the free speech haven, basically Twitter without censorship, effectively.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right, Jason.
--:-- Jason Miller: Yeah, I would say one of the important ways to look at this dynamic is not so much of a... you hear the alternative platforms that are competing against, say, Twitter and Facebook. But I think it's also important to point out the fact that Facebook is actually losing people, that Twitter is effectively a dying platform. I think the Washington Post described them as that their business model was misery. With Getter, there's plenty of room for whether it's Getter or Parler or Truth Social, other platforms, even Rumble taking on YouTube. We think that the traditional Silicon Valley tech platforms are dying.
--:-- With Getter, we describe ourselves as the all-in-one free speech platform. Right now, obviously, we have the features, essentially the microblogging competitors to say Twitter, Facebook, or other platforms. We have live streaming that we've offered, and just today launched our short video platform. But where we're going as a company this summer when we launch GetterPay, which will be our two-coin crypto ecosystem, that will not only be a competitor to the Apple Pays and the Ali Pays of the world, but we also think we're going to bring the DeFi aspect and peer-to-peer lending to a whole community of people in the U.S. and beyond who've never had the opportunity to really experience that.
--:-- Casey Newton: Right. So those are huge ambitions. You brought up all platforms, including Truth Social. I think just yesterday we saw Donald Trump Jr. shared a screenshot of the president posting. So when this thing launches, how are your apps going to adapt?
--:-- George Farmer: Well, I think it's important to define the terms of debate first of all. What is Truth Social? Truth has done a deal with Rumble. They clearly have an eye on the video distribution network. From that perspective, I think they're going to be engaging with Rumble very aggressively and trying to take on a Netflix style of business. I don't necessarily think that competes with our style of business. And then, as Jason just hinted at, you can have quite a broad array of free speech oriented social media sites which are trying to cater to that growing market of people who don't necessarily want as strict moderation policies in their social media.
--:-- To that end, you've got Truth, you've got Getter, you've got Parler. All of us are pitching ourselves into that space. One thing that we've done is try and take that model overseas as well. What does free speech look like overseas? What does free speech look like to the consumer in Saudi Arabia, where we have a good number of accounts, or Iran where we have a good number of accounts? It doesn't look the same as it does in the US consumer market. So the world is growing in our space. There's definitely more competition, but I think that there's a good reason for all of us to exist.
--:-- Casey Newton: I do think though that there's an assumption that where President Trump goes, the free speech loving conservative crowd is going to follow. How much does it sting that he hasn't joined your platforms?
--:-- George Farmer: Well, I think Jason probably has talked to him as much as I have talked to him. We've had meetings with the Trump organization. As I said, I think they definitely have their eye on things which are outside of our remit. We are not a video distribution network. We don't have any intentions to be in that space. We also are building out an NFT and Web3 style of business. We're trying to do more in the NFT space. We have a platform launching relatively shortly. We have a marketplace coming out relatively shortly. We already launched our first NFTs in December. All of this is outside the traditional social media world, I guess. You've obviously seen Facebook and Twitter try and pitch themselves into that business model as well with crypto social. We have our eye on that territory as well. So from that perspective, that's not something that Trump is really looking at. I don't think Truth Social is really going to be competing in that space. So it doesn't really bother me. He's free to choose whichever platform he wishes to use.
--:-- Casey Newton: Right. How do you feel about it?
--:-- Jason Miller: Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm going to see the president this afternoon and I'll make the pitch again to say, "Got a real Donald Trump all reserved and ready for you." But one of the things that I think people might find interesting is when President Trump announced in October that he was going to roll out Truth Social, we actually saw a 135% increase in new signups in the 10 following days as opposed to the 10 preceding days. A lot of people might not realize this, but about 20 to 25 percent of Trump voters quit social media when President Trump was deplatformed. We know that from our market research. They may not have gone and deleted their accounts, but they got frustrated at what Twitter and Facebook and YouTube did with the deplatforming. They just said, "We're over it. This is silly."
--:-- What we're seeing are people getting off the sidelines. Every time President Trump makes a new announcement or any time Twitter and Facebook go through their round of kicking people off, we see them come to these new platforms that have started, whether it be mine or George's or anybody else. I always say to channel my inner George Bailey that every time Twitter or Facebook kick someone off of their platform, another Getter angel gets its wings. So it's terrible for a democracy, but hey guys, keep kicking people off because they're coming over to our platforms quick.
--:-- But I also would say with regard to President Trump, I wouldn't rule him out joining additional platforms beyond his own. I've certainly encouraged him to say, as he looks towards a potential 2024 run, that he should be on as many platforms as possible to amplify his voice. So I think that's a distinct possibility. I think George also made a smart point in the direction all of these different companies are going. When you look at who our competitors are now, but who our competitors are in six months or a year or five years down the road, they're going to look much different. I think everybody has learned from the mistake that Twitter made, that microblogging on its own and selling advertising in microblogging isn't enough to take you to the stratosphere.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right. So we do have to have this fight because you just said that deplatforming is bad for democracy. I take the complete opposite view. I think when you have the president of the United States inciting violence on Twitter, leading to deaths of law enforcement officers, urging the overthrow of a free and fair election... You're going to tell me that removing that guy from the platform is bad for democracy? What's good for democracy?
--:-- Jason Miller: No, I think it's a terrible precedent to go...
--:-- Casey Newton: [To audience] Which side is the audience on? Yeah, exactly.
--:-- Jason Miller: No, look, you guys are wrong. I think to go and kick off a sitting president of the United States is nuts. It sets the precedent that certain people have free speech rights in this country and certain people don't. Now, it's all of us, and I know we'll probably talk additionally on moderation, which is very important to make sure that platforms are safe and inviting for people to join. Obviously there are laws that need to be adhered to both in the US and internationally.
--:-- But what we're seeing right now from this White House, where you literally have the press secretary of the White House going and picking winners and losers in the free speech debate, saying if someone's been kicked off of a platform, they should be kicked off of all platforms. If this was Donald Trump saying that, you guys would be going nuts. So when you clap at that, imagine if this was reversed and you had a Republican in the White House that was going and kicking people off just because they didn't like their comment. That's insane. I think it's an assault on the First Amendment. As Americans, we really take for granted the fact that we have free speech. That's why it's good that we have platforms such as Getter and Parler that are rising up and saying, "We're going to take those rights back."
--:-- Casey Newton: All right. So let's get into the free speech side of things. I would love to get your thoughts on, what are some of the good ideas that you can't find on Twitter and Facebook? What are people being starved for here?
--:-- George Farmer: I mean, just to echo what Jason was saying there, I think there is a philosophical point underlying this whole conversation. Yes, we can pin it down on exact specifics about what people are saying. Of course, you can get into the minutiae of the debate around that. But you actually do have to take a step back and talk about that philosophy of free speech and what you're trying to do. Because at the end of the day, Jason's right. When you all applaud, there is a point right now where you think, "Yes, this is the right thing to do." But at some point, you will be the subject of all of that. Everyone here will say something at some point in their life where the archaeology mob will come after you and tell you that what you said in 2011 or 2016 or 2021 is the wrong thing, and you no longer think the right way. That's why free speech is important. Because at the end of the day, we all make mistakes, and you need mercy and you need grace and you need forgiveness. If you don't have that, and you don't have that sort of social media platform which allows for that, you're all going to get canceled. At the end of the day, you're all going to get wiped out.
--:-- To answer the question about what now is important, I think there's no greater topic than COVID. Because at the moment, you saw what happened in the last two years. The major tech companies shut down debates around COVID. Whether it be the efficacy of cloth masks, whether it be the efficacy of lockdowns, whatever it might be. At the end of the day, all of these debates are now the ones we're having in the current national conversation because these are actually now suddenly open for debate again. You've even seen, I heard somebody yesterday, a major journalist—I won't name him because you might go and cancel him—a major journalist coming out and saying, "Actually, there is need for the dissenter's voice." That was not an opinion which was held. You didn't have a dissenting voice. You had the voice, and that was it.
--:-- Casey Newton: Right. Yeah, I mean, there's clearly a need for dissent. I think the question is... Let me ask it a different way. I think one reason why companies love to come along and say, "We're for free speech," is because it means they don't actually have to pay as much attention to what their users are saying. I'm not saying you don't have a principled view. I'm also saying it makes your business easier in a lot of ways. You don't have to hire as many moderators. You don't have to screen as many posts.
--:-- Jason Miller: I think you're just totally off. I think just completely off. We take moderation very seriously. Our terms of service make it very clear that we're not going to allow illegal behavior or doxing or racial or religious epithets, those types of things. We take that very seriously. The difference is that we don't use political discrimination to pick winners and losers. It's not that this community gets to have free speech but that community doesn't. In fact, the only two ideological guidelines that we have at the platform when we hire people to the company are: do you support free speech? Do you oppose cancel culture? If you agree with both of those, then great. You're people who we want to work with. Because again, as you look around the world, there are different communities and people are impacted in different ways. You got to think about the companies in global terms if you want to be able to scale. But to say that moderation isn't taken seriously or that there's some blind eye turned, I think that's just misleading. I'd say you're off on that.
--:-- Casey Newton: Sure. But when you look at even just those guidelines that you just described, whether or not you allow people to abuse racist language is arguably a political question. Which sort of leads me back to this place of, are we really fighting over nothing here? Doesn't every platform just have to come up with its own rules for the road? Some are a little bit more restrictive. Some are a little bit more expansive. But to say that one's for free speech and one isn't seems too simple to me.
--:-- George Farmer: Well, I think they're generally accepted. There's what's legally defined, and that's something that we've constantly come back to. You can't shout fire in a crowded room. You can't threaten to kill people at a certain time and place. You can't dox people. You can't steal other people's intellectual property. All of these are constitutionally protected rights. So you can't just say, "Well, what does free speech mean? It means nothing to some people and everything to others." No, we all have the accepted rules, the constitutional rules of the road, if you like, which we will have to stick by.
--:-- What you're seeing in the tech giants, what you're seeing particularly in Twitter, for example, is not just a one-off decision being made. This is something that I talked about with Kara Swisher on her podcast. It's a subjective line of thinking which has been made over a long period of time, which has clearly defined a platform's viewpoint. That means that that company has now become not just a platform, it's become a publisher. That consistent line of rational argument by them over a series of years has clearly defined them now as a publisher. If you're just saying this is a one-off where we're going to shut down somebody because they've said one thing we don't like, okay, you can have the merits of the argument about that particular comment. But where they've taken the same line of reasoning, as Jason mentions, political discrimination over several years, that clearly means that that company is no longer subject to the rules of Section 230.
--:-- Casey Newton: Okay. We don't honestly have enough time to get into Section 230, but I want to sort of keep going in this direction when it comes to free speech. So before you became CEO of Parler, I think we might say it enabled more free speech, right? And there was some violent material that was on the platform and led to a lot of problems that I think the company is still recovering from. How has the company adapted since then, and has it had to compromise at all on those free speech values?
--:-- George Farmer: In answer to your latter question, no. We have the same moderation principles that we had in place beforehand. What you're referring to really was the issue that the company faced around scale. I think anyone sitting in this room who's run a tech startup will probably have experienced that same issue. There are several points I'd make there. The first is scale. We went from a company with less than a million accounts to having 16 million accounts in a very short space of time. That obviously incurred huge scalability issues, and obviously we suffered the repercussion of that. We were still moderating at the time of January the 6th, which of course is what you're referencing. We published that in our report to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where we talked about how we were working with law enforcement to talk about the threats of violence which were on the platform. That's the first major thing.
--:-- The second thing is, we came back to the table and after January the 10th, when we got deplatformed by AWS and by Google and by Apple, there were various studies which were published and charging documents which were analyzed in the aftermath of the Capitol riot which talked about Parler's involvement. It found us to be a very small minority actor compared with someone like Facebook. Even Instagram was listed as a higher social media platform with engaged content than ours in terms of extremism. So again, they looked at us, they said, "We don't like this guy, we're going to kick him out." As a result, we were kind of unfairly scapegoated. But do we moderate more now than we did? No, we don't.
--:-- Casey Newton: You don't moderate more now than you did?
--:-- Casey Newton: So if, let's say sometime in the next two or four years, there's political violence again in America, what are you going to do to ensure that it's not happening on your platforms?
--:-- George Farmer: We would do the same thing that we did last time. We would moderate threats and incitement to violence, which is exactly what we've always done in our terms of service. We've taken exactly the same line since that day as we had before that day. So we haven't changed anything. We've always tried to cooperate with law enforcement where needs be or cooperate with whoever. I mean, we still receive subpoenas in relation to January the 6th to this day. So we work with them and we work with law enforcement to do what we can, but we moderate in the best fashion that we see fit.
--:-- Casey Newton: Right. Jason, you launched in the wake of January 6th. How do you think about this problem?
--:-- Jason Miller: Well, again, as talked on the moderation front, something that we take very seriously. We use essentially a two-pronged system with both AI as well as paid human moderators. Then we also have a couple thousand person volunteer force that supplements some of that. But even if they weren't there, we still have plenty to cover everything between the AI and the human moderator front. This is something that we're constantly watching, not just in the US, but all around the rest of the world. Something that we pay very close attention to and obviously cooperate with law enforcement as needed.
--:-- I think that as we look forward for where this is going, all platforms are going to continually update and revise certain aspects of their community guidelines or their terms of service. There are always going to be different things that come up. I think all of us share the same goal—I shouldn't say all of us, I'd say at least George and myself share the goal—of making sure that we have inviting platforms. We want people to come and join and feel safe to be able to join the platforms. We monitor things like that. But I think George is also very right that as we've started to learn more about what happened on January 6th, to go and try to point the finger at a particular social media platform and try to lay some kind of blame at them, I think is just wildly off the mark.
--:-- Casey Newton: Yeah, I mean, I think it was the president's fault myself. But I want to talk about censorship in a different way. The most popular social platform in America right now is TikTok, which is also the platform that censors more than any other. Until three years ago, you couldn't even show somebody who had a tattoo on the For You page. I've been talking to folks who are like, Americans talk about free speech as a value, but when you look at what they choose, they're often choosing censorship. The market is rewarding censorship. So I'm curious, what gives you the confidence that there's actually the audience you think there is for free speech paradise?
--:-- George Farmer: Well, it's what drives consumer demand. It's the golden egg question of the entire world. Look, it's different things to different people. There is no one answer to say, "This is going to be the key formula for success." What you are saying right now, of course, and we've seen this, and this is why our platforms have some success, is because of the fact that there is obviously nascent consumer demand for anti-censorship, free speech social media platforms. Otherwise, we wouldn't exist. So you are obviously seeing platforms which cater to that demand flourish.
--:-- At the same time, of course, TikTok, which I would say is completely the opposite end of social media in some ways, is far more centered around content creation. That's what makes it so popular. The short-form content is absolutely beautiful. That's why people love it. Now you've seen YouTube Shorts and a whole lot of other people move into the space. So what do the two cater to? There are very, very different demand profiles. Supply and demand. We're supplying a particular need. TikTok is supplying a different need. That's totally fine. There's room for both.
--:-- Casey Newton: Do you feel that way too?
--:-- Jason Miller: I would say, look, there's a lot of it has to do with countries and where people are. For example, in Japan, which is our fifth largest country that we're in, Twitter is actually bigger than Facebook. Saudi Arabia as well. Those are two places where those countries have really grabbed it. But even as I mentioned earlier with regard to the short video, this is where we just launched our Getter Vision, which is our competitor to TikTok and Instagram Reels. The short video clip space is really where the future is for the younger audience. I mean, even Zuckerberg in his most recent quarterly earnings said Instagram Reels accounted for 60 percent of their user engagement. That's also part of the reason why I think they're moving away from Facebook and going into this metaverse, because I think Zuckerberg also said they're going to lose 45 percent of their under 18 audience over the next two years. So you see where the trend lines are going.
--:-- But I think whether it's the microblogging space or the short video format or content creation or the crypto and payment platform sense, I think a lot of the companies are going in different ways. But I got to go back to the thing that you started with, though, where you didn't necessarily see where this need or where this community would be. I think you have to also keep in mind that the big tech companies have effectively written off 40 to 50 percent of people in every country around the world. This isn't just a US problem. We see it in Brazil where they try to silence the Bolsonaro folks. We see it in the UK with anyone who supported Brexit. We see it in France going up to their presidential election right now, the way that Zemmour and Le Pen are being politically discriminated against. So the free speech issue is going on all over the world, not just here.
--:-- If you're not being discriminated against, you're not going to see it. Because President Trump got kicked off and you applauded that. You like that. Many people—there are 73 million people who voted for him, or 75 million, whatever the exact number was—who would say, "That's a shame. That's terrible." So there are people all over the world who I think would have a strikingly different viewpoint.
--:-- Casey Newton: Yeah, I mean, although I always hasten to point out, look at what the number one page is on Facebook. It's either Dan Bongino or Ben Shapiro every day. Conservatives are cleaning up on Facebook and Twitter. It's always strange to me that they want to acknowledge how successful it has been for them. I think it has been a miracle for the conservative movement that they've been able to use social platforms to be as successful as they have. Does that not strike true to you?
--:-- George Farmer: Yeah, but I think this is something that I've had to face many times in terms of questions like, "We've got this study which shows that conservatives are not as censored." This is a misperception. Read the studies. The studies actually say nothing like that. The studies talk about the fact that engagement is much higher on conservative pages. True, engagement is. The top three on Facebook—Breitbart, Fox News, and I think the Daily Caller—generate as much interest as the BBC, CNN, New York Times, and a whole load of other platforms. But that doesn't address the fundamental question. Have they censored other right-wing platforms? Is that the reason that these three are more engaged with? Because they're narrowing the funnel of content choice.
--:-- At the other end of the spectrum, you're saying, "Look how engaged these channels are." Yeah, for sure. But how many other platforms have you taken out in an effort to get to these three? The concept of censorship and engagement is not a direct correlation. You can be a highly censored but engaged person. They are not mutually exclusive. So to say, "Well, you've got really high engagement," yes, you have. But that's not to say that you haven't taken out a lot of people to get that high engagement.
--:-- Casey Newton: We'll be back in a moment with more from Pivot MIA.
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--:-- Casey Newton: Welcome back. We'll now return to my discussion with Parler's George Farmer and Gettr's Jason Miller at Pivot MIA.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right, let me ask one more question about market demand, and then I think we are going to take some audience questions. So one other thing that I've wondered about, and some people will sometimes say that the reason that they believe that a platform that caters to conservatives may have trouble taking off is that liberals won't be around to dunk on, right? Like that the fun of these networks is actually yelling at people, making them look foolish, right? Is that a challenge for you? Is creating a useful dunking surface?
--:-- Jason Miller: You wanna go for this?
--:-- George Farmer: Yeah, well, as someone who could never really dunk in my basketball days, I could get up to the rim, but just that I can't jump. So, no, but I think there are a couple of things. When we launched Gettr, we made a very conscious effort, especially with as polarized as things are now and people kind of retreating to their ideological corners. I mean, you see it with cable television. That's part of the reason we made such an effort to have a global base. In fact, the US is only about 50% of our base. Up until January, when we grew by 50%, it was about 37% of our base. So we've made an effort to make sure we have an international, diverse set of voices.
--:-- George Farmer: Right now, the reality is a lot of the passion in the free speech debate is in the center right. I'd say traditionally in US history, the free speech debate was largely center left. You should go through talking about whether it be women's rights or African-American rights or gay rights or any of the debates that have really fueled a lot of the fire around free speech in recent decades. But guys, the pendulum is going to swing back. We see Nicki Minaj getting sentenced to digital jail for daring to raise questions about vaccine effectiveness. The cancel culture, once that pendulum gets swinging, you never know when it's going to come after you. That's why it's good to decentralize, get things away from Twitter and Facebook and all the power being in the hands of these few people.
--:-- George Farmer: Look, it's the fact that we've recently added everything from feminists in the UK to a whole bunch of mainstream media reporters here in the US. I think it's great. So more than a barrier, not saying that people are necessarily going to agree with the leftist center perspective all that much, but they're welcome.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right. It is now time for the free speech portion of today's chat. If it is more of a comment than a question, I am going to cut you off. So questions only, please.
--:-- Audience Member 1: Hello. Sure. Hi, I'm Claire Cruz. I work in legal technology. I wanted to thank both of you for coming here. I appreciate that. I always like hearing different perspectives. My question for both of you: what percentage on both platforms of Gen Z or people under the age of 25 are using both of these platforms, and what are you doing to obtain more of that age group?
--:-- George Farmer: Yeah, I mean, our platform, gosh, on user metrics, I would say under 30 is probably about 40% of our user base. In terms of NFT consumption, which is obviously something we are still testing and rolling out, and we'll be doing a lot more of that in the next six weeks, pretty much 100%. I think all the NFTs which are being purchased, all the ones that we've tracked at least, have gone to sub-30.
--:-- Jason Miller: With regard to Gettr, I'd say with the microblogging aspect, what we initially launched with, that probably skews a little bit older. But that's part of the reason why we launched Vision and why that's out today, at least in the beta testing format, because that will bring in a whole younger dynamic. My 13-year-old who's on TikTok was showing me how it works, and me being the boomer in the house. But again, that's where all the energy is for the under 18 or even under 30, on the short video. So that's a very distinct part of the reason why we're moving into that space, to be able to broaden out and diversify the user base.
--:-- Audience Member 1: Thank you.
--:-- Audience Member 2: Hi. You guys are brave. Okay, here's my question. I'm Karen Kahn. I run a company called iFundWomen. Do you all have security teams that are monitoring IRL things that might be happening in the violence space in the world as it relates to the conversations that are happening on your platform? Obviously, like, we're watching you. Big Brother's watching you like a fucking hawk. But are you guys watching you? Does that make sense?
--:-- George Farmer: Yeah, I mean, in terms of moderation in real time, we have AI systems which obviously monitor everything that's being put up on the platform. The average takedown time of a comment on our platform which violates our moderation policies is less than three minutes. There are obviously areas which...
--:-- Audience Member 2: And do you see pods? For example, like at Airbnb, I'm psyched to see Brian speak. They know when people are booking pockets of Airbnbs in random places of customers that haven't been Airbnb customers before, like around the Capitol with the insurrection, that shit's going down. So do you guys have those capabilities?
--:-- George Farmer: Oh, yeah. I mean, very much. We can monitor in real time. We have very good real-time monitoring.
--:-- Audience Member 2: And what do you do about it, though?
--:-- George Farmer: Well, it depends on where it falls within our moderation policies. As I said, incitement to violence is taken down. We come under bot attack pretty frequently. We are very conscious of that. We obviously have to monitor it in real time. If I suddenly see 150,000 accounts sign up from the same IP address, well, fairly bloody obvious, right? So we obviously deal with that in real time. We have AI systems which do that. We work with Hive. That's a publicly known piece of information. And they're very good.
--:-- Audience Member 2: And do you work with...
--:-- Casey Newton: All right, I'm going to have to... That's going to have to be the last question.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right, yeah. Candace, hi.
--:-- Audience Member 3: Hi, question for you.
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--:-- Casey Newton: Welcome back. Here's the rest of the panel at Pivot MIA. Candace, hi.
--:-- Candace Owens: Hi, question for you. First, I just wanted to clarify because I know that there's so many well-meaning journalists in the room who have actually written and updated something that you said on stage that was incorrect about the officer being killed on January 6th. He actually died of a stroke two days later, according to Vox Media, Reuters, Washington Post, and plenty of journalists in this room. So I just wanted to clarify that. That came out much later, but that's not true.
--:-- Candace Owens: I did want to ask you, though, because you said that you felt, or at least made the assumption, it sounded like you meant that Donald Trump deserved to be deplatformed because he wasn't citing violence. That was your comment. And I wanted to ask you, are you basing that on what he actually said? Because his last tweets, just to read them out loud, because I think it's important to actually know what we're talking about: "The 75 million great American patriots who voted for me, America first, to make America great again, will have a giant voice long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way. Go home in peace. I just am trying to understand. I'm asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful, no violence. Remember, we are the party of law and order. Respect the law and our great men and women in blue. Thank you." So I just wanted to, if you could expand a little bit on what you mean when you say that that's worthy of being deleted from a social media site because it's inciting violence. I want to operate on facts, not narrative.
--:-- Casey Newton: Well, sure. I mean, I think when you spend the entire period after the election saying that it was stolen and then you mask your supporters on the lawn of the Capitol and then you suggest that they just sort of walk into the halls of Congress while the votes are being counted...
--:-- Candace Owens: I'm talking specifically on Twitter, because you said this is right.
--:-- Casey Newton: Well, because what I believe is that we actually should take off-platform behavior into account. I don't think you get to be a terrible person in real life.
--:-- Candace Owens: Thank you for answering my question.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right. Off-platform behavior, you think should count?
--:-- Candace Owens: Yeah, I do think so. So murderers and rapists and everybody who has a platform, fine. But off-platform behavior should be taken care of.
--:-- Casey Newton: These are complicated things. But something else I believe is that the president of the United States should actually be held to a higher standard than everyone else, not the very lowest.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right. Thank you for answering the question.
--:-- Audience Member 4: Hey, folks. Thanks for being here. So I think one thing we can all at least agree in this room is that the political discourse in this country is getting very hot.
--:-- Casey Newton: Really?
--:-- Audience Member 4: So I'm wondering, we're here also talking about innovation. A lot of times when I hear moderation, it's a lot of after the fact, cleaning up the fallout. Do you think that you two can have a place on your platforms to maybe innovate in the space of how do we lower the temperature of conversations as they're happening, rather than just cleaning up the fallout? I'm trying to be wary of this whole idea of censorship because I know you guys are sensitive to that. So I don't know how you see this idea of moderation, even like I said, cooling the temperature of a conversation. Is that something that you've looked into? Is that something that you think is possible?
--:-- Jason Miller: I would say from Gettr's perspective, getting in and trying to influence the conversation or say, "Let's go and take it in this direction," that's not what we're about. We want to have a platform for people to come and actually speak their thoughts and opinions. I think you start getting down a real slippery slope when you start putting up warning labels. That's one thing that we don't do with Gettr. Either it fits the terms of service or it doesn't. As soon as you put up a warning label or some "be warned before you click on this," then it becomes editorializing that takes it into an entirely different direction.
--:-- Jason Miller: For example, the fact that YouTube right now, if you're talking about climate change and it's outside of their particular worldview, they'll throw up a label. Last time I checked, climate change didn't have anything to do with insurrection or any kind of violent activity. I think that's a pretty egregious example. But you have to be very careful if you're taking it from the perspective that you want to guide or manipulate or tone down certain conversations, because then at that point, you really cease to become what you set out to do, which is be a free speech platform.
--:-- Jason Miller: I think the goal, our approach to it, is to try to diversify and get as broad of an audience as possible, not just ideologically. One of the directions we've taken is just to try to get people who aren't necessarily even politics first. For example, Enes Kanter Freedom, the basketball player in the NBA, someone who talks a lot about international issues, but I don't think people view him as a political figure. We have a dozen or so MMA fighters who like to talk about everything from smashing people's brains to cooking, and we're glad to have those perspectives. I think you accomplish that by getting more voices on board rather than trying to suppress people who are passionate.
--:-- Audience Member 4: Do you mind if I clarify? So, like, Twitter, for example. If you're about to retweet something with a comment and you haven't clicked that link, they now say, "Hey, do you think you should read this first before you post?" They don't stop you from doing anything, but they're just kind of nudging you in the direction of saying, "Hey, let's have a productive conversation."
--:-- Jason Miller: They're not going to do that.
--:-- Casey Newton: We got to go to the next question.
--:-- Jason Miller: But to that point, yeah, we're not. Although I don't remember ever seeing that if I'm going to repost something on Twitter from the New York Times. I don't think I've ever gotten one of those. It's only if I'm going to repost something from Breitbart or something like that. So they're picking winners and losers.
--:-- Audience Member 5: One more question. Gentlemen, thank you both for being here. I'm Evan Engel. I'm a producer with Pivot. I have a question about the difference between moderation and censorship, which I can't really see. George, you said you're going to obey the Constitution as your guide, as if our courts are not full of constitutional problems around free speech and trying to decide what's in line with the Constitution and what's not. Jason, you said you're not going to allow hate speech or direct calls to violence. But the second you take that down and you say, "I'm moderating," won't somebody say, "No, I meant it as a joke and you're censoring me"? What is the difference here?
--:-- George Farmer: Well, you're absolutely right. There is a very strong debate to be had about what defines the concept of free speech. The easy answer is that we have to use common law. We have to use what's established currently, what's constitutionally accepted. I go back to the commonly used example: you can't shout fire in a crowded room. That's well known. You can't incite to violence. You can't say, "I'm going to kill you at this particular place and time." That is not allowed under the constitution. It's conspiracy to murder. So as a result, you can't go on a platform and say that. That's a very clear example of what we don't allow.
--:-- George Farmer: There is a difference between moderation and censorship. Censorship is where there is clearly no established political ground or legal ground for discussion around what you're talking about on the platform. For example, COVID-19. There's clearly no legally defined COVID-19 narrative in the courts as to what can and cannot be talked about with regards to COVID-19.
--:-- Audience Member 5: But you're still going to have issues where an elected official gets up and he says, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." And is that a call to violence or is that free speech? And the courts don't know the answer to that. You're going to have to solve that.
--:-- Jason Miller: Yeah. Well, look, of course, at the end of the day, if you're asking, is somebody at some point going to have to make a decision? Yes, they are. I've used this example before in terms of the free speech scale. If you want, zero to 100, we're trying to set the bar as far towards one end in terms of maximum allowable free speech, whereas other social media platforms are probably more in the middle.
--:-- Jason Miller: The other thing I would add is that ultimately, it's going to be the consumer choice for where they want to go. We think that with Gettr, we've really found the sweet spot of making sure that people can express themselves politically, that they can voice their opinions without the threat of being deplatformed or censored or algorithmed out of existence. The whole algorithm game is something we haven't really gone into, but I think it's actually a really big deal. It's effectively just censorship by another name.
--:-- Jason Miller: Each platform is going to have their own terms, whether it be the people who run the platform or their community that are going to have different aspects of input into that. But again, ultimately, it's going to be a consumer choice on where they want to go. I think that having more options for people and decentralizing this is going to be much better than just saying, "Hey, three Silicon Valley tech billionaires get to decide your rights, not just here in the US, but around the rest of the world, too."
--:-- Casey Newton: No, Evan, that's it. Thank you.
--:-- Audience Member 6: This is an honest question. No agenda, really. I'm from a company called Criterion Global. We've been in Miami since 2012. And we focus on growth in international markets, so a lot of LATAM, et cetera. One thing that really struck me is that we talk a lot about the constitution, the continuum of free speech as kind of the premise of your platforms. But you also talked about doing business in Saudi Arabia and I believe Iran. How does that work? You can't download Grindr. How does that work?
--:-- George Farmer: Yeah, that's the most interesting question we've been asked. Sorry, Chris. Sorry, everyone else. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that comes back to the philosophy of what free speech means. What are we actually even talking about here? Because what we can talk about in the US is so different to what we're talking about in Saudi. The reason we have such a large follower news account in Saudi and Iran is because these are highly censored societies which value the ability to speak out beyond the government censors.
--:-- George Farmer: What does free speech mean there? We still have to issue our community guidelines. This is what we operate on in terms of moderation on our own platform. That's why I come back to those things we talked about: inciting violence, doxing, intellectual property theft, pornography. All of these areas are things that we moderate. But beyond that, we are not moderating because, again, you start to get into that subjective territory where free speech in one country means something very different to another. Free speech is important. It is different in Iran. It is different in Saudi. It is different in the US. It is different in the UK. It's different in Sweden. All of these countries have different angles where the people themselves, the consumer, to come back to Jason's answer, the consumer wants to choose what they want to consume and what they want to say on a free speech platform.
--:-- Jason Miller: I would also add that going back to my earlier point about how we take for granted our free speech rights here in the US. Brazil, for example, obviously they wouldn't have a First Amendment or not the same way because it's a different country. They don't have free speech as part of their constitution, which I just kind of assume that every country would. Maybe they look a little bit different. But actually, Deputy Carol Duttoni is writing that and trying to get it passed in Brazil's Congress, which just blows my mind that this massive democracy like that doesn't even have guaranteed free speech. I think that's part of the reason why both Gettr and Parler have done so well in Brazil.
--:-- Jason Miller: You take a look then at their neighbor, Colombia, which does have essentially no censorship law. But as far as how it's applied to the tech community, I think it's really kind of open ended. There are certain countries where I know that we've made the decision we're just not going to invest the time and effort to scale because some of their laws might be too restrictive. But at a certain point, if we do want to scale truly globally, we probably have to go to moderation looking at it differently in certain countries. Obviously, certain things that are allowed here in the US are going to be different than what's allowed in Saudi Arabia or Iran or places like that. But again, it's something we spend a lot of time on.
--:-- Casey Newton: All right, well, that is all the time we have. I appreciate the debate. Jason Miller, George Farmer, round of applause. We'll go.
