Gettr markets itself as a “non-bias social network,” where users are able to post content more freely than Twitter… Miller has also suggested that “left of center” users attempting to join the platform were being “caught” and having content removed. Mechanisms are also in place to allow administrators to add and remove trending topics, suggesting that the company wants to preserve the ability to control narratives itself. Miller claims that Gettr was able to attract 1 million users in the first 3 days after launch, with 1.4 million in the first week.11 Further stories12 promoted claims that Gettr surpassed 1.5 million users after 11 days; however, according to our analysis, it did not appear to reach this number until the first week of August. The @support account – which every user automatically follows upon creation – shows 1.54 million users as of August 9 After the first week, user creation rates have largely plateaued, with growth starting to dip in the latter part of July. Of the 1.5 million users now on Gettr, approximately 372,000 have made a post (including resharing an existing post). Of those, ≈45% have made a single post, with ≈85% making 10 or fewer. Approximately 234,000 users have made a comment—of those, ≈40% have made a single comment, with ≈85% making 10 or fewer.

Gettr allows users to link to a website in their profiles. Of the nearly 1.5 million users on Gettr, less than 5% use this feature. While some users use this feature to link to their website (e.g., Sean Spicer links to SeanSpicer.com) or to signal personal values or political affinity (such as linking to DonaldJTrump.com), other users use this feature for spam and advertisements. Indeed, the most frequent ten URLs are all either spam or troll content. The most common URL is a broken link to YouTube associated with nearly 1,750 profiles that appear to have been created as part of an automated spam campaign (notably, most of the accounts with this link in their profile have been suspended). The second and third most common URLs are adult scam websites. Also in the ten most common URLs is a link to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” on YouTube (to assist the phenomenon of “rickrolling”). The dominance of spam in the most common URLs indicates a fair number of trolling or otherwise inauthentic accounts.

Gettr also does not implement industry standard solutions for detection of Child Exploitation Imagery (CEI), most notably PhotoDNA. Not only were we able to upload multiple images in the PhotoDNA test image set (a selection of benign images stored in the PhotoDNA database for testing purposes), but a sampling of images from posts and comments on the site yielded 16 matches against production PhotoDNA datasets, which were subsequently reported by SIO to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Instead, Gettr appears to rely entirely on community reporting mechanisms to find sensitive content and illegal child-related imagery. An entirely communitybased detection mechanism for sensitive and illegal content is extremely limited and prone to abuse, as such posts and comments may not be seen by users inclined to report them. Users may also not be aware of the reporting mechanisms themselves, or even what content qualifies as “child-related crime” – particularly given the fabricated child-related crime conspiracies that flourish on Gettr and similar platforms.

The user growth of Gettr appears to have been exaggerated, apparently having only reached 1.5 million at the beginning of August. Even with current numbers, spam accounts comprise a significant part of the userbase, and most accounts appear largely idle. In terms of posts and comments, growth has plateaued.