One American - Chase Geiser - Free Speech & Big Tech With GETTR CEO Jason Miller & Chase Geiser

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March 12, 2022 - One American - Chase Geiser

27:18

Free Speech & Big Tech With GETTR CEO Jason Miller & Chase Geiser | OAP #76

CEO, GETTR, The Marketplace of Ideas. Former Senior Advisor, President Donald J. Trump.

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	I started this podcast because I noticed a concerted effort to shame America and what it means to be American.
	One American podcast reinforces the values and ideals of America by having conversations with key influencers from all over the world who resonate with the values embodied by Americanism.
	If you believe in things like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and want to be part of the conversation with others who do too, then you're in the right place.
	So before we get into this episode, I'm asking you today as One American to tap the like button below and subscribe to the channel.
	This engagement really helps these conversations reach as many viewers as possible.
	Make sure to comment I subscribed below and I'll do my best to respond to each and every comment.
	my name is chase geyser and i am one american hey this is chase geyser and today we are live with jason miller from getter Jason, are you with me?
	It looks like you might have frozen up.
	So I am here.
	I think I'm unfrozen now.
	So hopefully I'm good.
	Actually, good.
	No, but Chase, thanks for having me and I admired your work for a while now.
	So it's great to join you.
	It's a pleasure.
	So I'm going to cut to a brief word from a sponsor and then we'll get started right away.
	Sounds good.
	In 16 years, it'll be the year 2000.
	He'll be 19 years old.
	What happens if every tax dollar that we pay, 50 to 60% of it's just going to pay the interest on the debt?
	He will be paying for what we lived on.
	We should be investing to allow him to be able to live on something.
	Joe Biden wants an immediate budget freeze, a constitutional amendment to limit spending, and a fair tax bill to guarantee our children's future.
	Delaware's own Joe Biden.
	Isn't that unbelievable?
	I've literally never seen that clip.
	I went through an entire presidential campaign, never saw that.
	Of course, I saw at first when you started to play it, I thought you were going to go into the Neil Kinnick, you know, generations of Bidens and playing football and playing in the grass.
	And I'm the first one to go to college.
	I've never seen this one.
	I mean, what do you think Joe would do if someone showed this to him right now?
	I don't know.
	He definitely wouldn't remember it.
	He can hardly remember his name.
	But this is very true.
	Or where the bathroom is.
	But it's really hit rock bottom for Joe.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But, you know, I've been a fan of Getter for a long time.
	Obviously, Getter is a hot story.
	And I'm in the social media business.
	What I do for my day job is I run a small social media advertising company.
	And, you know, we've seen a lot of different platforms try and fail.
	I wouldn't call Gab a failure, for example, but I think that what a lot of platforms have done in the free speech space is that they've done a really good job of getting new users because there's like a protest sign up that happens with this mass censorship that we see on big tech.
	But the struggle is keeping those users engaged.
	And that's something that I've noticed has been a difference about Getter versus these other alternative platforms is somehow you keep, you found a way to get people to some greater extent to keep logging back in and actually checking their profiles, engaging and commenting.
	Like what has been different about the strategy with Getter that's that's allowed you guys to keep the engagement, not just the user adoption?
	Well, great question.
	And I would say that when we kicked this platform off, I really had two primary goals that I pointed out for the team.
	Number one, I want to make sure that the tech, the user interface was just as good, if not better, than anything Silicon Valley had.
	Because again, to your point, you can get that protest visit of people saying, okay, I'll download the app.
	We'll come check it out.
	But if they look and say it's an inferior product or it's not available on the app stores, or there's just something a little bit kind of hinky about it, it just doesn't quite feel like it clicks.
	They're not going to come back.
	So number one, we had to have the first rate tech to be able to pull this off.
	The second thing is that where I really set the vision out for the entire company, I said, this can't be an American echo chamber.
	This truly has to be global in scope because if we want to scale, if we want to actually take on big tech, then we have to do it well outside of our own borders.
	And then as I started researching things, what I found out is whether it's renegade governments, whether it's big tech trying to shut down voices in other countries as well, everyone across the planet is facing this frustration and challenge with the censorship of free speech.
	And so number one, make sure we have the tech.
	Number two, make sure it's truly a global platform and not just about the U.S. And those are two things we stayed focused on.
	I think it's really helped us to grow.
	And now we're at 5 million users just eight months in.
	Well, congratulations on your user growth.
	Speaking of the tech, has it been difficult for you to find talent?
	Another good question.
	Initially, yes.
	Initially, we had some great engineers that were working on it.
	Is we the other thing that I said early on is our goal is not to become a marketplace competitor in the microblogging sphere simply to Twitter.
	Because as you notice, with Twitter, Twitter's never taken it to that next level because they kind of got to their peak optimization as far as their features and they stalled out.
	In fact, it's only since we've been on the scene over the last six months that we've really started to see Twitter actually talk about new features or start to add new things that make users want to come back.
	But there's a reason why Apple, for example, has a new phone every year or some different version of the phone every six months.
	It's to keep people engaged and keep coming back.
	And we found that with our new features.
	But initially, yes, I'd probably say that maybe two out of every three engineers that we would approach would give us some kind of answer about not wanting to get on the wrong side of big tech.
	I can't go and make Facebook or Google or Twitter one of these guys upset by doing a challenger platform.
	But where I really knew that we kind of hit the big time was a few weeks ago, I had someone who ultimately joined Getter that had a job offer from Google and a job offer from us, and they took the job offer from Getter.
	And first, my first reaction was, Are you sure?
	Like, you know, they probably have better benefits.
	Like, I don't want to, you know, negotiate against myself, but you know, we don't have fancy snacks in the break room, like I'm sure they do at Google.
	But the person said, no, for far too long, I've been told that I'm some kind of weirdo.
	I'm an outcast because I don't cue this leftist ideologue orthodoxy.
	I want to be free to be what I'm about.
	This person said, I'm a registered independent.
	I'm not even a Republican.
	I'm not a conservative, but I don't want to be told how to think.
	And when that person then joined the team, then I was like, you know what?
	We've made it.
	This is something special.
	Well, congratulations on hiring Edward Snowden.
	So I wanted to ask you.
	It's just a joke, folks.
	So I wanted to ask you, speaking of microblogging competitors, when is Getter going to acquire Truth Social?
	So interesting question.
	Look, I do think that, so a couple of things here.
	I do think that a certain point, I think they will get their act together and figure out kind of how they want to proceed forward.
	But at the same time, I do think, look, I've had talks with my team about what it would look like to go and acquire them, as well as some of the other platforms that are out there, because I do think that while we want to have a decentralized approach, want to have more voices, and I think that people are going to be more than willing to have Rumble on their phone, to have Getter, maybe have Truth as well.
	I do think the way that we've gotten off to such an impressive early start, I do think it would make sense if ultimately we found a way to acquire them.
	But I think it's probably a little early to go into any kind of formal conversation on that.
	And look, I spoke with the president night before last, and I'm still in pretty regular contact with him.
	I'm not going to go and push things, but at the right time, I've made it very clear to him that I'd like to find a way to team up.
	And I have his handle reserved.
	And I want to make sure that he has a voice, not just going to the midterms, but I'm pretty sure he's going to run in 2024 and he's going to want a platform that truly works.
	Absolutely.
	Well, and you know, one of the things that is a struggle for platforms just in general is the need for constant content to be published on the platform, right?
	Because without the content, then there's no engagement.
	Without the engagement, there's no user base, et cetera, right?
	And one of the things that TikTok did that was amazing, as many problems, of course, as I have with TikTok, is they figured out a way to really catalyze that endorphin response in new users where you can create a new account and you can make a video that goes viral and 500,000 people see it, you know, within a couple of days.
	So you're like, even if you don't have followers built up, you're experiencing that engagement that makes you want to keep using the platform over and over again.
	So my question for you is, what is sort of like the overall content strategy for Getter moving forward?
	I really love the live stream features that you're slowly kind of launching out.
	I think that you guys are doing a great job.
	I'm seeing some good content on there, but what's what do you guys have a long-term strategy for how to sort of partner with strategic influencers or creators in order to really kind of make some awesome content that's sort of exclusive to the platform?
	Or what's the strategy there for you?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And so I'm going to go and pull up for you here.
	So on the Getter platform, and it's a little tough to see with the light shining, but we have obviously our timeline.
	We have our scroll.
	We have been, it's in the beta testing phase at the moment, but we do have our short video competitor to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
	We've got some stuff coming on here from Ukraine, a number of things that people are posting.
	And so we have launched Vision, and I'd say there are probably about probably a few hundred people that are going through and continuing to test and refine it.
	The short video format really is what drives a lot of the engagement.
	In fact, Zuckerberg said that approximately 65% of all Instagram engagement comes through Instagram Reels.
	There's a reason why they took Instagram Reels and actually moved it over to the main Facebook platform because Facebook itself is dying.
	But the short video clip format, whether it's Reels, whether it's TikTok, is what the younger generation, my 13-year-old, for example, who looked at me like I'm the crazy boomer when it came to the timeline.
	But then, as soon as I said we had the short video component, she's like, Dad, does this mean I can be on Getter?
	I was like, No, not till you're 16.
	We're not gonna allow the kids on here.
	We're not gonna, we're not gonna go and target the preteens.
	Um, so the functionality and also with the live streaming, in fact, President Trump's rally in Arizona that he had back in January had a million people watching his rally on Getter via three different streams.
	That was over Rightside, Real America's Voice, and Newsmax.
	Um, then we had about 775,000 in the last one.
	And then, of course, he has a rally coming up this Saturday.
	Uh, and so the features that we're rolling out, I think, are going to be key.
	But we've also started to add on a number of people doing some partnerships in the UK, Magin Nawaz, who, of course, was just on the Joe Rogan show, Dominique Samuels, who we've added on.
	We have a number of different partners we've added here in the U.S. We're continuing to expand that.
	We've had people who've joined on their own as well.
	In fact, Russell Brand just joined Getter, which is fantastic.
	And I got a follow from Russell Brand, which is the CEO.
	It's kind of cool to be like, Hey, like, you know, Russell Brand follows me on Getter.
	You know, that's that's cool.
	But one other thing, Chase, that I will point out that, and we just literally, literally, this is kind of a hot off the presses thing.
	We allowed people, um, verified users, allowed them to start doing it.
	A smaller group yesterday opened to all verified users on Friday.
	And then, excuse me, on Monday, we're going to open up to everybody.
	When you post on Getter, it'll then appear on Twitter.
	So, you'll have the cross-posting.
	That's awesome.
	And so, we're getting there.
	So, we're making it.
	And then a certain point will expand.
	So, all you have to do is check your timeline on Getter.
	You post there, it'll show up on the other things.
	This will be a game changer because then you don't have to pop back over to Twitter because if you have a lot of followers built up, things like that.
	And so, we're our engineers, these guys have big brains.
	Our CTO, our chief technology officer, this guy has five degrees from MIT.
	In fact, when he said it in his interview, I immediately DM'd the HR lady.
	It was like, okay, this guy's lying.
	Oh, I think I just lost you.
	I don't know what happened here if you cut out, but folks, we will get this buttoned up.
	And as soon as he unfreezes, we will pop right back on over and let him finish the answer to that question.
	Oh, are you there?
	I just saw you for a second.
	There you go.
	You're back.
	You're back.
	Okay, sorry about that.
	It's the as soon as you, you know what?
	I'm going to blame it on you, Chase, because you said Snowden, then all of a sudden we started.
	That was, yeah, whatever you do, do not mention, you know, Snowden or Julian Assange.
	You keep saying it.
	You keep saying it.
	Or Putin or Invader.
	Like, I'm going to start freezing up.
	But no, it's that, it's the features that make it really cool.
	And it's exciting.
	Sometimes you, even as a CEO, become a little bit of the fanboy looking at some of the technology and the things these guys are coming up with.
	But it kind of goes to the point where I stole the line from my former boss that we want to make social media fun again.
	We want to be able to get some enthusiasm back into it.
	And it doesn't have to be the cesspool of negativity like we see on Twitter.
	I didn't realize Bill Gates had said that originally.
	So the next thing I wanted to ask you about is: I really liked what you said about the global strategy.
	And I think that's really insightful and wise that you're taking that approach.
	Obviously, you know, whether it's Joe Rogan as a podcast host or it's Facebook or Twitter or any of these other sort of successful platforms or outlets, you know, their massive growth and engagement really occurred before everything was hyper-political, right?
	Like part of what was cool about Twitter at one point, at least, was that there were people from the left and people from the right because they really got the journalists involved.
	And so you had the left there.
	And then obviously just everybody kind of joined over time.
	Facebook, same way.
	Everybody joined regardless of their politics.
	Joe Rogan's popularity, I attribute in large to the fact that he's had guests of all different walks and beliefs.
	He's got serious beliefs that fall on either the right or the left.
	He's not really obviously one way or the other, despite what the media says.
	How are you going to, or maybe you don't want to, but how are you going to try to grow Getter so that lefties aren't just like, oh, that's the alt-right platform.
	You know, that's kind of what happened to Gab.
	And I don't want to talk any, I don't want to say anything negative about Gab because I love what they're doing.
	I appreciate them.
	But it's a real problem for them from a PR standpoint.
	It's hard for them to grow.
	So you make a really smart point here.
	And this actually, this is part of the reason why I also wanted to make sure we embrace an international strategy to make sure it wasn't in just an American echo chamber that we had points of view and viewpoints from all over the world.
	So people realized there was the variety.
	So before we kicked off, I went and approached, and believe it or not, this isn't fake news.
	I actually do have some Democratic friends.
	And you've been around in Washington long enough, whether you know them from college or from Belly and up to the bar at the local tavern, then you invariably get to know some Democrats.
	I went to a few and said, look, I want to go and get some crazy lefties like you onto the platform.
	And what they said, you know, after kind of their perfunctory, you know, four-letter words, look, it's just, it's too hot right now.
	And the other thing, too, is why would we go and join a platform like yours when we're not getting kicked off of Twitter and Facebook?
	We just don't have a reason to go and shift.
	So one of the approaches that we're taking to make sure that we get the kind of this broad, diverse voice, and we will get some lefties.
	They're starting to trickle in.
	We're really making a push to try to get people who aren't political necessarily at all.
	Maybe they have more of a sports platform.
	Maybe they're cooking.
	Maybe they're into, maybe they're singers.
	And they might have some passionate center-right type ideology, especially around, say, COVID, the mandates, the lockdowns, things of that nature.
	Maybe they question, they question things that we're being forced to think of.
	I think of the, again, I referenced them earlier, but Russell Brand, you referenced Joe Rogan.
	I think these are people who, when they wake up in the morning, they don't think of themselves as political actors.
	They don't wake up and say, hey, I'm going to put on my Republican jersey today, or I'm going to put on my Democrat jersey.
	But I inherently believe that we're being lied to way too often or being manipulated, not just by the government, but by the media, by big tech.
	And they're kind of this divide between the haves and the have-nots.
	And they think we're just going to follow them blindly like sheep.
	So we're making the big push is to bring more of these athletes and entertainers and people from non-traditional ideological viewpoints on board.
	So less of the partisanship, but more of the passionate free speech people.
	And I tell all of my friends, Democrats included, guys, the pendulum is going to swing back.
	When you think of the free speech debates over the last decades or last century, whether it be women's rights or African-American rights or gay rights or anything, a lot of times the free speech debate has been viewed as, say, center-left proposition.
	Well, this is really the first time, at least in my lifetime, where the clampdowns have come on the center and center right.
	The pendulum is going to swing back because what we found out is that once these big tech platforms knew that they could kick off a sitting president of the United States from their platform, it sends out guns out at this point.
	Either you agree with them or they're going to go and put you in a box or put you in some digital timeout.
	And so that's kind of the expansion.
	But I do think that as Twitter and Facebook continue to be crazy with their world forming, I think we will get more people from the left.
	So when I really first noticed that the censorship problem was starting to happen, and this is somebody who works every day in Facebook Ads Manager and deals with terms of services and policies.
	And I follow this because it's my business too.
	I noticed that the censorship really started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
	And having looked into that scandal in some depth, it seems to me like that was really hyped as a bigger problem than it was in conjunction with the Russian collusion hoax, right?
	So if you remember, after Trump won in 2016, the Democrats said it was because of Russian collusion and that it was because Facebook was leaking data via Cambridge Analytica to Russian actors, right?
	And when that happened and Zuckerberg came like a robot to Congress and sipped his water and spoke for like seven hours, and that I noticed a shift in big tech.
	And maybe this is just coincidence.
	I'm sure you would know better than I, but I noticed a shift in the censorship attitude of big tech at that moment.
	It seemed as if big tech became afraid of federal action.
	And so my question for you, and this is the setup for that is, is this big tech censorship just a manifestation of company culture?
	Or is it actually the federal government applying pressure either directly or indirectly on these companies?
	So Gina's question, I'd say it's all of the above.
	And one of the things that you started to hit on, but just go and kind of flesh out this point.
	After 2016, a lot of the progressive left went to Zuckerberg, went to Dorsey, and said, it's all because of you pesky kids that we got Trump.
	You guys built these platforms.
	You allowed him to use it.
	He was able to circumvent the press, the traditional press, circumvent traditional media, go around all these institutions we have in place and talk directly to people.
	Never again can we allow this to happen.
	And so they so ostracized Zuckerberg, for example, that, I mean, they wouldn't even invite him to plug into their charging station.
	I mean, he had to just go and power down, you know, at his own complete, you know, complete factories.
	So I think that's why you saw the, what was kind of the snapback effect with big tech of saying, okay, we're really getting beat up.
	We're getting blamed for Trump.
	So now we have to overcorrect and let's go and start clamping down.
	So for me, where the censorship really became an issue was in January of 2020.
	And we noticed people start to say, hey, this virus is coming from a lab in Wuhan.
	And the big tech platforms were saying, okay, we're going to sentence you to digital jail for daring to blame this on the Chinese, which guess what?
	The virus came from a lab in Wuhan.
	I don't know if it was man-made.
	I don't know if it's traips out by a lazy worker.
	It's got patented Moderna technology in it, man.
	Right.
	But here's the thing.
	Like the virus came from a lab in Wuhan.
	There was a reason why China shut down travel from Wuhan to the rest of the country for Chinese New Year in 2020.
	But not international community.
	But not international.
	You could fly from Wuhan to the US, but you couldn't go from Wuhan to Beijing.
	Okay, guys, the virus came from a lab in China.
	Anyways, but we saw that.
	But then, of course, the most egregious example, even before we got to, even before we got to President Trump being deplatformed, was the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
	And there was, of course, after election is after the election, but Media Research Center did that survey that said one out of every six Biden voter would have reconsidered their vote for Biden if they'd known about the Hunter business dealings.
	And of course, the 10% for the big guy, the Biden business dealings, the broader Biden family.
	Why is that an issue?
	The two countries that were most likely being brought up were Ukraine and China.
	What has us at the precipice of a global conflict, if not a start of a new Cold War, Ukraine.
	What's the true existential threat challenging Western civilization, not just the U.S., but all Western civilization, China?
	These are the two places where the Bidens were making all their money.
	Anyways, the point being is that that's where I really saw that the censorship issue was becoming big.
	But as I started doing my research, I realized just how prevalent this type of discrimination is all around the world.
	In fact, the way that Twitter and Facebook are trying to clamp down on quote unquote Hindu nationalism that is somehow being discriminatory towards Hindus.
	And exactly.
	So now they're attacking them, which is crazy.
	We see President Bolsonaro in Brazil, who, by the way, is on the platform, the way that he's being censored and suspended and things like that by the social media companies.
	So this is much bigger and broader even than just President Trump being deplatformed.
	That's very interesting.
	So let me ask you this.
	You know, 5 million users is awesome.
	And I congratulate you on that.
	That's a serious accomplishment.
	That being said, relative to Facebook and Twitter, there's a gap and that's fine to be expected.
	I think that you're going to narrow that gap for sure over time.
	The point I'm trying to make is, or the question that I'm trying to ask is, have you, obviously you have to comply with Google and Apple terms of service on your platform, but have you, as the leader, CEO of Getter, experienced any pressure from big tech or government entities to increase the censorship on your platform?
	Good question.
	So domestically in the U.S., nothing from any of the quote unquote traditional big tech platforms, obviously that run the Apple Store and the Google Play Store, nothing at all, which has been good.
	There have, obviously, with regard to some of the international partners with regard to the EU and not just on, say, their GDPR type rules that are becoming more and more onerous.
	But as you look on some of the clampdowns that they're having with some of the international aspects.
	And look, we work to be constructive partners with governments who have different rules and regulations pertaining to speech.
	But we have seen in a couple of places where some of these governments have really started to target and go after individuals for what we've considered ridiculous reasons.
	Right now, it's really just been, say, requests.
	It hasn't been, say, an order where anything's become seriously problematic.
	But it's a matter of time.
	It's a matter of when, not, if that becomes a broader conflict.
	And I'm sure we'll end up in several places being the tip of the spear for some of these legal challenges to continue to fight for people's speech freedoms, even if they're not fighting for them themselves.
	So, you know, I've been a big fan of Steve Jobs for a long time.
	I've been an Apple user since I was a little kid.
	I think that what he did was incredibly innovative over and over again.
	He was just such an innovator, such a leader.
	And I've studied his work.
	I read the biography by Walter Isaacson, which I recommend for anyone interested.
	And the reason I bring him up is because, you know, he was famously fired from his own company in the 80s because he was trying to invest money and innovating new products and they wanted to continue to invest in the Apple II, which had been their bestseller.
	And ultimately, the board overruled him.
	And so the reason I mentioned that is because I want to ask you, how is the company culture and the corporate structure set up at Getter so that when there is pressure on leadership at the company, you can stand by your principles without having to fear for losing your position or because it's easy to buy boards, right?
	Nobody makes statues and committees for a reason, right?
	And so how do you keep that corporate integrity intact?
	Well, I think because this isn't just purely a business, but it's also a passion project, I think, for everybody involved.
	And so whether it be the board members, whether it be our investors, we have two international investment funds that are our initial investors for the platform.
	Everybody is very much bought into the free speech aspect and even more specific about how we need to use this free speech aspect to bring freedom and democracy around the world, how we want to take on and ultimately take down the CCP, for example.
	And so everyone's really bought in on this mission.
	Does it mean we agree on everything?
	No.
	Of course, there are going to be little speed bumps that happen along the way, like there is with any family conversation.
	But since we're actually driven by an idiot star as opposed to as opposed to just a bottom line profit aspect, I think that changes the dynamic and really what our focus is here.
	Because again, it's all about trust.
	Once you lose that trust, once people think that you're not committed to the cause, then the value proposition, so much of the value proposition of the Getter platform goes away.
	Right.
	So where can people find you and follow you?
	Absolutely.
	So Getter, G-E-T-T-R, which I very, in a very subtle way, have it plastered all behind me.
	So if you've been watching here and you didn't see the G-E-T-T-R completely just all in your face, so you can go to getter.com.
	You can go to the Apple Store, G-E-T-T-R, or the Google Play Store, G-E-T-T-R.
	Download us.
	It's super quick.
	There's no waiting list.
	No waiting list.
	You can get right in.
	You can get it right in and start using it.
	And we'll ask you to say, come check out the platform, whether it be some great folks, whether it be Steve Bannon, whether it be Dinesh D'Souza, whether it be Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Russell Brand, Joe Rogan's on the platform, Jorge Mazvedal.
	I know he lost on Saturday, but he stole our boy, Gomez.
	Enos Cantor Freedom, who's on the platform, President Bolsonaro from Brazil.
	It's really exciting just the way we've seen this off and grow.
	And I'm glad to be over for the ride.
	Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
	I appreciate you taking the time of day.
	It was an honor and a pleasure to have you.
	And let's stay in touch, okay?
	All right.
	Thanks, Chase.
	Appreciate it.
	And continued success with the show.
	And look forward to chatting with you again.
	Take care.

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