Elon Musk’s attempt to restore some degree of freedom of speech to Twitter was the platform’s last hope to remain a relevant social media company, GETTR Chief Executive Officer Jason Miller wrote in a Town Hall op-ed published Friday. With the deal now almost certainly dead in the water, alternative platforms with the vision Twitter once had – to be an open digital town square where people can share with each other – are rising to the occasion.
 
The piece by Miller reads, in part:
 
“Elon Musk’s failed takeover of Twitter generated countless headlines the past few months and brought about a renewed debate over the role of free speech in social media. The one thing it didn’t generate however was the only thing that matters: results.
 
“Musk’s announcement that he is backing out of his high-stakes gamble came as no surprise to anyone who has been watching Big Tech in recent years. His proposed acquisition of Twitter was destined to fail from the start because the problems plaguing Twitter run far deeper than anything that can be fixed by a new CEO. From political discrimination to bots to an inability to connect with the “TikTok Generation,” and a complete lack of business focus or vision, Twitter is a fundamentally broken product that places “wokeness” over freedom…and it’s Twitter’s users who suffer.”
 

[Read the full op-ed here]

“The question now isn’t what’s next for Twitter. The question is what’s next after Twitter. The answer lies with alternative platforms that the free market has built in response to users clamoring for a social media company that hasn’t anchored itself to censorship; that will protect users’ right to hear and be heard; and that doesn’t seek to join the Silicon Valley social media oligopoly, but rather to challenge it. 

“One such challenger is Rumble, the video hosting platform challenging YouTube’s marketplace dominance. Former Trump aide John McEntee intends to disrupt the dating app social media landscape with “The Right Stuff.” And GETTR, the all-in-one free speech platform we launched last summer, aims to challenge Twitter and other Big Tech titans by combining microblogging, livestreaming, and short video creation into a single app, free from political discrimination.”
 
Today, GETTR boasts nearly 6 million users in 192 different countries, more than 160 million livestream views, and 3 million views on Vision, GETTR’s short-video platform, which launched in June to challenge TikTok and Instagram Reels. Earlier this month, the platform also released Direct Message for all of its users.
 
GETTR remains the fastest growing social media platform in history, having marked its first million users less than three days after its formal launch on July 4, 2021. By comparison, Twitter took 24 months to attract one million users while Facebook took 10 months and even Instagram still took 3 months.