Now GETTR can no longer import Twitter content

When it turns one week since its official launch on July 4, GETTR doesn’t seem to be doing too well. And as much as its creator, former advisor to Donald Trump Jason Miller, gets his mouth full every time he talks about the social network he has launched, everything indicates that this service will be unable to achieve the success that intended, and even more to become an alternative to Twitter for a majority.

It all started when the service had barely completed its first 24 hours, at which point we learned that it had been hacked. An unfortunate debut, then GETTR’s lack of security image It was certainly able to act as a deterrent for many people to sign up and start using the service. According to the hacker, he was able to access the private data of the accounts of some “star” users of the service, while Miller claimed that it had not been the case, and that he had only been able to change their descriptions, and that the security flaw was corrected in minutes .

Further, GETTR also faced the massive publication of adult content, published at least in theory to check if GETTR really does not apply censorship to any type of content. The result of the test was that many feeds were filled with images of different Pokémon performing various sexual practices, among other content of a more or less similar nature. Some of these publications were deleted from the service.

One of the features that GETTR was promoted with was the possibility of importing our content, that is, our publications, from Twitter. In this regard, it must be clarified that we are not talking about a function that automatically publishes in GETTR what we currently publish on Twitter, no. The idea was that users could “jump” to the new social network without having to start from scratch, that is, keeping their Twitter message history, but leaving Jack Dorsey’s social network to stay on Miller’s.

Although the first days this function has been active, allowing its users to make the change, as we can read on Mashable Twitter has decided to put an end to this possibility, so since a few hours it is no longer possible to import the message history. This, of course, has outraged Miller, who has published an official statement about it … yes, indeed, on Twitter, from which we extract the following excerpt:

«Twitter has prevented users from importing their existing tweets to GETTR, the new free speech platform that challenges social media oligarchs, preventing people from accessing their own hard work, creativity, and original content.«.

pic.twitter.com/z5cedMaUQa

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) July 10, 2021

In the first instance, anger is understandable for several reasons: first, because since during the first days it was possible and now it is no longer possible, seems like a set limitation to this, to prevent GETTR from being able to import the messages that its users previously published on Twitter. And second, because as a result of this the service has run out of a tool that was very useful to facilitate migration and to fill the network with content.

However, claiming that this measure prevents people’s access to their own content is so absurd that it borders on the limits of surrealism. Users continue to be able to freely access their content… wherever they published it. If tomorrow, God forbid, I stop writing in MuyComputer to do it in any other medium, in a personal blog or in an e-fanzine, I will be able to continue accessing what I have published, in the place where I have published it , I will not pretend to republish it elsewhere. I will be able to cite it (and that can still be done in GETTR), but not move it from one site to another.

And even if it could do it, it would be absurd for MuyComputer to enable the means so that it could do it automatically, it would not make any sense. And yet that is what Miller claims of Twitter, a highway to be able to fill its own service with content, by emptying the original one. Claiming something like that and getting angry when the answer is negative, I find it questionable, regardless of the political readings that this situation has.

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