An ABC investigation has uncovered how Australian followers of an anti-Chinese government movement are censoring critics on a "free speech" social media platform.
Twitter look-alike app Gettr bills itself as a platform which is "defending free speech" and has become a safe space for divisive personalities and those spreading conspiracies about COVID-19 and President Joe Biden's family.
Launched last July, Gettr claims it has 4.5 million users and its high-profile accounts include former Trump luminaries such as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, as well as Australian politicians Liberal senator Alex Antic and One Nation candidate George Christensen.
The former US president himself is reportedly considering joining the app after the disastrous rollout of his own social media platform, TRUTH Social.
Gettr has also attracted members of the New Federal State of China (NFSC), a political movement founded by Mr Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon and exiled billionaire Guo Wengui.
The pair have used the platform to boost their anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) credentials and Mr Bannon has spruiked Gettr as being outside the moderation policies present on "big tech oligarchs" such as Twitter.
But insiders have revealed Gettr is actually subjected to round-the-clock monitoring by NFSC members, who flag content for take-down.
Criticism on the platform of Mr Bannon and Mr Guo, their organisations and Gettr itself is often quickly identified by NFSC members and removed, contrary to the platform's mission to combat "cancel culture".
Farms for the faithful
When Mr Bannon and Mr Guo launched the NFSC from a boat anchored near the Statue of Liberty in New York in 2020, they also established the Himalaya Supervising Organization (HSO) to support its cause.
The HSO network is spread across the world and its local branches in each country, referred to as Himalaya Farms, serve as a base of operations for its online and offline activities.
The branches can be found across the United States, Australia, UK, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Spain, Italy, Germany, and New Zealand.
Tens of thousands of accounts have joined Himalaya Farm servers on messaging service Discord — at least two chat rooms within the servers, seen by the ABC, are dedicated to monitoring Gettr 24/7.
Followers are vetted before gaining access to the "Gettr reporting room". They're required to provide a copy of their passport, records of donations to NFSC-aligned groups and examples of writings that show support to the movements and its leaders.
Once initiated, they are trained to monitor for what they deem "suspicious" content, which is often expressions of pro-CCP sentiments or comments critical of the NFSC movement.
The rank-and-file of these verified followers include "patrollers" who clock-in for two-hour shifts to identify and flag "offensive" posts or accounts to "administrators" who then review them for deletion.
Another former member of the NFSC movement, Lisa Chen, who was active in these Discord channels said posts that questioned Mr Guo on Getter would be deleted "in a couple of minutes".
"Gettr is said to fight against cancel culture, but in fact, it is a total supporter of cancel culture," Ms Chen said.
Several deleted posts and comments identified by patrollers include one questioning transparency of the Rule of Law foundation, a charity co-founded by Mr Bannon and Mr Guo.
Opinions that NFSC-aligned censors deemed as pro-CCP were also deleted.
Accounts that are flagged for deletion have also dropped off the purported free-speech platform, including one Gettr user whose account disappeared after posting Mr Guo might soon be charged for contempt of court in reference to legal cases the businessman is facing in the United States.
One censor took a screenshot of the post and wrote: "attacking Mr Guo, cancel account". Within one hour, an administrator replied the "account has been cancelled".
John Pan, was once a loyal supporter of Mr Guo and the movement but left after becoming disillusioned.
He was then subjected to harassment from Mr Guo and his followers.
He said he registered an account on Gettr in his own name days after the platform was launched but within 12 hours, and before he posted anything, it was taken down.
Mr Pan said insiders in the chatrooms sent him screenshots showing his account was flagged by patrollers.
"Gettr is just a dishonest website," Mr Pan said.
"The censorship system is even heavier than websites based in China."
It is unclear how these take-downs are actioned within Gettr, but a spokeswoman for the company said it worked with users and "super volunteers" to identify activity which violated Gettr's terms of services and community guidelines.
She claimed "thousands of CCP troll accounts and bots have directed their attention" towards Gettr, and added it would defend platform users from "malicious nation-state actors".
"Gettr platform moderation is performed by both artificial intelligence and a team of human moderators trained in multiple languages popular on our platform," the spokeswoman said.
"As part of this, Gettr works with experienced US-based third-party vendors and a globally distributed team of full and part-time moderation support staff, and like other social media companies, this includes both platform users and super volunteers."
The spokeswoman said Gettr did not have a policy of banning criticism of "specific individuals, groups of individuals, or political movements, including but not limited to Mr Guo or Mr Bannon".
"The content moderation carried out by our moderators is regularly reviewed to ensure that our moderators conduct their work … without favour or disfavour to any person, group, or political viewpoint," she said.
The ABC emailed questions to representatives to Himalaya Farm. They did not respond.
'Nobody can stop you'
As well as removing undesirable content, Ms Chen said followers were encouraged to register multiple Gettr accounts and other social media platforms, and to use fake profiles.
The ABC has seen chatroom administrators instruct accounts to write glowing comments about the NFSC and its leaders in English.
"They asked us to spread Guo's words everywhere, post it as widely as possible, on every account users we followed, " Ms Chen said.
"They said it (Gettr) is a platform for English audiences, especially American audiences."
Ms Chen said members were also told to follow certain people, including Mr Pompeo and Mr Bannon.
The Gettr spokeswoman said in response to questions around fake profiles: "Anyone who believes in free speech and abides by our Terms of Service is welcome to use Gettr, including supporters of Mr Guo."
Neither Mr Bannon nor Mr Guo responded to ABC questions, but the pair have been prominent promoters of the platform, with the latter's account referring to the app as "Miles Guo's Gettr", in reference to his English name.
The Gettr spokeswoman said Mr Guo had no leadership role or daily involvement with the company.
The spokeswoman added, however, one of its financial backers was an international investment fund "that has ties with, but is not controlled or managed by, the Guo Family Foundation".
"Mr Guo is a passionate ally of Gettr and believes in its mission of fighting political censorship," she said.
With the recent plan to purchase Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk who has promised to position it as a free speech platform, the future and appeal of Gettr remains unclear.
In an interview in the same week Gettr launched, Mr Bannon praised it for being a more tolerant environment for free speech than Twitter and predicted it would boom just like Fox News did in the 90s.
"The power of Gettr is that all of those ideas can be discussed on an open forum … and nobody can stop you," he said.
