Lawfare Archive: Content Moderation Comes for Parler and Gettr
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From September 9, 2021: Let’s say you’re a freedom-loving American fed up with Big Tech’s effort to censor your posts. Where can you take your business? One option is Parler—the social media platform that became notorious for its use by the Capitol rioters. Another is Gettr—a new site started by former Trump aide Jason Miller.
Unfortunately, both platforms have problems. They don’t work very well. They might leak your personal data. They’re full of spam. And they seem less than concerned about hosting some of the internet’s worst illegal content. Can it be that some content moderation is necessary after all?
Today, we’re bringing you another episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with David Thiel, the big data architect and chief technical officer of the Stanford Internet Observatory. With his colleagues at Stanford, David has put together reports on the inner workings of both Parler and Gettr. They talked about how these websites work (and don’t), the strange contours of what both platforms are and aren’t willing to moderate, and what we should expect from the odd world of “alt-tech.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Marissa Wong, Internat Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare |
| 0:14.3 | for January 18, 2006. |
| 0:18.6 | On December 23rd, Secretary of State Marco Rubio barred five Europeans associated with content |
| 0:24.3 | moderation efforts in the European Union from entering the United States, an order that they |
| 0:30.0 | be deported if found in the U.S. Rubio justified the ban by accusing the Europeans of leading, |
| 0:35.8 | quote, organized efforts to coerce American |
| 0:38.7 | platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose, unquote. |
| 0:45.9 | This followed a series of moves by the Trump administration against content moderation laws |
| 0:50.6 | overseas. For today's archive, I chose an episode from September 9th, |
| 0:56.0 | 2021, in which Evelyn Dweck and Quinta Teresic spoke with David Thiel, |
| 1:02.0 | the big data architect and chief technical officer of the Stamford Internet Observatory, |
| 1:07.0 | about content moderation, or the lack thereof, on two alt-social media sites, Parlor and Getter. |
| 1:27.1 | I'm Quinta Jurec, and this is the Lawfare podcast, September 9th, 2021. |
| 1:34.8 | Let's say you're a freedom-loving American fed up with big tech's efforts to censor your posts. |
| 1:41.2 | Where can you take your business? |
| 1:43.2 | One option is Parlor, the social media platform that became |
| 1:46.9 | notorious for its use by the capital rioters. Another is Getter, a new site started by former |
| 1:54.3 | Trump aide, Jason Miller. Unfortunately, both platforms have problems. They don't work very well. |
| 2:01.8 | They might leak your personal data. |
| 2:04.2 | They're full of spam. |
| 2:06.2 | And they seem less than concerned about hosting some of the Internet's worst illegal content. |
| 2:12.4 | Can it be that some content moderation is necessary after all? |
... |
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