Last Updated on February 12, 2022
Leaked WhatsApp messages between Jason Miller and Miles Guo suggests Guo has far more influence over GETTR than previously claimed.
Speaking to Tim Pool on Wednesday, Miller, the CEO of the “free speech” social media network GETTR, was quizzed about his relationship with exiled Chinese billionaire Miles Guo. GETTR was based on a nearly identical platform called Getome, then renamed Getter, which was hosted by Guo’s GTV, before it was relaunched as GETTR in July of 2021.
When asked, Miller said that while Guo does not have “a direct financial or leadership role within the company,” he admitted that “one of the firms that’s invested in [GETTR] has a heavy influence from Miles’s family foundation.” Miller stated that while he does “get ideas and hears things from Miles… he is not [his] boss.”
However, leaked WhatsApp messages acquired by leftist news outlet Mother Jones suggest that Guo does actually have a lot more influence than Miller claimed. The messages between Miller and Guo center around Joe Rogan’s remarks earlier this month.
On his podcast, Rogan labelled GETTR as being “fugazi,” for combining Twitter and GETTR follower counts together, something the site has now reversed.
In the exchange, which included audio messages from Guo and texts from Miller, Miller said the situation was not good, but that he had attempted to smooth things over with Rogan’s producer.
“It’s just a misunderstanding. There is no problem Jason,” Guo said in an audio message, “Joe Rogan is a big help to us. We are friend. We don’t want to do any bad things to this guy. We need to respect him. Just…explain to him what happened… We solve the misunderstanding… We must keep it gentleman-style. No fight back. We are friends. We need to respect him,” Guo continued, arguably giving Miller instructions.
“Exactly,” Miller replied. “I was very humble when I spoke with his producer yesterday.”
“That’s why I love you. You’re a 100 percent gentlemen,” Guo said. “You’re the super gentleman. That’s why you have the extremely enemy. Miles Guo is too many enemy, Steve Bannon too many enemy. We are easy create the enemy. That’s our trouble… We need to learn from you… That’s why you good CEO in GETTR. Thank you very much I learn a lot.”
Due to Guo’s broken English, the last sentence in the second message is harder to decipher, but can potentially be transcribed as follows: “Thank you for the GETTR, you sacrifice your patience and you are a big benefit for me and to GETTR,” lending more credence to the idea that Guo has control over the site.
The message exchange seemed to be initially private between Miller and Guo, but was forwarded on by Guo to a group chat of around 20 people:
“Regarding Joe Rogan, last night, we discussed with Jason to display the number of followers separately: GETTR followers and total followers,” Guo wrote in the WhatsApp chat that originally appeared in Chinese. “The web version has been launched, and the mobile version is also being submitted. After all the changes are made, Jason should respond to this issue. An announcement to explain.”
In a comment to Mother Jones, Miller said that Guo was just “one of many” people who offered him advice over the Rogan debacle. “I received suggestions from several dozen people that day, ranging from policy guidance to chewing me out,” Miller said. “Pointing out that we need to better communicate with some of our high-profile users isn’t exactly inside baseball.”
Mother Jones further alleged that legal documents leaked to them show an even closer connection between Miller, Guo and GETTR:
The social media app has said it is headquartered at 3 Columbus Circle in New York, but according to the document, the paychecks for GETTR employees bear a different address: 162 East 64th Street, an Upper East Side building that houses Guo’s commercial and nonprofit ventures.
National File was one of the first news outlets to publicly connect Guo and GETTR, highlighting that GETTR had received around 1,200 strange reviews from Chinese linked accounts, many mentioning Guo’s and Steve Bannon’s organization, known as the New Federal State of China.
The group positions itself as a government-in-waiting, ready to take over China after the fall of the CCP. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the address of the “Himalaya Embassy” of the New Federal State of China is also 162 East 64th Street.
In August last year, a team from the Stanford Internet Observatory and Cyber Policy Center analyzed the site. According to this analysis, the parties responsible for creating and promoting GETTR “are not transparent,” because, “while Miller has distanced Gettr from Miles Guo, the app appears to still be developed by a Guo-linked development team.”
