Trump aide's 'free speech' platform stiffed IT firm $3 million: lawsuit

Gettr, the right-wing alternative social media platform founded by former President Donald Trump's adviser Jason Miller, is facing a lawsuit alleging it stiffed an information technology company out of $3 million it owed them, Messenger reported on Friday.

"The tech company, TierPoint LLC, claims it entered into a contract with social media company Gettr in February 2022 to perform 'various forms of IT related services,' including bandwidth and cloud services, according to the Manhattan State Supreme court suit," reported Ben Feuerherd. "Gettr reported having 7.5 million users as of March."

Miller is no longer affiliated with Gettr, having left his position in February to go back to Trump's re-election campaign.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

According to the lawsuit, TierPoint "fully performed its contractual obligations" for Gettr, but the company has blown off invoices billed between November 2022 and June 2023. The suit includes all the unpaid invoices, which amount to $3,176,090. Gettr has declined to comment on the issue.

Despite having been founded as a supposedly "free speech" friendly alternative to Twitter (since rebranded X by tech billionaire Elon Musk), Gettr has faced its own controversies over what content is allowed on the platform; a report last year suggested the site was banning users who are critical of Guo Wengui, a billionaire Chinese dissident with ties to Trump strategist Steve Bannon who is scheduled to stand trial for fraud next year.

Many other supposed "free speech" Twitter clones have ended up mired in controversy.

Gab, one of the first such apps to gain traction, has become a haven for white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Parler, another such site, was famously used by the January 6 rioters in real time, and after a brief failed attempt to sell the platform to Hitler-praising rapper Kanye "Ye" West, it was shut down in April.