Podcaster Joe Rogan opened a GETTR account Sunday after Twitter suspended several high-profile individuals in recent days and called on others to join him.
Rogan’s move to the upstart social media website, chaired by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, came as Twitter suspended the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she posted information about COVID-19 vaccines that Twitter said violated its terms and services.
Before Greene’s ban, Twitter also suspended the account of mRNA vaccine technology contributor Dr. Robert Malone last week, just days before he was interviewed by Rogan. Over the weekend, Twitter also temporarily suspended media company Grabien’s account after it posted a video that included an interview with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who criticized pharmaceutical corporations. Malone and Grabien’s founder, Tom Elliott, also have GETTR accounts.
Responding to her suspension, Greene wrote Monday that she did not violate Twitter’s so-called “five strikes” policy,” arguing that Twitter suspended her account twice in error over the past year.
“This is beyond censorship of speech,” Greene also wrote. “I’m an elected Member of Congress representing over 700,000 US tax paying citizens and I represent their voices, values, defend their freedoms, and protect the Constitution.”
In a separate post, Greene proclaimed Twitter “will be irrelevant and will lose [its] grip on American politics” with recent suspensions as well as more and more high-profile people joining other social media platforms.
Malone, for his part, wrote on Substack that he believed his Twitter account—which had more than 500,000 followers—would be ultimately banned. On the platform, Malone often posted content that was critical of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, describing such rules as unethical.
“Today it did. Over a half million followers gone in a blink of an eye. That means I must have been on the mark, so to speak. Over the target,” he wrote on Substack. “It also means we lost a critical component in our fight to stop these vaccines being mandated for children and to stop the corruption in our governments, as well as the medical-industrial complex and pharmaceutical industries.”
Twitter shares were down about 1 percent by midday trading on Monday.