By Hannah Gais and Megan Squire

Two years since mainstream social media sites removed former President Donald Trump for using their services to incite an insurrection against the U.S. government, a growing constellation of “alt-tech” sites has continued to provide hard-right extremists safe haven for fundraising, spreading propaganda and organizing.

The Southern Poverty Law Center obtained, reviewed and analyzed data estimating the number of visitors and the popularity rankings for 12 prominent “alt-tech” sites. These websites range from copycats of popular mainstream social media sites, such as YouTube, to message boards and fundraising services. We found that the majority of “alt-tech” sites, whose purveyors emphasize minimal or nonexistent content moderation, have developed and sustained a dedicated user base. This stability allows hard-right extremists to resist some of the repercussions, such as loss of audience or funding streams, that result from deplatforming, when tech companies act to prevent an individual or a group from using their products.

The websites that the SPLC analyzed represent the range of services these alternative platforms offer to users. These include fundraising sites (SubscribeStar, GiveSendGo), internet message boards (4chan, 8kun and Patriots.Win), video streaming platforms that may or may not have fundraising capabilities (Rumble, Odysee, Cozy.TV) and Facebook and Twitter copycats (Gab, Parler, Truth Social and Gettr).

The entrenchment of “alt-tech” comes as a result of not only growing demand following mass deplatformings in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection but also as a result of the industry’s purveyors’ prominence within the right. Whether through an association with popular political figures – such as Trump or up-and-coming politicos – or courting popular right-wing content creators, the most successful “alt-tech” leaders have presented their platforms as crucial to the right’s political success and survival.

“I think a lot of [“alt-tech” platforms] are built on sand, so to speak. They tend to hype or inflate their actual usage, importance and finances,” said Emmi Bevensee, co-founder of SMAT, a tool that helps journalists, activists and researchers track hate speech and misinformation online.

“But that being said, in general, gross activity is still trending upwards on many of them. Notably around disturbing topics, such as anti-trans conspiracies,” Bevensee continued.

Far from gone and not forgotten

Five of the 12 sites that the SPLC analyzed regularly ranked among the top 10% of domains in the United States, according to data from the network security technology company Cisco.

Each day, Cisco’s Umbrella product releases a list of the top 1 million internet sites, ranked by how many users issue requests for them through passive DNS, or “domain name system,” usage. DNS is a protocol that permits computers to translate human-readable domain names, such as google.com, to IP addresses so browsers can find internet resources. SPLC also accessed data from SimilarWeb, a website analytics company that tracks and ranks sites based on the number of visitors.

Among the top-performing sites is Rumble, a Peter Thiel-backed video streaming site whose featured users include Trump and other antidemocracy, hard-right personalities. Throughout 2022 Rumble consistently ranked among the top 5% of domains in the United States. SimilarWeb ranks Rumble among the top 150 most visited sites in the country, having received 337 million visitors between September and November.

SimilarWeb also listed among the top 500 most visited sites in the country 4chan, a message board that, among other things, the white supremacist terrorist who carried out an attack in Buffalo, New York, in May cited as influential on his worldview. (As of December 2022, 4chan ranked at 349 among U.S.-based audiences.)

Other popular domains, according to Cisco data, included: Odysee, a decentralized streaming site whose vice president Julian Chandra stated that a “Nazi that makes videos about the superiority of the white race” does not warrant removal; Gab, whose former users include Robert Bowers, the man accused of murdering 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue in 2018; and Truth Social, a social media website founded by Trump.

Finally, three websites regularly ranked in the top 20–25% of Cisco Umbrella 1 Million top domains. These include Patriots.Win (formerly TheDonald.Win), whose users called for violence in the run-up to the 2021 insurrection; GETTR, a Twitter-like platform founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller and Parler, another Twitter copycat that was removed from the Google Play and Apple app stores and lost its hosting infrastructure after the Jan. 6 attack.

“People are really waking up”

Capitalizing on mainstream social media outlets deplatforming hard-right users promoting hate speech, COVID-19 misinformation and election denialism, “Alt-tech” sites welcomed such content and leveraged midterm congressional candidates’ affiliations with their sites in order to boost their brands.

“People are really waking up to what’s going on right now. We’re just happy to be in the middle of this,” Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The August segment focused on Rumble welcoming Andrew Tate, a former reality TV star, to the platform after he had been removed from several mainstream social media sites for hate speech. Tate has an extensive record of misogynistic comments, including a claim that female rape victims ought to “bear some responsibility” for being assaulted.

The 2022 midterm elections offered “alt-tech” sites a chance to prove their centrality to the GOP establishment. However, SPLC’s review of data from both Cisco and SimilarWeb indicate that the election didn’t impact popularity rankings of GETTR, Gab or Rumble.

J.D. Vance, a prominent financial backer of Rumble, won a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio and cited his investments through his venture capital firm as evidence that he cares about job creation. SPLC reached out to Vance for comment regarding his continued investment in Rumble and he said TKTKTK.

GETTR, the Jason Miller-run Twitter copycat, announced “wall-to-wall,” multiday coverage, including “exclusive last-minute campaign updates” from pro-Trump favorites such as failed Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and Thiel-ally Blake Masters. Miller subsequently joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago as the former president announced his 2024 electoral bid.

And Gab, the one-time beleaguered social media site, created a minor news cycle of its own, after the company’s CEO Andrew Torba endorsed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and U.S. senate candidate Blake Masters. Mastriano used Gab, which is based in Pennsylvania, to promote his campaign and paid the platform $5,000 for “consulting” services. However, following growing scrutiny, both Mastriano and Masters issued statements trying to distance themselves from Torba, and Mastriano ceased his use of the platform for campaign work.

“Alt-tech” stragglers

Other “alt-tech” sites demonstrated a downward decline in 2022. These include the message board 8kun (formerly 8chan), the fundraising site GiveSendGo and Patriots.Win.

8kun changed its name following several web services companies deplatforming it in 2019 in the wake of multiple white supremacist terrorist attacks, whose perpetrators used the site to distribute their racist screeds and propaganda. The message board lost its host only after a third mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which took place in August 2019. In addition to hosting terroristic content, 8kun/8chan was the preferred platform of choice for “Q,” an anonymous figure who claimed to have insider knowledge of then-President Trump’s efforts to take down a cabal of his enemies, known as the “deep state.”

“Q” ceased posting on 8kun in November 2020. Someone claiming to be “Q” resumed posting on 8kun in June 2022, but data reviewed by the SPLC indicate that this return appears to have done little to drive traffic to the site. While 8kun’s domain popularity rose between June and September of 2022, it suffered another decline between then and November. In November, around the election, 8kun briefly eclipsed 4chan in terms of domain popularity, but the site’s unstable popularity rankings since 2019 make it unclear if such momentum can last.

GiveSendGo, Parler and Patriots.Win struggled to regain their post-2020 election audiences. Patriots.Win dipped in 2022, settling in at the top 25% of Cisco Umbrella's 1 Million list, and GiveSendGo’s highest traffic period appeared to coincide with a data breach in early 2022. While Parler, which was deplatformed in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, experienced a similar dip, an Oct. 17, 2022 announcement that “Ye” (previously known as Kanye West) planned to acquire the site caused its domain popularity to rise. However, the site’s popularity has yet to return to 2020 levels.