Two hours after former President Donald Trump previewed a forthcoming social media network designed to “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” the hacking collective Anonymous gained access to the platform, created fake accounts, and posted lewd content.
According to The New York Times:
…hackers had gained access to a private version of the social network, creating fake accounts for Mr. Trump; the far-right personality Stephen K. Bannon; Ron Watkins, the QAnon conspiracy theorist; and Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, who barred Mr. Trump from Twitter after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Using a false “donaldjtrump” account, hackers posted images of defecating pigs, wrote expletive-laced rants aimed at Mr. Dorsey and inquired about the whereabouts of the former first lady Melania Trump. Images of the hackers’ handiwork were circulated on other social media platforms.
Trump announced the creation of TRUTH Social on Wednesday, calling it a “media powerhouse.” Its intent, according to a statement, is “to create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley.”
Trump has been banned from mainstream social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube since the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced,” Trump said in a statement. “This is unacceptable.”
The site was set to launch in 2022, but a “preorder” waiting list was posted on the App store Wednesday. Gleaning clues from that post, Anonymous was able to track down a prerelease version of the site and expose its lack security standards.
“We had a fun time trolling it to high heaven,” Aubrey Cottle, a hacker affiliated with Anonymous who goes by the alias Kirtaner, told The Times.
The Washington Post reports:
The site looks almost entirely like a Twitter clone: A user can post Truths, which are like tweets, or Re-Truths, which are retweets. There is also a news feed, called the Truth Feed, a notification system so users can know who interacts with their Truths, the social network’s App Store profile states.
The Post adds:
The site’s terms of service […] list some rules that would hamstring Trump himself. The site will ban, for instance, “excessive use of capital letters” — a hallmark of Trump’s online screeds.
Though the site portrays itself as a refuge for free speech uncensored by Big Tech, Trump’s site will ban any content that would “disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site,” the terms state.
The former president created a new business, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), and merged it with an existing shell company – or SPAC – so it could go publicly immediately. The combined entity, Digital World Acquisition Corp, has skyrocketed in value since its debut.
