GETTR, the newest pro-Trump social network, was hacked on launch day and is currently banning furries.
That’s right, while you were celebrating America’s independence on July 4, the latest right-wing social media platform was celebrating its official launch…and getting hacked. (More about the furries later.)
GETTR, the new “free speech” social media platform run by former Trump advisor Jason Miller, was infiltrated and defaced on Sunday by a hacker known as “@JubaBaghdad.”
According to Insider, GETTR accounts belonging to prominent figures on the right — such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, Mike Pompeo, conservative cable news channel Newsmax, and GETTR’s own official profiles, including Miller’s — were all affected by the hack. All of these users are verified on the platform.
The hacker changed the accounts’ display names. “@JubaBaghdad was here 🙂 ^^ free palestine ^^,” read the profiles.
Salon writer Zachary Petrizzo was one of the first to notice the hack on Sunday. According to Petrizzo, the changes to the accounts were made at approximately 10:10am ET.
But changing some display names is not all the hacker got out of his exploit.
Petrizzo tweeted that he spoke with the hacker, who showed him personal data he was able to scrape from the website. This information includes usernames, birthdays, and email addresses. It does not appear as if passwords were stolen during the breach.
According to the hacker, as of yesterday morning, around 24 hours after the hack, the site remains “compromised” with an “API server bug.”
There remain a high number of bugs in the code of Gettr, the hacker told Petrizzo, adding that hackers can continue to exploit the bugs in order to sell the scraped data on black markets.
However, in a statement provided to Reuters, Miller refutes this claim.
“The problem was detected and sealed in a matter of minutes, and all the intruder was able to accomplish was to change a few user names,” Miller told the outlet.
Speaking to Insider, Miller also talked up the hack and tried to spin it into a positive.
“You know you’re shaking things up when they come after you,” said Miller. “The problem was detected and sealed in a matter of minutes, and all the intruder was able to accomplish was to change a few user names. The situation has been rectified and we’ve already had more than half a million users sign up for our exciting new platform!”
While GETTR officially launched on July 4, the news of the latest right-wing social network was leaked days earlier by Politico. At the time, it was being pegged as a platform from “Team Trump” due to Miller’s involvement, although former president Donald Trump’s role was unclear.
Shortly after that news broke about GETTR, Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News reported that Trump will have no role — participatory or financial — in the platform. Trump has previously turned down offers to join other right-wing social media platforms, such as Parler.
Despite being marketed as a “cancel-free” social media platform, GETTR has already banned a number of users. Far-right personality Baked Alaska was suspended on July 1.
It’s unclear why Baked Alaska was suspended from GETTR, although he was boasting about the suspension on far right social network Gab shortly after. Gab is known for being a favored platform among white nationalists. Baked Alaska is currently facing criminal charges for his role in storming the Capitol building on January 6.
At the time this piece was being published, GETTR users were complaining about being banned from the platform for posting furry porn involving Sonic the Hedgehog.
According to Kotaku, hashtags such as #sonicfeet and #sonicmylove have permeated GETTR.
Users have been trolling the website with furry content in order to test those “free speech” values GETTR bases itself on. Sonic, a beloved classic video game character, is also very popular among online communities, furries included.
