Most people will have caught the news that Donald Trump has been banned from a huge number of social media platforms – from both Facebook and Twitter to Twitch. In March, after his bans, the ex-president mentioned he wanted to create his own social media for himself and his followers.
The site is now here, mere days old, and according to Motherboard, it has already been hacked. Data on a total of 90,000 users is said to have been compromised, including their email addresses, usernames, status and locations. Passwords thankfully don’t appear to have been compromised.
Motherboard has been in contact with one user who confirmed his email address was among those leaked. Motherboard also mentions trying to create new users with three of the email addresses in the database, being informed by the web page that “the email is taken”. That said, it is still unclear whether the leaked database contains information on all Gettr users.
The website, which was named Gettr, reminds you of Twitter in both design and functionality, but with a far more Trump-friendly profile. The service was developed by Donald Trump’s former adviser Jason Miller. The former spokesman for Trump’s presidential campaign, Tim Murtaugh, is involved as a consultant for the app.
The service is in fact so similar to Twitter that it might technically be possible to import your Twitter profile – including followers and tweets – directly into Gettr. According to them, this can be done by creating and using the same username as you use on Twitter itself. It thus seems likely the app uses a buggy blueprint of Twitter’s own API.
Although the website has been developed for Donald Trump and his followers, we are not sure if the real ex-president himself has created a profile yet.
The new website aims to “fight cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas.” Ironically, the site found itself having to resort to censorship after being filled with pornography and memes of the “anti-conservative” kind during the very first days after its launch.
