A new social media platform launched by prominent Trump adviser Jason Miller was briefly hacked shortly after its launch. The individual responsible for the breach changed the display names on accounts belonging to high-profile individuals including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Miller himself. The app is called GETTR, and it is styled as an alternative to Twitter, emerging as the former president himself remains banned from social media sites including Twitter and Facebook. Trump doesn’t have an account on the new site — yet, and Miller “told Fox News earlier this week he hoped Trump would join but that the former president was considering a number of options,” as Reuters summarizes.
Check out images of the hack’s effects on GETTR below:
Jason Miller's new right-wing social media site "Gettr" was hacked this morning. pic.twitter.com/cncddw9RZ9
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) July 4, 2021
As for the hack, Miller insisted to Reuters that 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.” Besides Pompeo and Miller, the hacker also changed the display names on other prominent accounts including the one belonging to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). According to Miller, over half a million people have already signed up to use GETTR, which is apparently available on the Google and Apple app stores both inside and outside of the United States. When asked about the platform’s security in light of the hack, Miller claimed to Reuters that certain issues had been “rectified,” although it’s not entirely clear what that means.
GETTR is not the first pro-Trump social media site to emerge recently. MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell has launched his own site, calling it Frank (as in speaking “frankly”), but its recent roll-out didn’t exactly go smoothly, with Newsweek referring to the site as “mired in glitches.” The platform doesn’t even appear to have any option for users to post content, making it pretty unreasonable to call it a social media platform at all. What’s actually on the site is a just about never-ending stream of content posted by Lindell or his allies promoting conspiracy theories and the like.
