The security record for pro-MAGA social media apps isn’t pretty.
Gettr, the app launched by former Trump aide Jason Miller, got hacked on the day of its Fourth of July rollout. A hacker ,who goes by the handle JubaBaghdad, crashed the app’s debut by taking over verified accounts for MAGA celebrities Steve Bannon, Mike Pompeo, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. He then used them to push pro-Palestinian political messages.
Just hours later, someone scraped personal data, including email addresses, from 90,000 Gettr users and dumped them on the internet. For Gettr, the problem was with the API, researchers found.
Parler, the social media app founded with money from the wealthy Trump-supporting donors of the Mercer family, suffered similar problems shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection when activists were able to scrape millions of posts and user content left easily accessible to the open web. Parler’s decision not to scrub revealing location data from the videos uploaded by its users allowed anyone to associate Parler user names with their potential homes and workplaces.
And in February, hackers dumped gigabytes of private messages and user data from Gab, a Texas-based far-right network home to a disturbing amount of antisemites and neo-Nazis.
The alt social media app ecosystem suffers from similar problems when it comes to trying to protect users from dangerous content like ISIS beheading propaganda or, in some cases, even child pornography.
Adam Hadley, the director of Tech Against Terrorism, a London-based nonprofit which works with smaller social media platforms to help them find and remove terrorist content, says moderation against extremist content is especially difficult for smaller platforms, which can struggle to find the resources to deal with the problem.
“You can be swarmed very easily by terrorist use,” Hadley says. “There's no easy solution. You need people to be making difficult decisions about content and before you even do that you need to know what your policy is and you need a press and PR capability to deal with media responses.”
Hadley’s nonprofit runs a free terrorist content analytics platform, which offers smaller social media apps free intelligence about when analysts spot extremist content on platforms, but even those kinds of resources aren’t always welcome.
“The problem with the alt tech platforms is that they don't want anything to do with us. When we approach them and say ‘Do you need some help?’ they almost always say ‘No.’” Hadley told The Daily Beast.
