Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Hours After Trump's Announcement Of His Upcoming "Media Powerhouse", Pranksters Find & Deface Two Unsecured Testing Sites; Trump Finds Key Investors Are Bailing, Is Under Fire For Illegally Using Corporate Logos, & May Face A Lawsuit For Building His Site With Pirated Software

Failed blogger Donald Trump's new social media network ("TRUTH Social") could be dead in the water months before it actually debuts.

Within one hour of Team Trump's announcement last week, some computer-savvy people discovered the company's completely unsecured BETA testing site, immediately signed up (using available (!) names like "donaldjtrump" and "mikepence"), and began posting shit to it. After the prank was discovered and the site was deleted, another unsecured site was found — and the fun started all over again! (Pillow Man Mike Lindell's website also immediately became an unmitigated clusterfuck!)
Several key investors are pulling out of the project as soon as they find out Trump is one of the principals behind it. Details of the start-up were apparently kept vague. One unnamed investor, who reportedly held a 10% stake in the company, "sold everything as soon as he could. . . . The idea that I would help [Trump] build out a fake news business called Truth makes me want to throw up."

In addition to illegally using several corporate logos in its App store listing (The New York Times and Chevrolet both stated they had not been asked, nor did they give, permission), Team Trump used pirated software to build the site and could face a lawsuit from Mastodon, a decentralized social network whose founder Eugen Rochko stated Trump violated the terms of use for the Mastodon software and gave Trump 30 days to re-build his site's computer code or be shut down.
Numerous people pointed out the idiocy and hypocrisy of Trump's Terms of Use. In his announcement, Trump boasted that his social network would be a home for "free speech" and "varied opinions". However, Trump will ban anyone from the site if they say anything bad about him or if they make fun of the website. (Also, the owner of "TRUTH Social" will ban people for "using excessive capital letters".)

Earlier this year, Trump shut down and deleted his "From The Desk" blog after only 29 days because people were making fun of it. (No one was reading it, also, but suffering humiliation was worse for Trump than being ignored.)

Washington Post Recap

Pranksters!

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