We are mourning the loss of 50 people in Orlando, Florida. A man opened fire at the Pulse a gay nightclub and turned it into the worst mass shooting in history. It’s hard to even figure out how to react to this kind of horror. It may make you feel helpless, as if you don’t know what to do.
In one case, an organization sent comfort dogs to the community. In another case, some genius hackers reacted brilliantly by trolling ISIS.
One guy affiliated with the hacker group Anonymous, WauchulaGhost, hijacked Twitter accounts of ISIS supporters. WauchulaGhost has done this to many Twitter accounts over the last few months.
After the Orlando shooting, he changed ISIS account backgrounds to a rainbow, which is a universal symbol of the LGBT community. The hacker posted links to gay porn on the Twitter feeds.
ROFL of the day: Hackers hijack ISIS Twitter accounts and turn them pro-gay #Orlando <3 @WauchulaGhost pic.twitter.com/73OmeVcr3C
— Jérôme VADON (@jeromevadon) June 15, 2016
He told Newsweek:
“I did it for the lives lost in Orlando … Daesh [ISIS] have been spreading and praising the attack, so I thought I would defend those that were lost. The taking of innocent lives will not be tolerated.”
Obviously, this Anonymous member did not disclose his real name or location. He claims that he has control of over 200 ISIS-related Twitter accounts. Twitter deleted many of them. He plans to continue doing this with fellow hackers Ebony and Yeti.
Anonymous declared war on ISIS last year after the Paris attacks. They set up a database of social media accounts related to ISIS. It included not just Twitter, but they also included Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. Anonymous invited the public to join.
They told people to report all of the ISIS accounts to the administrators of the social media site they were on. They claimed to take down over 5,500 accounts.
Anonymous is known for social media account hacking. The group also released personal and classified information on the Internet.
Just recently, they released information belonging to Donald Trump (R-N.Y.). The records included his Social Security number, his address, information on his children, and many other things.
It’s nice to see these hackers doing some great work. Getting ISIS off of social media would help with preventing people from joining the group, and go a long way for LGBT rights.
https://youtu.be/lTqUonNw_Zc
Featured image by Valis Iscari0t via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
