No, fans of the Great British Bake Off did not suddenly convert en masse to Donald Trump supporters.
You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, however, as scores of popular subreddits were temporarily hijacked Friday to promote Donald Trump. According to Reddit, an unspecified number of subreddit moderators — the people who oversee the sub-communities within Reddit — likely had their accounts taken over in some way, allowing the as-of-yet undetermined hacker to promote the current president of the U.S.
Perhaps most notably, background images and subreddit banners were altered to read “TRUMP” and “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Essentially, the subreddits appeared as if they had been wallpapered over by an overzealous, Trump-loving interior decorator.
“An investigation is underway related to a series of vandalized communities,” a spokesperson confirmed via email. “It appears the source of the attacks were compromised moderator accounts. We are working to lock down those accounts and restore impacted communities.”
In addition to r/GreatBritishBakeOff, pictured above, subreddits including r/NFL and r/Beer were also victimized. A post on the Mod Support subreddit lists over 50 subreddits reportedly vandalized in such a manner.
Not that funny.
Image: screenshot / reddit
“We have no evidence that 2fa was compromised, however out of an abundance of caution we are investigating this angle,” reads a post from the head of Reddit’s community team. “We do know for a fact that a majority of the compromised accounts did not have 2fa enabled on their accounts, we’re working to verify this is true for all accounts.”
This is not the first time Reddit has been the target of a hack. In 2018, the site admitted that hackers had obtained a trove of private messages dating from 2005 to 2007.
SEE ALSO: Reddit VP: ‘Ya, we f*cked up.’
Today’s disruption, though, appears to have targeted individual moderator accounts — albeit, a lot of them — as opposed to Reddit’s systems themselves. That is, if Reddit’s initial statement on the incident turns out to be correct.
In the meantime, console yourself with the knowledge that your favorite subreddits are quickly returning to their regularly scheduled programming.