- Apple has removed Wimkin, a social voice network, from their app stores, as The Wall Street Journal first reported.
- On his website, Wimkin posted a notice saying “a massive DDOS attack attempt has taken place” after the removal.
- At least one group on the network has repeatedly called for an armed force to be formed in Washington during the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
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Wimkin, a social media network with free speech, said it was hit with a ‘massive’ attack by hackers after Apple removed the app from its store.
On Tuesday, Wimkin was removed from Apple’s App Store for failing to moderate violent content, including some users claiming a civil war, as The Wall Street Journal first reported. Google, according to Wimkin, planned to remove the app early Friday morning. As of Saturday, the network was still available on Google.
On its website, Wimkin posted a notice saying “a massive DDOS attack attempt has taken place” after the removals were announced. In the past week, additional DDOS attacks disrupted the network and shut down the Wimkin app, the company said in a Facebook post.
“We’re putting the site in maintenance mode while we combat it. Please come check back soon. We’ll announce when it’s back online. Thank you for your patience and support. Thank you,” Wimkin said on his website.
With about 300,000 users, Wimkin is relatively small. The design mimics Facebook’s pages and posts. Its founder, Jason Sheppard, said on LinkedIn that his network ‘does not censor users except criminal activities, and allows freedom of speech without checking it.
In a statement to Insider, Sheppard said his company was working with Apple to repair the app. “We live in unprecedented times where America feels anxiety, fear and mistrust like never before. We are also slaves to technology, where sometimes the two together cause a sense of urgency that leads to legal mistakes that are not purposeful. We work with both Apple to regain “Ready to Sell” status and give them a 34-page plan, as well as Google Play that we did not remove, for the safety of our platform users and not for any censorship. Wimkin only censors nudity, pornography and criminal activity, including threats of harm or violence. ”
Last week, Apple and Google both removed Parler, a larger social voice network. As violent crowds marched through the hallway of Congress on Wednesday, a chorus of Parler users called for violence. Parler was offline Sunday night because Amazon removed it from its web hosting service.
Read more: Parler should be taken seriously as a focus of extremism and conspiracy theories, a new study shows
Both Parler and Wimkin said they are committed to freedom of speech. They welcomed users who were removed from Twitter or Facebook because they supported QAnon, with violent rhetoric or other policy violations. Parler was the best download in the App Store before it was removed last week.
In recent months, Wimkin users have been posting about the march to Washington in January. At least one group on the network has repeatedly called for an armed force to be formed in Washington during the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
‘Millions of American militias will gather in Washington DC on January 20, 2021 to prevent any attempt by the treacherous domestic enemy Joe Biden, or any other member of the Communist Organized Crime Organization known as The Democratic Party, to belong to We The People , ‘reads a post on the group’s page, as captured by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Some posts and users who incited violence were removed after Apple notified the app, Sheppard told The Wall Street Journal.
Apple said it had received complaints that Wimkin was “being used on January 20 to plan and facilitate illegal and dangerous activities,” according to Wimkin, who posted his conversation with Apple on his Facebook page.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment. “We have determined that Wimkin does not have adequate precautions for the content of users to protect the health and safety of users,” an App Store representative told Wimkin.
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that Wimkin had been removed from the Google Play Store. Google issued a warning but did not uninstall the app.