Nowadays, it’s hard to make it out there as a social media company. Society seems to have picked our mediums – Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and Twitter pretty much rule the show. I mean, world leaders take to Twitter to announce whatever they feel like, so it’s pretty much a set thing at this point.
But that doesn’t stop other companies from trying, and sometimes they get pretty far. Houseparty managed to get quite a distance, and then were launched even further when famed game developers Epic Games picked up their platform and added it to the Epic family.
We are investigating indications that the recent hacking rumors were spread by a paid commercial smear campaign to harm Houseparty. We are offering a $1,000,000 bounty for the first individual to provide proof of such a campaign to bounty@houseparty.com.
— Houseparty (@houseparty) March 31, 2020
If you haven’t heard of Houseparty yet, it’s a social media platform based primarily on face-to-face video chats with your friends. Think Skype, but the program actually closes when you tell it to close. Your friends receive a notification when you come online and you all hop into a call and chat for a while.
Epic Games picked up the company back last year, and now it’s launched itself even further into popularity with much of the world under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s even ended up topping charts now, becoming the sixth most downloaded free app in the United States and hitting #1 in New Zealand, Canada, and the UK.
Unfortunately, it looks like some people aren’t quite happy seeing it succeed. Recently, news began to circulate that the platform had been hacked. Users had had their data leaked Facebook-style and were being compromised left and right.
Only, that never happened – according to Houseparty, at least. They insisted that they hadn’t been the target of any sort of hack. Instead, they now believe that the claims were a paid smear campaign against them. Who did this, they don’t know and they aren’t guessing, but they’re offering a million bucks to whoever can tell them. You can see the tweet we embedded above to see the posting of their bounty.
“All Houseparty accounts are safe – the service is secure, has never been compromised, and doesn’t collect passwords for other sites,” Houseparty insisted on Twitter, refuting the claims. “We have spent the past few weeks feeling humbled and grateful that we can be such a large part of bringing people together during such a hard time.”
So go get ’em, Cowboy! You’ve got a million-dollar bounty to claim if you can prove the campaign. Their Twitter replies are already filled with random theories over who’s guilty, so the trail is still hot. And if you’re a Houseparty user, don’t worry, your information is safe with Epic.
