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'Not Even Student Work': MyPillow CEO's Social Media Site Botches Rollout (salon.com) 191

Posted by BeauHD from the doomed-from-the-beginning dept.
"Salon reports amateur-hour mistakes in the attempted rollout of FRANK, a social media site envisioned by Mike Lindell of MyPillow," writes Slashdot reader Tom239. "A Drupal expert described the code as 'not even student work.'" From the report: Speaking to Salon on Thursday afternoon about Lindell's site, one "Acquia Certified Drupal Grand Master," who oversees a technology firm that employs numerous other "grandmasters," said that Lindell's site was set up for failure from its inception, noting that its developers -- whom Lindell compared to Navy SEALs -- had failed to carry out basic "Drupal 101" tasks. One coder who spoke to Salon in great detail explained the potential shortcomings of the pillow maven's program code and the patchy work done by his developer team. "Drupal can power high powerful websites, sites with lots of traffic," the expert said, adding that it isn't the right software to build a social media site with, since it's not designed to handle a large amount of user-generated content. "Lindell's website was basically trying to make soup for scratch for everybody," said the expert, who claimed more than 25 years of experience in the IT field.

"In my professional opinion, it will be extremely unlikely, if not impossible, for Lindell to accomplish his vision with Drupal and his own servers," the expert told Salon. "Despite how much I love it, Drupal simply isn't the right tool for the number of users with the features that he wants to provide. It would take a massive effort of 12 to 18 months to build out the needed hosting setup and application architecture, and this would come with an enormous degree of risk. The idea that he could do this in just a couple of months is patently absurd, and I think the results speak for themselves."

"When I was looking at the code, in the browser, they basically launched the site while it was still in development mode," one expert told Salon, citing the fact that developers had failed to check a box to aggregate files on the platform as the first red flag he ran across. "Their files were not aggregated, and by the way, that's a check box in Drupal -- you literally check a box and click save, My jaw dropped when I saw that. I was like, 'They did not try to launch this thing without aggregation turned on!'" The second major red flag another Drupal expert found was that Lindell's site was spitting out coded error messages to users, which leaves the platform vulnerable to attacks. "This is a shit show," the expert said, calling this an "obvious" issue that coders learn how to prevent in "Drupal 101."
Elsewhere it was reported that Lindell's supposed free-speech haven will not allow swearing, pornography, or the use of 'god's name in vain'.
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'Not Even Student Work': MyPillow CEO's Social Media Site Botches Rollout More

'Not Even Student Work': MyPillow CEO's Social Media Site Botches Rollout

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  • How long until hacked (Score:3, Funny)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Friday April 23, 2021 @09:11PM (#61307396) Homepage Journal
    My suggestion is on the homepage put god loves Liddel so much they both have a hardon. And of course Trump is a pussy. And bury it in the code. These losers will spend days tracking it

  • Drupal? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Friday April 23, 2021 @09:16PM (#61307410)

    I didn't even know that people still used Drupal for new sites. If you want to make a social media site from the ground up, I understand using some sort of existing framework, but there are many better choices. For a site with those type of ambitions, you would think it would make more sense to code a lot of things from scratch rather than utilize a bunch of modules that may not be the perfect fit for everything you want to do.

    It appears that they were more worried about getting it done fast than getting it done right. At least they didn't use Wordpress.

    • Someone saw a man with a lot of money and wanted to show him something, and fast for his money.

    • It appears that they were more worried about getting it done fast than getting it done right. At least they didn't use Wordpress.

      The last few years, there have been more major vulnerabilities in Drupal's core than in Wordpress' core.

      Wordpress plugins, on the other hand, are still like the Wild West.

    • > I didn't even know that people still used Drupal for new sites.

      It was very popular among some of my age peers. It allows a great deal of flexibility over every detail, but it's true that it does _not_ scale well.

    • I remember a lot of sites switching over to Drupal...but that was 10+ years ago.

      Nowadays, everyone wants JAMstacks.

    • There are just so many ways to do a social media site right. If someone who had a lot of cash wanted to do it "right", the code would be open sourced, with the focus being on how things are implemented, maybe taking suggestions on how to improve stuff, be it better design of the app/database/rendering layers, what makes the social network some place for people to actually create accounts for, and so on.

      Of all the frameworks to build on, Drupal is close to the bottom of the list. I'd look at Django or Flas

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dracos ( 107777 )

      At least they didn't use Wordpress.

      They would have if Brad Parscale was available.

    • I didn't even know that people still used Drupal for new sites. If you want to make a social media site from the ground up, I understand using some sort of existing framework, but there are many better choices. For a site with those type of ambitions, you would think it would make more sense to code a lot of things from scratch rather than utilize a bunch of modules that may not be the perfect fit for everything you want to do.

      It appears that they were more worried about getting it done fast than getting it done right. At least they didn't use Wordpress.

      WordPress would have been a much better choice, actually.

      Drupal is way too clunky. It used to be a good security choice, but since Drupalgeddon I and II things are a tad different.

      WordPress is much more widely supported, has way more plugins, way more guides and documentation for how to do things right, much more out there about how to solve problems, a much nicer architecture for custom plugins ... just a better choice all around these days.

  • Navy Seals don't make websites. (Score:5, Funny)

    by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Friday April 23, 2021 @09:41PM (#61307478)
    Could that be where he went wrong?

  • This is the "Spite Site" from Curb your Enthusiasm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Friday April 23, 2021 @10:02PM (#61307522)
    Larry David had a genius last season when he opened a "spite store" in Curb your Enthusiasm. He decided he wanted to spite a local business and open up a coffee store right next to it. Needless to say, since it was a comedy, his store failed catastrophically because he had no clue what he was doing.

    All these "conservative" social media sites are quite similar. When you open a business out of spite, folly will ensue. Running a scalable site is hard...really hard. It takes devotion to your craft and years of experience to rival Twitter or Facebook, even for a user base a mere 1% of their size. People with those skills are usually pretty intelligent and no intelligent person would turn down Twitter, Facebook, Google, or even just a major tech company to go work for a startup for Mike Lindell or Peter Thiel or whichever nutsack says..."Hmmm, let me open up a business...it'll be just like $someSocialMediaSite but for 'people like me.'"

    If you're good enough to make "FRANK" scale, you're good enough to get hired by a tech giant for a huge salary. Look folks, I know many of you are upset at Twitter or Facebook for some reason. I personally don't get it. As long as you don't post fake election fraud posts or get linked to violent domestic terrorism, they seem to let all sorts of vile shit fly...maybe you fear they'll get stricter in the future and you'll be next, but I know a lot of terrible people who say a lot of terrible things on these sites...really some vile racist shit in the name of not being politically correct and they seem to have no problem expressing their views....so not sure what the fuss is, but that is neither here nor there. Ignoring politics for a moment...

    Any politically motivated alternative to a tech company is going to suck. They're the "spite stores" from Curb your Enthusiasm. They're run as side projects by egomaniacs with more dollars than sense, like Mike Lindell. They don't personally know how to run a tech business and NO ONE who knows what they're doing will work for them. If you give them your info, it will get stolen...not by ANTIFA, but by some rando in Asia who knows how to craft a basic SQL injection attack. These people are clueless with technology and not willing to pay to hire someone who knows what they're doing...if they can even find someone who wants to be hired to build "the next Twitter, only with more hate crime."

    Really smart people are neither liberal nor conservative. I know you "conservatives" think anyone who doesn't buy into your unsubstantiated bullshit about election fraud or whatever crap Trump said is "liberal," but we're not. We see through the bullshit. We don't have a high opinion of the green new deal and will tell a real liberal to shove their entire drum circle up their ass. I know many geniuses and they're kind of above the whole Democrat vs Republican thing. You either are good for their bottom line or you're not.

    So...anyone who knows what they're doing who will work for you is either really really blinded by ideology, which most techies aren't....or somehow you're in their bottom line interest, which you aren't...because you don't pay better than Google and you have no future. Your business plan is SHIT whenever it can be summarized as "like $x but without $y" Few businesses have ever succeeded by making a carbon copy of one business but REMOVING a single feature (in this case, moderation?). Everyone in the industry knows this. I wouldn't work for an AOC-backed social media site for hippy dipshits either. I value my career and paying my mortgage a lot more than I value anyone's stupid political ideology. Feeding my family is far more important than some idiot's political fight. Parler, Gab, FRANK, they're all run by idiots who will and have gotten your data stolen. Smart engineers, even those who may share your views, would never risk their careers for those amateur operations. I'd avoid those sites like the plague, just from a data safety perspective.

  • What conservatives really want (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Friday April 23, 2021 @10:06PM (#61307534)

    will not allow swearing, or the use of 'god's name in vain'

    It's funny how there's so much support from Slashdot nerds for the Republicans, forgetting that they're the party of Christianity and would take away actually important free speech like swearing and blasphemy, and not to mention ultimately banning Darwin, divorce and freedom of belief and association.

    Strawman "wokeness" has nothing compared to what conservatives really want to do with censorship and controlling people's lives. How easily Slashdot alt-right nerds forget that.

    • I like to think that most of these (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 23, 2021 @10:58PM (#61307672)
      are shill accounts taken over after they were abandoned by old users. I'd like to, but I know there's a lot of actual right wingers on this forum.

      My experience is they fall into two categories. First, racists. About 15% of the population is racist, if polls and research can be believed. The GOP welcomes them.

      Second, folks who never grew out of teenage angst where you don't like being told what to do. Republicans do a great job of marketing to these types. The narrative of personal responsibility and small gov't fits in well with this type.

      That said, I really don't think they're the majority. The majority leans left, but are scared of losing what they have, making them act (i.e. vote) conservative but think liberal.

      That's the trick, keep us all on the edge of poverty so we're forever at each other's throats. How else could 1% of the population hoard 50% of the wealth?

      • Second, folks who never grew out of teenage angst where you don't like being told what to do. Republicans do a great job of marketing to these types.

        Um, seriously? This from the party of "a boy can become a girl just by wishing it"?

        • there are actually differences between men & women's brains, and while these differences do not affect raw intellectual potential they do affect personality and tendencies.

          Trans people have genitalia that doesn't match their brain structure. That's what's meant by Gender Dysphoria. It's a well documented medical condition, with the only debate being what we do about it. The left want to accommodate people with the issue as much as possible, the right wing, largely on the basis of a specific and narr

          • Never mind the bathroom bills, the Arkansas anti-trans law, the Florida genital checks, all from the party of "I just want to government to stay out of my business"

      • That's the trick, keep us all on the edge of poverty so we're forever at each other's throats. How else could 1% of the population hoard 50% of the wealth?

        You mean the vastly wealthy tech company CEOs, all of whom colluded with the Democrats and "meddled" with the election?

        • The low /. id means this isn't a run of the mill shill account. This is either a troll, possibly Russian, who bought or stole the account (yes, you can buy low Id /. accounts and they're actually valuable, or at least they were it's been years since I looked at the market) or one of the 2 examples I gave.

          All 3 are functionally identical, but we can work on improving our society to eliminate the latter 2.

    • will not allow swearing, or the use of 'god's name in vain'

      It's funny how there's so much support from Slashdot nerds for the Republicans, forgetting that they're the party of Christianity and would take away actually important free speech like swearing and blasphemy, and not to mention ultimately banning Darwin, divorce and freedom of belief and association. Strawman "wokeness" has nothing compared to what conservatives really want to do with censorship and controlling people's lives. How easily Slashdot alt-right nerds forget that.

      It's not a strawman who de-platforms people. It's not a strawman who falsely accuses people of racism. It's not a strawman who can't tolerate any dissent, gets you fired, sends mobs to your house, etc. It's not a strawman who literally invents a murder and propagandizes the hell out of it, even using it for a charge in impeachment trial of the week #32 or whatever, ignoring the family of the "victim" who says the guy died from natural causes long after the event. I could go on ... and on ... and on ...

  • So this guy passed an exam, and that makes him an expert of some sort?

    In the real world, if you need a certificate to prove you know what you're doing, you are "proving" your knowledge to the wrong people.

    • Re:Acquia Certified Drupal Grand Master ?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @04:37AM (#61308084)

      So this guy passed an exam, and that makes him an expert of some sort?

      Sure, I guess that's what you read from the summary. Nothing about the fact that he has been in the industry for most of his life, owns a firm which specialises in Drupal. You only read certification and tuned out.

      I think Slashdot editors need to remember that the typical slashdot reader these days doesn't have the attention span to read more than one sentence in TFS.

      • Actually, I read the page the certification link led to. Owning a firm that gives people certifications with names like "Grand Master" is clearly selling something. Maybe the guy has been doing Drupal for a long time, perhaps the summary should have listed that, but the certification itself means nothing.

        • Why should the summary focus heavily on background information about someone because you assumed something about him? The story is not about him. The story is the Drupal development was amateurish and even if worked, Drupal is not a good fit as a social media platform.

    • That is literally what the word means, demonstrating skill in or knowledge

      https://www.thefreedictionary.... [thefreedictionary.com]

    • I know some people who needed certifications not for their boss, but for CYA from HR or their clients. Legal/regulatory/procedural hoops around certifications are there to ensure a skill floor, not to show that someone is a good hire.

    • First of all your assertion is that it is easy to get that certification. Some certifications are jokes but not all of them. Second, you seem to be basing your opinion only on his certification and not the substance of his criticism. I do not know if his claims that the developers missed basic steps, but is he correct?

  • The people who do this kind of awful work have full-time, good-paying jobs with benefits.

    (Curls up into the foetal position on the floor and cries)

  • The guy can't even make pillows (Score:4, Informative)

    by OldManJones ( 7986158 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @04:14AM (#61308062)

    His pillows are seriously uncomfortable and sub-standard. His TV ads are hyper-targetted at old, poor, rural, uneducated white people:
    1. the "factory floor" where sacks are pumped full of his "patented fill"
    2. the entirely white "workforce" and example "customers"
    3. the conspicuous cross around his neck
    4. the 1950s time-warp jingle
    5. the deceptive "special" offers
    The severe reactionary nature of his ads may make his customers feel the comfort of reactionary nostalgia, but his pillows won't give them any comfort, unless they were laying their heads down on gravel before.

    Why is it a surprise his website would be rubbish? (And why hasn't he been arrested for treason yet?)

    • The right wing has become a circular firing squad of con artists looking to cash out on boomers who are so afraid of losing the wealth they have hoarded they will give it just about any huckster who promises to "own the libs".

  • Any n00b can get productive in 10 Minutes. When it comes to server side web development, PHP gets the job done in record time, there is no two ways about that. The flip side is anyone can feel as if they know what they're doing even though they absolutely positively don't have the faintest clue. Using Drupal as a platform for a larger social media service is questionable at best and even then you have to be prepared to strip everything down to pure accelerated PHP once the prototype phase is over. You migh

  • So the coke / Jesus addled addictive personality trainwreck known as Mike Lindell hired a bunch of cowboys to implement his fever dream. I hope they got paid upfront because I hear he has a few legal issues coming up. As for their coding effort, they are in a no-win situation, because a) nobody is going to use this dumpster fire product except for curiousity, b) it is likely going to be hacked into oblivion every time it pokes its head above the parapet. It's also funny how Lindell bemoans his treatment at

  • Further, Mr Lindell added: “You don’t get to use the c-word, the f-word, the n-word, or god’s name in vain free speech is not pornography. Free speech is not ‘I’m going to kill you’. It’s very well-defined in our mission statement.”

    Well, there goes Trump's account.

  • What intellectual standing does a pillow salesman have, to launch a platform for discussion about - supposedly - intellectual topics? OMG

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      What intellectual standing does a pillow salesman have, to launch a platform for discussion about - supposedly - intellectual topics? OMG

      You equate "platform" with "content" - Do people join Facebook to follow the musings of Mark Zuckerberg or join Twitter to bask in the brilliance of Jack Dorsey? No. The provide a platform that relies on strangers to generate compelling content (cat videos, political mems, family photos, etc.).

      • Good point. It is just that I know that the pillow guy has a purpose in creating his platform. He wants to enable certain narratives, even though he claims that his platform will be fair. If someone with high intellectual standing and a reputation for rationality and open mindednes created the platform, it would be easier to believe that it will actually be a fair and platform that will encourage thoughtful discourse that is worth participating it, rather than emotional low-brow rants. But you are right, th

  • People deprived of service (due to their beliefs) by a cartel of professionals had to use amateurs, ha ha, what maroons!

    Now we can finally get back to focusing on "unity".

  • No doubt he will follow the standard practice of pointing the finger of blame at others, just like he did with the libtards.

  • Drupal dev not as smart as he thinks (Score:3)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @09:04AM (#61308476) Homepage

    Bundling assets is something you had to do a decade ago. Now we have HTTP 2. Bundling your assets can lead to worse performance than straight HTTP 2 if you're not very careful about where your bundles split. If you end up with two bundles sharing code, you're sending the client the files twice. Standard HTTP 2 already handles this efficiently.

  • The mistake was using Drupal (Score:3)

    by martynhare ( 7125343 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @10:00AM (#61308594)
    At the time I investigated it, it was still dependent upon register_globals being enabled in PHP; I quickly assigned it the task of serving /dev/null in the ethereal plane. Given how easy it is to code safely these days, why not just roll your own? At least then you can't be accused of double dumbassery by picking a poor solution and then configuring it poorly.
  • Should have called it PillowTalk, not that I'd ever use it.

  • This roll-out was profoundly more successful than the Federal Government's roll-out of the Federal Health Exchange, and cost several billion dollars less.

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