The MyPillow CEO pitched his new website, on the domain Frankspeech.com, as being a mixture of YouTube and Twitter that would protect the free speech of members. On the day of launch, the platform quickly buckled. Lindell blamed a cyberattack.
Taking advantage of the chaos were Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, who run New York City-based political guerilla-comedy outfit The Good Liars.
The duo purchased the domain name FrankSocialMedia.com and uploaded a mock site to the address. It displayed satirical jabs at the Donald Trump-supporting businessman, who was banned from Twitter in January for spreading voting misinformation.
A description on the satirical site joked: “The only Social Media for conspiracy theorists, crazy people and pillow enthusiasts! No f**king cursing on the whole goddamn site! The only social media company owned by a literal insane person!”
On Twitter, they noted that Lindell had “forgot” to purchase similar website addresses, a concept often known as domain squatting. The Good Liars account wrote on Monday: “Mike Lindell, we grabbed the domain FrankSocialMedia.com. Hope that’s okay!”
Lindell previously claimed that despite the main aim of protecting free speech, his site would not allow swearing, adult content or taking God’s name in vain.
He claimed it would be ultra-secure, and resistant to takedown attempts by U.S. tech giants. In reality, the website crashed almost immediately after launch.
It’s far from the first political prank performed by Selvig and Stiefler, who previously targeted Donald Trump by purchasing the web domain DonaldJTrump2024.com and filling it with a static website that repeatedly called the former president a loser.
The pair co-wrote the 2016 election mockumentary Undecided: The Movie and have also targeted Chick-fil-A, Scientology, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Fox News, the NRA and Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, their own website says.
The duo are partially funded via the Patreon fundraising platform and frequently share comedy to social media. Some of the most recent videos on YouTube show pranks or interactions with Trump supporters. However, the most active base appears to be on the video app TikTok, where the duo have amassed a 760,000-strong following.
As of Tuesday, the legitimate Frank site appeared more stable than launch day and user sign-ups were expected to resume on Tuesday. At the time of writing, Lindell was live streaming on the platform as part of a promotion dubbed “Frankathon.”
Lindell previously predicted that millions of people would sign up on the first day—with capacity for a billion. It was not yet clear how many users visited the website on launch day. Lindell has been contacted for comment via the official MyPillow press office.