The Tea Party Community (TPC), a conservative alternative to Facebook that officially launched Saturday, came under attack on the day it launched, causing it to be non-operational for some time.
Earlier in the day, messages on Twitter and Facebook indicated the site had experienced a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, but no details were available and nothing had been confirmed at that time.
Kevin Jackson, one of the co-founders of the site, confirmed to Examiner late Saturday that the site had been hacked.
"I don't know details at this point," he said.
According to a message posted by one of the site's users, TPC had experienced a "large" attack that reportedly affected other sites hosted by the provider. As a result, the message said, all traffic to the site was dropped.
One message described the attack as "high end" and carried out by "very elite people."
We attempted to confirm this, but was unable to.
According to a graph provided by Tim Selaty, Jr., one of the site administrators, TPC experienced spikes as high as 600 million bits per second (Mbps) during the attacks. By comparison, "fast ethernet" network cards still used in many computers are rated at 100 Mbps.
Selaty confirmed Saturday that the provider dropped their IP address and null routed it temporarily. Although the site was restored late Saturday, he said TPC would be moved to another provider.
The site was started in response to what many conservatives see as censorship by Facebook .
“Most of us are subjected to censorship on Facebook,” co-founder Ken Crow told Fox News' Todd Starnes.
Crow went on to say that there's "absolutely no question" in his mind that the social media giant is purposefully targeting conservatives. Many others have expressed similar sentiments, and a number of people have contacted Examiner, complaining that Facebook has banned them for doing nothing more than commenting on posts.
The site had nearly 50,000 users before the official launch and now has over 90,000 users despite the attack.
Selaty told Examiner that steps are being taken to mitigate such attacks in the future.
"It's going to be a rough ride fighting against the world," he said, "but we're not disappearing."
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