Riley Reid, one of the most prolific and famous adult performers in the world, says that her Twitter account and phone were hacked. The Twitter account, which has 2.3 million followers, has been consistently posting extremely racist, antisemitic, anti-sex work, and transphobic posts since April 4.
The posts are particularly cruel because many of them use one of the most visible people in the history of the adult entertainment industry to explicitly recruit followers to a growing and dangerous anti-sex work reactionary movement. Some of the tweets call for the deaths of “pornographers,” include swastikas and spread explicitly Nazi propaganda, and are anti “race mixing.”
Videos by VICE
Reid told adult industry news site Xbiz, which first reported the news, that “someone hacked into my phone provider and was able to get the number switched to their provider and device. So they are getting all my calls and texts as well as two-factor authentication.”
That description sounds exactly like a SIM swap, a common hack in which someone tricks or bribes employees at wireless providers to switch the target’s phone number to another device, which can then be leveraged to access other accounts by receiving their two-factor authentication codes sent over SMS.
In February, Twitter announced that it would no longer allow users to use SMS two-factor authentication unless they paid for Twitter Blue, the company’s disastrous subscription service. Users can still use apps for two factor authentication for free, which is generally safer specifically because it is not vulnerable to SIM swapping.
We don’t know why Twitter hasn’t removed the blatantly racist posts, some of which explicitly call for violence and recruitment to hate groups, or if Reid has tried contacting Twitter directly. Reid did not respond to a request for comment, and Twitter has eliminated its press team since Elon Musk acquired the company.
Twitter also significantly slashed its trust and safety team during multiple rounds of layoffs. These employees enforce Twitter’s policies for reducing the spread of hateful and harmful content on the site, exactly like the kind of content Reid’s hacked account is currently sharing to millions.
Over the years, Motherboard has contacted Twitter’s press email dozens of times about accounts that clearly violate its trust and safety policy, and that those requests regularly resulted in Twitter removing the accounts. Starting in March, and under direction from Musk, contacting Twitter’s press email auto replies with the poop emoji.
