How I got 500k views on X, and why you should not turn a cyber security hack into a marketing campaign.

Getting hacked is the most viral format on social media I know.

Multiple times I went super viral on X and Reddit:

1. You get hacked (even just a tiny bit)
2. You fix it
3. You post it
4. ??
5. 1M+ views

I did it for BulkImageGeneration and got 1M views on Reddit. Then I did it at Varg.

Someone stole $590 in API credits from us in 48 hours. I gave GLM-5.2 one prompt. Eighteen minutes later, the open-source model had identified the attacker's backend, prepared abuse reports and got their app taken down. In tokens, it cost $0.30.

Five minutes after I posted it, Cognition's Devin team noticed. The next day the post went viral.

At its peak it had around 500K views and was on track for a million.

I expected all that attention to work as a great soft launch for the app.

The big issue: the next morning, I had 10 hackers trying the same thing.

My whole day turned into cyber warfare.

Instead of new users, I got a mini army of hackers trying to ruin what I'd built.

I don't recommend it. If you ever have a hacking incident on your platform, it's super easy to turn it into viral content. Trust me, in most cases it's just a more negative experience, even with thousands of likes and huge attention.