Google and Apple’s app stores have been hosting an app for Scored, a message board site dedicated to hosting far-right forum TheDonald — which was previously banned on Reddit and rebranded as “patriots.win” after January 6 — and other far-right forums pushing extremism and conspiracy theories. The site, which researchers have called “an alternative Reddit platform that shelter[s] banned fringe communities,” is supposedly owned by the lead moderator of TheDonald who apparently “made the site” for the forum.
TheDonald originally began on Reddit as “r/The_Donald,” with the subreddit dedicated to supporting Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent presidency. It was known for spreading and promoting far-right misinformation, conspiracy theories, far-right campaigns, bigotry, white nationalism and white nationalist events, and calls for violence that violated Reddit’s rules. Reddit officially banned r/The_Donald in 2020 but many of the subreddit’s users had already moved to another site, known at the time as “TheDonald.win,” which became the home of what was called the “.win” communities. After the January 6 insurrection, which TheDonald was used to help coordinate, “TheDonald.win” rebranded as “patriots.win.”
In early 2022, an administrator on the “.win” communities’ central hub site announced that “going forward, we will be known as Scored” instead of .win. “Doggos,” who is TheDonald’s apparent lead moderator and seemingly “made the site” for the forum, claimed on the message board that “I own Scored,” and advertised donations to Scored as “supporting this community’s existence.”
The announcement on the communities’ central hub site also noted that “in the short term, our focus is on … working on our Android and iOS apps.” Media Matters has now found that since at least 2022, both the Google and Apple app stores have carried “Scored Communities.” The app leads users to numerous far-right forums, including TheDonald, which has continued to push extremism, rampant antisemitism, and racism after being banned from Reddit, as well as calls to violence. (Doggos has said that TheDonald on the app has “a little bit more content-level censorship due to app store policy.”)
On Scored’s app, users can find numerous other far-right forums — some of which were also banned from Reddit and revived under TheDonald’s infrastructure — including the QAnon message board “GreatAwakening,” forums dedicated to Gamergate, and a conspiracy theory forum affiliated with a subreddit full of antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
