Earlier today, the AP’s Twitter feed was hacked. The feed sent out a tweet claiming that the White House had been bombed by terrorists and President Obama was among the injured.
None of it was true. But the tweet from that source induced a brief panic in the stock market, which swooned more than 100 points.
The tweet went out at 1:07 eastern, and the rebound started just three minutes later.
Now the SEC is investigating the whole mess.
After last week’s nearly endless misinformation, I’ve nearly sworn off Twitter. I’ve mostly stayed off of it today, and have felt a bit saner.
CNET’s Molly Wood seems to be suggesting some sort of action is needed on Twitter’s part to deal with its “accuracy problem.” It would be nice to have tools to issue corrections, but other than that I don’t see a regulatory solution here. Twitter isn’t producing the content on Twitter, we are. Twitter’s “accuracy problem” is really ours, and the media’s, accuracy problem. The media ran with false story after false story last week as the pursuit of the Boston bombers heated up. This time AP’s feed was hacked. That’s on whoever hacked it, and on the AP if its practices left the feed open to hacking, more than it’s on Twitter.
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