Barack Obama has a kind offer. If you send him $1000 of Bitcoin, he will send you back $2000.
At least, that’s what his (hacked) Twitter feed was saying last night. https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-hack-what-we-know-about-whats-going-on-2020-7
The former President wasn’t alone. Others under attack included Jeff Bezos, Kanye West and Bill Gates.
Twitter hasn’t said much beyond noting a “coordinated engineering attack” whatever that means.
The company has had a busy few days in the news.
The other day, senior New York Times journalist Bari Weiss quit the paper claiming that “Twitter has become its ultimate editor”. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/media/bari-weiss-resignation-new-york-times.html
She thinks the paper is scared to risk the wrath of the “young wokes” on Twitter and routinely bows to their whims.
Yesterday, the BBC’s head of standards David Jordan warned that some staff obsessed with “going viral”, “have not adhered to our standards or have overstepped the mark” when posting on Twitter.
There are a few things going on here but I think the connection is the lack of responsibility that attaches to social media.
Twitter gets hacked and sort of shrugs its shoulders.
A top New York journalist reckons – and I think she has a point – that the supposed best newspaper in the world has subcontracted editorial decisions to a Twitter mob.
And a BBC bigwig thinks too many of its hacks don’t feel the need to be impartial when on social media. It’s only Twitter, right?
I wonder what would happen if every news organisation banned Twitter for a month. And every hack agreed not to look at it or post on it for the same period.
I don’t think we’d come out of the other side stupider.
