Twitter Bug Enabled Forced Following
It was a marketers dream and a marketers nightmare. For a few hours yesterday a weakness in the Twitter platform discovered by a Turkish tweeter provided an absurdly easy way to force others to follow you. Gizmodo, Mashable and others published the trick and for a few hours it spread like wildfire.
Depending on who you talk to, Twitter either has fixed the bug or is still working to do so. Either way, testing the hack could get your Twitter follower number reduced to zero. Late yesterday Twitter released this announcement:
"We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to "force" other users to follow them. We're now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we're aware and this too should shortly be resolved."
“Gizmodo, Mashable and others published the trick and for a few hours it spread like wildfire.”
Isn’t that sort of irresponsible journalism (not that these sites are responsible journalist sites anyway)???
Why not publish articles on how to lie, cheat, and steal from your friends and family?
Just because you know something doesn’t mean you should publish it. Gizmodo seems to have become the “news whore” of the internet, publishing anything to get noticed.