A fake report on CNN's iReport site alleged that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson had been found dead.
(Credit: iReport, screengrab from Business Insider)Reports began to surface Sunday charging that AT&T had blocked broadband access to parts of the notorious (and powerful) Internet forum site 4chan, which the telecom company confirmed on Monday. Late in the evening, a fake story surfaced on CNN's iReport citizen journalism site alleging that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson had been "found dead in his multimillion dollar beachfront mansion" after a cocaine overdose.
Suffice it to say that the two events are likely connected. Access to 4chan has since been restored for AT&T broadband customers.
For those who stepped in late: 4chan is sort of like the Internet's equivalent of a league of pirates, den of thieves, or whatever other sort of anarchic analogy you prefer. Decentralized and relying on anonymity, the participants issue large-scale pranks both online and offline, from teaming up with video site eBaumsWorld to launch the "Porn Day" campaign on YouTube to spamming Twitter's trending topics.
The fake iReport disappeared from CNN quickly, perhaps because it read that Stephenson was found "delirious" when "a friend called 911 after a night of what he called, 'male dancers everywhere and the best blow west of the Mississippi.'"
Last October, iReport was the victim of a prank in which a more believable user-submitted story reported that Apple CEO Steve Jobs--who has a well-publicized history of health problems--had suffered a heart attack. It wasn't true, but it was online long enough that Apple's stock took a dip.
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe told CNET News in an e-mailed statement that a denial-of-service attack was what stemmed the temporary block of 4chan traffic and that it has since been restored. "Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org," Coe wrote. "To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic."
"Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question," the AT&T statement continued. "We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers."
This post was updated at 9:25 a.m. PT.
While word of riots in the streets of Tehran spread like wildfire on Twitter, CNN stayed largely silent on the story, surprising and dismaying many.
(Credit: Twitter)As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran--thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities--an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: "CNNFail."
Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East.
For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported by the Iranian government to have lost to the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The widespread street clashes--nearly unheard of in the tightly controlled Iran--reflected popular belief that the election had been rigged, a sentiment that was even echoed, to some extent, by the U.S. government Saturday.
"The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government," The New York Times cited senior officials as having said Saturday, "despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute. Even when the network's Internet site finally posted a story late Saturday, the network's first "story highlight" was, "Ahmadinejad plans rally after winning second presidential term."
Increasingly, Twitter has become the go-to source for breaking news about any kind of notable event, be it an earthquake, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, or post-election riots in Tehran. Yet many Twitter users found CNN's lack of attention to what could end up being one of the biggest stories in years appalling.
"CNN just loops the same stories endlessly, while ignoring the biggest story," posted Twitter user MediaButcher.
"CNN needs to talk about the important things like Ms. California and who Paris Hilton is (sleeping with)," wrote Twitter user ArchivalQuality.
Others used the opportunity to applaud the work of other networks while indirectly criticizing CNN. "Might I point out to all of those tracking #CNNFail that there's a corresponding #NPRWin good coverage @ www.npr.org," opined Twitter user Nickbernstein, referring to the Twitter convention of using "hashtags," or pound-signs before keywords to indicate Twitter search terms, in this case a reference to the suggestion that NPR had done a good job covering the Iranian riots.
And it wasn't long before word of CNN's theoretical reporting failure began to make its way into more established media. Under the headline, "Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran," the popular blog ReadWriteWeb blasted the network for its failure to cover the clearly massive story in the Middle East.
"Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street," ReadWriteWeb wrote late Saturday night, "the top story on CNN.com remains peoples' confusion about the switch from analog TV signals."
It's odd that CNN would be so late to this story, especially given the criticism it's getting from the Twitterverse, and given how clued in the network is supposed to be to Twitter. It was, after all, only two months ago that CNN's Twitter account barely missed out--to actor Ashton Kutcher--on being the first to accumulate a million followers.
One would think, then, that when the idea began to percolate around Twitter that CNN was missing out on a major, historical story like the one developing in Iran, the network would have noted the discontent and done something about it.
But even as the sun prepared to rise in the eastern United States, CNN's Web site was still focusing on Ahmadinejad's victory and not the fact that massive riots in the streets of Tehran might be a world-changing moment, potentially on par with the failed 1991 coup in the Soviet Union that led to the collapse of the authoritarian government there.
To be sure, it's too early to tell if the events unfolding in Terhan will have such a lasting effect. But in Iran, there haven't been such vivid pictures of popular anger at the government since the revolution there in 1979 that toppled the Shah and led to the current religious fundamentalist leadership.
And to the thousands on Twitter posting to the #CNNFail thread, this story should be a no-brainer for the network that managed to have the only reporters on the ground when the United States began bombing Baghdad in 1991 at the beginning of the Gulf War.
Updated at 11:15 AM with reports from users. See end of story.
Twitter is getting fishy. In the race between Ashton Kutcher (aplusk on Twitter) and the CNN Breaking News feed (CNNbrk) to get to 1 million followers first, Kutcher won. But was the race goosed by Twitter itself?
Can't unfollow Kutcher? Don't give up...
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Last night, various reports surfaced (see TechCrunch, for example) that while people could follow Kutcher and CNNbrk, they couldn't unfollow them.
But the real issue is this: The people of the world need a way to unfollow Kutcher, or whomever else they want to. The standard way of doing it, going to a Twitter user's update page, and pressing the "remove" button under the "Following" notification, doesn't work for the aplusk or CNNbrk accounts. You'll get an error.
This works. So long, Ashton!
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)But here's how to get around that: Simply enter the update "off aplusk" or "off CNNbrk" in your Twitter status entry box, or in any Twitter client. This is the reverse of the command to follow someone, "f [name]." I confirmed that it works. I was listening to Kutcher before, and now I'm not.
The world is saved.
Update at 11:15 a.m. PDT: Reports are coming in that this method for unfollowing is not working reliably. My latest report: After following aplusk anew, I tried it once more and it didn't appear to work at first, but after a few minutes I confirmed that I had in fact unfollowed aplusk again. Also, I tried following and unfollowing aplusk directly from his own page, and that also worked, but I tried it again and got the old error message. Feel free to report your experiences in the comments below.
Related Twitter news:
Twitter's big day? Here comes Oprah
Ashton outmaneuvers CNN to 1 million on Twitter
Following the great Twitter race to 1 million
CNN acquires leading Twitter account
Moments after Ashton Kutcher became the first to a million Twitter followers, the actor touts his win over CNN.
(Credit: Twitter)This had to be one of the weirdest pieces of media I've ever seen: watching actor Ashton Kutcher, streaming live on the Web, and Anderson Cooper, broadcasting live on CNN, each pimping their Twitter accounts, trying to exhort the world to help them become the first to reach 1 million followers.
As Kutcher--as well as a host of guests at what I presume was his and wife Demi Moore's house, and even P. Diddy, who was on speakerphone at the house--put it, this was a battle between old-guard TV and newer-kid-on-the-block Web.
In the end, the battle to a million was about as close as it could be. And the winner late Thursday was Kutcher and the Web--never mind that Kutcher himself is a creature of old-guard TV and film.
Ashton Kutcher pops a bottle of champagne just seconds after realizing he'd won.
(Credit: UStream)He won by less than 2,000 total followers.
The race started heating up Wednesday when CNN acquired the @cnnbrk Twitter account--the largest Twitter account at the time with 947,000 followers. Kutcher was in second place at that point, with 917,000 followers.
Personally, I could care less about Kutcher's celebrity and his ability to get tons and tons of people to do the almost unbelievably easy task of clicking "follow" on his Twitter account. Rather, it was seeing this real-time face-off between Kutcher, streaming live on UStream, and Cooper, working it hard on his evening broadcast of "AC 360."
To be fair, Kutcher had an advantage: he was able to stay totally on message on his Web stream, while Cooper had to limit his exhortations to short bursts of enthusiasm sandwiched between, you know, real news stories.
Still, given the fact that there were clearly large numbers of people actively watching the battle, I have to admit that I'm surprised Cooper didn't cut to a report--and a live interview--with Kutcher once the victor was known.
So, variously, this was pure round-number stat cotton candy for the eyes, a down-to-the-wire, nail-biter race, and, I think, most importantly, a truly interesting and profound moment of genre vs. genre. Grassroots, democratic do-it-yourself Web streaming vs. big media at its most polished. Both reaching to the masses, referencing each other, live.
To be sure, the mixing of media is nothing new. But to me, and I'm certain many others who were watching the action live, there was something surreal about witnessing the urgency being expressed by both the guy in his living room and the guy on the professional news set, both being able to speak to theoretically unlimited numbers of people (well maybe not unlimited, but you know what I mean) and both standing tall for their medium.
Captivating stuff.
While CNN did not immediately report the news of Kutcher's victory, the network did offer congrats on its Twitter account.
(Credit: Twitter)Oh, and while I said I was surprised that Cooper didn't do an instant report on CNN about Kutcher's victory, that seems to be due to the limits of what TV allowed him to do. Like I said, he had news to report.
But over on the Web, where the linear constraints of TV don't apply, CNN's Twitter feed offered the network's well wishes.
"Congrats @aplusk," CNN's tweet read. "Ashton Kutcher is the first twitter account to reach 1MM followers."
Congrats, Ashton. And congrats, Web.
CNN gained nearly a million Twitter followers on Wednesday when it acquired the @cnnbrk Twitter account.
The account, the largest on Twitter with more than 947,000 followers, had been maintained and nurtured by James Cox. CNN did not disclose financial details of the acquisition, probably because rules at the microblogging site prohibit the selling of Twitter accounts.
The acquisition comes as the race to 1 million Twitter followers heats up. As of Wednesday afternoon, Ashton Kutcher was in second place with 917,000 followers, followed closely by Britney Spears, who has about 913,000 followers.
Kutcher publicly challenged CNN to a race to 1 million users on Tuesday in a video posted to Qik.com.
"I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter," Kutcher said. "And so I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner--because I don't think it's gonna happen."
CNN accepted Kutcher's challenge Tuesday on the "Larry King Show."
Kutcher, who is best known as star of TV's "That '70s Show" and husband of actress Demi Moore, has said he will donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day if he is first to 1 million followers.
Meanwhile, game publisher Electronic Arts is getting in on the action, promising to put Kutcher's 1 millionth follower in a future EA game and give that person a copy of every game EA produces in 2009--but only if Kutcher beats CNN to the million-follower mark.
Ashton Kutcher campaigns for 1 million followers on his Twitter page.
(Credit: CNET)
(Credit:
Twitter, screengrab by Ian Schafer (ianschafer.com))
Clarification: Twitter has clarified that this incident was the work of a hacker and separate from the phishing scheme.
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez is one of the most popular users on microblogging service Twitter, with nearly 40,000 followers and a Twitterholic rank in the top 20. Unfortunately for Sanchez, it looks like he fell victim to the phishing scam that has been plaguing the popular service for several days now.
In a "tweet" that has since been deleted, Sanchez's account displayed the message "i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today"--and we're pretty sure that did not come from Sanchez himself. He has now posted a response tweet explaining that his account was hacked.
Over the weekend, reports began to surface that there was a password-stealing phishing scam making the rounds on Twitter. Disguising itself as a private message that led to a fake Twitter log-in screen, the scam was widespread enough for Twitter to put a warning message on all members' home pages alerting them of the issue.
Why did so many people fall for it? Well, the fake Twitter log-in screen looked pretty darn authentic. And because there are so many third-party applications based on Twitter's application program interface (API), tons of avid users are used to throwing their Twitter passwords around left and right. That is, it goes without saying, probably not the safest habit to get into.
It looks as if the aim of the phishing scam may have been to take over the accounts of some of the service's most popular users: the account for Fox News, as well as pop singer Britney Spears, also had their passwords stolen and offensive tweets sent out. The Fox News tweet, for the record, concerned the sexual orientation of pundit Bill O'Reilly; the Spears tweet made some tawdry allegations about her naughty bits.
UPDATE: Twitter has posted an official blog entry explaining that this is different from the phishing issue. Rather, it was a hacker's doing:
The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend. These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We'll put them back only when they're safe and secure.
Props to marketing blogger Ian Schafer for grabbing this screenshot.
(Credit:
MySpace)
As we wrote on Monday, CNN's citizen journalism pet project iReport was due to get a site of its own. Today the service finally went live as iReport.com, and is already filling up with user content both old and new.
iReport's site has a lot in common with YouTube, showing off a grouping editor-selected videos (and photos) on the top of the page alongside a queue of the latest news content that's been uploaded by users. Each iReport user gets their own page with a listing of their uploaded photos and videos. Similar to Current, content is marked to show if it's been featured on CNN's televised or Web news reporting. adding incentive for others to click on it.
In addition to hosting any news story videos uploaded by users, iReport dishes out assignments to fledgling videographers and photo journalists. On top of the list is the 2008 Presidential elections, alongside weather reports, the ever popular "offbeat images", as well as "stories from Second Life," Linden Lab's MMORPG. Users can upload up to 10 videos and videos at a time, with each one taking up to 100MB in size.
Interestingly enough, the videos on iReport.com cannot be embedded on third party sites, although there are links to share it on five major social bookmarking and news services. Users also have the option of making the file downloadable, letting others grab it to play on their PCs or portable media devices. Syndication (albeit direct) is the name of the game.
In the future the service plans to increase the ties between stories, as well as where users are reporting from by integrating world maps. Already there is a "more on this story" feature that groups together content by assignment. The service also employs tags and a "newsiest" feature which "combines freshness, popularity, activity, and ratings" in an algorithm not unlike the ones found on social news sites like Digg and Reddit.
More screenshots after the break.
CNN's iReport site features playable Web videos and pictures submitted by users. Media that has been chosen to show up on CNN.com or CNN TV programming gets its own 'On CNN' badge seen in the top left of the player.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
CNN is close to expanding its "iReport" user-generated reporting initiative into a separate Web site, MediaWeek wrote Monday.
The new site, to be hosted at iReport.com, will be a repository for user-submitted news content--video, audio, and photos. Visitors can navigate through categories of news (like sports, weather, and politics), rate content, and embed it elsewhere on the Web. Contributors will be able to create profiles, and regulars can build up individual followings. As for filtering, the new site will be moderated once content has already been posted to the site; this is a change from CNN's current strategy with iReport, in which only select contributions are posted to CNN's Web site. This obviously means that the news runs the risk of inaccuracies and pranksters, but one could assume that moderation as well as community interaction could keep the fake-news factor to a minimum.
Right now, hubs for "citizen journalism" on the Web include well-backed companies like Current Media, which recently filed for an IPO, as well as start-ups of varying size like NowPublic and GroundReport.
CNN first launched the iReport project in August 2006, and since then has received over 100,000 photo and video submissions, according to MediaWeek. In October, the Time Warner-owned news brand established a presence for the initiative in virtual world Second Life.
The questions in presidential debates have traditionally been determined by whatever media outlet happened to be running the show. CNN and YouTube are looking to change that tonight. As you may know, YouTube is working with CNN to hold a presidential debate where all of the questions will asked through YouTube videos that have been submitted since early June.
Even though users can submit their own questions, CNN is ultimately in charge of picking the questions that are going to be asked. Still, this is a promising development. According to an article on CNN.com, there is a small committee at CNN that is in charge of selecting the questions. David Bohrman, Senior VP for CNN and a member of the selection committee said, "There are questions that we, the journalists, we, the mainstream media, would never think to ask in the presidential debate."
The fact that this debate is even happening just goes to show the enormous impact that user generated-content has had on society. Ten, even five years ago, something like this would have had no chance of happening. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out and hopefully this type of debate becomes more typical in the future.
For those interested, the debate will be on CNN tonight at 7pm ET and available on youtube.com/debates for discussion and critique shortly thereafter. So, set your TiVo, VCR, maybe even watch it live and let me know what you think.
