Tweetbomb – a tweet which can save, shave or shake the world
@Keith Kliner talks about a very interesting phenomenon ‘tweetbomb’, some future tweet on twitter which has the potential to reach 100 million people, mobilize them and cause an ‘act’. Something very similar to flashmobs, but much more faster and at a very large scale. And not necessarily for good.
What Keith Kliner talks about may be actually in the making and we have seen this mass hysteria or the collective obsessional behavior in many shapes and forms. For example, the recent hashtag #amazonfail; explained here and here
Evgeny Morozov is showing a similar concern in the post from hashmobs to DDOSMobs. He cites the example of recent Pirate Bay’s attack on IPFI. BTW the pirate bay leaders have denied any involvement and termed these attacks as pointless.
The Pirate Bay attacks show that pouring one’s rage on Twitter and marking it with a hashtag could be a precursor to "DDOSmobs", which I define as groups of angry Internet users who prefer to take their anger beyond Twitter and other social media and organize "denial-of-service" (or DDOS) attacks. DDOSmobs are as toxic as hashmobs, but they actually have the capacity to cause real damage. DDOSmobs could be driven by nationalism (as was the case of cyber-attacks on Georgian web-sites last summer), hatred of particular minorities (as was the case with cyber-attacks on LGBT sites in Russia), or outrage over issues like piracy (as we now see in cyber-attacks on IPFI).
The worry is therefore, bomb or no bombs or for that matter even if few rounds of bullets. Can a certain amplified human behavior, cause a greater outbreak or harm.
Yes, and more than anyone twitter is the best candidate for acting as ‘transporter’. There are bots, but still many of it’s user are humans. And humans are like that.
"Mass hysteria is never that far beneath the skin, I suppose. A human being is a thinking animal, but crowds don’t seem to be."
-Father Marco, "Escape Velocity" (p.115)
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