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The really funny thing would have been to send a single, incendiary but not obviously fake message from the account of someone whose tweets often cross the line
by Udik 6y ago
The really funny thing would have been to send a single, incendiary but not obviously fake message from the account of someone whose tweets often cross the line of acceptability. I am thinking of Trump or Elon Musk.
For example, a tweet by Musk saying that he's seriously considering leaving Tesla "because it's not going in the right direction".
Of course the tweet would be denied and deleted soon after, but who's gonna believe entirely that it was a hack, given Musk's history and a single tweet? It's "Inception", by tweet.
Now imagine what you could do with Trump's account.
- koolba 6y agoEspecially if you post it in the middle of a gibberish tweet storm. Imagine immediately following the “going private... funding secured tweets” if a malicious actor wrote something about Saudi funding, or cashing out of it’s rejected. It’d be much hard to separate fact from fiction when the baseline is already crazy sounding.
- jahlove 6y ago> China owns $1.1 trillion in our debt, and I've just directed the Secretary of the Treasure to deny any future interest payments to them! #MAGA Boom, the dollar collapses.
- toss1 6y agoYup, then consider using access to other accounts as reinforcement; e.g., in this example, a corresponding Saudi account posting apparently corroborating messages. Or, in a high-tension war scenario, not only posting tweets from POTUS, and adversary accounts, but also from varios mil commands and news organizations - think creating the entire scenario of Orson Well's War Of The Worlds broadcast... Might not start a war (we can hope there are enough safeguards in place), but it could cause a lot of damage in a few minutes/hours...
- Udik 6y ago> consider using access to other accounts as reinforcement But then you gain in immediate effect but all those accounts will immediately say that they have been hacked. And since it's many uncoordinated and adversary accounts, people will have less trouble believing in a hack. While if you do it with a single tweet, the suspicion it was in fact authentic will linger.
- toss1 6y agoYup, all depends on the plan, goals, expected counter-measures, how those are handled, etc. With a larger plan, would likely have to suppress other channels to get word out, preemptively spreading disinformation, exploiting time zone differences, etc...