The news shook the country for a brief moment when the Associated Press announced that the White House had been bombed and the President has been injured in the attack.  Fortunately for everyone, that wasn’t the case.  Turns out the AP Twitter feed had been hacked.  Within minutes, the account was shut down by Twitter, but the damage had been done.  As the news of Barack Obama’s fake injury spread throughout the world, with the hacked Tweet getting retweeted thousands of time in a few short minutes, the damage reverberated across the nation.  The Dow Jones, crude oil, and numerous other measures sank while gold futures and oil prices immediately rose.

Said the mysterious AP editors, “The @AP twitter account has been hacked.  The tweet about an attack at the White House is false.  We will advise more as soon as possible.”

As news came out that the account was hacked, things seemed to settle down.  The markets resumed their rise, prices went back to normal, and the account got locked down until the AP could get it under control.  Still, it shows one of the weaknesses of Twitter as a news source.  We get the bulk of our news from Twitter, thanks to news feeds.

Tags: ap, associated press, ap twitter feed hacked, associated press twitter feed hacked, news, twitter news, twitter feed hacked, associated press hacked, barack obama, fake white house bombing, dow, social flow, dow jones industrial average, AP twitter feed causes stocks to drop

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