Twitter Troll Who Posted Fake Sandy News Apologizes to Internet
A Twitter troll
who got his kicks on Monday by tweeting a series of dire but fake news
updates as Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on New York City took to the
microblogging service on Tuesday night to publicly apologize.
Shashank Tripathi is a New York City hedge fund analyst who — until
resigning Tuesday — also managed Republican Christopher Wight’s campaign
for the House of Representatives in New York. He uses the Twitter
handle @ComfortablySmug (that’s his avatar pictured above right).On Monday, as anxiety and panic gripped New York, he tweeted a series
of false updates that began with “BREAKING.” One said that the floor of
the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded. Another said that power
company Con Ed would cut off service to all of Manhattan.
The messages were retweeted widely and even reported on by national
media. They helped spread misinformation about the storm as worried New
Yorkers and observers tried to find out what was happening. Some have
publicly wondered since whether people who deliberately use social media to disseminate false information during national disasters should be prosecuted.
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