YouTube Manager’s Twitter Hacked: Fake News Are Spreading!
- Twitter account of Vadim Lavrusik, product manager at YouTube, was hacked by a hoaxer.
- Fake tweets came from the account sighting that 'Keemstar' - a famous YouTuber, is lost in the shooting.
- Twitter was quick to acknowledge the hack and has deleted all subsequent tweets coming from the account.
Tuesday afternoon, YouTube headquarters became surrounded by San Bruno police following a shooting incident. Four persons have been injured and one person killed in the act. YouTube employees, during and after the episode took to the popular microblogging platform Twitter, to keep their friends and family up to date on what was happening.
However, as more and more Twitter users scrambled across their news feed in search of news related to the shooting at YouTube’s headquarter, they found a lot of misinformation as well. As TheVerge reports, one such hoaxer even went to the far length of hijacking a verified Twitter account belonging to Vadim Lavrusik, product manager at YouTube.
Around 2.36pm PT, Lavrusik posted on Twitter that he was safe, and just 20 mins later a series of hoax tweets began coming from his account. One such fake tweet read, “PLEASE HELP ME FIND MY FRIEND I LOST HIM IN THE SHOOTING,” and linked back to a picture of Keemstar - who is a popular YouTuber. Currently, there is no such information regarding Keemstar being involved in the incident.
Multiple Twitter users quickly flagged these hoax tweets, and the platform promptly removed them as well. Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO personally responded to the situation and said: “We’re on it.”
But even with multiple Twitter executives aware and taking action against the current situation, the platform still suffered from a flood of hoax tweets coming in from Lavrusik’s account, which however were also greeted to instant deletion. As of now. no one is still sure as to how his account was compromised in the first place.
Although it should be noted, this isn’t the first time that Twitter struggled with an outbreak of misinformation relating to breaking news events.