Strange things afoot with the "DC blackout" on social media

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A bunch of people are getting hacked t

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People are saying this post is appearing on their timelines without them posting it.

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Misinformation about the extent of the unrest in Washington, D.C., and false claims about widespread communications outages burgeoned Monday on Twitter, making the #DCblackout hashtag into a nationwide trend on the platform.

Started by an account with just three followers, the hashtag exploded in popularity, generating about half a million tweets in its first nine hours after being created. The thread swelled with untrue claims that authorities had somehow blocked protesters from communicating from their smartphones to crack down on the unrest, which included looting and some fires.

Several Twitter accounts shared images of a major fire burning out of control near the Washington Monument, but others noted that the image appeared to have been copied from the television show “Designated Survivor.”

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D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said Monday there had been no communications blackout “in any shape or form,” he said. “That’s why I rarely take a lot of the information that I get from social media on its face.” Chris Rodriguez, the director of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, speaking at the same news conference, seemed to confirm Newsham’s statement, saying his office monitors social media for disinformation campaigns and passes any intelligence to federal and local law enforcement. Twitter said Monday afternoon that it had acted against many accounts using the #DCblackout hashtag. “We’re taking action proactively on any coordinated attempts to disrupt the public conversation around this issue,” said spokesman Brandon Borrman. “We are actively investigating the hashtag #DCblackout and during that process have already suspended hundreds of spammy accounts that tweeted using the hashtag.”

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