WOn July 15, 2020, between 20:00 and 22:00 UTC, reportedly 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised by outside parties to promote a bitcoin scam. Twitter and other media sources confirmed that the perpetrators had gained access to Twitter's administrative tools so that they could alter the accounts themselves and post the tweets directly. They appeared to have used social engineering to gain access to the tools via Twitter employees. Three individuals were arrested by authorities on July 31, 2020, and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and unauthorized computer access related to the scam.
WBana al-Abed is a Syrian girl from Aleppo, Syria who, with assistance from her English-speaking mother, sent messages through Twitter documenting the siege of the city. Most of these tweets have documented issues such as airstrikes, destruction, hunger, displacement, the prospect of her and her family's death, her longing for a peaceful childhood, the al-Bab district of eastern Aleppo, and her general calls for peace.
WAnthime Joseph "Tim" Gionet, more commonly known as Baked Alaska, is an American neo-Nazi, anti-semitic conspiracy theorist, social media personality and former rapper. Gionet gained attention through his advocacy on behalf of alt-right and white supremacist ideology, and through his promotion of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories such as white genocide and Jewish control of the media. He has also used the alias Tim Treadstone.
WDonald Trump's use of social media attracted attention worldwide since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. White House said that the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter permanently banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers.
WJohn Morgan Roderick is an American musician, singer, songwriter, podcaster, and politician. He is the lead singer and guitarist of the rock band The Long Winters, was a touring member of the rock band Harvey Danger, and co-hosts the podcasts Roderick On The Line, Road Work, and Omnibus.
WBriscoe Cain III is an American attorney and Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives for District 128.
WComcare v Banerji is a decision of the High Court of Australia. It was an appeal brought by Comcare against former public servant Michaela Banerji, seeking to overturn a decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The tribunal had declared that termination of her employment was not a reasonable administrative action; once regard was had to the implied freedom of political communication.
WCTB v. News Group Newspapers is an English legal case between Manchester United player Ryan Giggs, given the pseudonym CTB, and defendants News Group Newspapers Limited and model Imogen Thomas.
WThe death of Christine Dacera occurred in the early hours of New Year's Day of 2021, when Dacera was found unconscious in a bathtub in a hotel in Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines. Dacera was a flight attendant for PAL Express who was based in Manila, Philippines. She was declared "dead on arrival" at around 12:25 p.m. (PHT) after she was rushed to Makati Medical Center. Initially reported as rape and homicide case, Dacera's death certificate listed the cause of death as an aortic aneurysm, a form of aortic dissection; however, the Dacera family believed that Dacera was raped and disputed the medico-legal report. In an investigation, eleven gay men who were with Dacera before her death have been described by authorities as "persons of interest". The rape and homicide charges filed against the men were later dismissed due to lack of evidence. Dacera's death gained widespread media attention as a result of suspicious circumstances which appeared to contradict the findings of the Philippine National Police.
WKatie Olivia Hopkins is an English media personality, columnist, far-right political commentator, and former businesswoman. She was a contestant on the third series of The Apprentice in 2007, and following further appearances in the media, she became a columnist for British national newspapers. Hopkins wrote for The Sun in 2013 and the Daily Mail's website MailOnline from 2015 to 2017. In 2015, she hosted her own television talk show If Katie Hopkins Ruled the World, and appeared on the fifteenth series of Celebrity Big Brother, finishing as runner-up. The following year, she became a presenter for the talk radio station LBC. In 2021, Hopkins joined the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
WJason Eric Kessler is an American neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-semitic conspiracy theorist. Kessler organized the Unite the Right rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11–12, 2017 and the Unite the Right 2 rally held on August 12, 2018.
WKnight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-05205 (S.D.N.Y.) is a lawsuit filed on July 11, 2017 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and decided May 23, 2018. The plaintiffs, Philip N. Cohen, Eugene Gu, Holly Figueroa O'Reilly, Nicholas Pappas, Joseph M. Papp, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, and Brandon Neely, are a group of Twitter users blocked by U.S. President Donald Trump's personal @realDonaldTrump account. They allege that this account constitutes a public forum, and that blocking access to it is a violation of their First Amendment rights. The lawsuit also names as defendants White House press secretary Sean Spicer and social media director Dan Scavino.
WMcAlpine v Bercow was a landmark libel case in 2013 between Conservative peer Lord McAlpine and Sally Bercow, the wife of John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons.
W[New Life+] Young Again in Another World is a Japanese light novel series written by MINE and illustrated by Kabocha. The series is licensed in English by J-Novel Club. A manga adaptation by Satoru Abou is currently being serialized, and an anime television series adaptation by Seven Arcs Pictures was scheduled to premiere in October 2018, before it was cancelled on June 6, 2018. Following the announcement of the anime adaptation, the series and its author began to face criticism for controversial material in the novels and in Twitter posts that MINE had made between 2012 and 2015.
WPJS v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2016] UKSC 26 is a UK constitutional law case in which an anonymised privacy injunction was obtained by a claimant, identified in court documents as "PJS", in order to prohibit publication of the details of a sexual encounter between him and two other people. Media outside England and Wales identified PJS as David Furnish.
WSamaritans Radar was a Twitter-based service created by the digital advertising agency Jam for the British emotional support charity Samaritans. It was intended as a way to inform users when their Twitter contacts were potentially in need of emotional support. The app scanned Twitter for key phrases such as "help me", "hate myself", mentions of being depressed or needing someone to talk to and then sent an email to that user's friends. Samaritans suspended the Radar service following widespread criticism and a petition asking the charity to discontinue the service.
W"Seriously McDonalds" is the name under which a viral photograph was spread in June 2011. The photograph shows a sign, which is in fact a hoax, claiming that McDonald's has implemented a new policy charging African-Americans more, as "an insurance measure". Despite having existed for some time, the picture was spread around the Internet, especially on Twitter, in June 2011, by people who were offended or amused by the photograph. McDonald's acted quickly to deny the legitimacy of the sign, but it continued to trend on Twitter under the hashtag "#SeriouslyMcDonalds" and "#seriouslymcdonalds" for a few days. The company's response to the hoax has received praise from journalists and public relations professionals.
WTay was an artificial intelligence chatter bot that was originally released by Microsoft Corporation via Twitter on March 23, 2016; it caused subsequent controversy when the bot began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, causing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch. According to Microsoft, this was caused by trolls who "attacked" the service as the bot made replies based on its interactions with people on Twitter. It was replaced with Zo.
WOn March 4, 2017, Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones at his Trump Tower office late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations. His initial claims were based on an article on Breitbart News, which cited speculations made by conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch. By June 2020, no evidence had surfaced to support the claim, which had been refuted by the Justice Department (DOJ).
WR v Paul Chambers, popularly known as the Twitter Joke Trial, was a United Kingdom legal case centred on the conviction of a man under the Communications Act 2003 for posting a joke about destroying an airport to Twitter, a message which police regarded as "menacing". The conviction was widely condemned as a miscarriage of justice, and was appealed three times, the conviction being quashed as a result of the third appeal.
WAnthony Weiner is a former member of the United States House of Representatives from New York City who has been involved in multiple sex scandals related to sexting.
WMilo Yiannopoulos, who has also published as Milo Andreas Wagner and the mononym Milo, is a British far-right, alt right, and alt-lite political commentator, polemicist, public speaker, and writer. His speeches and writings often ridicule Islam, feminism, social justice, and political correctness. Yiannopoulos is a former editor for Breitbart News, a far-right media organisation.