We've been had! Anonymous not "killing" Facebook
(CBS/ZDNET) - Apparently the report that Anonymous was planning to take down Facebook on Guy Fawkes Day was a hoax.
Emil Protalinski at ZDNET pointed out some oddities with the whole Facebook operation. He discovered the Twitter and YouTube accounts for the operation known as #OpFacebook were created on July 16.
Why didn't they just go through the proper channels and why was there such a large time gap between the announcement and the attack? "Anonymous rarely gives more than a few days notice, if at all," Protalinski said.
After a little digging, a few things surfaced that gave traction to Protalinski's suspicions.
GroupAnon, which has about 26,000 followers, sent out these two tweets:
"No one can speak for the whole of #Anonymous. There are some anons who support #OpFacebook whilst others do not. | #AnonOps"
"@Anonymous_SA Exactly! #OpFacebook is just an Op, it's not Anonymous..."
AnonOps, which has about 45,000 followers, sent out these four tweets:
"We prefer to face the real power and not to face to the same medias that we use as tools. #OpFacebook #Anonymous"
"#OpFacebook is being organised by some Anons. This does not necessarily mean that all of #Anonymous agrees with it."
"Dont be silly. Important things are happening in the world to deal with quirks like #OpFacebook. Lets keep our style & moral #Anonymous"
"TO PRESS: MEDIAS OF THE WORLD... STOP LYING! #OpFacebook is just ANOTHER FAKE! WE DONT "KILL" THE MESSENGER. THAT'S NOT OUR STYLE #Anonymous"
By contrast, here is the only message from the OP_Facebook account, which has about 3,000 followers:
"spread the new video like AIDS NOU!!! youtube.com/watch?v=SWQTS8..."
So there it is. We believe that #OpFacebook is a hoax. Perhaps this subsection of Anonymous will attack Facebook and spread those creepy 3D sonograms of our grandmother's vacation pics all over the web. We'll just have to wait and see.
