Hacktivism

Hi all,

Here is what I'll be showing in class today. First a quick video that shows opposing views on hacktivism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNXk6kLd8IA

Recent example of hacktivism: skittles.com

Since skittles.com has changed their site in the past days... here's a related article about what i orignally planned to talk about...
http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/01/skittles-tweet-the-rainbow-or-racial-slurs/

The gist of this is skittles.com is basing their site off social media... the background of their homepage is merely a twitter search (today it is a facebook fan page). What the execs at Mars Inc did not expect (or maybe they did), is the "hep" use of social media would result in a large amount of people spamming skittles.com, posting everything from racial slurs to toilet humor. It's pretty clear that the users of twitter and now facebook are sending a pretty clear message to the company... "you don't get it, you're trying to be cool, and therefore we're going to screw with you".

Also if you're interested in learning more about the different types of hacking, looks like there's a book out by Tim Jordan simply called Hacking. Check out this interview he recently did that gives a brief overview: http://ourmaninside.com/2009/02/27/hacking-and-hacktivism/