Month: December 2018
The G-20 Hyperlink Blues
Using his great deductive reasoning skills, Rudy Giuliani concluded that Twitter conspired with anti-Trump forces to malign his Tweet. By failing to include a space between the end of a sentence and the next one, Giuliani errantly produced the hyperlink: G-20.in. This, of course, for most of us in the Tech World, means that Twitter thinks the word combination is a website with a domain extension of “.in” which is similar to “.gov”, “.com”, etc. (i.e. it makes the word combination “clickable”). So, some bright individual noticed that, bought the domain name, “g-20.in” (to make a real website out of the domain name) and put up this great announcement, “Donald J. Trump is a traitor to our country” (see the hyperlink for the full webpage experience). Twitter users could now be directed to this site as they click on Giuliana’s Tweet.
But, rather than find out what really happened, Giuliani constructs this whole elaborate conspiracy theory story that Twitter is behind some grand scheme to defame the President because Twitter allowed “someone to invade my text with a disgusting message.” This makes something that was incredibly funny into something ridiculously funny but also, disturbingly outrageous at the same time because I think, as a former high profile prosecutor, Giuliani should know better. I will refrain from making any kind of comment regarding what that might mean for his legal representative skills, however.
References:
The Polarity Resistance 