When Livestreams Go Wrong: MacRumors Gets Hijacked

Jason Kincaid

Jason Kincaid worked as a writer for TechCrunch from April 2008 through 2012. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaid@gmail.com → Learn More

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

MacRumors has long been one of my favorite sources for Mac-related gossip (largely because the site has generally avoided overly sensational articles that were clearly wrong), but today it has been having a few issues with its Macworld Livestream.

At 9:24 AM the stream issued an alarming announcement that “Steve Jobs just died”. Moments later this was corrected, with a statement that the MacRumors team didn’t know how it had gotten into the feed. There was quiet for a few minutes. And then things took a turn for the worst, as members of what appears to be the 4chan image-board began flooding the feed with bizarre comments.

Note: We don’t recommend that you visit the site at the moment, as the feed now includes some graphic and disgusting images.

For a working stream of the latest news, check out the CrunchGear Macworld Notes.

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