Twitter has spread false stories that went viral
1. Fake Amber Alert hit Twitter
Essentially it was
"A 7-yr.-old girl was taken by a man driving a newer silver truck. The license plate reads 72B381 please please pass on."
It spread from Salt Lake City to Oklahoma and the poor schlub driving the silver truck with those plates was the victim.
2. Proposition 8 (the amendment banning gay marriage in California) actually wasn't overturned, but got traction when an old L.A. times story got picked up as current.
3. Premature death rumors is actor Patrick Swayze, who is fighting cancer after KISS-FM sent a tweet to 309 followers that he had died. Everyone (even celebs including @KirstieAlley) were retweeting condolences. Then confusion followed when it was revealed he was not dead.
4. Subway's Jared was also killed by Twitter was the victim of Kevin Rose when he was tweeted about the "death." Condolences was sent out by Digg founder Kevin Rose to his 46,000 followers (at the time).
5. A fake BBC story about a mutant zombie strain of the flu was retweeted 800 times soon after the H1N1 (Swine Flue) scare was breaking. Suddenly people were wearing masks and Twitter began to spread false stories.
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