ScienceFunn is an Instagram account that posts jokes about STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). The account shares memes, puns, gifs, and all manner of geeky jokes.
So, when I logged in to Insta earlier this week and saw that the account’s latest post was a woman in a tiny bikini and big stripper heels trotting down a cycle path, I knew exactly what had happened.
No, this wasn’t a sudden hard pivot away from barium and towards boob’n’bum from the account owner. Clearly, they were hacked.
Although…
The use of ‘clearly’ there may not be as justified as I’d like to believe.
Seems legit…
Of the two-and-a-half thousand comments, it seemed that about half of them seemed to believe the owner themselves had posted the video.
The post has been deleted now, so I can’t quote any of the comments verbatim, but the ones from people who’d been tricked were all along the lines of one of these:
- This is supposed to be a science account! How dare you!
- Bro, how much they paying you to post this? Is no account safe?
- Well that’s an unfollow from me.
And then there was a bonus comment:
- You realise that there are minors who follow you? It’s shameful that you’d post something like this.
This incident has been very damaging for the account owner – in a new post confirming the hack, they report that they’ve lost 40,000 followers due to that post.
Although it should be noted that at least one person in the comments said that started following because of the video. So, you know, swings and roundabouts.
But on a broader scale, it was largely harmless. Some people saw a bum when they didn’t want to. Some people saw a bum and didn’t mind, but it’s not what they were expecting. Some people probably thought it was a massive improvement on all them maths jokes.
Could have been a lot worse
But the damage could have been very real.
After all, this is a science account. Imagine if it was hacked and, instead of nudity the hackers had posted conspiracies. Scientific misinformation coming from a science account would be much harder to spot.
Especially given that apparently the appearance of boobs was too subtle (unlike the boobs themselves).
If we can’t expect the sudden appearance of boobs on a channel entirely about science memes to act as a red flag for a large portion of internet users, how can we expect to protect users against misinformation, fake accounts, bots and more subtle forms of hacking?
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Image by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
