
Hackers Turn Burger King’s Tweet Stream Into A Whopper Of A Mess - coloneltcb
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/hackers-turn-burger-kings-tweet-stream-into-a-whopper-of-a-mess/
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mnicole
The worst part about all of this - to me, anyway - is that they had the
opportunity to be clever and funny about it and could have left it at the
McDonald's-buys-BK PR stunt with continuing professional-sounding tweets, but
instead they wasted their hijack by turning it into the exact flood of
childish dribble that people expect when they think "hacker".

~~~
joezydeco
It sure appears that BK has been asleep at the wheel for a while now,
especially after dropping their most recent ad firm. You're not going to get
an Oreo/Poland Spring style response out of this.

I don't get what's happening to BK overall. Every McDonalds around me is
either being torn down and rebuilt or fully remodeled with new facilities and
new tech, while one BK in town has suddenly closed and the other has been
decomposing from the inside out for the last 8 years.

~~~
stephengillie
BK has been bought and sold many times over the years. Most recently, it was
sold to 3G Capital from a group of Bain Capital, TPG Captial, and Goldman
Sachs Funds. [1]

Meanwhile, McDonald's spent over $1B to remodel their stores [2]

[1] <http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1025990/>

[2]
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-05...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-05-06-mcdonalds-
revamp_n.htm)

~~~
joezydeco
Good links, thanks.

I have to admit some bias in my original post since I'm indirectly doing some
engineering work for McD's at the moment.

What's admirable about the corporation is that they seem to be constantly
planning upgrades to both the facilities _and_ the equipment inside it.

I also work near a number of their test sites so I'm seeing things that are
continually being changed and played with. The drive-thrus in my area have
_leader boards_ to show which store has the fastest service. They've gamified
fast-food!

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gfodor
So these guys now are at risk of going to prison in order to create an
advertisement for McDonalds and lots of buzz around Burger King. Somehow I
don't think they thought this one through.

~~~
tatsuke95
The fact that we can talk casually about people going to prison for what is
essentially cyber-vandalism is so ridiculous I don't know what to think. These
are weird times.

~~~
GauntletWizard
Punishment should be proportional to the crime. When you do graffiti on the
side of a Burger King, it's a few hundred dollars and two man-days to clean it
off. In proportion, the fine should be 2-3x that cost, and maybe 2-3 days in
county jail for the offenders.

With the economy of internet scale, that ramps up fairly quickly. How many
people saw that vandalism? With your local McDonalds, it's probably a few
hundred, a thousand on the outside. How many people follow @BurgerKing? It's
probably more on the order of millions. Even using a logarithmic scale,
there's an arguement to be made for months in prison. The cost of the
offsetting advertising campaign? Who knows; They say "There's no such thing as
bad publicity", but certainly _some_ money is going to be spent cleaning up
this mess; Probably again 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the cleanup of the
local franchise.

~~~
jlgreco
Should highly visible graffiti (say, on a freeway overpass) deserve harsher
punishment than graffiti down a poorly lit rarely trodden ally or in an unlit
subway tunnel?

~~~
gfodor
An interesting point and I'd have to say yes if you consider the punishment to
be based upon potential damages.

~~~
stfu
Are you enhancing this visibility economics to other "ideas" as well? e.g.
that the punishment for the killing some public figure should be higher than
the one for some homeless guy?

~~~
sukuriant
It is, though. Killing the president would be reason for you to serve a longer
term than killing someone else.

~~~
chrischen
That probably has less to do with his importance in general than it has to do
with him being a special government employee. For example killing a cop would
also land you a longer term than killing someone else.

You probably wouldn't (or shouldn't) get a longer term for killing a homeless
man vs killing Bill Gates for example.

~~~
sukuriant
Agreed. When he said "public figure", I figured he meant politicians,
presidents, congressmen, judges, etc, not people who are just generally
popular.

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madao
I wish these guys would just go away, they should be using their time to
change the world, not troll it. half the shit they do is completely pointless.
Sure it may bring some notice to public but honestly it dies down just as fast
as it gets put up.

~~~
mhurron
Bringing laughter to people is changing the world. There is no greater calling
then teh lulz.

I know I got a kick out of it.

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paragonred
I really dislike the use of the word "hacker" as it is used by most people.
It's just semantics, but it makes me sad that when most people think hacker,
they think these types of activities.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Which is why I like the work hackivist as it captures the spirit of that
activity. Of course it doesn't work with criminal (hackinal?) which some
people use 'cracker' (as in criminal hacker).

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mkr-hn
McDonalds responded: <https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/303575465237549056>

~~~
bmuon
I love their use of "counterparts". It almost reads as "archenemies".

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Steko
Best thing that could happen to Burger King with the horse whoppers thing in
the news.

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olefoo
So the real WTF here is why Twitter doesn't support TFA, at the very least for
verified accounts; and definitely for anyone spending money on promoted tweets
or trends.

It's certainly something they could add for select accounts, and it's
something I wish they'd add as an option for regular accounts.

Just think, a single text message and a "You are logging in from a new
computer/ipaddress/application combo so please enter the code we just sent
you". Would have saved considerable embarrassment all around.

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oh_god_why
Ugh. Why would anyone waste their precious time creating an advertisement for
McDonald's?

Unless...

~~~
chc
Alternate way to frame the question: Why would a prankster alter a company's
Web presence in a way that suggests they have experienced a hostile takeover
by their biggest competitor?

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mkr-hn
It jumped by 30k followers in a handful of minutes. Huge increases like that
seem to trigger an automatic suspension.

~~~
kintamanimatt
The cynic in me would love to see this as a savvy marketing strategy! First
time I've thought of BK in a long time, so I guess it worked! They should
capitalize on their new dose of attention by giving away a "hacked" coupon on
Twitter to get people into stores!

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comrh
Yay Hacktivism! Oh wait, this is childish and pointless.

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Mithrandir
The account is suspended now. Here's what it looked like:

Before: <http://archive.is/Fg9Ss>

After: <http://archive.is/BsLQe>

~~~
camfex
Intermediate: <http://archive.is/96qTG>

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habosa
This is funny, but I really wish these Anonymous guys would either disappear
or get 'real' jobs using their skills to build useful things. They're really
hurting the image of what it means to be a programmer/tech enthusiast these
days. Whenever I tell people I'm a software engineer they say "Can you hack?
Hack my computer!" and I just have to shake my head.

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monochromatic
Did Burger King do something to piss people off, or is this just random
vandalism?

~~~
mhurron
Depends on how you like horses.

~~~
lostlogin
Now that's funny. British?

~~~
mhurron
No, I had to learn how to be funny the hard way.

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zecho
Part of me thinks this was another viral Crispin Porter + Bogusky
advertisement.

~~~
sheraz
I don't think CPB has had BK for a while [1]. Though I agree this could have
been in Crispin's spirit.

[1] - [http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/burger-
king...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/burger-king-and-its-
ad-agency-part-ways/)

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Lightning
Twitter suspended the account: <https://twitter.com/burgerking>

