Boise Weekly’s Twitter was posting anti-vax, conspiracy content. Here’s what happened
Staff at Boise’s alternative weekly newspaper say they were locked out of the outlet’s Twitter account Friday morning. For hours, the account was tweeting a string of anti-vaccination posts and other wild conspiracy theories.
“Hey y’all, I regret to inform you that someone got into @Boiseweekly’s Twitter account, changed our password, and is tweeting anti-vaccine stuff,” Boise Weekly staff writer Xavier Ward wrote Friday morning. “That is not us, and we’re working to figure out a solution.”
The official Boise Weekly account had tweeted more than 20 anti-vaccine posts as of 1 p.m. Friday. In a tweet sent at 11:24 a.m., the person in control of the account said that Boise Weekly inadvertently posted social media passwords online in a photo.
“The Boise Weekly was kind enough to leave their social media passwords on Instagram for the world to see,” the tweet reads.
The tweet appears to refer to an Instagram post featuring a Boise Weekly staffer sitting in front of a white board. The board contains several of the outlet’s social media passwords, although most are blurry and difficult to read in the background.
Boise Weekly staff didn’t regain access to the account until hours later. In a statement posted on the Boise Weekly website Friday afternoon, editor Harrison Berry apologized to readers for the “erratic” and “malicious” tweets from the compromised account.
“On Friday morning, someone accessed our Twitter account and began making posts that are inconsistent with our paper’s mission, values and tone,” Berry wrote. “The activity is malicious, in poor taste, and may be offensive to many people who follow us. For that, we are deeply sorry. We at Boise Weekly are distraught that someone would act with so little regard for our paper and our readers.”
This isn’t the first time someone has targeted Boise Weekly. After the weekly ran a cartoon by Jen Sorensen called “Get Well Gifts For The Unvaccinated,” Berry wrote that the weekly received “more than 40 emails and 20 phone calls from critics of the cartoon.”
Someone also tagged the outlet’s downtown office with graffiti and anti-vaccine protesters picketed the office, decrying the cartoon.
“Boise Weekly took some flak and phone calls, but some people have experienced the publication of their personal information online, intimidation, property damage, or threats to their person or business,” Berry wrote in a January editorial about the previous incidents. “It’s part of a pattern of escalating tactics on the part of some within the anti-vaxxer movement to silence critics and maintain a favorable political environment in Idaho.”
Boise Police Department spokeswoman Haley Williams told the Statesman on Friday that there were no citations or arrests related to the Dec. 19 vandalism, which the police report estimated would cost about $500 to repair. Williams said officers who investigated the previous misdemeanor vandalism were informed of the possible link to the Twitter account takeover.
In one of the tweets from the account, the hacker also linked their actions to the cartoon published in December.
“Perhaps if the Boise weekly didn’t publish content mocking the death of children, they wouldn’t have people having to log into their twitter account and correct them,” the person tweeted at 12:12 p.m.
The Boise Weekly was founded in 1992. Adams Publishing Group, the parent company of the Idaho Press, purchased the Boise Weekly in 2018.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 1:00 PM.
