Pranksters Make Short Work of GOP”™s URL Shortener for Conservatives
by Eliot Van Buskirk
Wired
December 15, 2009
The Republican party took down its innovative link-shortening tool Tuesday for several hours after pranksters had a field day using the tool to associate the GOP with bondage sites.
As part of its new media strategy, the Republican party launched a new site called GOP.am on Monday. It”™s a URL shortener designed to make it easy for conservative web surfers to exchange links to web pages.
Pranksters almost immediately began using the service to link to controversial or ironically intended websites, such as the official site of the American Communist Party, a bondage website and a webpage advertising a sex toy in the likeness of Barack Obama. GOP.am apparently started blocking such links at some point Tuesday morning, and the GOP.am homepage was taken offline. Continue reading “GOP URL Shortener Pranked”