Twittering Mumbai - from Boston

So yes, Twitter posts did first report the news of the Mumbai attacks. (I realize I'm slow in getting to this, but I needed to think it through, which I realize is very old school in this day and age.)

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and others have been pointing out that the attacks demonstrated that Twitter has become a news source, with the first hints of the dreadful violence coming in Tweets, not cable news flashes.

Let's leave aside the fact that Twitter is a news source monitored -- at least at this point -- only by members of the digital intelligensia who, I guess, track the world's Twitterage to try stay on top of what's happening in real time. (I did monitor Twitter's election-related posts during Election Day and the day after and was rewarded with white noise and blather like "Gobama, LOL!")

My point is that within a short time, the Mumbai Twitterage also demonstrated the unreliability of unverified and anonymous text messages as an information source.

This came when a perhaps well-meaning Boston high school kid not afraid to make up the news started reporting on Twitter that the Indian government wanted people to stop Tweeting about the attacks because it was aiding the terrorists. That bogus report got picked up and parrotted as fact by Tweeters who were actually in Mumbai. (Thanks to Poynter's Amy Gahran for tracking this.)

OK so the fake news did get filtered out. Eventually. And maybe the government should have sent out such an alert on its own, I don't know enough about the tactical situation in Mumbai to say.

But let's look at this in a different light: It's been widely reported that these terrorists used not-that-high tech tools to plot and carry out the attacks, including Google Earth satellite pictures, GPS devices and cell phones. If they were really members of the digerati, they could have used Twitter to spread their message of hate-fueled revenge, to spread disinformation that would aid their carnage and hinder the commandos trying to hunt them down or just to send out fake assurances that all was well to encourage more victims to come out of hiding and be slaughtered.

"Govt says OK to come out. Situation under control." Bang!

So sure, I guess you can say Twitter is a news source. But consider the source: There's really no way to tell on the fly who is doing the Tweeting, a high school kid in Boston or a gunman standing in a puddle of blood in a hotel in Mumbai.

You might say I'm being a digital fuddy duddy. But I think it's a safe bet that the world's purveyors of terrorizing violence are taking notes on what to do next time, and, if they're as cunning as the bastards who shot up Mumbai, they should be factoring Twitter into their plans.

And I'm not saying Twitter is wicked or potentially complicit. Just that it's vulnerable to anyone with a phone and an agenda, like so many things are nowadays. And I'm just offering the reminder: Consider the source.