Neomeme

Update: Looks like the malicious code on the comments is now being replaced with “i am a terrible person”. But it is still possible to submit malformed URLs, and it remains to be seen whether the exploit is completely fixed.

Digg this story if you want to read the comments of gloating Diggers- Digg does not allow any markup(or markdown) in its comments, so there is no risk of such an exploit.

reddit, one of the most popular social news sites, has just been hacked with a pretty bad exploit. As a story making its way up reddit’s front page demonstrates, reddit’s programmers have made a major mistake in designing the site- they did not validate input in any text boxes on the site. From a security standpoint, this is a massive flaw. Read more »

Since it is, after all, politics season, in the interest of fair coverage, I turn now to the other darling of the Internet long shot presidential candidate, Republican-but-really-a-libertarian Ron Paul. Despite polling under 2% in traditional polls, Ron Paul has won every major Internet poll. His supporters have dominated the Internet- they may not be the most numerous, but they sure scream the loudest. Ron Paul has a monstrous amount of blog mentions, dwarfing even Barack Obama on some days, and dominates all other “Web 2.0″ social media sites. And did I mention that he has the most YouTube subscribers in what may be becoming a surprisingly YouTube-centric election. Read more »

If you haven’t heard of long shot Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel, you will soon. Immediately following his participation in the first Democratic debate, Gravel’s popularity shot up tremendously, thanks in large part to exposure online. If debate performance can be measured by the number of supporters won over post-debate, then Mike Gravel won the debate hands down. As I write this, the number one story on reddit is “Meet the Next President of the United States of America”, which links to a video compilation of Gravel’s best(and most provocative) statements in the debate. The same story is #1 on Digg, climbing to the top in record time. You only need to look as far as the thousands of votes Gravel received on reddit and Digg to see that he is popular, at least online.

The interesting thing is that Mike Gravel was dismissed by the mainstream media as a nobody with no support, and denied participation in the next debate. Ironically, it is this very rejection by the mainstream media as not popular enough/too controversial/too outspoken that has made Gravel so popular online. Read more »