Single Point of Failure

By now you have seen this image all over.

Check out the coverage of this story in The Hacker News. It's better than most, but still doesn't get it quite right... in my opinion.

Here's the thing: Not Obama nor Gates nor Bezos nor any of these prominent figures "got hacked." What they did was, they trusted their identity and part of their public face to a single entity: Twitter. Twitter is the only one in this story that "got hacked." The Hacker News article details why they did, but it's the fact that it matters so much that I find so distressing.

To me, the problem is not that Twitter got hacked, the problem is what a gigantic vulnerability for everyone this points up. I can think of one particular moron who could literally start World War III via his Twitter account. In fact, he damn near did.

Is this what humanity needs as a single point of failure for... all of civilization? Twitter?