Sorry, Twitter, Prop. 8 has not been overturned

May 15, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Updated


This just in from Twitter — California’s Prop. 8, which amended the state constitution to ban gay marriage, has been overturned by the state Supreme Court. Since I’m a typical San Francisco liberal, you can probably guess how I reacted. To paraphrase some of the comments on Twitter: We won!

Except, oh wait, we didn’t. Everyone tweeting about gay marriage’s victory failed to look at the time stamp on the article being linked to, or only saw the date, not the year. In fact, it’s an article from May 2008, and it covers the Supreme Court’s overturning of an early anti-gay marriage proposition — in other words, it’s about the court decision that led to Prop. 8 being put on the ballot. Oops.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Supreme Court still hasn’t reached a decision on whether the proposition was constitutional. And the rest of us are left to marvel at this example of the real-time web in action. Right now, there are still hundreds of tweets popping up every few minutes, some of them spreading the incorrect info about the proposition being overturned, some trying to correct things, others wondering how this all started.

Update: Looks like this isn’t just the story of new media misinformation, but of an old media screwup, too. It looks like a tweet from the Los Angeles Times helped spread the rumor (as implied in the tweet below), although apparently someone else started it. Danny Sullivan has more details.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • This illustrates why Twitter is silly and pointless.
  • Stephen
    this illustrates why logical fallacies are fallacious.
  • IGT
    my thoughts exactly
  • Fact check mo-fos!
  • LA Times added to the rumors but didn't start them. See my post:
    http://daggle.com/how-prop-8-rumor-on-twitter-s...
  • Ah, thanks Danny. I'll update with a link to your post.
  • Mark P.
    NIT-TWITS!!!!!
  • monroecolby
    The legalization of gay marriage in California, last year, didn't have anything to do with leading proposition 8 to being a ballot proposal. Religious zealots were brewing their poison long before it's fruition. Conversely, if we can use the ballot process in California in any fashion that we please, as the proposition 8 supporters have argued they can, we can put proposition 8 supporters marriage rights up for a popular vote. Ironically, they would be the first ones who would run to the court seek it's protection.
  • I'm curious if you can point to a longer explanation of how the ballot measure and the court decision "didn't have anything to do" with each other. I understand that the proposition effort began well before the decision, but my understanding is that the final signatures were collected, and the ballot measure was officially submitted, after the court decision. But I'm certainly not an expert on the history ...
  • "I'm a typical San Francisco liberal".

    Ouch. Why did you tell us? You just degraded my reading experience of your nice blog. :(
  • Well, that first paragraph is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, so I wouldn't take anything I said there at face value.

    That said, while this is a business/tech blog (and a tech-driven post, not a political one), many of us at VentureBeat have strong political beliefs, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.
  • br_political
    This is how the morons lost the last 2 elections, they believed their fake polls. 1st of all we did not need these last 2 elections because by definition of marriage at the writing of the state constitution it meant only man/woman. These justices never have any legal right to render any decision over-ruling the constitution. And the 18,000 gay marriages were never legal. There are plenty of people not registered and did not vote which are against gay marriage.
  • Samuel
    Likewise, there are plenty of people either not registered or who did not vote who support same sex marriage. What's your point?
  • What this shows is that social media, like real social interaction, is prone to failure on an objective plane. What it also shows is that because there is a time-record of all the information, the truth (objective only) can be deduced quickly and easily. Essentially, a rumor mill and a rumor buster all at once.
  • The latest rumor on Prop 8

    http://tinyurl.com/goofy-gavin