Snopes Gets Hacked. Twitter F*cks up the Response

March 10, 2025

Wow. When I sat down this evening to just work on one of my #programming projects, I did not expect to see Snopes start posting on their feed with an absolutely absurd story of how they spent six weeks trying to claw back control of their hijacked #Twitter account. Spoiler alert: the experience involved Grok, probably the dumbest AI out there that was actually able to help.

From their statement on March 9th, 2025, a Snopes employee found themselves locked out of the company’s X account. Their CEO checked the site email and—bam—a fresh message from Twitter: “someone new” had just logged in. Unfamiliar location. Then, moments later, another email: “Twitter two-factor authentication is good to go!”

I know if I got this message, my blood pressure would have been through the roof.

They reported their CEO scrambled to reset the password using the “forgot password” link. Success—sort of. While the password was reset, the hacker had already enabled two-factor authentication (2FA). From what they were saying, it was a good thing they hit the reset password as it appears to have blown the hacker out of the account also before they could do any damage.

And so began the long, painful quest to get anyone at X to actually care.

Step one: submit help tickets—”We’ve been hacked” form, “Can’t access 2FA” form—you name it. Silence. Days turned into weeks, and the sound of crickets was deafening. Snopes even shelled out $1,000 for X's Verified Org plan—even though they already had the status for free—hoping it would unlock this mystical “Priority Support.”

Nope.

The actually saving grace here from what they said was Grok. You read that right. Grok of all things. After providing some stupid assistance, it actually pointed them to John Stoll, the head of Twitter's news who actually got to Customer Support and got their account back.

So, what did we learn?

Always use two-factor authentication. Convenience isn’t worth six weeks of hell.
Twitter’s customer support is a joke. Even $1,000 a month can’t buy you a human response.
Networking is useless if no one answers. LinkedIn was a ghost town.
Grok is as helpful as a Magic 8-Ball. It spat out obvious nonsense before accidentally pointing to the right person.
John Stoll is the real MVP. He seems to be the only person at X actually was willing to help.

In the end, Snopes’ saga exposes Twitter’s abysmal security and support. It wasn’t money, forms, or AI that saved the day—it was a lucky DM to the one guy who bothered to help.

The moral? Don’t count on Twitter to help even if you're a paying customer, even if you're hacked and the Head of News is the only way to get a hold of customer service.

God. They're fucking stupid. If you want to read Snope's full saga, you can do so here with their leading toot!

I know they're called X now. I don't care. Until Space Karen stops deadnaming his daughter, I won't stop deadnaming his company.