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Superbloom:
The nuisance became a crisis in the early-morning hours of April 15, 1912, when the Titanic sank after its fateful collision with an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. The ship's radio operator was able to issue a distress call quickly, highlighting the value of the new technology in emergencies. But efforts to rescue the passengers were hindered by an ensuing barrage of amateur radio messages. The chatter clogged the airwaves, making it hard for official transmissions to get through. Worse, some of the amateurs sent out what we would today call fake news, including a widely circulated rumor that the ocean liner remained seaworthy and was being towed to the nearby port of Halifax for repairs. The false reports sowed confusion among would-be rescuers. Fifteen hundred people died.
The chaos in the airwaves during the Titanic rescue was an unintended by-product of the American government's laissez-faire atti-rude toward radio traffic. Although European countries had begun restricting wireless transmissions as early as 1903, radio had been left unregulated in the United States. There were few controls over who could broadcast, which frequencies they could use, or what information they could transmit. Politicians and journalists, dazzled by the magical new technology, feared that bureaucratic meddling would stifle progress. Government intervention "would hamper the development of a great modern enterprise," the New York Times opined in an editorial published three weeks before the Titanic's sinking. "The pathways of the ether should not be involved in red tape.”