Multi-trillion-dollar stock market swings on Monday appear to have been set off by false reports on Elon Musk’s X. Experts say the episode highlights the social media site’s enduring relevance, even as it helps amplify falsehoods.

How did it happen?

  • Ulrich
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    514 days ago

    …by whom? A random Twitter user? CNBC? Reuters?

    • cabbage
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      414 days ago

      Anyone who could make this news break would be in a position to steal unfathomable amounts of money in broad daylight, and get away with it.

      I think we should always suspect bad actors in cases like this, and investigate thoroughly. It’s too easy of a scam with too much money to be made.

      Maybe there is nobody to blame. But assuming so just seems incredibly naive to me considering the amount of bad actors and the ease of pulling a stunt like this.

      • Ulrich
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        214 days ago

        Anyone who could make this news break would be in a position to steal unfathomable amounts of money in broad daylight, and get away with it.

        They’d also have to be in a position to lose a ridiculous amount of of money in the extremely likely case that no one looks twice at their completely unsupported Tweet.

        Should we look at it? Absolutely. Do I see any evidence? No. Literally anyone could have tweeted the same thing. The far more likely scenario, in my eyes, is that these news orgs saw this Tweet picking up traction from a bunch of idiots and couldn’t take the risk of being the last one to report the “news”, and so went ahead and reported completely unfounded non-sense anyway.

        • Echo Dot
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          213 days ago

          went ahead and reported completely unfounded non-sense anyway.

          The White House is now such a mess I don’t know how organizations would even go about verifying this anyway. You can ask for an official statement and it’s just a random guess by someone these days, it’s not an official statement of policy.

          • Ulrich
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            13 days ago

            Could be, but that’s on the White House, not the reporters. Not the case here.

            • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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              112 days ago

              why not, hes losing billions in tesla right now, he probably also wants to make others who helped him recoup some lossess.

              • Ulrich
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                112 days ago

                The question is not “why not”, the questions is “why do you think that?”

      • Ulrich
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        12 days ago

        Okay, and what did the “adult frat boys” do, exactly?

        Also worth noting that the White House has now confirmed the 90 day tariff freeze.

        • @KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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          111 days ago

          They do various schemes to manipulate and extract money from the free markets.

          It’s not a conspiracy, they are quite open even with their methods, because they are… Bragging… About it.

          • Ulrich
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            11 days ago

            Great, so you shouldn’t have any problem explaining exactly what they did?

              • Ulrich
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                18 days ago

                …because you just said they’re “quite open with their methods”…?

                  • Ulrich
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                    17 days ago

                    I honestly don’t know how to be more clear about this.