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@feddit.org
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    6 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@feddit.uk
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      5 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@feddit.org
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        5 days ago

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

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          5 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@feddit.org
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            4 days ago

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