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?

  • @llii@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9510 days ago

    About a minute later, it was posted by the X account “Walter Bloomberg,” which has more than 850,000 followers. Although the account is not affiliated with Bloomberg News, it often shares the news organization’s headlines. The account’s boosting of the false headline prompted chatter among CNBC analysts on live television about a possible 90-day reprieve from Trump’s tariffs.

    This ist the dumbest fucking timeline.

  • Ogmios
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    8610 days ago

    It’s kind of frightening that people who control that much capitol are apparently unaware that social media is not gospel truth.

    • OpenStars
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      5710 days ago

      Not just that, but “Reuters and CNBC reported it” as well. It snowballed from X to mainstream news then back to X again and back to people talking in “reputable” news again, again and again.

      At this point I’m wondering just how much if any that mainstream for-profit media is any better than X at reporting anything at all.

    • @Zink@programming.dev
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      610 days ago

      They probably care less about whether it is true, and more about whether they can get their buy in before everybody else.

  • queermunist she/her
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    6810 days ago

    It was a pump-and-dump scam, I’m almost sure of it.

    Someone made millions off of that Xeet.

      • sunzu2
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        610 days ago

        That’s only works when you are running the OP, rest of us end up bag holding

        • Echo Dot
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          9 days ago

          Just invest gold and wait for the inevitable heart attack/assassination/assassination made to look like a heart attack

          • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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            18 days ago

            its kinda too protected to be shot, probably something that has tendancy to cause high energy reaction in materials.

          • sunzu2
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            19 days ago

            Not big on commodities tbh

            Also metals are hyper manipulated markets for various reasons so they don’t trade like boomer gold big think they do

  • Ulrich
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    6110 days ago

    In statements to NPR, Reuters said it has withdrawn the incorrect report, blaming a headline published on CNBC. When asked for comment, CNBC said it “aired unconfirmed information in a banner,” which it “quickly” corrected.

    What in the absolute fuck?

      • cabbage
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        1910 days ago

        Yeah. Money is not lost in finance markets, it is redistributed. Reading any of this as random and/or unintentional is beyond naive.

      • Ulrich
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        510 days ago

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

        • cabbage
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          410 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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            210 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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              29 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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                9 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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                  18 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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            8 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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              17 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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                7 days ago

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

  • @oxysis@lemm.ee
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    4510 days ago

    these are the people who are leading us into a recession… they fall for a fucking random tweet…

  • @mlg@lemmy.world
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    158 days ago

    2025 and people are still treating X as a source of information.

    youtube comments section has more reliability than what Twitter ever did

  • I Cast Fist
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    1210 days ago

    What was that they said during the stupid reddit thingy with stock markets? “It’s not a casino”?

    • Ulrich
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      18 days ago

      I mean kinda. Except that the odds are actually stacked in your favor.

  • katy ✨
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    810 days ago

    the twitter post didn’t cause it to happen the idiot in the white house did with his stupid trade war.

  • @AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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    410 days ago

    I saw the video. A reporter asked if the president would consider a 90 day pause and the white house guy responds with “yeah, well, you know, the president is going to do what he wants to do.”

    But the first thing out of the fucking guys mouth was “yeah”. So of course the reporter is going to run with it when it was literally just a filler word cuz the dude didn’t know how to answer the question.