Monday, August 06, 2012

Stock Market responds to a fake tweet of Assad's death

Stock Market response to a fake tweet

Browsing Twitter a couple of hours ago, I picked up a tweet from V. Kolokoltsev, which is indeed the name of the Russian Ministry of the Interior.
It said:


ATTENTION. RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR IN DAMASCUS REPORTS THAT PRESIDENT OF ARAB REPUBLIC OF SYRIA BASHAR AL ASSAD HAS BEEN KILLED OR INJURED.

I was cautious, had a look at his account, who he was following - a load of news agencies. 
He had 7 tweets showing. 
Wanting to believe it was true, I tweeted:


If @MiniInterRussia's tweets are to be believed, Bashar al Assad is dead. Let's hope for peace, justice and democracy in #Syria.
Then I looked closer at his account, and clicked on his Favstar page. Favstar records which of your tweets were retweeted and favourited. 

Here it is: 

It shows many more than 7 tweets: a series of fake death announcements, including those  Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev.

His latest tweet reads:

This account is an hoax created by italian journalist Tomasso De Benedetti

Tomasso has form. Here's a Guardian account from March 30th this year when he was up to the same thing. He says he does it to show how weak the media is. Fair enough.

What is really interesting, however, is how he really got the Stock Market.

The image at the top of this post shows the spike caused by rumour of Assad's death caused by the fake tweets.  Now I was nearly taken in, but the stock market WTI should have some checks and balances. There was a nice discussion on Twitter about the reaction:

Seeing reports that Assad has been killed. Any truth in it?
 apparently. Some Russian minister has tweeted something.
  fuckssake. Traders are really the stupidest people alive. I mean, really. Thankfully they don't earn that much.
  yes; one would hate to think what would happen if such impulsive people were remunerated well for acting on gut.
  indeed. Global economic catastrophe might ensue, for example.
  heaven forbid if such calamitous events were to come to pass.

So. There we have it. Always check your sources. Unless, of course you are a stock broker.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I never heard before this type of fake tweet related to stock market and this the bad news for the people because they are buying and selling the shares everyday.

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