From the death of Eddie Murphy to Aliens being found for real this time, Twitter has proven itself time and again to be the best possible resource for spreading unfounded rumors if you really want them to go viral. Now its power has really come into its own. With a quick tweet about the death of Syria’s president the cost of oil was actually driven upward at a rapid pace. The tweet, which supposedly came from a Russian official, was of course false. This didn’t stop speculators however from taking it as truth before stopping to find out whether or not it was valid information.
This goes to show something very major to be true, besides the obvious fact that speculators look for reasons to drive up the cost of oil. It proves once more that we cannot take everything that is said on social media networks to be true. One good look at the website Snopes.com will tell you the full story. Internet rumors have been around for years and years. First starting out as emails that have been forwarded and then rehashed over and over these rumors seem to grow in number and complexity. Snopes.com has made it their job to help bust as many of them as possible, but the list keeps growing. With the rise of Twitter, Facebook and other social sites these rumors seem to have gained even more power.
When they were in your inbox it was easy to just click delete and ignore instead of forwarding it on to someone who might believe it. On Twitter though the rumors get the audience they seek. Again, this raises questions the first of which is whether tweets such as that of the Syrian president’s death should be an allowable reason for speculators to influence the market. How difficult would it be for investors in big oil to seed the Twitterverse with rumors such as these to help drive their profit margins upwards?
It is frightening to think of the power that tweets can have when turned to such a negative purpose. What if there were “reports” of the US being invaded or of an assassination of a high ranking US official? What sort of turmoil could that create in this country? In the end it is going to have to come down to taking a few moments and checking out such tweets before giving them any serious consideration. All things being said it is the only thing that will stop the proliferation of unfounded rumors through social media networks.