I think that at least one good thing has come out of the drama of the Twitter escapades the last few weeks and that is, people like drama. Not only that, people act on the most ridiculous information, if companies really are "losing billions" in evaluations based off of Tweets.
Just think about the absurd nature of the trading markets if a Tweet saying something ridiculous like "insulin is now free" actually has an effect on the market. Instead of trying to stop the "8 dollar trolls" (which would be a great current Twitter account), perhaps people should be questioning how professional markets are reacting so heavily to Tweets.
Unverified. Mustn't be real.
Doesn't anyone have a problem with this though? People were complaining that Elon Musk was "manipulating the markets" with his Tweets about Doge and Bitcoin, but they were just influencing crypto idiots. But, it seems that at least crypto people were reacting to a real account with 100M followers, Wall Street traders are reacting to troll accounts....
WTF.
Sure, I get that some average people are duped into following and perhaps even retweeting, but in all seriousness, how are these accounts taken seriously and getting enough traction in a very short time frame to be able to influence the markets?
That seems dodgy AF!
Think about your own accounts on Twitter (if you have them) and how difficult it has been to gather followers, yet these troll accounts are able to within a very short time frame get followers, retweets and traction in the media.
Now this is interesting....
Look at this - a little bit of decentralization creeping in.
A web of trust.
Cross-reference all of the account interactions and much of the job is done automatically. Look at how they interact with their follower base, and more of the job is done. Have the organizations do manual verification work as well, and much of the issue disappears.
Not that it is an issue.
It is like these "data hacks" that are constantly in the news, where some hacker has stolen account information from an organization, because that information has a value attached to it and then, they blame the hacker. Yes, the hacker is to blame as they did it, but doing it is incentivized and expecting incentivized people not to act on the incentive is never going to work. And, knowing that people are incentivized to hack the data should mean that the data is sored in ways where hacks can't happen - because there is a known risk and it is up to the organization to do the risk mitigation work - do their job.
Blaming the incentivized is shirking the responsibility of the task, yet people are seemingly increasingly blinded by the shift. These aren't "isolated" cases, they are systematic components of the structure and they are driven by highly predictable human behavior. Offer a high enough reward for an activity and surprise, surprise - people will act.
You know it. I know it.
You act on incentive. I act on incentive.
And everyone has a price, with some willing to act quite poorly for very little.
When we live in a world where people are willing to shoot and kill others over a pair of sneakers, wrong colored clothes, or because they drew a cartoon, is it really any wonder that in an environment like Twitter, there are going to be trolls who are willing to say stuff for attention? As said, the real wonder is that supposedly finance professional are making billion dollar calls based on Tweets on a social platform where they know trolls are operating.
Now, what would be interesting to see is if before these tweets go out, if there are short orders being put in on the stocks. In a world where people are able to claim that national elections and voting counts are rigged, is it really that inconceivable that these are essentially corporate false flag events designed to do just what they are doing, and covering the tracks by shifting blame to a troll - who should never have been able to influence the markets?
The blue checkmark isn't the problem.
As ridiculous as it is to buy a verification that verifies nothing, blaming what is wrong with Twitter on that, is highly delusional. The real problem is that while people are focusing on this minutiae of importance, the largest plays are being made. It is a magician's trick, with the distraction to draw attention, being played while the cogs of the real mechanics are turning out of sight, out of mind, out of drama.
The reason the idea that trolls are able to get traction of our attention, is that we are having that narrative forced down our throats and we are only too willing to swallow, because we don't want to face the reality of the alternatives.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]