A Hoax Bloomberg Article Caused Twitter’s Stock to Briefly Spike

Hey, remember how yesterday a fake article caused people online to flip out over something that wasn’t actually happening thanks to the inability of various credible news sites to check the sourcing? Well, it happened again today.

And this one actually affected Wall Street.

We have gone on and on before about garbage fake news sites tricking people into believing some untrue thing is true, not with the kind of comedic grace of The Onion, but by just making shit up and passing it off as real in the hopes that rubes will make it go viral because who verifies information they get on the internet, right?

Well, it happened again today, when a cheap Bloomberg knockoff site bloomberg.market (since suspended) ran a fake story (cached version) “reporting” that Twitter received a buyout offer for $31 billion.

And whichever person created the fake site was very meticulous in making it look exactly like a real Bloomberg article.

As a result, look what happened to Twitter’s stock this morning:

Yep, that spike from 36.83 to 38.33 came after the fake Bloomberg article got picked up online. Good job, Wall Street.

[h/t Variety]
[image via 1000 Words/Shutterstock]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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