Digital mischief

In an age of digital falsehoods, the hacking of a top international news agency’s Twitter account to spread a lie universally was a disaster waiting to happen. And because this involved the name of the US President, the sender could generate shockwaves that made the Dow Jones index shed 150 points as panic gripped investors. The reliability of social media in disseminating “hard news” has always been suspect; as it’s invariably someone else’s “secret” that’s being disseminated. As the saying goes, “a lie can go halfway around the world while truth is pulling its boots on”. Truth, indeed, has a hard race to run.

So automated are stock exchanges today that only speed breakers on tumbling indices can perhaps contain the damage somewhat. During the Boston Marathon attack rumour mongers had a field day. While such gossip would hardly affect anyone but closed groups in earlier eras, the speed at which “news” travels these days invests rumours with such credibility that they can have unintended consequences.

The susceptibility of stock markets is due to extreme automation that make billions of transactions possible in a trading day. The pressing of a wrong button on the computer can cause havoc worldwide, which is the price modern society must pay for dependence on software programmes. The world is yet to devise ways to cope with the digital explosion.