To the Editor:

It is unlikely that the founders of Twitter could have predicted the economic impact their small social networking app would have. How could a 280-character tweet, nothing more than a blurb, have any reaching effects beyond the app itself? The answer is that tweets go viral and gain traction. All it takes is the tap of a button to retweet a post, exposing the tweet to hundreds, if not thousands, more. This is fine when the tweet is lighthearted and humorous, but when the tweet is provocative, it can have severe economic consequences. The following tweet from Elon Musk, and its economic impact, prove this.

On August 7th, 2018, Musk tweeted, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” When his 22 million followers saw this tweet, there was unsurprisingly a large amount of praise. The value of Tesla stock mirrored this reaction accordingly as it reached a company record high of $379.57. Upon further investigation of the tweet, however, it was determined that Musk was alone in tweeting this. No one else in the company was even aware of the idea of going private, which meant that Musk’s tweet was deceitful. Funding not-so-secured. As a result, the SEC filed a substantial lawsuit against Musk. Now, when the CEO of a company gets sued by the SEC, the public reaction is not going to be positive. As a result, the value of Tesla’s stock plummeted and fell from its inflated high of $359.57 on August 7th to a measly $264.77 on September 28th (which was the day after Musk was sued by the SEC). Surely Musk did not anticipate this disaster, but nonetheless, he should have been much more careful with his tweet because of the drastic impact it had on the stock value of his own company.

Twitter has certainly grown from the small social networking app it once was in 2006. It has inadvertently become a platform that can directly influence the economy. In the case of Elon Musk, he nearly jeopardized the success of Tesla by sending it into a nosedive over a tweet about going private. Therefore, people, especially those in power, need to be much more aware of their tweets or at the very least have the intern review them on their run for coffee.

Daniel Dicker

26 Farm Field Ridge Road, Newtown         March 31, 2019