It’s not a new issue. As early as 2018, people were talking about how Twitter bots were manipulating the stock market. Markets, both domestic and international, operate primarily upon speculation. When people say something has value, it has value. Many investors are watching social media for key signals; news investors, in particular, buy and sell frequently based on sentiment.
So, what exactly are “bots,” and how are they changing the way we interact and trade with each other?
It’s estimated that as many as 15 percent of accounts online are bots. Bots act as though they’re humans. They make posts, post photos and media, like other posts, and so forth. They will often steal content from other accounts so they can appear real. But their goal is to spread an agenda.
As an example, someone who is trying to boost a stock might create 1,000 bots that look like investors and analysts. These bots then start talking positively about that company and its stock in ways that are indistinguishable from actual investors. Eventually, this drives the stock price up, and then real investors start talking positively about the stock.
There are other types of bots that influence the stock market, too: bots that buy and sell stocks automatically. So, the entire stock market is now being influenced by bots from all angles.
It’s well-known that social media has an impact on the stock market. You need only look at the antics of Elon Musk to determine this. After some of Musk’s comments, his stock has dropped by as much as 10%.
Speculators use social media venues such as Twitter as a way to get news, and very little is done to verify this news. Because of this, social media and the stock market are a particularly volatile couple.
But the only way to defeat this is to reduce bots (which is hard when they act just like people) or to become more skeptical about the information that’s being displayed online. This requires either a major technological or a major social shift.
In recent years, bots have been used to influence elections and politics. Bots have been used to call for certain actions in the country as well as to obfuscate real facts. These bots are a concerted effort by other countries to destabilize the country, and that also leads to some concerns that another country could try to destabilize the economy through bots and other bot sentiments.
Unfortunately, the average user really has no way of fighting this type of influence. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has been working on trying to reduce bots on the platform, but there’s also Facebook and LinkedIn. Over time, the market will start to correct to the new impact of social media. For now, there may be issues that aren’t quite predictable.
