Economists recently asked whether social media platforms lead to the collapse of banks, following the collapse of the US Silicon Valley Bank, which is the fastest bank collapse in history.
US Congressman Patrick McHenry, chairman of the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, described this financial event that filled the world with the first bankruptcy fueled by Twitter.
And US media reports spoke of a major role played by the Twitter platform, which exacerbated the panic of investors and depositors, as 42 billion dollars were withdrawn in one day last week, leaving only one billion dollars in a negative cash balance.
The number of tweets on Thursday alone, before the crisis reached its climax on Friday, reached 200,000 tweets, in which founders and CEOs of a number of companies active in the technology sector participated.
The day before the bank collapsed, several prominent venture capitalists took to Twitter, using their accounts to issue warnings with hashtags that went viral.
Experts say that banks’ facilitation of money withdrawals through the latest financial applications on mobile devices was a precedent in the banking world.
Fathi Shams El-Din, a professor of radio and television at Benha University and an expert in digital media, says:
- If there was no uproar regarding the Silicon Valley bank on social media platforms, it would not have gone bankrupt, and perhaps the crisis would have found its way to a different solution.
- What spread on social media platforms led to a state of panic among depositors and investors, so they took the initiative to withdraw more than $ 42 billion from their accounts.
- Social media platforms are playing a growing role in shaping public opinion.