The Atlantic: “National-security leaks. Insurrections. Bank runs. Group chats are now the most powerful force on the internet…Group chats aren’t just good for triggering geopolitical crises—they’re also an effective means to start a bank run, as the world learned last month. The investor panic that led to the swift collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March was effectively caused by runaway group-chat dynamics….Although the Discord leaks are, of course, a national-security story, they’re also a story about how information travels in 2023 as the relevance of traditional social media wanes. They are a story about the power, primacy, and unpredictable dynamics of the group chat.“It wasn’t phone calls; it wasn’t social media,” a start-up founder told Bloomberg in March. “It was private chat rooms and message groups.” The rumors about SVB’s precarious financial position then spilled out into different whisper networks. Investors, armed with what they believed was sensitive inside information, alerted their portfolio companies, and in a matter of hours, the cascade moved from small WhatsApp groups to the private text threads of chief financial officers, and then into massive 1,500-person servers. But thanks to the private nature of the group chats, this information largely stayed out of the public eye. As Bloomberg reported, “By the time most people figured out that a bank run was a possibility … it was already well underway.”