(CNN) -- Misinformation can spread quickly on Twitter, each retweet exposing it to wider audiences and even resulting in real world impacts. On Tuesday, hackers took over the Associated Press Twitter account and falsely claimed that there had been explosions at the White House and that the president was hurt. The tweet was up for a few minutes and retweeted more than 3,000 times before Twitter took the account offline. The AP immediately confirmed the news was not true, but the tweet was up long enough to send a shudder through the stock market, which plunged 143 points before recovering.
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A fake tweet can spread across the social network and into the real world quickly
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One tweet from a hacked AP account resulted in a dip in the stock market
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There is no way to edit or take back a tweet and deleting is ineffective once it is in the wild
The @placeholder incident is not the first time a tweet has influenced markets.