After fake verified accounts flooded the network, Twitter Inc. suspended it’s recently announced $8 blue check membership. However, the decision to halt paid verification came too late for Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company.
A fake account, verified with a blue tick, tweeted: “insulin is free now”
American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly lost billions after stocks plunged on Friday because a fake account, verified with a blue tick, tweeted: “insulin is free now.” The tweet was sent on Thursday.
According to The Star, after a phony account pretending to be Eli Lilly promised free insulin, the company’s shares fell 4.37 percent on Friday, wiping out more than US $15 billion in market value.
Eli Lilly tweeted a clarification from its official Twitter account
Twitter took action on Friday to reduce the number of false accounts that have emerged since Elon Musk’s takeover, according to AFP. Sign-ups for a new paid checkmark system were suspended, and some accounts had their gray “official” badges reinstated.
Prior to this, only government agencies and businesses, politicians, well-known people, journalists, and other prominent figures, were eligible for the coveted blue tick.
The @TwitterSupport account tweeted early Friday that a gray checkmark indicating an “official” account was coming back, only days after it was introduced — then almost immediately scrapped.
An internal memo for Twitter staff, obtained by US media including The Washington Post, confirmed the feature had been temporarily disabled to “help address impersonation issues.”