A Twitter Blue impersonator caused a stock drop at Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company.
Twitter Blue was introduced by Elon Musk in order to allow anyone to receive a verified check mark as long they paid the $8.99 monthly subscription fee.
Musk was quickly confronted with impersonation issues and decided to create a feature on Twitter that would inform users which accounts are verified for notability instead of subscription.
People can find out why they have been verified by clicking the blue checkmark in a verified Twitter account’s profile.
However, this didn’t solve any of the problems.
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Thursday’s close of Eli Lilly stock was $368 USD. Later that night, a Twitter Blue subscriber created fake Eli Lilly accounts and began tweeting like they were the company.
“We are excited to announce insulin is free now,”Twitter account @EliLillyandCo
People assumed that the account was genuine because it appeared legitimate, even though it wasn’t marked as verified by Twitter Blue.
Eli Lilly’s stock had fallen to $346 on Friday morning.
The company tweetedFriday “We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad.”
Musk also suspended Twitter Blue verification rollout due to similar issues at other companies.
Although Eli Lilly’s stock was affected, the tweet of the parody account brought attention to an important issue in the US: the insulin price.
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