Twitter announced its new paid verification scheme – Twitter Blue – and then suspended it within 48 hours after it created a havoc on the micro-blogging site. Several tweets from fake accounts of celebrities went live, while these didn’t cost celebrities much, some tweets from fake accounts of multi-national corporations cost these companies billions. Here are some of the companies that were impacted by Twitter Blue.
Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly and Co is an American pharmaceutical company, with products being sold in approximately 125 countries. A tweet from a fake account with a blue tick tweeted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” This saw a significant drop in the stock price of Eli Lilly. The impact of this was also seen on its competitors Novo Nordisk and Sanofi.
This did lead to a serious conversation on why the insulin, a drug that was funded with public money and was invented to be free – is so expensive. People claimed that a satirical tweet was not the only responsible factor in the decline of Eli Lilly’s stock prices but also because people are becoming more aware, and hence a fall in competitors’ stocks as well.
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin Corporation is an aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It lost significant market cap value after a fake account tweeted, “We will begin halting all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States until further investigation into their record of human rights abuses.”
Several other tweets from fake accounts of major corporations were also made. A verified account pretending to be British Petroleum (BP) tweeted, “Just cause we killed the planet doesn’t mean we can’t miss it”— which was later on suspended.
Stocks of other companies like PepsiCo, Tesla, SpaceX, Roblox, and Nestle also dipped briefly when fake accounts made more obviously satirical messages.
The paid verification model has since been suspended but not until it caused major chaos on the micro-blogging site.
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