New York: Multinational companies like Lockheed Martin and Eli Lilly lost billions of dollars because of tweets made by impersonated accounts using Twitter’s new paid verification feature. The newly launched feature which allowed Twitter accounts to have a verified checkmark for just an $8 a month subscription had resulted in a deluge of fake accounts.
American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly (LLY) lost billions after stock plunged on Friday because a fake account, verified with a blue tick, claimed “insulin is free now.” The tweet was sent on Thursday.
Did Twitter Blue tweet just cost Eli Lilly $LLY billions?
Yes. pic.twitter.com/w4RtJwgCVK
— Rafael Shimunov ✡️ 🍉 (@rafaelshimunov) November 11, 2022
They blamed impersonators who used the company name, logo and a similar-sounding handle, got the handle “verified”, and then tweeted “decisions” that spooked investors, leading to a fall in share prices.
Many cited the impersonation of US-based weapons maker Lockheed Martin. A handle called @LockheedMartini (notice the extra ‘i’ at the end) used the name of the company and 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.”
The same day, the company’s share price fell 5 per cent on the New York Stock Exchange, with many drawing a link between the false tweet and the drop. “Twitter Blue erased a few billion in market cap for Lockheed Martin,” said one user.
Similar theories went around about medicine maker Eli Lilly, which too lost about 5 per cent value in share price on a day that a parody account with a verification mark said it would provide insulin for free.
But Twitter users argued that there were other reasons behind the fall: “Not everything is about Twitter.”
