As much as last week $8 Twitter Verification distorted many public faces in gross parodies of their sterilized brands, a pharmaceutical company that has long raised the price of a life-saving drug, got caught up in the conflict and may have lost millions because of a fake post. New reports reveal just how much chaos a single tweet from a seemingly legitimate Twitter account caused for the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company.
On November 10, a fake verified account going by Eli Lilly and Company wrote “We are excited to announce that insulin is now free.” The post had over 1,500 retweets and 10,000 likes before it was eventually taken down, but despite the middling performance in the grand scheme of Twitter posts, a host of other fake accounts were quick to follow suit.
The real Eli Lilly account, @lillypad, posted on Twitter In response to all the chaos “We apologize to those who were served a fraudulent message from a fake Lilly account.” More importantly for the company, however, all the hubbub had a big impact on Eli Lilly’s very real stock price. Google Analytics shows that after that initial tweet and subsequent copycat accounts, the pharmaceutical company’s stock dropped from $368 per share to $346 per share, which according to economic reports at the time – reportedly wiped off billions in market cap. The company had been on an upward trend for the past several months, but has yet to recover to its original price as of Monday morning’s report.
The company told Gizmodo via email that “In recent days, fake/parody Twitter accounts for Lilly have been communicating false information and we are working to correct this situation.” The company did not say how much the debacle cost their company, or how it might affect future advertising decisions on Twitter.
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Two unnamed sources with knowledge of said matter Washington Post Workers inside the company rushed to contact Twitter and get them to take down the fake accounts, but the posts remained for hours. Twitter has reported that it has Expect thousands of employees across the board. Communications is one of those departments that suffered major staff cuts, which is why, although we reached out to Twitter for comment, we don’t expect to hear back.
The company has banned all advertising on Twitter, according to the post. Those accounts could be worth “millions” of dollars to Twitter, according to former Eli Lilly Senior Communications Director Amy O’Connor, speaking to WaPo.
Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company and drug manufacturer, is one of three companies that make insulin drugs that are absolutely necessary for people with type 1 and some type 2 diabetes. insulin was discovered over a century ago, and synthetic iinsulin has been in production for decades, but the price of life-saving drugs has balloons extremely in recent years. The cost of insulin medication each year doubled From 2012 to 2016, from $2,864 to $5,705. Patients of the advocacy group for affordable drugs have said that the price of Eli Lilly in particular has increased by 1,200% since 1996.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly has claimed that it has not benefited from the increase in the cost of insulin.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also blasted the company for “Raising the price of insulin … while it costs less than $10 to produce.” The new owner of Twitter Elon Musk then took the time to answer senator, trying to argue that newer forms of insulin are more expensive to manufacture. Ironically enough, Twitter is Hour of hope The feature commented to the world’s richest man that while in the US a standard unit of insulin medication costs over $99, Other countries see insulin prices less than $10.
Twitter’s verification has turned out to be a bad show, and the company doesn’t seem to have an answer yet on how it’s going to fix it. The $8 monthly price for a blue token allowed some of the worst accounts on the internet, including neo-nazis and transphobes, to gain additional legitimacy. U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said he worked with a Washington Post reporter to help prove how easy it was to create a fake, verified Twitter account and has publicly called on the company to take responsibility. But the man behind the company has already dismissed Senator Markey’s concerns. Musk responded to Markey in a tweet, saying his official account now resembles a parody account, and then went on to mock the congressman for wearing a face mask in his Twitter profile picture.
