Twitter user posing as pharma giant announces 'free insulin'; firm suffers $15bn loss

The stock price of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly plummeted after a fake tweet from a "verified" account that posed as the firm, went viral. This incident came to light amid Tesla CEO Elon Musk's new "Twitter Blue" option, which costs $8 for verification. According to the fake account posing as the Indianapolis firm in a tweet on Thursday, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” Notably, Eli Lilly became the first big pharmaceutical firm to be a victim amid the rise in phoney Twitter handles caused by the recently implemented Twitter Blue paid accounts, which Elon Musk just pushed through.   

According to the Independent report, after the verified Twitter account shared the tweet, the company's shares fell 2.2% on Friday. It is pertinent to mention that one of the top three insulin manufacturers in the world is Eli Lily. Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, besides Eli Lily, supply insulin in the United States.  

The fake tweet was sent from the handle @EliLillyandCo

In addition to this, the fake tweet has been made from the account @EliLillyandCo which was the fake Eli Lilly company. On Thursday, the official Eli Lilly and Company Twitter account, @LillyPad, attempted to put things right. The company even apologized to those who were tricked by the false tweet. 

As per Investor's Business Daily, the phoney account tweeted at 1:30pm (local time), and it was available online for many hours. The post received thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets during that period. The account's verification was eventually deleted by Twitter, and its tweets have been made private. 

Apart from Eli Lilly, the fake tweet hurt Novo Nordisk’s as well as Sanofi’s stock price. According to the media reports, Sanofi's shares dropped 4%, while Novo Nordisk's slid 3.2%. 

In the US, even at the Congressional level, the cost of insulin has frequently come up in several discussions. Eli Lilly reported $878 million in revenue for the third quarter alone, the Independent reported.  

Meanwhile, this incident serves as evidence for Musk's critics that Twitter's new paid verification service is flawed. Although verification has undoubtedly evolved into a social media status symbol, its original purpose was to provide people a method to determine whether the content they were reading was originating from an official account. Imposter accounts with verified badges have been uploading bizarre information on the website ever since the new method was implemented.  

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