The lurches of Elon Musk after incorporating the blue bird of Twitter into his empire have consequences. For him, for the social network and for many companies and public figures that have an account on it. The pharmaceutical Eli Lilly fell 4% on the stock market on Friday and lost some 14,000 million dollars in one day after announcing in a tweet that insulin was free. Meanwhile, another message from the arms company Lockheed Martin It warned that it was halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US “until further investigation is carried out into their history of human rights abuses.” His shares plunged 5.37%.
The point is that none of them had written anything like that.
Those tweets were sent by impostors who demonstrated how easy it is to bypass the Twitter Blue check mark, for which any user could pay 8 euros and which, supposedly, should have protected subscribed accounts from being impersonated. But the reality is that the filters didn’t work, the impersonators didn’t mind paying a ridiculous amount if it allowed them to wreak havoc, and Musk was forced to suspend payment serviceAt least for the moment.
The cases of Lilly and Lockheed Martin were very striking due to their bumps in the stock market, but there were many more impersonations. Twitter was filled with famous people saying stupid things (more than usual). a fake LeBron James He got on his fans’ nerves for a few hours after asking to leave the Los Angeles Lakers. And someone posing as the former president George W. Bush it said ‘miss killing Iraqis’. Even Jesus Christ had his own verified account.
In an ironic endless loop, the companies themselves Elon Musk have also been supplanted. a fake SpaceX He announced that he was going to stop all the missions of the space company to dedicate 240 million dollars “to the incredible subsidies of the government to the groups dedicated to sustainable agriculture and to ending hunger in the world. We cannot look to other planets to solve our problems here.” For its part, Tesla It said that its engineers “simulate hundreds of impact scenarios before killing a child.” They also wore the blue mark.
Super Mario comb
In the midst of the confusion caused by the impostors, Pepsi recognized that Coca Cola “is better”, Nestlé did not hesitate to affirm that he stole the water to later sell it again and Nintendo It featured Super Mario doing a comb, an image that probably sums up many users’ response to Twitter Blue.
Although the Twitter team managed to take down most of the fake profiles, the damage had already been done. Against the ropes, Musk decided to remove verification. In response, the billionaire posted yesterday on his own account that “cheating people is not cool.” And that in the future, “accounts dedicated to parody should include ‘parody’ in his name, not just in the bio.”
To be more precise, accounts doing parody impersonations. Basically, tricking people is not ok.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2022
The failed payment service is Elon Musk’s umpteenth problem since he made the purchase of Twitter official.
Due to the massive layoffs in all the company’s headquarters and the revolution that it intends to implement in the use of the platform, the tycoon’s management continues to create one controversy after another.