It cost only $8 – but could have caused billions in damage: the blue tick on Twitter.
With the small symbol next to the name, companies and famous people can show that the account is real. Elon Musk (51), recently the proud owner of Twitter, made money from the verification icon after his acquisition. For $8 you can buy a blue tick.
A short time later, chaos ensued: fake accounts had bought the verification and tweeted under the names of real companies. A fake Nestlé wrote: “We steal your water and sell it back to you.”
Minus 5 percent because of fake tweet
The American arms company Lockheed Martin also fell victim to a fake account. A fake Lockheed Martin tweeted with a blue checkmark: “We will begin to suspend all arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States pending further investigations into their human rights violations.”
The tweet was visible for several hours and was shared thousands of times. This did not go unnoticed on the stock exchange either. At one point, Lockheed Martin stock fell by about 5 percent. With a market cap of more than 120 billion, the fake tweet should have cost the arms manufacturer several billion.
Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company from the United States, also paid dearly for the blue tick. A fake company account tweeted under the company’s name, “We’re excited to announce that insulin is now free.”
Suspended $8 System
An official apology from Eli Lilly came too late — as a result, the stock fell nearly five percent. The malaise could only partly be the cause of the fake tweet. As the “Spiegel” writes, it was announced Thursday morning that the pharmaceutical company had to pay $ 176.5 million in a procedure for a cure.
Twitter has suspended the $8 system after the fake news wave. The SMS service was warned by the US consumer protection agency FTC. It remains to be seen whether, despite the disaster, the merchantable tick will make a comeback in the future. (obf)