One of the ideas that Elon Musk implemented after his Twitter takeover was a premium service that offered “blue tick verification” to anyone willing to pay $8 per month for it. Before his takeover, the blue tick was something that official profiles could get for free on Twitter. Official profiles of companies, celebrities, governmental organizations, journalists, etc. Musk decided to start charging for this feature however the company now allowed anyone to have a blue tick available next to their profile as long as they paid the fee of $8 per month without any real verification. This feature was recently rolled out and suspended quickly after some impostor accounts started using it. This bold move created chaos when a bunch of fake accounts that looked like verified official profiles of known companies and organizations started sharing tweets and messages trolling the official accounts, below are some examples:
Well, Twitter blue was beautiful while it lasted pic.twitter.com/YMi7ldN1YA
— Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) November 11, 2022
An impostor account posing as pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. and registered under the $8 per month Twitter Blue Tick system tweeted that insulin was free, forcing the company to post an apology. Some think that this caused a drop in their share price.
One profile that looked like the official account of Lockheed Martin a known brand in aerospace and military contractor posted the following message:
CNBC reports that these companies lost billions in value due to these pranks.