Twitter verification trolls targeted the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly, falsely announcing that 'insulin is free' before claiming it would cost $400-per-vial
- Two Twitter accounts pretended to be insulin-producing pharma firm Eli Lilly and Company.
- "Insulin is free now," one of the accounts tweeted, gaining 11,000 likes.
Two Twitter users bought verification to impersonate a pharmaceutical company and pretend that insulin was being given away for free, seemingly satirizing the long-running debate over the price of the drug in the US.
Both accounts pretended to be Eli Lilly and Company, who introduced the world's first commercially available insulin product – a necessity for people with diabetes. According to Fortune, the insulin Humalog is Eli Lilly's biggest revenue driver.
On Thursday, an account with the username "EliLillyandCo" tweeted: "We are excited to announce insulin is free now."
Its blue tick made the account look official, as it previously marked legitimate accounts before Elon Musk let users purchase one for an $8 monthly Twitter Blue subscription.
The fake tweet got around 11,000 likes before the impersonator was suspended.
The real company then apologized for the "misleading message from a fake Lilly account" and added that users should only trust the "LillyPad" account. Twitter's font also means trolls can use a capital I instead of a lower-case L to appear similar.
Another troll added to the confusion by verifying the account "LillyPadCo," and similarly apologizing for the previous impersonator, using the same wording and claiming that it was the official account.
The second pretender added: "Humalog is now $400. We can do this whenever we want and there's nothing you can do about it. Suck it."
At the start of the year, Eli Lilly lowered the price of Humalog to $82.41 for an individual vial amid a long-running saga over the cost of the drug, which is vital to many people with diabetes and a number of other conditions.
An investigation by Congress released last December found that several companies have been able "to get away with outrageous prices and anticompetitive conduct" because Medicare isn't allowed to negotiate for lower prices. Hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli achieved infamy in 2015 when he raised the price of an antiparasitic drug from $13.50 to $750.
Musk has said that Twitter will ban such accounts that don't clearly state that they're parodies, but trolls have still had their fun impersonating the likes of George Bush and OJ Simpson. The platform has twice introduced and twice reversed an "Official" tag to distinguish some legitimate accounts.
Eli Lilly told Insider it was "in conversations with Twitter