One of the most prominent instances was a verified Eli Lilly account tweeting “insulin is free today,” prompting the genuine Eli Lilly to apologise for the “misleading” post since their insulin is not free. Then, another false Eli Lilly apologised for the real Eli Lilly’s apologies. An account that seemed to be a Twitter ad salesperson begged Musk to delete the bogus Eli Lilly accounts. The bogus Eli Lilly accounts were both removed, but the tweets caused the drug company’s shares to plummet.
Musk reacted by saying that spoof accounts should be properly tagged. “Tricking people is not acceptable,” he said on Twitter. Some made feeble efforts to comply. A bogus Tesla account called @Teslareal wrote “parody” on its profile’s header picture but proceeded to harass Musk (the account is now suspended).
