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Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

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Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#121

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

shapefrog wrote: post #104
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His assertion that lords and peasant system needs to be dismantled is absolutely correct, however. Not such a great system when a bunch of peasants convince themselves to believe in lies. "Everyone gets a voice to say damaging things" is the road to ruin.

> His assertion that lords and peasant system needs to be dismantled is absolutely correct, however. But what if the entire business model was/is actually a lord and peasant system. Whereby lords can, while verified and identified as lords, communicate with the masses of pesants without any other gatekeepers. The peasants having their chit chat on the side isnt the point, that is the noise and the lords are the signa…

The damaging stuff isn't idle chitchat. Much of it is orchestrated by people who want to manipulate the gullible to their political advantage.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#122

Post by AlexandrB »

elijaht wrote: post #87

I actually liked the ~idea~ behind this but not the execution, which I can't believe was so bungled In my ideal world, Twitter Blue would act as "identity verification as a service". Pay $X/month and provide some proof of identity linked to your display name on Twitter. If the two correlate, you get the check. I think identity could be fairly flexible- could be "I am John Smith", but also could be "I am CorpA" or "I…

> I actually liked the ~idea~ behind this but not the execution, which I can't believe was so bungled

How do you not bungle something you conceive, implement, and roll out to millions of users in 2 weeks (while in the middle of a massive wave of layoffs).

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#123

Post by mrguyorama »

belval wrote: post #46
mirzap wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patients don't have real choice. Options are either you die or spend hundreds* of dollars on a drug that everywhere else on the planet costs few bucks.

Why is there no black market for insulin? Like build capacity in Mexico/Canada and smuggle the product in the US? Seems like the multiplier would still be pretty good.

The Bush admin basically made a point of ending crossing the boarder to buy cheap drugs.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#124

Post by munificent »

Robotbeat wrote: post #65

Are people aware that impersonating a company’s customer is, like, fraud and opens them up to being sued for damages when something like this happens? There are kind of two things that happened, here. One is a kind of rushed implementation of a questionable feature. The other is a breakdown of social taboo of just violating the law and/or acting in a damaging way. We all know that spam and bots are rampant on the Int…

When you get enough people together, it's not enough to rely on the disincentive of individual prosecution to avoid bad actors. At scale, someone will think it's worth the risk or just not think at all and do something harmful.

This is why you can't open a bar without bouncers, or have an outdoor concert without on premise security. When you concentrate people together you simultaneously:

1. Increase the number of times you roll the dice with someone choosing to be harmful.

2. Increase the number of people within the blast radius (figurative or sometimes literal) of the bad actor who does.

You simply can't escape this fundamental law of human behavior. If you're building a system that aggregates people together—physically or virtually—you have an obligation to understand and deal with this.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#125

Post by system16 »

tablespoon wrote: post #21
scotty79 wrote: post #7

It's super funny that identity verification of authors of things published was basically more than half of the value twitter provided to its users, both readers and writers and the first thing Elon did was to destroy it. Just to replace it with what he calls "payment verified", which basically means you have 8$ and means to send it to twitter. Which apparently is worth less than nothing. It kind of reminds me how a w…

> I think it just helps to be a user of the product and have a deep understanding for it before you make any changes. Elon used twitter a lot, but in pretty unusual fashion (because he's world famous billionaire) so he really didn't understand what's most valuable part and took it for granted. And it also doesn't take a genius to make changes a little slower and more conservatively. For instance, in this case they sh…

> It also doesn't help that there's a Twitter replacement (Mastodon) waiting in the wings

As much as I want to see Mastodon succeed, I don't see it ever happening. Its biggest feature (multiple instances) is also the biggest reason most users are never going to use it. It's just too confusing for the end user. Also it's bizarre that the one instance that actually has the potential to gain mainstream interest (mastodon.social) is not accepting new invites.

I'd put my money on something new taking Twitter's place way before Mastodon.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#126

Post by rodgerd »

sytelus wrote: post #60
scotty79 wrote: post #7

It's super funny that identity verification of authors of things published was basically more than half of the value twitter provided to its users, both readers and writers and the first thing Elon did was to destroy it. Just to replace it with what he calls "payment verified", which basically means you have 8$ and means to send it to twitter. Which apparently is worth less than nothing. It kind of reminds me how a w…

They should have done actual verification like many financial accounts do (you upload your ID and answer questions on your past). Musk is ex-payments professional and should have known that gaming payments to adversely attack verification was bound to happen. His assertion that lords and peasant system needs to be dismantled is absolutely correct, however. Twitter has largely turned into message distribution system f…

> Twitter has largely turned into message distribution system for 1%

The Twitter user base is massively non-Western. Within the West it skews non-White.

Your assertions are meaningless garbage and betray a complete lack of how Twitter works and who uses it, comprising merely the braying of the far-right greivance industry.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#127

Post by blitzar »

tablespoon wrote: post #36
kerkeslager wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are freee to keep your money and die if you prefer. Just to be clear, you're proposing that "freedom" means "do what this corporations wants you to do or die". If this were anywhere but Hacker News, I'd think you were joking, but... you're being serious, aren't you? And let me guess: if a government says, "do what we want you to do, or die", that's regulation and therefore bad, because it's a government doing i…

> If this were anywhere but Hacker News, I'd think you were joking, but... you're being serious, aren't you? How did you come to that conclusion? I mean, there is a lot of earnest extreme libertarianism on HN, but not nearly so much that you can assume a comment like the GP isn't sarcastic. The correct interpretation is somewhere between "sarcastic" and "too ambiguous to tell" without digging into comment history.

Hell I can clear it up.

> the patient's trust in the company to rip them off on lifesaving drugs

So is it dont trust the company to a) have drugs that will save your life (i.e. rip you off by giving you sugar pills) b) make you pay a price that is "not worth it" (i.e. a higher price than your life is worth).

My reference to freedom is literal, nothing to do with government or any other agenda - perhaps other interpretations are loaded with an agenda. IF you dont trust a product, dont use it. You dont have to - you are free to make theses choices. Many people, especially at very advanced ages or sickness opt to forgo expensive treatments that would offer them an extra 6 months of life because it 'isnt worth it'. Some people dont believe that conventional treatments will cure them - see Steve Jobs.

As for my personal political view which seems to be the real attack vector here - for those that fall into neither category, i.e believe the medication will save their lives, feel it is worth it but do not have the money for it. Well in the civilized world, their countries agree with them that their life is worth it and that is how they get their medication and we collectively have healthcare.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#128

Post by AlexandrB »

falcolas wrote: post #37
spywaregorilla wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet their stock is already back up 60% of the amount it dropped in a mere 3 days. Alternatively phrased as after 3 days, only a mere 40% has been lost. Hits different though.

That's the key word: lost. Nothing's been lost - neither Eli Lilly nor their shareholders have lost any money (unless they sold their stock, at which point they aren't shareholders). The price of their stock dipped, and is rising back up. At worst, Eli Lilly would have had slightly higher interest rates on their next round of debt funding.

You're assuming that brand value has no financial value. Forget the stock price, this probably impacted EliLilly's brand in a way that will cost a bunch of money to "fix". If it sparks renewed calls for regulatory action on insulin prices, it could cost them quite a bit more than just brand value as well - either in lobbying, political "contributions", or profits. But that's speculation for now.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#129

Post by AlexandrB »

century19 wrote: post #103
consumer451 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the company is worth on the open market, say at this moment.

And sell it to who? It's going to have to be seriously discounted because it will cost them years to rebuild what he has already broken.

I'm sure there's a SPAC out there that might want it. And thus the cycle will be complete.

Re: Eli Lilly pulls millions in Twitter advertising after fake account debacle

#130

Post by lotsofpulp »

mlsu wrote: post #101
lotsofpulp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the dirt cheap insulin does not work as well as the newer patented insulin that a private company paid to do R&D for. There is nothing stopping Congress from passing a bill to fund insulin R&D that provides the newest insulin technology without being patented, but the fact that they do not and would rather sit in their pulpit and “grill” private company representatives proves that it is all a show. We (sufficient…

The patents on lispro (the stuff that costs $300/vial) expired several years ago. The fact is, Lilly isn't even the largest profiteer. The insane margins of insulin are actually split between Lilly, PBMs (like optumRX and CareMark) and insurance companies, through an incredibly complex system of rebates and vouchers. Turning over that rock reveals more writhing maggots than anyone cares to see.

> The insane margins of insulin are actually split between Lilly, PBMs (like optumRX and CareMark) and insurance companies, through an incredibly complex system of rebates and vouchers. Turning over that rock reveals more writhing maggots than anyone cares to see.

Health insurance companies (parent companies of PBMs) have low single digit profit margins, and medicine manufacturers like Eli Lilly have 20%+ profit margins. If health insurance companies are getting any piece of the "insane" profit margin, then it is being eaten up by losses of other healthcare spend.

Health insurance company profit margins:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/unitedhealth-g...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ELV/elevance-healt...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CVS/cvs-health/pro...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CI/cigna/profit-ma...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HUM/humana/profit-...

Versus medicine manufacturers' profit margins:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnso...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LLY/eli-lilly/prof...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PFE/pfizer/profit-...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVO/novo-nordisk/p...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ABBV/abbvie/profit...

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