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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

#31

Post by kadutskyi »

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…

You can have a fake ID. I would calculate that "payment verified" is way cheaper than full identity verification. But it's easier to create several iClouds with the same cc, so you still need to check IDs, but you can compare newly created accounts (or ones that changed their name) with existing accounts and check for similarities and flag those accounts. The thing is that you can automate that and you need to do that only for a small percent of subscribed users. Instead of fully checking everyone's identity you check only flagged accounts.

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

#32

Post by jjulius »

legitster wrote: post #14

Is the fake accounts thing overblown? Like, if I create a fake verified Eli Lilly account on Twitter with no followers, how would anyone even see it? It seems like it would only get picked up and shared by people in on the joke.

>Is the fake accounts thing overblown?

From the article:

>By Friday morning, Lilly stock had dropped by more than 5% from the day before. The Twitter stunt pulled down the stock price of other diabetes drugmakers, including Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. Lilly’s stock has yet to recover and, on Monday morning, remained down more than 4% over the past five days.

I'm not normally one to defend drug makers, but when you're talking about the loss of ~$15 billion in market cap[1], and then you factor in the fact that the company themselves was so frustrated by this that they walked away from their ad deal with Twitter, it all makes it hard for me to see how this is "overblown".

[1]https://gizmodo.com/twitter-eli-lilly-elon-musk-insulin-1849...

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

#33

Post by kerkeslager »

bellinom wrote: post #28
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…

It's scary how many people legitimately see this as "freedom".

Well, if it's any comfort, it's usually not this bad. I only usually come across this on Hacker News, which is why I have to limit my time here for my own mental health. Some people are so dogmatic about capitalism here that they become indistinguishable from sociopaths.

It's why I call this[1] "The Hacker News Trolley Problem".

[1] https://i.redd.it/d9fnppk1p6771.jpg

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

#34

Post by benchtobedside »

jahlove wrote: post #22

that's the ugliest URL i've seen on HN.

The submitted link was: https://e.endpointsnews.com/t/t-l-auriiuk-cjrhukllr-k/ - this was an email newsletter link used to allow readers to bypass Endpoints' paywall.

HN then modified it to its current ugly form.

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

#35

Post by ctvo »

searchableguy wrote: post #5

I wonder if Elon also thought of this when he made verification checks paid. He must have been aware of verified accounts getting sold and used for scamming so maybe he wanted to dip into that instead of losing it to middleman.

> He must have been aware of verified accounts getting sold and used for scamming so maybe he wanted to dip into that instead of losing it to middleman.

I don't think we can assume he must have been aware of anything. That team was told to release it by November 9th or they were all fired or some such, right? so in a week and a half, release this new feature.

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

#36

Post by tablespoon »

kerkeslager wrote: post #6
blitzar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are freee to keep your money and die if you prefer.

> 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.

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

#37

Post by falcolas »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #11
falcolas wrote: post #8

Aah, yes, the company who lost billions in "value". And yet their stock is already back up 60% of the amount it dropped in a mere 3 days. I have to imagine they're doing this for the continued exposure. There's no such thing as bad press and all that.

> 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.

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

#38

Post by falcolas »

benj111 wrote: post #20
falcolas wrote: post #8

Aah, yes, the company who lost billions in "value". And yet their stock is already back up 60% of the amount it dropped in a mere 3 days. I have to imagine they're doing this for the continued exposure. There's no such thing as bad press and all that.

80% from what base line? >by Friday morning, Lilly stock had dropped by more than 5% from the day before. The Twitter stunt pulled down the stock price of other diabetes drugmakers, including Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. Lilly’s stock has yet to recover and, on Monday morning, remained down more than 4% over the past five days. So the article suggests its only recovered 20% of the fall. And anyway what is a fair amount o…

I'm looking at the actual stock market as of right now. They've been trading for hours, and their price is up overall.

> And anyway what is a fair amount of value to lose over a fake tweet? is 1% ok? 2%?

Given that when the stock prices return and continue to rise - there's no actual monetary losses... sure. Those are all fine. At worst, their interest rates on new loans would be a bit higher is all.

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

#39

Post by danudey »

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…

> 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.

1. Create a new Apple account

2. Buy a $10 iTunes gift card

3. Use that to pay for Twitter Blue

Would I pay $10 and twenty minutes of my time to knock $20bn off of an insulin profiteer's stock price? Absolutely. Put me down for a recurring subscription.

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

#40

Post by legitster »

jjulius wrote: post #32
legitster wrote: post #14

Is the fake accounts thing overblown? Like, if I create a fake verified Eli Lilly account on Twitter with no followers, how would anyone even see it? It seems like it would only get picked up and shared by people in on the joke.

>Is the fake accounts thing overblown? From the article: >By Friday morning, Lilly stock had dropped by more than 5% from the day before. The Twitter stunt pulled down the stock price of other diabetes drugmakers, including Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. Lilly’s stock has yet to recover and, on Monday morning, remained down more than 4% over the past five days. I'm not normally one to defend drug makers, but when you're ta…

> The Twitter stunt pulled down the stock price of other diabetes drugmakers, including Novo Nordisk and Sanofi.

It seems much, much more likely the stock loss was part of a larger market event than a specific Twitter stunt.

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