It all started in April 2022 when Elon Muskthe richest man on Earth, decided he wanted to buy Twitter. After months of speculation and even retractions, the businessman ended up paying $44 billion for the microblogging social network.
Musk proposed big changes to the platform from day one, claiming that his purchase would return “freedom of expression to Twitter.” The first red flag was that racist words increased in use by 500% immediately after Elon became CEO of the company.
This has started to scare brands that pay for advertising on Twitter causing many, for example United, Pfizer and GM, to quietly cancel their contracts with the social network.
When all are verified, no one is verified
Given this, Musk decided to pivot Twitter’s business model towards subscription, charging 8 dollars (about 160 Mexican pesos at the current exchange rate) for verification. In other words, anyone who wanted to pay would have access to the famous “blue popcorn”.
The idea at first sounded good. It is even mentioned that about 400 thousand users managed to access the program now known as Twitter Blue.
However, everything soon turned to chaos and destruction for Twitter.
In all social networks, “popcorn” or verifications work to identify the official accounts of a government, media outlet, influencer, politician, businessman, public servant, etc. This helps us find official sources, as marketing specialist Armando Ruíz explains here, and prevent the spread of misinformation.
On Wednesday, November 9, the verified Twitter testing phase began, and for three days, Twitter became pandemonium. With no verification checks and offering verification for $8, the abuse obviously started.
The $8 proposal became a nightmare for brands
An anonymous citizen decided to pay the 8 dollars to impersonate the official account of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and announce that “from that moment on”, the insulin would be completely free.
That tweet from a purportedly verified account cost $15 billion for Eli Lilly stock to plummet. The company tried to clarify the situation, but it was already too late.
The pharmaceutical company sells the insulin for $275 in the United States. It should be remembered that the inventors of the drug sold the patents for a dollar because they wanted everyone to have access to it.
The defenestration of Eli Lilly shares was not the only one of the victims of Elon Musk’s paid verification. An account impersonating Nintendo of America posted a crude image of Mario. Do not forget how protective the Japanese company is with its intellectual property.
It was not the only trolled brand. “Pepsico” tweeted that Coca-Cola was the best soft drink.
Even a fake Jesus Christ account mocked Elon Musk’s plans by saying, “Guess who has two thumbs and is verified?”
There were even examples that could have more sinister consequences such as geopolitical conflicts, as Ruíz points out. Gunmaker Lockheed Martin “tweeted” that it would stop supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States pending the conclusion of a robust investigation into their possible human rights abuses.
The fake Chiquita Brands account reported that it had removed the government of Brazil.
The one imitating British Petroleum said that “just because they had killed the planet, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t miss it”; “Coca-Cola” announced that they were the biggest plastic polluters in the world and that of “Nestlé” said that it stole the world’s water and then resold it.
Elon Musk’s companies did not escape verification chaos
The “trolls” did not stop with the well-known brands. They also attacked Elon Musk’s companies. “SpaceX” indicated that it had accepted billions from the US government just to mimic what NASA achieved decades ago.
For its part, the fake Tesla account “offered” 10,000 vehicles to the Ukrainian army because they were the “most explosive devices on the market.”
On Friday, November 11, just two days after its launch and on the orders of Elon Musk himself, Twitter Blue was suspended.
Bad news from Twitter continues for Musk
Musk has faced big problems in his takeover of Twitter. He has mentioned to those close to him that the company could be on the brink of bankruptcy, several of the top executives having resigned in a matter of days.
Musk’s personal fortune in recent months has shrunk by more than $100 billion due to the devaluation of Tesla shares.
On the other hand, Twitter as a company is drowning in debt. Musk paid $44 billion (an inflated price according to analysts), but most of it (about $30 billion) is money he borrowed to make the purchase. That money was obtained under an 8% interest, an incredibly high figure since it translates into payments of one billion dollars a year. Twitter as a company, at best, earns $700 million annually.
March Violante Martha Elena Violante (March Violante) is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Emprendedor.com and has more than 10 years of career in digital journalism. She has interviewed figures such as Randi Zuckerberg, Daniele Lamarre, Zoe Saldana, among others. She has worked in media such as Entrepreneur in Spanish and English, High Level, PREMIERE Cinema, Mexico Unknown, among others. “We are entrepreneur.com”