Elon Musk (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images)

Elon Musk's pay-for-play Twit­ter sows chaos as fake Eli Lil­ly ac­count pro­claims in­sulin is free

Elon Musk’s plan to over­haul Twit­ter’s ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem roiled the so­cial me­dia site Thurs­day, with dozens of politi­cians, celebri­ties and brands be­com­ing prime tar­gets for im­per­son­ation. Chief among those tar­gets was phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ant Eli Lil­ly.

A lit­tle af­ter 1:30 pm East­ern time Thurs­day, a fake Lil­ly Twit­ter ac­count post­ed a mes­sage pre­tend­ing the com­pa­ny had made in­sulin com­plete­ly free. The ac­count, which paid for Twit­ter’s hall­mark blue check­mark through Musk’s new $8 per month sub­scrip­tion ser­vice, spawned a litany of oth­er im­per­son­ators across the site, most of which post­ed crude or po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive mes­sages.

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