How impersonated user ‘shot down Lockheed F-35 Lightning II’
PANAGYURISHTE ($1=1.89 Bulgarian Levs) — Mr. Elon Musk went down in history as the first innovator and entrepreneur who managed to return a spacecraft carrier back to earth. He did it quickly and efficiently, leaving behind him “breathing dust” state and private space institutions. With almost the same speed, however, even faster, Mr. Musk’s idea ‘crashed the shares of several large conglomerates’.
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Driven by the idea of eliminating bots, spam, and fake Twitter profiles, Musk launched a premium $8 profile verification service. It should be noted that Musk’s actions were well-intentioned, but clearly not well-thought-out, as they backfired in an avalanche. In Bulgaria we say “Measure twice, cut once” and perhaps this should be the guiding maxim of the new Twitter owner in the future.
A tweet from a fake account, but verified with Twitter’s famous blue badge that verifies the original source, may have cost Lockheed Martin $7 billion in losses in just a few hours. “We will begin halting all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States until further investigation into their record of human rights abuses.” This was written by the ‘fake Lockheed Martin’s Twitter profile’ who had chosen to position himself with the name @LockheedMartini [an ‘i’ was added to the end of the original company name].
Why maybe? Immediately and for several hours, the company’s shares fell by 5.5%, which is a reduction of the company’s capitalization by 7 billion US dollars. BulgarianMilitary.com says “maybe” because the capitalization reduction may have been for another reason and happened at the time the tweet was published and after. There is no definitive evidence that this tweet is the cause of the company’s heavy losses. It is for this reason that we put quotation marks in our title – we use them either to ironize or to suggest.
The possibility that the tweet wasn’t the cause of the F-35 Lightning II manufacturer’s decline exists, and is at a decent percentage of probability. The reason: At the same time, and without other fake profiles being used, the capitalization of other defense companies, such as Raytheon and General Dynamics, also declined.
But another dependency related to Twitter’s “blue badge” is noticeable. Shares of Musk’s companies such as Tesla and SpaceX also fell briefly. Financial and stock market experts say the cause is fake accounts posting more overtly satirical content.
Whether Musk’s ‘8 bucks’ landed a state-of-the-art fighter to the ground remains to be seen. But it is a fact that sometimes good intentions, if not considered and tested, very often lead us to hell.
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