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After vowing to make Twitter a bastion of “free speech,” Elon Musk introduced a brand new coverage on Sunday that may take away accounts participating in the kind of “impersonation” that comedians and others have used to humorously protest his takeover of the social community in latest days.
“Going ahead, any Twitter handles participating in impersonation with out clearly specifying ‘parody’ can be completely suspended,” Musk tweeted Sunday night.
The mogul added that whereas customers beforehand acquired a warning earlier than suspension, transferring ahead “there can be no warning.”
Celebrities reminiscent of Kathy Griffin, Sarah Silverman, and Mad Males star Wealthy Sommer shortly had their accounts eliminated for altering their usernames and pictures to match Musk’s.
As a fake-Musk, Griffin pushed her viewers to vote for Democrats within the forthcoming midterm elections. “After a lot spirited dialogue with the females in my life,” the My Life on the D-Listing star wrote in a single tweet, “I’ve determined that voting blue for his or her selection is barely proper (They’re additionally attractive females, btw.)”
After Griffin’s suspension, Musk joked that she had been banned “for impersonating a comic.”
“But when she actually desires her account again, she will be able to have it,” he wrote in a pair of follow-uptweets. “For $8.”
The parody bans comply with—and apparently contradict—an Oct. 28 promise from Musk that no “main content material selections” would happen earlier than the formation of “a content material moderation council with extensively various viewpoints.”
On Sunday evening Musk posted: “My dedication to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my aircraft, despite the fact that that may be a direct private security danger.”
He claimed that Twitter “must develop into by far probably the most correct supply of details about the world. That’s our mission. Widespread verification will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the individuals.”