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Elon Musk news – live: CEO insists Twitter use at ‘all-time high’ as Tesla stocks sink and celebrities flee

Adam Smith and Io Dodds
·29-min read

Elon Musk has been criticised for urging “independent-minded voters” to back Republican candidates in this week’s midterm elections.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last month, told his 115m followers that “shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties”, and that voters should therefore limit a Democratic president by voting for a Republican Congress.

It comes after comedian Kathy Griffin and numerous others were suspended from Twitter for impersonating Elon Musk.

Ms Griffin, while pretending to be Mr Musk, urged Americans to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections.

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It is the latest episode in a week of chaos the San-Francisco-based social network, which reportedly may have to rehire some of the staff that it fired last week because it needs their expertise.

Mr Musk decided to lay off almost 50 per cent of Twitter staff, with the company’s employees were alerted on their job status by email after barring their entrances to offices and cutting off their access to internal systems overnight.

Twitter is apparently losing an eye-watering $4m per day. immedaitely clear.

Key Points

Tesla stock sinks to a new low

08:30 , Adam Smith

Tesla stock sank to hit a new 52-week low on Monday as chief executive Elon Musk’s rocky start to his Twitter regime appeared to spook investors.

Shares in the electric vehicle maker plunged more than 4 per cent to $196.66 on Monday after Mr Musk tweeted that “independent-minded” voters should support Republicans in Tuesday’s midterms.

The stock had recovering slightly to $198.40 by 3.40pm, but was still among the worst performers on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes on Monday.

The company has seen its value fall by 14 per cent since Mr Musk completed the $44bn acquisition of Twitter on 28 October.

Tesla stock plunges to new 52-week low as Elon Musk’s Twitter woes mount

Elon Musk mocks Twitter competitor Mastodon

08:00 , Vishwam Sankaran

Elon Musk has mocked Mastodon, the alternative site many are embracing as they look to move away from Twitter.

Many high-profile users have signed up to use Mastodon, an open-source alternative to Twitter, since Elon Musk’s takeover.

Mr Musk appeared to mock those switching over to the alternative platform, referring to the site as “Masterbatedone” in now-deleted posts.

You can read more on this here.

Amnesty International condemns Twitter's mass layoff

07:30 , Vishwam Sankaran

Human rights non-governmental organisation Amnesty International expressed concern over Twitter laying off its “entire human rights team and AI ethics team”.

Amnesty International - Technology, a global collective of advocates, hackers, researchers and technologists defending digital rights, said Twitter has failed to address hateful and abusive speech on the microblogging platform.

It said Twitter must have “operational structures” in place to address harmful and abusive conduct on its platform, Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

However, the NGO said, it is “hard to see” how Twitter can uphold this responsibility following its recent mass layoffs.

“Advertisers also must respect rights. They must carefully weigh Twitter’s human rights record and the impact of Twitter’s recent staff cuts, when deciding whether to advertise on the platform,” it said.

Whoopi Goldberg quits Twitter over Elon Musk takeover

07:05 , Vishwam Sankaran

American actor and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg becomes one of the latest in a string of celebrities to announce she is abandoning Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover.

“It’s been a little over a week since Elon Musk took over Twitter and this place is a mess,” Ms Goldberg said.

“I’m getting off today because I just feel like it’s so messy, and I’m tired of now having certain kinds of attitudes blocked now getting back on. So I’m gonna get out, and if it settles down enough and I feel more comfortable maybe I’ll come back. But as of tonight, I’m done with Twitter,” she added.

The talk show host cited Mr Musk’s firing and rehiring of Twitter staff as well as the barring of comedian Kathy Griffin’s account as some of the other reasons why she decided to quit the platform.

“Some speech is not OK free speech. So everybody has to agree on that, but if people keep saying ‘You hurt my free speech’ it’s going to be a problem. You know what? This is our problem. But it ain’t my problem today because I’m out,” Ms Goldberg said.

ICYMI: Musk tells Twitter to vote Republican months after saying platform must be 'politically neutral'

06:45 , Vishwam Sankaran

Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk urged voters to back Republican candidates ahead of the US midterm elections months after saying that the social media platform must remain “politically neutral.”

“For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” the multibillionaire had tweeted in April, months before taking over the company in October.

On Monday, he tweeted, urging “independent-minded voters” to vote for Republican candidates.

“Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” Mr Musk said.

You can read more on this here.

Twitter suspends account of US political organisation director hours before midterm

06:25 , Vishwam Sankaran

Twitter has suspended the account of Stephanie Doute, the executive director of the California League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan voter education organisation, hours before the US midterm elections with “no explanation.”

“On Election Day eve, Twitter has suspended @sdoute, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of California @LWVC on the eve of midterm elections,” The League of Women Voters of San Francisco tweeted.

“No warning. No explanation. No way to appeal. What is next?,” it said.

Some Twitter staff are reportedly working ‘20-hour days’ on Musk’s ‘pet projects’

06:02 , Vishwam Sankaran

Twitter’s staff working on the platform’s revamped Twitter Blue subscription service – a project new boss Elon Musk is deeply involved in – are reportedly working “20 hour days.”

“The couple of teams that are on his pet projects are doing 20-hour days,” an employee told Platformer.

One of the company’s staff had earlier tweeted that she slept at her office to meet deadlines.

“When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you sleep where you work,” Esther Crawford, who is in charge of early-stage products at the company, said last week.

Elon Musk faces 'larger problems' with Twitter Blue roll out - report

05:40 , Vishwam Sankaran

Twitter Blue, one of Elon Musk’s pet projects since taking over Twitter to revamp the platform’s subscription service, reportedly faces several “larger problems” going ahead.

Twitter Blue currently has over 100,000 active subscribers and it will be an uphill task to expand the revamped version of the service for widespread rollout, according to Platformer.

The new version will reportedly be 37.5 percent more expensive and it is unclear how the social media company would persuade users to pay and subscribe to the service.

Twitter may likely “lose money” on this service if current plans to reduce ad load by half for its subscribers are enacted, the report noted.

Mr Musk is also reportedly helming heavy control over teams working on the launch of Twitter Blue.

“There is one decision-maker and that is me,” Musk told workers, according to Platformer.

Some verified users report they cannot change their names on Twitter

05:15 , Vishwam Sankaran

Twitter’s policy states that account names must indicate a parody account. It banned impersonating profiles from the platform unless they explicitly mentioned they were parody accounts.

“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Mr Musk tweeted yesterday.

But The Verge reported that several of its staff with verified accounts have not been able to change their screen names on Twitter to mark themselves as parody.

Many remaining staff didn’t know who their new managers were days after mass layoff - report

04:50 , Vishwam Sankaran

After thousands of Twitter’s employees were laid off last week, many of the remaining staff reportedly did not know who their managers were for days.

Remaining managers are also bracing for a steeper workload, Platformer reported, citing sources close to the matter.

Some of the remaining employees are reportedly “just sitting around.”

“No chain of command, no priorities, no organisation chart, and in many cases, no idea who your manager or team is,” one employee told Platformer.

Mastadon chief calls Elon Musk 'not entirely comprehensible' - report

04:30 , Vishwam Sankaran

Eugen Rochko, the founder and chief of Twitter rival Mastodon, said in an interview on Sunday that Elon Musk was “not entirely comprehensible” about his takeover of the microblogging platform.

Mr Rochko called the Tesla titan’s purchase of the platform an “impulse decision that he soon regretted,” adding that the multibillionaire must now “deal with the fallout.”

The Mastodon chief also criticised Musk’s stance on free speech on Twitter.

“So allowing free speech by just allowing all speech is not actually leading to free speech, it just leads to a cesspit of hate,” he told Time Magazine.

Elon Musk discusses putting all of Twitter behind paywall — report

04:10 , Vishwam Sankaran

Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk has reportedly discussed the possibility of eventually putting all of Twitter behind a paywall.

Platformer reported citing sources familiar with the matter that the Tesla chief and investor David Sacks discussed the idea of charging most, or all users, a subscription fee to use Twitter.

Under one such plan that was reportedly discussed, Twitter might allow everyone to use the microblogging platform for a limited amount of time every month but require a subscription for continued browsing.

Revealed: Elon Musk’s skill at magic tricks

03:53 , Io Dodds

One amazing nugget from early Twitter investor Chris Sacca: Elon Musk is a skilled magician.

While criticising Mr Musk’s decisions so far, and arguing that the Tesla and SpaceX mogul needs people around him who are willing to tell him the truth, Mr Sacca paused to express his overall admiration for Mr Musk.

“I've known Elon a long time... I've had fun nights out with him (did you know he is a skilled close-up magician?), and I've learned a lot from him. He's given me solid advice multiple times, and he has personally accelerated my ambitions to unf*** the planet.”

A skilled close-up magician? I’m not sure why, but somehow this makes complete sense.

Don’t believe all you read on Twitter

03:24 , Io Dodds

Here’s my full story on Daniel Radcliffe’s non-suspension from Twitter.

Numerous Twitter users and some news outlets shared claims on Monday that the 33-year-old actor was among the celebrities who had their accounts suspended for impersonating Mr Musk.

The rumour appeared to have begun with a tweet from ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic, the musical parody artist whom Radcliffe is portraying in a new Hollywood biopic, who said: “Oh no, they suspended @danielradcliffe’s Twitter account! Wasn’t it obvious he was doing a PARODY???”

But according to the Internet Archive, the account @danielradcliffe had already become inactive some time between September 2009 and August 201.

What does Elon Musk really believe?

03:01 , Io Dodds

Perhaps now is a good time to consider the exact nature of Elon Musk’s political beliefs.

The 51-year-old mogul has often been coy and contradictory about his politics, donating to both Republicans and Democrats while variously declaring himself a “moderate”, a “socialist”, and “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”.

His recent support for Republican candidates marks his most forthright political messaging so far, but he stopped short of presenting himself as a doctrinaire conservative.

And, if you dig deeply enough, you can find a clear strain of technocratic utopianism – apparently influenced by his famous love of science fiction – running through his statements.

Check out my long read about Elon Musk’s political beliefs here.

Investor warns that layoffs could backfire

01:50 , Io Dodds

In his lengthy Twitter thread, early investor Chris Sacca issued a stark warning to Elon Musk about his massive layoffs, which have reportedly cut around 50 per cent of Twitter’s 7,400-strong staff.

”Every day it's looking more like an uphill battle,” he said. “So much product and policy talent was pushed out the company door, and, my god, you just can't fire that many engineers, operations [staff], and SREs and expect the site to stay healthy.”

”SREs” refers to “site reliability engineers”, a specialised cadre of employees that keep online services ticking away even under sustained high traffic or unusual circumstances.

Last week, the cloud computing economist Corey Quinn raised similar fears, saying Mr Musk’s reported plans to cut cloud spending by $1bn could lead Twitter to suffer outages or even permanent data loss.

“Most client requests are of the form ’help us predict and control our spend’,” he said. “Occasionally it's ’lower the bill.’ Almost never is it ’lower the bill by X dollars.’

“That happens as a side-effect of the others; pursuing it as the defined goal is courting disaster... very quickly you're not cutting fat, but muscle and bone.”

Musk ‘alone and winging it’, says early Twitter investor

01:19 , Io Dodds

One of Twitter’s earliest investors has said that Elon Musk needs people around him to “speak some truth to power” and say no to his worst ideas.

Chris Sacca, who invested $25,000 in Twitter back in 2006 and was its 102nd ever user, said on Monday that he feared Mr Musk was “straight-up alone right now and winging this” due to being surrounded by yes-men.

“I've known Elon a long time. I've admired his thinking and ambition. His ability to note and question the assumptions implicit in the rest of our thinking is a rare type of genius I've only seen in the greatest minds. His success to date is not an accident,” Mr Sacca said.

”But I've recently watched those around him become increasingly sycophantic and opportunistic. Simply put, agreeing with him is easier...

“This guy is alone. He has plenty of ’pals’ and is the life of parties and dinners. But the hard truth is that he is straight-up alone right now and winging this. If you're trying to make sense of anything, that context might help...

“Yet, I really want this thing to work. The only way I see that happening is if anyone around Elon can speak some truth to power and complement his bold and ambitious instincts with desperately needed nuance.”

Ice-T delivers his verdict

00:35 , Io Dodds

The rapper and movie star Ice T is unimpressed by Mr Musk’s takeover.

“Musk spent $44bn and I can still block him... lol... I'll probably get banned for that tweet,” he said on Monday afternoon.

You can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Tesla shareholder slams Musk as a ‘part-time CEO'

00:09 , Io Dodds

Even as he fends off lawsuits over his firing of Twitter employees, Mr Musk is facing a separate legal challenge in his role as chief executive of Tesla.

According to Reuters, a Tesla shareholder named Richard Tornetta is seeking to rescind Mr Musk’s record 2018 pay package, which awarded him a combined $56bn.

The suit accuses Mr Musk of being a “part-time CEO”, noting that he only worked for the electric car maker on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, while working for his rocket company SpaceX on Mondays and Thursdays.

That was before Mr Musk also became chief executive of Twitter, a major social network with around 450 monthly users that has made an overall loss in all but two of the last 11 years.

The trial begins on Monday 14 November.

Fact check: Daniel Radcliffe not banned from Twitter

Monday 7 November 2022 23:25 , Io Dodds

Reports that Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe was banned from Twitter under Elon Musk’s new rules appear to be false.

Numerous Twitter users appeared to take it literally when ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic, the musical parody artist whom Mr Radcliffe is portraying in a new Hollywood biopic, tweeted on Monday: “Oh no, they suspended @danielradcliffe's Twitter account! Wasn't it obvious he was doing a PARODY???”

It is true that there is an account on Twitter called @danielradcliffe, which has been suspended.

But Mr Radcliffe is well-known for never using social media, including Twitter. “I considered getting a Twitter,” he said in 2020, “and I 100 per cent know that if I did, you all would be waking up to stories of, like, ‘Dan Radcliffe gets into fight with random person on Twitter’.”

Moreover, according to the Internet Archive, the @danielradcliffe account became inactive some time between September 2009 and August 2011, when the Archive’s automated web checks began redirecting to Twitter’s “account suspended” page.

In other words, @danielradcliffe never was the real Mr Radcliffe and was probably suspended years ago, while Mr Yankovic appears to have been making a joke.

All of this could have been avoided if Twitter, at any point in the last 16 years, had been transparent enough to add information to suspended users' profiles showing how and why they were banned. Alas, it’s hard to imagine such a feature being prioritised now that half the company’s employees have been laid off.

Elon Musk’s Nazi soldier meme, explained

Monday 7 November 2022 22:49 , Io Dodds

Here’s my full story on Mr Musk’s odd meme featuring a Nazi soldier.

This is actually not the only time in the last few days when Mr Musk received Nazi-related criticism. He also appears to have deleted a tweet in which he responded positively to a user who posted an apparent quote by Voltaire.

As it turns out, this quote actually originated with an American neo-Nazi and convicted possessor of child sexual abuse images, who has written of his frustration that Voltaire gets credit for his views.

Twitter user growth at ‘all time high’ since Musk buyout

Monday 7 November 2022 22:16 , Io Dodds

New users are flocking to Twitter in unprecedented numbers following Mr Musk’s takeover of the company, according to a new report in The Verge.

Journalist Alex Heath obtained an internal company document claiming that the social network’s growth in daily active users has hit “all time highs” since Mr Musk’s takeover, accelerating to more than 20 per cent.

That means an extra 15 million people have joined since late October, causing the site’s overall suer numbers to “cross the quarter billion mark” since June.

The document is an FAQ given to Twitter’s sales team for their converations with advertisers, many of whom have paused their spending or are considering doing so due to concerns about Mr Musk’s leadership. Hence, this might only represent the rosiest possible interpretation of Twitter’s data.

A third party report from the bot monitoring firm Bot Sentinel suggested that more than a million accounts may have been deactivated or suspened since Mr Musk’s takeover, although it could not tell how many of these accounts were automated.

Twitter’s advertiser FAQ also says that “levels of hate speech remain within historical norms, representing 0.2 per cent to 0.45 per cent of tweets per day among hundreds of millions.”

However, Twitter has never released public statistics for the prevalence of hate speech on its service, so we have no way to compare that with the past.

Tesla stock plunges to 52-week low

Monday 7 November 2022 21:31 , Io Dodds

Shares in Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla have plunged to their lowest point in more than a year amid the ongoing chaos at Twitter.

Having started the day priced at $208.79, Tesla’s stock dropped by about 6 per cent to $197.14 by the close of trading on Monday – the lowest price since May 2021.

“Fundamentally, the weakness in Tesla stock has to be blamed on Twitter,” wrote the financial magazine Barron’s on Monday. “More specifically, the weakness has to be blamed on Elon Musk, who now runs both companies.”

Read the full story here from my colleague Bevan Hurley.

Elon under fire for sharing Nazi soldier meme

Monday 7 November 2022 20:39 , Io Dodds

The meme tweeted by Elon Musk this morning might have struck some as innocuous, featuring a black and white photo of a soldier with a cage full of carrier pigeons and the caption “3 unread messages”.

However, hawk-eyed Twitter users quickly pointed out that the soldier in question is actually a member of the army of Nazi Germany, know as the Wehrmacht.

According to Getty Images, the photo shows a Nazi soldier during the German invasion of France in May 1940, when portable radios were not yet carried by all soldiers.

Musk urges independents to vote GOP

Monday 7 November 2022 19:47 , Io Dodds

Elon Musk has been criticised for urging “independent-minded voters” to back Republican candidates in this week’s midterm elections.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last month, told his 115m followers that “shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties”, and that voters should therefore limit a Democratic president by voting for a Republican Congress.

In April, he said that Twitter “must be politically neutral” in order “to deserve public trust”.

My colleague Gustaf Kilander in Washington, DC has the full story.

Elon Musk’s cohort does not understand free speech

Monday 7 November 2022 19:00 , Adam Smith

David Sacks, the founding chief operating officer and product leader of PayPal, who worked with Elon Musk, has claimed impersonation is free speech.

“Impersonation is not free speech. Fraud is not protected by the First Amendment”, he tweeted.

Ari Cohn, a prominent free speech lawyer, offered a rebuttal: “Impersonating someone on Twitter isn’t fraud. You should feel bad about this deeply uninformed tweet.”

He continued: “Furthermore, parody is protected by the First Amendment, and none of the exceptions you think you know anything about say otherwise. Stick to venture capitalizing. Leave the law to people who know what they are talking about.”

Whoopi Goldberg says ‘I’m out'

Monday 7 November 2022 18:38 , Io Dodds

The actress and TV host Whoopi Goldberg has said she’ll be staying off Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover.

“So it has been a little over a week since Elon Musk took over Twitter and the place, it’s a mess,” said Ms Goldberg on her TV show The View on Monday morning.

“I’m getting off. I’m getting off today because I just feel like, you know, it’s so messy... I’m going to get out, and if it settles down and I feel more comfortable, maybe I’ll come back. But as of tonight, I’m done with Twitter."

Ms Goldberg has around 1.6m followers on Twitter, although she does not tweet very often.

Monday 7 November 2022 18:00 , Adam Smith

Elon Musk is doubling down on his claim that ‘activists’ are ruining Twitter’s advertising aims.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” tweeted Mr Musk on Friday.

Lou Paskalis, the MMA global president, explained to Mr Musk the concerns of some advertisers - especially in the wake of his firings. Mr Musk then blocked Mr Paskalis; he was unblocked sometime later.

However, Elon Musk has still said he has claims against the activists.

What is Mastodon?

Monday 7 November 2022 17:30 , Adam Smith

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has pushed users to alternative platforms, including a perculiar one called Mastodon.

The social media site has reportedly gained over 230,000 in the wake of Mr Musk’s buyout, with a total of 655,000 users.

However, Mastodon is not as simple to use as Twitter - despite looking superficially similar - and users may need some guidance in getting the most out of the site.

What is Mastodon, which Twitter users are fleeing to after Elon Musk takeover

Elon Musk fired Twitter’s human rights team

Monday 7 November 2022 17:00 , Adam Smith

Elon Musk ‘s job cuts hit Twitter’s entire human rights team.

The mass layoffs came as Mr Musk admitted that “a number of major advertisers have stopped spending on Twitter” since his takeover, with firms such as GM, Audi and General Mills pausing their advertising after the takeover.

Shannon Raj Singh, the former human rights counsel at the company, took to Twitter on Friday to confirm that she and her team had been ousted.

“Yesterday was my last day at Twitter: the entire Human Rights team has been cut from the company,” she wrote.

Elon Musk fires Twitter’s human rights team as part of sweeping layoffs at platform

Monday 7 November 2022 16:30 , Adam Smith

Irish premier Micheal Martin has criticised the way in which staff were let go at Twitter, saying that it was “not acceptable” and was “fairly unprecedented”.

“We are concerned, and our concern is there for the employees of Twitter,” the Taoiseach told reporters in Co Tipperary.

Twitter is letting a significant number of staff go – reported to be as high as half its workforce – as part of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s dramatic takeover of the social media giant.

“There seems to be a fairly unprecedented approach being adopted here to a global workforce and that’s manifesting itself in Ireland.

“What I would say is no matter who you are or what sector you are in, one must always treat people with dignity and respect, and the employees at Twitter deserve to be treated with respect.”

Twitter staff cuts are ‘not acceptable’, says Irish premier

Elon Musk mocks Mastodon

Monday 7 November 2022 16:10 , Adam Smith

Elon Musk has seemingly mocked Mastodon, the alternative site that many have embraced as they look to move away from Twitter.

Many high-profile users have already left the site, or threatened to leave. Some of them have moved onto Mastodon, an open source alternative to Twitter that has seen vast numbers of registrations in recent days.

But Mr Musk appeared to mock those who were switching over, referring to the site as “Masterbatedone”. He highlighted posts by US economist Paul Krugman, who appeared to have encountered technical problems when he signed up to the service.

Elon Musk mocks people signing up to Twitter alternative

Twitter may have to delay verification changes

Monday 7 November 2022 16:00 , Adam Smith

Twitter will delay the rollout of their new system of verification check marks to subscribers of its $7.99 per month subscription service until after the US midterm elections on Tuesday, according to report by The New York Times.

The Times cites an internal post and two people with knowledge of the decision. The Independent has contacted Twitter for confirmation of the report.

The news comes just a day after the announcement of the new service in which users can pay to have a verification check mark on their profile.

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk announced the initiative this week via the platform — one of many sweeping changes he is making to the social media site.

Twitter to delay rollout of paid blue checkmarks until after midterm, report says

Monday 7 November 2022 15:30 , Adam Smith

Kathy Griffin has trolled Elon Musk by returning to Twitter via her dead mother’s account after being suspended.

The comedian was barred from the social media site for turning her user profile into a parody of its new owner.

Griffin’s account was soon removed, with Musk writing: “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended.”

However, Musk soon received a tweet from the account Griffin’s mother Maggie used before her death, which had not been active since 2019.

“I’m back from the grave to say… #FreeKathy,” she wrote, later clarifying in a separate tweet: “Oh by the way this is KG. I’m tweeting from my dead mother’s account.”

Kathy Griffin trolls Elon Musk by defying Twitter ban using dead mum’s account

Twitter’s search tool could be improved

Monday 7 November 2022 15:00 , Adam Smith

Mr Musk has also said that he wants to improve Twitter’s search tool.

“Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in ‘98! That will also get a lot better pronto”, he said.

Other changes to Twitter in the short-term include a paywalled video player, rolling out a Verified badge for anyone subscribing to Twitter Blue, and paid-for DMs into celebrities accounts.

Elon Musk clamps down on parody accounts

Monday 7 November 2022 14:30 , Adam Smith

Elon Musk is now banning anyone that is parodying him - unless they make it clear its a parody.

“Comedy is now legal on Twitter”, the billionaire said two days ago. It now seems he has changed his view.

“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” the multibillionaire tweeted on Monday.

The Tesla chief’s tweet comes as several users impersonated him on the microblogging platform this weekend, including actor Valerie Bertinelli who changed her profile name to “Elon Musk” shortly after the company rolled out its new controversial paid-verification system.

“The blue checkmark simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you. That no longer applies. Good luck out there!” Ms Bartinelli wrote.

Twitter accounts impersonating others to be banned without warning, Elon Musk says

Twitter may have to rehire its staff

Monday 7 November 2022 14:00 , Adam Smith

Elon Musk may have to u-turn on firing employees, Bloomberg reports.

“Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves”, the publication states, citing people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity.

“Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.”

Jack Dorsey apologises to staff for layoffs

Sunday 6 November 2022 06:26 , Maroosha Muzaffar

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey broke his silence over the mass layoffs at the social media giant after Elon Musk takeover and apologised to staff for layoffs.

He wrote in a series of tweets: “Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient. They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment. I realise many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologise for that.”

He added: “I am grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don’t expect that to be mutual in this moment...or ever…and I understand.”