Twitter’s chaotic takeover continues, with new owner and CEO Elon Musk being trolled by fake accounts defrauding his other businesses.
Musk, the billionaire best known for leading companies like Tesla and SpaceX, completed a $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform on October 27 after months of precarious struggles and lawsuits.
His time as head of the site has been preoccupied with uncertain decisions from the CEO and promises to loosen restrictions that put advertisers away. In a recent statement to Twitter employees, Elon Musk acknowledged that the coming months will be difficult and that bankruptcy is not off the table.
Elon Musk has also come under severe criticism for withdrawing Twitter’s verification badge system while the system is in flux. The new CEO made it possible for users to pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue to receive a Blue Check on their account.
An option that doesn’t require the usual steps to actually verify one’s identity has given rise to a multitude of fake accounts with blue verification badges, including those of Musk himself. Fake accounts spoofing real corporations, including two tweets from a fake SpaceX account directly mocking Musk.
The account took aim at more inane topics related to the private space-flight company’s acceptance of government subsidies, as well as the personal goals of Elon Musk. Somebody told Elon that his d*** would grow up on Mars and honestly that’s what it is all about,” he tweeted using the fake account handle @SpaceXOfficial.
People often ask why we accepted the billions of government subsidies during our lifetime at SpaceX that NASA pulled decades ago, but with a private company he added in another tweet we don’t have a good answer but people often ask us Ask Let’s Ask As of Saturday morning the account no longer exists and no other account in the name of SpaceX has received a verification badge.
Other tweets highlighted by Klippenstein came from spoof accounts mocking the likes of Nestlé and Coca-Cola, the former for its notorious opposition to water rights and the latter for its contribution to plastic pollution, among other notable examples of the trend. Middle.
A fake Eli-Lilly account announced that the company would be insulin-free, a tweet that prompted an apology from the real company and caused its stock to drop a little more than 4 percent on Saturday, the same day that Klippenstein told SpaceX. made fake. Twitter announced that it would be shutting down the Twitter Blue verification system, citing brand and celebrity impersonation issues.