Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that every Twitter handles impersonation without clearly specifying “parody.” will be “permanently suspended“.
“We used to issue a warning before suspension, but now that we are introducing widespread review there will be no warning,” he tweeted Sunday night.
He said any name change would result in the temporary loss of a verified tick.
As of Sunday night, several accounts that had changed their names to Elon Musk or approaches to Elon Musk appeared to have been suspended or placed behind a warning sign, including those of US comedian Kathy Griffin and the Australian satire website the Chaser.
Musk previously said he opposed permanent bans on Twitter.
Musk appeared to defend his sweeping bans, tweeting that he still supports and will continue to support freedom of speech continue to allow the account that is tagging their movements to stay online.
The latest storm comes amid reported uncertainty about Twitter’s planned rollout of verification exams for a $7.99 monthly fee, which is a feature of Twitter’s paid Blue service.
The New York Times reported that the new feature would be delayed until after the US midterm elections amid concerns users could buy verification, impersonate a political figure, and then create election confusion.
Twitter’s engineering teams are rolling out new features at breakneck speed amid the chaos and hardship caused by reports that half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees have been laid off without notice.
There were reports Sunday night that dozens of layoffs were being asked to return, either because they were accidentally fired or because the company had since realized their work was critical to developing the new features Musk was aiming for.
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He acquired Twitter for $44 billion late last month, in a deal backed with billions of his own money. Now the entrepreneur has set up a war room at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, in which he is courting cost savings and new products with a small team of consultants.
The first of these was Twitter Blue, which launched in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
On the subject of previously suspended accounts, Musk said last week that they will not be allowed to return to Twitter until the social media platform has “a clear process for doing so.”
Creating such a process would take at least a few more weeks, Musk had tweeted, bringing more clarity to the possible return of Twitter’s most famous banned user, former US President Donald Trump. The new schedule implies that Trump will not return in time for the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
With Portal