Twitter has begun suspending users, including US comedian Kathy Griffin, for using Elon Musk’s name on the social media platform as he vowed to crack down on impersonators.
Griffin, The Chaser and a raft of Twitter users have taken the mickey out of Musk online by obtaining the blue verification tick under Elon Musk’s profile.
Posting as Elon Musk, Griffin tweeted that people should vote Democrat in the mid-term elections before her account was temporily suspended.
“After much spirited discussion with the females in my life, I’ve decided that voting blue for their choice is only right,” she wrote as Musk.
“(They’re also sexy females, btw.) #VoteBlueToProtectWomen.”
The Chaser tweeted under the handle Elon Musk Fondles Dogs and wrote: “Dunno what you’re all worried about, it’s not like there could be any downsides to verifying any old account.”
That account has not yet been suspended.
One user who called himself Iamsimon tweeted as Elon Musk saying “I’ve made a huge mistake”, while another named Elon Musk (real) wrote “my wife left me”.
The fake Elon Musk accounts were taken down with the alert “This account has been temporarily suspended”.
It came as Mr Musk warned in a tweet that Twitter users engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying it as a “parody” account would be permanently suspended without a warning.
In a separate tweet on Sunday, Mr Musk said Twitter previously issued a warning before suspension, but going forward there would be no warning.
“This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” Mr Musk said, adding any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark.
Tweet from @elonmusk
Twitter on Saturday updated its app in Apple’s App Store to begin charging $US8 ($12) for sought-after blue check verification marks, in Mr Musk’s first major revision of the social media platform.
The Tesla boss, who also will serve as chief executive of Twitter, last month said Twitter would form forming a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints”.
“No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes,” he said.
On the topic of banned accounts, Mr Musk last week said they would not be allowed back onto Twitter until the social media platform had “a clear process for doing so”.
Creating such a process would take at least a few more weeks, Mr Musk had tweeted, giving more clarity about the potential return of Twitter’s most famous banned user, former US president Donald Trump.
The new timeline implies Mr Trump will not return in time for the US midterm elections on November 8.
Earlier on Sunday, the New York Times reported Twitter was delaying the rollout of verification ticks to subscribers of its new service until after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
After Twitter laid off roughly half its staff on Friday following Mr Musk’s $US44 billion acquisition ($68 billion), the company has since contacted dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asked them to return, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
Some of those being asked to return were laid off by mistake.
Others were let go before management realised that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Mr Musk envisions, the report said citing people familiar with the moves.
Twitter recently laid off 50 per cent of its employees, including employees on the trust and safety team, the company’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth said in a tweet earlier this week.
Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.
