“Going forward, anyone operating Twitter who engages in impersonation without clearly identifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk tweeted Sunday night. The tycoon added that while users had been warned before the suspension, moving forward “there will be no warning”. Celebrities including Kathy Griffin, Sarah Silverman and Mad Men star Rich Sommer quickly had their accounts removed for changing their usernames and photos to match Musk’s. As a fake Musk, Griffin pushed her audience to vote Democratic in the upcoming midterm elections. “After much heated discussion with the females in my life,” the My Life on the D-List star tweeted, “I’ve decided that voting blue for their choice is the right thing to do (They are hot women too, btw . )” After Griffin’s suspension, Musk joked that she had been banned “for impersonating a comedian.” “But if she really wants her account back, she can have it,” he wrote in a pair of follow-up tweets. “For $8.” The parody bans follow — and apparently contradict — an Oct. 28 pledge by Musk that no “major content decisions” would be made before a “content oversight board with widely divergent views” was formed. On Sunday night, Musk posted: “My commitment to free speech even extends to not banning the account that follows my plane, even though it poses an immediate risk to personal safety.” He argued that Twitter “must become by far the most accurate source of information for the world. This is our mission. Widespread verification will democratize journalism and empower the voice of the people.”
