Elon Musk has already said he’ll find someone else to run Twitter (Credit: Getty)
A Twitter account deliberately parodying Elon Musk has had a warning slapped onto one of its tweets.
The account in question posted a tweet suggesting that all Tesla cars with autopilot had to be recalled due to an ‘imminent threat’.
And although the name on the account includes the word ‘parody’ at the end, it’s obscured by the length.
Now a warning note has been imposed under the tweet for ‘context’.
It reads: ‘This tweet was created by the YouTuber and podcaster, H3H3Productions. Seeing the tweet on a timeline hides the ‘parody’ at the end of his name, and does not show the second tweet in the thread.’
‘He was previously suspended for doing a similar account change.’
At first glance, the verified parody account looks genuine (Credit: Twitter)
Plenty of other Twitter users commented under the tweet to say they fell for the trick, thinking it was genuine.
Since taking over as Twitter’s boss, Musk has waged war on parody accounts.
At first, he tried to charge for Twitter’s famed blue tick, which only excarbated the problem. Then he introduced a new form of verification – a grey tick and ‘official’ badge – which was killed within hours of its launch.
The trigger-happy billionaire then mandated that Twitter users engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying their accounts as a parody will be permanently suspended without a warning.
Of course, simply making the account name long enough that the ‘parody’ part is obscured – especially on mobile – is about the simplest workaround possible.
Tackling parody accounts will become a problem for the new Twitter CEO at some stage.
On December 18, Musk ran a poll on his own Twitter feed, prompting his 122 million followers to decide whether he should ‘step down as head of Twitter’.
Ultimately, the final results of the poll showed 57.5% of people said yes to Musk stepping down – so another change of leadership could potentially be on the cards.
At the time of writing, nothing has been announced, though.
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The *actual* Elon Musk won’t be happy with this one.
