7th November, 2022
Twitter will permanently suspend users who impersonate authentic accounts on the social media platform.
Its new owner, Elon Musk announced this via his verified Twitter page on Sunday night.
He tweeted “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,”.
“Previously, we issued a warning before the suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning.”
Musk also said any name change at all will cause temporary loss of the verified checkmark.
The move came after the platform allegedly suspended users who had changed their user names to Elon Musk, including U.S. comedian Kathy Griffin and actor Rich Sommer.
After Griffin’s suspension, Musk tweeted that she had been banned “for impersonating a comedian.”
“But if she really wants her account back, she can have it for eight U.S. dollars,” he wrote.
Last week, Musk completed his 44-billion-dollar takeover of the platform, immediately cutting the workforce and implementing a monthly subscription fee for users to be verified on the platform.
dpa/NAN