The Twitter account belonging to comedian Kathy Griffin was suspended on Sunday after she changed the name and photo of her verified profile to Elon Musk.
Musk, 51, officially purchased Twitter in October for US$44 billion.
In direct defiance of the new Twitter owner’s claims that all accounts impersonating someone else — without clear mention of the account being a parody — would be suspended, Griffin, 62, mocked Musk.
With Musk’s name and photo, she urged Americans to protect abortion rights and vote for the Democratic Party in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. (On Monday, Musk encouraged his followers to vote Republican.)
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk decreed on Sunday.
He claimed before his takeover, accounts were “issued a warning before suspension,” but that this would no longer be the case.
Following his tweets, Griffin, posing as Musk, wrote, “I’ve decided that voting blue for their choice is only right.”
It is not clear if Griffin’s suspension was due to her impersonation of Musk.
Griffin didn’t stop after her account was suspended, either; instead, the comedian logged into her late mother’s account and tweeted “#FreeKathy.”
Also on Sunday, Musk responded on Twitter to reports that Griffin’s account had been suspended. In jest, Musk wrote that Griffin was “suspended for impersonating a comedian.”
He claimed she could have her account back for $8, the soon-to-be cost of a blue verified checkmark on Twitter.
Using her late mother’s profile, Griffin responded to Musk’s tweets. She called Musk an “a—hole” and a “hack.”
“Please do a better job running this company. It used to mean something,” she wrote before signing off as “KG.”
On Monday, Griffin kept up the joke. She claimed to be Maggie Griffin contacting Musk “from the spirit world.”
“This is not a parody. This is the actual ghost of Kathy Griffin’s boxed wine loving mother saying I’m gonna get tipsy and throw my bingo cards at you,” Griffin wrote.
Griffin is not the only person to have their account suspended for impersonating Musk.
Comedian Sarah Silverman claimed her account was locked when she changed her name and photo to Musk and tweeted, “I am a freedom of speech absolutist and I eat doody for breakfast every day.”
YouTuber (and well-known internet troll) Ethan Klein also claimed his account was suspended for impersonating Musk. In a TikTok video posted late Sunday, Klein playfully lamented that he was “permanently banned on Twitter by the supposed free speech warrior, Elon Musk.”
Two additional accounts separately claiming to be American conservative journalist and right-wing influencer Andy Ngo and actor Keanu Reeves were also suspended.
As of this writing, the back-and-forth continues.
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