According to Business Insider, Elon Musk got into a heated back-and-forth with Hard Drive, a satirical website, after posting a picture from one of the site's articles.
The World's Richest Man Got Into a Twitter Fight!
In a now-deleted tweet, Musk posted an image from an article published by Hard Drive without accreditation.
Here's Hard Drive's reply:
hey i'll give u a horse if u stop cropping our name off our articles https://t.co/QnNfyiNYs3
— Hard Drive (@HardDriveMag) May 30, 2022
"Well, if you make something that looks like a meme & someone (not me) crops off your name, so it goes," Musk said, adding the image was only a "6/10 meme."
Hard Drive did not raise the white flag and countered with another article titled "Elon Musk admits he wants to travel to Mars because no one hates him there yet."
There have been a few more exchanges between the two, where both implied sarcasm in each reply.
Hard Drive Is Not the First Satirical News Site To Draw Musk's Ire
Meanwhile, Business Insider noted that Hard Drive isn't the only satirical news site to draw Musk's ire. In March last year, he also expressed his distaste towards satirical news site The Onion after it joked that Musk - who is from South Africa - was wealthy because of apartheid.
This is Musk's response:
Shame on you, Onion. This is why people are switching to @TheBabylonBee!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2021
Musk has previously been accused of using memes and images without giving credit to the creators. Musk responded with two uncredited memes after The New York Times contacted him for a piece about his stealing memes.
After Tesla began utilizing icons of a farting unicorn, the tycoon got into a copyright issue with a potter in 2018. Although Musk intimated in now-deleted tweets that the potter should be glad for the publicity, Musk and the potter came to an undisclosed agreement.
Musk had a Twitter fight in 2019 on whether he should credit fan art, tweeting "always credit everyone" and "no one should be credited with anything ever."
It is worth noting that Musk seems proud of his sense of humor after telling a court in July 2021 that his jokes bring free publicity to his electric vehicle company Tesla.
Musk Wants To Buy Twitter, but Has Put the Deal on Hold for Now
As previously reported, there have been rumors for weeks that Musk is considering renegotiating his deal to buy Twitter. He has been requesting proof that the number of spam accounts on the site is fewer than 5%.
Musk previously stated in a tweet that if he acquires Twitter, he will "defeat the spam bots or die trying," claiming that the company's reliance on advertising is the basis for the proliferation of spam bots.
According to the Tesla CEO, his multibillion-dollar offer was contingent on the accuracy of this number from Twitter's SEC filings, hinting that the company's value to him would be significantly different if the estimate was inaccurate.
With this, Musk announced that he had put the deal "on hold" until Twitter could supply him with the information he wanted.
According to Mashable, if Twitter is unable to meet his demands, he will most likely try to barter Twitter down from the initial agreed-upon sale price of $54.20 per share. If not, he may just back out entirely.
