Elon Musk may be known to be the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, but he is also infamous for his tweets. Twitter has been a hotpot for trolls and memes, and Musk is the person in the middle of most of it.
Although he has been advocating free speech since anyone can remember, he is implementing a ban without warning. This goes for accounts that don't specify if they're parody accounts or not.
One of the victims of the ban is Kathy Griffin, a comedian, and actress. She was banned for tweeting about voting for democrats, whilst impersonating Musk by changing her name and profile picture.
This did not deter the comedian, as she revived her departed mother's Twitter account and used it to poke fun at the tech mogul.
Regards from Beyond the Grave
Kathy Griffin's mother passed back in 2020, but her Twitter account, @TitItMaggieG, remains. Griffin took this opportunity to troll Musk as she evades the ban that was implemented.
She joked by tweeting to the Tesla CEO that she has come back from the grave, and that he should #FreeKathy. She tweeted with the hashtag numerous times, as mentioned in Gizmodo.
Musk, of course, would not simply concede. He replied by saying that he didn't ban Griffin for impersonating him, but for impersonating a comedian.
The Twitter owner implied in the reply that Griffin wasn't actually funny. Griffin then responded by saying that he stole the joke from other users. She added by saying that he should do a better job at running the platform and that Twitter used to mean something.
She tweeted stating that she was actually Maggie Griffin, expressing that Elon Musk was a douchebag and that it wasn't a parody. She then closed with "To the moon, a**hole. #FreeKathy" This no longer urged a response from the billionaire.
Elon's Response to the Ban
Benny Johnson, a political Columnist, tweeted a screenshot of Kathy Griffin's account being suspended. Elon replied by saying that Griffin can have her account back, granted that she paid $8 for it.
Johnson added to the thread a screenshot of Kathy Griffin's posts on her Mastodon account, expressing that she was wreaking a little havoc on Twitter.
BREAKING: @KathyGriffin has been permanently suspended from Twitter for impersonating @ElonMusk pic.twitter.com/ust86DZHKj
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 6, 2022
Two hours later, she stated that Elon locked her account, and that maybe not all content moderators were let go, which she implied sarcastically. An hour later, she said that #FreeKathy was trending on Twitter, followed by calling Elon Musk a drama queen.
Some users are pointing out the hypocrisy of Elon contradicting his "free speech" beliefs, and other are quick to defend him saying the impersonating someone is illegal. This has brought up political issues as well, since the nature of Griffin's tweet that got her suspended was one.
Some users pointed out that Elon was already sharing his political beliefs, when he tweeted back in April that Twitter should be neutral grounds. In his tweet, he mentioned that this was needed for Twitter to deserve public trust.
