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The Street
The Street
Tony Owusu

Elon Musk Has AOC's Attention After Boosting Parody Account of Her

Elon Musk has placed his stamp on Twitter 2.0 like he promised, but the full ramifications from some of his changes are just being felt. 

Take Twitter Blue for example. 

DON'T MISS: The Value of Elon Musk's twitter Plummets 

It used to be that a blue checkmark by your name meant that the owner of the account had been verified but as U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is finding out, the new pay-to-play system can lead to a lot of confusion. 

The account in question is @AOCpress had been suspended in 2019, but was reinstated in May under the new regime. 

As part of Twitter Blue's new rules, the parody account features the term "parody" in the account name, but you can't really see that part of the name unless you click on the profile. 

Over the weekend the account blew up after Musk responded to a tweet directed to him.

Twitter has placed an emphasis on the subscribers who pay $8 per month for the privilege to exercise their free speech, sometimes, as in this case, at the expense of legacy blue checks with millions of followers. 

The shift in strategy has had its benefits and downsides, but Musk seems happy with the direction he's taking, even as the valuation of the company the loves continues to plummet. 

After purchasing the social media platform for $44 billion in October, Musk admitted in March that the company's value had been more than halved. 

Since then, the valuation is now estimated to be $14.41 billion, or about one-third of Musk's purchase price.

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