Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, took to his social media platform to clap back at Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she accused him of personally meddling with her account.
The ongoing dispute between the pair of public figures kicked off earlier this week, just days after the Tesla founder successfully acquired the San Francisco-based company for $44bn, and he then announced that a blue verification mark on Twitter would soon cost users $8 a month.
After going back and forth about the forthcoming changes announced by the billionaire owner, the New York congresswoman pointed out that – since raising her qualms – she’d begun experiencing issues with her own blue-check verified account.
“Yo (Elon Musk) while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?” she tweeted on Thursday morning.
“This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me,” she added, while screenshotting a picture of her mentions which appeared to be completely empty.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez aired her concerns about the activity on her Twitter account to a competing social media platform, Instagram, where she accused Mr Musk of meddling with her account because she’d “upset” him about the questions she was raising regarding his newly announced changes.
“So I pulled up my Twitter app, and it’s like gone,” she said, noting how her Twitter mentions were “literally like a blank screen”.
“So it turns out, we got under a certain little billionaire’s skin,” the Democratic lawmaker quipped.
That video was then reshared on Twitter by Newsmax presenter Benny Johnson, who captioned it with the message: “LOL – @AOC thinks @ElonMusk is messing with her Twitter app”.
Hours later, Mr Musk took the bait and responded to the aforementioned video, on his social media platform of preference, and jested: “What can I say? It was a naked abuse of power.”
Earlier in the week, the pair had publicly squabbled over the newly announced changes the billionaire planned to implement, namely the $8 fee for the verified status.
At one point, Mr Musk had taken Ms Ocasio-Cortez to task over the price of her own merchandise, screenshotting a picture of one of the sweatshirts sold by her office and highlighting the price it was being sold for – $58.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez shot back: “Proud of this and always will be. My workers are union, make a living wage, have full healthcare, and aren’t subject to racist treatment in their workplaces.”
One of the core changes that Mr Musk has announced since taking ownership of the social media app, adding a price tag for a blue check, has received considerable pushback from public figures on the microblogging website, including American novelist Stephen King.
The millionaire horror writer took to Twitter to lambast Mr Musk’s announcement, writing in a post on the social media platform on Monday that he would be “gone like Enron” if this plan was put into action.
“F*** that, they should pay me,” he added.
For his part, Mr Musk responded to the author’s feedback in much more diplomatic terms than he did with Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s critiques, writing in a follow-up tweet to the acclaimed novelist: “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”
By Wednesday night, King seemed far from convinced that it was the smart path forward for the billionaire owner of the social media app to pursue.
“Kudos to Elon Musk, who has begun a revolution in how the world drives and who has incredible visionary talents,” tweeted King on Wednesday. “I got an early Tesla and traded for another one. Wonderful cars (no autopilot for me, thanks). That said, when it comes to Twitter...”
