Elon Musk has mocked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s $58 jumper range in a Twitter beef over the tech billionaire’s plan to charge Twitter users $8 per month for a verified blue tick.
“Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan,” the New York Congresswoman tweeted.
But just hours later Musk hit back: “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8”.
To back up his point the Tesla boss circled the price AOCs charges her supporters for a simple purple sweatshirt at her online shop.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022
Twitter users following the beef were quick to point out in the comments that the AOC jumper is Union made and Musk also charges $65 for a Tesla Christmas sweater.
The Democrat added: “One guy’s business plan for a $44 billion over-leveraged purchase is apparently to run around and individually ask people for $8. Remember that next time you question yourself or your qualifications.
“My twitter mentions/notifications conveniently aren’t working tonight, so I was informed via text that I seem to have gotten under a certain billionaire’s skin. Just a reminder that money will never buy your way out of insecurity, folks.”
It comes as Musk said Twitter will not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that, a process that will take at least a few weeks.
That would mean people banned from the site for violating Twitter’s rules for harassment, violence, or election and covid-related misinformation will not be able to return before next Tuesday’s US midterm elections.
The pledge came after Musk, who took control of the social-media site last week, after buying it for $44 billion, said in a tweet that he had met with a handful of civil-society leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies”.
It came as Kanye West made his first post on Twitter since the social media platform’s takeover by Musk.
The US rapper shared a captionless photo of NBA basketball player Kyrie Irving on Wednesday.
It received more than 30,000 likes within 30 minutes of being posted.
West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, was locked out of Twitter last month over anti-Semitic posts.
Musk previously said that the platform had restored the rapper’s account before he finalised his acquisition of the company – though it is West’s first post since that time.
