US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Sunday threatened Twitter chief Elon Musk to "fix" his companies "or Congress will," hours after Musk mocked the senator for demanding answers about Twitter's verification process. Markey has requested for answers about the platform’s new verification and impersonation policies.
According to news reports, after a Washington Post reporter successfully set up a fake verified account pretending to be the Massachusetts Democrat, Markey shared a letter to Musk on Twitter Friday asking him to “explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again.”
In response, Musk wrote back to Markey in a tweet on Sunday and said, “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?” However, Markey did not appear to appreciate Musk’s response.
“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will,” Markey wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
Twitter appeared to have paused the $7.99 a month Twitter Blue verification program shortly after the Post ran its test as impersonations of celebrities and brands proliferated across the platform. However, prior to the pause, the Post was able to set up a Twitter handle called ”@realEdMarkey” using “a spare iPhone, a credit card and a little creativity.” The account received a blue verified checkmark, even though Markey already has two legitimate verified accounts.
The blue check is supposed to be a feature of the paid Twitter Blue, but the Post reporter found that Twitter said the fake Markey account was verified “because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.”
Twitter has recently lost key privacy and content moderation executives.
“Safeguards such as Twitter’s blue checkmark once allowed users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information in Twitter’s global town square,” Markey wrote in his letter to Musk. “But your Twitter takeover, rapid and haphazard imposition of platform changes, removal of safeguards against disinformation, and firing of large numbers of Twitter employees have accelerated Twitter’s descent into the Wild West of social media.”
Markey asked Musk to respond to his questions in writing by November 25. The exchange between Musk and Markey on Twitter is not the first time the pair has gone head-to-head.
Musk, the CEO of the automaker Tesla, and Tesla’s driver assistance systems are branded Autopilot and Full Self Driving in the US. During a series of Tesla crashes in August 2021, Markey and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) expressed “serious concerns” about the way the company advertises these technologies. They asked the Federal Trade Commission to launch a probe.
Meanwhile, after firing about 50 per cent of Twitter workforce, or about 3,800 employees, Elon Musk has reportedly laid off at least 4,400 contractual workers at the company. According to reports from Platformer and Axios, the micro-blogging platform is now laying off employees who are on contract.