Senator warns Elon Musk: 'Fix your companies. Or Congress will'
The warning came following a string of snarky tweets from Twitter's new chief
US Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts fired back at Elon Musk on Sunday after the new boss of the Twitter mocked his concerns over paid verification on Twitter.
Markey said Musk should "fix" his companies, otherwise "Congress will".
Markey wrote to Musk on Friday, asking an explanation for how the Washington Post was able to set up a verified account mimicking him and why a company pop-up informed users that the verification was due to a role in government.
In a report last week, the Washington Post stated that one of its journalists had been able to create a fake verified account impersonating Markey.
"Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again," Markey wrote, criticising the new $7.99 a month Blue with verification subscription.
Musk mockingly responded to the senator's worries about fake verified Twitter accounts.
"Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody," Musk tweeted Sunday morning.
About an hour later, Musk sent out another tweet saying, "And why does your pp have a mask?" in reference to the Senator's Twitter profile photo, which depicted him with a mask.
Musk's answer didn't much impress Markey.
He cautioned Musk that if he doesn't fix his companies, which include Tesla and Starlink, Congress may take action against his firms.
"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," Markey wrote.
"Fix your companies. Or Congress will."
Musk has until November 25th to respond in writing to the queries posed by Markey and others.
The senator's worries about online impersonation are not baseless. Just two days after introducing its new paid-for Blue subscription, Twitter suspended it. Trolls had exploited the service to mimic companies, politicians and celebrities, leading to chaos on the platform.
One user posing as LeBron James claimed the NBA star had requested to be trade by Los Angeles Lakers, and shares in the pharmaceutical business Eli Lilly fell dramatically after a fake account claimed it was providing free insulin.
Most of these fake accounts have subsequently been deleted, but some stayed online for an extended period of time, during which some have caused damage to the reputation of the person or company that they were pretending to represent.
While Markey does not represent all of Congress, he is a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has the authority to examine Elon Musk companies.
Last week, Musk raised the possibility of Twitter going bankrupt, following a warning from a US regulator and the departures of senior executives from the company.
He reportedly told Twitter employees on a call that the company was losing so much money that bankruptcy was not out of the question.
Twitter's worker purge
After acquiring Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, Musk began aggressively firing staff and said the firm was losing more than $4 million per day, partly as a result of advertisers abandoning the platform after he took charge.
He sacked half of Twitter's 7,500 workers, 10 days after purchasing the firm.
On Saturday, Casey Newton of Platformer said that Twitter has also fired a sizable number of contract workers, impacting somewhere between 4,400 and 5,500 individuals.
According to various media accounts, the majority of contract workers were dismissed without prior warning and only learned of it after losing access to the company's email and internal communications systems.
According to Platformer, the mass firings affect workers in multiple countries who worked in content moderation, marketing, engineering and other departments.