Twitter has suspended comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating the company’s new owner, Elon Musk.
Griffin appeared to be the first celebrity to lose her tweeting privileges after a wave of prominent users impersonated Musk over the weekend, with the goal of underscoring potential flaws in the social media company’s plans for a revised verification system.
Musk has made an $8 Twitter subscription plan his signature bid to bolster the company’s revenue. The new plan was hastily rolled out over the weekend before the company ultimately decided to delay the service until after the midterms.
The updated Twitter Blue subscription plan gives paying users the ability to get a blue check mark on their profiles, an option previously available exclusively to verified celebrities, politicians, journalists and other public figures. Musk proposed the new feature as a way to fight spam on the platform.
But the partially rolled-out plan faced widespread backlash, and in a display of defiance, some celebrities on the platform posed as Musk over the weekend, complete with a blue check mark on their profiles.
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