Kathy Griffin

The comedian Kathy Griffin is the most recent Twitter casualty after CEO Elon Musk announced that accounts that participate in “impersonation” without explicitly stating “parody” will be permanently suspended.

The actor and comedian Kathy Griffin’s account has been permanently suspended by Twitter for “engaging in impersonation” after she altered her Twitter display name to Elon Musk and urged people to vote for Democrats in the US midterm elections.

According to reports from Fox News, Kathy had changed her Twitter profile name to Musk after which she appeared to have been immediately removed from the social networking platform. However, her handle displays her own username, @kathygriffin, the name by the blue tick.

According to Elon Musk, this violates the company’s anti-impersonation policy. Kathy Griffin account being suspended caused controversy, and many people accused Musk of repressing free speech. Elon Musk responded to a post by stating, “Actually, she was suspended for impersonating a comedian.”

Elon Musk stated via several tweets on Sunday that any Twitter account discovered engaging in “impersonation” without explicitly stating “parody” will be permanently suspended. He said, “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended.”

He said that the verified checkmarks would temporarily disappear if any names were changed. He also noted, “Previously, we issued a warning before the suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.”

Musk recently disclosed that the platform would charge 8$ per month for a subscription service on Twitter that would grant users priority in mentions searches, and replies. Musk noted in a tweet, “Twitter’s current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for USD 8$/month.”

Musk believes that the $8 verified Twitter accounts are his strategy for making the service more accessible. Users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can obtain the blue checkmark next to their names exactly like the celebrities, companies, and politicians.

It was stated that the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. would be the first countries to offer the service.

Musk’s choice to impose the blue tick fee, however, did not sit well with everyone. Even some advertisers retracted their advertisements from the website.

The Twitter Blue membership became publicly available over a year ago as a means of accessing articles from some authors without ads and making other changes to the app, such as changing the color of the app’s icon on the home screen. Along with the “blue tick fee,” Musk has been facing a lot of backlash on Twitter for firing staff members.

Musk defended his decision to remove employees by claiming that Twitter was losing over 4$ million every day and the firings were necessary. He said employees were granted three months’ pay as severance when they lost their jobs, but he did not go into specifics about Twitter’s daily losses.