Senator to Elon Musk: ‘Fix Your Companies. Or Congress Will’ – By Edward Graham (Nextgov) / Nov 14, 2022
After Elon Musk mocked Sen. Ed Markey’s concerns about Twitter verifying fake accounts, the senator told the mogul to get it together or Congress would step in.
An influential Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee threatened to rein in Elon Musk’s companies on Sunday, after the senator and CEO exchanged heated words on Twitter over the platform’s verification process.
The exchange between Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Musk came after The Washington Post on Nov. 11 published an article describing how one of the newspaper’s columnists—with Markey’s blessing—was able to set up a verified Twitter account posing as the senator. Following the article’s publication, Markey sent a letter to Musk demanding answers about the company’s recently announced subscription-based verification service, saying that “allowing an imposter to impersonate a U.S. senator on Twitter is a serious matter that you need to address promptly.”
“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 the Nov. 11 letter. “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.”
