It’s that time again. The time when B&T checks in to see what Elon Musk has been up to in his relentless ruining of Twitter. And, reader, it’s not good.
In the space of a few days, Musk has managed to piss off LeBron James and The New York Times, make serious bank from a cartoon dog, and asked to have a lawsuit about his spruiking of Dogecoin thrown out
Following a Twitter conversation last year, Musk promised to replace the Twitter bird logo with the Shiba Inu dog that first became the doge meme and then the logo of Dogecoin.
As promised pic.twitter.com/Jc1TnAqxAV
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023
In Australia, the change is present on the desktop version of Twitter but not on the app versions. Following Musk’s decision to switch the logo, the price of Dogecoin jumped by almost a quarter.
This, of course, is great news for doge holders — including Elon Musk! The South African businessman’s other big venture, Tesla, announced in July last year during an earnings call that it had held onto its supply of Dogecoin despite selling all its other crypto holdings. Musk is rumoured to own a vast amount of the cryptocurrency, as well.
The news would be good for Musk, whose personal wealth is largely tied to Tesla’s stock value.
But, alas, it might not be good news. Musk is currently facing a US$258 billion (AU$380 billion) — yes, “billion” with a “b” — racketeering lawsuit alleging that he has been running a pyramid scheme to promote Dogecoin.
Musk’s lawyers have told Manhattan’s federal court, which is hearing the case, that the charges are a “fanciful work of fiction” considering Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets” about Dogecoin.
These innocuous and sill tweets include “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge” and were too vague to support a fraud claim.
“There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion,” Musk’s lawyers said. “This court should put a stop to plaintiffs’ fantasy and dismiss the complaint.”
Investors in Dogecoin accuse Musk of deliberating inflating the crypto’s price by 36,000 per cent and then letting it crash, netting him huge profits at the expense of other Doge investors despite Musk knowing the coin had no intrinsic value. The investors also point to Musk’s appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” where he portrayed a fictional financial expert and called Dogecoin “a hustle.”
Musk has also been playing around with Twitter’s verification system, removing The New York Times’s blue tick after saying it was a “propaganda” outlet.
According to documents leaked, conveniently enough, to the Times, Twitter is planning to charge organisations US$1,000 per month (around AU$1,400) to be verified. However, it had planned to make an exception for its top 500 advertisers and the 10,000 most-followed organisations that had been previously verified.
Musk’s acolytes have been lauding the father of eight’s trolling of one of the most-respected publishers in the world. To everyone else, including Twitter’s flagging advertising community which accounted for 90 per cent of its earnings, it just looks a bit sad.
They voluntarily did exactly what I wanted them to do pic.twitter.com/MqOSLaXk7l
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023
Celebs are also throwing their toys out of the pram over the changes to Twitter’s verification system. LeBron James said that he would not be stumping up the cash.
Welp guess my blue ✔️ will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain’t paying the 5. 🤷🏾♂️
— LeBron James (@KingJames) March 31, 2023
