- A musician says he set up a fake Tesla account to show Elon Musk was "thin-skinned."
- Connor Musarra said in a TikTok the Twitter account was suspended after around six hours.
A musician says he impersonated Elon Musk's EV company, Tesla, to show how "thin-skinned" the billionaire is.
Connor Musarra told $4 he created a parody verified Tesla account to highlight the issues with some of Musk's decisions for Twitter.
The LA-based musician told the outlet: "The goal of my fake Tesla account was to highlight how much of a thin-skinned, incompetent buffoon Elon is, but also I just wanted to make people laugh."
One of the tweets poked fun at Tesla car's safety, $4 from the handle @TeslaReal: "our favorite movie is total recall because that's also how car safety regulators refer to our company."
Musarra told Newsweek that Musk had "introduced a new level of unmanageable insanity" with his new paid verification system.
He added: "The $8 verification badge immediately introduced a level of misinformation that I don't think anyone has seen before. If your product allows me, a random musician from LA to impersonate a billion-dollar company like Tesla just by spending $8, I would say that product is not well thought out."
Musarra and representatives for Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Since taking over the platform, Musk has overhauled Twitter's blue tick verification system.
The billionaire implemented his controversial $8 fee for blue ticks last week. However, the rollout was targeted by $4and fake accounts flooded the platform. Twitter moved to suspend the feature on $4.
Twitter wrote in an internal message that it was halting subscriptions "to help address impersonation issues," Platformer's Zoe Schiffer $4.
Musarra said in a $4 that his parody Tesla account was active for six or seven hours.