Elon Musk's bitter relations with journalists have entered a new stage. Now, any press inquiries sent to Twitter will be responded with a "poop" emoji. Musk said this in a tweet on Monday. "press@twitter.com now auto responds with 💩 (sic)," he said.
This comes amid mass layoffs and glitches that have gripped Twitter ever since Musk took over the social media platform in $44 billion dollar deal.
BOOM sent a mail to press@twitter.com to confirm this. The automated reply to the mail was in fact a "poop" emoji. Musk's tweet was shared 7,000 times and had over 75,000 likes by Monday afternoon as Twitterati were baffled over the bizarre decision.
Many users confirmed the update by sharing screenshots of the emoji reply to their email queries. "He's not lying," a user wrote.
Also Read: Yet Another Outage: How Twitter Has Glitched Again And Again Since The Musk Takeover
Although many are finding the update humorous, others took a critical approach and called out Musk for his childish antics. "Are you 12?" a tweet read.
Another user wrote, "It's fantastic that you're sending a company prospectus with every press request."
Mass layoffs at Twitter
Following Musk's takeover, Twitter has witnessed thousands of layoffs and myriad outages in the past few months. Down from a workforce of 7,500 to 2,000, Twitter saw its most recent layoffs in February 2023. Despite Musk claiming that there will be no further layoffs, Twitter continues to let staff go from almost all departments. In India, the marketing and communication departments were the most affected during the layoffs in November 2022. Amid layoffs, outages, external links not working, and more, the recent update adds another barrier between Twitter and its users.
Musk vs Press
Elon Musk, who took over Twitter in a $44 billion deal in October 2022, has been at loggerheads with journalists. In December 2022, Twitter suspended the accounts of prominent journalists from the New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, among others for "violating Twitter rules".
These journalists had been reporting on Elon Musk who later said the journalists had been banned for doxxing him and violating "privacy rules". "Same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else," he wrote, claiming that the journalists had posted his real-time location.
"They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service," Musk added. He later reinstated the accounts, following a Twitter poll but not before making a few sarcastic tweets.
In November last year, Musk came under fire when he said that the "media elite" will do everything it can to prevent the goal of the platform from elevating "citizen journalism". Journalist Bill Scher said in a tweet, "Twitter apparently is pursuing the goal of being a 2003 blog post."
The Twitter CEO has time and again displayed his selective aversion towards the media through his tweets. With the latest emoji response, he has yet again reinforced the same. Here are some of his remarks about media and journalists.