A US comedian and actor, whose Twitter handle also has the blue tick, is putting Elon Musk's control of Twitter and its moderation practices to the test by using Donald Trump as bait.
Tim Heidecker started the hashtag #TrumpIsDead on Twitter and in a series of tweets regarding former US President, Heidecker tweeted "Trump is dead (died badly) and said that Musk "suppressed this news (or has he?)". The tech billionaire was also tagged in the tweets.
"Many are sad by the news," Heidecker added. "I heard he died in a sad and sick way (not as a dog, but this reporting could change soon)."
Within an hour, Heidecker's tweets had garnered more than 20,000 likes, thousands of retweets and #TrumpIsDead began to trend on Twitter, Business Insider reported. By Wednesday afternoon, the tweet had received more than 57,000 likes and close to 10,000 retweets.
Twitter users, however, soon realised the joke and hopped onto the bandwagon with Donald Trump memes of their own.
While Elon Musk is yet to respond to the tweets, moderation, misinformation, and hate speech have become an issue under his leadership.
As a possible acknowledgement to that, the tech billionaire even changed his Twitter bio on Monday from "Chief Twit" to "Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator".
But Heidecker's tweets could prove a notable trial for Musk and his ally Twitter's head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth who had asserted that the micro-blogging site's rules were "still being enforced at scale" amid the transition.
Read more: Elon Musk says Twitter board 'deliberately' hid this evidence from court
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