Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, thinks he is the funniest person on the planet. He just
loves to go out there and troll everybody. And of course, last week, at the end of the
week, they started removing all of the legacy verified blue check marks. Uh, I myself lost
my blue check mark because I'm not going to pay money to have such a stupid little thing.
But either way, people were making a big deal about it and realizing that only the blue
check marks left were people who had paid for the check marks. A campaign began on Twitter
called Block the Blue, which is where mostly people on the left would go through and just
block anybody with a check mark cuz it meant that they were the ones giving Elon Musk $8
a month. Once this started, Elon Musk decided, you know what? And he even admitted that he
was trolling, uh, o on Twitter.
He decided to start giving some celebrities, and even some reporters like Matt Bender,
their check mark back. And Matt Bender has, uh, done a wonderful job of exposing Elon
Musk over the, uh, last few months. And he was a big pusher of the block, the blue campaign.
So Elon Musk, in his trolling ways, decided to give Matt Bender back his check mark. Other
celebrities got their check marks back, LeBron James, Stephen King, uh, I think William Shatner
as well. And Musk said that he is personally paying for these people to have these check
marks. The problem is when you click on their check mark, it says that this user is verified
because they subscribe to Twitter Blue, which is a direct violation of Section 43 a of the
Lanam Act from the Federal Trade Commission. That particular section of the Lanam Act is
about fraudulent endorsements.
Let me put it this way. I can't get on the air right now and say that George Clooney
buys Ring of Fire t-shirts. George Clooney loves our Ring of Fire merchandise buys it
every day. I don't know what he's doing with it, but he buys it every day. I, that would
be illegal for me to say because I cannot give the public the impression that a celebrity
is either endorsing or purchasing our products. But for Elon Musk to put those check marks
back on those people's profiles, you click on it and says they subscribed when they didn't.
It gives the impression that these high profile, powerful people are endorsing this service
even though they're not. So, yes, that is a direct violation of federal law. It's pretty
cut and dry. It's very simple. Now, Elon Musk can avoid this. All he has to do is
Take all of those accounts and say that this person is verified because Elon Musk is personally
giving them a check mark. Like, that's it. That's how you get around that he can do that.
He probably will. And then there's no legal violation on that front because there's another
thing happening, and this is something that I'm kind of surprised has not been picked
up in the media. Another person who received their check mark back, but does not appear
as far as we know to be subscribed to Twitter Blue, a little guy called Donald Trump, got
his blue check mark back that check mark while small is valued at $8 per month. And if Elon
Musk did in fact give Donald Trump that check mark back without Trump subscribing to Twitter
blue, y'all know what that is? Right? That is an in-kind campaign contribution that if
Elon Musk does not report, he would be in violation of, uh, federal Elections Commission
laws in addition to the violations of the F T C laws.
So we may have f e c, we may have F T C, we may have all kinds of legal violations with
Elon Musk trying to troll people by giving them their blue check mark back. Now, as I
said, e even with both instances, there are very easy fixes for this. And it's likely
now that Elon Musk understands, oh wow, I can't do this. He'll probably fix that and
put a new message on there. The $8 to Trump. He'll probably just end up reporting that
if Trump didn't pay for it, Trump is the kind of guy who totally would pay for it. So that's
not a hundred percent clear. Any other politicians with a check mark that didn't pay for it,
Musk would have to report it as a campaign contribution. Uh, so, uh, the politicians
would have to report it on their financial disclosure forms.
There's a lot of paperwork involved in this, all because Elon Musk wanted to be a troll
and he doesn't understand how things actually work. That's what's going on here. Twitter,
the most popular public forum in the world is being run by an SIL who doesn't understand
how things work. He's just doing it because it's fun. , look at me. Look how fun
and cool I am. This is the biggest cry for attention coupled with the biggest cry for
help that I think I have ever had to report on. But that's what we're dealing with with
Elon Musk, a man who decided to make his divorce in midlife crisis. Everybody else's problem.