H3H3’s Ethan Klein banned from Twitter for impersonating Elon Musk

Twitter has been a bubbling hotbed of controversy ever since Elon Musk bought the social media platform for $44 billion. The quirky, questionable billionaire has been making a lot of unpopular decisions since he became the big boss of Twitter, which has led others to start impersonating him by changing their name on Twitter to Elon Musk and then tweeting outrageous statements.

One of the louder voices to lash out at Musk was Ethan Klein, also known, as H3H3, a controversial YouTuber who is not afraid to make his opinion known on podcasts and social media. Like many others, Klein decided to change his name and photo to Elon Musk and start tweeting out offensive things to test Musk’s free speech policy. Some of his tweets included calling Jeffrey Epstein an “old friend” and praising Tesla for only having six accidental deaths. Because of the impersonation, H3H3’s Twitter account was banned.

Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022

The response from the streaming community has been mixed. Some applauded H3H3 for risking his social media page for the cause of speaking out against Musk, while others said that impersonation is not comedy and that he should have listened to the rules.

“Comedy is dead on Twitter and Elon Musk killed it,” H3H3 said from a second Twitter account.

Many of Musk’s decrees as Twitter CEO have been questioned, such as his decision to make the verification check cost $8 a month. Meanwhile, anybody who decided not to buy it would be essentially “shadow banned” on the site since their tweets would be buried under verified users’ tweets.

Many also found Musk’s focus on “free speech” to be alarming, which has led to an increase in racial slurs since Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. Musk claimed that hate speech would go down once people had to pay for the verification since he said in an interview that all the unverified accounts would be “bots and trolls.” He reasoned that their tweets would be suppressed since verified accounts would be the ones getting boosted.

Klein’s ban is just one more situation that has shown the jarring divide on Twitter when it comes to Musk’s new policies. A lot of people are sticking by Musk and supporting his changes, condemning anyone who questions the $8 check mark or impersonation rules. But others say that they are looking for Twitter alternatives, hoping to leave the platform behind as it continues to “die.”