Aussie ‘techno-optimist’ Ana Mostarac made a caricature of Elon Musk. Then, Twitter forced her to delete it. 

If you’ve hung out on Twitter recently, you know that the platform has introduced a pesky view count feature for tweets, which allows you to see how many times your tweet has been viewed. Aside from the fact that it’s a good decade worth of muscle memory down the drain, who wants to reckon with the truth that they’re not as Twitter cool as they thought? Not us. 

Aussie ‘techno-optimist’ Ana Mostarac posted a caricature of Elon Musk telling people exactly how she felt about the feature – then, Twitter started forcing her to delete it for violating their rules against ‘hateful conduct’. 

Sharing a screenshot of the original tweet along with Twitter’s message, Mostarac said: “It’s so over.” In the picture, Mostarac’s original tweet is shown flagged by Twitter, saying: “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” 

In another screenshot, Mostarac highlighted the message accompanying the delete button. “By clicking Delete, you acknowledge that your tweet violated the Twitter rules.” 

Twitter’s response to Mostarac’s tweet has largely been panned, considering her original caricature only depicted Musk’s face. “How to be Streisanded on your site,” said one comment, referring to the effect named after Barbra Streisand, who tried to remove all photographs of her Malibu home in 2003, but inadvertently ended up attracting more attention to it. 

“Imagine being THIS fragile,” said another comment, while others called Musk a big baby. 

Of course, this isn’t the only time Musk has done something of social ridicule since taking over Twitter. Some time ago, he ran a poll asking people whether he should resign. To no one’s surprise – except perhaps his – 57% of respondents voted yes. Musk followed up the poll with an announcement that he will step down as CEO of Twitter as soon as he finds a ‘suitable replacement.’ 

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