Twitter post claiming Tesla is recalling every single car from fake Elon Musk account starts chaos

Twitter CEO Elon Musk (AFP via Getty Images)

A post by a fake Elon Musk account about a major Tesla recall has once again led to questions about the health of Twitter.

A viral post that looked as if it belonged to the real billionaire announced that all Tesla cars would be taken off the road because of a warning they were dangerous.

“Tesla has just been informed by the [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] that our cars pose an ‘imminent threat’ to all drivers and are demanding an immediate recall of all vehicles w[ith] auto pilot,” it read. “We are going to fight this to the end, but I’m being forced to announce the immediate recall of our entire fleet.”

The tweet received thousands of retweets and interactions, including from many users who appeared to have been initially misled by it.

The post looked as if it had been shared by Mr Musk’s real account, and had the blue tick that indicates a person’s identity has been verified. But it was actually shared by Ethan Klein, the YouTuber, who has an old verified checkmark from before Mr Musk took over Twitter.

Mr Klein was already banned by Twitter in November, when he was one of a number of users who impersonated Mr Musk in protest against his ownership of the site and new rules about verification and parody. That suspension was lifted on Wednesday, and only hours later Mr Klein once again posted an impersonation of Elon Musk.

This time around, Twitter locked the account until Mr Klein deleted the content that broke Twitter’s rules, such as the profile image and name. Mr Klein shared an image of those rules alongside a mocking comment about Mr Musk’s espoused commitment to free speech.

The only explicit indications that the tweet was fake were in the name of the account – which included the word “parody” – and a Community Note that was appended on the end of it.

However, neither of those were visible until a user clicked into the tweet. Mr Klein had included the words “CEO Tesla Motors” after the name Elon Musk, which meant that the words “parody” were cut off by character limits, and those community notes are not visible until a tweet is viewed on its own.

Ever since Mr Musk took over Twitter, a range of celebrities have looked to undermine his management of the company by impersonating Mr Musk and posting other tweets. Questions have also been asked about verification, after Mr Musk allowed any user to buy a blue checkmark and make their account appear official, which was quickly exploited by a range of users to send posts impersonating other notable figures and companies.