Naughty Twitter fingers

The BBC’s recent three-part show on Elon Musk, tirelessly narrated in the sultry style of an M&S advert for a facetious, cannabis-seasoned gammon joint, veers into puff-piece territory way too often to be taken seriously, with ex-wife Talulah Riley quaintly describing the destructive social media output of the purported genius as a product of “naughty Twitter fingers”.

A fourth part to that series might have depicted how the oversized tyke’s bloviation on free speech led to his legal obligation to buy the platform, where he now wants to charge all verified users £7 a month to retain blue-tick status: no doubt a contingency plan to supplant the sponsors ahead of Twitter’s putrefaction into a spammy Milo Yiannopoulos house of mirrors.

“Verification is one of the ways to filter out disinformation or low-quality information,” said Nu Wexler, Twitter’s former head of global policy communications. “If you’re offering up blue checks for rent, it makes it harder to sift through disinformation and find high-quality information.”

We eagerly await Musk’s next Mary Poppins bride to let us know how it all worked out.