Japan’s Ministry of Finance issued a warning late last week regarding an account on the platform formerly known as Twitter that impersonates its top currency official, Masato Kanda, in just one of a string of incidents involving X Corp and Elon Musk in recent days.

According to the Ministry, vice-minister Kanda does not have an account with the Musk-owned platform.

"Please don't follow the impersonation account and/or comment on the post," pleaded the Ministry, adding "MOF is currently requesting that X (formerly Twitter) suspends the impersonation account."

At the time of writing this, the account had been suspended.

Kanda is regarded as a person of influence whose perspectives on economics could influence markets.

While that SNAFU unfolded, X owner Elon Musk was busy opening up the platform's ad revenue share program to any X Premium (Blue) subscriber over the age of 18 with at least 500 followers who had generated at least 15 million impressions in the past three months.

Well, opening the program up to them maybe, because, according to X Support, "We need a bit more time to review everything for the next payout and hope to get all eligible accounts paid as soon as possible."

"Major payouts coming soon!" tweet-exed Musk. Yeah. Sure.

Late payments are of course common when dealing with the X-cellent social network, which is accused of not paying its rent, litigation consultants, or severance pay. The latter payments have become the subject of a lawsuit.

Musk appears to be managing some of those relationships quite interestingly - such as by reportedly racking up fees for the landlord by erecting a throbbing brighteye sore onto the company's San Francisco headquarters without a permit.

Whether any of these payment promises will actually be made is questionable. Musk said last month his money pit is yet to achieve positive cash flow, which he attributed to a combination of an around 50 percent drop in advertising revenue and heavy debt load.

Musk took on the debt willingly, and cratered revenue with maximal free speech policies that saw the already-roiling Twitter host even more content advertisers found scary as the platform changed its name to X.

However, there's one thing that the company formerly known as Twitter has money for, and that’s the lawsuits of strangers.

"If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. No limit. Please let us know," promised Elon over the weekend.

Among those queuing up already is a woman who allegedly was fired for 2016-era tweets questioning trans rights and following right-wing anti-LGBT group Libs of TikTok.

(On the flip side, claiming hate-speech reports scare off advertisers can get an organization sued by X Corp.)

It's highly unlikely such a promise to pay legal fees made over a tweet with no terms and conditions is legally binding - after all, Musk was cleared of fraud last February after he falsely tweeted that "funding" to take Tesla private was "secured." If a CEO can tweet false information to the market and face no consequences, are there even rules anymore?

All this is great for Musk, because who has the time to follow through with all those promises to pay legal bills when you are engaged in planning a billionaire vs billionaire cage fight?

The pre-fight trash talk between social media platform kingpins Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg began in June. Flash forward to last weekend and, according to Elon, the fight will be live-streamed on the shiny new toy he calls "X" with all proceeds going to a charity for veterans (probably also not legally binding.)

"Shouldn't we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?" posted Zuck on his own Twitter-esque platform, Threads - which, along with Instagram, carries a fundraising feature.

According to Zuck, he's suggested August 26 as the day, but has not received confirmation from his opponent - although both have said they are physically training for the engagement.

Um, can't wait. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2023/08/07/weekend_twitter_chaos/