Boos rain down on Elon Musk at a Dave Chappelle comedy show

SAN FRANCISCO: Elon Musk was loudly jeered by the crowd at a special Punchline Comedy Club event on Sunday night (Dec 11) after he was invited on stage by comedian Dave Chappelle. 

Boos rained down on the Tesla and Twitter CEO after Chappelle introduced him as a guest and told the Chase Center crowd to "make some noise for the richest man in the world".

Chappelle later joked: “It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience”, referencing the controversy surrounding the billionaire's takeover of Twitter in October and the subsequent firing of 50 per cent of the tech firm's 7,500-strong headcount.

"It's almost as if I've offended San Francisco's unhinged leftists... but nahhh," Musk tweeted after the event.

On Monday, Musk admitted he was surprised by the backlash, although he tweeted that it “was 90 per cent cheers and 10 per cent boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter).”

Musk also relaunched a subscription service for Twitter on Monday after a maiden attempt saw an embarrassing spate of fake accounts that scared advertisers and cast doubt on the site's future.

The first try last month came just 10 days after his US$44 billion takeover of the influential platform and mass layoffs, including teams of workers moderating content.

RELAUNCH OF TWITTER BLUE

The relaunch of Twitter Blue comes as the SpaceX owner has stepped up his tweets endorsing right-wing causes, including opposition to the use of gender-neutral pronouns and the United States government's response to COVID-19. 

The subscription service costs US$8 per month for users accessing Twitter on the web and US$11 if signing up on an Apple device. The extra price could be explained by Musk's anger that Apple charges up to 30 per cent service fee on its app store.

The initial rollout of Twitter Blue caused an uproar when many fake accounts popped up pretending to be celebrities or companies and Musk's team was forced to pull the plug on the scheme.

This time, the company beefed up its verification procedure with a review required by Twitter before receiving the coveted blue check mark.

Checkmarks are now gold for businesses and, later in the week, will become gray for government organizations, the company said.

A blue checkmark on an account, which indicates it has been verified by Twitter, was previously free but reserved for organizations and public figures in an attempt to avoid impersonation and misinformation.

According to the site, new subscriptions to Twitter Blue were currently available only in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, "with plans to expand".

'ONE MORE LOCKDOWN'

Since his takeover, content moderation has proved to be a major headache for Musk, who has described himself as a free-speech absolutist, vowing to end most forms of censorship on the site.

But his commitment to free speech has scared off major advertisers, caught the attention of regulators and briefly challenged the company's access to the Apple app store.

Musk believes that the previous ownership of Twitter held a strong left-wing and pro-LGBTQ bias and unfairly banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump.

On Sunday he also lashed out against the outgoing key advisor for the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, a frequent target of vitriol on right-wing media.

"My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci," Musk said, tauntingly playing on the growing practice for people to indicate their preferred gender pronouns.

Musk also posted a meme showing Dr Fauci telling US President Joe Biden: "Just one more lockdown, my king ..."

Early in the pandemic, Musk tweeted that concern over the virus was "dumb" and since taking over Twitter, he has removed its policy targeting COVID-19 misinformation.

The White House has blasted Musk for the tweets against Dr Fauci, calling them "disgusting" and "divorced from reality".

"These are incredibly dangerous, these personal attacks that we are seeing," said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.

CNN reported that Twitter's former head of trust and safety had fled his home after baseless attacks on Twitter, endorsed by Musk.

Yoel Roth, who left the company in November, has been the subject of threats following the release of the Twitter Files, a trove of internal documents that Musk alleges demonstrates collusion within the company with the Democratic Party.

The attacks took a serious turn on Sunday when Musk endorsed a tweet that accused Roth of being an apologist for paedophilia - a common trope used by conspiracy theorists to target opponents.

The South African-born Musk's embrace of right-wing talking points is attracting increasing scorn in politically liberal San Francisco, where Twitter is headquartered.

Carolina Milanesi, a tech analyst for Creative Strategies, warned that Musk's political turn on Twitter could be problematic for the company going forward.

With engagement down significantly, the return on investment for promoting tweets has "crashed", she said.