Elon Musk was briefly locked out of his Twitter account

11 months ago

Tesla boss and keen tweeter Elon Musk was briefly silenced on Twitter on Tuesday in an apparent mix-up over an earlier tweet.

The business magnate told his 23 million followers that the social network thought he had been hacked and temporarily locked his account in response – although Twitter is not able to confirm incidents on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.

It appears the action may have been carried out as a precautionary move to an earlier tweet, when Mr Musk jokingly posted an anime image, asking users, “Wanna buy some Bitcoin?”, which may have triggered a false alarm at Twitter.

The 47-year old has been involved in a number of fiery conversations on the social network, most recently including a clash with the makers of the game Fortnite.

Mr Musk tweeted an apparently edited image of a headline saying that he had bought Fortnite and deleted it to “save kids from eternal virginity”.

Epic Games hit back, mocking the SpaceX founder for taking a decade to build its first base.

In a recent interview, Mr Musk admitted that an “excruciating” year was taking its toll on him, working up to 120 hours a week and sometimes taking the sedative Ambien to get to sleep.