While Twitter employees are working 12-hour days under the threat of termination, their boss Elon Musk is engaged in trolling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and possibly limiting features on her account.

The Silicon Valley Wealthy Boys’ Club will always have a special level for resentment of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for more than just her positions on taxing upper income brackets. That’s because AOC is self-made, articulate, charismatic, and hot — everything that a major tech founder wishes he was, but never will be. Their special level of ire toward Ocasio-Cortez is one of today’s subplots in Twitter’s chaotic transition to the Elon Musk era.  

It starts with a late Tuesday exchange between AOC and Musk entourage hanger-on David Sacks, and concerns Musk’s new scheme to charge $8-a-month for a blue-check verification. After Ocasio-Cortez complains that “Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan,” Sacks retorts that “Why aren’t @nytimes @washingtonpost @TheAtlantic  free? Their billionaire owners should stop being greedy and give us those products for free.”

Respondenth Ocasio-Cortez, “Are you seriously equating an app where people are torrenting racial slurs at an accelerated clip with the New York Times 🤣 Also fyi, legacy newspapers actually care about verifying newsworthy sources. And they don’t charge their journalists/creators for ‘priority’ placement.”

Then late Tuesday, she cryptically notes she’s had features disabled. “Also my twitter mentions/notifications conveniently aren’t working tonight, so I was informed via text that I seem to have gotten under a certain billionaire’s skin 😂 Just a reminder that money will never [buy] your way out of insecurity, folks.”

Wednesday morning, she shows the receipts, a Verified notifications area that appears to be wiped clean. “Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like? ,” she tweeted. “This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me 🤔”

Musk also hit back with an image of a sweatshirt in her campaign store priced at $58. Ocasio-Cortez replied, “My workers are union, have full healthcare + benefits like childcare help, and every one is paid a living wage. Proceeds go to community acts like tutoring underserved kids. You’re a union buster with an ego problem who pockets the change from underpaying and mistreating people.”

Whatever may have happened with AOC’s account, I’m guessing it’s probably a bug. We’ll likely see plenty of bugs in this wholly haphazard transition to the new $8 subscription service for verification. And Twitter employees are reportedly working marathon shifts and sleeping in the office trying to make the whole thing work.

But while they do, Musk and his cronies are goofing off on Twitter and trying to troll AOC for attention.

Related: Musk Reportedly Laying Off 50% of Twitter Staff, Layoffs to Begin Friday [SFist]

Image: (Left) House.gov, Right (Debbie Rowe via Wikimedia Commons)