Brazil First Lady Rosangela da Silva is locked in a feud with Elon Musk over the recent hacking of her account on the social media platform X, after he brushed off responsibility for the breach.
Janja, as the wife of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is known, on Wednesday accused the billionaire who owns the platform formerly known as Twitter of using irony to downplay what she called a misogynistic hacking of her account last week.
“He minimizes a serious event that doesn’t just affect me, but thousands of women on his platform every day,” she said in a statement.
The Dec. 11 breach of the social media-savvy first lady’s account made national headlines in Brazil, after a hacker posted lewd images and insults directed at the president on the profile that has 1.2 million followers.
Janja earlier this week threatened to sue the company, claiming that it was too slow to respond to requests to freeze the account, take down the posts and help her regain access.
Musk, who completed his acquisition of the platform last year, said Wednesday that his company bore no blame.
“It is not clear how someone guessing her email password is our responsibility,” he wrote in a post replying to an account that mentioned the legal threat.
Janja categorized the response as “symptomatic” of Musk, who regularly clashes with critics on the website.
“I didn’t say it’s X’s responsibility for someone to ‘guess’ my account password, but it should be the platform’s responsibility to act as quickly as possible when crimes are committed within it,” she said in the statement, adding that she “will continue to raise questions and fight for accountability on the platforms.”
