Wait, where did he say this?

To me it doesn't just feel like extortion, it straight up is extortion.

Twitter DM, apparently: "Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3."

https://www.protocol.com/elon-musk-flight-tracker#toggle-gdp...

Not really, the party never solicited payment. Musk opened up the negotiations and was then pissed off when the other side didn't accept his first offer.

But he didn’t take the money, meaning that at least his intent wasn’t to extort.

Edit: looked this up apparently Elon offered him 5k which he rejected and asked 50k instead. So I guess neither have the moral high ground.

Anyone who knows about that offer knows that Elon offered money to take it down first. Why are you being deceptive about this?

He did, but if it were not extortion then the person running it would come back with a "no" rather than a counter offer.