X user quits paying for Twitter Blue to protest X commandeering his account.

Archived version: https://archive.li/Yg8r8

My favorite part:

But while his reaction the day after learning that X was commandeering his handle was extreme frustration, Vaught told Ars that the platform will remain his primary form of social media.

“it’s highly annoying, but Twitter is still my preferred social media,” Vaught said. “That’s how I communicate and learn my news about what’s going on. Nothing else compares.”

His only “minor protest” to X’s action, he said, was to cancel his Twitter Blue subscription.

Vaught is mostly a Musk fan, as he’s interested in Musk’s electric cars and space developments. He said that this experience with X hasn’t tainted his opinion of Musk or his relationship too much with X as a platform. He’s holding out hope that Musk has a long-term plan for where Musk is taking X, but like many users, he’s struggling to adjust to the rebranding.

  • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
    2972·
    11 months ago

    Musk screws him over and yet he continues to use the service?

    People are so stupid these days.

    • Haibane@lemm.ee
      433·
      11 months ago

      He almost seems to enjoy it. He probably refreshes the x page dozens of times a day.

      Oh yeah, steal my username musk daddy.

    • BrooklynMan@lemmy.mlEnglish
      351·
      11 months ago

      the alt-right movement is like an abusive relationship, made up of a bunch of very insecure people constantly seeking approval from an abuser who doles it out with an equal amount of degradation, keeping them confused and isolated enough that they have no choice but to keep coming back because - after having driven everyone else away with their hateful rhetoric - the abusive alt-right is now their only source of “community” at all.

      it’s a cult.

      More thorough video explanation from The Alt-Right Playbook: Endnote 4: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship (live)

      • dwan@lemm.ee
        152·
        11 months ago

        Apparently Xitter care enough to actually —steal— I mean take over the handle.

      • Haibane@lemm.ee
        11·
        11 months ago

        You care, obviously. Did you comment on this story because you don’t care? You’re kinda sending us mixed signals.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      255·
      11 months ago

      Vaught is mostly a Musk fan, as he’s interested in Musk’s electric cars and space developments.

      So am I. But the guy is an idiot. SpaceX in particular is successful because he isn’t the person running the day-to-day operations.

      • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
        10·
        11 months ago

        You can be excited about the work the engineers are doing without idolizing the bigoted CEO.

        I don’t see why so many people can’t separate the awful business man from the science.

        • deejay4am@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          11 months ago

          This. I love the science SpaceX is doing. I love the EV momentum Tesla created (even if their own products are proving to be less than stellar, no pun intended).

          Musk is a huge tool though.

      • navi@lemmy.tespia.orgEnglish
        8·
        11 months ago

        Gwynne Shotwell does not get enough main stream credit for keeping SpaceX (and Musk) afloat. She’s OP.

    • tourist@lemmy.world
      26·
      11 months ago

      nothing else compares

      Guarantee my guy tried 3 other websites before calling it quits

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
        181·
        11 months ago

        where he gets his news from. Nothing else compares

        Uh… How about an actual news site? Maybe the NYT for example? I’m guessing they use too many words he doesn’t understand.

  • ren (a they/them)@lemmy.world
    70·
    11 months ago

    he sounds like a person in an abusive relationship.

    “yeah, he hits me sometimes, but Jimmy’s a good guy y’all! just need to give him a chance, besides… all my stuff is there, where would I even live?”.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    541·
    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    “16 years ago, I created @music and have been running it ever since,” Jeremy Vaught, director of engineering at the nonprofit Life Happens, posted on X.

    But Vaught never had the time to focus on leveraging the @music audience, only ever benefiting from the account when companies occasionally sent him free perks like headphones in trade for promotions.

    Vaught said he was never interested because he knew that selling his handle violated Twitter’s terms of service, and he figured there was more value in keeping the account.

    To “minimize any inconvenience” from having his account handle taken away, X defaulted to changing Vaught’s username to @musicfan, which he described as “probably the least worst” alternative the platform suggested.

    But while his reaction the day after learning that X was commandeering his handle was extreme frustration, Vaught told Ars that the platform will remain his primary form of social media.

    “Twitter’s not dead to me at this point,” Vaught told Ars, even if “it’s a super huge bummer” to lose the @music account.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.ml
      10·
      11 months ago

      My only thought (plausable excuse) is that he is possibly sucking up while expressing discontent under the false pretense maybe Musk will pay him losses. Whether he likes him or not, he should know someone thay disagrees with him will not get paid but rather sued for existing.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    266·
    11 months ago

    “Twitter’s not dead to me at this point,”

    At this point I’m cheering Musk on.

    Anyone who is still on Twitter XXX deserves this.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      8·
      11 months ago

      I am a bit annoyed that the leopard has eaten my face but not enough to move away from the leopard or do anything at all.

      • regedit@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        Not true, they did something to stop the leopard face-eating, they stopped giving the leopard money! Take that leopard!

  • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
    94·
    11 months ago

    What’s the top three worst things Musk has done? I don’t really follow celebrity news so I’m a bit confused about why everyone seems to hate him all of a sudden. I’m genuinely asking

      • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
        18·
        11 months ago

        Well he’s clearly a jerk who doesn’t know when he should just stay silent but I guess this can partly be explained by the fact that he obviously has some form of autism/asberger or something.

        I just don’t see anything that major in there. I can think of several worse people who don’t seem to be getting this level of hate so I find it curious what it is about Musk then that he does.

        • MrBobDobalina@lemmy.ml
          13·
          11 months ago

          Firstly, being on the autism spectrum (not saying he is or isn’t) doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole, and I’m sure many people who are on it and aren’t assholes will tell you that this take is insulting.

          Secondly, when you say there is nothing major on there, you have to keep in mind his level of reach and influence. If your neighbour says “this new Covid thing is going to just blow over, there’ll be no cases soon’”, you can say “OK buddy, hope you’re right but it’s not looking likely”. When Musk says it, he directly contributes massively to the misinformation that has killed a lot of people and changed the whole damn world for the worse

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
            1·
            11 months ago

            Yeah I agree that with a platform of this size it comes with huge responsibility aswell knowing your words have a real world consequences. Maybe that’s the explanation to the widespreat hate. People much worse than him generally don’t shitpost on social media so we’re not thinking about them

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
            13·
            11 months ago

            I genuinely don’t know what started all this. He used to be quite popular person but then something changed and seemingly everyone started hating him. I couldn’t explain why and thus my question.

        • jayandp@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          11 months ago

          Because whenever there’s a fire, he throws gasoline on it like it’s his life goal to butt heads with the world. And he shows no respect to others, like suddenly taking a user’s username without asking and breaking stuff with no remorse.

          Is he statistically the worst person in the world? Probably not. But he does his best to make people feel like he is.