“Brb im gonna post something on x”
“X? Is that a new kind of porn?”
X-creting, not posting. Or would that be xitting (pronounced ‘zitting’).
He’s an idiot, but there is literally nothing wrong with this. You don’t own a username, and you aren’t entitled to it.
Well somebody certainly felt entitled to it.
It’s probably in his interest to stop pulling dick moves. Sometimes you shouldn’t do things that you are able to do.
He has long list of terrible shit he’s done, but this is literally nothing lol
People acting like he stole someone’s property. He changed the username of some random squatter on his own personal website.
Which also there’s a huge underground communities who hack, trade, and sell these “rare” usernames. So no doubt it was owned by some squatter or someone who obtained it through malicious means.
Have you read the article? Please do not making things up. The original holder of the handle created it 16 years ago.
Where is the part where that matters in the slightest. Still a username on a live service that is subject to change at any time, and there has never been an expectation of ownership.
Where is the part where that matters in the slightest.
You are proposing that, in justification of the dick move, this user is “no doubt” squatting or obtained the username maliciously when that isn’t the case based on the second paragraph of the article and other interviews with the original registrant of the handle. I don’t really think that’s a good faith discussion.
Regarding your second sentence, I don’t disagree but at I’m also not trying to make a point beyond my first reply of “sometimes you shouldn’t do things that you are able to do”.
So you’re saying rare usernames have a monetary value, but also that it’s perfectly fine for a website to steal these rare usernames because the man-child owner of the site has a weird obsession with a certain letter of the alphabet? And how do you know they obtained it via “malicious means” and not that they weren’t just an early adopter of twitter?
The fact that he’s treating twitter like his “personal website” is part of the problem.
It’s not stealing. He owns the website. It literally is his personal website. Tf are you guys smoking. Usernames are not property. The entitlement here is ridiculous and just objectively wrong.
Everything I read about Elon is against my will and I’m tired of being violated.
Shitty as this behavior may be: Why would there have to be any payment? It’s just an account with a private company.
They can setup arbitrary rules or ban you without any rules. It’s their service, their database… Just like a club can throw you out on a whim. You may tell your friends and eventually that club may go out of business because of their shitty behavior but that’s about it.
This would have been a whole other story if it had happened with the x.com domain name…
Shitty as this behavior may be
That is exactly why. If you need to do something shitty, soften the blow. If you don’t, you’re an asshole. Making something hurt less means you have empathy. I’m honestly confused why you needed to ask. You’re taking something of value from someone and providing nothing in return.
Edit: just because something is allowed (taking the account) doesn’t mean it’s “good” (in the moral sense). And just because something isn’t required (offering compensation) doesn’t mean it can’t be used as a sign of good will or the lack of it can’t be viewed negatively.
And just because something isn’t required (offering compensation) doesn’t mean it can’t be used as a sign of good will or the lack of it can’t be viewed negatively.
I agree. The headline could’ve said “@x user handle grabbed in an asshole move”. Expecting payment for something like a Twitter handle is just weird to me.
Twitter handles have exchanged hands in the past for large sums. The precedent exists that handles have monetary value, especially single character ones. It’s not much different than selling domain names.
If you need to do something shitty, soften the blow.
“But why though?”
— Elon Musk
“And if the guy who had the x handle complains, he’s a pedo guy.”
What if instead of taking over Twitter handle X, he had taken over Twitter handle of say NY Times. Not blocked it or suspended but straight up takeover. They’re part of that company’s brand. X May have not been important monetarily to that person but doing something like this without offering some sort of compensation signals to all other companies who use Twitter that their handle isn’t safe. This may be a unique instance because he wants the X Twitter handle for their rebranding, but it is an asshole move and undoubtedly others will be watching closely.
I agree. They are within their rights to do whatever with their database, their service. But if their decisions impact someone else’s business then they shouldn’t be surprised if someone takes legal action.
They can setup arbitrary rules or ban you without any rules. It’s their service,
Indeed this shows the change in meaning that “service” has undergone in the past 10 or maybe 20 years. Before, the very notion of “service” was that this kind of events could not happen – otherwise it wasn’t a “service”. Reliability and reliance were integral part of the definition of “service”.
Today this word doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Well, back then you paid for service. Then it’s a different story, there’s an actual contract which is legally binding. Enshittified internet doesn’t have those. Nor are users customers but we all know that here.
Amen.
Yes they have the right and ability to seize any account on their service for any reason. But if they want to be a stable platform where people build their brands and their businesses, there should be an expectation that this would not happen. Due process for when there is a dispute.
Clearly musk wants people to view the platform as such a place so this is a dumb move. In addition to being asshole
Musk took the handle as part of his monetization “strategy” to rebrand so with money involved payment for taking something from a user is a logical step.
Not taking it would be the most logical step, but exchange of money to compensate would be a close second.
From the article: “… is seeking to make X into a “super app” that features not only Twitter’s existing social networking and messaging features, but also payments and banking as well as video.”
Stealing users data and accounts then using them for their own purposes seems like a great way to get people to trust you with their banking information.
They didn’t really “steal” the account. The moved it to a different handle.
Thus removing any value that account may have once had. So it’s still effectively stealing.
So they stole the account’s name. It’s identity which is everything on social media.
Yeah, it’s like if you took “google.com” from Alphabet and replaced it with “google12345678998765.com”; they had a web URL and they still have a web URL so it’s basically the same thing.
I don’t understand how he expects to brand a letter. It’ll do poorly in any kind of searching. Especially since it’s a common letter to see on its own.
The part I’m really blown away by is that I just saw this final project in the intro to design class I teach from a group of international students earlier this spring. The project was to create a logo design and brand guidelines as a small team. The students can pick the business and whether it’s new or a rebrand, and this group went with social media all-in-one apps and made the justification that they are hugely popular in China, but nothing like that exists in the US. My favorite part is that the letter X was a HUGE part of the logo/branding, but they did not name it just “X” specifically for the reasons you listed - it’s not discoverable or unique in searches, the App Store, etc.
I feel like I’m being punk’d
i just wish I could filter keywords in jerboa
I’m guessing he’s trying to spell something dirty again with his companies like he did with the Tesla models (S, 3, X, Y). Dude basically is a 13 year old boy if they were given billions of dollars.
SpaceX, does he have an E? X, Tesla
Apparently Ford got the E first so King Twit went with a 3.
Yea but a company starting with E
Ford really should have released the electric Mustang as the Model E. Not only because Mustang was a bad brand to use for that but because Elon losing his shit about it would have been hysterical and free PR.
Archive Link: https://archive.li/QIQgo
Link doesn’t appear to work for me
Working OK for me
You’re probably on Firefox with DNS over HTTPS enabled. The folks who run archive.today intentionally block Cloudflare’s DNS for some reason…
Works for me, try again? Sometimes archive links take time to generate.
Something to do with me I’m guessing. It’s like the third one I’ve tried today and just fails to establish a connection
- I got lucky and got through on archive.is
- archive.today and Cloudflare have an ongoing hissy fit, other than hopping instances, sometimes just waiting a few hours also works …
@mastermind thanks for posting the archive link!
Can the platform just die already so I can stop reading about a man-child’s shitty business decisions? Thanks, management.
Umm, you certainly can stop reading anything about him or anything he’s connected with. Your choice.
No offense but this is so goddamn stupid. We don’t live in a bubble and unfortunately their actions may have an impact as they ripple through the business and political world.
Intentionally censoring news because “lol get wrecked Jeff Bezos” is hurting no one but yourself.
Lol what it has over 200 million active monthly users. How fucking dense are you?
It’s not going anywhere
deleted by creator
The vast majority of these users aren’t paying for subscription, and many advertisers have dropped it. Meanwhile it needs to pay additional debt and interest from the acquisition itself.
It is on its death bed already. All it takes is for the owner to realize it’s not worth taking losses over it anymore.
Isn’t that what haooened to vine? Plenty of users not enough money to cover the costs.
Didn’t the mods create a megathread specifically for this reason?
Different instance I thought.
No. All these people are terminally attached to the platform and will rather stay on board until the ship sinks.
All these people are terminally attached to the people they are connected to on the platform. Moving over is easy. Convincing your friends to move along with you is hard. As a creator, convincing your whole follower base to move along with you is nearly impossible.
Yup people that use Twitter as part of theor job will be the last to leave
Not to mention, so I can stop seeing pictures of him, pressing his fingertips together in front of his face like he’s some fucking pensive genius. I’m goddamn tired of it
He’s just smelling and tasting his fingers, which he just had up his own ass.
Bro where do you hang out online that you see so much Elon content haha
I’m incredibly sick of seeing his face and his stupid expressions
I like that one from the nineties when he had not gotten all those operations.
But yeah let’s move on, there is science out there, lore, videogames, books and more!
It did die, like back in November I think. We’re at the point where the zombie like corpse has fallen over and horsehair worms started emerging. 🤮
Or it was gunshotted in November and now it’s slowly bleeding out…
I hate that I can read this
You’ve got to assume that Twitter can revoke any users access at any time for any reason under its existing terms and conditions. This is a predictable douche move by Musk but the original account holder very likely has zero recourse.
Which makes his desire to have x be the everything app so much more horrifying. That level of consolidated power is horrifying on its own, and it’s even more horrifying knowing the person running it enjoys abusing his power.
Whether or not they can sue, I think the point is everyone knows that one could sell a one letter Twitter account for tens of thousands (or, could have 2 years ago, anyway). So, just that Musk is a gigantic dickhead.
sounds like… landed gentry
The article quotes the TOS that gives only one reason why a person might lose their twiX handle, and it’s not “Elon Musk wants it”, so there’s probably going to be a line of lawyers wanting to take this case.
They should have at least offered to give him the twitter handle. haha
You know, everyone should start calling the service twiX, just to irritate the candy bar company, which is actually a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that does care how its brands are perceived.
But, as I mentioned above, Twix the candy bar and TwiX the portmanteau for Twitter/X exist in different product spaces. Consumers are unlikely to be confused between the two. I still wouldn’t mind it catching on, haha.
It’d still irritate them due to the connotations, regardless of how legally actionable their irritation would be.
Just make sure that you always explain it like “It’s TwiX, you know, like the candy bar! They must be affiliated.”
I used to like Twix bars until I saw the kind of shit they are saying on their online platform. They are kinda all over the place, but I think it’s because the people at Twix know their racism is bad for business so try to hide it a little.
TOS aren’t legally bindingTOS aren’t always legally binding, and they’re a private company, appropriating an account stored on their private servers for their own service only.There’s no legal standingThere’s probably no legal standing to do anything about this. It’s just shitty and immature, not illegal.(Technically, the TOS even says they can take accounts for trademark violations, and since Meta owns the trademark on the use of ‘X’, clearly they’re just taking it so they can give it to Meta and help them enforce their trademark.)
Edit: Correcting misleading blanket statement
Microsoft, not Meta, owns the trademark, iirc.
Meta owns the trademark specifically for use with social media, which they bought from Microsoft, by my understanding.
I have to wonder whether Musk knew Meta had the trademark, and intentionally used it in order to rile them up.
… Nah, that would require actual planning on his part.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it was just some billionaire schoolyard bully shit.
Microsoft and Meta both own trademarks on the letter X. Trademarks are always context-sensitive, meaning multiple entities can trademark the same sequence of letters in different contexts.
Source on them not being legally binding? They have a mixed track record but I’ve never seen anyone flat out say they aren’t legally binding. Sometimes they are; sometimes they are not.
I am no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that something pre-dating the trademark is grandfathered in. Hence why Steam uses steampowered.com and not steam.com
Looks like they’re binding if they follow very specific criteria; I don’t know if
TwitterX’s qualify, but I’ll accept that my above statement is probably wrong.That said, they do have a carveout for trademark violations which technically this is, because X is trademarked, just not by Twitter.
X is trademarked, just not by Twitter
This stance is only valid if Twitter gave the handle to one of those other x-trademarks, and probably only if one of them demanded it.
It’s also specifically about a trade. If I had a vitamin company called X and a vacuum cleaner company called steam, neither of those companies could legally have anything to say about it.
Don’t you love it when people just make grand statements about law with zero evidence or sourcing to back it up?
Apparently, if I don’t pay my bills, utility companies can’t actually do anything because terms aren’t legally binding. Who knew!
Bad example, because utility bills usually are legally binding, as utilities are often subsidized by local governments.
Utility bills aren’t binding because they’re subsidized. They’re binding because they are contracts, and contract law is a thing that exists.
It’s a complicated thing and there are many restrictions and conditions on what makes a valid contract and what kinds of things are and aren’t allowed. Many Terms of Service violate contract law and thus wind up not being enforceable, but it is absolutely not correct to say that Terms of Service are in general not binding.
TOS aren’t legally binding only when they are not compliant with existing laws! For example when a hotel says in it’s TOS “we can murder you in your sleep” that is not binding, but when they say “we can expell you for wearing a pink polo shirt” that is legally binding
I had a landlord who had a really hard time understanding that state law specified what was legal for them to put in a rental contract, and that if someone signed a contract with illegal provisions, they were not bound to follow it.
Your first sentence is so unbelievably and obviously wrong that you there’s no way we should trust any of your other thoughts on the matter. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
They don’t even allow me to delete my account. They suspended me (never posted anything) and now I’d need to beg to be unbanned, just to get off Mr. Elons wild ride. I’m in the EU so I’m thinking about making use of my right to be forgotten.
The fact that police stopped workers from taking down the logo is really funny to me.
i love the fact that it just says “er”
Elon Musk has taken over the @x Twitter account without paying its owner as part of the social network’s ongoing rebrand.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but a “rebrand” should not be “ongoing” for any reason. That’s like saying your surgery is ongoing. That’s bad, mmmkay.
Well, it’s not surgery, but I agree that it’s very unprofessional and as we see - messy.
I’m just waiting for him to backflip from x to er and then at some point back to Twitter. But I’m not a billionaire genius.
Of course he did.
Twitter: The company owned by a transphobe, that changed it’s outside image and wants people to call it by a different name.
