According to Hwang, the company now formerly known as Twitter did offer “an alternative handle with the history of the @x account” so that his original account, complete with its posts and followers, could live on and continue to be used.
What short, catchy username did Musk’s company change Hwang’s handle to? @x12345678998765.
You can’t make this shit up. God damn!
However, Hwang tells me, he was also offered a new handle of his choice – as long as it’s available. He just hasn’t picked one yet.
Since his handle is being taken against his will, he should get to take someone else’s handle against their will. Then let it be a chain reaction.
“as long as it’s available” is as good as nothing imho.
We’ll a lot of people have left
He should ask for @twitter.
It’s only fair. An even trade.
that sounds like what an idiot would have for a password.
It’s the same password I have on my luggage!
Who the hell downvoted an Airplane! quote?
Maybe someone who hasn’t see Airplane.
I refuse to believe there are people like that. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
So you are saying one could log into @x with that…
Quick someone check if it’s Elons password!
Nah his password would definitely include an “42069” in it.
Did you try
xXx42069NoScopexXx?
That is absolutely hilarious. They should’ve offered him @twitter in exchange, it would only be fair…
Musk probably wanted to make it @x42069.
Let’s be real now. That name is temporary until he chooses his new one. Read the whole article. It’s rediculous enough without making things seem even worse.
But look at that username. It definitely not randomly generated. Someone at Twitter pick that new name. They just give someone with the shortest username possible (1 character) the longest possible username (15 characters), and they do so by pressing the number row back and forth until they hit the username characters size limit. If it’s not a mockery then I don’t know what is.
It’s not mockery, it is the logical thing to do. They don’t want to allocate a username a person would actually want, so naturally they pick the longest possible username, with arbitrary and meaningless contents. Would you have been happier if it was @xloremipsumdolo? @xtemporaryusern? Like what was the right thing for the technician who had to pick the name to do, in your mind?
I thought long and hard about this, and you’re right. If it were me, no matter what the new username is, I’m still going to be mad. But I feel like I’ll be less mad (just a little bit less) if they select a completely random username (with sensible length, like 8 characters or less), indicating it’s chosen by an impartial random number generator instead of chosen by someone who in my mind is messing with me (image of Elon Musk laughing at me coming in my mind).
💩
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All for the buzz I imagine.
Or for some hyper inflated fragile ego I guess.
Well that’s my guess.
Elon Musk is a bully
As all billionaires are. Along with unempathetic sociopathic psychopaths.
Well yeah. If you weren’t sociopathic, you wouldn’t be holding onto all of your money, but would instead be trying to help people with it.
Being a billionaire means having the means to help millions of people, and deciding to instead keep all that money for yourself.
Being a billionaire means using it to acquire more money which provides more power which provides more control. Shit floats to the top.
Not necessarily. It may be optimization between what you give now and what you keep for later to make more, with the total effect on others’ well-being being the criterion. I mean, theoretically.
If you make a dime and immediately give it away randomly, you are making a worse decision than keeping it by this criterion. If you immediately give it away not randomly, but to somebody you think needs it, still possibly worse because you could try and make much more and then, say, open a pharmaceutical company.
Say, with cattle you’d use some for meat and some to make more cattle to feed more people. You wouldn’t just slaughter the whole herd for meat. It’s worse.
You can’t be sociopathic and psychopathic - they’re different points on the same (ASPD) spectrum. Please learn what words mean before throwing them around.
That may be the most tautological sentence I’ve ever read.
Automated teller ATM machine 👍
Personal Identification PIN Number 👍
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No no, I really think you are
I can’t fathom having the power to save our at least change millions of lives…but instead choose to leech more wealth from the people that need it most. And systematically make the world worse. It’s a sickness.
There are no good billionaires.
I would build SO much low income, homeless, and transition housing. I would also start my own line of bamboo products and packaging to replace plastic.
Then you’d go bankrupt and stop supporting your “so much” housing, unless you’d gift it to those people, not give as a temporary service.
Bamboo - a nice idea. Actually I’m not sure it’s that hard for you to do even now. I’m serious, if you know the pipeline, then try to evaluate how much a start would cost (for it to be barely profitable). You need, well, bamboo itself (grows like a virus, shouldn’t be a problem), and on the process of making stuff from bamboo I’m not sure (I think it involves making some kind of pulp and then pressure?..), but humans do this kind of thing. Should probably start with dishes and cups.
The most important part of what you said is that you’d build “SO much” housing. If we’d just let the free market build all the housing it wants without letting NIMBYs get in the way, we’d have largely solved the housing crisis.
Except we already have more houses than there are homeless people. The problem is the empty houses have ridiculous price tags due to corporate landlords and landlords refusing the sell and only rent (also at ridiculous prices)
Vacancy rates in the places where people actually want to live are really low. Besides, are people not allowed to have vacation homes?
Market price is a function of supply and demand. We’ve been under building housing for years.
Alright but life never promised anyone these luxuries. I don’t give a fuck if someone can’t have a vacation home because it means more people without one can have one. People act like freedom to do whatever the hell they want no matter how negatively it effects everyone else is their universal right. The Universe doesn’t give a fuck about your summer home, nature doesn’t give a fuck that you worked hard to get it. It will all be swallowed all the same if our main goal still is not perpetual survival. That may be authoritarian, but it is also the truth. We never left the game of survival we just plastered concrete and asphalt on top of it and pretended we were removed.
I mean, one can build it NITBY, just with functioning public transport to TBY, so that it could function. There’s plenty of available space on the planet.
Modern billionaires are the manifestation of the rampant consumerism of the masses. Want to do your part against the billionaires? Start with consuming less. Buy less. Move toward minimal.
Elon is as a Elon does
That would be amazing
What short, catchy username did Musk’s company change Hwang’s handle to? @x12345678998765.
That’s some really !funnyandsad material…
Sounds like someone trying to type a random number on the keyboard, looking at it, and thinking, what ever
It’s not even random, it’s counting 1 to 9 and then down again to 5. Seems like even less effort lol. It’s either patronising in a show off kind of way or just dumb. Either way… just wow.
Yeah why would they pay the “owner”? It’s their platform they do whatever they want. What a dumb thing to complain about.
There is this thing called decency. You might have heard of it.
Yeah they even offered him some bullshit as compensation that they were not required to. Don’t expect decency from a huge company like Twitter.
Don’t expect decency from a huge company like Twitter.
But we should.
Because that would be the decent thing to do.
Yeah we should totally expect decency from the social platform filled with Nazis that is run by a billionaire edgelord catering to them.
We should expect decency from corporation in general and if we really had the balls, we’d all be out in the streets demanding it.
remove limited liability and watch them suddenly grow a conscience
I like how we all like to pretend that these companies are not run by people. Company is not being an asshole people who were in charge of this transition were.
They certainly can do whatever they want, but folks are still able to call musk out for being a bully.
It’s the same reasoning behind folks confusing freedom of speech with freedom from consequences of their speech.
the main problem with this is that with them doing it without asking or time to prepare all the people the guy knew where lost or have a problem finding him.
And the huy was seemingly not even a nobody but instead had a company so even more company contacts could get lost or customers wanting to directly reach out to him could sent private data to a 3 party (twitter) about confidential informations.Secondly it says that the company can and will take over accounts when they have some reason, even if it is only the name.
That means the trust in the handle gets completly broken because it could be a twitter account in just a few seconds without warning.
So they have the power to take over an official governement or news account without warning and only leaving a reason. This is theoretical but if there is a news station with a handle like “xnews” i can really expect that it gets taken over in some time in the future.I agree with all of this. I just think it’s idiotic to complain that they didn’t pay him. Twitter handles are not “owned” by the user and the platform can and will do with them whatever they like at any time.
What you should have posted was nothing.
Why would the bank give you your money, its their business and you gave it to them.
Contrary to Twitter banking is regulated and governed by actual laws. It’s a completely different beast. Go ahead and google who the owner of the money in your account is and how that is regulated.
Its literally regulated as well, a account in general cant just be taken…
Not defending the Musk here, but literally it’s not your money anymore as soon as you put it in a bank account.
The money you put in your account belongs to the bank, and the account functions as an I.O.U… A very privileged one compared to other debts, and in most cases redeemable without notice, but you’re in fact just another creditor.
You got downvoted to hell, but you’re absolutely right. The fact that FDIC exists should be evidence enough to anyone with a functional brain that depositors in a bank are creditors and do not retain ownership of their literal deposit.
I wonder what other arrangement it could even possibly constitute.
Bailment? That would mean physically locking the bills that you deposit in a safe that you rent, which is possible I guess, but not what we’re talking about here.
Trust? This would mean the deposit does not go on the bank’s books, and they cannot use it for their own purposes. This is clearly not the case, at the very least since investment banks and savings banks were merged.
Agency? That would mean the bank uses your money to enact transactions on your behalf, again, clearly not the case.
That leaves the only other form of “I give you money and you give it back later”, namely debt.
That’s not how banks work.
It’s certainly how banks work where I live, and presuming we are talking about the US here, I did a quick skim through the first few results on google and there mostly seems to be agreement that it is a debtor/creditor relationship.
How would you describe the legal arrangements of a bank account then?
That absolutely not how shit works.
Former banker here. You’re just fucking wrong about that. You’ve said zero true things.
Well I’m interested now. It certainly is the case where I live, and presuming we are talking about the US here, I did a quick skim through the first few results on google and they seem to agree that it’s a debtor/creditor relationship.
How else would you describe the legal arrangements of a bank account then?
You own the money in your account, simple as that for individual accounts.
The transaction is “I give the bank money, and they have to give it back later”. How can we arrange that legally without transferring ownership? I only know these ways:
Bailment: That would mean the bank keeps the physical bills (or other valuables) in a proverbial or literal safe with my name on it, to return the exact same items later. Of course banks offer that service, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
Trust: The bank takes my money and invests it on my behalf. It does not go on the bank’s books, and they cannot use my money for their own purposes (e.g. as security for loans, to fulfil capital requirements, invest it themselves and keep the proceeds, etc.). This is obviously not the case.
Agency: The bank takes my money and executes transactions on my behalf, according to my orders. Again, obviously not the case.
Am I missing something? Is there some special law for bank accounts? I’m genuinely interested.
Think about it this way, if I’m going after your money, do I sue you, or do I sue the bank?
It’s funny you mentioned bailment, the bank is absolutely required to keep enough cash on hand in order to satisfy what the FDIC deems to be a reasonable amount of coverage for their deposit accounts. (search “demand deposit account”)
If by “money” you mean the physical dollar bills you put in the ATM, then yes.
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The “dumb thing” to complain about is that they did not pay him any money. It’s a dick move that they took it but I don’t get why anyone would think they would buy it off the “owner”. He was offered some gestures and apparently expected them to want or take it.
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Because a celebrity has clout to make a big stink of it. The headline isn’t only “Mean twitter took account from user!” but contains “He got zero dollars for it.” as if he was entitled to that in any way.
Yes that’s literally what everyone is saying. We aren’t asserting “rights” on twitter or something.
I believe that too, but look at the replies - there are people who literally believe they own their account or compare it to personal property or their bank accounts.
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Then you might actually be in a different thread. One guy believes this is the same as the bank taking their money and never returning it and another one believes this is like taking people’s belongings because they enter your property.
It’s their platform they do whatever they want
Their platform only has value because people use it. Mistreat your users, they go elsewhere and suddenly your platform becomes worthless.
TIL if anyone carries anything valuable onto my property, it entitles me to take it from them
My property, my rules /s
TIL the original user of the “@x” account owned it and brought it to Twitter who than took it from him.
Bingo
You might be surprised to learn that you do in fact not “own” your Twitter handle and Twitter is not required to buy it off of you if they want it.
Oh really? Wow, maybe if I licked more boots it would make me smarter enough to “understand” this
Why do you assume that complaining is the same as saying Twitter isn’t allowed to do this? I can still think it’s shitty without thinking they aren’t allowed to do it.
I think it’s dumb to go “He got zero dollars for it.” as it sounds like he was owed anything. I also feel that it creates confusion with people being paid for a TLD they owned (or “squatted” on) which is something very different from having a Twitter handle. But apparently that’s just me.
Why do you CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE?
So what you’re saying is you approve of identity theft. Gotcha.
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Interpreting your words just shows how much you don’t give a shit that someone lost their username because some dumb rich prick likes the letter X.
You’d be whistling a different tune if it was your username.
Yeah you are reading into my post whatever you want to read. I was always talking about them complaining “He got zero dollards for it.” as if he was in any way entitled to that. I’m sure it sucks for the user that Twitter just took the account but I really don’t give a crap about the Twitter shitshow.
Hey, I’m with ya there, to hell with Twitter, but still, people literally make, build up and sell user accounts every day. Elon is one of the richest dudes in the world, the least he could have done was compensated the original account owner.
I do not get how you’re so confused.
It’s not that he was “entitled” to money, it’s that money would have made taking his handle less of a dick move. Elon is a multi billionaire, he could have thrown a tens of thousands of dollars at this dude and had a good PR situation for his generosity, and not even noticed the dip in his bank account. Instead the story is that he’s an asshole who treats his users like shit if they have something he wants.
So here we are, calling him an asshole. How is that confusing?
I’m not confused and I agree that he’s an asshole. I still think its dumb to expect to get paid by Twitter when they take over your handle. Musk is not about good PR or good will, Hwang is lucky he wasn’t called a pedo by Musk - yet. And there are indeed people here who believe they are entitled to compensation and think they own their stupid Twitter name. How is that confusing?
No one is owed anything, but not compensating the original owner further erodes what little trust was left in the company. You wouldn’t want to spend resources building a brand on a platform where your name can suddenly get snatched away at some billionaire’s whim.
Absolutely true. But apparently the headlines for this event are all “he got no money for it!”
Up until it was taken from him, he would have been able to sell it for a shit tonne of money. I think it’s easy to understand why it was shitty of Twitter yo just snatch it
Because there’s precedent that handles have value (on the order of thousands of USD). They’re taking value from a customer. It’d be interesting to see what swag they offered in exchange, but considering the guy’s net worth, he could have afforded some decency. I mean, Gmail can just take your email address to, but it is how many identify themselves in business, so it can harm them financially. Sure, that’s the risk with doing that, but it is what it is. Musk could have generated some good will but instead generated more bad publicity. I’m beginning to think he has no PR on staff or just surrounds himself with people who never say no.
Is there a precedent for Twitter buying an account “back” from a user? IIRC all deals regarding Twitter accounts have been made between users.
The precedent is that the handle has value. It’s a bad look when a company destroys value for a user, regardless of whether they have the right to or not. The internet is full of people complaining when Google shuts down a YouTube channel. It’s essentially the same thing. You expect a good reason or exchange to occur to make the customer whole.
I don’t understand where your confusion lies. The guy got screwed over for being a loyal user of the service, despite Musk not owning it for that whole duration.
The guy was offered swag, but I couldn’t find details of what it was. And as far as I can tell, this isn’t really decrying the lack of money. Just how they handled the situation as a whole.
You understand how it’s an asshole move, but don’t understand why someone would expect some compensation for the dick move? When someone gives their spouse some roses because they acted like an ass, are you confused by the roses?
Musk is an overpaid idiot, but anyone has to expect not to have any real rights on any website.
const x = 0;Me being called XTornado … That was close not that close but again I didn’t predict this happening at all (all the Twitter name change all that ).
I wonder how is this post related to technology in any way? That is just some regular news.
It’s a reminder that in big parts of todays digital world you own nothing. All access, presumed rights, and data can be taken from you whenever a big company decides to do so. Is it news? Probably not. Are people aware of it? Clearly not - at least nobody acts like it.
More X-crement. Stop wasting your time on this shit site.
The guy should ask for @xoriginal…
As much as this sucks, this person has no rights to their name and never did. Stop using the platform and giving it attention!
Haha, me calling it dumb to think they’d be owed money is getting people super angry.
Being downvoted is not indicative of voters’ anger. It’s simply showing they don’t agree with you.
Pulling the victim card is revealing a shit-ton about you tho.
So what do users not agree to in my post but do with in this?
Also, what a fucking Reddit thing to do.
Crying reddit croc tears in no way helps your cause.
I don’t have a “cause”. But I see that you have no answer.
I see why people use downvoting this way, especially since that was the norm on reddit which a good portion of the base fled from, I find the same issue I had with downvotes on reddit to apply here as well though. I try to advocate down votes to be not out of personal opinion, but a reflection that the content is either useless or harmful to the existing conversation. This allows posts that are actually useful and contribute to the discussion to exist even if they are unpopular to peoples opinion. Just because you don’t like the post, doesn’t mean the post isn’t true or useful, which is why I find that form of downvoting ideology to be harmful overall.
That being said, I would find the parent comment you replied to as constructive to the conversation…Up until they started egging people on with “is getting people super angry” I wouldn’t call this being downvoted for not agreeing, I would call it being downvoted for not being constructive to the post at hand(as there’s no need to actively try to get people to rage at you with a post like that)
I don’t think anyone is saying they are owed money. But just taking the handle with nothing in return is really not nice.
They could at least give the guy like Twitter Blue for life or whatever the heck premium is called now.
Is that not what the title says? Like, i’m new to Lemmy so maybe i’m confused? Didn’t OP write “He got no money from it :(” in the title?
Yeah, it’s not like they ever bought that name from Twitter so there’s no real argument that they actually own it, even if they’d ever bought the checkmark BS.
Money and a rename would have been a goodwill gesture, and expecting any goodwill from this version of twitter is insanity.
This can be done with any centralized social media. You don’t know your username.
I wouldn’t say it’s limited to centralized social media. The admin of Lemmy.world could go into its database and do whatever they want to my username, too. And other instances can feel free to steal my name if I didn’t grab it first.
That’s correct! The only social media I would trust is Nostr.
Was he ever going to get paid
Well I went ahead and did a mastadon. No clue what I am doing, but… Woohoo?
I’m [email protected] there too I guess. Idk
You’d want to include your instance as part of your handle. I know, it’s not as intuitive as a centralized service, but it is a requirement, especially when sharing the name elsewhere. So, your Lemmy account is [email protected]. Folks on lemmy.world don’t need that, but folks on another instance (like me) would. I can get it from clicking your username, but there’s no way to figure it out for a different platform from here.
If you type it like this you’ll get an instance agnostic link (at least on instances v0.18 and above, not necessarily in apps): /u/[email protected].
You can also select from a dropdown box on the website to send a mention, however this link goes to their instance rather than your own: @[email protected]. The code for this is
[.world](https://lemmy.world/u/ChamrsDeluxe), you can type this manually and replace any link text in between the square brackets, so generally[link text](https://userinstance/u/user).The old pre-0.17 instance agnostic links were
[link text](/c/community@instance)or[link text](/u/user@instance), but the new versions will automatically generate without link code:/c/community!community@instance/u/user@instance(does not send a mention)
Also, kbin doesn’t federate properly. You might not even see this comment over there…
If I’m reading this right there are two ways to indicate a user including its instance:
/u/username.com@username@example.com
Which one is the recommended one?
The first one will generate a link automatically with no code (on lemmy v0.18 and above, not necessarily in apps - it doesn’t seem to work in Jerboa currently). This link is instance agnostic, meaning the viewer sees a link in their own instance, rather than the
example.cominstance. This means you can send them a DM, or open their comments and reply to them.The second one isn’t enough on its own, it needs to be in the form
[link text](https://example.com/u/user). However, if you start typing@user@example.comon the website, a pop up box will allow you to select the user and generate the link code for you - it will give you[.com](https://example.com/u/user). This version is not agnostic, it takes you to the user’s instance, however it does send a mention to the user’s inbox.Hopefully in a future update they will combine these two, so that an agnostic link will also send a mention, and so the mention link will auto-generate and be agnostic. Right now, one is for linking to a profile you want to interact with, the other is for calling that person into the thread with a mention.
Edit: Just for a little more fun variation, it looks like Jerboa handles the
@user@instancelink as if it were instance agnostic. On the website it opens the user’s instance.
That’s all well and good, but I was telling them to include the instance for their mastodon handle, which they’ve gone back and edited to include it now.
Yeah I know. But we’re on lemmy here, so it’s good to know.
Mastodon might not do that sort of thing, and kbin is different again. Tbh I’m surprised you even got my last comment (although it seems like you got it late) as most of the time kbin and lemmy don’t federate properly through threads. For example, I was unable to reply to you on my phone in Jerboa, and on the website it doesn’t work unless I specifically select English as the language.
You’re not done yet - you need to sign up on all the instances!! Then you’ll really not know what you’re doing!
Followed!
