X owner Elon Musk has once again hijacked a rare coveted username from its original user.
This time, however, the takeover wasn’t for the good of X the company, it was so Musk could promote Donald Trump for president.
On Saturday, Musk appeared at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler Pennsylvania. However, earlier that day, Musk began promoting his pro-Trump Super PAC, called America PAC, using a brand new handle @America.
“Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” Musk’s new bio said as of approximately 1:30pm ET on Saturday, Oct. 5.
The @America handle appeared attached to a brand new account setup just this month, in October 2024. However, this rare, one-word geographic handle had already been long registered by another X user more than 14 years prior to Musk taking the handle from them, in September 2010.
According to a person familiar with the situation, X took the handle from the user much like how Musk’s social media company took the @X handle from its original registrant last year.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… this isn’t quite as bad as it looks.
although clearly they could have handled the situation better.
Agreed, but I mean has been the general theme with the new owner. Everything could have been handled better, but nothing was.
Users do not technically own their handles on X.
Another reason why the fediverse is better. We have better control over this, simply by owning our own instances. Then admins on another instance can’t simply seize our usernames.
It appears the original owner hasn’t posted on X since it was called Twitter, in May 2020.
So basically they released a handle that otherwise wasn’t going to be used and would have gone to waste.
It would be better if they had a general policy about these things … but considering the owner…
as it pertains to the @X handle, the company had a good case that they should have ownership of it
Less good as the user was actively using it beforehand but the justification is also stronger in this case.
If you’re still on Xitter at this point, you deserve all the bullshit you get. That place is a cesspool. You can’t swim in the toilet and then pretend to be mad you’re covered in shit.
You can’t swim in the toilet and then pretend to be mad you’re covered in shit.
This is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard. Definitely made my day.
This sends a clear message: if you still have a valuable handle, sell it now.
The Other Truth Social.
Well, the account was allegedly inactive. Sounds like they weren’t on Twitter either.
yeah, don’t know why they’re so mad. 90% of people don’t know what lemmy even is, much less mastodon. And those numbers are very generous considering there are ~40k people using lemmy
This is probably the most American thing elon has ever accomplished; taking something that isn’t theirs and using it to hurl feces.
Yea. You would never see that in [insert name of literally any country]
/s
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, you’re right.
I’m not interested in what a drug-addled white supremacist has to say. I’m not allowed to use edibles on my days off because it can put my job at risk but this piece-of-shit uses ketamine, acid, shrooms and cocaine and is still allowed to have expensive government contracts.
I don’t get how anyone can Take Acid and stay a fascist. It creates the quite opposite feelings to hate.
Same situation with Joe Rogan. He’s a giant pothead but gets to use in Texas which has some of the strictest regulations in the country.
Some of those drugs will change your brain chemistry permanently or rewire it. They can even make you paranoid and start to believe weird conspiracies.
The Manson effect.
I used to think this until I met an acidhead who would dose every weekend. Most racist person I’ve ever met and, if anything, the acid made him more racist.
I assume he microdosed it because he read that it could increase productivity.
Because they think they can control him. Possibly why he’s so hell bent on this now too. It would explain some things. But he’s still a piece of shit no matter what. 🙃
Well, you could move to a less shitty state.
It doesn’t matter for the line of work I’m in until it is legalized federally.
After this, I don’t know what more proof anyone could possibly need that Xitter is purely a right-wing propaganda platform exactly equivalent to the likes of Truth [sic] Social. Anyone who continues to use Xitter supports this behavior. Continued use of accounts like @POTUS or @KamalaHarris or these is effectively an endorsement of equating Donald Trump with America. It has to stop! The platform has to be fully abandoned by every single person, organization, or government entity that isn’t fascist; there is no choice now.
Anyone still in Twitter is a clown. It’s not different from being on Truth Social.
Indeed. I feel sorry for those people that feel compelled to still be on it for their jobs, or for their side-hustle/main-hustle or whatever, but yeah, anyone still on there just because? I have no idea, unless they are Nazis or Nazi adjacent.
I can’t wait until Trump loses interest in Musk.
I hope it’s the final push over the edge Musk needs.
Could you imagine come November trump loses and musk just shots himself to Mars for forever. What a good day that’ll be.
Four words too many on that first sentence.
At this point though, I have a sinking suspicion that Trump is going to win. I hope I’m wrong but I’m in a swing state and it feels more like 2016 than 2020 to me. America is full of ignorant people who are too prideful to realize how absolutely ignorant they are.
Naw it feels like a mix of 16 and 08. Theres so much energy around harris, but its bogged down by all the hate from trump. But im older, Obama was elected when i was in high school amd thats when i started paying attention to politics
Older than me? I’ve got probably a decade on you. My first (major) political awareness involves blowjobs and dress stains. I vaguely recall Iraq Part 1 and the excitement around it being televised live.
My abandoned Reddit account is older than some of the people I interact with on here.
I hope you’re right. As with all the recent elections where the Democratic Party wins, it’s all down to the youth vote. Also, really hopefully this one has even more extra support from the uterus carrying people amongst us than anticipated by the polls.
It comes down to people in 7 states. And after seeing interviews with some swing voters, they aren’t deep thinkers.
We’re fucked and i’m currently making my escape plan.
Do you not feel the change approach? She hasnt come out and used Obama’s exact phrasing, but it feels like shes going to bring some change that we desperately need.
Her bringing on Tim Walz keeps that hope alive for me. Like even if she somehow disappoints me, there will be Walz who can inject some “mind your own business” socialism at the national stage. I wish he would have more faith in his own speaking abilities though.
I have no issues with her. And I think she will be a better leader than we’ve had in a while. Possible bette than Obama who seemed too afraid to be bold in his actions.
But the news cycles are all about Trump and I know people who still plan to vote for him and the polls are still awfully close that it could easily swing either way.
I feel like I am stuck in a political demographic where I am the outlier. It sounds like the view might be better from where you stand.
to the one place wokeism has not corrupted … SPACE~
Nah, Trump will put Musk on his cabinet, possibly Secretary of Transportation. Which is ironic that Musk has an electric car company but the GOP is all about fossil fuel. We’ve seen gas guzzling pick ups block multiple super chargers to fuck with Tesla owners.
How many people in Trump’s cabinet lasted the whole term?
The only one I recall was Betsy DeVos.
Nope. She left 12 days early because of January 6th.
Just didn’t quite make it.
And that was because she gave him tons of money.
There will be no caninet to put him on.
Not until he has no billions left, like Mike pillow.
Musk Pillow has a nice ring to it. He’s going to do a lot of harm to good tech when he really crashes out after Trump loses.
Some personal physician will OD him on Special-K because he got tired of his shit.
I’ll donate $5 to their go-fund-me defense.
What an absolute shameless piece of shit.
Stealing @America sounds about right up his alley. Just like T Daddy.
Ah ok so this is what the right meant when they say "Take America Back*
Maybe they’ll all go home now. Mission complete.
Musk is so disgusting.
deleted by creator
What a fucking loser honestly
Fully weaponizing “his platform” to influence the election. Painting a target on his back, making more enemies by the day. (Only this time, it’s not just his drug-induced paranoia.) Gambling everything, once again. Accidentally buying “the town square” was his biggest mistake.
Imagine a world where this shit was illegal
It’d be a weird world unless X/Twitter was government run. But at some point we’re going to hit the mother of all lawsuits… email is a standard communication medium for folks and lots of people still, and have forever, used @ hotmail, yahoo or gmail addresses.
It will be really fucking interesting the first time one of those companies seizes an address and diverts some critical notification.
See you don’t get it, it’s totally fine for musk to take the @America tag and push Twitter for Trump. Twitter was SUPER biased before because you couldn’t say the N-word whenever you want. It’s not biased at all now because it’s completely far right which is obviously the Correct Way to Be™ so it can’t be biased.
-dipshits
I was able to shorten the original 4,204-character article to this 140-character summary:
X took over @America and gave the guy @America123_12 instead. Twitter terms allow this. The tag was registered in 2010, inactive since 2020.
You forgot the part about Elon fornicating with a tapir. Pretty critical piece of the story to exclude.
Didn’t seem critical to the core narrative. The tapir was fully sober and in heat so I don’t really see how it relates.
You are, in fact, correct. My heavens. The lack of journalistic integrity these days must’ve seriously damaged my ability to isolate important news from tabloid trash. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.
Folks, I admit fault. I’ll leave Elon & his tapir to their business.
For some reason I read tapeworm and now I’m not sure what’s worse.
