Twitter board agrees to $44 billion sale to billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk

[Lord Revan]

Good luck to him finding any competent litigators willing to represent him, no lawyer worth his salt is going to touch this case without a hefty payment in advance

Yeah considering his history of not paying bills yeah that's probably the case lawyers like to get paid after all.

[bobalot]

Elon wants to measure his dick against Mark Zuckerberg.

Why do people worship this jerkoff?

[bilateralrope]

Elon wants to measure his dick against Mark Zuckerberg.

Why do people worship this jerkoff?

Musk tried suing Meta over them hiring ex-Twitter employees.
Key quote:

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone, asked for comment, referred to his post on Threads that said, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

Musk wanted a cage match against Zuckerberg. That's how I found out that Zuckerberg has MMA training and Jiu Jitsu tournament wins.

Musk started off desperate to score some win over Zuckerberg and quickly found out that he's got nothing.

[bilateralrope]

X Corp. asks court to terminate Twitter’s privacy settlement with FTC

X Corp. motion claims FTC is "tainted by bias," says Musk shouldn't be deposed.
JON BRODKIN - 7/14/2023, 7:52 AM

Elon Musk is trying to avoid a deposition with the Federal Trade Commission and wants a court to terminate or modify a privacy settlement that Twitter and the FTC agreed to last year before Musk bought the company. The May 2022 settlement lets the FTC monitor and enforce Twitter's compliance, and Twitter claims the US agency became overly aggressive in its investigative demands after Musk bought the firm.

"This motion asks the Court to rein in an investigation that has spiraled out of control and become tainted by bias, and to terminate a misfit consent order that no longer can serve any proper equitable purpose," Musk's X Corp. wrote in a motion filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Republicans in Congress have also been criticizing the FTC's investigation into Twitter, including at a House Judiciary Committee hearing today.

X Corp.'s motion claimed that "the FTC radically shifted its enforcement strategy after Mr. Musk acquired Twitter, imposing new and burdensome demands and treating the Consent Order as license for invasive scrutiny of any move X Corp. makes, no matter how remote from the data privacy and security concerns that ground both the FTC's statutory jurisdiction and the Court's Order."

The motion asked for "a protective order staying the notice of deposition of Elon Musk," and "an order terminating or modifying the consent order in this action or staying enforcement of the consent order."

FTC accused of “bullying” audit firm

X Corp. cited testimony from an FTC deposition of David Roque of Ernst & Young (EY), the independent firm assessing whether Twitter lived up to its privacy and security obligations. X Corp. wrote:

Mr. Roque testified that the FTC's conduct made him "fe[el] as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the engagement before it had started." "In some of the discussions... with the FTC, expectations were being conveyed about what those results should be before we had even begun any procedures."

According to Mr. Roque, he felt that the FTC was attempting to "influence" EY to reach the conclusion that "there were deficiencies in Twitter's privacy and information security program." He was so concerned by the FTC's communications that he and his colleagues discussed whether the agency threatened to become an "adverse threat" to EY's independence or a party "outside of the arrangement we had with Twitter trying to influence the outcome of our results."

"This record shows how the FTC attempted to bully EY into acting as an arm of its enforcement staff digging up dirt on X Corp., rather than an objective, independent, third-party auditor bound by its own contractual, ethical, and professional obligations of independence and objectivity. This is extraordinary misconduct," X Corp.'s motion claimed.

X Corp. claimed that "the FTC's desire to depose Mr. Musk derives from the same bad faith and improper conduct that has characterized its investigation to date." The company's motion said the FTC's "quest to depose Mr. Musk is baseless, politically motivated, and made in bad faith. Only after Mr. Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022 did the FTC embark on a rapid-fire campaign of endless discovery requests."

We contacted the FTC about the X Corp. motion today and will update this article if we get a response.

Musk sought meeting with Khan

The settlement with the FTC in May 2022 forced Twitter to pay a $150 million penalty for targeting ads at users with phone numbers and email addresses collected from those users when they enabled two-factor authentication. Twitter also agreed to implement more robust privacy and security protections for users. Twitter was already bound by a 2011 FTC settlement over security failures and was accused of violating the previous settlement.

Musk requested a meeting with FTC Chair Lina Khan late last year, but she refused the request and told Twitter to stop dragging its heels on providing documents and depositions needed for the agency's investigation into Twitter's privacy and data practices. The investigation is reportedly focused on whether Twitter has enough resources to protect its users' privacy after laying off thousands of employees.

"The FTC's unusually combative posture toward Mr. Musk and 'Twitter 2.0' came as a surprise," according to the new X Corp. filing. "In order to gain a better understanding of the FTC's concerns, and how Twitter could demonstrate its commitment to user privacy, data protection, and information security, Mr. Musk made several requests to FTC Chair Lina Khan for a meeting."

"Notably, the FTC has never sought to depose any current X Corp. employee other than Mr. Musk himself," the motion said. However, the FTC deposed five former Twitter employees. After taking over in late October 2022, Musk reduced Twitter's staff from about 7,500 to about 1,500.

X Corp. complained that the FTC has issued 16 demand letters since Musk bought Twitter, compared to 28 in the previous 11 years. "X Corp. has responded to this avalanche of demands as best it can, responding promptly to FTC inquiries and producing more than 22,000 documents to date," the motion said. "The FTC's overreach has now culminated in a demand to depose Mr. Musk, who is not, and never has been, a party to the Consent Order."

If the court refuses to terminate the 2022 consent order, X Corp. says it should at a minimum "order the FTC to respond to X Corp.'s reasonable requests for information so that it can assess the extent of the agency's misconduct and necessary remedies, while staying all enforcement of the Consent Order (including the deposition of Mr. Musk) until that process is complete."

Republican lawmakers echo Musk’s complaints

In April, US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) subpoenaed Khan in an attempt to rein in the investigation into Twitter. Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said that congressional staff research shows "the FTC harassed Twitter in the wake of Mr. Musk's acquisition" and "abused it [sic] statutory and enforcement authority." Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also criticized the FTC's Twitter probe.

Khan reportedly told Jordan that FTC investigations are confidential and that the agency "will continue to faithfully discharge our statutory obligations and enforce the law without fear or favor."

Khan was criticized by Republicans again today at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Jordan said that Khan "is trying to usher in a radical departure from the norms that made the American economy great, to a system where her and her cronies have unchecked power over business practices in our country," according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) defended Khan at the hearing. "Ultimately, Chair Khan, you will face attacks today because you are doing your job," Nadler was quoted as saying. "There are credible concerns that user data may have been compromised when the majority of [Twitter's] legal engineering staff was fired. This work has nothing to do with the new ownership of the company and his political views."

Musk backed down in the lawsuit forcing him to buy Twitter right before he was deposed there. So it looks like he's still desperate to being forced to answer questions while under oath.

[Formless]

Musk wanted a cage match against Zuckerberg. That's how I found out that Zuckerberg has MMA training and Jiu Jitsu tournament wins.

Musk started off desperate to score some win over Zuckerberg and quickly found out that he's got nothing.

Zuckerberg can't really fight, though. Icy Mike from the youtube channel Hard2Hurt did a video where he breaks down the training footage Zuckerberg has shown to the public of his juijitsu training, and its bad. For reference, Mike is a former cop and professional MMA coach/self defense instructor, and he's had all kinds of clients over the years from multiple backgrounds, including rich people (though none as rich as Zuckerberg). According to him, its obvious to a trained eye that Zuckerberg is going slow, drilling the techniques but not at a realistic speed or against resistance, his trainer is telling him exactly what to do at every step, he's being coddled. At the end of the video he even catches the editor likely speeding up footage to make it look like Zuckerberg is going faster with the technique than he really is. While these training methods might give you a technical understanding of how the techniques are performed, they won't bring you to a level where you can consistently pull them off against a resisting opponent.

Now, Zuckerberg has been in an actual juijitsu tournament where he didn't do half bad, but the tournament was under IBJJF rules which are considered a bit of a joke by MMA guys because of how restrictive they are. There's all kinds of things that you can do in MMA that IBJJF considers "too dangerous", giving competitors in the sport a reputation for being wimps. And we're not talking things like striking which aren't part of the sport because its a grappling art, we're talking grappling tactics that you can't do despite being a grappling art. Zuckerberg was never in danger in that tournament, and that's the point. Mike says in the video that this is how all his rich clients want to train. They want the Disneyland experience of martial arts training, if you will. They want to feel like a badass without actually risking taking damage, which means they don't do real sparring, which means they aren't learning how to actually defend themselves in or outside of a ring. Zuckerberg can no doubt afford bodyguards to protect him outside the ring, and he can choose to fight only under rulesets that minimize the risk to him inside of it. Its all a facade to make Zuckerberg look cool to people who aren't used to seeing how real fighters train and would likely be fooled by Dale Brown's style of bullshido. As for Elon Musk, at least Zuckerberg has shown his training; Musk has talked up how he grew up in South Africa, so of course he knows how to fight, but that's just Musk being Musk. He's always tried to pretend he's a self made man that came out of poverty, but that's a lie. His family has plenty of wealth so he's almost certainly never been in a fight in his life. But even if he had, a fight between the two would be a joke that makes Jake Paul look like a competent fighter in comparison.

So yeah, that's why Musk is looking for other ways of trying to get at Zuckerberg. Elon wouldn't want to step into the ring under IBJJF rules because Zuckerberg probably would destroy him on account of having at least some kind of training, Zuckerberg wouldn't want to do it under literally any other ruleset like boxing or MMA, and it would be such a sad affair neither of them would profit off it anyway. So Musk is looking for any alternative way of trying to get under Zuckerberg's skin, whether it sounds stupid or better yet, involves lawyers and is doomed to fail just like Twitter.

[bilateralrope]

Elon Starts Bribing His Biggest Fans As He Admits The Company Is Still Burning Cash (Despite His Earlier Claims To The Contrary)

from the full-tilt-twitter dept
Mon, Jul 17th 2023 09:34am - Mike Masnick

It seems to anger certain Elon Musk fans every time I mention it, but pre-Elon Twitter was generally doing okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just okay. It wasn’t printing cash like Meta or Google, but it had been steadily increasing revenue and was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over. There was a big paper loss in the 2nd quarter of 2020 due to a single noncash deferred tax asset, and many people see that giant loss and mistakenly think it showed the company was deep in the hole. However, you can tell it was nothing given that most analysts basically ignored that single big loss and focused on the underlying advertising and user numbers.

Elon has admitted multiple times now that he basically set fire to Twitter’s value and what had been a growing revenue stream. So it’s little surprise that he admitted it once again over the weekend, tweeting an admission that the company had lost around 50% of its advertising revenue.

The more interesting bit here, though, was him admitting that the company was “still negative cash flow.” Remember, in February, he had said the company was “trending to breakeven” and in April had suggested that it was now there. That April statement included him claiming that “most” advertisers had returned to Twitter, which Musk is now effectively admitting was a lie. And, his prediction that the company would be “cash flow positive” in the 2nd quarter didn’t quite pan out, I guess.

Of course, both of the things he complains about are directly due to Musk’s own terrible decisions. Advertisers have bailed because of his terrible choices, setting fire to brand safety efforts and driving away top tier advertisers (and users), and the “heavy debt load” was entirely due to his decision to finance $13 billion of the takeover with debt, on which the company how has to pay interest.

Both of those moves could have been easily avoided.

On top of that, you have to wonder how a company that was effectively breakeven before all of this is still cash flow negative when he’s (1) fired somewhere around 80% of the employees, (2) stopped paying rent (3) refused to pay out owed severance packages (4) not paying lawyers and PR companies or (5) cloud computing bills. He’s also shut down one of the company’s three data centers and closed offices (or been evicted from them).

What expenses is he actually paying?

Well, it seems he’s paying out what can only be considered bribes to some of his favorite Twitter users. Back in February, Elon announced that the company would start sharing ad revenue with Twitter Blue subscribers.

But since then there had been not a peep, even as some users raised questions about such payments.

Then, finally, late last week, some users started tweeting about how they had received their first payments, though many noticed that these payments were basically only going to Elon Musk’s favorite reply guys. This left some others (including some other Musk stans) pissed off that they weren’t getting their share of the cash.

Among those in Twitter’s payout pool was Andrew Tate, who tweeted that he received $20,379 under the new program. Tate wrote that “every penny” of the proceeds will go toward his Tate Pledge charity initiatives. The former pro kickboxer, who once tweeted that women should “bare [sic] some responsibility” for being raped, last year claimed tech platforms had banned him for what he said were “traditional masculine values.” Tate has 7.1 million followers on Twitter; his Twitter account had been banned in 2017 and was reinstated after Musk acquired the social network. Last month Tate was charged with rape and human trafficking offenses in Romania. Earlier this week, Tate and his brother Tristan sued a Florida woman and others, alleging they conspired to falsely accuse the Tates in the Romania case, the AP reported.

Also getting Twitter payments were Brian Krassenstein ($24,305) and Ed Krassenstein ($24,877), entrepreneurs who originally rose to prominence on the platform with their relentless anti-Trump tweets. “Now I’m going to stop promoting border crossings and begin promoting Tesla vehicles,” Ed Krassenstein joked in a tweet. “I assumed I’d would be getting paid around $500 or so for the past 4-5 months. I thought, it would be pennies on the dollar compared to what George Soros pays me (sarcasm).”

In 2019, the Krassentein brothers were banned by Twitter for allegedly using fake accounts to amplify their reach (which they denied). Following Musk’s takeover of the company last fall, Twitter reinstated their accounts in December.

Other Twitter users who shared ad-revenue payouts included podcaster and political commentator Benny Johnson ($9,546), Ashley St. Clair, a writer for political satire site Babylon Bee ($7,153), and an anonymously run account called End Wokeness ($10,419).

One user, who was not included, emailed Twitter and heard back from the company confirming that those selected were not based on the criteria stated in Twitter’s blog post about the program, but rather the payouts went “to a selected group of people.”

That email is all kinds of hilarious. In case you can’t see the image, it says:

Thanks for reaching out about being unable to receive your payment from Creator Ads Revenue Sharing on Twitter. We have information for you.

Currently, creator ad revenue sharing is only available to a selected group of people.

We hope this clarifies your concern.

Indeed, you do have information.

So… to sum up: Elon’s own decisions destroyed the company’s revenue and saddled it with way more expenses in the form of debt interest/repayment. The company is bleeding users and revenue, and despite promising a large group of users payouts if they joined his failed “Twitter Blue” program, the company is only paying that money to a small handpicked group which seems to consist almost entirely of accounts that suck up to Musk on the platform.

I might not be an intergalactic business genius, like many people assure me Musk is, but I fail to see how this strategy succeeds.

Over $20,000 paid to human trafficker Andrew Tate. The only person surprised about how advertisers react to that will be Musk.

[bilateralrope]

Musk has recently started renaming Twitter to X. Replacing the logo in places.

As this is a Musk decision, there are obvious problems that were overlooked:

The problem with X? Meta, Microsoft, hundreds more own trademarks to new Twitter name

By Blake Brittain
July 25, 20232:34 PM GMT+12

July 24 (Reuters) - Billionaire Elon Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be complicated legally: companies including Meta (META.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) already have intellectual property rights to the same letter.

X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it is a candidate for legal challenges - and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own issues defending its X brand in the future.

"There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries.

Musk renamed social media network Twitter as X on Monday and unveiled a new logo for the social media platform, a stylized black-and-white version of the letter.

Owners of trademarks - which protect things like brand names, logos and slogans that identify sources of goods - can claim infringement if other branding would cause consumer confusion. Remedies range from monetary damages to blocking use.

Microsoft since 2003 has owned an X trademark related to communications about its Xbox video-game system. Meta Platforms - whose Threads platform is a new Twitter rival - owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 covering a blue-and-white letter "X" for fields including software and social media.

Meta and Microsoft likely would not sue unless they feel threatened that Twitter's X encroaches on brand equity they built in the letter, Gerben said.

The three companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta itself drew intellectual property challenges when it changed its name from Facebook. It faces trademark lawsuits filed last year by investment firm Metacapital and virtual-reality company MetaX, and settled another over its new infinity-symbol logo.

And if Musk succeeds in changing the name, others still could claim 'X' for themselves.

"Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as 'X', Twitter's protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo," said Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb.

"The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow."

Insider reported earlier that Meta had an X trademark, and lawyer Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft had one as well.

Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Additional reporting by Sheila Dang; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sonali Paul

So Musk has managed to create another obstacle in the way of the "everything app" he says he wants to make.

[Broomstick]

I think at this point it's pretty clear the intention was to destroy Twitter all along. And I'd say he's succeeded.

[Ralin]

I think at this point it's pretty clear the intention was to destroy Twitter all along. And I'd say he's succeeded.

He's apparently been fixated on the whole X name for a long time: https://twitter.com/chafkin/status/1683 ... HVohQ&s=19

And now he's divorced/having a midlife crisis.

[bilateralrope]

I think at this point it's pretty clear the intention was to destroy Twitter all along. And I'd say he's succeeded.

I don't think he was ever intending to complete the purchase of Twitter. That's why he tried to get out of the deal. If he came up with a new plan after that, he hasn't been able to follow it.

Anyway:
Twitter: Sign change paused as police arrive at San Francisco HQ

Workers taking down the Twitter sign at its San Francisco headquarters paused their work after police arrived at the scene.

The sign change came after Twitter owner Elon Musk rebranded the social media company to X.

Police in San Francisco told the news site Insider that officers at the HQ were responding to "a possible unpermitted street closure."

The owners of the building were allegedly not told about the sign removal, local media also reported.

Workers managed to take down most of the lettering before their efforts were paused, leaving the letters e and r in place.

[Ralin]

Yeah takes like that attribute way more forethought behind everything Musk has done in the past year or so than is really warranted.

[bilateralrope]

Here's a Mastodon thread about the last time Musk tried to rename a company to X

Lots of similarities to how he's handling Twitter. The big difference is that there were people then who could force Musk out of Paypal before he tanked it.

[bilateralrope]

Elon Musk and company take @x handle from its original user. He got zero dollars for it.

Here's how it went down.
By Matt Binder
July 26, 2023

Elon Musk took his next big step in fully turning Twitter into X on Tuesday night: The @Twitter handle officially changed to @X.

But, what about its original owner? Mashable interviewed Gene X. Hwang, co-founder of event photo company Orange Photography and the person who originally registered the @x handle on the platform more than 16 years ago, earlier that same day. Hwang told us at the time that he had yet to hear from Musk and company, but was hoping they could work something out when the inevitable happened.

So, Musk now has the @x handle. What happened? Did Musk reach out to Hwang? Did Hwang cash in and get a paycheck from the company for the handle as some on social media have speculated?

No, the company just took it from him.

"I got an email basically saying they are taking it," Hwang told Mashable in an email exchange.

Hwang previously told Mashable he was waiting for Twitter (or X now) to contact him so he wasn't previously in contact with the company. He hadn't heard from X before that. There was no back-and-forth discussion.

Musk's company is within its right to take the username. Barring trademark issues, users don't have rights to specific handles according to most social media companies' terms of service. However, with reports that Twitter had been considering launching a service where users could bid on unused, rare handles, some users had thought the company would offer Hwang something.

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.

Shortly after X took control of the @x handle, Hwang tweeted from his new username.

"Alls well that ends well," he posted, which might be where the speculation originated that he was happy with whatever deal that was made.

But, there was no deal. However, the company did offer Hwang some non-financial compensation.

"Some merch and to meet with management if I like," Hwang told me, referring to what the company did offer him in its email.

It's unclear if the swag would be Twitter or X related.

"Oh well - guess that's how it goes," Hwang said.

Musk has set a precedent. If he wants a username, he will take it.

I wonder how long before he starts seizing usernames to auction them off. Then complains that nobody bid enough for them.

[LadyTevar]

That's Bullshit.

[Lost Soal]

He's completely fucked this up, no surprise really, but the Japanese handle is simple @Japan because the Trademark for X Japan is held by a metal band so he can't just steal it from them.

[LaCroix]

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/25/tech ... index.html
The trademark to X is already held by about 900 registrations.
The chance that his logo does NOT resemble one of theirs closely is practically nil.

And among that exalted group of very creative Logo-designers is... Meta... and Microsoft...

Good luck, Elon...

[Lost Soal]

The Logo is basically identical to Xfinity and they keep getting Tax payer money to burn.

[Zaune]

It's a shame Scott Adams decided to blow his own career to smithereens for no adequately explained reason. The inevitable Dilbert story arc based on this saga would have been quite something.

[bilateralrope]

He's completely fucked this up, no surprise really, but the Japanese handle is simple @Japan because the Trademark for X Japan is held by a metal band so he can't just steal it from them.

Maybe nobody told Musk about the Japanese handle. So someone smarter made the decision there.

Which means it's going to get interesting if Musk notices.

[bilateralrope]

Elon’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy On CSAM Apparently Does Not Apply To Conspiracy Theorist Accounts He Likes

from the not-how-it-works dept
Thu, Jul 27th 2023 11:57am - Mike Masnick

You may recall that early on in Elon’s ownership of Twitter, he insisted that “removing child exploitation is priority #1” while exhorting his supporters to “reply in the comments” if they saw any.

Leaving aside that this is a ridiculously terrible process for having people report potential CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) or, as some people prefer, CSEM (with the E standing for “exploitation”), there was little to no evidence of this actually being put into practice. Most of the people (one person told me everyone) who worked on the CSAM team was let go or left. Ella Irwin, who headed up trust & safety until she resigned two months ago (as far as I can tell no replacement has been named) made a bunch of statements about how the company was treating CSAM, but there was almost no evidence backing that up.

There were multiple reports of the CSAM mitigation process falling apart. There were reports of CSAM on the platform remaining up for months. Perhaps even worse (and risking serious legal consequences), the company claimed it had suspended 400k accounts, but only reported 8k to law enforcement which is required by law. Oh, and apparently Twitter’s implementation of PhotoDNA broke at some point, which is again incredibly serious as, PhotoDNA (for all its problems) remains a key tool for large sites in fighting known CSAM.

And yet the company still claims (on a Twitter-branded page, because apparently no one actually planned for the “X” transition) that it has a “zero tolerance” policy for CSAM.

The key parts of that page say both “We have a zero-tolerance child sexual exploitation policy on Twitter” and “Regardless of the intent, viewing, sharing, or linking to child sexual exploitation material contributes to the re-victimization of the depicted children.”

Anyway, that all leads up to the following. One of the small group of vocal and popular utter nonsense peddlers on the site, dom_lucre, had his account suspended. A bunch of other nonsense peddlers started wringing their hands about this and fearing that Musk was going soft and was now going to start banning “conservative” accounts. In responses, Elon just came out and said that the account had posted CSAM, that only Twitter “CSE” staff had seen it, and that after removing the tweets in question, it had reinstated that guy’s account.

It’s worth noting that this person was among the hand-picked accounts who received money during Elon’s recent pay-for-stanning rollout.

Almost everything about this statement is problematic, and one that any lawyer would have a heart attack over if Elon were their client. First off, blaming Twitter’s legacy code is getting old and less and less believable each time he does it. He could just say “we fired everyone who understood how stuff worked,” but he can’t quite get there.

Second, posting “the reason” for a suspension is, like in so many cases having to do with trust & safety, trickier and involves more nuances than Elon would ever think through. Just to scratch the surface, sometimes telling users why they were suspended can create more problems, as users try to “litigate” their suspension. It can also alert abusive users to who may have reported them, leading to further abuse. Posting the reason publicly can lead to even more issues, including the potential risk of defamation claims.

But, even more importantly, it’s not a zero tolerance policy if you reinstate the account. It really seems like an “Elon’s inner circle tolerance policy.”

The claim that the only people who saw the images were the CSE team seems… unlikely. Internet sleuths have sniffed out a bunch of replies to his now deleted post (which was up for four days on an account with hundreds of thousands of followers), suggesting that the content was very much seen.

Also, there are big questions about what process Twitter followed here, since deleting the content, telling the world about who was suspended for what, and then reinstating the account are not what one would consider normal. Did Twitter send the content to NCMEC? Did it report it to any other law enforcement? These seem like pretty big questions.

On top of that, viewing that content on Twitter itself could potentially expose users to criminal liability. This whole thing is a huge mess, with a guy in charge who seems to understand literally none of this.

He’s now making Twitter a massive risk to use. At a time when the company is begging advertisers to put their ads on the site, I can’t see how Elon choosing to reinstate someone who posted CSAM, which was left on the site for days, is going to win them back.

X suddenly sounds a lot riskier to use.

[His Divine Shadow]

X looks like the close symbol on a window. How fitting.

[bilateralrope]

Not just @x: Elon Musk also took @xAI from its original user for his AI company

A pattern is emerging.
By Matt Binder on July 27, 2023

Elon Musk's Twitter is now X. The rebrand, which was made official on Monday, has made headlines all week. Along with the destruction of the globally recognized Twitter brand and its iconic blue bird logo, the rebranding has also had an extremely messy rollout. For example, large swaths of the website are still branded as Twitter.

Then, of course, there was the switch of the official @Twitter handle to @x, a username that had already been registered by an active user. Many were shocked that Musk and company would just repossess an active user's handle without any negotiation or form of financial compensation.

It turns out this isn't the first time in the past month that Elon Musk has taken another user's handle on the platform now formerly known as Twitter.

Musk's company also took the handle @xai from the Japanese user who originally registered the handle back in 2010. On July 12, Musk would go on to officially announce his new artificial intelligence company, xAI. That same day, xAI also launched a Twitter account using the handle @xai.

"My account was changed without permission," reads an English-language translation of the post that the Japanese user published on X on Wednesday. "It seems that Elon Musk robbed me."

When Mashable spoke to Gene X. Hwang, the U.S.-based founder of an event photography company who originally registered the @x handle more than 16 years ago, Hwang explained that he found out his rare one-letter username was taken after receiving an email from the company after they had already taken it. In the email, the company also offered Hwang some merchandise and a meeting with the X team.

The Japanese user who originally had the @xai username tells Mashable that he was offered no such thing. In fact, according to the user, they didn't even receive an email. They logged in to Twitter on Wednesday and noticed that their username had suddenly been changed to @xai_ or "xai" with an underscore at the end of it.

"I received a [DM] message from a kind person on July 13th, saying, 'Elon has taken my account,'" the user told Mashable regarding the first notice they received about their handle being taken.

The user went on to post a screenshot of a tweet from their account from when they still had the @xai handle as proof to any users who doubted their claim.

Mashable can independently confirm the user originally had the @xai handle as well. Old replies found in their mentions show other users referring to them as @xai. Travis Brown, an independent researcher who analyzes Twitter data, also confirmed to Mashable that the user was previously posting from the @xai handle.

While xAI went live on July 12, the @xai handle could have potentially been transferred to Musk's company in late June, according to Brown's analysis. The @xai handle was transferred to an account newly registered in May without any prior posting history that appears to have been setup specifically for that purpose.

Musk's companies appear to be cherry-picking longtime Twitter handles

Unlike the case with the @x handle, the @xai username was not taken for the X platform. Musk's AI company, xAI, is a separate entity from Musk's social media platform. It even says so on the homepage of the company's website, x.ai.

"We are a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission," it reads.

Of course, X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is well within its right to take over any handle on its platform. But it remains odd that, according to the Japanese user, the company never even reached out.

A second Twitter handle was affected when @xAI changed hands

Furthermore, it appears the company made another bizarre move in changing the Japanese user's handle from @xai to @xai_. It seems they also changed another user's handle, the user who originally had @xai_, who is now found at the handle @xai__1. (Note the two underscores in that second user's new handle.)

Mashable confirmed that @xai__1 was previously @xai_ through Brown's Twitter data as well as through a link listed in @xai__1's bio which states that the user's Twitter account can be found at @xai_. The user appears to have not used Twitter since 2015.

So, to make things a bit more clear: It appears that Musk and company wanted @xai. So, the company changed the original @xai to @xai_. However, there was already a user with the @xai_ handle so they changed the original @xai_ to @xai__1 and then gave @xai_ to the original @xai.

Earlier this year, Platformer reported that shortly after Musk's Twitter takeover, he requested that the company transfer the single-letter @e handle to him. Combine that story with what we now know about @x and @xai and it's becoming clear that X users with rare, short usernames shouldn't become too attached to their handles on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The past few days have given us two new doom scenarios for Twitter:
- His willingness to unban people who post child porn leads to anger and maybe legal action. Because he's clearly not trying to prevent people posting it.
- He takes a username from someone willing and able to start a lawsuit over it.

[Solauren]

The question with the username - Do we own our user names if we use them on multiple platforms? Are they copyrighted?
Or will a judge rule 'nope, not copyrighted unless you registered it as a trademark'?

[bilateralrope]

The Ars Technica forums have a photo of the new logo on the building, as well as the remains of the old sign.

‘X’ logo installed atop Twitter building, spurring San Francisco to investigate permit violation

BY JANIE HAR AND HAVEN DALEY
Updated 3:35 PM NZST, July 29, 2023

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The city of San Francisco has opened a complaint and launched an investigation into a giant “X” sign that was installed Friday on top of the downtown building formerly known as Twitter headquarters as owner Elon Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.

City officials say replacing letters or symbols on buildings, or erecting a sign on top of one, requires a permit for design and safety reasons.

The X appeared after San Francisco police stopped workers on Monday from removing the brand’s iconic bird and logo from the side of the building, saying they hadn’t taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.

Any replacement letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure “consistency with the historic nature of the building” and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said earlier this week.

Erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit, Hannan said Friday.

“Planning review and approval is also necessary for the installation of this sign. The city is opening a complaint and initiating an investigation,” he said in an email.

Musk unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he remakes the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday.

Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter X and had already renamed Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. One of his children is called “X.” The child’s actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.

On Friday afternoon, a worker on a lift machine made adjustments to the sign and then left.

How many illegal things will the inspectors see on their trip up to inspect the X ?

[Broomstick]

Elon really does have the notion that the law doesn't apply to him.

I really wish something would happen to disabuse him of that notion. I would hate for him to be right about that. Not the least because it would encourage other extremely wealthy people to act even more rogue than they currently do.