6 ms·
Elon Musk takes control of X account from user who had held it for 16 years
- DemocracyFTW2 3y ago> World’s richest person offered no money to previous owner of @X As you would expect.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- GuB-42 3y agoPrevious owner was compensated proportionally to the value of Twitter. In an act of kindness, Elon Musk didn't make him pay.
- acomjean 3y agoReminds me of Homer Simpson getting bought out by Bill Gates. Gates: “Buy him out boys” Gate’s goon trash Homers office Homer: “What is going on” Gates: “I didn’t get rich writing a lot of checks” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
- tekla 3y agoI don't understand what the outrage is. Somewhat of a Dick move? Maybe. But illegal/unethical/immoral hell no.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoIt's not illegal, but how is this not unethical?
- tekla 3y agoWhat is unethical about it?
- fsociety 3y agoTook someone’s identity on the platform, even worse because they have established it for 16 years. Taking it because they rebranded to X on a whim is silly.
- tekla 3y agoHow is that unethical?
- metaltyphoon 3y agoWow, I can’t believe you can’t see what is unethical about it.
- tekla 3y agoAs it turns out a minor insult is actually not an argument for why something is unethical
- notaustinpowers 3y agoIt's like if I took your email account you've used since 2007 because I changed my name to yours because I liked it better. Yeah, he's the owner of the company, legally he can do it. Doesn't make it any less unethical and poor taste.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoBecause it's breaking at least an implicit promise - that your account is under your control.
- tekla 3y agoThe TOS doesn't say anything about that https://twitter.com/en/tos https://twitter.com/en/tos > We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason
- simbolit 3y ago"without paying the previous owner for the one-letter account" (1) paying for transferring a T̶w̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ account is against the TOU (2) the "previous owner" was never the owner of the account, read the TOU Finally: why is this news?
- regularjack 3y agoYou know why this is news.
- bradhe 3y agoBecause Elon Musk is a douchebag and this is another brick in that wall.
- craftsman 3y agoIt further devalues the idea--such as it was--of "verified" accounts.
- simbolit 3y agoAlso in Elon News today: Community Note correcting Musk’s anti-vax tweet mysteriously disappears https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/15a086f/community_note_correcting_musks_antivax_tweet/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/15a086f/com...
- ea550ff70a 3y agoFree speech for me but not for thee
- izzdrasil 3y agoThis happens shortly after Twitter pays out five figure sums to users that amplify Musk's own posts. Obviously they're within their rights to do this and also to take @x but it's not a great look.
- kalleboo 3y agoWhy does anyone think they own or are owed anything on a private platform? Decentralize or one day you'll also get screwed over. That's been the lesson of the past year or two.
- saurik 3y agoHow has not been the lesson of the past quarter century (of general people having access to the Internet), over and over again except then new people show up or everyone just forgets and they start using whatever the new shiny thing is?
- kalleboo 3y agoIt certainly has, but the level of centralization, the amount of control by the platforms, and the lack of alternatives has always been slowly ratcheting up year by year, day by day, as we boil in the pot. It reached other people's breaking point far earlier, many of us only noticed last November, and for the majority of the people, that breaking point is still in the future. edit: noticed you were being downvoted and I don't like that, you make a good point
- agubelu 3y agoDoesn't the admin of a decentralized Mastodon instance have similar powers?
- kalleboo 3y agoIf you don't trust any other admins, you can run your own. Or pay a managed host like mastohost where you'll have a contract that is more in your favor than the typical social network "we reserve every right".
- barrysteve 3y agoPeople give up ownership in the hopes of a reciprocal relationship, even an unbalanced one. Grabbing the X account just feels petty. These are made up user accounts, you can just make two X accounts with different IDs in the database. It's not like real estate where the locations are bound by the laws of physics. And it's Elon's modus operandi. He screwed over his relations with the tesla founder in similar fashion. He really would benefit from hanging out with Gaben and spend less time courting controversy.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoHe is just a bully - why some people on HN worship him is puzzling.
- valval 3y agoWhat are you talking about? This forum is 98% mindless Musk hate just like all the other left-leaning forums.
- seeknotfind 3y agoCan you imagine if a company did this for something really important, like your email? Is there protection against this?
- JohnFen 3y ago> Is there protection against this? No. People call these "their accounts", but they don't own them. They only exist as long as the company allows them to.
- craftsman 3y agoGiven that a user can purchase a "verified" account--although you may be correct--the company just eliminated the value proposition of doing so.
- lesuorac 3y agoDepends on the exact action. But generally yes you can go to court. Historically people have done that with Google to figure out the exact ban reason (or to get unbanned) but that's often with Adsense / YT accounts where you have clear financial harm.
- exogeny 3y agoIt's so unnecessarily callous and such an unforced error. Why do this? Why accrue all of this bad PR for no reason? Fuck Elmo. What a dick.
- mint2 3y agoThe article mentions they did offer some company merchandise… depending what that was I actually think that was nearly appropriate. Paying for it made no sense - it’s a private company and can do what it wants. But in order not to be appearing as a roughshod callous company, giving a token of appreciation makes sense AND an actual paper card saying apology signed by musk. The token could be one of their old logo statues, its not like they need them anymore. That would have been reasonable.
- nerdbert 3y agoPaying for it makes sense because it establishes that the company agrees that accounts have value, and that the company will be even-handed in managing that value. Appropriating it with an offer of some laptop stickers or a Twitter coffee mug says "this is all crap and anyway we can take it away anytime we feel like it, so you'd be a fool to invest any serious effort or resources into this ecosystem."
- mint2 3y agoIt’s not nice to twist my words and ignore what I actually said in order to try to make a point. I specifically cited a Twitter statue as the example and also said a hand signed note from musk. That’s not not even close to “laptop stickers and a coffee mug” garbage that I’ve been falsely accused of saying. For reference, the auctioned Twitter logo statue sold for $100k, which is crazy. So actually that might be too much, I’d assumed it was a few $K not $100.
- Rapzid 3y agoA bunch of junk he now has to dispose of and a meeting with the management team running twitter straight into the center of the Earth? So, they wanted him to pay them for taking @x ..
- morkalork 3y agoNow, would you trust X with your online banking when they do stuff like highjack an account just because it has a cool name they want?
- JohnFen 3y agoIn fairness, I wouldn't trust X with anything whatsoever in the first place.
- bko 3y agoWould you trust Nissan for trying to kick off a person who owns nissan.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Computer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comp...
- 6D794163636F756 3y agoIs that at all relevant to the product they sell?
- craftsman 3y agoIf Nissan took my "verified" car that I purchased, no I wouldn't.
- mamoul 3y agoThis makes me even less interested in buying a Tesla while he's in charge. Imagine what he can do with your Tesla, with all of its telemetry.
- JohnFen 3y agoThis is a very large part of why modern cars aren't of interest to me. It's not just Tesla. The same problem exists with all EVs as near as I can tell, and more modern ICE vehicles.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y agoIsn’t it concerning that short domain names and handles are generally the weapon of choice of people who have literally zero money to spend on promotion? It’s something people who are just starting out do in the hopes that the ability to quickly find their username/website would help them go viral. Make your company into a verb and or a noun is much more valuable , Twitter has all that, at least until last week. ‘President Trump tweeted’ was the most frequrntly repeated newsflash story 2016-2020
- netcruiser 3y agoIn the early days I managed to register administrator@gmail.com. It was of course taken from me.