Because domain names are tied to security model, they're often the last thing you can fix. So let's say, hypothetically, they build in a redirect from twitter

Because domain names are tied to security model, they're often the last thing you can fix. So let's say, hypothetically, they build in a redirect from twitter to x-dot-com. Off the top of my head... - All logins are now busted. Some percentage of users is lost forever because they can't remember their login credentials and instead of going through the recovery flow, they go use Bluesky. - A huge amount of third-party integrations are busted because they aren't using client libraries that understand redirects - A full code audit is necessary. Someone has hard-coded twitter.com into a critical system somewhere. Other people have referenced a variable, but it's the wrong variable. Still others are looking up the value in a database somewhere that doesn't have a search frontend anyone knows about. And some other database has a huge cache of absolute URLs it vends and everyone who built it got fired by Musk. This is probably the most predictable-cost step, but it's still a cost to be paid. - A significant number of users are confused. The median of web user is profoundly ignorant of how the web works, and no matter how much you warn them and how much you prepare them, day-of-switch they will panic. Staff up your support team. Customers-lost-forever-two-point-oh. - Every business integration needs to be updated. Google App Store, Apple App Store, Amazon Appstore... They all have bindings to twitter.com, and some part of their flow will panic and flag a security issue if they see it's turned into a redirect to elsewhere. That probably triggers a security audit of every version of the Twitter client (and those companies aren't particularly inspired to foot the bill on Musk's behalf, billionaire that he is...). Hell, Google indexes twitter.com via a dedicated side-pipe. Will that side-pipe handle a redirect? (source: I've been in the side-seat for a merger-become-rebrand, and the number of things people expect to "just work" and don't is impressive).