2y ago

Twitter commandeers @X username from man who had it since 2007

arstechnica.com

Twitter took Gene X Hwang's username and only offered him “some merch.”

Technology @lemmy.world

Pepo48 @lemmy.world

2y ago

Twitter took @x handle from longtime user and only offered him “some merch”

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2023/07/twitter-took-x-handle-from-longtime-user-and-only-offered-him-some-merch/

37 comments

That's an exremly shitty thing to do. I don't know how anyone can still be behind this company..
- If I owned it, I'd definitely be behind it.
  
  @nottheengineer I don't own it, and am still behind it.
- While I agree, no one should be behind this shit company, it's quite a standard thing to do.
  Literally every social media platform has the ability to reset a users username so they can free it up. It happens all the time.
  Are you famous enough? Cool, contact any company about taking over the username "Jake" and they'll give you it. Doesn't matter that the other dudes name is Jake. Doesn't matter they had it first. Doesn't matter that it isn't a trademarked name.
  
  It didn’t work for Beyoncé. She tried to take the brand, Blu Ivy off an Australian company so her daughter could have it. Australia said get fucked.
  An American wedding planner also had the name, and America told Beyoncé to get fucked too.
  
  Just look at what happened to Jake from state farm. They even took the man's khakis.
- It's not really that shitty in context with Musk's everyday doings. I'm honestly not surprised at all.
  If this was the worst of him, I'd be able to handle it (even though it indeed is a shitty thing to do and devalues Twitter handles [which is imo actually a good thing]).
  
  Musk's everyday doings
  Speaking of his everyday doings. Has anyone investigated all those underage illegal migrant children he has in his bathroom shower? Or was that just a rumor started on "the app formerly known as twitter"?
- It is but that is who Musk is.
Unfortunately the expected move from the cesspool formerly knows as Twitter.
- Yep, totally not surprising in the least. Imagine if you'd built up a whole following around one handle and poof, it's just gone. I think Musk got threatened by how stupid Huffman was being with Reddit and decided that the only way to be more stupid was to relabel the already flailing company.
  
  Not defending the thin-skinned rich kid but the tweeter formerly known as @X didn't lose anything apart from the name. Anyone can change their @name on Twitter and keep the rest of the account intact. Twitter changed his @name so that they could change their @name. Nothing else changed on either account.
At least #twitter made it to come up with a play on brexit ...#Xit!
- Too soon? xD
I suspect this is what Eron Musk's normal attitude towards life is like.
What some people don't realize it's that those usernames besides from being unique are very valuable, at the point that when someone won't sell it they get harassed until they do
- Darknet Diaries did an interview with someone who was harassed for an Instagram handle and while the harassment for him was low stakes, it was high annoyance and high anxiety inducing.
  Darknet Diaries: 97: The Pizza Problem
  Episode webpage: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97
  Media file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/G481GD/traffic.megaphone.fm/ADV1180047426.mp3?updated=1632679018
OK, but do they still respond with poop emojis?
X...gonna give it to me.
Oh, boy, handle with few chars can be so expensive, let alone a single char. Musk is a stinky shit.
I mean, it's their app. Sure it's shitty, but at the end of the day it's just a username. IDK. A minor inconvenience at most.
- Nobody is debating that it's legal. They're within their rights but it's unethical and extremely worrying since Elon's stated goal is to make X the everything app for communication, payments, and whatever else. The fact that he's more than happy to abuse his power just because he can makes the prospect of X growing horrifying. It would be an app where they own you and you own nothing.
  
  I just see as a sign it's never gonna work. Not under Elon, not X. He's a megalomaniac idiot...
  And I don't see how it's "unethical" either. It's annoying, rude, stupid, ridiculous, shitty, sure. But unethical? They didn't promise anything, they even gave some compensation even though they didn't need to, right? Ethics isn't even objective so I just don't think that's remotely meaningful, what ethical boundary are they overstepping? "To forcibly change someone's social media handle is unethical"?
  IDK, just don't use Twitter!! I guess I just don't see this as a big issue because I think Twitter is dumb, I suppose if you use the app a lot... IDK.

37 comments