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.
If you make the connection that Elon being there is also “in connection with” then wouldn’t that now spill over with Elon acting as the head of twitter, confiscating the @America handle to give to the SuperPAC to promote Trump? One links the other?
In which case Twitter is now providing an in kind contribution?
Assuming that is a problem, then the only way it wouldn’t be is if the SuperPAC itself paid the original holder of @America to sell it to them and then Twitter did the hand over at both parties request?