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.
See you don’t get it, it’s totally fine for musk to take the @America tag and push Twitter for Trump. Twitter was SUPER biased before because you couldn’t say the N-word whenever you want. It’s not biased at all now because it’s completely far right which is obviously the Correct Way to Be™ so it can’t be biased.
-dipshits
But MAH FREEZED PEACH! The world’s town square, argle bargle…
-Any given Crazy Uncle Liberty, probably.
Now I’m no legal expert, but wouldn’t appropriating someone’s social media account to post your own political propaganda literally be a violation of that user’s 1st amendment rights? Isn’t Musk really into freedom of speech?
I was wondering if it could be an illegal campaign contribution since it has value and was taken and won’t be reported as such
No. First Amendment applies to action by the government.
Not according to Musky Boy.
Nope. Your first amendment rights can absolutely be violated by a private corporation in a context that isn’t directly related to criticizing the government. This person literally had their page appropriated by Musk, which is absolutely not covered on the EULA, to spread political propaganda. This isn’t the same thing as right wing people crying about being banned from Facebook for posting nazi crap.
Lol whatever you say but you’re wrong. Might be a breach of contract but if it’s a private corporation, it has nothing to do with the First Amendment. The rare exception would be where the private entity is merely an agent of the government, such as a private prison.
Doubt it’s not covered in EULA. Probably has something like
Company reserves the right to cancel your account for any reason, or without reason…
Fine. Cancel it, but don’t appropriate it without clearing everything first.
The posts are the property of X, so legally they can be the biggest douches about it.
Yup. I know. I just wouldn’t want them to co-opt my stuff if I had my name tied to it and then start posting rhetoric. That’s misrepresenting me and I would sue for defamation.
For the record, I do not have a personal X account tied to me. This is all hypothetical.
If you’re still on Xitter at this point, you deserve all the bullshit you get. That place is a cesspool. You can’t swim in the toilet and then pretend to be mad you’re covered in shit.
Well, the account was allegedly inactive. Sounds like they weren’t on Twitter either.
yeah, don’t know why they’re so mad. 90% of people don’t know what lemmy even is, much less mastodon. And those numbers are very generous considering there are ~40k people using lemmy
This sends a clear message: if you still have a valuable handle, sell it now.
You can’t swim in the toilet and then pretend to be mad you’re covered in shit.
This is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard. Definitely made my day.
The Other Truth Social.
This is probably the most American thing elon has ever accomplished; taking something that isn’t theirs and using it to hurl feces.
Yea. You would never see that in [insert name of literally any country]
/s
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, you’re right.
How long before Musk/Trump merges Twitter and Truth? They’re basically the same place at this point.
My 🔮 says they will someday pitch investors on federating with Blue Sky, after which they will discover no one wants their content.
I’m all for hating on musk/trump. But do we know if he actually stole the handle/tag or if he paid an obscene amount of money to the original owner?
I hate Twitter and deleted my account a long time ago but facts matter and assuming he stole the tag is just as bad as what he is doing. We may never know what actually happened but I’m curious
I can’t wait until Trump loses interest in Musk.
I hope it’s the final push over the edge Musk needs.
Nah, Trump will put Musk on his cabinet, possibly Secretary of Transportation. Which is ironic that Musk has an electric car company but the GOP is all about fossil fuel. We’ve seen gas guzzling pick ups block multiple super chargers to fuck with Tesla owners.
There will be no caninet to put him on.
How many people in Trump’s cabinet lasted the whole term?
The only one I recall was Betsy DeVos.
Nope. She left 12 days early because of January 6th.
Just didn’t quite make it.
Some personal physician will OD him on Special-K because he got tired of his shit.
I’ll donate $5 to their go-fund-me defense.
Not until he has no billions left, like Mike pillow.
Musk Pillow has a nice ring to it. He’s going to do a lot of harm to good tech when he really crashes out after Trump loses.
Could you imagine come November trump loses and musk just shots himself to Mars for forever. What a good day that’ll be.
Four words too many on that first sentence.
At this point though, I have a sinking suspicion that Trump is going to win. I hope I’m wrong but I’m in a swing state and it feels more like 2016 than 2020 to me. America is full of ignorant people who are too prideful to realize how absolutely ignorant they are.
Naw it feels like a mix of 16 and 08. Theres so much energy around harris, but its bogged down by all the hate from trump. But im older, Obama was elected when i was in high school amd thats when i started paying attention to politics
Older than me? I’ve got probably a decade on you. My first (major) political awareness involves blowjobs and dress stains. I vaguely recall Iraq Part 1 and the excitement around it being televised live.
My abandoned Reddit account is older than some of the people I interact with on here.
I hope you’re right. As with all the recent elections where the Democratic Party wins, it’s all down to the youth vote. Also, really hopefully this one has even more extra support from the uterus carrying people amongst us than anticipated by the polls.
It comes down to people in 7 states. And after seeing interviews with some swing voters, they aren’t deep thinkers.
We’re fucked and i’m currently making my escape plan.
Do you not feel the change approach? She hasnt come out and used Obama’s exact phrasing, but it feels like shes going to bring some change that we desperately need.
Her bringing on Tim Walz keeps that hope alive for me. Like even if she somehow disappoints me, there will be Walz who can inject some “mind your own business” socialism at the national stage. I wish he would have more faith in his own speaking abilities though.
to the one place wokeism has not corrupted … SPACE~
Musk is so disgusting.
Can we establish “dismusking” as a new word that means “extremely disgusting”?
Elon’s Musk
Can Americans become media-literate quickly? That question could determine the election
Half of Americans are barely literate at all, forget media-literate.
Vote for Trump so I won’t lose my captive market 🤣🤣🤣🤣
You can’t beat musk on his own platform, it’s long since time to use a big boy one.
It just shows what a bunch of lowly thieves this bunch is.
I don’t need to read @America to know why you support Trump. We all know. All of us know Elon.
I really don’t think Trump’s dick can go any further into Musk’s mouth
