Elon Musk takes @America handle from X user to promote Donald Trump
Elon Musk takes @America handle from X user to promote Donald Trump
The original @America user was a critic of both Musk and Trump.
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.
I’m not interested in what a drug-addled white supremacist has to say. I’m not allowed to use edibles on my days off because it can put my job at risk but this piece-of-shit uses ketamine, acid, shrooms and cocaine and is still allowed to have expensive government contracts.
I don't get how anyone can Take Acid and stay a fascist. It creates the quite opposite feelings to hate.
Because they think they can control him. Possibly why he’s so hell bent on this now too. It would explain some things. But he’s still a piece of shit no matter what. 🙃
Well, you could move to a less shitty state.
It doesn’t matter for the line of work I’m in until it is legalized federally.
After this, I don't know what more proof anyone could possibly need that Xitter is purely a right-wing propaganda platform exactly equivalent to the likes of Truth [sic] Social. Anyone who continues to use Xitter supports this behavior. Continued use of accounts like @POTUS or @KamalaHarris or these is effectively an endorsement of equating Donald Trump with America. It has to stop! The platform has to be fully abandoned by every single person, organization, or government entity that isn't fascist; there is no choice now.
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.
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.
This sends a clear message: if you still have a valuable handle, sell it now.
The Other Truth Social.
Well, the account was allegedly inactive. Sounds like they weren't on Twitter either.
Stealing @America sounds about right up his alley. Just like T Daddy.
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.
Imagine a world where this shit was illegal
Imagine a world where this shit was irrelevant.
It'd be a weird world unless X/Twitter was government run. But at some point we're going to hit the mother of all lawsuits... email is a standard communication medium for folks and lots of people still, and have forever, used @ hotmail, yahoo or gmail addresses.
It will be really fucking interesting the first time one of those companies seizes an address and diverts some critical notification.
I can't wait until Trump loses interest in Musk.
I hope it's the final push over the edge Musk needs.
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.
to the one place wokeism has not corrupted ... SPACE~
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.
How many people in Trump's cabinet lasted the whole term?
There will be no caninet to put him on.
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.
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.
What a fucking loser honestly
Fully weaponizing "his platform" to influence the election. Painting a target on his back, making more enemies by the day. (Only this time, it's not just his drug-induced paranoia.) Gambling everything, once again. Accidentally buying "the town square" was his biggest mistake.
Honest question from a non-American.
If Trump loses, how much of a case does Harris have of going after Musk for interfering in an election?
Probably very little.
I'm not up to speed on what Twitter is doing these days outside of what's reported here on lemmy.
Unless Musk starts saying things like "Polls are closing early so don't bother voting because Trump won" or things that will suppress votes, his actions and tweets are going to be categorized as political free speech, which has broad interpretation in the US. Sad, but true.
We, as well as our government officials, should remember that Twitter is not the public town square. It's a dumpster fire that is owned by a private entity that permits users to throw their shit into. That private entity is within their right to do whatever they want within the confines of the law.
You mean like his mother telling people to go vote 10 times with 10 fake names?
None, because there isn't even a pretension of justice under fascism.
I don't think she'll have to. MAGA will implode along with Truth Social, Twitter, and maybe even Tesla as I'm sure Elon has turned off many potential buyers just as competing car companies are getting closer in value as Tesla.
None.
Private citizens and companies can endorse whoever they want.
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
"Let me tell you why I claim to support trump."
The real reasons would never be spoken aloud.
Musk is a moron. So.
I wouldn’t take that bet. Even if ordinarily you’d be right.
Can Americans become media-literate quickly? That question could determine the election
Half of Americans are barely literate at all, forget media-literate.
What an absolute shameless piece of shit.
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 don’t need to read @America to know why you support Trump. We all know. All of us know Elon.
Vote for Trump so I won't lose my captive market 🤣🤣🤣🤣
But MAH FREEZED PEACH! The world's town square, argle bargle....
-Any given Crazy Uncle Liberty, probably.
You can't beat musk on his own platform, it's long since time to use a big boy one.
Do Twitter usernames have value? Could this be considered a massive in kind campaign contribution?
I would argue if the users don't hold value, and the content is made by the uses, the company would need a re-evaluation of near zero value. Then again .. Lemmy has no value to usernames. As you and I can have the same username, as we are on different instances. But that is attached to the idea of disenfranchising the value behind the instance ownership.
Even if they did, Musk gave it to his own PAC, not the Trump campaign.
Sure it sucks, but it can't be a surprise anymore.
The username @X was also taken from a user. Same with @Music, who if I recall correctly, was a fan of Musk and was even subscribing to Twitter at the time. They even continued to do what @Music was doing with music recommendations, so it was barely a rebrand. It was basically just hijacking the work someone else put into establishing their social media presence.
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I really don’t think Trump’s dick can go any further into Musk’s mouth
It just shows what a bunch of lowly thieves this bunch is.
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 believe I'm saying this, but... this isn't quite as bad as it looks.
although clearly they could have handled the situation better.
Agreed, but I mean has been the general theme with the new owner. Everything could have been handled better, but nothing was.
Users do not technically own their handles on X.
Another reason why the fediverse is better. We have better control over this, simply by owning our own instances. Then admins on another instance can't simply seize our usernames.
It appears the original owner hasn’t posted on X since it was called Twitter, in May 2020.
So basically they released a handle that otherwise wasn't going to be used and would have gone to waste.
It would be better if they had a general policy about these things .. but considering the owner...
as it pertains to the @X handle, the company had a good case that they should have ownership of it
Less good as the user was actively using it beforehand but the justification is also stronger in this case.