No. DJT would have valued it at $80 billion.
Then fleeced his employees some other way.
Would anyone here have thought of doing the following? This is one reason why Elon is rich, but those of here aren’t:
Shortly after, in January The New York Times reported that X was considering selling usernames as a way to generate revenue. At the time, engineers had started discussing the possibility of such sales, but nothing had officially gone into place, noting that only certain usernames, such as those of well-known people and brands, might have value.
Those are exactly the ones I would think wouldn’t have value. Brands and celebrity names would only be valuable to that particular brand or celebrity. Anyone else would be infringing their copyright.
And that would require them to actually want to be on Twitter–the site where they’ve abandoned their account.
I could much more easily see value in having generic names. If you’re a dogfood business, and you get @dogfood, I could see how that could be great. But getting, say, @purina would be useless if you’re not Purina.
Edit: you might think: but what if the impersonator was from Russia or something. Sure, maybe they wouldn’t get in legal trouble. But Twitter would, since they’d be part of the trademark infringement.
Trademark.
Otherwise I agree. Any hypothetical “value” of someone assuming control of an identity not their own would be in shenanigans and mischief, if not outright sabotage.
Right up Elmo’s alley.
I doubt we have any extortionists in our midst.
Speak for yourself!
So, Mr Gnoitall, that’s 3,000 pounds, please, to stop us from revealing: your name, the name of the three other people involved, the youth organization to which they belonged, and the shop where you bought the equipment!
It’s a fair cop.
Elmo is picking a fight with Wikipedia. Why? Who knows what thought du minute flittered through his brain.
The Guardian featured an article just about that: “Why does Musk hate Wikipedia?”
A good read, with the conclusion:
“The sight of something created socially that works is an insult to him.”
I don’t disagree with anything in that article, but I do think it missed an aspect of it. The alt-right and other right wingers Musk seems to be identifying with and/or courting have long had a hatred of Wikipedia because its factual information often disagrees with their narrative. Remember Conservapedia? They created it to be a version of Wikipedia without the “liberal bias.”
Musk in part felt comfortable attacking Wikipedia because he knows his fans don’t like it. And those are the only people he seems to be listening to anymore.
Or maybe that’s “playing to”.
Kinda like with trump, there’s a symbiotic relationship between the adoring fans seeking validation from their “leader”, and the “leader” seeking validation from the adoring fans.
It’s a pitiful kind of symbiosis, but IMO it is a symbiosis.
The problem comes in when they spin themselves too far off into toxic land, and each group becomes slowly inured to their respective drug and needs larger and larger “hits” to get the same high. Eventually one side or the other tips over into operational insanity. Whether that’s blathering at imaginary enemies in the sky or rampaging through the streets.
But didn’t Elon explain that a major reason he bought Twitter was because he believed in free speech–and that the previous management was suppressing it?
Yes, he did say that, but the important thing to remember is that he is full of shit.
Can you say “anti-SLAPP” penalties? Plus maybe RICO? I can. So can the Feds.
If Elon Musk sues these researchers, isn’t Elon Musk duty bound to fund their defense?
It comes after X owner Elon Musk amplified an antisemitic trope on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The boycott has also been picking up steam in the wake of an investigation by a US group which flagged ads appearing next to pro-Nazi posts on X.
Mr Musk has denied his post was antisemitic and has threatened to sue over the advertising investigation.
Left-leaning pressure group Media Matters for America said it had identified ads bought by high-profile firms next to posts including Hitler quotes, praise of Nazis and Holocaust denial.
Are we allowed to kick him out?
This is not a real question, unless the answer is yes.
There is a copy of the lawsuit in the article.
It’s a private company. The best you can do is not visit the site, drive the value of the company down, and hope that someone else buys it from Musk and regrows it back to its former glory faster than one of its competitors (Threads, Bluesky, etc.) can replace it.
Of course, while the company is in free fall, most of the good employees are liable to go to one of those other companies. Putting back in all the technology that’s necessary to admin the website, without any good workers, would be hard. So anyone who wants to grab the company and fix it again will need to also invest in a large quantity of human capital.