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.
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?
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.
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