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.

  • YeetPics
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    10 hours ago

    This is probably the most American thing elon has ever accomplished; taking something that isn’t theirs and using it to hurl feces.

  • @[email protected]
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    218 hours ago

    I was able to shorten the original 4,204-character article to this 140-character summary:

    X took over @America and gave the guy @America123_12 instead. Twitter terms allow this. The tag was registered in 2010, inactive since 2020.

    • HonkyTonkWoman
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      138 hours ago

      You forgot the part about Elon fornicating with a tapir. Pretty critical piece of the story to exclude.

      • @[email protected]
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        95 hours ago

        Didn’t seem critical to the core narrative. The tapir was fully sober and in heat so I don’t really see how it relates.

        • HonkyTonkWoman
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          75 hours ago

          You are, in fact, correct. My heavens. The lack of journalistic integrity these days must’ve seriously damaged my ability to isolate important news from tabloid trash. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.

          Folks, I admit fault. I’ll leave Elon & his tapir to their business.

  • n1ckn4m3
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    13613 hours ago

    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.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 hours ago

        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

    • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼
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      3110 hours ago

      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.

  • JaggedRobotPubes
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    149 hours ago

    You can’t beat musk on his own platform, it’s long since time to use a big boy one.

  • @[email protected]
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    4513 hours ago

    I can’t wait until Trump loses interest in Musk.

    I hope it’s the final push over the edge Musk needs.

    • @[email protected]
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      510 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      1012 hours ago

      Could you imagine come November trump loses and musk just shots himself to Mars for forever. What a good day that’ll be.

      • Match!!
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        25 hours ago

        to the one place wokeism has not corrupted … SPACE~

      • @[email protected]
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        812 hours ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          312 hours ago

          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

          • @[email protected]
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            511 hours ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
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              27 hours ago

              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.

            • @[email protected]
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              10 hours ago

              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.

              • @[email protected]
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                210 hours ago

                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.

              • @[email protected]
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                110 hours ago

                I have no issues with her. And I think she will be a better leader than we’ve had in a while. Possible bette than Obama who seemed too afraid to be bold in his actions.

                But the news cycles are all about Trump and I know people who still plan to vote for him and the polls are still awfully close that it could easily swing either way.

                I feel like I am stuck in a political demographic where I am the outlier. It sounds like the view might be better from where you stand.

      • @[email protected]
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        29 hours ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    3214 hours ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      1214 hours ago

      Indeed. I feel sorry for those people that feel compelled to still be on it for their jobs, or for their side-hustle/main-hustle or whatever, but yeah, anyone still on there just because? I have no idea, unless they are Nazis or Nazi adjacent.

  • @[email protected]
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    2315 hours ago

    How long before Musk/Trump merges Twitter and Truth? They’re basically the same place at this point.

    • @[email protected]
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      210 hours ago

      My 🔮 says they will someday pitch investors on federating with Blue Sky, after which they will discover no one wants their content.

  • @[email protected]
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    20 hours ago

    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.

    • @ReallyActuallyFrankenstein
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      2916 hours ago

      Yup, it’s the new fascist bar.

      Those non-fascist influencers, celebs, and other “must have” content sources for the remaining audience need to talk amongst themselves, decide on a new platform, and leave together. Their audience will see it, momentarily snap out of the inertia, download a new app, and barely notice the difference. Non-fascist politicians and news orgs who have to go to where the people are will have cover and can follow suit. It can be over in a week.

  • @[email protected]
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    1414 hours ago

    But MAH FREEZED PEACH! The world’s town square, argle bargle…

    -Any given Crazy Uncle Liberty, probably.

    • Vanon
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      1817 hours ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    1014 hours ago

    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?

      • @[email protected]
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        312 hours ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          312 hours ago

          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…

              • @[email protected]
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                29 hours ago

                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.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 hours ago

      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