On Monday, X filed an objection in The Onion’s bid to buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy. In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has “superior ownership” of all accounts on X, that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the transfer of them to The Onion.
The legal basis that X asserts in the filing is not terribly interesting. But what is interesting is that X has decided to involve itself at all, and it highlights that you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media, and it also highlights the fact that Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends. In the filing, X’s lawyers essentially say—like many other software companies, and, increasingly, device manufacturers as well—that the company’s terms of service grant X’s users a “license” to use the platform but that, ultimately, X owns all accounts on the social network and can do anything that it wants with them.
“Few bankruptcy courts have addressed the issue of ownership of social media accounts, and those courts that have were focused on whether an individual or the individual’s employer owned an account used for business purposes—not whether the social media company had a superior right of ownership over either the individual or the corporation,” Musk’s lawyers write.
The case Musk’s lawyers are referencing here is Vital Pharm’s bankruptcy case, in which a supplement company filed for bankruptcy and the court decided that the Twitter and Instagram accounts @BangEnergyCEO, which were primarily used by its CEO Jack Owoc to promote the brand, were owned by the company, not Owoc. The court determined that the accounts were therefore part of the bankruptcy and could not be kept by Owoc.
Except in exceedingly rare circumstances like the Vital Pharm case, the transfer of social media accounts in bankruptcy from one company to another has been routine. When VICE was sold out of bankruptcy, its new owners, Fortress Investment Group, got all of VICE’s social media accounts and YouTube pages. X, Google, Meta, etc did not object to this transfer because this sort of thing happens constantly and is not controversial. (It should be noted that social media companies regularly do try to prevent the sale of social media accounts on the black market. But they do not usually attempt to block the sale of them as part of the sale of companies or in bankruptcy.)
But in this InfoWars case, X has decided to inject itself into the bankruptcy proceedings. Jones has signaled that Musk has done this in order to help him, and his tweet about it has gone incredibly viral. On a stream of his show after the filing, Jones called this “a major breaking Monday evening news alert that deals with the First Amendment and the people’s fight to reclaim our country from the clutches of the globalists.”
"Elon Musk X Corp entered the case with a lawsuit within it to defend the right of X to not have private handles of people like Alex Jones stripped away. It violates the 13th Amendment against slavery, there are many issues. Today they filed a major brief in the case,” Jones said. “Elon Musk’s X comes to Alex Jones’ defense against democrat attempts to steal Jones’ X identity.”
Musk famously unbanned Jones, then appeared on the same Twitter Spaces broadcast with him. Musk has also tweeted occasionally that he believes The Onion is not funny. Jones, meanwhile, has been ranting and raving about some sort of conspiracy that he believes led a judge via the Deep State to sell InfoWars to The Onion at auction.
X calls itself “the sole owner” of X accounts, and states that it “does not consent” to the sale of the InfoWars accounts, as doing so would “undermine X Corp.’s rightful ownership of the property it licenses to Free Speech Systems [InfoWars], Jones, or any other account holder on the X platform.” Again, X accounts are transferred in bankruptcy all the time with no drama and with no objection from X.
“Looming over the framework [in the Vital Pharm case] was the undeniable reality that social media companies, like X Corp., are the only parties that have truly exclusive control over users’ accounts,” the lawyers write. “X CORP. OWNS THE X ACCOUNTS.”
That a corporate social media company says it owns the social media accounts on its service is probably not surprising. Meta, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and ByteDance have run up astronomical valuations by more or getting people to fill their platforms with content for free, and have created and destroyed countless businesses, business models, and industries with their constantly-shifting algorithms and monetization strategies. But to see this fact outlined in such stark terms in a court document makes clear that, for human beings to seize any sort of control over their online lives, we must move toward decentralized, portable forms of social media and must move back toward creating and owning our own platforms and websites.
Interesting that it’s the same web3 proponents that are the first to say they own your entire digital identity and you have to like it
Which proponents?
Does this mean X is discarding its neutrality under section 230?
you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media
X, and by extention all other social media platforms, would intervene in any and all brands to demand permission for mergers/sales if social media accounts are part of the merger. This is an insane level of megalomania, that goes well beyond “ownership of content posted” online.
The fact that Musk is intervening to protect the most hateful pro-Republican disinformation, while having bought the presidency, and then expecting Supreme court to side with him could be understood as counter to democratic ideals, but its just another step in that direction.
The most likely outcome of a pro-Musk ruling is the onion makes a new lower bid for infowars without the twitter accounts. Maybe Musk bids higher for infowars. There is an anti-trust case for this scenario, but it only applies in a presumed principled democracy.
if twitter owns all the accounts, what does that mean for official state run accounts that are archived and saved for historical purposes?
Next time someone Musk doesn’t like wins an election, then government account can stay with the ruler he would have preferred win the coup. Venezuela and Bolivia are coups he explicitly endorsed.
Wow, Alex Jones looks like he aged 15 years in the past few months.
Good.
He’s probably experiencing the unimaginable levels of stress he himself once imposed on many people with his platform in the past. Good riddance.
Maybe he will age really fast up to the end of life period where he enters into immense pain and suffering but then just gets stuck their excruciatingly for years while everyone around him abandons him because he is a hateful piece of trash.
Probably not but one can hope, especially when it brings a smile to your face :)
If X owns all of the accounts, then it sounds like they should be liable for all of the speech from those accounts. I hope people jump on this.
I don’t know much about law but I assume that you can also be liable for things you don’t own.
If I rent a car I don’t own it but I’m in full control of it so I’m fully responsible if I break any laws with this car.
I think one could argue in a similar way for Xitter accounts.
You nailed it on the head—if X owns all X accounts, then X should absolutely be held liable and named as codefendants in all past and future litigation where content posted on X is used in the suit. By asserting ownership over the accounts, X is effectively taking on a level of responsibility for the platform’s use and misuse, akin to how a publisher is held liable for the content it distributes.
This raises serious implications for legal accountability. If X claims ownership, they are asserting control, and with control comes liability. They can’t just cherry-pick the benefits of owning the accounts (like monetization, data, and influence) without accepting the risks, including being dragged into lawsuits where harmful, defamatory, or illegal content originates from their platform.
It would also set a precedent for greater accountability in tech. Platforms often hide behind Section 230 protections to dodge responsibility, but if they step forward and say, ‘We own the content or accounts,’ then they lose the shield of neutrality and should face the consequences accordingly. It’s a slippery slope that X might regret going down if this theory gains traction in courtrooms.
elon just admitted in court that he owns multiple accounts dedicated to sharing csam on the internet.
It’s a stupid thing to do anyway. Now every other corporation that uses Xitter as a social marketing tool just got reminded that their account is essentially valueless as it can be removed from them at his whim.
This !!! We need this
in that case, it sounds to me like the Sandy Hook families should be able to sue X for another 1.6 billion for allowing its accounts to be used to defame and threaten the families.
This really conflicts with the idea that, as platforms, websites are not legally liable for the content their user’s produce. At least at a high level, it feels like those two should be mutually exclusive. If X owns all of the accounts on its site, it should be legally liable for all of them. If X is not legally liable, it should imply some amount of individual ownership.
Like, yes federation is better and we should be pushing for it, but also, we should be trying to push for better regulation of incumbent social media platforms too if we can. Seems unlikely but we can try.
If they are worth saving at all. Social media is a poor replacement for real human connection.
Those companies are just taking advantage of how isolated and lonely people in general are.
Its social heroin.
How will Musk manage all the conflicts of interest, between all of his companies and assets and his role in government. His business interests are so large and diverse that it literally can’t be done, can it? Already got the sense that the US is going down the path of oligarchic kleptocracy. But how shameless and out in the open will it be?
A very big conflict of interest is tariffs on Canada/Mexico auto sectors that would significantly diminish his Tesla competition.
CEO must be the easiest job in the world because so many of those fuckers have more than one.
That’s the strange thing, it’s completely open with tons of news outlets constantly calling it out, not an “taboo secret” like of like old facist governments. And in all liklihood, it will stay that way.
The filter bubble and American apathy is just that powerful, I guess?
Simple: he doesn’t.
In his mind the government needs to be run like a business, and in business only profit matters, therefore there is no conflict of interest. Also it is becoming clear that laws are completely irrelevant now and no matter the accusation, they will put YOU in jail because they got the power.
oligarchic
kleptocracycryptocracyFFY
i hope elon musk dies
I hope it’s from explosive diarrhea and in public, and he’s aware of it every minute, and confused and embarrassed. That’s the important bit, that he goes confused. I want the last spark of chemistry in that shitheels’ brain to be devoted to the utterly failed grasping of his situation.
I love it that we can say this here unlike the other place where you would have gotten temp banned for this.
Elmo shills for a fuckfaced bastard who harasses families. Why do people buy his shit? Why do governments give him money? Why can’t we make this motherfucker irrelevant!?
If he wanted to save a right wing shitbird’s stuff so badly, why didn’t he buy it?
My guess?
He’s far less concerned about the specifics of this situation and far more concerned about what happens if/when his Twitter is host to something horrible enough that people are calling for his head, and/or he is wanting to sell…or being pressured to sell Twitter…but there’s something specific he wants to stipulate in that transaction that a precedent set here might fuck up.
I think he’s going entirely the wrong way then.
If he owns all accounts he’s responsible for all accounts, right?
He should have just let it go.
This is grounds for the immediate dismantling of twitter.
Musk too
if they own the accounts, that means they arent protected by section 230 and is liable for every illegal thing that is posted?
Removed by mod
To make sense of this: Infowars is a social media company (uses X account as platform)?
Infowars was/is a media company, Alex Jones’ show was on TV and online.
They are known for peddling and creating far right conspiracy theories, and because of this were often banned from social media websites for breaking their Terms of Service.
Because Elon is a right-wing conspiracy theorist who likes Alex Jones, he unbanned infowars from Twitter when he(Elon) bought it.Inforwars was recently sued into the ground because of the claims he made to his audience about the victims of school shootings and their families. Because of this, he was ordered to have his assets liquidated.
The Onion (a satirical news/comedy website) won the bid for Inforwars and its assets, and Elon isn’t a fan of this, so he’s trying to not allow The Onion access to the Inforwars Twitter account.
Xitter is basically state media at this point. MAGA media, if you prefer, as run by the preferences of President Musk.
