Musk's X is trying to stop The Onion from buying Alex Jones' social media accounts.

Does it feel like your X account belongs to you and you can do whatever you want with it? That’s not true, according to a new court filing from the social media company formerly known as Twitter. It’s an argument that X is making in order to throw a wrench in The Onion’s recent purchase of InfoWars, the conspiracy theory media company run by Alex Jones. And it’s a great reminder that you don’t actually own what you think you own in the digital age.

  • hypeerror@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1161·
    27 days ago

    So if X-itter accounts were to threaten persons or places that were in the interest of the state to protect that responsibility lies on Musk?

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
      971·
      27 days ago

      Gee wizz, I don’t think you understand Capitalism at all. Musk gets the profits and you get the liability.

      • hypeerror@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        23·
        27 days ago

        If only he were also trying to sue advertisers that no longer want to do business with him. It would be the perfect storm of what is good comes to me and what is bad is yours.

        • oyo@lemm.eeEnglish
          51·
          26 days ago

          I still don’t understand how the fuck that worked. Why would any company risk doing business with shxitter after that?

  • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzEnglish
    502·
    26 days ago

    The Onion should allow Musk to block the sale of the Twitter handle, then sue Alex Jones for falsely advertising the sale of an account he can’t sell and sue Twitter for infringing on their trademark of the InfoWars brand.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      26 days ago

      Alex Jones had no say in what was being sold. The Court seized his assets and sold them to pay the people he owes.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    161·
    26 days ago

    Not supporting Musk here, but there is some truth to the claim in the headline.

    One major danger we currently have is everyone thinking that social media platform accounts are property. They simply aren’t – at least, not yours. If the company decides to terminate your account, they can do that. It will be supported by the TOS. You do not own it.

    You also don’t own data you put on it. Post a bunch of photos to FB? They own them and can do whatever they want with them.

    The danger is that these things are so ubiquitous they appear like information utilities, but they are not. They are corporate services wholly owned by their respective corporations. It is something that makes federated systems stand out from the crowd (not that you own an account there either, but there at least is not a single centralized corporate owner).

    More people need to be made aware of this.

  • superkret@feddit.orgEnglish
    2917·
    27 days ago

    I mean, if someone lets me into their house, points me to a whiteboard with a pen and tells me to write whatever I want so the other people in the house can read it…
    Do I own the whiteboard? Or the pen? Or have control over any of it?

    No. The owner of the house can lock me out and wipe off or change what I wrote at their leisure.

    • Hawke@lemmy.worldEnglish
      352·
      27 days ago

      You do have some control, in the form of copyright. Also the analogy doesn’t hold up well since you’re not using their “pen” and they only let you reach inside through the window. And the audience is outside the house.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
        151·
        27 days ago

        And to continue that analogy- Twitter didn’t assign the name, the user created it so they hold copyright on the name.

      • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        515·
        27 days ago

        Except when you enter the home, you accepted the TOS that transfers copyright to the owner of the home.

        • Hawke@lemmy.worldEnglish
          231·
          27 days ago

          Nope.

          as a user, “you retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours you own your Content (and your photos and videos are part of the Content),” although you also grant Twitter a license to use the content, which authorizes it “to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.” Based on this language, other twitter users are also licensed to copy and redistribute your posts by “retweeting” them.

          https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/tweets-protected-copyright/

          • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.worldEnglish
            15·
            26 days ago

            Really ? I think you’ll find that clause means you do not own copyright to anything you post on X.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              26 days ago

              Really? How do you get that from “you retain your rights and give Twitter a license to use your content”? Retaining rights literally means not giving them up.

          • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            315·
            27 days ago

            Congratulations on reading the twitter TOS. Now tell me if it is legal for a company to lay claim on copyright via a TOS.

              • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                417·
                27 days ago

                I thought we were talking about who legally can lay claim on copyrights in the hypothetically house with a whiteboard? i’m not the one lost with the program.

                • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  26 days ago

                  You see, x is the pen, Infowars is the ink and we’re the contents of the water bowl all along

                  Skibidi dibidi bop

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      61·
      26 days ago

      A better analogy is i hand you a bullhorn and you shout at randos.

      Do i own your words, even though it’s my bullhorn? No.

    • x00z@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      26 days ago

      No but somebody else can own the creator of what was written on the board. That might be a bit weird in today’s terms if it’s a person, but if it’s a company that wrote that stuff it can legally become somebody else’s, which is what is happening with Infowars.

      Twitter has always allowed a company to own their own account, and even transfer it and be used by multiple people. For example how Biden’s account is used by his staff. But now X starts meddling with this specific case, which is very questionable.

      And if you’re going to say that “it’s his own account”; lawyers were saying that his “personal brand” is too heavily intertwined with Infowars and that it should be part of the Infowars brand.

  • Cornpop@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    26 days ago

    He does though. Read the fine print. You are just allowed to use it. Not really surprising.

  • the_tab_key@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    27 days ago

    I hadn’t logged into Twitter in years. Just signed in to delete my account. He can have it back.

  • hightrix@lemmy.worldEnglish
    147·
    27 days ago

    He does. Same with any other platform you do not “own” your account. You have credentials to login to an account you created.

    This should not be news to anyone. This applies to all social media, all entertainment, and every other account you use online.

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
      6·
      27 days ago

      I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, you are correct.

      The platform owns the platform.

      You have given the platform permission to use anything on the platform however they want.

      They own the content you put on the platform.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        26 days ago

        They own the content you put on the platform.

        This will depend on the terms of service agreement. Some of them try to get away with this, while others just give themselves an irrevocable license to use content you publish on their platform.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      27 days ago

      Which is why it’s really important to have some trust /reputation if using these services.

      Why anyone would use a service run by a fascist entitled madman who literally represents the very worst version of humanity is beyond me and they deserve whatever they get.

    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      26 days ago

      You mean rich spoiled man-children who are nothing more than insecure adolescent tweens going through puberty and having sexually frustrated tantrums because girls just laugh at them, and their narcissism is so all-consuming that their only emotion is disdain and goal in all the world is more and more self-gratification and the insatiable pursuit of total control of everything, because they know deep down they will never ever be the recipients of genuine respect or admiration.

      Yeah that’s what I thought you said. Slight faux pas.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    61·
    26 days ago

    It’s days like this that I’m just so happy and proud of myself for never doing the whole Twitter thing.