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.
So if x has superior ownership, then they should be subject to every illegal thing ever posted on X.
Including CSAM posts and other illegal things.
So whos the pedo now Elon?
So whos the pedo now Elon?
I won’t ever get over him larping as a child and tweeting as if he’d want himself as a father.
And all because none of his actual children give two shits about Apartheid Daddy.
Especially if the claim ownership of the Infowars account. They should be added to the debtors for the Sandy Hook families.
Same as the Companies are People bs. They’re people when it comes to bribing politicians, but they have money and are not responsible for evils committed by their companies.
And are essentially immortal entities
- Corporations are people ❌
- Corporations are Gods ✅
Aquinas spoke of that mythical city on the hill…
The judge should say, fine if you want legal precedent that you are the superior owner I’ll give it to you, case closed. Now you will have to respond for every singles illegal thing posted on there since you are the owner.
Hilariously, trump wants to remove the law that says you can’t hold platforms legally at fault for their users. Once that gets repealed, this is a genuine argument. (As far as I know… I’m not a lawyer but that’s my interpretation)
This should be removed (maybe amended so it no longer would apply to corporations, it was originally intended to community sites like forums, Usenet etc).
Though if they would make this change, it likely will make it even worse.
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What the actual fuck?! Just that first paragraph!
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.
So they argue that accounts are non transferable, even by court order!!
This is complete bullshit, and should not be taken seriously at all as a legal argument, obviously X has the right to close the accounts afterwards, if they are operated against the terms X has decided. But ONLY if that. It should not be allowed to do it arbitrarily.Not non-transferrable, as that would prevent Elon from claiming @america or the transfer of @POTUS.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Or @X
Or a whole bunch of usernames, for that matter: Elon Musk’s X Has Started Selling Off Old Twitter Handles For Upwards Of $50,000
Hah!!
Ooh, it’s behind a paywall. Do you mind sharing the list please? Gets popcorn
What the onion could do in such case that elon does not want to give the accounts as part of the deal is to send a letter threatening legal action if they do not take down the accounts for infringing on their InfoWars trademark
Oh I like this
You are naive, if you really think that the law still applies to people in Trump’s near proximity.
I think the entire reason they’re doing this is to set the precedent that they can defy court orders.
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.
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.
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.
This !!! We need 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 could argue that, sure, but their defense of that has already been established and accepted - effectively that the “town square” cannot be liable for the speech of people in it… but if Twitter fully owns all accounts, then the people in the square ARE twitter.
I can’t wait for the Texas and Connecticut families to file a motion to make X liable for the $1.5b too, since they own the Infowars account it’s their responsibility.
Can’t have a safe harbor and ownership.
This I don’t trust the US legal system but it’ll be very funny if the Sandy Hook parents win.
Please let this happen. It’d be fucking hilarious to watch the rat try to squirm out of xitter losing him even more money.
if they own the accounts, that means they arent protected by section 230 and is liable for every illegal thing that is posted?
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It violates the 13th Amendment against slavery
Uh?
Just hollering bullshit, because in the past if he did that louder and longer it worked for jones.
Okay… so lets say Musk wins, and the infowars handle isn’t transferred.
The Onion should then file an impersonation complaint with X and have the handle handed to them. I would assume in the auction the onion purchased the rights to the trademark InfoWars.
This would be interesting considering people like Elon want to get rid of Section 230. He could be shooting himself in his left foot to prevent himself from shooting himself in his right foot.
X could just hide/delete/forbid the account entirely to avoid this. It’s not impersonation if it doesn’t exist.
They likely just wouldnt post on x at all.
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.
And I think the onion could sue for copyright infringement or something to at least close the accounts.
Ok. The accounts can be withheld, suspended or whatever.
The Onion is therefore entitled to due compensation from X Corp., as this was considered to be included in the bid. X can have that NFT for just 47 billion dollars, what a deal! /s
No. If valve cancel your steam account, you lose your games and they owe you a big fat zero.
Same goes for all accounts with assets attached.
Sad to say, but in this case it is musk’s platform and his rules.
If he wants to go home and take his ball too. Tough luck.
Doesn’t seem right, but it is legal and already happened on multiple platforms multiple times.
Perhaps, but it all depends on the judge’s decision whether X corp’s argument is completely bullshit or not.
For your Valve example, in the Subscriber Agreement you can terminate the agreement, or Valve can terminate it for a violation of the Agreement rules, with no refunds. For a termination without a valid reason, “no refunds” does not necessarily apply. I’m not saying it would be hard for Valve to come up with a bullshit reason to cancel anyone’s account on a whim or to change the terms so that they get broken easily, but it’s not automatic and courts can assign value to a specific license you have access to, based on the jurisdiction, in particular in places like Quebec, Australia, and the EU.
9C. Termination by Valve
Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use). In the event that your Account or a particular Subscription is restricted or terminated or cancelled by Valve for a violation of this Agreement or improper or illegal activity, no refund, including of any Subscription fees or of any unused funds in your Steam Wallet, will be granted.
Addendum: I wasn’t totally serious with the second paragraph, nothing may stop X from banning The Onion/Infowars or whatever after the transfer is complete. But trying to disrupt the transfer itself over it seems a little ridiculous.
And twitter / x most likely have a similar rule. And musk could have achieved similar by just banning the account.
There’s no reason to give it to Jones. He doesn’t own any of the applicable ip any more. Maybe there’s an argument if he tried that.
It’s just a matter of time before Jones gets it back. You’re still living in a world where these creatures might have been served justice. The jig is up. Jones will be restored and the parents of the children of who were slain will get nothing, which is the natural order for americans.
If valve cancel your steam account, you lose your games and they owe you a big fat zero.
That really depends on how good the consumer protection laws are in your jurisdiction. Not every country is as bad as the USA in terms of consumer protection… Some countries have laws that priorize people over corporations.
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.
removed I run my own mastodon instance. I definitely own my social media accounts
lol why though?
Why not just blindly put your trust in the investors behind Bluesky not to screw you over? Every case of that kind of thing happening is in the past and I am looking to the future which looks bright and blue!
Xitter is basically state media at this point. MAGA media, if you prefer, as run by the preferences of President Musk.
A country where money gives you power over even the justice system, is just a joke of country and will eventually collapse on itself.
No it won’t. It will prop itself up on labor exploited from the working class.
It’s the middle class that will collapse. Eventually everybody will be poor. Nobody but the rich will own land. It’ll all be one big exploitation of it’s people. Just as russia has done for 1000 years before us.
That’s the goal, didn’t you know? An entire nation of labor slaves without power, and an entire class of elite without empathy.
And that’s how it’ll collapse. People will burn it to the fucking ground.
Now see, I don’t like it but the simplest thing would be for musk to ban the account right now.
He’s not circumventing anything then. Ownership of the account was transferred, that twitter, a private entity chose to ban it is their business.
It’s not worth arguing about. The website and ip is the juicy thing, being able to make satirical info wars programming and products is where it is at. Maybe, maybe there would be a case if musk allowed Jones to make a new account with the same name or otherwise handed it to him.
Would be hilarious if the onion just told Musk to shove that account up his ass and
taketook it to blueskyBluesky could make a good advertisement by saying that its ID is more effective than Twitter/X ID
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.
I don’t disagree but I’d say that there’s a more important lesson here: The concept of ownership is mediated by a legal system that gives the wealthy a special pass. Rich people can pay lawyers to make up concepts like “superior ownership” 'til the cows come home, and any subsequent precedent costs $600/hr to even access. None of us should feel secure under this system about our online lives or our fucking houses, even if we “own” them.
Concepts like “fair”, “balanced”, and “democracy” can not exist under Capitalism, because money is speech and power, and the small elite who control thousands/millions more capital than average control everything thousands/millions times more than average.
I entirely agree with your main point.
Aside from that, the concept of “superior ownership” isn’t something made up any time recently. It’s the notion that there are different types of ownership and some of them take priority over others.
For example, if I have a watch, A steals the watch from me and sells it to you, and then B steals the watch from you, you, me and B all have a claim to it.
B possesses the watch so you need to prove they stole it to show you have a superior claim to ownership. You can show that you bought the watch fair and square from A, which means it looks like your claim is valid, but because it was stolen from me in the first place I have the best claim.It’s not a rich person making up a new legal principle, it’s a rich person trying to use their money and lawyers to buy an outcome because they don’t like one of the parties.
My point wasn’t that in this specific case they made up “superior ownership,” but rather that it was made up as a legal concept at some point in the past, probably by lawyers working for rich people, and it’ll probably never matter to you and me. Like so many legal concepts, it is reasonable, but only rich people can really access it, and, at this point, there are so many of them that they will always have one ready to go when it suits them.
I disagree on this specific one. It’s not an incredibly esoteric concept and is part of every legal dispute involving ownership of anything. It’s legalese for “they don’t own it, I own it”.
