Elon Musk’s X Has Started Selling Off Old Twitter Handles For Upwards Of $50,000
www.forbes.com
Rumored to be in the works for the past year, the initiative appears to have begun rolling out recently, with email solicitations being sent to potential buyers.

This is what desperation looks like.

  • Fapper_McFapper@lemmy.worldEnglish
    892·
    1 year ago

    What does it matter if you can buy a username on Twitter? We all know that at any point Musk will just take it from you like he did to the owner of the X handle. Here’s a thought, why not just get off of twitter already.

    • argarath@lemmy.worldEnglish
      341·
      1 year ago

      You forget that there are SO MANY gullible morons there eating up every single bullshit that musk says and then asks for seconds after fighting the flies off the shit nuggets left behind

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    772·
    1 year ago

    Musk’s company has been rumored to be planning to put such a program into effect for months. As early as November 2022, Musk posted on the social media site that a “vast number” of handles had been taken by “bots and trolls” and that he planned to start “freeing them up next month.” (In response, a user suggested a “Handle Marketplace” where people could sell accounts to each other, with the site pocketing a fee; Forbes couldn’t determine whether such a practice is now in place.)

    They want usernames to be nfts lol

    Instead Musk is going to accuse accounts that are just sitting there of being abandoned or a bit, and selling them

    • takeda@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      Bots/trolls don’t care about having cool handles so nothing from them would be valuable enough to pay for. As you said, it is now about the inactive handles that were left, for example npr. He hopes that maybe this will make them come back or at least he can make some money if real trolls will purchase them. I think he was waiting for a year, because the former is worth more. The later generates some income, but it dilutes the value of Twitter.

  • Teon@kbin.social
    672·
    1 year ago

    Remember: this is a private company he owns. He can do as he pleases. And when he changes his mind you are fucked, because he is an immature child who lives in ‘elon’ world.
    Help your friends and family to move to ANY other social media platform (preferably the Fediverse).

    • Kissaki@feddit.deEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Even as a private company he is bound by law.

      It’s a public-facing platform, it’s not obvious your profile can be take away, and it wasn’t a thing when you set it up. That sounds like a decent case to me you could at least ask a lawyer about.

    • Tyfud@lemmy.oneEnglish
      291·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, most likely. This lets his rich buddies give him money for bribes and shit and it acts as “income”

  • Jeffool @lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    1 year ago

    Like I said in another post:

    Seems like a good time to remind everyone just a few months ago he took two active usernames from their users without warning. Both @x and @music were in use and taken by Musk with no warning and no recompense.

    At this rate I see it as completely possible that someone buys one, and the first time they don’t update within whatever Musk feels like is “too long” that day, he takes it back with no warning.

  • Fisk400@feddit.nuEnglish
    25·
    1 year ago

    I’m sure this wont create an incentive to create thousands of accounts in order to squat on them.

      • Fisk400@feddit.nuEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        The article talks about creating a marketplace for users to sell usernames to each other and twitter getting a cut of that.

        • db2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          I didn’t see that anywhere in the article. What is there talks about Twitter taking handles it considers not used enough away from the people who registered them and selling them for a profit.

          • Fisk400@feddit.nuEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            “Musk’s company has been rumored to be planning to put such a program into effect for months. As early as November 2022, Musk posted on the social media site that a “vast number” of handles had been taken by “bots and trolls” and that he planned to start “freeing them up next month.” (In response, a user suggested a “Handle Marketplace” where people could sell accounts to each other, with the site pocketing a fee; Forbes couldn’t determine whether such a practice is now in place.)”

            I seem to have misread this section as musk suggesting this but it’s actually just some random user suggesting it to musk.

  • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    I actually really like how he is behaving similar to some 00s web forum owners (I imagine mostly forum text RPGs, cause that’s what I was on as a kid).

    Then you could jump to another such forum, and still seamlessly keep contact (via ICQ or something else in other countries) with everybody. Cause the forum was one thing, and chatting with people was a separate thing, not controlled by the same people.

    Want that back. And the first 2 HP games. And the web browser being a lightweight program as compared to many other things we’d run.

    And Opera 9.

  • sugarfree@lemmy.worldEnglish
    318·
    1 year ago

    We already know there are black markets for usernames on every social media site, so the website stepping in and setting up a regulated marketplace itself is a good idea. There’s no reason a highly coveted username should stay on an account that was registered 10 years ago and has never been used since, or on a banned account.

    • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
      13·
      1 year ago

      We already know there are black markets for usernames on every social media site

      Do we?..

      so the website stepping in and setting up a regulated marketplace itself is a good idea.

      Regulated by who?

      If the site can take your account because they want to, what exactly are you buying?