As all billionaires are. Along with unempathetic sociopathic psychopaths.
I can't fathom having the power to save our at least change millions of lives...but instead choose to leech more wealth from the people that need it most. And systematically make the world worse. It's a sickness.
There are no good billionaires.
I would build SO much low income, homeless, and transition housing. I would also start my own line of bamboo products and packaging to replace plastic.
Then you'd go bankrupt and stop supporting your "so much" housing, unless you'd gift it to those people, not give as a temporary service.
Bamboo - a nice idea. Actually I'm not sure it's that hard for you to do even now. I'm serious, if you know the pipeline, then try to evaluate how much a start would cost (for it to be barely profitable). You need, well, bamboo itself (grows like a virus, shouldn't be a problem), and on the process of making stuff from bamboo I'm not sure (I think it involves making some kind of pulp and then pressure?..), but humans do this kind of thing. Should probably start with dishes and cups.
The most important part of what you said is that you’d build “SO much” housing. If we’d just let the free market build all the housing it wants without letting NIMBYs get in the way, we’d have largely solved the housing crisis.
Except we already have more houses than there are homeless people. The problem is the empty houses have ridiculous price tags due to corporate landlords and landlords refusing the sell and only rent (also at ridiculous prices)
Vacancy rates in the places where people actually want to live are really low. Besides, are people not allowed to have vacation homes?
Market price is a function of supply and demand. We’ve been under building housing for years.
Alright but life never promised anyone these luxuries. I don't give a fuck if someone can't have a vacation home because it means more people without one can have one. People act like freedom to do whatever the hell they want no matter how negatively it effects everyone else is their universal right. The Universe doesn't give a fuck about your summer home, nature doesn't give a fuck that you worked hard to get it. It will all be swallowed all the same if our main goal still is not perpetual survival. That may be authoritarian, but it is also the truth. We never left the game of survival we just plastered concrete and asphalt on top of it and pretended we were removed.
The Universe doesn’t give a fuck about your summer home, nature doesn’t give a fuck that you worked hard to get it.
Nor does the universe care about your sense of fairness or lack of understanding of econ 101. Keep restricting supply while demand increases, and watch what happens. Oh wait, we’ve already seen what happens, and yet we refuse to acknowledge it.
So be it. A population deserves the problems it gets.
I never said supply wasn't an issue. I said people are out here acting like they are owed luxury and that has never been true nor will it ever be. We all know zoning laws and supply restrictions for profit are what got us here. Do you think any of the lobbyists receiving money from these corps are gonna let it go? No.
Edit: and econ101 doesnt matter when the supply is kept artificially low through corporate welfare, consolidation, and lobbying.
Dude is either trolling or brainwashed. You’ll never get through to them.
We all know zoning laws and supply restrictions for profit are what got us here.
Ah, OK. But then "there's more empty houses than homeless people" argument doesn't make sense.
and econ101 doesnt matter when the supply is kept artificially low through corporate welfare, consolidation, and lobbying.
WDYM it doesn't? It works as expected.
Ah, a population can't deserve anything, an individual can. But yes, you are correct.
Keep restricting supply while demand increases, and watch what happens. Oh wait, we’ve already seen what happens, and yet we refuse to acknowledge it.
Sadly humans are apes and thus they are not really looking for science to tell them what they don't know, they want it to confirm what they'd like to think.
I mean, one can build it NITBY, just with functioning public transport to TBY, so that it could function. There's plenty of available space on the planet.
Modern billionaires are the manifestation of the rampant consumerism of the masses. Want to do your part against the billionaires? Start with consuming less. Buy less. Move toward minimal.
That may be the most tautological sentence I've ever read.
Well yeah. If you weren't sociopathic, you wouldn't be holding onto all of your money, but would instead be trying to help people with it.
Being a billionaire means having the means to help millions of people, and deciding to instead keep all that money for yourself.
Being a billionaire means using it to acquire more money which provides more power which provides more control. Shit floats to the top.
Not necessarily. It may be optimization between what you give now and what you keep for later to make more, with the total effect on others' well-being being the criterion. I mean, theoretically.
If you make a dime and immediately give it away randomly, you are making a worse decision than keeping it by this criterion. If you immediately give it away not randomly, but to somebody you think needs it, still possibly worse because you could try and make much more and then, say, open a pharmaceutical company.
Say, with cattle you'd use some for meat and some to make more cattle to feed more people. You wouldn't just slaughter the whole herd for meat. It's worse.
You can’t be sociopathic and psychopathic - they’re different points on the same (ASPD) spectrum. Please learn what words mean before throwing them around.
According to Hwang, the company now formerly known as Twitter did offer "an alternative handle with the history of the @x account" so that his original account, complete with its posts and followers, could live on and continue to be used.
What short, catchy username did Musk's company change Hwang's handle to? @x12345678998765.
You can't make this shit up. God damn!
that sounds like what an idiot would have for a password.
So you are saying one could log into @x with that...
Quick someone check if it’s Elons password!
Nah his password would definitely include an "42069" in it.
Did you try xXx42069NoScopexXx?
It's the same password I have on my luggage!
Who the hell downvoted an Airplane! quote?
Maybe someone who hasn't see Airplane.
I refuse to believe there are people like that. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
However, Hwang tells me, he was also offered a new handle of his choice – as long as it's available. He just hasn't picked one yet.
That is absolutely hilarious.
They should've offered him @twitter in exchange, it would only be fair...
Musk probably wanted to make it @x42069.
All for the buzz I imagine.
Or for some hyper inflated fragile ego I guess.
Well that's my guess.
Let's be real now. That name is temporary until he chooses his new one. Read the whole article. It's rediculous enough without making things seem even worse.
But look at that username. It definitely not randomly generated. Someone at Twitter pick that new name. They just give someone with the shortest username possible (1 character) the longest possible username (15 characters), and they do so by pressing the number row back and forth until they hit the username characters size limit. If it's not a mockery then I don't know what is.
💩
It's not mockery, it is the logical thing to do. They don't want to allocate a username a person would actually want, so naturally they pick the longest possible username, with arbitrary and meaningless contents. Would you have been happier if it was @xloremipsumdolo? @xtemporaryusern? Like what was the right thing for the technician who had to pick the name to do, in your mind?
I thought long and hard about this, and you're right. If it were me, no matter what the new username is, I'm still going to be mad. But I feel like I'll be less mad (just a little bit less) if they select a completely random username (with sensible length, like 8 characters or less), indicating it's chosen by an impartial random number generator instead of chosen by someone who in my mind is messing with me (image of Elon Musk laughing at me coming in my mind).
What short, catchy username did Musk's company change Hwang's handle to? @x12345678998765.
It could have been worse.
They could have named him "X Æ A-12" 😵💫
Kyle!
Man...
I was pretty bummed when I heard that Twitter was going to die. There are some cool moments in history that happened on Twitter. It was a hell of a ride, but the writing was on the wall well before Elon bought it. It was time to go.
But not like this.
It deserved a good death. Not to have it's corpse raped on full display over and over.
A lot of very talented people committed so much time and energy to this. When it launched, it was a novel idea and they really forged some roads in our understanding of how we communicate and receive information.
It was clear at the end that it would never produce the kind of ROI on advertising to make investors happy, and that Nazis had clearly taken over the platform and used it to bastardize journalism further. It was time to go to pasture.
But not like this.
Hopefully its mutilated, humiliated and desiccated corpse will feed the growth of the federated web.
I hope you find peace, sweet prince.
Twitter was profitable before Musk took over.
The purchase itself saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt. Musk paid $26bn, other investors (including the Saudi prince) together paid $5bn, and the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on their behalf.
The new owners only paid tax on the $31bn they paid, not the $44bn that was paid to shareholders. (Here's something I'm not sure about: Musk was one of the largest shareholders. Is the $44bn the total value of all shares - does that include Musk's shares? Did he basically buy shares from himself?)
The interest on that $13bn was comparible to Twitter's revenue, before Musk started fucking around. Twitter could not afford that debt.
The buyout itself was what killed Twitter. Everything since then has been nothing but a clown show to distract from the fact that was the original intention.
Thank you. I hate it when people say Twitter wasn't profitable. It was profitable. It just wasn't an infinite money printing machine like people (investors) wanted. Twitter didn't need investor money or loans to pay all its bills unlike say Tumblr.
Twitter was the victim of the same financial BS as Toysrus.
I've had the impression for a while that Twitter upper management wanted monthly active users on the level of Facebook, Tiktok and other social media. To enrich themselves by way of ad revenue, rather than to create opportunities and experiences for the platform and its users. Then when it became apparent that such a potential opportunity had come and gone (if it was ever there in the first place), they did what was in their minds the next-best thing: They cashed out while they could still find a buyer. Elon's idiotically freewheeling but nevertheless binding offer was basically their winning lottery ticket, so they held his feet to the fire instead of treating it like the thoughtless shitpost it was.
Wait, that sounds like a leveraged buyout. I overlooked that detail in the news. It changes everything.
I know that some investment firms use leveraged buyouts to drain every bit of money from a company before they chop it up, sell the good bits and let the rest go bankrupt due to the massive debts left in the carcass of the old company. It's so scummy I wonder why it's not illegal.
I'm not saying it wasn't profitable. It's a hell of an achievement that it was.
Just that they took on a lot of investment capital and it wasn't the kind of return that investors were expecting.
Ultimately, the efficacy of social media advertising on the whole is in the decline. The number and types of companies that used to advertise and run their business on Facebook is so different today than it was five years ago, and business are seeing far less return for their budget.
Twitter was riding a knife's edge (particularly during COVID) and would have to really scramble to stay in the red in the future.
would have to really scramble to stay in the red in the future
Did you mean stay in the black?
the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on their behalf.
That's truly some Hollywood-accounting-style bullshit. I couldn't even imagine the paradoxical mathematics it took to make that happen.
It would be like me paying you to buy a candy bar from me.
there was a time when twitter was the place for internet sensation. if you want to see what's going around the world, twitter was a great place to visit. movements like #metoo wouldn't have happened if there was no twitter. sad to see that musk just plays with it like a toy and making it's credibility to lose everyday and giving it a slow death.
movements like #metoo wouldn’t have happened if there was no twitter.
You'd want to include your instance as part of your handle. I know, it's not as intuitive as a centralized service, but it is a requirement, especially when sharing the name elsewhere. So, your Lemmy account is chamrsdeluxe@lemmy.world. Folks on lemmy.world don't need that, but folks on another instance (like me) would. I can get it from clicking your username, but there's no way to figure it out for a different platform from here.
If you type it like this you'll get an instance agnostic link (at least on instances v0.18 and above, not necessarily in apps): /u/ChamrsDeluxe@lemmy.world.
You can also select from a dropdown box on the website to send a mention, however this link goes to their instance rather than your own: @ChamrsDeluxe@lemmy.world. The code for this is [@ChamrsDeluxe@lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world/u/ChamrsDeluxe), you can type this manually and replace any link text in between the square brackets, so generally [link text](https://userinstance/u/user).
The old pre-0.17 instance agnostic links were [link text](/c/community@instance) or [link text](/u/user@instance), but the new versions will automatically generate without link code:
/c/community@instance
!community@instance
/u/user@instance (does not send a mention)
Also, kbin doesn't federate properly. You might not even see this comment over there...
If I'm reading this right there are two ways to indicate a user including its instance:
/u/username@example.com
@username@example.com
Which one is the recommended one?
The first one will generate a link automatically with no code (on lemmy v0.18 and above, not necessarily in apps - it doesn't seem to work in Jerboa currently). This link is instance agnostic, meaning the viewer sees a link in their own instance, rather than the example.com instance. This means you can send them a DM, or open their comments and reply to them.
The second one isn't enough on its own, it needs to be in the form [link text](https://example.com/u/user). However, if you start typing @user@example.com on the website, a pop up box will allow you to select the user and generate the link code for you - it will give you [@user@example.com](https://example.com/u/user). This version is not agnostic, it takes you to the user's instance, however it does send a mention to the user's inbox.
Hopefully in a future update they will combine these two, so that an agnostic link will also send a mention, and so the mention link will auto-generate and be agnostic. Right now, one is for linking to a profile you want to interact with, the other is for calling that person into the thread with a mention.
Edit: Just for a little more fun variation, it looks like Jerboa handles the @user@instance link as if it were instance agnostic. On the website it opens the user's instance.
Yes, but this doesn't have anything to do with mastodon which was my point. You need to include the instance in your mastodon handle. Which I see you've gone back and edited now, but that was my whole point. I didn't need a lesson on something I literally just demonstrated I know about.
That's all well and good, but I was telling them to include the instance for their mastodon handle, which they've gone back and edited to include it now.
Yeah I know. But we're on lemmy here, so it's good to know.
Mastodon might not do that sort of thing, and kbin is different again. Tbh I'm surprised you even got my last comment (although it seems like you got it late) as most of the time kbin and lemmy don't federate properly through threads. For example, I was unable to reply to you on my phone in Jerboa, and on the website it doesn't work unless I specifically select English as the language.
You're not done yet - you need to sign up on all the instances!! Then you'll really not know what you're doing!
Followed!
What short, catchy username did Musk's company change Hwang's handle to? @x12345678998765.
That's some really !funnyandsad material...
Sounds like someone trying to type a random number on the keyboard, looking at it, and thinking, what ever
It's not even random, it's counting 1 to 9 and then down again to 5. Seems like even less effort lol. It's either patronising in a show off kind of way or just dumb. Either way.. just wow.
I hate to say it because Fuck Elon, but this is just one of those things you sign away when you agree to the terms of service.
True, but it's still worth criticizing because of him being so dickish about it. He even renamed the account @x12345678998765.
And he could have gone down the "Mike Row Soft" route and offered the guy some free stuff as compensation.
Terms allowing them to do something doesn't mean they have to be dicks about it.
Exactly! Musk is being an asshole because he can and he likes it. Sure, he has every right to be an asshole just like Jason Aldean has the right to release a racist song. That doesn't make them free from criticism.
As much as this sucks, this person has no rights to their name and never did. Stop using the platform and giving it attention!
Yeah, it’s not like they ever bought that name from Twitter so there’s no real argument that they actually own it, even if they’d ever bought the checkmark BS.
Money and a rename would have been a goodwill gesture, and expecting any goodwill from this version of twitter is insanity.
I don't think anyone is saying they are owed money. But just taking the handle with nothing in return is really not nice.
They could at least give the guy like Twitter Blue for life or whatever the heck premium is called now.
Is that not what the title says? Like, i'm new to Lemmy so maybe i'm confused? Didn't OP write "He got no money from it :(" in the title?
Haha, me calling it dumb to think they'd be owed money is getting people super angry.
Being downvoted is not indicative of voters' anger. It's simply showing they don't agree with you.
Pulling the victim card is revealing a shit-ton about you tho.
I see why people use downvoting this way, especially since that was the norm on reddit which a good portion of the base fled from, I find the same issue I had with downvotes on reddit to apply here as well though. I try to advocate down votes to be not out of personal opinion, but a reflection that the content is either useless or harmful to the existing conversation. This allows posts that are actually useful and contribute to the discussion to exist even if they are unpopular to peoples opinion. Just because you don't like the post, doesn't mean the post isn't true or useful, which is why I find that form of downvoting ideology to be harmful overall.
That being said, I would find the parent comment you replied to as constructive to the conversation...Up until they started egging people on with "is getting people super angry" I wouldn't call this being downvoted for not agreeing, I would call it being downvoted for not being constructive to the post at hand(as there's no need to actively try to get people to rage at you with a post like that)
So what do users not agree to in my post but do with in this?
Also, what a fucking Reddit thing to do.
Crying reddit croc tears in no way helps your cause.
I don't have a "cause". But I see that you have no answer.
To be fair, no user "owns" their account. Everything about your Twitter account, from the user name to the data you tweet belongs to Twitter. I hesitate to call it a dick move. It's more of an Elon move.
I really hope phrases like "he got Musked" and "they Musked up" become a thing.
Right. Although I don't support it, but if the logic is that they can supress stories and say you don't have a free speech on a private platform, then they can take away your handle because technically it's theirs.
The user got Elon'd
Get Musked kiddo 😎
Someone wrote those terms and conditions though. So, still a dick move.
Musk is an overpaid idiot, but anyone has to expect not to have any real rights on any website.
Imagine how amazing the PR would have been if the title had been: "User gets spectator seating for a SpaceX launch in return for lost handle"
Instead he got a "fuck you" 🤷
More X-crement. Stop wasting your time on this shit site.
Another example of Musk being a cunt, what a surprise
I can hear his theme song now.....
X gon' take it from ya (uh), he gon' take it from ya
X gon' take it from ya, he gon' take it from ya
First we gonna rock, then we gonna roll
Then we let it pop, go, let it go
This can be done with any centralized social media. You don't know your username.
I wouldn't say it's limited to centralized social media. The admin of Lemmy.world could go into its database and do whatever they want to my username, too. And other instances can feel free to steal my name if I didn't grab it first.
That's correct!
The only social media I would trust is Nostr.
I doubt X has much money to spare to give to people considering how they hemorrhage money.
Clearly you don't realize how much a billion dollars really is then.
He could literally lose 99% of his wealth and still be islands buying rich.
Elon is not Twitter/X. Sure, he could pump all his personal money into it and keep it afloat indefinitely and I'm sure he's putting in personal money.. but at the end of the day they're separate entities.
You want a business to survive on its own funding. If I were him I would try to put in as little personal money as possible. Which is why we're seeing stuff like them getting evicted from office spaces. He doesn't want to just burn money.
Thank you for this!
I dislike Musk as much as the next person, but most of the hate of Musk & Twitter/X fails to make the distinction that they are not the same thing. At this point, any additional capital injected into X is throwing good money after really bad money.
Elon is not Twitter but Twitter is Elon. It used to be a public company, but now it is his personal property. There is no difference between Elon losing a dollar and Twitter losing a dollar. If he can use his personal resources to manipulate Twitter's market value or appeal to advertises, he can and will because anything else is leaving money on the table. They are not separate entities.
From what i have read, most of his money is in the stock value of tesla. If other car makers take away teslas market share then elons wealth will soon follow, and right now he does not exactly do any of "his" companies any favours with his ego and business decisions.
const x = 0;
The guy should ask for @xoriginal...
Technically they don't need to nor would you. Yeah its shitty but its making a mountain out of a molehill....
A typical Internet scammer would have at least pretended to offer some money before stealing the username.
He ain't pretending ...
Can someone pro-bono the original user for a suit? inb4 this is a dumb idea
This is a dumb idea
FUCK ELON MUSKy
I swear to god fucking Elon Musk googled “cool website name generator” before changing it
I read he has a history with trying to make company X happen
I think it's more likely he googled "Call of Duty Username prefix generator" then shaved the duplicates XD
Yup, keep fucking that chicken there Elon.
I shall refer to it as Ex
Or "ten" and we all agree it should be looked at as a Roman numeral.
What if I don't like the romans? I think they're the reason we're in this mess in the first place.
Was he ever going to get paid
Knowing Musk, this is not a surprise.
That would be amazing
offensive but idgaf about Tw so, did they ban the owner's email login while at being dicks
Me being called XTornado ... That was close not that close but again I didn't predict this happening at all (all the Twitter name change all that ).
Leftpad
Has what to do with this? ...
Why is this news? It is their platform. You have your handle at their discretion. Getting paid for it? Hahahaha. Riiiight. This isn't some domain that is actually owned. You own literally nothing on social media platforms. Whoever theorized he'd be paid is moronic and a perfect example of a twit.
Doesn't it come across as unethical and wrong like an abuse of power to you?
Sure it's wrong, but the real point is no one is surprised Musk did something to make someone feel like shit. It's his goal
The better move is to let the platform slip away into irrelevancy.
Its their platform and their reputation. If some users don't like what "Musk" do, then they have right to make and read news about it, regardless of de jure rights, EULA and whatnot.
PS: And yes, the owner's account was renamed in a rather nonchalant "fuck you" way. I would never learn about this, without these news.
I'm not insinuating it wouldn't be bad press for them. It's simply the reality of being on someone else's platform. You exist on their service at their pleasure. They can shut everything down tomorrow and you are owed nothing, but that does not free them of criticism.
Except copyright and pattents if applicable, you cant claim a capital letter, but you can your branding (style and context behind the letter).
If you are thinking of building a brand on twitter (or X) or have an existing brand, it is important to know that twitter (or X) are willing just take your name away from you if they feel like it without recourse.
Of course it is always technically possible to take a user name. But most sites make it clear that they wont risk damaging brands by protecting against fake clones and allowing companies to keep their user names. That is why it is news.
I mean you agree to that when you sign up on their service so you should know better than to build your entire identity on something you dont own. Just like you wouldnt have Lemmy be your one point of a brand on someone elses instance because you dont know if it will shut down tomorrow
Yes, I agree. I don't see how that makes the information any less important. If Lemmy or Twitter was going to shutdown tomorrow I would want to hear about it.
Sounds like a you problem if you're relying on a social media service to help you build a brand. If you pay, you have legal recourse. If you're there for free advertising, sucks to base your brand on hopes and dreams.
Yes, it is your problem. That is why it should be news. So you can figure out if it is worth the risk of putting your brand on twitter.
It's showing a rather funny lack of tact, soft skills and PR skills. Google can take your Gmail account too, but it's rather unheard of (say Google launches a product name "GreatDay" - it's absolutely unheard of for Google to just grab the "GreatDay" handle from Gmail - in fact such a move would sent terror chills up many marketing departments around the world honestly).
I'm not going to blame you for not understanding just how ridiculous this is, but this sends all the wrong messages - i.e. could I pay Elon to grab someone else's Twitter handle because I can make a better business claim for it? That sure is what this seems to imply
It's news because as the owners of information channels can do as they please, it's shitty when they don't even pretend to be neutral. Which is why they usually do. Not a hard thing to follow and no, thinking that a payment would be issued isn't a sign of a "twit," it's just one way they could have not seemed like dicks who do as they please.
I wonder how is this post related to technology in any way? That is just some regular news.
It's a reminder that in big parts of todays digital world you own nothing. All access, presumed rights, and data can be taken from you whenever a big company decides to do so.
Is it news? Probably not. Are people aware of it? Clearly not - at least nobody acts like it.
I'm not sure what you are trying to do with this link, the two x accounts are not the same....
Reportedly Twitter changed the guy’s X account to that one.
I think we're talking past each other, the x who lost his account (I think) is now x12345678998765 the post behind the link was made by the account x12345678908765 they are not the same account, so the link does neither disprove nor prove the article in the main post which makes the comment by sam just useless and deceiving
Ah, you’re correct. Cheers.
0 is not 9. Look closely.
Yeah why would they pay the "owner"? It's their platform they do whatever they want. What a dumb thing to complain about.
There is this thing called decency. You might have heard of it.
Yeah they even offered him some bullshit as compensation that they were not required to. Don't expect decency from a huge company like Twitter.
I like how we all like to pretend that these companies are not run by people. Company is not being an asshole people who were in charge of this transition were.
Why would the bank give you your money, its their business and you gave it to them.
Contrary to Twitter banking is regulated and governed by actual laws. It's a completely different beast. Go ahead and google who the owner of the money in your account is and how that is regulated.
Its literally regulated as well, a account in general cant just be taken...
You might have dropped this (◠‿・)—","
Not defending the Musk here, but literally it's not your money anymore as soon as you put it in a bank account.
The money you put in your account belongs to the bank, and the account functions as an I.O.U.. A very privileged one compared to other debts, and in most cases redeemable without notice, but you're in fact just another creditor.
That's not how banks work.
It's certainly how banks work where I live, and presuming we are talking about the US here, I did a quick skim through the first few results on google and there mostly seems to be agreement that it is a debtor/creditor relationship.
How would you describe the legal arrangements of a bank account then?
Former banker here. You're just fucking wrong about that. You've said zero true things.
Well I'm interested now. It certainly is the case where I live, and presuming we are talking about the US here, I did a quick skim through the first few results on google and they seem to agree that it's a debtor/creditor relationship.
How else would you describe the legal arrangements of a bank account then?
You own the money in your account, simple as that for individual accounts.
The transaction is "I give the bank money, and they have to give it back later". How can we arrange that legally without transferring ownership? I only know these ways:
Bailment: That would mean the bank keeps the physical bills (or other valuables) in a proverbial or literal safe with my name on it, to return the exact same items later. Of course banks offer that service, but that's not what we're talking about.
Trust: The bank takes my money and invests it on my behalf. It does not go on the bank's books, and they cannot use my money for their own purposes (e.g. as security for loans, to fulfil capital requirements, invest it themselves and keep the proceeds, etc.). This is obviously not the case.
Agency: The bank takes my money and executes transactions on my behalf, according to my orders. Again, obviously not the case.
Am I missing something? Is there some special law for bank accounts? I'm genuinely interested.
Think about it this way, if I'm going after your money, do I sue you, or do I sue the bank?
It's funny you mentioned bailment, the bank is absolutely required to keep enough cash on hand in order to satisfy what the FDIC deems to be a reasonable amount of coverage for their deposit accounts. (search "demand deposit account")
If I owe you money, and somebody else owes me money, yea of course you would sue me, not that other person. But I could write over some of the debt I'm owed to you to clear my debt to you.
And isn't this exactly how debt enforcement works? You win in court and the court tells the bank (or forces me to tell the bank) to take x amount out of my account and put it into your account. The debt I was owed gets transferred to you, which clears my debt to you.
No, it doesn't work like that at all. The difference is in the demand. You go to your bank and you demand the money in your account and you get it, simple as that. You can't do that with debt. Me owing you a dollar doesn't mean you have a dollar to spend. Ease of collection is literally the most important aspect of what we're discussing.
Of course you can "spend" debt, but only if the debtor is very reputable. Consider the old example: I ask you to fix my car. I don't have any money on me to repay you, so I give you an I.O.U.. You go get a haircut, but don't have any money on you either. The hairdresser knows I'm a standup guy so he takes my I.O.U. as payment instead. Later he comes to me to collect, I repay him and we rip up the I.O.U.. See how it can be spent like money (we could of course add any number of people in between who trust me where my I.O.U. changes hands)?
Part of the agreement with the bank is that they guarantee (to a reasonable degree, as the FDIC puts it) to be available for collection in cash at any time. That of course makes them an extremely reliable debtor, and therefore their I.O.U.s (a.k.a. the money in your account) are virtually globally accepted as payment (not least because of the government heavily regulating the matter). See the parallels?
Also, I still would like to know what the legal nature of a bank account is if not debt. I think I've ruled out Bailment, Trust, and Agency. What else is it?
Going on a tangent here, I think what cannot be understated is the power dynamic intrinsic in debt agreements. Usually, the creditor gains a considerable amount of power over the debtor, especially if the latter fails to repay his debt (the threat is foreclosure, imprisonment, etc.). It may be difficult to see a bank account as a debtor/creditor relation, precisely because this power gradient is inverted. The bank is the debtor, but somehow they retain all the power in the relationship.
Consider what happens if they cannot pay up (during a bank run for example): it is not the bank and the bankers that are under physical threat, but its creditors (the account holders), because obviously without money they cannot survive.
If by “money” you mean the physical dollar bills you put in the ATM, then yes.
That absolutely not how shit works.
You got downvoted to hell, but you're absolutely right. The fact that FDIC exists should be evidence enough to anyone with a functional brain that depositors in a bank are creditors and do not retain ownership of their literal deposit.
I wonder what other arrangement it could even possibly constitute.
Bailment? That would mean physically locking the bills that you deposit in a safe that you rent, which is possible I guess, but not what we're talking about here.
Trust? This would mean the deposit does not go on the bank's books, and they cannot use it for their own purposes. This is clearly not the case, at the very least since investment banks and savings banks were merged.
Agency? That would mean the bank uses your money to enact transactions on your behalf, again, clearly not the case.
That leaves the only other form of "I give you money and you give it back later", namely debt.
No one is owed anything, but not compensating the original owner further erodes what little trust was left in the company. You wouldn't want to spend resources building a brand on a platform where your name can suddenly get snatched away at some billionaire's whim.
Absolutely true. But apparently the headlines for this event are all "he got no money for it!"
Up until it was taken from him, he would have been able to sell it for a shit tonne of money. I think it's easy to understand why it was shitty of Twitter yo just snatch it
Because there's precedent that handles have value (on the order of thousands of USD). They're taking value from a customer. It'd be interesting to see what swag they offered in exchange, but considering the guy's net worth, he could have afforded some decency. I mean, Gmail can just take your email address to, but it is how many identify themselves in business, so it can harm them financially. Sure, that's the risk with doing that, but it is what it is. Musk could have generated some good will but instead generated more bad publicity. I'm beginning to think he has no PR on staff or just surrounds himself with people who never say no.
Is there a precedent for Twitter buying an account "back" from a user? IIRC all deals regarding Twitter accounts have been made between users.
The precedent is that the handle has value. It's a bad look when a company destroys value for a user, regardless of whether they have the right to or not. The internet is full of people complaining when Google shuts down a YouTube channel. It's essentially the same thing. You expect a good reason or exchange to occur to make the customer whole.
I don't understand where your confusion lies. The guy got screwed over for being a loyal user of the service, despite Musk not owning it for that whole duration.
The guy was offered swag, but I couldn't find details of what it was. And as far as I can tell, this isn't really decrying the lack of money. Just how they handled the situation as a whole.
You understand how it's an asshole move, but don't understand why someone would expect some compensation for the dick move? When someone gives their spouse some roses because they acted like an ass, are you confused by the roses?
the main problem with this is that with them doing it without asking or time to prepare all the people the guy knew where lost or have a problem finding him.
And the huy was seemingly not even a nobody but instead had a company so even more company contacts could get lost or customers wanting to directly reach out to him could sent private data to a 3 party (twitter) about confidential informations.
Secondly it says that the company can and will take over accounts when they have some reason, even if it is only the name.
That means the trust in the handle gets completly broken because it could be a twitter account in just a few seconds without warning.
So they have the power to take over an official governement or news account without warning and only leaving a reason. This is theoretical but if there is a news station with a handle like "xnews" i can really expect that it gets taken over in some time in the future.
I agree with all of this. I just think it's idiotic to complain that they didn't pay him. Twitter handles are not "owned" by the user and the platform can and will do with them whatever they like at any time.
So what you're saying is you approve of identity theft. Gotcha.
Their platform only has value because people use it. Mistreat your users, they go elsewhere and suddenly your platform becomes worthless.
They certainly can do whatever they want, but folks are still able to call musk out for being a bully.
It's the same reasoning behind folks confusing freedom of speech with freedom from consequences of their speech.
Why do you assume that complaining is the same as saying Twitter isn't allowed to do this? I can still think it's shitty without thinking they aren't allowed to do it.
I think it's dumb to go "He got zero dollars for it." as it sounds like he was owed anything. I also feel that it creates confusion with people being paid for a TLD they owned (or "squatted" on) which is something very different from having a Twitter handle. But apparently that's just me.
Why do you CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE?
What you should have posted was nothing.
TIL if anyone carries anything valuable onto my property, it entitles me to take it from them
My property, my rules /s
TIL the original user of the "@x" account owned it and brought it to Twitter who then took it from him.
Bingo
You might be surprised to learn that you do in fact not "own" your Twitter handle and Twitter is not required to buy it off of you if they want it.
Oh really? Wow, maybe if I licked more boots it would make me smarter enough to "understand" this
Elon Musk is a bully
As all billionaires are. Along with unempathetic sociopathic psychopaths.
I can't fathom having the power to save our at least change millions of lives...but instead choose to leech more wealth from the people that need it most. And systematically make the world worse. It's a sickness.
There are no good billionaires.
I would build SO much low income, homeless, and transition housing. I would also start my own line of bamboo products and packaging to replace plastic.
Then you'd go bankrupt and stop supporting your "so much" housing, unless you'd gift it to those people, not give as a temporary service.
Bamboo - a nice idea. Actually I'm not sure it's that hard for you to do even now. I'm serious, if you know the pipeline, then try to evaluate how much a start would cost (for it to be barely profitable). You need, well, bamboo itself (grows like a virus, shouldn't be a problem), and on the process of making stuff from bamboo I'm not sure (I think it involves making some kind of pulp and then pressure?..), but humans do this kind of thing. Should probably start with dishes and cups.
The most important part of what you said is that you’d build “SO much” housing. If we’d just let the free market build all the housing it wants without letting NIMBYs get in the way, we’d have largely solved the housing crisis.
Except we already have more houses than there are homeless people. The problem is the empty houses have ridiculous price tags due to corporate landlords and landlords refusing the sell and only rent (also at ridiculous prices)
Vacancy rates in the places where people actually want to live are really low. Besides, are people not allowed to have vacation homes?
Market price is a function of supply and demand. We’ve been under building housing for years.
Alright but life never promised anyone these luxuries. I don't give a fuck if someone can't have a vacation home because it means more people without one can have one. People act like freedom to do whatever the hell they want no matter how negatively it effects everyone else is their universal right. The Universe doesn't give a fuck about your summer home, nature doesn't give a fuck that you worked hard to get it. It will all be swallowed all the same if our main goal still is not perpetual survival. That may be authoritarian, but it is also the truth. We never left the game of survival we just plastered concrete and asphalt on top of it and pretended we were removed.
Nor does the universe care about your sense of fairness or lack of understanding of econ 101. Keep restricting supply while demand increases, and watch what happens. Oh wait, we’ve already seen what happens, and yet we refuse to acknowledge it.
So be it. A population deserves the problems it gets.
I never said supply wasn't an issue. I said people are out here acting like they are owed luxury and that has never been true nor will it ever be. We all know zoning laws and supply restrictions for profit are what got us here. Do you think any of the lobbyists receiving money from these corps are gonna let it go? No.
Edit: and econ101 doesnt matter when the supply is kept artificially low through corporate welfare, consolidation, and lobbying.
Dude is either trolling or brainwashed. You’ll never get through to them.
Ah, OK. But then "there's more empty houses than homeless people" argument doesn't make sense.
WDYM it doesn't? It works as expected.
Ah, a population can't deserve anything, an individual can. But yes, you are correct.
Sadly humans are apes and thus they are not really looking for science to tell them what they don't know, they want it to confirm what they'd like to think.
I mean, one can build it NITBY, just with functioning public transport to TBY, so that it could function. There's plenty of available space on the planet.
Modern billionaires are the manifestation of the rampant consumerism of the masses. Want to do your part against the billionaires? Start with consuming less. Buy less. Move toward minimal.
That may be the most tautological sentence I've ever read.
Automated teller ATM machine 👍
Personal Identification PIN Number 👍
Well yeah. If you weren't sociopathic, you wouldn't be holding onto all of your money, but would instead be trying to help people with it.
Being a billionaire means having the means to help millions of people, and deciding to instead keep all that money for yourself.
Being a billionaire means using it to acquire more money which provides more power which provides more control. Shit floats to the top.
Not necessarily. It may be optimization between what you give now and what you keep for later to make more, with the total effect on others' well-being being the criterion. I mean, theoretically.
If you make a dime and immediately give it away randomly, you are making a worse decision than keeping it by this criterion. If you immediately give it away not randomly, but to somebody you think needs it, still possibly worse because you could try and make much more and then, say, open a pharmaceutical company.
Say, with cattle you'd use some for meat and some to make more cattle to feed more people. You wouldn't just slaughter the whole herd for meat. It's worse.
You can’t be sociopathic and psychopathic - they’re different points on the same (ASPD) spectrum. Please learn what words mean before throwing them around.
Elon is as a Elon does
You can't make this shit up. God damn!
that sounds like what an idiot would have for a password.
So you are saying one could log into @x with that...
Quick someone check if it’s Elons password!
Nah his password would definitely include an "42069" in it.
Did you try
xXx42069NoScopexXx?It's the same password I have on my luggage!
Who the hell downvoted an Airplane! quote?
Maybe someone who hasn't see Airplane.
I refuse to believe there are people like that. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
He should ask for @twitter.
"as long as it's available" is as good as nothing imho.
We'll a lot of people have left
Since his handle is being taken against his will, he should get to take someone else's handle against their will. Then let it be a chain reaction.
That is absolutely hilarious. They should've offered him @twitter in exchange, it would only be fair...
Musk probably wanted to make it @x42069.
All for the buzz I imagine.
Or for some hyper inflated fragile ego I guess.
Well that's my guess.
Let's be real now. That name is temporary until he chooses his new one. Read the whole article. It's rediculous enough without making things seem even worse.
But look at that username. It definitely not randomly generated. Someone at Twitter pick that new name. They just give someone with the shortest username possible (1 character) the longest possible username (15 characters), and they do so by pressing the number row back and forth until they hit the username characters size limit. If it's not a mockery then I don't know what is.
💩
It's not mockery, it is the logical thing to do. They don't want to allocate a username a person would actually want, so naturally they pick the longest possible username, with arbitrary and meaningless contents. Would you have been happier if it was @xloremipsumdolo? @xtemporaryusern? Like what was the right thing for the technician who had to pick the name to do, in your mind?
I thought long and hard about this, and you're right. If it were me, no matter what the new username is, I'm still going to be mad. But I feel like I'll be less mad (just a little bit less) if they select a completely random username (with sensible length, like 8 characters or less), indicating it's chosen by an impartial random number generator instead of chosen by someone who in my mind is messing with me (image of Elon Musk laughing at me coming in my mind).
It could have been worse.
They could have named him "X Æ A-12" 😵💫
Kyle!
Man...
I was pretty bummed when I heard that Twitter was going to die. There are some cool moments in history that happened on Twitter. It was a hell of a ride, but the writing was on the wall well before Elon bought it. It was time to go.
But not like this.
It deserved a good death. Not to have it's corpse raped on full display over and over.
A lot of very talented people committed so much time and energy to this. When it launched, it was a novel idea and they really forged some roads in our understanding of how we communicate and receive information.
It was clear at the end that it would never produce the kind of ROI on advertising to make investors happy, and that Nazis had clearly taken over the platform and used it to bastardize journalism further. It was time to go to pasture.
But not like this.
Hopefully its mutilated, humiliated and desiccated corpse will feed the growth of the federated web.
I hope you find peace, sweet prince.
Twitter was profitable before Musk took over.
The purchase itself saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt. Musk paid $26bn, other investors (including the Saudi prince) together paid $5bn, and the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on their behalf.
The new owners only paid tax on the $31bn they paid, not the $44bn that was paid to shareholders. (Here's something I'm not sure about: Musk was one of the largest shareholders. Is the $44bn the total value of all shares - does that include Musk's shares? Did he basically buy shares from himself?)
The interest on that $13bn was comparible to Twitter's revenue, before Musk started fucking around. Twitter could not afford that debt.
The buyout itself was what killed Twitter. Everything since then has been nothing but a clown show to distract from the fact that was the original intention.
Thank you. I hate it when people say Twitter wasn't profitable. It was profitable. It just wasn't an infinite money printing machine like people (investors) wanted. Twitter didn't need investor money or loans to pay all its bills unlike say Tumblr.
Twitter was the victim of the same financial BS as Toysrus.
I've had the impression for a while that Twitter upper management wanted monthly active users on the level of Facebook, Tiktok and other social media. To enrich themselves by way of ad revenue, rather than to create opportunities and experiences for the platform and its users. Then when it became apparent that such a potential opportunity had come and gone (if it was ever there in the first place), they did what was in their minds the next-best thing: They cashed out while they could still find a buyer. Elon's idiotically freewheeling but nevertheless binding offer was basically their winning lottery ticket, so they held his feet to the fire instead of treating it like the thoughtless shitpost it was.
Wait, that sounds like a leveraged buyout. I overlooked that detail in the news. It changes everything.
I know that some investment firms use leveraged buyouts to drain every bit of money from a company before they chop it up, sell the good bits and let the rest go bankrupt due to the massive debts left in the carcass of the old company. It's so scummy I wonder why it's not illegal.
It is a leveraged buyout, yes.
I'm not saying it wasn't profitable. It's a hell of an achievement that it was.
Just that they took on a lot of investment capital and it wasn't the kind of return that investors were expecting.
Ultimately, the efficacy of social media advertising on the whole is in the decline. The number and types of companies that used to advertise and run their business on Facebook is so different today than it was five years ago, and business are seeing far less return for their budget.
Twitter was riding a knife's edge (particularly during COVID) and would have to really scramble to stay in the red in the future.
Did you mean stay in the black?
That's truly some Hollywood-accounting-style bullshit. I couldn't even imagine the paradoxical mathematics it took to make that happen.
It would be like me paying you to buy a candy bar from me.
there was a time when twitter was the place for internet sensation. if you want to see what's going around the world, twitter was a great place to visit. movements like #metoo wouldn't have happened if there was no twitter. sad to see that musk just plays with it like a toy and making it's credibility to lose everyday and giving it a slow death.
That's exactly why Musk is doing what he's doing.
Indeed, put it out of its misery.
Shitty social media website does shitty thing and continues enshittification full throttle.
Well I went ahead and did a mastadon. No clue what I am doing, but.. Woohoo?
I'm chamrsdeluxe@mastadon.social there too I guess. Idk
You'd want to include your instance as part of your handle. I know, it's not as intuitive as a centralized service, but it is a requirement, especially when sharing the name elsewhere. So, your Lemmy account is chamrsdeluxe@lemmy.world. Folks on lemmy.world don't need that, but folks on another instance (like me) would. I can get it from clicking your username, but there's no way to figure it out for a different platform from here.
If you type it like this you'll get an instance agnostic link (at least on instances v0.18 and above, not necessarily in apps): /u/ChamrsDeluxe@lemmy.world.
You can also select from a dropdown box on the website to send a mention, however this link goes to their instance rather than your own: @ChamrsDeluxe@lemmy.world. The code for this is
[@ChamrsDeluxe@lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world/u/ChamrsDeluxe), you can type this manually and replace any link text in between the square brackets, so generally[link text](https://userinstance/u/user).The old pre-0.17 instance agnostic links were
[link text](/c/community@instance)or[link text](/u/user@instance), but the new versions will automatically generate without link code:/c/community@instance!community@instance/u/user@instance(does not send a mention)Also, kbin doesn't federate properly. You might not even see this comment over there...
If I'm reading this right there are two ways to indicate a user including its instance:
/u/username@example.com@username@example.comWhich one is the recommended one?
The first one will generate a link automatically with no code (on lemmy v0.18 and above, not necessarily in apps - it doesn't seem to work in Jerboa currently). This link is instance agnostic, meaning the viewer sees a link in their own instance, rather than the
example.cominstance. This means you can send them a DM, or open their comments and reply to them.The second one isn't enough on its own, it needs to be in the form
[link text](https://example.com/u/user). However, if you start typing@user@example.comon the website, a pop up box will allow you to select the user and generate the link code for you - it will give you[@user@example.com](https://example.com/u/user). This version is not agnostic, it takes you to the user's instance, however it does send a mention to the user's inbox.Hopefully in a future update they will combine these two, so that an agnostic link will also send a mention, and so the mention link will auto-generate and be agnostic. Right now, one is for linking to a profile you want to interact with, the other is for calling that person into the thread with a mention.
Edit: Just for a little more fun variation, it looks like Jerboa handles the
@user@instancelink as if it were instance agnostic. On the website it opens the user's instance.Yes, but this doesn't have anything to do with mastodon which was my point. You need to include the instance in your mastodon handle. Which I see you've gone back and edited now, but that was my whole point. I didn't need a lesson on something I literally just demonstrated I know about.
That's all well and good, but I was telling them to include the instance for their mastodon handle, which they've gone back and edited to include it now.
Yeah I know. But we're on lemmy here, so it's good to know.
Mastodon might not do that sort of thing, and kbin is different again. Tbh I'm surprised you even got my last comment (although it seems like you got it late) as most of the time kbin and lemmy don't federate properly through threads. For example, I was unable to reply to you on my phone in Jerboa, and on the website it doesn't work unless I specifically select English as the language.
You're not done yet - you need to sign up on all the instances!! Then you'll really not know what you're doing!
Followed!
That's some really !funnyandsad material...
Sounds like someone trying to type a random number on the keyboard, looking at it, and thinking, what ever
It's not even random, it's counting 1 to 9 and then down again to 5. Seems like even less effort lol. It's either patronising in a show off kind of way or just dumb. Either way.. just wow.
I hate to say it because Fuck Elon, but this is just one of those things you sign away when you agree to the terms of service.
True, but it's still worth criticizing because of him being so dickish about it. He even renamed the account @x12345678998765.
And he could have gone down the "Mike Row Soft" route and offered the guy some free stuff as compensation. Terms allowing them to do something doesn't mean they have to be dicks about it.
Exactly! Musk is being an asshole because he can and he likes it. Sure, he has every right to be an asshole just like Jason Aldean has the right to release a racist song. That doesn't make them free from criticism.
It's still really petty - Elon is one of the richest guys on earth. Take the username, but send him a Tesla. Invite him to a SpaceX launch.
Well you don't get rich by giving away 100k cars to everyone...
Exactly. You get rich by being a dick.
As much as this sucks, this person has no rights to their name and never did. Stop using the platform and giving it attention!
Yeah, it’s not like they ever bought that name from Twitter so there’s no real argument that they actually own it, even if they’d ever bought the checkmark BS.
Money and a rename would have been a goodwill gesture, and expecting any goodwill from this version of twitter is insanity.
I don't think anyone is saying they are owed money. But just taking the handle with nothing in return is really not nice.
They could at least give the guy like Twitter Blue for life or whatever the heck premium is called now.
Is that not what the title says? Like, i'm new to Lemmy so maybe i'm confused? Didn't OP write "He got no money from it :(" in the title?
Haha, me calling it dumb to think they'd be owed money is getting people super angry.
Being downvoted is not indicative of voters' anger. It's simply showing they don't agree with you.
Pulling the victim card is revealing a shit-ton about you tho.
I see why people use downvoting this way, especially since that was the norm on reddit which a good portion of the base fled from, I find the same issue I had with downvotes on reddit to apply here as well though. I try to advocate down votes to be not out of personal opinion, but a reflection that the content is either useless or harmful to the existing conversation. This allows posts that are actually useful and contribute to the discussion to exist even if they are unpopular to peoples opinion. Just because you don't like the post, doesn't mean the post isn't true or useful, which is why I find that form of downvoting ideology to be harmful overall.
That being said, I would find the parent comment you replied to as constructive to the conversation...Up until they started egging people on with "is getting people super angry" I wouldn't call this being downvoted for not agreeing, I would call it being downvoted for not being constructive to the post at hand(as there's no need to actively try to get people to rage at you with a post like that)
So what do users not agree to in my post but do with in this?
Also, what a fucking Reddit thing to do.
Crying reddit croc tears in no way helps your cause.
I don't have a "cause". But I see that you have no answer.
To be fair, no user "owns" their account. Everything about your Twitter account, from the user name to the data you tweet belongs to Twitter. I hesitate to call it a dick move. It's more of an Elon move.
I really hope phrases like "he got Musked" and "they Musked up" become a thing.
Right. Although I don't support it, but if the logic is that they can supress stories and say you don't have a free speech on a private platform, then they can take away your handle because technically it's theirs.
The user got Elon'd
Get Musked kiddo 😎
Someone wrote those terms and conditions though. So, still a dick move.
Musk is an overpaid idiot, but anyone has to expect not to have any real rights on any website.
Imagine how amazing the PR would have been if the title had been: "User gets spectator seating for a SpaceX launch in return for lost handle"
Instead he got a "fuck you" 🤷
More X-crement. Stop wasting your time on this shit site.
Another example of Musk being a cunt, what a surprise
I can hear his theme song now.....
X gon' take it from ya (uh), he gon' take it from ya X gon' take it from ya, he gon' take it from ya
First we gonna rock, then we gonna roll Then we let it pop, go, let it go
This can be done with any centralized social media. You don't know your username.
I wouldn't say it's limited to centralized social media. The admin of Lemmy.world could go into its database and do whatever they want to my username, too. And other instances can feel free to steal my name if I didn't grab it first.
That's correct! The only social media I would trust is Nostr.
I doubt X has much money to spare to give to people considering how they hemorrhage money.
Clearly you don't realize how much a billion dollars really is then.
He could literally lose 99% of his wealth and still be islands buying rich.
Elon is not Twitter/X. Sure, he could pump all his personal money into it and keep it afloat indefinitely and I'm sure he's putting in personal money.. but at the end of the day they're separate entities.
You want a business to survive on its own funding. If I were him I would try to put in as little personal money as possible. Which is why we're seeing stuff like them getting evicted from office spaces. He doesn't want to just burn money.
Thank you for this!
I dislike Musk as much as the next person, but most of the hate of Musk & Twitter/X fails to make the distinction that they are not the same thing. At this point, any additional capital injected into X is throwing good money after really bad money.
Elon is not Twitter but Twitter is Elon. It used to be a public company, but now it is his personal property. There is no difference between Elon losing a dollar and Twitter losing a dollar. If he can use his personal resources to manipulate Twitter's market value or appeal to advertises, he can and will because anything else is leaving money on the table. They are not separate entities.
From what i have read, most of his money is in the stock value of tesla. If other car makers take away teslas market share then elons wealth will soon follow, and right now he does not exactly do any of "his" companies any favours with his ego and business decisions.
const x = 0;The guy should ask for @xoriginal...
Technically they don't need to nor would you. Yeah its shitty but its making a mountain out of a molehill....
A typical Internet scammer would have at least pretended to offer some money before stealing the username.
He ain't pretending ...
Can someone pro-bono the original user for a suit?
inb4 this is a dumb ideaThis is a dumb idea
FUCK ELON MUSKy
I swear to god fucking Elon Musk googled “cool website name generator” before changing it
I read he has a history with trying to make company X happen
Yeah I read, he should give up already
And got this:
https://i.imgur.com/JiTUI3M.png
I think it's more likely he googled "Call of Duty Username prefix generator" then shaved the duplicates XD
Yup, keep fucking that chicken there Elon.
I shall refer to it as Ex
Or "ten" and we all agree it should be looked at as a Roman numeral.
What if I don't like the romans? I think they're the reason we're in this mess in the first place.
Was he ever going to get paid
Knowing Musk, this is not a surprise.
That would be amazing
offensive but idgaf about Tw so, did they ban the owner's email login while at being dicks
Me being called XTornado ... That was close not that close but again I didn't predict this happening at all (all the Twitter name change all that ).
Leftpad
Has what to do with this? ...
Why is this news? It is their platform. You have your handle at their discretion. Getting paid for it? Hahahaha. Riiiight. This isn't some domain that is actually owned. You own literally nothing on social media platforms. Whoever theorized he'd be paid is moronic and a perfect example of a twit.
Doesn't it come across as unethical and wrong like an abuse of power to you?
Sure it's wrong, but the real point is no one is surprised Musk did something to make someone feel like shit. It's his goal
The better move is to let the platform slip away into irrelevancy.
Its their platform and their reputation. If some users don't like what "Musk" do, then they have right to make and read news about it, regardless of de jure rights, EULA and whatnot.
PS: And yes, the owner's account was renamed in a rather nonchalant "fuck you" way. I would never learn about this, without these news.
I'm not insinuating it wouldn't be bad press for them. It's simply the reality of being on someone else's platform. You exist on their service at their pleasure. They can shut everything down tomorrow and you are owed nothing, but that does not free them of criticism.
Except copyright and pattents if applicable, you cant claim a capital letter, but you can your branding (style and context behind the letter).
If you are thinking of building a brand on twitter (or X) or have an existing brand, it is important to know that twitter (or X) are willing just take your name away from you if they feel like it without recourse.
Of course it is always technically possible to take a user name. But most sites make it clear that they wont risk damaging brands by protecting against fake clones and allowing companies to keep their user names. That is why it is news.
I mean you agree to that when you sign up on their service so you should know better than to build your entire identity on something you dont own. Just like you wouldnt have Lemmy be your one point of a brand on someone elses instance because you dont know if it will shut down tomorrow
Yes, I agree. I don't see how that makes the information any less important. If Lemmy or Twitter was going to shutdown tomorrow I would want to hear about it.
Sounds like a you problem if you're relying on a social media service to help you build a brand. If you pay, you have legal recourse. If you're there for free advertising, sucks to base your brand on hopes and dreams.
Yes, it is your problem. That is why it should be news. So you can figure out if it is worth the risk of putting your brand on twitter.
It's showing a rather funny lack of tact, soft skills and PR skills. Google can take your Gmail account too, but it's rather unheard of (say Google launches a product name "GreatDay" - it's absolutely unheard of for Google to just grab the "GreatDay" handle from Gmail - in fact such a move would sent terror chills up many marketing departments around the world honestly).
I'm not going to blame you for not understanding just how ridiculous this is, but this sends all the wrong messages - i.e. could I pay Elon to grab someone else's Twitter handle because I can make a better business claim for it? That sure is what this seems to imply
It's news because as the owners of information channels can do as they please, it's shitty when they don't even pretend to be neutral. Which is why they usually do. Not a hard thing to follow and no, thinking that a payment would be issued isn't a sign of a "twit," it's just one way they could have not seemed like dicks who do as they please.
I wonder how is this post related to technology in any way? That is just some regular news.
It's a reminder that in big parts of todays digital world you own nothing. All access, presumed rights, and data can be taken from you whenever a big company decides to do so. Is it news? Probably not. Are people aware of it? Clearly not - at least nobody acts like it.
https://twitter.com/x12345678908765/status/1684047458341642240
Edit: fake post, my bad
I don't think that's the original account.
I'm not sure what you are trying to do with this link, the two
xaccounts are not the same....Reportedly Twitter changed the guy’s X account to that one.
I think we're talking past each other, the
xwho lost his account (I think) is nowx12345678998765the post behind the link was made by the accountx12345678908765they are not the same account, so the link does neither disprove nor prove the article in the main post which makes the comment by sam just useless and deceivingAh, you’re correct. Cheers.
0 is not 9. Look closely.
Yeah why would they pay the "owner"? It's their platform they do whatever they want. What a dumb thing to complain about.
There is this thing called decency. You might have heard of it.
Yeah they even offered him some bullshit as compensation that they were not required to. Don't expect decency from a huge company like Twitter.
I like how we all like to pretend that these companies are not run by people. Company is not being an asshole people who were in charge of this transition were.
Why would the bank give you your money, its their business and you gave it to them.
Contrary to Twitter banking is regulated and governed by actual laws. It's a completely different beast. Go ahead and google who the owner of the money in your account is and how that is regulated.
Its literally regulated as well, a account in general cant just be taken...
You might have dropped this (◠‿・)—","
Not defending the Musk here, but literally it's not your money anymore as soon as you put it in a bank account.
The money you put in your account belongs to the bank, and the account functions as an I.O.U.. A very privileged one compared to other debts, and in most cases redeemable without notice, but you're in fact just another creditor.
That's not how banks work.
It's certainly how banks work where I live, and presuming we are talking about the US here, I did a quick skim through the first few results on google and there mostly seems to be agreement that it is a debtor/creditor relationship.
How would you describe the legal arrangements of a bank account then?
Former banker here. You're just fucking wrong about that. You've said zero true things.
Well I'm interested now. It certainly is the case where I live, and presuming we are talking about the US here, I did a quick skim through the first few results on google and they seem to agree that it's a debtor/creditor relationship.
How else would you describe the legal arrangements of a bank account then?
You own the money in your account, simple as that for individual accounts.
The transaction is "I give the bank money, and they have to give it back later". How can we arrange that legally without transferring ownership? I only know these ways:
Bailment: That would mean the bank keeps the physical bills (or other valuables) in a proverbial or literal safe with my name on it, to return the exact same items later. Of course banks offer that service, but that's not what we're talking about.
Trust: The bank takes my money and invests it on my behalf. It does not go on the bank's books, and they cannot use my money for their own purposes (e.g. as security for loans, to fulfil capital requirements, invest it themselves and keep the proceeds, etc.). This is obviously not the case.
Agency: The bank takes my money and executes transactions on my behalf, according to my orders. Again, obviously not the case.
Am I missing something? Is there some special law for bank accounts? I'm genuinely interested.
Think about it this way, if I'm going after your money, do I sue you, or do I sue the bank?
It's funny you mentioned bailment, the bank is absolutely required to keep enough cash on hand in order to satisfy what the FDIC deems to be a reasonable amount of coverage for their deposit accounts. (search "demand deposit account")
If I owe you money, and somebody else owes me money, yea of course you would sue me, not that other person. But I could write over some of the debt I'm owed to you to clear my debt to you.
And isn't this exactly how debt enforcement works? You win in court and the court tells the bank (or forces me to tell the bank) to take x amount out of my account and put it into your account. The debt I was owed gets transferred to you, which clears my debt to you.
No, it doesn't work like that at all. The difference is in the demand. You go to your bank and you demand the money in your account and you get it, simple as that. You can't do that with debt. Me owing you a dollar doesn't mean you have a dollar to spend. Ease of collection is literally the most important aspect of what we're discussing.
Of course you can "spend" debt, but only if the debtor is very reputable. Consider the old example: I ask you to fix my car. I don't have any money on me to repay you, so I give you an I.O.U.. You go get a haircut, but don't have any money on you either. The hairdresser knows I'm a standup guy so he takes my I.O.U. as payment instead. Later he comes to me to collect, I repay him and we rip up the I.O.U.. See how it can be spent like money (we could of course add any number of people in between who trust me where my I.O.U. changes hands)?
Part of the agreement with the bank is that they guarantee (to a reasonable degree, as the FDIC puts it) to be available for collection in cash at any time. That of course makes them an extremely reliable debtor, and therefore their I.O.U.s (a.k.a. the money in your account) are virtually globally accepted as payment (not least because of the government heavily regulating the matter). See the parallels?
Also, I still would like to know what the legal nature of a bank account is if not debt. I think I've ruled out Bailment, Trust, and Agency. What else is it?
Going on a tangent here, I think what cannot be understated is the power dynamic intrinsic in debt agreements. Usually, the creditor gains a considerable amount of power over the debtor, especially if the latter fails to repay his debt (the threat is foreclosure, imprisonment, etc.). It may be difficult to see a bank account as a debtor/creditor relation, precisely because this power gradient is inverted. The bank is the debtor, but somehow they retain all the power in the relationship.
Consider what happens if they cannot pay up (during a bank run for example): it is not the bank and the bankers that are under physical threat, but its creditors (the account holders), because obviously without money they cannot survive.
If by “money” you mean the physical dollar bills you put in the ATM, then yes.
That absolutely not how shit works.
You got downvoted to hell, but you're absolutely right. The fact that FDIC exists should be evidence enough to anyone with a functional brain that depositors in a bank are creditors and do not retain ownership of their literal deposit.
I wonder what other arrangement it could even possibly constitute.
Bailment? That would mean physically locking the bills that you deposit in a safe that you rent, which is possible I guess, but not what we're talking about here.
Trust? This would mean the deposit does not go on the bank's books, and they cannot use it for their own purposes. This is clearly not the case, at the very least since investment banks and savings banks were merged.
Agency? That would mean the bank uses your money to enact transactions on your behalf, again, clearly not the case.
That leaves the only other form of "I give you money and you give it back later", namely debt.
No one is owed anything, but not compensating the original owner further erodes what little trust was left in the company. You wouldn't want to spend resources building a brand on a platform where your name can suddenly get snatched away at some billionaire's whim.
Absolutely true. But apparently the headlines for this event are all "he got no money for it!"
Up until it was taken from him, he would have been able to sell it for a shit tonne of money. I think it's easy to understand why it was shitty of Twitter yo just snatch it
Because there's precedent that handles have value (on the order of thousands of USD). They're taking value from a customer. It'd be interesting to see what swag they offered in exchange, but considering the guy's net worth, he could have afforded some decency. I mean, Gmail can just take your email address to, but it is how many identify themselves in business, so it can harm them financially. Sure, that's the risk with doing that, but it is what it is. Musk could have generated some good will but instead generated more bad publicity. I'm beginning to think he has no PR on staff or just surrounds himself with people who never say no.
Is there a precedent for Twitter buying an account "back" from a user? IIRC all deals regarding Twitter accounts have been made between users.
The precedent is that the handle has value. It's a bad look when a company destroys value for a user, regardless of whether they have the right to or not. The internet is full of people complaining when Google shuts down a YouTube channel. It's essentially the same thing. You expect a good reason or exchange to occur to make the customer whole.
I don't understand where your confusion lies. The guy got screwed over for being a loyal user of the service, despite Musk not owning it for that whole duration.
The guy was offered swag, but I couldn't find details of what it was. And as far as I can tell, this isn't really decrying the lack of money. Just how they handled the situation as a whole.
You understand how it's an asshole move, but don't understand why someone would expect some compensation for the dick move? When someone gives their spouse some roses because they acted like an ass, are you confused by the roses?
the main problem with this is that with them doing it without asking or time to prepare all the people the guy knew where lost or have a problem finding him.
And the huy was seemingly not even a nobody but instead had a company so even more company contacts could get lost or customers wanting to directly reach out to him could sent private data to a 3 party (twitter) about confidential informations.
Secondly it says that the company can and will take over accounts when they have some reason, even if it is only the name.
That means the trust in the handle gets completly broken because it could be a twitter account in just a few seconds without warning.
So they have the power to take over an official governement or news account without warning and only leaving a reason. This is theoretical but if there is a news station with a handle like "xnews" i can really expect that it gets taken over in some time in the future.
I agree with all of this. I just think it's idiotic to complain that they didn't pay him. Twitter handles are not "owned" by the user and the platform can and will do with them whatever they like at any time.
So what you're saying is you approve of identity theft. Gotcha.
Their platform only has value because people use it. Mistreat your users, they go elsewhere and suddenly your platform becomes worthless.
They certainly can do whatever they want, but folks are still able to call musk out for being a bully.
It's the same reasoning behind folks confusing freedom of speech with freedom from consequences of their speech.
Why do you assume that complaining is the same as saying Twitter isn't allowed to do this? I can still think it's shitty without thinking they aren't allowed to do it.
I think it's dumb to go "He got zero dollars for it." as it sounds like he was owed anything. I also feel that it creates confusion with people being paid for a TLD they owned (or "squatted" on) which is something very different from having a Twitter handle. But apparently that's just me.
Why do you CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE?
What you should have posted was nothing.
TIL if anyone carries anything valuable onto my property, it entitles me to take it from them
My property, my rules /s
TIL the original user of the "@x" account owned it and brought it to Twitter who then took it from him.
Bingo
You might be surprised to learn that you do in fact not "own" your Twitter handle and Twitter is not required to buy it off of you if they want it.
Oh really? Wow, maybe if I licked more boots it would make me smarter enough to "understand" this