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.

  • penquin@lemm.ee
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    26 days ago

    A country where money gives you power over even the justice system, is just a joke of country and will eventually collapse on itself.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      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.

      • penquin@lemm.ee
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        26 days ago

        And that’s how it’ll collapse. People will burn it to the fucking ground.

    • r00ty@kbin.life
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      26 days ago

      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.

      • penquin@lemm.ee
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        26 days ago

        Would be hilarious if the onion just told Musk to shove that account up his ass and take it to bluesky

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    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.

    • Aeao@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      And I think the onion could sue for copyright infringement or something to at least close the accounts.

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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      25 days ago

      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!

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    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.

  • theluddite@lemmy.ml
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    26 days ago

    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.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      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.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      26 days ago

      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.

      • theluddite@lemmy.ml
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        26 days ago

        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.

  • osugi_sakae@midwest.social
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    26 days ago

    Am I correct in seeing this as the company is claiming that courts of law cannot require them to transfer control of an account from one user to a different user? This despite the fact that doing so has been fairly standard practice for years now?

    Personally, I think the lawyers for The Site Previously Known As Twitter have a very weak argument. However, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, so there’s also that.

  • 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    I own my own social media accounts if I run my own instances.

    If I use third party social media, then I do not own any account I create on it.

  • TooManyFoods@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    But then musk would be violating the lease with free speech systems because Jones is no longer the one who owns free speech systems.

  • crawancon@lemm.ee
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    25 days ago

    it’s pretty weird how much is tied to our online identities, and we don’t own them.

    and who gives two fucks about repudiation or identity theft anyway.