X owner Elon Musk has once again hijacked a rare coveted username from its original user.
This time, however, the takeover wasn’t for the good of X the company, it was so Musk could promote Donald Trump for president.
On Saturday, Musk appeared at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler Pennsylvania. However, earlier that day, Musk began promoting his pro-Trump Super PAC, called America PAC, using a brand new handle @America.
“Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” Musk’s new bio said as of approximately 1:30pm ET on Saturday, Oct. 5.
The @America handle appeared attached to a brand new account setup just this month, in October 2024. However, this rare, one-word geographic handle had already been long registered by another X user more than 14 years prior to Musk taking the handle from them, in September 2010.
According to a person familiar with the situation, X took the handle from the user much like how Musk’s social media company took the @X handle from its original registrant last year.
What an absolute shameless piece of shit.
This is probably the most American thing elon has ever accomplished; taking something that isn’t theirs and using it to hurl feces.
Yea. You would never see that in [insert name of literally any country]
/s
I was able to shorten the original 4,204-character article to this 140-character summary:
X took over @America and gave the guy @America123_12 instead. Twitter terms allow this. The tag was registered in 2010, inactive since 2020.
You forgot the part about Elon fornicating with a tapir. Pretty critical piece of the story to exclude.
Didn’t seem critical to the core narrative. The tapir was fully sober and in heat so I don’t really see how it relates.
You are, in fact, correct. My heavens. The lack of journalistic integrity these days must’ve seriously damaged my ability to isolate important news from tabloid trash. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.
Folks, I admit fault. I’ll leave Elon & his tapir to their business.
For some reason I read tapeworm and now I’m not sure what’s worse.
You can’t beat musk on his own platform, it’s long since time to use a big boy one.
If you’re still on Xitter at this point, you deserve all the bullshit you get. That place is a cesspool. You can’t swim in the toilet and then pretend to be mad you’re covered in shit.
Well, the account was allegedly inactive. Sounds like they weren’t on Twitter either.
yeah, don’t know why they’re so mad. 90% of people don’t know what lemmy even is, much less mastodon. And those numbers are very generous considering there are ~40k people using lemmy
You can’t swim in the toilet and then pretend to be mad you’re covered in shit.
This is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard. Definitely made my day.
The Other Truth Social.
This sends a clear message: if you still have a valuable handle, sell it now.
I can’t wait until Trump loses interest in Musk.
I hope it’s the final push over the edge Musk needs.
Nah, Trump will put Musk on his cabinet, possibly Secretary of Transportation. Which is ironic that Musk has an electric car company but the GOP is all about fossil fuel. We’ve seen gas guzzling pick ups block multiple super chargers to fuck with Tesla owners.
How many people in Trump’s cabinet lasted the whole term?
The only one I recall was Betsy DeVos.
Nope. She left 12 days early because of January 6th.
Just didn’t quite make it.
And that was because she gave him tons of money.
There will be no caninet to put him on.
Could you imagine come November trump loses and musk just shots himself to Mars for forever. What a good day that’ll be.
to the one place wokeism has not corrupted … SPACE~
Four words too many on that first sentence.
At this point though, I have a sinking suspicion that Trump is going to win. I hope I’m wrong but I’m in a swing state and it feels more like 2016 than 2020 to me. America is full of ignorant people who are too prideful to realize how absolutely ignorant they are.
Naw it feels like a mix of 16 and 08. Theres so much energy around harris, but its bogged down by all the hate from trump. But im older, Obama was elected when i was in high school amd thats when i started paying attention to politics
Older than me? I’ve got probably a decade on you. My first (major) political awareness involves blowjobs and dress stains. I vaguely recall Iraq Part 1 and the excitement around it being televised live.
My abandoned Reddit account is older than some of the people I interact with on here.
I hope you’re right. As with all the recent elections where the Democratic Party wins, it’s all down to the youth vote. Also, really hopefully this one has even more extra support from the uterus carrying people amongst us than anticipated by the polls.
It comes down to people in 7 states. And after seeing interviews with some swing voters, they aren’t deep thinkers.
We’re fucked and i’m currently making my escape plan.
Do you not feel the change approach? She hasnt come out and used Obama’s exact phrasing, but it feels like shes going to bring some change that we desperately need.
Her bringing on Tim Walz keeps that hope alive for me. Like even if she somehow disappoints me, there will be Walz who can inject some “mind your own business” socialism at the national stage. I wish he would have more faith in his own speaking abilities though.
I have no issues with her. And I think she will be a better leader than we’ve had in a while. Possible bette than Obama who seemed too afraid to be bold in his actions.
But the news cycles are all about Trump and I know people who still plan to vote for him and the polls are still awfully close that it could easily swing either way.
I feel like I am stuck in a political demographic where I am the outlier. It sounds like the view might be better from where you stand.
Not until he has no billions left, like Mike pillow.
Musk Pillow has a nice ring to it. He’s going to do a lot of harm to good tech when he really crashes out after Trump loses.
Some personal physician will OD him on Special-K because he got tired of his shit.
I’ll donate $5 to their go-fund-me defense.
Musk is so disgusting.
Can we establish “dismusking” as a new word that means “extremely disgusting”?
Elon’s Musk
Anyone still in Twitter is a clown. It’s not different from being on Truth Social.
Indeed. I feel sorry for those people that feel compelled to still be on it for their jobs, or for their side-hustle/main-hustle or whatever, but yeah, anyone still on there just because? I have no idea, unless they are Nazis or Nazi adjacent.
How long before Musk/Trump merges Twitter and Truth? They’re basically the same place at this point.
My 🔮 says they will someday pitch investors on federating with Blue Sky, after which they will discover no one wants their content.
But MAH FREEZED PEACH! The world’s town square, argle bargle…
-Any given Crazy Uncle Liberty, probably.
After this, I don’t know what more proof anyone could possibly need that Xitter is purely a right-wing propaganda platform exactly equivalent to the likes of Truth [sic] Social. Anyone who continues to use Xitter supports this behavior. Continued use of accounts like @POTUS or @KamalaHarris or these is effectively an endorsement of equating Donald Trump with America. It has to stop! The platform has to be fully abandoned by every single person, organization, or government entity that isn’t fascist; there is no choice now.
Yup, it’s the new fascist bar.
Those non-fascist influencers, celebs, and other “must have” content sources for the remaining audience need to talk amongst themselves, decide on a new platform, and leave together. Their audience will see it, momentarily snap out of the inertia, download a new app, and barely notice the difference. Non-fascist politicians and news orgs who have to go to where the people are will have cover and can follow suit. It can be over in a week.
What a fucking loser honestly
Fully weaponizing “his platform” to influence the election. Painting a target on his back, making more enemies by the day. (Only this time, it’s not just his drug-induced paranoia.) Gambling everything, once again. Accidentally buying “the town square” was his biggest mistake.
I’m not interested in what a drug-addled white supremacist has to say. I’m not allowed to use edibles on my days off because it can put my job at risk but this piece-of-shit uses ketamine, acid, shrooms and cocaine and is still allowed to have expensive government contracts.
Because they think they can control him. Possibly why he’s so hell bent on this now too. It would explain some things. But he’s still a piece of shit no matter what. 🙃
Well, you could move to a less shitty state.
It doesn’t matter for the line of work I’m in until it is legalized federally.
Honest question from a non-American.
If Trump loses, how much of a case does Harris have of going after Musk for interfering in an election?
I don’t think she’ll have to. MAGA will implode along with Truth Social, Twitter, and maybe even Tesla as I’m sure Elon has turned off many potential buyers just as competing car companies are getting closer in value as Tesla.
None.
Private citizens and companies can endorse whoever they want.
It is unbelievable to me how everyone is just walzing past the fact that a super-pac organizer attended a rally with the candidate.
I’m more worried about election officials getting star treatment at a candidate’s rallies.
My knowledge on this topic is very minimal, but is it because the SuperPAC isn’t supposed to be coordinating with either party?
52 USC 30118: Contributions or expenditures by national banks, corporations, or labor organizations
Text contains those laws in effect on October 6, 2024It is unlawful for any national bank, or any corporation organized by authority of any law of Congress, to make a contribution or expenditure in connection with any election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, or for any corporation whatever, or any labor organization, to make a contribution or expenditure in connection with any election at which presidential and vice presidential electors or a Senator or Representative in, or a Delegate or Resident Commissioner to, Congress are to be voted for, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any of the foregoing offices, or for any candidate, political committee, or other person knowingly to accept or receive any contribution prohibited by this section, or any officer or any director of any corporation or any national bank or any officer of any labor organization to consent to any contribution or expenditure by the corporation, national bank, or labor organization, as the case may be, prohibited by this section.
It’s one of the few threads of campaign finance law that still exist. Things to keep in mind, in-kind contributions are still contributions. An example would be, directing your private business that is in no way affiliated with your super PAC to promote and fundraise for the candidate that you are standing on stage at a rally with. If that isn’t “in connection with” then I don’t know what is.
If you make the connection that Elon being there is also “in connection with” then wouldn’t that now spill over with Elon acting as the head of twitter, confiscating the @America handle to give to the SuperPAC to promote Trump? One links the other?
In which case Twitter is now providing an in kind contribution?
Assuming that is a problem, then the only way it wouldn’t be is if the SuperPAC itself paid the original holder of @America to sell it to them and then Twitter did the hand over at both parties request?
This is of course subject to whatever SCOTUS sock puppet Alito has his ghostly hand up the ass of, but the way it was intended to work was that super pacs can receive and spend limitlessly so long as there is no coordination with the candidate. Elon can’t call trump and ask what trump would like the pac to do. So Elon being a right wing shit head is legal all day, so long as he doesn’t do any of his right wing shit headery in connection with trump.
And yes, that would usually imply that if there is coordination then all contributions, even those in kind, are campaign contributions and must be regulated and disclosed. Which they aren’t. And probably won’t be. But if this case comes up in a few years, the right wing shit head chorus will cry alligator tears about the poor oppressed witch-hunted trump. FML.
Probably very little.
I’m not up to speed on what Twitter is doing these days outside of what’s reported here on lemmy.
Unless Musk starts saying things like “Polls are closing early so don’t bother voting because Trump won” or things that will suppress votes, his actions and tweets are going to be categorized as political free speech, which has broad interpretation in the US. Sad, but true.
We, as well as our government officials, should remember that Twitter is not the public town square. It’s a dumpster fire that is owned by a private entity that permits users to throw their shit into. That private entity is within their right to do whatever they want within the confines of the law.
You mean like his mother telling people to go vote 10 times with 10 fake names?
how is this election interference, it isn’t forcing anyone to vote a particular way, nor is it manipulating ballots?
Look who really owns Twitter. It’s the people who loaned Musk money for his buyout.
Who is top of that list? Saudi Arabia.
And now Twitter is fully in service to the Republican party? Sounds like foreign electoral intervention to me…
why shouldn’t Saudi Arabia be able to endorse and support a US political candidate?
None, because there isn’t even a pretension of justice under fascism.
Stealing @America sounds about right up his alley. Just like T Daddy.
