The original @America user was a critic of both Musk and Trump.

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.

  • abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.usEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… this isn’t quite as bad as it looks.

    although clearly they could have handled the situation better.

    Agreed, but I mean has been the general theme with the new owner. Everything could have been handled better, but nothing was.

    Users do not technically own their handles on X.

    Another reason why the fediverse is better. We have better control over this, simply by owning our own instances. Then admins on another instance can’t simply seize our usernames.

    It appears the original owner hasn’t posted on X since it was called Twitter, in May 2020.

    So basically they released a handle that otherwise wasn’t going to be used and would have gone to waste.

    It would be better if they had a general policy about these things … but considering the owner…

    as it pertains to the @X handle, the company had a good case that they should have ownership of it

    Less good as the user was actively using it beforehand but the justification is also stronger in this case.