[HN Gopher] Jeremy Vaught spent 16 years to build @music on Twit...
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       Jeremy Vaught spent 16 years to build @music on Twitter, then X
       took it away
        
       Author : rapnie
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2023-08-05 22:31 UTC (29 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (syzito.xyz)
 (TXT) w3m dump (syzito.xyz)
        
       | s5300 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | maximinus_thrax wrote:
       | From another article [0]:
       | 
       | > Vaught is mostly a Musk fan, as he's interested in Musk's
       | electric cars and space developments. He said that this
       | experience with X hasn't tainted his opinion of Musk or his
       | relationship too much with X as a platform. He's holding out hope
       | that Musk has a long-term plan for where Musk is taking X, but
       | like many users, he's struggling to adjust to the rebranding.
       | Vaught still refers to the platform by its original name.
       | 
       | I love the smell of 'cult of personality'
       | 
       | [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/x-user-super-
       | pis...
        
       | kanbara wrote:
       | i'm not surprised this happened. with @x, it sort-of makes sense.
       | but to randomly pull handles the company wants like this is a bit
       | beyond the pale of fostering a friendly community.
        
         | inpdx wrote:
         | I think the ship has sailed far past "fostering a friendly
         | community."
        
       | zapdrive wrote:
       | Something something free market.
        
       | constantly wrote:
       | I do think this is philosophically unjust, but in no way should
       | anyone have built any brand on Twitter, particularly a generic
       | like "music", and not expected something like this would happen.
       | Twitter in particular has a long and storied history of this sort
       | of thing.
       | 
       | I think the move should have been, if one were going to start on
       | Twitter, to slowly funnel the largest possible portion of their
       | 11M followers to their own external site, or collaborated with I
       | don't know Spotify to funnel people there for cash.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | XorNot wrote:
       | Keep in mind that Musk's stated ambition with X is to make it
       | "the everything app".
       | 
       | Imagine if Google started grabbing Gmail addresses it wanted for
       | products.
        
         | pard68 wrote:
         | Google doesn't use @gmail though I know what you mean.
         | X/Twitter should do like Google and use another designation for
         | their own "handles"/services. "@" is pedestrian because
         | everyone on that platform is "@something". A different pattern
         | for official accounts would make sense to me. Just as Google
         | doens't use "@gmail.com" for their own product emails.
        
       | anigbrowl wrote:
       | On the one hand, it's unsurprising that platforms would do this,
       | users sign up for TOS with terrible policies and realize too late
       | that they're the product. Too, a handle like '@music' was also an
       | opportunistic bet on hub status of one's own.
       | 
       | On the other hand, the sense of arrogance and entitlement on
       | display here marks an impressive new nadir in fuck-you
       | capitalism. Contractual arguments are sort of meaningless since
       | most user agreements are extremely one-sided contracts of
       | adhesion and the judicial establishment often rejects equitable
       | arguments in favor of narrow technical ones, notwithstanding the
       | vast asymmetries between user and service provider. All the
       | legal, economic, and (increasingly) social incentives favor
       | abusive behavior.
       | 
       | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-made-this
        
       | corndoge wrote:
       | I hope they keep doing it, maybe it will lead to users
       | understanding that they do not control or own the platform.
       | Unfortunately the odds of that seem slim. Even when users get fed
       | up and move, they tend to just move to another proprietary
       | platform, without consideration or forward thought that maybe
       | it's worthwhile to use support a platform where this cannot
       | happen.
        
         | flykespice wrote:
         | I hope the bank claim the money back from your account since
         | you don't control or own their "platform".
        
           | Freedom2 wrote:
           | What kind of comparison is this? In most modern countries,
           | banking isn't a platform in the same sense that Twitter is,
           | and despite large issues over the last few decades, they are
           | still regulated by the government(s) they operate in.
        
       | dec0dedab0de wrote:
       | Meh. I think it's fine for them to take it, but they should have
       | left a link up to his new account, and publicly thanked him for
       | keeping an eye on this url for so long. Maybe throw in a 16 year
       | credit towards free service or something. This just seems like a
       | super easy opportunity to make fans. It reminds me of how
       | Microsoft messed up with Mike Rowe soft at first.
        
         | smcl wrote:
         | It's fine in the sense that Musk owns Twitter/X and can do
         | whatever he likes with it. It's a bit stupid in my opinion (I
         | don't know if they _really_ gain much by having @music vs
         | @twittermusic) but there have been plenty more stupid things
         | going on over there and the former owner is apparently a fan of
         | Elon so it's not really caring about.
         | 
         | The right-wing guy recently posting child porn and getting
         | personally reinstated by Elon, for example, was another one of
         | those "he owns it and can do what he likes" issues ... but one
         | that's far more troubling.
        
       | charcircuit wrote:
       | As pointed out in the comments he didn't have 11M followers.
       | @music was renamed to @musicfan and @twittermusic was renamed to
       | @music. Both accounts kept all of their followers.
        
         | timeon wrote:
         | So it is completely ok?
        
       | gilli wrote:
       | This is why I like how Bluesky handles it, you can use your own
       | domain name. So I simply got @gilli.is, no reason for anyone ever
       | to take that away from me.
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-05 23:00 UTC)