Musk's X is trying to stop The Onion from buying Alex Jones' social media accounts.

Does it feel like your X account belongs to you and you can do whatever you want with it? That’s not true, according to a new court filing from the social media company formerly known as Twitter. It’s an argument that X is making in order to throw a wrench in The Onion’s recent purchase of InfoWars, the conspiracy theory media company run by Alex Jones. And it’s a great reminder that you don’t actually own what you think you own in the digital age.

  • superkret@feddit.orgEnglish
    2917·
    16 days ago

    I mean, if someone lets me into their house, points me to a whiteboard with a pen and tells me to write whatever I want so the other people in the house can read it…
    Do I own the whiteboard? Or the pen? Or have control over any of it?

    No. The owner of the house can lock me out and wipe off or change what I wrote at their leisure.

    • Hawke@lemmy.worldEnglish
      352·
      16 days ago

      You do have some control, in the form of copyright. Also the analogy doesn’t hold up well since you’re not using their “pen” and they only let you reach inside through the window. And the audience is outside the house.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
        151·
        16 days ago

        And to continue that analogy- Twitter didn’t assign the name, the user created it so they hold copyright on the name.

      • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        515·
        16 days ago

        Except when you enter the home, you accepted the TOS that transfers copyright to the owner of the home.

        • Hawke@lemmy.worldEnglish
          231·
          16 days ago

          Nope.

          as a user, “you retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours you own your Content (and your photos and videos are part of the Content),” although you also grant Twitter a license to use the content, which authorizes it “to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.” Based on this language, other twitter users are also licensed to copy and redistribute your posts by “retweeting” them.

          https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/tweets-protected-copyright/

          • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.worldEnglish
            15·
            15 days ago

            Really ? I think you’ll find that clause means you do not own copyright to anything you post on X.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              15 days ago

              Really? How do you get that from “you retain your rights and give Twitter a license to use your content”? Retaining rights literally means not giving them up.

          • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            315·
            16 days ago

            Congratulations on reading the twitter TOS. Now tell me if it is legal for a company to lay claim on copyright via a TOS.

              • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                417·
                16 days ago

                I thought we were talking about who legally can lay claim on copyrights in the hypothetically house with a whiteboard? i’m not the one lost with the program.

                • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  15 days ago

                  You see, x is the pen, Infowars is the ink and we’re the contents of the water bowl all along

                  Skibidi dibidi bop

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      61·
      15 days ago

      A better analogy is i hand you a bullhorn and you shout at randos.

      Do i own your words, even though it’s my bullhorn? No.

    • x00z@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      15 days ago

      No but somebody else can own the creator of what was written on the board. That might be a bit weird in today’s terms if it’s a person, but if it’s a company that wrote that stuff it can legally become somebody else’s, which is what is happening with Infowars.

      Twitter has always allowed a company to own their own account, and even transfer it and be used by multiple people. For example how Biden’s account is used by his staff. But now X starts meddling with this specific case, which is very questionable.

      And if you’re going to say that “it’s his own account”; lawyers were saying that his “personal brand” is too heavily intertwined with Infowars and that it should be part of the Infowars brand.