At the beginning of the year, Elon Musk signaled that his company consider adopting dormant usernames after NPR left the site in protestbut now the company does not seem to be averse to taking over active providers.
Earlier this week, Twitter made the decision to throw away 17 years of brand awareness by Change the name to X. And to complete the conversion, it stripped the original owner of the username @x without asking or offering any financial compensation.
Instead, after taking over the account, the original owner – Gene X Hwang – was offered a selection of X-items and a tour of the company headquarters as a “token of our appreciation.”
For context, popular usernames on social media platforms are considered extremely valuable, often targeted by hackers and sold for thousands of pounds. In fact, Twitter was one of the social media companies that only two years ago, took action against the theft and unauthorized sale of “OGUsers”.
“The username associated with the @x account is associated with X Corp,” said a letter sent to Hwang and published by TechCrunch. “Therefore, your username will be changed to a new username.”
“However, we value your loyalty and want to minimize any inconvenience this may cause,” it continues. “You may choose any unclaimed or inactive username as a replacement. All data associated with your previous username, including followers and data you follow, will be transferred to your new username.”
Despite previous He indicated that he would be willing to sell itHwang seems to be okay with losing the requested username.
“It would have been nice if they had compensated it because it really had a lot of value to me, but things are what they are,” he told TechCrunch.
“Maybe I should ask about the bird on the sign, since she also dismantled again yesterday”, he joked.
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