Is Elon Musk Trying to Protect Alex Jones's X Accounts?
There's a fascinating development in the Alex Jones Chapter 7 case. Jones ended up in bankruptcy to try to avoid paying on the defamation judgment the Sandy Hook victims' families won against him. His case converted to a Chapter 7, and a trustee has been liquidating his assets. Among the assets the trustee is trying to sell are Jones's social media accounts in X (formerly Twitter).
X has since filed an objection to the sale claiming that the X accounts are not the property of Jones, but are instead owned by X, which merely issued Jones a non-transferable license. Now this "limited" objection is only about the "accounts" proper, not the content Jones posted on X. X claims that it is objecting because of it has an interest in preventing the transfer of accounts because of its concern about making sure that users are who they say they are.
X's professed concern about fake accounts is risible. X does not generally verify its users when it onboards them. Nor does X appear monitor in any way to determine if an account has in fact been transferred. Instead, X is a platform that is lousy with fake accounts and bots. So what's this really about?
As far as I can tell, the X objection to the sale is about Elon Musk wanting to ensure that Alex Jones can continue to use his Twitter handles and retain his followers and make it very difficult for anyone to delete or edit Jones's old posts.
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