Archived version: https://archive.li/Yg8r8
My favorite part:
But while his reaction the day after learning that X was commandeering his handle was extreme frustration, Vaught told Ars that the platform will remain his primary form of social media.
“it’s highly annoying, but Twitter is still my preferred social media,” Vaught said. “That’s how I communicate and learn my news about what’s going on. Nothing else compares.”
His only “minor protest” to X’s action, he said, was to cancel his Twitter Blue subscription.
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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“16 years ago, I created @music and have been running it ever since,” Jeremy Vaught, director of engineering at the nonprofit Life Happens, posted on X.
But Vaught never had the time to focus on leveraging the @music audience, only ever benefiting from the account when companies occasionally sent him free perks like headphones in trade for promotions.
Vaught said he was never interested because he knew that selling his handle violated Twitter’s terms of service, and he figured there was more value in keeping the account.
To “minimize any inconvenience” from having his account handle taken away, X defaulted to changing Vaught’s username to @musicfan, which he described as “probably the least worst” alternative the platform suggested.
But while his reaction the day after learning that X was commandeering his handle was extreme frustration, Vaught told Ars that the platform will remain his primary form of social media.
“Twitter’s not dead to me at this point,” Vaught told Ars, even if “it’s a super huge bummer” to lose the @music account.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
great bot!
Actually a useful bot!