Warning: This article contains discussion of gun violence which some readers may find distressing.
Elon Musk has shocked X users after claiming that he owns everyone’s accounts in a bizarre court filing.
This has come to light after the tech mogul weighed in on the pending sale of InfoWars to The Onion newspaper.
The satirical outlet is in the process of buying Alex Jones’ InfoWars in a bankruptcy auction.
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Jones filed for bankruptcy after he was court ordered to pay almost $1.5 billion in damages to the families of the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
This was due to the fact that he had falsely claimed the shooting was a hoax.
The sale of the conspiracy theorist’s company was to include his website, product inventory, customer lists, social media accounts and intellectual property.
The Onion are being assisted by the Sandy Hook families for the sale which is now being objected by Jones and a losing bidder, First United American Companies (FUAC).
FUAC is associated with Jones’ dietary supplements business.
However, in a court filing, Musk has argued that X, formerly Twitter, owns the accounts on the platforms and said they can’t be sold without its permission.
The company claimed to a federal judge: “X Corp.’s [terms of service] make clear that it owns the X Accounts, as the TOS is explicit that X Corp. merely grants its users a non-exclusive license to use their accounts.”
X went on to argue: “Regardless of the accounts’ use, X Corp. is plainly the owner of the X Accounts and the Services, and the Trustee cannot sell, assign, or otherwise transfer what it does not own or have an interest in.”
While X did say that users own the content in which they post, this revelation is still likely to have a huge impact on its millions of users as it means the company could theoretically take over any account it wishes.
And it seems like Musk has already been taking advantage of this power for his own personal gains.
During his support of Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, the Tesla boss took over the use of the @America handle.
This was then revamped in order to promote his own Super PAC which was campaigning for the now president-elect.
The original user’s handle is now @America123_12 and while the account had been registered since 2010, it had reportedly been dormant for four years.