Elon Musk renamed Twitter to "X" as part of his latest company overhaul, but it looks like Meta already holds the rights to the name.
  • Pratai@lemmy.caEnglish
    711·
    11 months ago

    We live in an age where three massively bloated companies are going to battle it out over who owns a letter.

    That asteroid won’t come soon enough.

  • Prater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    671·
    11 months ago

    I hope I’m not alone in finding it utterly ridiculous that a company can literally hold rights over a single letter.

    • RheingoldRiver@kbin.social
      41·
      11 months ago

      Keep in mind that it’s in a particular context. It seems a bit ridiculous as a headline, but if they were actively using the branding, it might not seem so ridiculous: imagine Facebook (I will not call them Meta) is already operating a social media site for posting short thoughts called X with the TLD social (hypothetically). And they’ve been operating it as X for 10 years. Then Elon does this. Clearly Facebook has a suit because that’s straight-up infringement.

      This is a little more hazy because Facebook isn’t actively using their X trademark, and it’s not exactly the same as Twitter. But they do hold the rights to it (as far as I can tell from the one tweet (xeet?) about it). And it’s not (quite) as ridiculous as it sounds.

      Also,

      Twitter auto-replied to Insider’s request for comment with a message saying that the communications department would get back to us soon.

      Is this a euphemism for the poop emoji??

    • Poggervania@kbin.social
      51·
      11 months ago

      If it makes you feel any better, the CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison, pretty much bought out the entire island of Lanai from the state of Hawaii.

      So a letter doesn’t surprise me too much.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      40·
      11 months ago

      Microsoft has it for Xbox, so it would be difficult to apply here.

      Meta has it for a social media and I stant messaging app…

      If they don’t challenge this, they’re basically giving it away for free. So they pretty much have to challenge

      • Zellith@kbin.social
        13·
        11 months ago

        I think it might originally be for DirectX. Which is where the xbox got its name iirc. (DirectX Box)

        • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
          6·
          11 months ago

          You’re correct. They used X in a lot of gaming stuff back then like Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Also they had some kind of window system that relates to DirectX. I think DirectX may have been named after the window software.

          • moose@reddthat.com
            English
            7·
            11 months ago

            The X in DirectX is a placeholder, because it’s a suite of APIs.

            DirectShow, DirectSound, DirectMusic, Direct3D, ect.

            Its like “Direct____”

          • Hildegarde@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            11 months ago

            Flight Simulator X is because X is a cooler way to write 10. Apple did that with Mac OS too. Using roman numerals alone cannot be trade marked.

          • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Sort of. DirectX was an entire collection of programming applications, not the application itself. Basically, the X was a stand-in for all the various Direct APIs that made up the suite. DirectDraw was the window one you’re probably thinking of. There was also Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectMusic, and DirectPlay.

            Another way to think about it is that it’s akin to AdobeX. There’s Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Acrobat, etc…

            That being said, it was 100% the basis for the Xbox’s name. It was a DirectX Box, and DirectX was (at least at first) the primary method of writing games for the console. And since Windows also used DirectX, it made games much easier to port to PC. By that point, the X had sort of taken on a life of its own, and Microsoft started using it simply as a way to signify that something was made for the Xbox. Xinput, for instance, is the protocol that Xbox controllers use. But the X doesn’t stand for anything in that case, except to signify that it was designed for use with the Xbox.

    • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      102·
      11 months ago

      Lots of big companies register lots of really dumb trademarks, even for things that they don’t end up producing. Most of them would be thrown out in court.

  • Captain_Ender@kbin.social
    103·
    11 months ago

    Really would be cool to stop seeing this shit all over the front page. Pretty sure a lot of us are here because we don’t care about these sites.

    • ebits21@lemmy.caEnglish
      41·
      11 months ago

      Memmy added the ability to filter posts by keywords recently. Very useful ;)

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        I need this on Jerboa. My filtered list on RiF was fucking huge, and you can bet fucking “elon”, “musk” and “elon musk” was in it (with Marvel, Star Wars and other cultural spam that I don’t give a shit about).

  • Melkath@kbin.social
    4·
    11 months ago

    All of the cage fight crap, and the Threads crap are a big show leading to Meta buying Twitter, Musk recouping some of his losses, and Zuckerberg getting his hands on the worlds personal data again to fire his intelligence contracts back up.

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
    4·
    11 months ago

    This is like reading about politics. Just when I think things can’t get any stupider…

    Edit:

    Twitter auto-replied to Insider’s request for comment with a message saying that the communications department would get back to us soon.

    They got an actual reply? No infamous 💩 emoji? That’s a story in itself.

  • RickRussell_CA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    Well, throw it in the closet with the electric guitar, the karate suit, the Boring Company, and that crazy vacuum train thing. Just another one of Musk’s dumb ideas that never got anywhere.

  • sudo_shinespark@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    Didn’t Xfinity recently rebrand itself to use just an X for most things, too?

    I’m beginning to question this guy’s decision making skills /s