A couple of week after X commandeered the favored @X account from longtime Twitter consumer Gene X Hwang, one other consumer has reported that X has taken over his standard account, @music.

“16 years in the past, I created @music and have been operating it ever since,” Jeremy Vaught, director of engineering on the nonprofit Life Occurs, posted on X. “Simply now, Twitter/X simply ripped it away. Tremendous pissed.”

Vaught instructed Ars that he created the @music Twitter account in 2007 as a approach to promote impartial music being carried out reside in Second Life.

Over the subsequent 16 years, Vaught linked with a vibrant group of software program builders on Twitter as he continued creating main promotions in Second Life. Then, as soon as his on-line pursuits grew previous Second Life, he continued utilizing the @music account to easily put up about music, as Twitter grew to become his most popular social media platform. With that fundamental account premise, the @music viewers exploded, and he organically gained followers, finally constructing as much as roughly 450,000 followers.

Throughout that point, Vaught experimented with the @music account, looking for the easiest way to make the most of the big following there.

“I am a software program developer,” Vaught instructed Ars. “And I used to be attempting to provide you with the best manner to make use of that viewers and do one thing with it.”

However Vaught by no means had the time to deal with leveraging the @music viewers, solely ever benefiting from the account when corporations sometimes despatched him free perks like headphones in commerce for promotions. Sometimes, patrons would strategy Vaught, attempting to tempt him to promote the @music deal with, however the greatest provide was solely round $5,000. Vaught stated he was by no means as a result of he knew that promoting his deal with violated Twitter’s phrases of service, and he figured there was extra worth in protecting the account.

Now X has taken the account away. Within the electronic mail Vaught posted on X, the platform instructed Vaught that “the consumer deal with related to the account @music will likely be affiliated with X Corp.”

“Accordingly, your deal with will likely be modified to a brand new consumer deal with,” the e-mail stated.

When you go to @music now, it has 11 million followers, which—judging from an Web Archive snapshot—seems to be generated from merging the now-defunct @TwitterMusic account into Vaught’s @music account.

“Twitter’s not useless to me”

X provided Vaught just a few various usernames to contemplate—@musicfan, @musicmusic, @music123, or @musiclover—none of which appealed to Vaught. He stated that it was doubtless X had commandeered these handles from different customers and that the account would not be the identical below another username, even when he did select a brand new one.

To “decrease any inconvenience” from having his account deal with taken away, X defaulted to altering Vaught’s username to @musicfan, which he described as “in all probability the least worst” various the platform recommended.

Proper now, Vaught is not positive if he’ll proceed utilizing the account below a unique identify.

“Actually, if it is not @music, it is actually not that fascinating.” Vaught instructed Ars. “Certainly one of my preliminary reactions was simply to shut the entire thing down, proper? Like I am simply so irritated and so mad.”

However whereas his response the day after studying that X was commandeering his deal with was excessive frustration, Vaught instructed Ars that the platform will stay his main type of social media.

“it is extremely annoying, however Twitter remains to be my most popular social media,” Vaught stated. “That is how I talk and study my information about what is going on on. Nothing else compares.”

His solely “minor protest” to X’s motion, he stated, was to cancel his Twitter Blue subscription.

“I did flip off the Twitter Blue,” Vaught stated. “I do not really feel like I’ve the necessity to hold paying [Elon Musk] 11 bucks a month.”

X doesn’t reply to requests for remark, so it is inconceivable to know what number of extra accounts could also be commandeered through the Twitter rebrand and past.

Vaught stated that he acknowledges that he owns nothing in relation to managing accounts on social media platforms and can at all times be on the whim of what the platform desires relating to accounts. However he had taken some consolation when @TwitterMusic launched and no one got here for his account then. So he wasn’t essentially anticipating to lose the @music account this week.

“I assumed, if I can survive that, who’s gonna come after it now?” Vaught stated.

Vaught is usually a Musk fan, as he is all in favour of Musk’s electrical vehicles and area developments. He stated that this expertise with X hasn’t tainted his opinion of Musk or his relationship an excessive amount of with X as a platform. He is holding out hope that Musk has a long-term plan for the place Musk is taking X, however like many customers, he is struggling to regulate to the rebranding. Vaught nonetheless refers back to the platform by its unique identify.

“Twitter’s not useless to me at this level,” Vaught instructed Ars, even when “it is a tremendous big bummer” to lose the @music account. “Sixteen years is a very long time to spend money on one thing after which simply have it ripped out from beneath you,” Vaught stated.