X Corp., Elon Musk's company that owns the social network X (formerly Twitter), has stated that user accounts do not belong to the users themselves, but they only have a license to use them. This is reported by 404 Media.
This information became known from a court document filed by the company to prevent the satirical publication The Onion from acquiring Alex Jones' InfoWars media company, which is known for frequently spreading conspiracy theories.
The Onion recently purchased InfoWars at an auction. The decision to sell this conspiracy media outlet was made because of a court ruling against Alex Jones, who was found guilty of defaming the families of teachers and students killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. The families won a $1.4 billion judgment, forcing Jones to sell his media outlet.
However, a company affiliated with Jones challenged the legality of the acquisition of The Onion media. In addition, Elon Musk's X joined the case to help stop the sale. In its court filing, the media company argues that Alex Johnson's and InfoWars' accounts on X, which were part of the auction, belong to X Corp. and cannot be transferred. This could stop the sale of InfoWars.
However, Elon Musk's company claims that it only owns and controls the accounts, not their content. Nevertheless, the transfer of accounts to new companies is a common practice, especially in cases of bankruptcy. After acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk himself threatened NPR with transferring their account to another company when the publication stopped using the platform.
Over the past year, the relationship between Elon Musk and Alex Jones has become more friendly. At first, the billionaire unblocked the conspiracy theorist on his social network. He also stated that, in his opinion, The Onion is not a funny site. In response, Jones directly said that Elon Musk came to his aid to "protect him from the Democrats' attempts to steal his identity from X".