Elon Musk’s X/Twitter is objecting to the sale or transfer of any X accounts maintained by Alex Jones or Infowars in a new court filing. The company claims that Jones and Infowars do not own their accounts — Elon Musk and his company own them along with all other accounts on the platform.
“X Corp. objects to the sale, assignment, or transfer of: (a) the Infowars X account; (b) the Banned.Video X account; (c) The War Room X account; (d) the Alex Jones X Account; and (e) any other accounts maintained by FSS or Jones on X,” the court filing reads.
“X Corp. does not object to the proposed sale as a general matter, but objects to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform,” the filing explains.
According to the filing, “Accounts on X are governed by the X Terms of Service.” Musk’s company claims that Jones and Infowars don’t own their accounts, but rather only have a license to use them from X.
“Under both the Prepetition TOS and the Current TOS, all right, title, and interest in and to X Corp.’s services, including X Corp.’s various websites, SMS, APIs, email notifications, applications, buttons, widgets, ads, commerce services, and other covered services (collectively, the ‘Services’) are X Corp.’s ‘exclusive property,'” the filing reads. “As the owner of the Services, grants each user ‘a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and nonexclusive license to use the software provided’ to use the Services,” X Corp. writes.
“In contrast to the Services, the account holders own the Content (as defined in the TOS) they submit, post, or display on or through the Services; however, the Content is distinct and separate from the Services,” the court filing explained.
X Corp.’s court filing comes amid Musk’s social media company filing a notice of appearance in Alex Jones’ Infowars bankruptcy case, asking to be included on future communications about the bankruptcy case.
The judge overseeing the case, meanwhile, noted that he is concerned with the process in which the satirical comedy site the Onion, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, won Jones’ platform at a bankruptcy auction.
Southern District of Texas Judge M. Christopher Lopez cited transparency issues with the auction and is calling for a new hearing on the bidding procedure.
“I personally don’t care who wins the auction. I care about process and transparency,” Judge Lopez said, adding that a new hearing would determine whether those who ran the Infowars auction conducted “a full and fair process.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.