- By Vikas Yadav
- Sat, 04 Nov 2023 02:14 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
X, formerly called Twitter, is reportedly planning to trade unused or abandoned handles on the platform in exchange for hefty dollar amounts, as was hinted at by Elon Musk in the past. The Telsa CEO and X owner posted about a possible update that was probably an indication of this step in December last year. He posted that X will "start freeing" the name space of around 1.5 billion accounts, which have had "no tweets" or log-in activity for years.
In the latest move, Forbes reported that X plans to sell these handles that would materialise Musk's words. According to the email accessed by the news outlet, a team called @Handle Team is working on the marketplace for the sale of unused account names of users who initially enlisted them. In a few cases, the demanding fee shoots up to $50,000 (over Rs 41.5 lakh after currency conversion).
While the news outlet did not publish the email communication, the mail is sourced from X staff and mentioned that X recently updated its @handle policy to make changes to its guidelines, fees and retrieval process.
Under Elon Musk's leadership, X has worked strongly to curb bot activity on X. (Image:Unsplash)
Musk posted in November 2022 that many of these inactive accounts had been occupied by "bots and trolls", and the plan was to start the liberation process next month (December 2022). A user (@parisvega) had proposed a "Handle Marketplace" back then (but different from the reported scheme).
At the time of filing, the question of "Can I get an inactive username?" within the X Help Centre has the answer: "Unfortunately, we cannot release inactive usernames at this time." Forbes wildly speculated that Musk could consider using the service to acquire the "@handle" account, which has been inactive since 2019. This can be a genuine possibility considering the name of the team working on the procedure.
On a related note, Musk announced that xAI's Grok AI model will be released today for limited testers. He added it will be available for all X Premium+ accounts once the trial is over. You can read more on this update here.
