ABOUT 24 hours ago we wrote about the Twitter crisis and Elon Musk's need for a distraction. A distraction from what? Here's one example. We separately dealt with the "X" transition, which isn't even a transition but a shallow rebrand (the words "tweet" and "Twitter" still appear in many places in the site, so this half-baked deployment of a change is showing crudely).
"This will accelerate the death of Twitter Musk's ambitions on the Web."For those who missed or didn't notice what's happening, see "X is stupid" in Geminispace or some of the earlier coverage of this, e.g. "Elon Musk rebrands Twitter’s icon blue bird logo after nearly 17 years", "Elon Musk changed Twitter's iconic logo to the letter X", "Musk set to replace iconic Twitter blue bird logo with X logo", "Twitter's New "X" Logo Is Reminding Plenty Of People Around X.Org", "Elon Musk replaces Twitter logo with X as part of plans to develop 'everything app'", "Elon Musk Changes Twitter’s Logo to an X", "Elon Musk says he’ll get rid of Twitter’s famous bird logo in favor of an X", and "Elon Musk says Twitter to change logo, adieu to ‘all the birds’".
This does not affect us in any way because we don't use Twitter, but many people are truly pissed off, including media sites, politicians, and activists. They should never have outsourced their online activities (and thus audiences) to Twitter in the first place.
"This does not affect us in any way because we don't use Twitter, but many people are truly pissed off, including media sites, politicians, and activists. They should never have outsourced their online activities (and thus audiences) to Twitter in the first place."If Musk wanted to do something useful, he would remove the bloat or bring back JS-less access (which existed until 2020). "The web standards are also already so complicated that it is impossible to write a new web browser from scratch," one person pointed out yesterday (there were past articles to that effect a few years ago). At the moment Twitter has severe accessibility issues. "Issues which may now violate the Americans with Disabilities Act," Ryan noted. "JavaScript pop-ups interfere with screen reading software and magnification. The old non-JS version of Twitter could be read in Reader Mode."
Changing some logos or a name solves no real issue and creates many new issues.
"Elon seems to be setting Twitter up for an easy trademark infringement lawsuit," one reader told us today, if "X11 rises to the occasion rather than folds. Such a suit might not be won but would be an exquisite way to get GNU/Linux visible in the press again."
XRevan86 has meanwhile quoted Oliver Alexander as saying: "Oh dear god it is hideous. From distinct visual identity to the most generic branding ever. Also basically an exact copy of the “X Windows System” logo" (many people noticed the same thing).
"Is the X.org logo a registered trademark in the United States?" Ryan asked. "It probably is. It doesn't cost much to register one, and it's actionable because they're both "technology products" and what Elon Musk is doing is "likely to cause confusion in the marketplace". In some cases, trademark doesn't necessarily apply if something is too different or in another sector entirely. Like, You changed it "enough" or the "mark" is associated with beer and you're selling tennis balls. But this is tech, typosquatting, and a stolen logo."
"I don't think the typosquatting part would work, as AFAIK X.com has been around for a long time, just not doing anything," MinceR asserted. ⬆