• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, November 27, 2024

Elon Musk's X Corp. is attempting to partially block The Onion's planned purchase of Infowars, the media company owned by bankrupt right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

In a "limited objection" filed Monday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston, X Corp. argued that Jones is unable to transfer the rights to any portion of X Corp's website -- including addresses like X.com/infowars.

“The X Accounts cannot be sold or transferred at this time,” the tech platform asserts.

The company added that its objection only concerns the Infowars account handles -- including @infowars (located at X.com/infowars) and @realAlexJones (x.com/RealAlexJones) -- and not the content associated with those accounts.

X Corp's petition comes around two weeks after the Onion and a group of families who lost children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre won a bankruptcy auction for Infowars and its assets. The families previously won a $1.5 billion defamation judgment against Jones over his lies about the school shooting. Jones declared bankruptcy soon after the judgment was issued.

While there have been other court cases over ownership of social media handles, those battles have often been between competitors, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman.

He adds that attempts to prevent transfers of account names “are usually done quietly and rarely involve court proceedings.”

“Social media services approach this topic gingerly because they want to encourage their users to invest heavily in their accounts,” he says.

X Corp.'s motives aren't yet clear, and it's possible the company is attempting to restrict resales of user names in order to prevent people from speculating by registering handles with the goal of re-selling them, Goldman says.

This isn't the first time X Corp. has asserted an ownership interest in a username. Last month, he began using the handle @America to promote president-elect Donald Trump's candidacy. That handle was registered to someone else in 2010, but had been dormant for four years, according to Axios.

X Corp. isn't the only one attempting to intervene in the Onion's planned purchase of Infowars.

First United American Companies, which also put in a bid for Infowars, is separately attempting to block the sale. First United American -- which is connected to Jones' supplement business -- argued in papers filed with Lopez last week that its bid for Infowars should have been accepted by the bankruptcy trustee.

Lopez will hear arguments in the matter next month.