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Operation Bluebird Launches New Twitter (arstechnica.com) 93

Posted by BeauHD from the back-from-the-dead dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Operation Bluebird, the Virginia-based startup trying to revive the allegedly abandoned "Twitter" name and logo, announced Monday that it has launched its new social media network: Twitter.now. "We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product," Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird's cofounders, told Ars. "And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore."

[...] Twitter.now, still in its nascent stage, only has hundreds of users for the time being. The social media network looks and feels much like the Twitter of old and many of its offshoots -- it has replies and retweets. A new and notable feature is the automated fact-checking tool, a Gemini-based "veracity engine for real-time analysis" ("Vera" for short), which runs on every tweet. Coates has been testing Vera in recent days by posting obviously false messages, like "George Washington was our second president."

"Our first goal is to see if we can truly bring back a town square that's safer and less harmful," he said. "We say freedom of speech and not freedom of reach. We want people to say what they want, but we also want to create a platform that's not financially locked into that viral content that's harmful or inaccurate." Operation Bluebird argues that Elon Musk effectively abandoned the Twitter brand and trademarks when he renamed the company X, opening the door for the startup to claim them. X Corp. sued to stop the effort, but a federal judge tentatively ruled in April that X appeared to have relinquished rights to "tweet," the bird logo, and possibly "Twitter" itself, though no written ruling has been issued.

Bluebird has taken that as enough of a green light to move forward while emphasizing that its new Twitter is not affiliated with X. "Operation Bluebird, Inc. picked up the name X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it on trust, in your browser at twitter.now," it states prominently on its website. "We are not X, and we are not affiliated with X Corp."

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Operation Bluebird Launches New Twitter

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  • The brightest of ideas right here.

    • It looks more to me like a marketing stunt. If they were to operate as Twitter, it would muddy the waters for their cleaner brand image.

  • Reminds me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:08PM (#66309639)
    of these Chinese companies resurrecting boomer/grandma brands like Zenith and Philco for some type of appeal to nostalgia.

    • Re:Reminds me (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:16PM (#66309651) Homepage

      of these Chinese companies resurrecting boomer/grandma brands like Zenith and Philco for some type of appeal to nostalgia.

      Have you seen the keyboard smash business names on Amazon they come up with otherwise? Yeah, I totally feel confident buying an e-scooter charger from Zxnmfgy.

      • The company making that charger has a real name, usually IME beginning with "Shenzen" since they all seem to be there. Then the same product has twenty different Scrabble tile names attached to it and it's sold under all of them. I'm not sure if this is mostly done by one company using a bunch of names, or separate companies, but they all use the same font for branding (Impact) so they all LOOK the same. But SOME listings will give you the manufacturer's info as well as the brand.

        • That way, when the product burns down someone's home, the seller can just punch their keyboard again and continue doing business under the new name.

          • That's only one of many benefits. I've thought about this a lot because I've bought related stuff under a bunch of these different names. I've wondered if they are auto-generated randomly, or perhaps are something more bizarre such as being transposed in sequence order from Chinese characters.

      • of these Chinese companies resurrecting boomer/grandma brands like Zenith and Philco for some type of appeal to nostalgia.

        Have you seen the keyboard smash business names on Amazon they come up with otherwise? Yeah, I totally feel confident buying an e-scooter charger from Zxnmfgy.

        Putting Zenith lipstick on the Zzzzle-pig, does nothing for consumer confidence.

      • Loose lithium ion cells from trustfire or fandyfire If it looks like someone banged elbows on a keyboard to name the "company," I'm not buying.
  • Is, perhaps ironically, a great idea. You'd think not because of the hallucination problem, but that can be minimized. And how else are you going to respond to every single false claim? I guess we'll see how it plays out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      hallucination is the least of the problems, the material those llm are trained with is: in anything remotely political you won't get fact checking, you get mass media echo chamber summaries. a 5% of hallucination would actually be a refreshing bonus.

      fact check on your own. ironically, you can use llms to make it easier, but never omit fact checking the fact cheking.

      • Facts don't come from the model. Hopefully they know that. The model is just language. If they've done it right, the AI will just fetch reports from Snopes, Politifact, etc that are relevant.

    • X did this. Then Grok started contradicting the "facts" as Musk preferred them, so it rather famously went through a few stages of tweaking that resulted in a few, shall we say, unfortunate incidents. These days, Grok is locked behind the blue checkmark paywall.

      I'd imagine a startup trying to do AI fact checking at scale is going to quickly discover that it costs a pretty penny to keep the token monster fed.

  • Begging for litigation (Score:3)

    by Joe Jordan ( 453607 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:13PM (#66309649) Journal
    I don't see how they'll pull this off without surviving an onslaught of litigation. It's clever, and those anxious for a new Twitter will hop on with high hopes, but the network effect is what keeps X, Facebook, etc. going, and the world does not need another social network.

    • Re:Begging for litigation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:21PM (#66309665) Homepage
      The use-it-or-lose-it time frame for trademarks is only three years. Proof the previous holder planned to use it is on that previous owner.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      looks like a take the money and run operation to me.

      • This is what I assumed as well. It checks all the buzzwords. Probably just hoping to get bought out for a payday.

    • ... the network effect is what keeps X, Facebook, etc. going, and the world does not need another social network.

      And the abuse-your-members effect is what has kept me off of "X, Facebook, etc". I wonder how many other folks there are who feel the same way, who might sign up for a re-invented Twitter that promises to behave better.

      I've always loved the social network concept, but have never been on any social network other than Slashdot and the ancient Classmates site. I saw from Facebook's early days where all of it was heading and just said "no". But if the new Twitter changes the business model sufficiently, then I

      • Social networking exists to:
        - make money by exploiting human behavior
        - manipulate human behavior to make that exploitation more profitable

        Ban blood/gore, gambling, full nudity, swear words and the whole thing can be deemed not porn, not age restricted by the regulators.
        Long term modification of the behavior of a species can't be harmful, right? When has that ever been a problem?
          As long as kids don't hear bad words and start repeating them, everything's fine.

        • True enough - but it doesn't have to be that way. Get rid of the profit motive, the algorithms that promote any content for any reason, and the advertising. Social media should be a social service, as part of the commons. It shouldn't be a private, for-profit thing.

  • Something you are failing to mention... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Snard ( 61584 ) <snard12&gmail,com> on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:24PM (#66309675) Homepage
    I visited twitter.now, and was inviting to "join" as a Founder for only $20. Or as a Fighter for only $ 40. Somehow this posting fails to mention that I am being charged for access to this new application (disclaimer: I did not complete the activation process, so I don't know if the $20 contribution is mandatory)
    • What is a "fighter" in this context?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      i'm planning to resurrect geocities. would you like to become a Resurrecter for only $15? a Warlock for only $35?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Ooh. I've always wanted to be a Geocities warlock. Or is that Geocities Warlock(tm)?

        But seriously, loving the irony of Elon's petulant rebranding coming back to bite him in the a**.

        The fact that twitter.com still exists as a redirect actually strengthens and weakens their claim to abandonment. A mere URL with no content does not generally qualify as use in commerce. And the existence of that redirect without Twitter branding on the resulting site makes it clear that abandonment is willful, because it i

    • "Fighter" right? Sounds like a place to socialize and totally not a platform where rage baiting, partisanship and anger thrive.

    • It's mandatory if you want to use the service today. Otherwise you are "waitlisted" to use it for free.

      Seems scammy, but I get that they want early adopters to help offset operational cost.

  • Ever since Musk bought Twitter, microblogging has been fractured into separate right-wing and left-wing platforms. I don't really see that situation changing anytime soon.

    • It is not impossible to do microblogging without political crap. But it will take a new, innovative idea.

      Personally I think the single algorithm designed for 'engagement' should have variations.

      You should be allowed to pick {ragebait/politics} as an option, but also be allowed to select other algorithms, possibly included:

      Child
      Happy
      Business
      Moderate

      With each option resulting in a different algorithm that enhances/reduces certain types of content.

      Let the people decide what they should be spoon fed.

      • Or just show a feed full of only the people you follow. This algorithmic feed stuff is always going to be inherently toxic. Problem is, when you're starting a new social media site from zero, everybody worth following is still on another platform.

  • "We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,"

    You have some suckers and a tank of a brand name that doesn't exactly roll through society with a clean CarFacts report.

    A new and notable feature is the automated fact-checking tool..which runs on every tweet. Coates has been testing Vera in recent days by posting obviously false messages, like "George Washington was our second president."

    Obviously false message testing, eh?

    OK. I'll try and be subtly accurate with the new social Rorschach test when I rephrase the usual question into "What does the W in WNBA stand for?"

  • It'll Fail (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DerKlempner ( 249063 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @01:29PM (#66309815) Homepage
    From the https://twitter.now/ [twitter.now] current front page:

    We're committed to protecting free expression while keeping the platform safe. We prohibit illegal content, child exploitation, threats of violence, harassment, scams, and other harmful conduct. Our policies and features will continue to evolve as the platform grows.

    How long before whatever political ideology becomes mainstream on the site will it be before the "undesirables" are accused of "harassment" or "other harmful conduct" because a user does something as simple as taking offense to another person's post?

    Most of social media is just people arguing about whose opinion is better. It's all crap, because it's online, anonymous shit-talking. When we speak to other people face-to-face, a large majority don't revert to name-calling and acting like an ass. They realize there's repercussions from real-life actions. Expecting there to be any real discourse where anonymous identities protect everyone is just delusional. This will fail as much as basically all social media has failed.

    • When we speak to other people face-to-face, a large majority don't revert to name-calling and acting like an ass.

      The "large majority" is definitely getting smaller due to social media behaviors bleeding through into real life. I've definitely experienced an uptick in people giving their unsolicited $0.02 while out in public.

      Real life needs a disable comments option.

      • I agree. All these goofy protests sure are annoying! We should just disable them.

        Or, you have to accept we live in a society that we are allowed to stay stupid shit and your only real option is to walk away or argue. I personally just walk away because even if someone is saying something I vehemently disagree with, it's still their right to say it. Plus, anyone that loud and annoying in public is likely beyond persuasion anyway. All they are really doing is showing us who they really are.

        • I wasn't referring to protests. I meant when strangers feel the need to express their unsolicited opinion about, well, whatever happens to be going through their mind at the time. Like my partner and I will be talking about some mundane thing out at the theme parks and a random person will jump in with their own take as if they'd forgotten they're not in the YouTube comments section.

          If someone wants to stand on the street corner and scream their head off at the Flock camera, though? Hey, more power to th

    • I don't think the point of this is to replace anything. It sounds like it's mostly just a bunch of bullshit to attempt to get bought out by a real social media site. You'll noticed they checked all the buzzword boxes to get attention. They are just hoping for a payday with this joke of a website.

  • The problem is not the site's favicon, it's how to bring in users. And seeing this is a US-based social network, the speech will be Zionist-controlled. If they were based somewhere else, I might consider using their product

  • Just what the World needs. . . . .

    . . . . another Social Media Echo Chamber :|

  • Being the new 'kid' (Score:3)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @01:54PM (#66309875)
    The problem is, a new platform (bandwagon) attracts the people unwelcome on other platforms (bandwagons). There are more racists and well-paid provocateurs in the world than philosophers, so the platform is flooded "with shit" in a matter of weeks. Thus, moderators are needed to remove the propaganda and advertising, and censors are needed to remove the illegal stuff. The moderators must deal with more than imprecise measurements of honesty and intent: They must balance civility and free speech as well. Get the balance wrong and the content descends into an echo chamber or a cesspool.

    Twitter Now has to fight for brand, even when it is technically abandoned: They are asking for donations with no guarantee of success. It has to find advertisers when Google and Facebook can offer more eyeballs and better prices. It has to develop a position on what political rhetoric or sexual expression is allowed and what will cause account suspension. It must run at a loss until it reaches a "critical mass" that attracts like-minded micro-bloggers and advertising dollars.

    In a winner-take-all market, the competitors also have an interest in sabotaging the new 'kid' as it grows and develops a market position. That may be the biggest obstacle for Twitter Now.

  • Just what the world needs.

  • If you are looking for a practical Twitter replacement, there is already BlueSky. It seems used and functional enough for that purpose, and is at least what I have seem refreshingly free from trolls.

    It's supposed to be open standards and distributed, even if it isn't distributed in practice. In that regards, Mastodon etc is a better choice.

  • We already have Xitter, which most certainly lives up to its name.

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