Twitter Makes a Comeback, but Not Under Elon Musk

The blue bird is back, but Elon Musk’s X is fighting to keep it from returning as Twitter. Stephen Coates, Twitter’s first trademark counsel and later a senior legal executive, launched Twitter.now in late August through his startup, Operation Bluebird.

The platform remains in early testing. Its creators present it as more than a recreation of the service Musk acquired in 2022 and renamed X in 2023. They are also challenging the idea that one central moderation policy should decide what millions of users see.

Twitter.now is being built around VERA, an AI system intended to assess posts, check claims, provide context and sources, and assign each item a trust score. Users will eventually be able to choose how much potentially misleading or harmful content they are willing to see.

Coates describes the approach as a distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of reach. Users may publish lawful material, but that does not mean an algorithm should distribute it widely. The proposed system would make moderation closer to a personal setting than a single platform-wide rule.

The revived identity is also the subject of a legal dispute. Operation Bluebird petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office in December 2025 to cancel X’s trademarks for “Twitter” and “tweet,” arguing that the rebrand amounted to abandonment. The startup then applied for its own Twitter trademark. X responded with claims of trademark and copyright infringement and is seeking to stop the platform from using the identity.

A judge has not issued a final ruling. In an earlier phase, however, the judge indicated that X had not provided enough evidence to establish ownership of some disputed marks, including the bird logo and “tweet.”

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freedom of speech and freedom of reach