“Get over your X. The bird is back,” says the founder of the new Twitter that Musk couldn’t kill

Startup launches Twitter.now as Elon Musk’s fight over the brand continues.

Operation Bluebird, A Virginia-based startup that’s seeking to reclaim the Twitter name from Elon Musk, has launched a new social network under the Twitter.now domain.

The news on the Twitter.now launch was announced by Stephen Coates, a former Twitter trademark lawyer and associate director of Twitter. Coates and trademark attorney Michael Peroff have founded Operation Bluebird to revive the iconic brand from the dead.

“The public square is open again, and definitely not affiliated with X in any way. Whatsoever. Get over your X. The bird is back,” said Coates in a LinkedIn post.

“Twitter is a reclaimed brand. We are not X and are not affiliated with X Corp. Early access is now open,” he added, inviting the new users to join the platform and support it with a $20 registration fee.

Musk is not happy: Is it really copyright infringement?

The launch of a social network with the same name instantly raises questions of potential trademark infringements, as Elon Musk may still hold rights to the Twitter brand.

However, it seems that Operation Bluebird came prepared. The company has made an argument directly to the US Patent and Trademark Office.

In December 2025, the company filed a 105-page petition seeking cancellation of X Corp.'s “Twitter” and “tweet” trademarks. It argued that X had abandoned the marks after removing the Twitter branding from the service and replacing it with X. The company simultaneously applied for its own Twitter trademark.

X Corp., however, has rejected the idea that changing a company's name means it is surrendering its intellectual property.

In a lawsuit filed in Delaware late last year, X accused Operation Bluebird of trademark infringement and sought a federal judge's order blocking the proposed Twitter revival.

The dispute approached a new phase in April 2026, when US District Court Judge Colm Connolly issued a tentative ruling from the bench indicating that X appeared to have abandoned intellectual property claims involving the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo, while also raising the possibility that the same could apply to the “Twitter” name.

The judge has not yet issued a written order, but for Operation Bluebird, that was enough push in self-esteem to launch the platform.

“When X Corp. retired the Twitter brand, we saw an opportunity to build something new: a public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice,” Coates writes in a LinkedIn post.

What features will the new Twitter have?

Of course, the return of the little blue bird is unmistakably nostalgic, even as the company insists it is building something new.

“Twitter.now is not an attempt to recreate the old platform. We are building a different service, with trust signals that provide context for what users see and tools that allow people – not an opaque algorithm – to decide how much credibility and noise reach their feeds,” said Coates.

Twitter.now offers deliberately familiar services as the platform Musk purchased in 2022 and renamed X. It is a public social network that offers posting, replying, and reposting functionalities.

However, rather than promising to recreate the old Twitter exactly, Bluebird claims to build a platform where users have more transparency into why content appears in their feeds and greater control over how much noise reaches them.

“Our governing principle is simple: freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” Coates added.

As part of its vision, the team is introducing the AI tool VERA, which analyzes posts and provides users with information on the accuracy or trustworthiness of claims.

Also, the platform has a feature called the “Trust Dial,” which lets users choose how much they want to trust the content in their feeds. The feature gives users more control over what they see, rather than leaving those decisions entirely to an algorithm.

Twitter.now says users can share their views freely, but that does not mean every post will be shown to a large number of people. Posts that are considered spam, manipulative, harassing, or intentionally misleading may be shown to fewer users under the platform’s rules.

That $20 to sign up? It will be used to fight Elon Musk

So far, the platform is not open to everyone and is paywalled. To sign up, the new user can choose to pay $20 to become a “Founder” or $40 to be called a “Fighter.”

The company specifies what kind of fight it has in mind.

“There was a place where the whole world came to talk. The richest man alive bought it and broke it,” it writes on its website.

“Goliath has money. We have you,” it adds.

“We're a small team. He's the richest man alive. He has the money – we have the mission, and the people.

Redditors skeptical: Why would people migrate to a new Twitter?

Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022 pushed many longtime users away from the platform. Protesting users migrated to BlueSky or Mastodon platforms. Is there space and energy left for yet another platform to protest?

Internet users have mixed feelings about it. On Reddit, some users showed skepticism.

“I’m up for it, but I am already happy on Bluesky, so I’m not sure why I would switch back to a Twitter clone,” one Reddit user wrote.

“But I’d probably reserve an account just in case.”

In a Reddit discussion on Twitter.now launch, some questioned whether Operation Bluebird’s early-access model was trustworthy. One user on Reddit called it “just a ploy to get an email database built up,” pointing to the fact that requesting a handle does not guarantee that it will be assigned.

Another commenter wrote that it “looks like a scam,” with the original poster responding, “yeah, it is sketchy.”

Others were more enthusiastic: “I hope X users mass migrate to twitter.new,” one user wrote, while another user pushed back on the skepticism: “It's not sketchy, I know Operation Bluebird. Cool cats.”

Some users were put off by the paywall, while others said that if the company upholds its promise of privacy and transparency, they are ready to pay.

The trademark fight itself attracted plenty of attention. Some Reddit users seemed more interested in the possibility that Musk had discarded one of the internet’s most recognizable brands than in the new platform itself.

It really is insane that Musk paid $44b for Twitter, a company that had ‘tweet’ enter the lexicon, and decided to just throw all that in the trash,

one Reddit user wrote.

“Like if someone bought Google and decided to try to stop people from talking about googling things.”

Another user compared the rebrand to HBO's rebranding as Max, calling it “the only other branding insanity of this magnitude.”

For some, the appeal is less about Twitter.now itself and more about the possibility of disrupting Musk’s X.

“LOL I won't ever use it, but if it fucks with Musk then have at it,” one Reddit user wrote.

The legal battle also drew Reddit's attention.

Fascinating legal play cotton, let’s see how it works out,

one commenter wrote.

Others were more skeptical about the future of the new Twitter. Users argued that the company could face another fight if Twitter.now gains traction, noting that the judge’s ruling is not final.

“This doesn't seem like it's going to keep the name for very long. The judge's ruling is not final, and despite moving to the name 'X', I doubt that the Twitter IP is truly up for grabs,” a user wrote.

“While I’m enjoying this company’s story unfold from a bystander’s perspective, I think their mission is fundamentally flawed to fail,” another said.

“Not because of copyright or trademark, but because I think the idea of yet another proprietary social media platform is kinda over.”

The commenter pointed to Bluesky and Mastodon as examples of platforms pursuing federated social media, while arguing that users are increasingly moving to newer formats such as TikTok or abandoning social media altogether.