The band has been silent on the matter, which is an extremely strong indicator that they got a boatload of cash in the deal.

Everyone is reaching for pitchforks but all signs point to the band getting a huge payday.

Back in May, the iOS app "Muse" rebranded as "Allume". Their explanation was "An unexpected opportunity came up regarding the Muse name and trademarks, and as a result I'll soon be changing the name of Muse to Allumé."

Funnily enough that is against the Instagram ToS (https://help.instagram.com/termsofuse):

> 4.2 How You Can't Use Instagram. [...]

> You can’t sell, license, or purchase any account or data obtained from us or our Service, regardless of whether such data was obtained while logged-in to an Instagram account.

> This includes attempts to buy, sell, or transfer any aspect of your account (including your username); solicit, collect, or use login credentials or badges of other users; or request or collect Instagram usernames, passwords, or misappropriate access tokens.

YOU can’t , they can.

ToS doesn't constrain the owner.

I'd love to get paid a ton of money to leave their social shitwork for good. Do they have mastodon or bluesky?

I'd suggest building a time machine and going back to register threads.com.

This, especially given the same switch happened with twitter handles as well.

Don't be so generous in your assumptions. Meta simply stole the username because they could, and gave the old owner nothing in return. Or if they were lucky, maybe the band got a few Meta branded t-shirts, as was the case for one of the other victims from the article.

Seriously, look at that list of all the times Meta stole people's handles. Why would this time be any different?

If it happened across multiple platforms (of different owners) and the band themselves are not complaining, months after the rename, it seems quite likely.

Note that if this was done against the band's will it would be fantastic publicity for them to say so. Everyone would be on their side.

Meta probably reached out to them to remove any uncertainty around sharing the Muse trademark, and this was included in the deal. The band themselves didn't lose any followers, it was a rename. They might have asked for a clause not to talk about the deal.

> Meta simply stole the username because they could, and gave the old owner nothing in return.

The name changed happened across platforms including Twitter\X.

Meta doesn’t own X.

Is nobody reading the article? This comment section is crazy.

This place has become Reddit with how easy it is to farm upvotes for any “evil corpos” take, no matter how clueless or inane.

> This place has become Reddit […]

Not reading TFA (the fine article) has been a noble Internet tradition since (at least) the earliest days of Slashdot.

Oh way before that.

But the mating displays about every company being a conspiracy are about Reddit era, IIRC.

to be fair, Meta is a conspiracy company, probably just not in this particular case

That's what happens when you abuse people's trust for years: they don't trust you.

"The old owner" was $platform

Read the TOS for these services ... you don't own anything stored on their servers

Incorrect. This happened across platforms including X.

I think GP is (correctly) claiming that you don't actually own your account handle on social media services, including X. But I don't think it was a particularly relevant response at that point in the comment thread, and I agree Meta likely bought the usernames from the band on the various platforms.

This comment and others like it are wild to me.

Since when was the default to assume malicious activity and victimization, and then to ask for proof otherwise? Obviously we should do the reverse. There should be evidence of theft rather than assuming theft as the baseline.

For starters, if the band's handles were taken non-consensually, then the least we should expect is a public complaint from said band.

This is doubly true in a world where social media handles are routinely bought, sold, and traded. And triply true where the supposed victim of this crime is an incredibly popular group of people with an extremely massive platform, and it's 99.9999% likely that Meta knew this going in.

When a company is known for being malicious by default, to the point of knowingly covering up their ongoing and extensive contributions to teen suicides, it is not unreasonable for people to expect they would steal social media accounts to suit their interests.

They are pure unadulterated evil. They are guilty until proven innocent at this point.

I disagree, this is an unreasonable and almost certainly incorrect thing to assume happened in this case.

The fact that one hates XYZ is not a good reason to turn one's brain off and lose the ability to think rationally about XYZ.

In fact, I would argue that there's never a good reason to turn one's brain off and lose the ability to think even moderately intelligently.

I am agreeing it is unlikely it was actually malicious, but it is Meta and they deserve no charity. If it is even a small possibility they did the evil thing, we should all operate on the assumption they did the evil thing anyway until proven innocent.

I hope all the non charitable assumptions they deserve snowball enough to hurt them.

May their stock price burn in hell.

I really really really really REALLY don't like this way of thinking, and I hope that fewer and fewer people adopt it.

Good lord. Please use logic and Occam's Razor this.

Muse is a platinum album winning band that's got 10 albums over 20 years. If this was stolen, they (and their label) would be raising hell.

That’s not how either logic or justice work.

This is from an app the was also named Muse:

> An opportunity came up regarding the Muse name and trademarks. These have now been sold, so I need to move the app to a new name. Nothing else about the company, the app, your account, or your data has changed.

From https://allume.com/allume-faq/

Probably nothing. But Meta throwing a boatload of money at Muse is probably cheaper and easier than being evil about it.

The problem is, it’s Meta. And like the scorpion said to the frog, “I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”

The fact that the band changed their handles months ago and haven't complained? Occam's razor, man.

Knowing that people are willing to exchange social handles for money.

Many times that's against the TOS? And the names/handles belong to the site not the user anyway. I've seen these deals happen too.

my reason for believing they were paid is that the band has not been making a stink about it

Well in a decent society you can't take things that aren't yours.

Nobody using Muse the tool knows or gives a fuck who Muse the band is, the band itself is twice their age.

At 32 years a band is reaching Spinal Tap stage and they could probably use the cash. Occam's razor and all that.

> Nobody using Muse the tool knows or gives a fuck who Muse the band is, the band itself is twice their age.

Muse is incredibly popular. They're in the middle of a tour right now, too. Just saw them live two weekends ago. I'm sure there are tons of people who both listen to Muse and will use Muse the AI tool. I'm sure that's true for many of the AI tool's creators, too.

Muse the tool will have been forgotten in a few years and Muse the band will carry on.

I'm sure more people know the band than the tool - I've only heard of it through here and have no desire to learn more.

Makes sense they take the money, they can probably buy back the site in a few years.

Muse is pretty popular, 30 million album sales is not too bad.

I listened to the Beatles growing up, despite them being much more thab twice my age.

I have younger relatives that love Muse (and Spinal Tap).

Before today, I'd never heard of the muse app that chanhed it's name.

> Before today, I'd never heard of the muse app

It only launched two days ago, so.

Then you would know about the trademark beef the Beatles had with Apple for years.

Talk about sour grapes. Muse remains ridiculously popular and I will bet my bank account that there are more Muse fans than slop enthusiasts.

The irony of a highly talented band that have been actually doing the work for over twenty years being pushed aside to make room for Meta's model that promises you won't have to actually do the work.