Muse, Meta's newly-released AI agent, is now using social media handles once controlled by Muse, the English rock band. The exact circumstances surrounding how the accounts changed hands are unclear, but it has once again raised questions about Meta and other large platforms' ability to commandeer usernames when it suits them.
Muse, the band, which trademarked its name in 1999, according to its wiki, has used the @muse moniker on Instagram and on X for years. But earlier this summer fans noticed the band's Instagram username seemed to change to @museband. The change happened in July, according to The Independent, though Reddit users seem to have spotted a change in early June.
In any case, by the time Meta officially unveiled Muse, the AI agent, on Tuesday, the social media company was using the @Muse handle for its new agent. Likewise, the band once used the @Muse handle on X, but is now going by @museband on that platform as well. It's not clear when that changeover happened, but it seems to have caused some crossed wires as Mark Zuckerberg's initial posts about Muse the agent apparently tagged the band's account, as New York Times reporter Mike Issac pointed out. And early posts from other Meta execs also inexplicably tagged the band, which Issac said was a "bug."
While details around the changes haven't been made public, some fans have expressed disappointment with the band's name being used for an AI feature. As the Independent notes, Muse has written songs that are "heavily inspired by fears and anxieties surrounding technology and how it might be used for social oppression."
Meta didn't immediately respond to requests for comment and neither did representatives for the band. But this is not the first time an Instagram handle has changed hands around the time that Meta made a major announcement.
The company secured the @Meta Instagram handle, which had been used by an independent motorcycle magazine of the same name, shortly after it announced it was changing the company's name from Facebook to Meta in 2021. The magazine never publicly commented on just how that name change came about, but its editor-in-chief wrote at the time that it felt like a "punch in the gut" to see a "corporate Goliath" take on the identity it had used since 2014. The magazine later changed its name.
Likewise, when Meta launched Threads in 2023, it didn't control the @threads handle on Instagram. The account was instead used by a small fashion retailer called American Threads. But a month later, Meta suddenly gained control of the account.
Meta has said little about how such name changes play out. In 2021, the company told me that it hadn't made any legal threats to the motorcycle magazine but didn't answer questions about whether it had contacted or paid the publisher. "We allow people to change their usernames on Instagram," a spokesperson told me at the time.
Officially, Meta doesn't allow people to buy, sell or trade Instagram usernames, though sought after handles are known to trade hands, sometimes through shady channels. People have also lost desirable handles on X in seemingly unofficial ways. The person who controlled @X before Elon Musk took over the company was told in an email in 2023 that he was losing the username, though he says he was offered merch in return. That same year, the person who had used the @music handle since 2007 had his username suddenly changed so that it could be used as an official X account. More recently, X opened a "handle marketplace" for people to officially buy inactive usernames.
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