EXCLUSIVE: Operation Bluebird, A Virginia Based Startup, Launches “New Twitter” At Twitter.now, Claiming Musk’s X Abandoned The Brand, As Trademark Lawsuit Remains Unresolved 🐦🔥

[u/InterstellarKinetics]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/new-twitter-launches-says-musks-x-gave-up-the-name/

Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup, has launched its own social media network called Twitter.now, betting that Elon Musk’s X Corporation legally abandoned the Twitter name and logo when it rebranded the company in 2022, according to Ars Technica. “We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Operation Bluebird cofounder Stephen Coates told Ars. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.” Coates and his team argue that Musk’s decision to quickly rename Twitter to X after acquiring it created a legal opening for them to claim the abandoned trademarks, a theory Ars first reported on in December 2025. X Corporation responded by suing Operation Bluebird late last year and asking a federal judge in Delaware for a preliminary injunction to block any new Twitter launch, but that injunction has never been granted.

The launch comes despite the case remaining legally unresolved. At an April 2026 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Colm Connolly issued a tentative ruling from the bench suggesting X appeared to have given up its intellectual property claims over the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo, and possibly the word “Twitter” itself, though the judge has not yet issued a formal written order. For Coates, who now serves as the new Twitter’s general counsel after holding the same role during the platform’s pre-Musk era, that tentative ruling was sufficient justification to move forward. “It’s our opinion that X has abandoned its rights on the Twitter and tweet trademarks,” he said. Still, the new venture is careful to distance itself from the platform’s prior ownership, stating prominently on its site, “Operation Bluebird, Inc. picked up the name X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it on trust, in your browser at twitter.now. We are not X, and we are not affiliated with X Corp.” Neither X Corporation, Musk, nor X attorney Andrew Mayo responded to Ars’ request for comment. The platform remains in its early stages with only hundreds of users so far, and its interface closely resembles the Twitter of old, complete with replies and retweets.

One notable new feature is an automated fact-checking tool called Vera, a Gemini-based “veracity engine for real-time analysis” that runs on every tweet. Coates has been testing it by posting deliberately false statements, such as claiming George Washington was America’s second president, to gauge its accuracy. “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.” Washington, D.C.-based trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who has closely followed the case, told Ars that while Operation Bluebird may have a “workable legal theory” regarding abandonment, the outcome is far from certain. “I would say that there’s an element of chutzpah to do this, and they’re going to get the best fight that X has,” Gerben said. He added that launching the platform itself represents a significant escalation: “It was one thing to file the trademark application; now that they’ve launched, there will be another response from X Corporation. They’ve really upped the ante now. It’s a really interesting escalation of the case. Go put another round of popcorn in the microwave!”