San Fran sues Twitter over “X” sign

Technically, this may not wind up being a lawsuit. For the time being, the city of San Francisco has simply lodged a “complaint” against Elon Musk and ordered a halt to construction taking place at his Twitter headquarters. As part of his puzzling efforts to rename and rebrand the social media platform, Musk had workers install a giant, metal “X” sign on top of the building and they were attempting to remove the large, familiar bird logo from the side of the structure. The latter work was halted after the city informed Musk that certain permits and inspections were required which he had apparently not taken care of in advance. This seems like a curious bureaucratic jab at the billionaire by the government of his adopted home city. Perhaps they’re upset about his decision to move some of his other operations to Texas? (AP)

The city of San Francisco has opened a complaint and launched an investigation into a giant “X” sign that was installed Friday on top of the downtown building formerly known as Twitter headquarters as owner Elon Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.

City officials say replacing letters or symbols on buildings, or erecting a sign on top of one, requires a permit for design and safety reasons.

The X appeared after San Francisco police stopped workers on Monday from removing the brand’s iconic bird and logo from the side of the building, saying they hadn’t taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.

This wouldn’t be much of a headline were it not for the silliness and pettiness on display from both sides. San Francisco certainly has a responsibility to ensure public safety (not that you could tell from the conditions out on the streets), so if there are safety inspections required for construction work, Musk needed to comply with those rules. But the city is going further than that. They’re saying that any changes to the building need to “ensure consistency with the historic nature of the building.”

Seriously? Twitter was founded in 2006. That was less than twenty years ago. How “historic” is the Twitter sign? Some of the decorative facades along the top of the structure and on the columns appear to be considerably older, so if he was tearing them out perhaps they might have a point. But the signs are just advertising. People change them every time a business changes hands.

The wisdom of Musk attempting to rebrand Twitter as “X” is another question entirely. As an early entrant into the social media wars, Twitter embedded itself into our language quickly. “Tweeting” was something that never existed, but within a decade everyone was saying it and most people were doing it. Twitter isn’t just the name of a company. It’s a major element of the online ecosystem.

Now, with the stroke of a pen, Elon Musk wants to make “Twitter” and “tweeting” disappear and replace them with the letter X. As much as I’ve been an admirer of Musk and his many accomplishments, I have to say that this is simply stupid. We’re not going to stop calling it Twitter and we’re not going to start referring to tweets as “Xs.” It’s dumb. He appears to be intentionally sabotaging his own brand on a whim when the company is already facing serious financial issues.

I understand that Musk has always been fascinated with the letter “X” for some reason. He even calls his son X, though his actual name is an unpronounceable collection of letters, numbers, and symbols. (That was also an unkind thing to do to his own offspring.) It’s often said that geniuses tend to be erratic. Musk appears to be both, and increasingly the latter. His initial decision to buy Twitter (which he later attempted to back out of multiple times) seemed to be spontaneous and his reasons for doing so were enigmatic. The entire evolution of the “blue check” debacle only drove people away and reduced advertising revenue. It’s almost as if he’s trying to drive the brand into the ground.

Then again, he’s a billionaire with a half dozen major companies and I’m some schlub blogger sitting here writing about him so what do I know? Perhaps these maneuvers will all turn out to be part of some genius-level strategy. But it certainly doesn’t look that way at the moment.