Miss Old Twitter? A Startup Recreated It — Now X Is Suing

A startup called Operation Bluebird has launched Twitter.now, a social network that looks and feels like the Twitter you remember. You can post, reply, and repost just like before. There is no free version though: you have to pay $20 for a "Founder" pass or $40 for a "Fighter" tier. The money is meant to support the platform and its legal fight with X over the Twitter name.

Why should you care? Because the choice in social media is getting more interesting. X, Threads, and Bluesky already compete, and now a new option is betting that people still care about the old Twitter identity. But this isn't just nostalgia — it's a legal gamble. X is suing, saying it still owns the Twitter and Tweet trademarks even though it rebranded in 2023. Twitter.now argues X abandoned those rights. The lawsuit could decide whether anyone can simply bring back a famous internet brand.

The longer-term idea involves AI. Twitter.now plans to use an AI system called VERA, built on Google's Gemini models, to analyze posts, check claims, and add context or sources. A planned "Trust Dial" would let you set how much AI-ranked confidence you want in your feed, instead of the platform deciding for you. That sounds helpful, but AI moderation has a history of making mistakes and missing context — so it could create new problems even while trying to solve old ones.

For everyday users, this means more options, but also more uncertainty. Twitter.now's name recognition might attract an initial crowd, but it still needs real conversations and creators to stay interesting. And even if it wins the lawsuit, the harder question is whether people will actually pay to join another social network called Twitter. Right now, that's a bet only the startup is making.