A New 'Twitter' Just Launched — Musk's X Couldn't Stop It Yet

Remember Twitter? The bird logo, the tweet button, the blue-and-white look? A small Virginia startup called Operation Bluebird has brought it back with a new site called Twitter.now. The founders say Elon Musk gave up the Twitter name when he renamed the company X in 2022. A judge seemed to agree in an April hearing, though X is still fighting in court. The new Twitter looks and works much like the old one — you can reply, retweet, and post tweets. Right now it only has a few hundred users, but its creators say they're not waiting anymore.

The big new feature is 'Vera,' an automated fact-checker powered by Google's Gemini AI. It runs on every tweet. The founder has been testing it by posting false claims, like 'George Washington was our second president,' and the tool flags them. The goal, they say, is to be a safer town square: freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. That means you can say what you want, but the platform won't boost harmful or false content for virality.

The legal battle is far from over. X Corporation sued Operation Bluebird and asked a judge to stop them. While the judge gave a tentative ruling in Bluebird's favor, he hasn't written a final order yet. Trademark experts say the startup has a workable legal argument but is also showing chutzpah. X will likely respond more aggressively now that the site is live. As one expert put it, go put another round of popcorn in the microwave.

For now, Twitter.now is a tiny, hopeful experiment. It shows there's still appetite for the pre-Musk Twitter experience, and maybe for more automated fact-checking. But with so few users and a big lawsuit ahead, its survival is far from guaranteed.