A former Twitter trademark lawyer has launched a social network with a familiar name — and a novel approach to content moderation.
Stephen Coates’ startup, Operation Bluebird, launched Twitter.now in early testing on Thursday. Coates, formerly Twitter’s head counsel for trademarks, domain names, and marketing, told Business Insider that the platform is experimenting with a twist: Users, rather than the company’s central algorithm, will decide how much potentially false or harmful material reaches their feeds.
“We’re going to use the phrase ‘freedom of speech and not freedom of reach,'” Coates said. “That freedom allows you to express yourself in the manner you choose as long as it’s lawful, and that doesn’t always ensure that you’re going to get reach based on that content.”
How It Works
Coates said the platform’s VERA AI system is designed to assess posts, verify claims, provide sources and context, and assign a trust score to content. A future version aims to let users choose a minimum score, filtering posts that fall below their preferred threshold.
Coates said that, for example, when a political leader makes false statements, a user could configure the platform to remove those claims from their feed without the platform banning the politician.
“We’re empowering those users to be able to decide what level of harmful or adult or untruthful content they want in their feed,” Coates said.
He summed up the idea colorfully: Twitter.now would permit someone to “scream obscenities at the children,” but give users tools to ensure “the children won’t hear it.”
The Market Challenge
Twitter.now is entering a market filled with would-be X rivals, all facing a moderation problem no social network has solved cleanly. Bluesky, seen as a major alternative to X, has faced its own moderation-related criticism. Many studies have also shown that engagement-driven algorithms reward outrage and sensationalism.
“It’s a grand experiment, and I don’t know if we have sights to be bigger than X,” Coates said. “But I think we want to build a better mousetrap and see if people will come.”
The Legal Fight
A considerable trademark uncertainty, however, has been keeping Twitter.now off app stores. X sued Operation Bluebird last year, accusing it of trademark and copyright infringement, and asked the court to block the launch. Operation Bluebird has argued that X abandoned its trademarks, including “Twitter” and “tweet,” after Musk renamed the platform.
At an April hearing, the chief judge said X did not provide sufficient evidence to show rights over the bird logo and “tweet” mark, but has not issued a written decision on X’s request for an injunction. The judge said he was “undecided about use of ‘Twitter'” and would benefit from further briefing.
The Bottom Line
Former Twitter lawyer Stephen Coates has launched Twitter.now, a social platform that lets users set their own content moderation filters. The VERA AI system assigns trust scores to posts, allowing users to filter out false or harmful content based on their own preferences. The platform faces a trademark lawsuit from X, which argues it owns the rights to “Twitter.” A judge has not yet ruled on the trademark dispute
