The crux of the issue is Jones’ bankruptcy. A trustee is selling his assets to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the families of the victims of a 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Those assets include four X accounts related to Jones with nearly 4 combined million followers. However, Musk’s hat is now in the ring as his legal team claims those accounts aren’t actually Jones’ property to sell.

X “is clearly the owner of X accounts,” X’s counsel wrote in his appeal, which was filed on Monday. “The Trustee cannot sell, assign or otherwise transfer what he does not own or in which he has no interest.”

The implications for X – and Musk – couldn’t be greater. A ruling against On the other hand, critics of Jones’ brutal 12-year campaign against the families of young children killed at school praised the July 2024 order for Jones to pay damages. Jones spent years falsely labeling the children’s deaths a hoax, deriding the grieving families as “crisis actors.”

X’s objection was filed as part of the ongoing litigation in Jones’ case and his attempt to stop satirical outlet The Onion from purchasing his Infowars site.

A US bankruptcy judge, Christopher Lopez, will decide the fate of Jones’ X-accounts, and whether they should be included in the liquidation of his assets as part of his bankruptcy.

Who owns an X account: a user or X?

In 2018, Twitter banned Jones for “abusive behavior,” but Musk reinstated Jones’ account in December 2023 after polling users on whether he should do so. About 70% of users voted for Jones to be readmitted to the site.

“The people have spoken and so it will be,” Musk responded before restoring Jones’ report.

X’s terms of service could imply that the user owns his or her account, as they explicitly retain ownership and rights to the content they post and share. Daniel Fletcher, a UK-based lawyer specializing in intellectual property, told Fortune. “It is worth noting, however, that some of this ownership and rights are shared to some extent with X.”

The terms – which a user must agree to in order to open an account – state that each user grants “a broad, royalty-free license to make its content available to the rest of the world and to allow others to do the same.”

That means that while a user’s

“This is a very new argument that X is making; we haven’t seen it before,” said Adam Weissman, an intellectual property attorney Fortune.

A whole new argument arises

The terms of service – which apply to each social media platform – invariably mention ownership, although each platform is different. At X, Weissman said, ownership refers to the actual content a user creates, not their account itself.

“There’s a lot of talk about the possibility that X can disable or temporarily revoke access to your account,” Weissman added. “But as far as I know, there is no language that specifically describes who the owner is.”

Weissman said some discussions arose this past summer between employees and companies about who owns a corporate social media account. But Weissman said he has “never seen the argument that the platform owns it.”

“This could be the first time this argument has really been addressed,” he said.

Regarding Jones’ bankruptcy proceedings in particular, if Musk and X somehow manage to establish ownership of the accounts, the new question will become: what does an account actually consist of?

“There are already terms and services about private information and personal information within the account,” Weissman said. “So the hard part will be: What does it mean to own the account? Where does it leave us? You don’t own your followers, that’s for sure. So I’m curious what they actually mean by this.”

X’s involvement in Jones’ case appears to be a delaying tactic, Weissman said. “It’s like throwing something at the wall to see what sticks.”

The terms of service suggest otherwise

Each platform’s terms of service explicitly state that the user owns the content, as far as copyright is concerned, Weissman said, although each platform uses its own specific language and grants licenses to use the content in different ways.

On X, the license to use content is very broad, Weissman said. “They have a wide range of what they can do with your content without having to get your permission. However, that is not synonymous with the account. As far as I remember, the terms do not explicitly state who owns the account.”

Fortunately, a normal user who isn’t trying to become an influencer or build a significant following probably doesn’t have to worry much about these details.

“Most people who aren’t making money on their accounts yet don’t think about this,” Weissman said. “But anyone trying to make money from the platform needs to think about what they put on it, because these platforms can turn around and exploit the content without their consent.”

In fact, content creators will often welcome the extra coverage, even if it is a legal overstep. “It’s often not exploited to a degree that people are upset about,” Weissman says. “But that possibility has always been there.”

Under X’s terms and conditions, a user retains their rights to “any Content you transmit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours – you own your content (and your recorded audio, photos and videos are considered part of the content).” But “by submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt , modify, publish, transmit, display, upload, download and distribute any such content in any media or distribution methods now known or later developed for any purpose.”

“I think it’s interesting that Grok, X’s AI tool, responded that X owns the accounts,” David Carstens, an IP attorney in Plano, Texas, told me. Fortune. “But if you look at X’s Terms of Service, it seems much more likely that the user owns their account.”