Startup launches Twitter.now social network after claiming X abandoned the trademark
Twitter.now launched in August 2026 from Operation Bluebird, co-founded by Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates, after X sued over the name. Early access costs $20, and VERA assigns trust scores, checks claims, and lets users filter posts below a threshold.
A new social network called Twitter.now launched in August 2026, operated by a startup named Operation Bluebird. The company’s founding team includes Stephen Coates, a former Twitter trademark counsel.
The launch follows a legal dispute with X, which sued Operation Bluebird last year and sought a Delaware court injunction to block the platform from using the Twitter name. Operation Bluebird countered that X had abandoned trademarks including “Twitter” and “Tweet,” according to a petition filed at the time.
Coates addressed the platform’s intent in a LinkedIn post. “When X Corp. retired the Twitter brand, we saw an opportunity to build something new: a public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice,” he wrote. “Twitter.now is not an attempt to recreate the old platform. We are building a different service, with trust signals that provide context for what users see and tools that allow people — not an opaque algorithm — to decide how much credibility and noise reach their feeds.”
The site is currently in testing, with early access priced at $20. Central to the platform is an AI system called VERA, which evaluates posts, checks claims, provides sourcing and context, and assigns a trust score. Users will be able to set a trust score threshold to filter out posts that fall below it.
Operation Bluebird told TechCrunch it plans to address moderation challenges through VERA, noting that the current version is its initial release. “VERA 2.0, with expanded capabilities, is on the near-term roadmap,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Moderation remains a persistent challenge for social platforms. The source notes that Bluesky has recently faced criticism over its moderation practices, and the original Twitter was repeatedly forced to navigate similar decisions before Elon Musk acquired it. How Twitter.now handles those pressures as its user base grows remains to be seen.