British rock band Muse spent the last decades building a fanbase of nearly three million followers under their Instagram handle: @muse. But the social media account, verified by Meta, was quietly taken away by Mark Zuckerberg's newest product, a personal Meta AI agent that shares the same handle as the band. Fans on social media were not pleased, with many voicing concerns about unfettered corporate power.
On X and Instagram, the artists had to change their names to @Musetheband and @museband respectively, following Meta's unveiling of its new AI tool, which is also called Muse.
How Did the Band Lose Their Handle?
The timeline muddies the corporate 'land grab' story. Muse's fans had already noticed the band using their new handle on Instagram by early this June, months before Meta had even unveiled its AI agent on 8 September. There is no public evidence that Meta had compelled the band to give them their user handle.
So far, neither Meta nor the band had confirmed whether the handover was consensual or transactional. Still, none of this had stopped the rest of the internet from piling on.
'Muse going from making dystopian rock albums warning us about the machine takeover to taking an AI buyout is top tier tragic irony,' one X user wrote.
Others focused their ire on Meta's controversies, while others discussed Meta's new AI, sparking anxieties over displacement: 'Can't believe an AI slop app stole the handle from a real human band.'
Another X user focused on the implications of the social media controversy and what that could mean for brands: 'If you build a brand or product around a handle only for them to take it to and you know.'
Meta's History With Handle Grabs
The incident with the @Muse band handle is not unprecedented or its rivals. The @Meta Instagram handle, for example, had once belonged to an independent motorcycle magazine. The company secured it shortly after Facebook rebranded itself to Meta in 2021.
The magazine's editor-in-chief had described the experience as similar to a 'punch in the gut' and that Meta was behaving like a 'corporate Goliath' for doing so.
Other social media companies have done the same. Elon Musk, for example, took the @X handle from a user when he rebranded Twitter to X back in 2023. The original owner had held the handle since 2007.
The @Muse incident had reignited the familiar debate between power imbalance between platforms and their creators, who rely on them, and whether they own their digital identity once a tech giant decides to take their name. Muse and Meta have not released a statement at the time of writing. For now, searching 'Muse' on the internet will land on Meta's new AI chatbot.
