The ETC Cooperative is making public today that we hired the law firm Morrison Cohen, LLP to sent a letter to Twitter Support back in November of 2022. We then followed up with registered mail on multiple occasions but with no reply from Twitter, Inc.
Our action is to seek the return of the Twitter handle @etc_classic, with more than 600,000 followers, to the ETC community.
On our letter dated November 15, 2022 we state the following:
Ethereum Classic is an open-source, blockchain-based platform (not to be confused with the Ethereum network). Ethereum Classic is governed and operated by its community of users. Ethereum Classic used the Twitter handle @eth_classic from July 2016 to October 6, 2022. On October 6, 2022, a former member of the Ethereum Classic community usurped the handle @eth_classic, and transferred it to another project in which he has an investment, renaming it @Ergo_Platform (the “Account”). We seek return of the Account to the Ethereum Classic community.
We also argue that Charles Hoskinson, the former community member mentioned above, violated the Twitter Rules and Policies:
Hoskinson’s account clearly violate the Rules and Policies because co-opting the @eth_classic account, and underhandedly changing the handle to one for another project he supports, artificially inflated the followers for Ergo (by a factor of ten). This was a deliberate, misleading account transfer of an account with a robust, organically grown community and following to a project that lacked those elements. The 670,000 followers of @eth_classic now see posts relating to Ergo, a project that had only 65,000 followers before the account transfer.
To learn the details of the event that led to this decision please refer to this Twitter thread by Bob Summerwill, our Executive Director, on the @eth_classic account.
As the nominal handle "eth_classic" was returned to us, with zero followers, by the Ergo Project and is managed by Bob, we made a pledge to the ETC community in which we stated the following:
- Bob Summerwill, in his role as executive director of the ETC Cooperative, is in control of the account on behalf of the ETC Cooperative and ETC ecosystem as a whole.
- We declare ourselves just stewards but not owners of that account on behalf of the ETC ecosystem as a whole.
- Although difficult to define, ownership of the account is of the ETC community, perhaps better described as a public good of Ethereum Classic.
- The ETC Cooperative, through any of its board members, employees, or contractors, will never use the account for any other purpose.
- If Bob Summerwill ceases to be the executive director of the ETC Cooperative, then he will pass the account to his successor or to another ETC ecosystem participant who will be willing to make the same public statements prior to transfer.
- Any other present or future board member, employee, or contractor of the ETC Cooperative who holds or will hold, or shares or will share, admin keys to the account must comply with this pledge.
- We request Twitter, Inc. and its subsidiaries, as the social media companies that run the Twitter social network where the account is hosted, to regard this pledge as an official agreement between the ETC Cooperative and the ETC community, and to act accordingly in the case that a similar conflict as described in this pledge arises with the account in the future.
This announcement is to update the Ethereum Classsic community of the steps we have taken with regards to recovering this valuable social media asset that took so much work and time to build.
Thank you for reading this article!
To learn more about the ETC Cooperative go to: https://etccooperative.org
To learn more about ETC go to: https://ethereumclassic.org