After rebranding, X took x from its original Twitter owner and offered him merch

It's so important for any platform owner/operator to at least be perceived as being unbiased on the platform, and at best to actually be unbiased. But the siren song of unfair advantage to executive leadership is, in many cases, irresistible.

This strongly implies that there is no possible privately owned platform. The profit motive is too powerful to be resisted, and too vague to be enforced by any cultural norms.

"Hey, sorry for no warning, we took your name"

"What are you gonna give me for it?"

"We can give you some merch with the name on it, to remind you that we took your name"

Literally how it went (slightly paraphrased to inject my opinion above):

https://twitter.com/birdhustle/status/1685348651780964352

Twitter, the company, owned it. He was just using it while they didn't want it.