In an ironic twist, the band Muse loses its social media handles to Meta’s new AI, “Mark Zuckerberg is such a loser”

In an ironic twist of fate that no one saw coming, the English rock band Muse has lost all its social media handles to Meta’s new AI, also named Muse. Eagle-eyed fans of the band, which has been around since 1994, noticed the changes to the group’s social media handles, which have long been @muse.

Many fans were unimpressed, mostly with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. However, a few Muse fans wondered whether the band had sold the handles to Meta for a significant payday.

Muse has a history of warning about the dangers of technology

What makes the hijacking of its social media handles so ironic is Muse’s history of addressing fears about technology and warning against a future dystopian society run by tech in its songs. The band’s eighth album, Simulation Theory, released in 2018, leaned heavily into these themes, in particular with songs like “Algorithm,” which included the lines, “We are caged in simulations/ Algorithms evolve/ Push us aside and render us obsolete.”

Music critic Kitty Empire said of their 2015 album, “Muse’s Drones is a concept album about remote killing machines, dehumanised drones in thrall to authority – psychotic soldiers, and the rest of us – and the possibility of sedition through love.”

Some fans accused the band of being “sellouts” (although there is no indication as of yet that Muse sold their social media handles). One fan reportedly wrote on X, according to The Independent, “Muse going from making dystopian rock albums warning us about the machine takeover to taking an AI buyout is top tier tragic irony.”

Other fans, though, placed the blame squarely on Meta. As one person allegedly said, “Mark Zuckerberg is such a loser.”

Muse’s new handles leave a lot to be desired

Before the switcharoo, Muse’s Instagram handle was the very apt @muse. Now, it’s @museband. A similar name change happened on X, only worse, with the band now going by the clunky @musetheband.

The new Meta Muse AI app, which is currently only available to those in the US and was designed to help with everyday tasks, including emails and scheduling, now has the @muse handle on its social media sites.

Some of Muse’s fans claimed that their accounts automatically followed Meta’s AI account after the changes, since they were already following the band. However, it’s unclear if that’s true, as the Meta AI account currently has around 11,000 followers, while the band has approximately 2.3 million.

While it’s unclear how the swap came to be facilitated, it isn’t unheard of for a social media site to simply take over someone’s handle with no recompense (and this wouldn’t be the first time Meta’s AI has stolen from an artist). When Twitter was renamed X in 2023, Elon Musk grabbed the username @X from someone who had held it for over a decade. The only compensation they were offered was a visit to X’s headquarters and X-branded merchandise.

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