ai16z founder accuses X platform of extortion: demands $50,000 business licensing fee or account suspension

2025-06-18 02:48:29

On June 18, the founder of ai16z posted on Farcaster stating, “X contacted me, saying that we violated certain terms of service, such as selling data and circumventing the Secret Key to sell certain content, but we have never done these things, nor will we now or in the future.”

They directly linked the open-source code I provided as a reason for deleting our account. Most of that code was not written by me; it was stitched together from other open-source projects.

X said that if we pay a corporate licensing fee of 50,000 dollars per month, we can stop pursuing the matter. Currently, we only spend 1,000 dollars per month on yellow certification and an additional 200 dollars on developer licensing. This is blatant extortion, completely unreasonable, and should not be legally permissible.

I do not want to be a part of this system — it goes against everything I stand for. I am considering whether to take legal action on this matter.

According to previous reports, the official X account of ElizaOS @elizaOS and its founder Shaw’s account @shawmakesmagic have both been frozen.

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