> Instagram confirmed to Newsbeat that Kevin's handle had been changed in line with its policy.
> It allows it to make changes to an account if it's been inactive for a certain amount of time.
I tried going to the guy's new Instagram [1], but couldn't see any posts there at all. I visited his Twitter [2] instead, and except for a few posts he made from the exciting run in the last 24 hours, he hadn't tweeted since 2013.
I don't think they did a bad thing here — it's their platform, and they have some incentive to encourage a more lively and current community. Although it seems minor, one facet of this might be to help big users reclaim better names from the huge pool of defunct ones out there, especially given that Instagram has gotten so big that finding anything that's not a conflict is difficult.
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In fact, Instagram basically encourages this type of account use. Any time you try to browse the site they try to get you to sign-up, even if you have zero intention of making your own posts.
It sounds like the guy would have given the account name over either way, so why couldn't they have simply contacted him first and asked?
Is 10x worse than "we have changed your account name". If you're going to do something and there aren't any alternatives don't act like it's a question unless an extremely high ratio will say yes.
I don't understand online services' obsession with making sure public-facing identifiers are unique. This is not close to true in any other area. How many British guys can be named Harry?
If there could be two World of Warcraft toons named Joe, maybe there wouldn't be so many xX_KillStealr69_Xx-es running around.
How else could this be accomplished, especially when we are talking about URL structures that need to be somewhat short in length?
Ahh yes, nothing more lively and current than watching senior citizens coo over monarchs.
In all seriousness, this is just another step towards instagram being another bland reflection of the media fun house in which we all live: famous people get air time to pimp products and movements.
???
Instagram is a mainstream everything-is-an-ad site and has been since I've first heard of it.
You underestimate the reach here. When it comes to Prince Harry and Meghan, it's like saying only senior citizens care about the Kardashians.
Nobody in this situation is a monarch or ever likely to be a monarch.
Certainly not a 100% fail-safe solution – I see people already listing domains that were seized for various inexcusable reasons – but the Nissan.com case [0] (Nissan the car company vs. Mr. Nissan the run-of-the-mill computer sales guy) comes to mind as a classic (and fascinating) counterexample.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_vs._Nissan_Compu...
https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d200...
Good luck trying to argue in a court that your Instagram path is your legal asset and not Instagrams.
> All registered domains must be set in use within one year, otherwise the .AL Registry has the right to suspend them.
He mentioned that he was able to keep his twitter handle and that's most likely because Twitter doesn't pull this sort of shit. I remember a few years back Israel wanted to the twitter handle "@israel" for their official twitter account, asked twitter and they would not hand it over from the original user. I think they ended up paying the original user something like $500k for the handle, which IMO was a damn good deal for the user.
That account had value and this is a poor business practice. Courts award value and the damages are to make a point that its a bad practice if the judge/regulator finds it disturbing. Assuming that the judge / consumer regulator will say "well but you clicked I agree" is a bad assumption, ESPECIALLY when European countries are involved. the company is just as likely to axe that contract logic and just lean on their severability clause to keep the rest of the contract without self-granting the ability to reassign accounts.
Instagram would be in a better place if it generally brokered and escrowed account trading on its platform, and took a fee from that.
My account was 10 years old, no published repos, but consistent other activity. I don't have the desire nor the connections stir up a twitrage, but I'll certainly make their behavior known on HN.
These companies point to "inactivity", yet there is never any attempt to contact beforehand. The policy is merely a thin justification to do whatever the heck they want to suit corporate or personal employee whims.
That's SaaS (Surveillance as a Sharecropper) for ya.
Thanks a lot Josh Williams you thief: http://instagram.com/jw
I had a couple tumblr employees following me, cool people. I even had the founder “like” a couple of my posts. My sense was that there wasn’t an avenue open to poach a day-one user like me. This was all pre-yahoo.
Eventually, when I was done with the site more or less, I put out a feeler for a buyer and made a quick buck. That buyer I think tried to sell it themselves and it ended up shuttered.
Good times. Tumblr had a fun niche art community at the time and my “tumblr fame” helped me network with some interesting people.
> An account is determined to be inactive based on a number of things, including the date the account was created and whether the account has been sharing photos, commenting on photos, liking photos and logging in.
https://help.instagram.com/397846020286683?helpref=related&r...
From the article:
> Kevin admits that he didn't have that many followers and didn't post often - but he would use it to like and follow other people's posts.
For all we know, he hadn't logged in or posted anything for a year.
But, still, Instagram should be a good landlord here and at least inform the user before just yanking their account handle.
> Kevin admits [...] he would use it to like and follow other people's posts.
If we are to believe him, then his account was not inactive by Instagram's own definition of inactivity.
When rich and famous people want your handle.
"When rich and famous people want your handle bad enough to shell-out money to a PR firm who has spent a boatload on Twitter ads to establish a very favorable business relationship that allows them to procure already-in-use accounts for their clients with a simple request to their account manager at Twitter."
I saw this happen for a small startup I worked at some years back who hired a PR firm and instantly were able to take control of a twitter account that we'd been denied access to for _years_. It was inactive with like 8 porn posts and nothing in the last 5 years, and we sent in formal verification of our trademark, and I also reached out through back channel tech contacts who put in internal requests, and we still got denied 3 times over about a year period. We hired a PR firm to run a marketing campaign for something unrelated to Twitter, and on like day 2 of the relationship, they reached out and basically just off hand said "oh yeah btw we reached out to Twitter and got control of this account for you, I think it matches your company name more directly if you want it!" We hadn't even asked them about it.
Not doing something like this leads to stupid stuff like having POTUS' handle be "real donald trump" (yes, I know choosing that handle predates his being POTUS, but you get the idea).
I actually find this a charming reminder of the old days of the web. there's a certain populist quality to the idea that no one is important enough to snatch a particular username that some commoner took first. I agree situations like @realdonaldtrump are kind of silly, but it doesn't hurt anyone. anyone who actually has a large audience has a verified account so there's little doubt regarding who actually controls it.
that said, we really do need a responsible way to reclaim truly inactive accounts without enabling "reset my password via email" type attacks.
So yes, I think they should have at least asked first and tried to resolve it amicably.
No one should be able to get something any more than any one else. Of course that’ll never be the case. But why excuse the behavior and even encourage it?
It’s Instagram’s responsibility either way. They could have said “pick another name or we can nicely ask the current owner for that one.”
Never got an email about it or any form of contact. They just up and gave my account to the machinima.com company.
They could have at least explained the situation to that person and allow them to choose a new handle. I would be furious if my handle suddenly had "_" as prefix and suffix. What next, "@xXxsussexroyalxXx"?
sussexroyals (there are two of them after all) thesussexroyals (more grammatically correct) thesussexes (as they are commonly referred to in the press) harryandmeghan (has only posted once since Dec 2017) meghanandharry (ladies first!)
and so on...
Instagram people were probably star struck, and salivating at the idea of _millions_ of eyeballs and media interest on the site, that they pretty much waived anything through.
I'd imagine a lot of the top brass at companies would do anything for a slice of celebrity/royal action, it's a gold mine and worth a lot more to them than some peon from Reading who just lurks.
In the 90s, Mr. Nissan was able to fight and keep nissan.com. That feels like a thousand years ago. Now everything is governed by private "policies" that amount to "we can do anything we want".
I don't like the new world at all.
Distrokid email: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8tw90s0n8urj9j3/distro-email.png?d...
My reply: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ym9oxvwprkqm9ph/distro-reply.png?d...
Good luck with that, Twitter has a long history of taking handles on behalf of brands and celebrities...
This seems like a poorly handled extension of that power.
But- truly just an example of how your use, data, name, etc on these services is really just at their whim.
Or does that old instinct of defering to power make you want to give in to the presumptuous request of a large entity?
What you are talking about is essentially moral relativism. Most people see that as dubious.
Just because one entity sees something as right does not make it objectively right.
Can Instagram do this? Yes. Should everyone be okay with it in virtue of that ability? That comes down to personal opinion.
