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Someone has stolen my Instagram account

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171–180 of 351 posts

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#171
post #16

I think this is indicative of the biggest problem we have had with social media: there is no legalism here, just "codes of conduct" that companies and users both willfully ignore. If your handle gets sold by some facebook employee to a rich kid in LA, what recourse do you have? I don't know what laws this would break (maybe some broad definition of fraud? I Am Not A Lawyer) so it's not like this person has a slam dun…

I don't think the "theft" of the username would break any kind of law, as this was a company decision (since it done by an employee) and the username was never your property anyway. I'm assuming that employee definitely violated some internal policies, but nothing from a legal point of view. The only recourse I can see from a legal point of view is that they seem to have handed over the entire account (as the followe…

It's not only the user name. It's the photos, chats, etc.

Of course one should backup the photos outside Instagram or any other service but I have no idea if Instagram allows that. For Whatsapp on Android it's as easy as syncing the pictures folder on the phone to my computer. Then I backup them with all my other files.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when will people learn that Facebook, Google et al do not care at all about individual users? When will people learn, not just Facebook, Google et al, but no large company cares about individual users? Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Ford, Unilever, Visa, Walmart do not care about individual users. Not because all of them are bad, but simply because they physically cannot deal with every complaint. Even worse, when the…

When will people learn that capitalism literally doesn't give a shit about people.

Capitalism is an economic and political system.

An economic and political system technically literally cannot care about people, same way as temperature, gravity, philosophy or history cannot care about people.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#174
Are we seriously just going to presume that this is true based on a hacker saying "my friend works at facebook"? This feels like the Apple refund thread all over again, with the same problematic outcome if it turns out to be false - people not seeing the rebuttal and still thinking it actually happened.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the "theft" of the username would break any kind of law, as this was a company decision (since it done by an employee) and the username was never your property anyway. I'm assuming that employee definitely violated some internal policies, but nothing from a legal point of view. The only recourse I can see from a legal point of view is that they seem to have handed over the entire account (as the followe…

There is absolutely a legal theory, and that is fraud. If you claim to be someone you are not, and someone relies on your false claim to their detriment, you are liable.

Fraud seems a stretch. Maybe if you used your handle for commerce and someone stole it & attempted to sell the same product.

It doesn’t strike me as litigation you’d be likely to win.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#177
post #33
post #7

There's no evidence to back the user's claims. This sounds like "Hey my dad works at Xbox and will ban you". There are other ways to compromise an Instagram account, like sim swapping ( https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/t-mobile-employee-made-u... )

It's believable though. The culture around "OG" accounts really is that weird. It's easy enough for a Facebook policy team to confirm this one way or the other by looking at the logs. If this gets enough visibility I assume that will happen.

It's easy, but remember that it is not a policy team who will decide what to say publicly, but PR team, which in Facebook's case has a sociopathic/capitalist culture of putting profits above everything, and so they will decide whether confirming it in either way will generate more negative news about that event than leaving it ambiguous.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#178
post #98
post #3

This is a very common thing. In fact influencers and FB employees publicly and loudly talk about this method and no one stops them. "Hey I'm visiting fb headquarters anyone want a new @ or a checkmark?" Why do random fb employees even have this capability?

I live with a FB employee. Most of my close friends are FB employees. I've literally never heard this.

Yes and I work remotely at AWS and I never hear the FC workers talking about working conditions....

All of the Big tech companies are so large and have their hands in so many pots, that working at a company as the equivalent of an L5/L6 that you are out of the loop about most things that go on.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelfed is the instagram-esque incarnation of the fediverse.

Which I'd assume will be filled with alt-right and similar content (banned from other platforms usually for good reason), anime avatars and a liberal dose of poor taste (and potentially illegal in certain jurisdictions) content such as "lolicon". None of this is something most people want to be anywhere near. While mainstream social media has many flaws, at least I am grateful for the fact that it bans, discourages o…

Not really, actually. Pixelfed (and mastodon, at least the official instances) aren't at all anti-moderation, for better or worse. They're more about moderation at the local instance level. I don't run in to any alt-right content on either pixelfed or mastodon. Not that I'm a huge user of either.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#180
post #174

Are we seriously just going to presume that this is true based on a hacker saying "my friend works at facebook"? This feels like the Apple refund thread all over again, with the same problematic outcome if it turns out to be false - people not seeing the rebuttal and still thinking it actually happened.

For all the talk about The Social Dilemma and how quickly unconfirmed stories spread and are cemented due to social media I'm disappointed that we are no better. We devour this as facts just because it fits our narrative.
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