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“They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

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31–40 of 111 posts

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#31

This is the #1 problem with google/facebook/other giant companies - zero due process. They build a business around minimal human interaction with our staff and it shows when real problems come up. I'm frankly sick of hacker news being a facebook/google/whatever ticketing system. And yet, there's no alternative.

I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#32
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so baffling to me, is there any research on whether a short name benefits marketing outreach or anything like that? I'd think a 4 letter gibberish name would put me off, if anything. I get if it's, like, "Mark" for some famous Mark, but if it was "ghfa", what's the point?

>but if it was "ghfa", what's the point? You build your brand from the bottom up based on that handle alone. Totally possible and your example is actually pretty good, no weird letters either (x,q,y,z)

From a recent Marketplace article:

Liquid Death is an “entertainment machine” with a water brand attached - https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/25/liquid-death-is-an-en...

> In 2017, Cessario, a longtime advertising creative who had previously worked on marketing campaigns for Netflix and Organic Valley, released a commercial for Liquid Death canned water. The product didn’t exist yet, but the commercial went viral.

> “The video ended up getting millions of views,” he said. “The page had more followers than Aquafina within a few months, so I think we knew that we were onto something that could be really big.”

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#35
post #21
post #3

The underground marketplace for desirable social media handles (OG Handles) was explored in this excellent episode of Reply All: The Snapchat Thief [1]. In that story the basic technique was a SIM-swapping attack [2]. Fraudster calls the cell provider, claims to be the victim and that they lost their phone. Cell provider then ports the phone identity over to a new SIM. After that the fraudster just resets the account…

What good is a SIM-swap to defeat 2FA if you don't have the password in the first place?

At least with some companies, they use the phone number to let you reset the password.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#37
post #30

Instagram itself does this kind of thing. Your handle isn't yours anyway, it's theirs. Instagram owns 100% of the handles and you just have to deal with that- same as every site, but Instagram is well-known for stealing your handle and giving it to someone else. The took somebody's handle and just gave it to the "royal family" who I guess was so entitled beyond belief that they jut couldn't take the idea that they wo…

> 'He still has the @sussexroyal handle on Twitter'

And, apparently, not any more?

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#39

This is the #1 problem with google/facebook/other giant companies - zero due process. They build a business around minimal human interaction with our staff and it shows when real problems come up. I'm frankly sick of hacker news being a facebook/google/whatever ticketing system. And yet, there's no alternative.

I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.

FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.
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