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Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

bbc.com

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Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#61

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

smnrchrds wrote: post #5
ct0 wrote: post #2

This goes to show that "your" handle on someone else's platform is never really yours. The only thing that can not be taken away from you is a domain name. Start hosting your voice via your own domain.

Domain names can be taken away too, especially ccTLDs. It is harder to seize a domain, but as we have seen time and time again with TPB, Sci-Hub, Wikileaks, etc. you can lose your domain if entities with enough power and influence want it seized.

There is still a legal apparatus around that domain name. It’s an asset.

Good luck trying to argue in a court that your Instagram path is your legal asset and not Instagrams.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#62

Post by newsgremlin »

geuis wrote: post #24

Twitter did the same thing to me a few years back. I registered @machinima back in 2006 or so and would semi frequently post links to interesting machinima videos I liked. After a couple of years I stopped posting for a while and I guess you could consider the account “inactive” even though my Twitter client was authenticated and checked it daily for activity via api (or so I thought). A few years ago I went to post…

Have you tried getting it back now that machinima.com is defunct (albeit much like the original content that got them off the ground)? I think rooster teeth probably don't want to be associated with that brand anyway.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#64

Post by Benjammer »

dev_north_east wrote: post #41
joekrill wrote: post #3

We may not have the full story here, but it doesn't seem like Instagram is disputing that they simply took it. I don't see anyone suggesting that they even attempted to contact the guy first. Outrageously poor way to handle things. Also, at what point does an Instagram account become "inactive"?

> Also, at what point does an Instagram account become "inactive"? When rich and famous people want your handle.

I think it's more specifically something like this, in case anyone is actually wondering:

"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.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#65

Post by zamadatix »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #52
clra wrote: post #28

Well, it feels weird to defend Instagram, but here we go. The important lines from the article are these ones: > 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] ins…

Why does the absence of posts indicate inactivity? He said in the article he uses it to like posts, but not create content. That doesn't sound inactive to me. 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…

"would you give up your account name" "No" "We have changed your account name"

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.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#66

Post by littlestymaar »

zamadatix wrote: post #65
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the absence of posts indicate inactivity? He said in the article he uses it to like posts, but not create content. That doesn't sound inactive to me. 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…

"would you give up your account name" "No" "We have changed your account name" 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.

What about "would you give up your account name" "No" "Ok fine, I'll have to find a new name. Have a nice day sir.".

This story pretty much sounds like “All animals are equals but some are more equals than others”[1] to me.

[1]Georges Orwell Animal Farm (his best book IMO)

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#67

Post by thaumasiotes »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #56
thaumasiotes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instagram has gotten so big that finding anything that's not a conflict is difficult. 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.

Wouldn’t the same issue apply to email addresses or domain names? At some point there needs to be a unique identifier or ID to locate the right destination. How else could this be accomplished, especially when we are talking about URL structures that need to be somewhat short in length?

In this particular case, I'm guessing -- based on the URLs -- that in order to have the Instagram username "sussexroyal", it's also necessary to be located at www.instagram.com/sussexroyal . This is a design mistake. The URL identifier does not need to be the public-facing identifier, and it shouldn't be. You can have the Duke of Sussex as sussexroyal at www.instagram.com/y6llflk9 and the guy in Sussex who roots for the Royals as sussexroyal at www.instagram.com/y2q9g6uo .

There is no need to have the public-facing identifier be the unique identifier, nor is there a good reason to do it. ICQ got this right, way back at the beginning. But somehow everyone forgot.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#69

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

zamadatix wrote: post #65
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the absence of posts indicate inactivity? He said in the article he uses it to like posts, but not create content. That doesn't sound inactive to me. 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…

"would you give up your account name" "No" "We have changed your account name" 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'm not talking about proposing a false question under the pretense that you're going to take it regardless of the answer.

Your assumption that Instagram can grab anything they want just shows the normalcy of this type of behavior. Maybe we, as the consumers of these products, should step up and say that is not cool? If you do it to that person, what is to stop you from doing it to another in the future, to me?

I think it should also be a signal to any one that creates a brand, a business, on Instagram. Instagram can instantly snatch your livelihood without even contacting you.

I'm proposing people being human and remembering that just because a URL path might be a technical creation, there is still a human being behind that and we should treat people as we want to be treated.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#70

Post by notahacker »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #67
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t the same issue apply to email addresses or domain names? At some point there needs to be a unique identifier or ID to locate the right destination. How else could this be accomplished, especially when we are talking about URL structures that need to be somewhat short in length?

In this particular case, I'm guessing -- based on the URLs -- that in order to have the Instagram username "sussexroyal", it's also necessary to be located at www.instagram.com/sussexroyal . This is a design mistake. The URL identifier does not need to be the public-facing identifier, and it shouldn't be. You can have the Duke of Sussex as sussexroyal at www.instagram.com/y6llflk9 and the guy in Sussex who roots for…

But instagram.com/sussexroyal is a much more memorable URL than instagram.com/y2q9g6uo, and being able to find someone from remembering their handle is much better than remembering the handle and then wondering which of the multiple people called sussexroyal you're after when the search results come through

Needless to say, the most prominent and memorable identifier being non-unique has all sorts of uses for trolls and spambots too.

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