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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

#81

Post by RandallBrown »

yashap wrote: post #42
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…

Yeah, zero posts and doesn’t even have a profile pic. It’s a dead account, I don’t have much of an issue with Instagram’s policy to “steal” handles on accounts like this.

Or maybe he just likes photos and follows his nephews or something.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#82

Post by djhworld »

anonoholic wrote: post #31

The daft thing is there are plenty of alternative names they could have taken, that are genuinely idle accounts, and arguably better names: 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...

I'd imagine the Prince's staff contacted Instagram to talk about having an account set up, and maybe suggested the name.

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.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#83

Post by miah_ »

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?

Blizzard accounts are Unique only in that they have a unique number appended to the end. For example there can be many 'eeeeeeeeeeeee' accounts, but only one 'eeeeeeeeeeeee#1432'. The games only show 'eeeeeeeeeeeee' during play.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/75767

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#84

Post by sbr464 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #66
zamadatix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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)

Great reference. Perfectly fitting.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> There is no need to have the public-facing identifier be the unique identifier

Yeah, there is: it's a major UX improvement, because the URLs at issue are entry-point URLs, which need friendly names for the same reason domains for public-facing services (which are key components of entry-point URLs) do.

It's true that in the general case objects don't necessarily need a URL component that matches their friendly name, but this is not the general case.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#86

Post by bambax »

You own nothing. You are nothing.

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.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#87

Post by robdachshund »

vamos_davai wrote: post #30

Their platform, their voice. It's not part of public domain. Unreasonable outrage from the HN crowd.

Just because you can do something does not make acceptable to all people.

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.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#88

Post by robdachshund »

pavlov wrote: post #9

So I guess you don't have any ownership over a URL path component on somebody else's server when you're not even paying for that hosting. Not particularly surprising...

Okay, I guess everyone should just shut up and not have any opinion on the matter then.

Just because they can do this does not mean people cannot criticize it or find it reprehensible. Is it surprising that people don't approve of this?

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#89

Post by ValentineC »

tankenmate wrote: post #11
oarsinsync wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that 'especially' applies to ccTLDs any more than gTLDs. Especially since most (all?) gTLDs are covered by the same jurisdiction as the .us ccTLD.

Actually gTLDs are restricted by their contract with ICANN (registry agreement (RA), search google for "ICANN RA"). ccTLDs however merely give lip service to domain registration norms, but as there is no contract beyond "this registry is yours to run" ccTLDs have far more leeway (public pressure sometimes withstanding) to do as they please. It is for reasons similar to this that a fair number of ccTLDs don't run EPP…

I'm sceptical of ccTLDs mostly because of how the Libyan government killed a domain shortener for linking to porn sites in 2010: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/08/bitly-lib...

Heck, I own a .sg domain, and I don't trust the Singapore government to not overreact if I published anything politically sensitive on it.

Re: Prince Harry and Meghan took my Instagram name

#90

Post by ValentineC »

glvn wrote: post #12
kgwxd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure there are many real world examples of domain names being taken.

Domains are a whole different ball game thought, I've seen instances of domain names being seized for legal reasons (ie FBI seizing domains of torrent sites), but if the UK govt wanted to seize say sussexroyal.com (which btw is available on GoDaddy right now or a cool $70), that would be a much bigger ordeal of going through ICANN vs just "asking" Instagram He mentioned that he was able to keep his twitter handle and…

> 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.

I've always wondered such deals could just be bait for a user to violate the Twitter terms of service, and therefore free the username up for others to use.

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