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They say “nothing will change”
- jonsuh 13y agoTaken straight from Instagram's policy: > "We encourage people to actively log in and use Instagram once they create an account. To keep your account active, be sure to log in and share photos, as well as like and comment on photos. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity, so please use your account once you sign up!" Source: https://www.facebook.com/help/instagram/294919817276863 https://www.facebook.com/help/instagram/294919817276863 The wording is terribly obtuse and seems targeted more for username squatters. Would be helpful if Instagram defined what a period of prolonged inactivity is. Shady nonetheless, considering they didn't even notify her informing her that her username was revoked due to inactivity.
- tocks1 13y agoBut the account wasn't revoked - merely renamed.
- avree 13y agoIt makes more sense to rename the account. In the case of a user having old photos, likes, or comments, they don't lose all their history. Another HN commenter had a similar experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7598567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7598567
- anigbrowl 13y agoYes, but they didn't say they would do that, they said they would remove them - although the ToS probably doesn't give the offended customer any recourse, and the fact that the service is free means they have no leverage to challenge the ToS in court. The lesson here is that if you're not very busy and you have a name someone else wants, it can be taken away from you.
- ben336 13y agoI wonder if the time period varies based on whether it is a requested user name. IE, they let you keep it until somebody else tries to sign up with that user name after at least 6 months of your inactivity.
- robmcm 13y agoYou would think a warning email would be worthwhile. If someone was really name squatting they would write a script to log in once a week. So if you genuinely want to release unused names an email to the person informing them would be the least you could do. As it is, it looks like someone at facebook just took the name for their own.
- iLoch 13y agoThis would be a much more interesting story if it sounded like the authors wife used Instagram more than once a year. I can't help but not care without more context. If someone is sitting on a name on an account that rarely gets used and rarely gets tagged, what's the problem? Now if his wife was using Instagram every day and this happened... Well that would be an interesting story.
- jonsuh 13y agoYeah, I think it begs the question: When did the last activity take place? It's weird that they didn't just delete the account. Instead they renamed the account to "_____kathleen": https://twitter.com/kathleenw/status/448151516399276033 https://twitter.com/kathleenw/status/448151516399276033
- phillmv 13y agoDude. If someone took my handle on instagram and thus I can no longer access any of my photos I would LOSE MY SHIT. It's totally unacceptable, especially for non techies who don't back up their stuff, to jut shut off access to your memories.
- Legion 13y agoThe old account isn't lost. It gets renamed.
- mynewwork 13y agoSo you completely rely on a free web service to store something that important to you? It's unlikely now that they're owned by fb, but trusting a zero-revenue startup to offer you free access to some photos indefinitely probably isn't the safest assumption.
- clamprecht 13y agoI doubt people would pay money for it, but it'd be nice to have a service that periodically logs in you your accounts just to keep them "active". Or at a minimum, a reminder. I use my instagram account as read-only these days, but it would be a [minor] bummer to lose my account because I'm "inactive".
- tensafefrogs 13y ago"A few months ago while tagging my wife" "This morning I told her I Instagrammed a photo of our kids that she should see." Instagram names are not domain names, and it sounds like she doesn't use the account. Most services have a clause that lets them reclaim inactive accounts after a set period of time.
- avree 13y agoThis isn't actually an uncommon policy. For example, Twitter lets (or used to let?) you take a username that's inactive for 9 months. Source: http://sarahwallace.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/how-to-request-a-username-on-twitter/ http://sarahwallace.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/how-to-request-... The Facebook stuff is probably a red herring here. If there was activity on the account, I bet this would never have happened.
- cheriot 13y agoGetting tagged by friends and family should factor in somehow. Even if the wife wasn't logging in, people following her were getting content and the people tagger her were keeping their photos organized.
- praeivis 13y agoThat outdated info and impossible to get inactive username anymore since 2011.
- threedaymonk 13y agoI personally know someone who acquired an inactive username within the last year. You might need connections: this individual used to work at Twitter.
- nedwin 13y agoYou definitely need connections.
- ErikAugust 13y agohttps://support.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=inactive_username https://support.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=inactive_...
- Dnguyen 13y agoIt's not true. I've lost a Twitter handle (@houselogic) that was active. Twitter support got me trapped in support ticket hell. They kept asking me to submit ticket after ticket.
- dmschulman 13y agoThis is the new norm now that these web services are no longer a niche product. Some kind of set standard for inactivity would be nice so users are aware of when they are in danger of losing their username. I know many who set out to register popular Twitter and Soundcloud names when those services launched just so they could sit on them and possibly make a buck. Those username policies are out there to combat this kind of behavior but it's crummy to see when those policies actually affect legitimate users.
- centizen 13y agoInstagram has done this in the past as well, and IIRC; before the merger. But by all means - jump on the Facebook hatewagon and take a ride.
- simonsarris 13y agoOh guffaw. Even our beloved Github has a means to let you unseat inactive account names. https://help.github.com/articles/name-squatting-policy https://help.github.com/articles/name-squatting-policy (And they should, I think.) Since at least 2012 Instagram has had this in their terms: > 4. We reserve the right to force forfeiture of any username that becomes inactive, violates trademark, or may mislead other users. So whine about the policy if you don't like it, but don't whine that Instagram has materially changed.
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- frodopwns 13y agoWhere does it say this account was inactive? IF it says such a thing anywhere how long was it inactive?
- randartie 13y agoThe article itself claims it was inactive.
- albedoa 13y agoCan you tell us where? I don't see it.
- frodopwns 13y agoIncorrect. The original article says nothing of the sort. The update which came after your post says this however: "Our only guess is that she did not post as often as they might not have liked." But he does say elsewhere that she used it often to rate images. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599802
- bnferguson 13y ago
- gnu8 13y agoThose who are defending this as a reasonable and commonplace policy are dissembling at best. This is another example of the emerging electronic class system. Those who are members of the Silicon Valley clique are privileged to take what they want from those who are not. Recall the Googler who was able to have a web page he didn't like shut down, just by calling his connection at Digital Ocean. One might argue that a thing such as an Instagram account is just a service provided by a business and the business can do as it likes, but this isn't the case. A social media account is a vehicle for the user to interact with the entire world, and it shouldn't be able to be unilaterally revoked, especially if the only reason is to give it to a"more deserving" insider. We need a system of due process for situations like this.
- pekk 13y agoI see what you mean. But the foundation of this is using other people's services. Usernames on services run by private companies actually aren't your property. That's why there is no "due process." If most internet traffic hadn't moved on top of proprietary services there wouldn't be that concentration of power to abuse.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rubyn00bie 13y agoRE Digital Ocean: I actually wrote in to Digital Ocean about this incident, twice, over the course of the last year. The first time I wrote in, I received a bullshit response from some support peon saying exactly the wrong thing "we support our CTO, blah blah blah." The second time I wrote, curious about their offerings once more, saying how perverse I thought his actions were and asking how I could trust such a company... then, to my surprise, I had one of their co-founders write me back saying that such a thing would never happen again and that it was more or less inappropriate abuse of power. A sufficient response. We've yet to switch to them, or try 'em out, but at least they're now in the running again.
- sneak 13y ago> then, to my surprise, I had one of their co-founders write me back saying that such a thing would never happen again and that it was more or less inappropriate abuse of power. A sufficient response. We've yet to switch to them, or try 'em out, but at least they're now in the running again. The problem is that the equity holders that allowed this to happen in the first place now have capital to hire people who aren't shitheads, but they themselves set the culture and hired the early shitheads in the first place. Doing business with people like that, even if their business isn't shitheads now, sends the message that "it's okay to have no moral compass whatsoever, as long as you win and raise money/become profitable, and then fix it before you are too large". That's not acceptable.
- dublinben 13y agoYou have no ownership over a username in a private service. Your access can (and will) be terminated at any time in accordance to their Terms of Service. If you want to maintain control over your identity and presence online, you ought to use self-hosted services like Pump.io or Diaspora.
- drdaeman 13y agoBetter in practice, but still the same in theory - it's just that it's server admin and domain registrar who are in power. One can be the former, but not the latter.
- klenwell 13y agoWorried about having someone steal your invaluable Twitter or Instagram username? The solution is obviously to immediately litter all your social media accounts with such foul loathsome toxic content that no one else would want to touch them again for at least the next 1000 years.
- Istof 13y agoIf you think that they will keep your "content" for 1000 years, you might be dreaming.
- drgath 13y agoAs others have mentioned, this was probably due to inactivity. I stopped using Instagram years ago, but still had 'instagram.com/derek', and just checked to see if that was still my username. Nope, it is now 'derek______________', just like '_____kathleen'. The fact that a FB employee now owns the 'kathleen' user means they probably have an internal reservation system for expired accounts, which is a nice perk.
- basseq 13y agoThe Derek Yang that owns @derek is also a Facebook employee (I believe). [1] www.linkedin.com/in/dereklyang
- josefresco 13y agoBefore we all seemingly jump on the "she should have updated her account" bandwagon, it would help to see actual evidence of her inactivity, or at least evidence/statements in Instagram's TOS that state what "inactive" really means. This doesn't cut it: "We encourage people to actively log in and use Instagram once they create an account." How long can I go idle before Instagram takes my account back? Also, as someone else stated in this thread the very least Instagram could have done was to email her and inform her that she was about to lose her account due to inactivity. Lastly, it's important to note that Instagram didn't just "prune" her account, they renamed it and gave her original account name to an employee. If they were concerned with squatters or dormant accounts they would have actually nixed the account, not renamed it to something else.
- wiredfool 13y agoI wonder if she could claim the @InstagramHelp twitter account. It seems dormant to me...
- buro9 13y agoTwitter no longer let anyone claim any inactive accounts. And only honour Trademark based claims if it's obvious there was intent to confuse and it's causing confusion. It would be a no go.
- insensible 13y agoI have seen at least two instances of Twitter staff taking old, unused short handles after being hired there. But I don't know about the specific policy decision you seem to be referencing (and I don't know whether that decision exists).
- lazerwalker 13y agoTwitter no longer publicly allows anyone to claim inactive accounts. Informally, Twitter employees (and friends of employees) still have channels they can use to claim inactive accounts.
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- lazerwalker 13y agoWhoever you think is in the wrong here, the real takeaway is a reminder that when you use a VC-funded for-profit service, you don't "own" anything.
- TezzellEnt 13y agoI was going to comment along the same lines. While there may be a social contract that you may "own" a name once you register it on an online service, if it's not something you paid for then it's truly not yours (this notwithstanding any TOS saying otherwise). With free online services, users are the product, not the customer.
- vijayr 13y agoWhat is the importance of "VC-funded" here? What you are saying is true for any for-profit service (specifically those that we use for free), isn't it?
- w1ntermute 13y agoThe importance is that the VC funding allows the service to offer its service free of charge to users until it can scale enough to either land a cushy acquisition based on connections the VC firm has or (much more rarely) monetize via a method that isn't viable until they've already scaled up. In either case, you are not the customer, since you are not paying them. In the absence of VC funding, however, companies are much more likely to be forced to charge their users, meaning they have a more vested interest in customer service.
- fleitz 13y agoIf you think the private sector is bad, try dealing with a sovereign like the feds. There's a lot more of this kind of crap and it affects your life in a much more serious way than having your username changed. Do you really think you 'own' your house? Might want to ask the residents of New London. Indeed when you get services like a school system for free, you are the product.
- ampersandy 13y agoWhat does this have to do with Facebook and the acquisition? Anyone working at Instagram pre-acquisition would also have been able to reclaim inactive handles. Twitter does this as well and that's how I got my current username. There are a couple of things that are required before you could reclaim a handle (I forget the exact timespans, but it was close to this): * Has not logged in for one year * Has not tweeted in a year and half * Does not any have applications linked to Twitter If Instagram has a similar policy, I really don't have any sympathy that the username was taken.
- martingordon 13y agoHow exactly did you do this? I want my name on Twitter but it's being squatted on by someone who has zero tweets, zero followers and following one person. I put in a request back in 2009 to free up the name and they told me the same thing that's still in their support document five years later: they're working to free up names but don't have a timeline. https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive-account-policy https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive-account-...
- ampersandy 13y agoI used to work at Twitter, so I was able to request it internally. As I mentioned, you were only able to request a handle that met some strict 'inactive' policies. I left in 2012, so I don't have much context since then. The root problem is that you want to give handles to people who will genuinely use them. But if you open up any system for reclaiming handles, it's just going to be abused by people trying to snag and sell handles (just like domains). Since there was no obviously correct way to ensure only people who would use the handles got them, it was just done internally for people who requested it (and their friends).
- bichiliad 13y agoI wonder if this is just really, really clever PR to get people to use their accounts more.
- rch 13y agoWhy don't new services default to using a random string as an identifier, along with an alias for display, instead of a requiring a unique username? Managing overlapping names among friends is something most people know how to do well enough already.
- nemothekid 13y agoFollow me on Instagram: @f9ab8ed9dacd8724bc
- maccard 13y agohere's a link to my instagram: http://instagram.com/f9ab8ed9dacd8724bc/# http://instagram.com/f9ab8ed9dacd8724bc/#
- anigbrowl 13y agoThat's fine for email, but services like Instagram thrive on literal word of mouth with people saying it over the phone or over TV or radio. Watch some TV and see how many adverts include the Facebook logo or a hashtag (implying Twitter, although a competitor could steal that market overnight). It's not just about clickability, it's also about having an identity easy enough for people to remember to check out. 'I haven't looked at Joe_Blow's Instagram in a while' is an easy thought to form, having to perform a search to find the random string of the actual account name, which is unrecognizable for most people if the search returns more than one result - that's a pain.
- rch 13y agoThere's nothing wrong with vanity tags. Similar to 'verified' accounts. And if you're referencing me from your phone, you could alias me as @knowsnothing and change my icon to a koala if you wanted to. That offends me less than me having to come up with @awesome_sauce314 to use some photo sharing service, which I'd need to share among friends, coworkers, family, strangers, etc.
- thehme 13y agoI read "..she opened up Instagram on her phone (she’s not a regular on the service anymore)", and wondered, does he mean that @kathleen has not been using it for a while (months)? There is no justification for stealing a handle, but I was just wondering. I recall once I wanted to have a specific handle on twitter for an idea I had, so I contacted the owner via a private message. He/she has no tweets and to this day, I have not heard from him/her yet. Would anyone be open to perhaps having an "expiration" date on our accounts? Sometimes I feel like there are robots out there claiming every possible handle, so that, idk, they can sell it later?
- brandon272 13y agoI think it's in extremely bad taste to remove an account that's ever had content uploaded to it. Person registered two years ago and hasn't uploaded anything? Sure, prune the account. User creates an Instagram account and uploads some nice family photos and doesn't sign in for a year? Leave it alone!
- fbndki 13y agoWelcome to the nightmare
- steven2012 13y agoIt's clear that Facebook etc employees are higher on the virtual caste system than the rest of us peons. The more and more they make this evident, the less interested regular people will be in participating in their virtual world.
- logfromblammo 13y agoI feel as though this would be a good opportunity to remind people that choosing an Internet handle that has any connection to your public identity name is not necessarily a good idea. The potential name space for memorable, usable, easily-typed handles is much larger than the list in the baby names book, and there is value in avoiding collisions. As my own public name is two of the most common first names and one of the most common last names in the Anglophone world, I am not altogether unfamiliar with the disutility in using a common name. Aside from that, in the real world, we have a host of disambiguators available to tell the difference between two individuals with similar names. There is no particular reason why a site's user handle would need to be unique. The data store should probably be keying everything on a serial ID number anyway. Just as the DNS exists to associate names with IP numbers, a handle resolver could use disambiguators as needed to minimize disruption of the user experience due to non-uniqueness. If you log in from a new device with a new IP address, you might be asked "Which 'kathleen' are you?" once, and get a small "I'm a different 'kathleen'" link thereafter. If you're a giant like Facebook, there is probably more utility in allowing people to have short, non-unique user handles with an on-demand disambiguation system than in a system required to enforce user handle uniqueness.
- raesene3 13y agoWhat I think is interesting about this is more the general case than this specific example. I'd say that people's social media handles are becoming more and more important to them, so loss of them becomes increasingly bad. A lot of people in the tech world are probably more known by things like their twitter handle than their real name. With free services (and indeed perhaps with paid for) there's not a lot to stop a company changing the ToS to allow for usernames to be transferred as they like(assuming it's not already in the ToS). Now if your chosen handle is pretty niche (no one who's not a fan of 90's ADnD settings is likely to want mine), it's probably not a big risk, but for other ones it seems plausible to suggest that a company might start seeing them as a valuable asset, to be monetized..
- xacaxulu 13y agoWhen can we start taking accounts of deceased persons?
- geldedus 13y agoglad I have deleted my Instagram account back when the policy change scandal; this incident confirms Instagram is a BS site
- reshambabble 13y agoThere are two interesting groups at play here - the tech companies that own all data, usernames, etc. on their platform and the user that needs to be on their platform for the company to exist and be successful. Our private information becomes public information when we share it with some of these companies, and they are given permission to own and use the information to a certain extent. They promise us security and stability at first because they need us, but when they don't depend on us anymore they can get away with sacrificing those users who don't contribute enough in order to serve their own interests. Because what does losing one person do to them? Are we all going to boycott Instagram now? Probably not. There definitely needs to be some regulation on how internet-based businesses can use and change a user's information because our public/internet identity has become so integrated into our lives that an incident like a sudden change in username can feel like a violation of privacy (even when it's not really one).
- gordaco 13y agoThis looks like an employee acting on her own, thinking (wrongly) that the account was not active and nobody would notice if she took over the username. Still, it's a disturbing issue that shouldn't have been allowed to happen, so if this is the case I hope the employee gets some penalty. And the fact that this was possible, or maybe even legal (I don't know Instagram's terms of service), doesn't make it less of a dick move. I was an employee for a local social network with about ~10mil registered users (~5mil daily users). It was much smaller than Instagram, but despite that (or precisely because of that) things like this were completely forbidden.
- qwerta 13y agoIs not there some 'anti hacking' law in US? Aaron S. got like 30 years for downloading a few documents. Call FBI and see what happens.
- yankoff 13y agoThis is just unbelievable.. Have you tried to email their support? It's hard to believe that that could be an acceptable practice at any company, I would assume it's just some employee being a jackass.
- owenversteeg 13y agoThis happened to me (employee of the company took my username) with a different service, and a quick tweet to the founder had my account restored. I'm not going to identify the website because the person that made it is a nice guy in general and he restored my account right after I asked.
- uptown 13y agoUpdate Apr 16, 2014 @2:34pm: I’m very pleased to announce that Facebook / Instagram did the right thing and delivered my wife’s Instagram handle back to it’s rightful place: http://instagram.com/kathleen http://instagram.com/kathleen
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- emsy 13y agoSo what's next? Facebook employees breaking into houses and stealing Occulus Rift DevKits that haven't been used for a while? SCNR
- Im_Talking 13y agoI hate Facebook and, by association, I hate every Facebook subsidiary. They are monetizing your privacy.