7 ms·

How Instagram closed my account and gave it to a football celebrity

337 points by javiercr 11y ago

intrasight 11y ago
Get a new Instagram account. It is a free service.
- Fastidious 11y ago
  The worse advise. If anything, he should just keep away from Instagram and never go back.
  - intrasight 11y ago
    I disagree. If one finds a service valuable, it continues to be valuable if you have a new username. I am not excusing Instagram's behaviour. But I am pointing out the fallacy in believing that you own your username.
    - leeleelee 11y ago
      For the service to be valuable, users are led to believe that when they create a username and a password for themselves, their username will not simply disappear and access revoked at any point in time. That would be quite a useless service wouldn't it?
      - morganvachon 11y ago
        Indeed, especially for a service like Instagram, your identity is your entire reason for using the service. By taking away the article author's username, they also took the entire account away, including any content he posted. For most users this represents months or years of interactions and activity they can never get back. Depending on how much they use the service, their entire online identity could potentially be lost.
        intrasight 11y ago
        Outsourcing your identity to a company that treats you as the product - good luck with that.
oldmanjay 11y ago
The hyperbole of the talk of violated rights took my sympathy about down to zero. It's a shitty move on Instagram's part to be sure, but I don't think even the most European of Europe's governments defends the right to the Instagram account name of your choice.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  But probably have the right to not get your IP destroyed. And just transfer the account once it is created.
  - adzicg 11y ago
    This is assuming that instagram held the only copy of those pictures (so loss leads to IP being destroyed). I doubt anyone would keep the only copy of any serious IP on a third-party free service. (just to make things clear - I'm not defending instagram, but deleting photos on a service users don't pay for can hardly be called 'destroying IP')
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      Instagram's TOS probably gives it an explicit, perpetual license to your IP.
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  You rescind sympathy because someone has a erroneous thought about the legal nature of the way they were wronged?
notjimhalpert 11y ago
It seems like he should be at least notified before they seized his account, though.
- ceasarby 11y ago
  What could be the grounds of taking account away from him? This guys is not a spammer, everyone who sees photos there can figure it's not a football player, but different Andreas Iniesta. Football guy could get verified account with nickname Iniesta official or smth. Very sad story, I feel for the poor guy :(
ryanlol 11y ago
The modern policy of no customer support by these services is a little worrying. I'm in a similar situation with google suspending my gmail account because I tried to make play store purchases while traveling (apparently this is a "suspicious access pattern"). Now I'm out 5 years worth of emails and have no way of contacting google (Despite being a paying google apps customer and registered on their payroll system). Frankly, I'd rather like to be able to pay to receive some support from these companies. Oh well, at least they made my emails bounce. tl;dr why don't web companies offer paid support to their users?
- adzicg 11y ago
  > The modern policy of no customer support by these services is a little worrying. I've got a mixed feeling about this. On one hand, because a friend and I operate a mostly-free opensource online service, I can appreciate the cost associated with even reading customer e-mails and triaging which one is important to reply to. For a free service, especially one that has millions of users, it's just not economically justified to run effective customer support. And it's not a good move to take someone's account away, but then again, it's a free service so pretty much the account belongs to the company, not the person. On the other hand, not being able to get any support from Google when their APIs change and break our stuff is annoying (keeping it polite :). Perhaps there is a model there for services such as Instagram to offer paid support. I'd gladly pay for Google developer support if that was an option, but it doesn't seem that they care enough to offer it.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Are you really Instagram's customer? As in, they accept money from you?
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    I don't use Instagram. But in Googles case, very much yes. And I'd like to give them more money for some customer support.
    - hga 11y ago
Fastidious 11y ago
Assuming Instagram is behind this, it is bad business to do that. Instagram by itself is nothing, it's users are what made the service, and showing a lack of respect for them it is their worse publicity.
ypcx 11y ago
And this while thousands or more spam bot accounts are added daily, and while Instagram could easily ask or force the user to change is handle. Anyway, good to know.
javiercr 11y ago
I am not the author of the post but I thought it was interesting because it's related to something I've been thinking for a while: the "namespace" for humans is quite limited. World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is growing exponentially. Plus, thanks to the Internet, if someone with name X does something "remarkable" that name X will be associated to that individual forever, creating a "digital shadow" over those future individuals with the same name. I remember someone who had my exact same first and last name, and he had bought the domain [fist_name][last_name].com ... The annoying problem was that person was also a developer and his website was awful. I was always worried that someone could google me, find his site and, as he was a developer too, think that poor site was mine.
- nathan_f77 11y ago
  I have the same problem! http://nathanbroadbent.com/ http://nathanbroadbent.com/
- dominotw 11y ago
  >World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is growing exponentially. I plan to give my child a new last name for this reason so he/she could have unique google hit. But I am not sure what the legal implications of this are.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    Depends where you live. In the UK, the person registering the birth can give any surname: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/2088/regulation/9/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/2088/regulation/9/ma... In the UK, there is no legal formality around changing one's name (you can change it by deed poll if you want a piece of paper, but you change your name by simply using the new name), so they could change it themselves anyway whenever they feel like it.
  - 11y ago
planetjones 11y ago
Terrible stuff by Instagram. Iniesta the footballer already has a very successful (5.4 million followers) account on Twitter using the handle andresiniesta8. It looks like versions 1-7 have been deleted. However the guy who wrote the article already has a Twitter account using ainiesta, which clearly isn't one of these imitation or mock accounts. The footballer hasn't moved Instagram handles, but it does look like Instagram are directing the author's alias to the footballer's existing account. Awful.
- SuperKlaus 11y ago
  fyi, it's "8" cause that's the number on his jersey.
  - jpindar 11y ago
    And using a combination of their name and jersey number as a username is very common among athletes, it doesn't mean they couldn't get just the name.
- joeyspn 11y ago
  > Iniesta the footballer already has a very successful (11.2 million followers) account on Twitter FTFY
  - planetjones 11y ago
    Oops! I meant to say Instagram account. He already has 5.4 millions on Instagram using the *8 handle.
xenadu02 11y ago
GitHub did the same thing to me. Changed my SSH keys and renamed my account. I used to have "rbishop", now some other developer has it. No notice, no communication, nothing. When I contacted the person at GitHub who did it he refused to answer any questions or explain anything. So watch out... If you have the same name as an employee's drinking buddy, prepare to have your account removed without notice or explanation.
- sopheny 11y ago
  github sucks. Use gitlab man :)
  - latj 11y ago
    I still like bitbucket
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  What was your old account name? Just bishop?
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    >I used to have "rbishop", now some other developer has it.
- lsaferite 11y ago
  Was your account inactive by chance? They have rules that after an account is inactive for a significant amount of time it is subject to removal. I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account. It had one repo that was forked years previously and never had any updates. And the user never contributed to any repos or anything. No activity of any type in years. So, I contacted GH support asking about the account and they removed the account and told me I could register it if I was fast.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    How much time elapsed between you speaking to GH support and them removing the account? I would very much hope that GH would attempt to contact the account holder before they deleted the account!
tzs 11y ago
The Instagram FAQs on their site say that account names are first come, first serve. They say that if the name you want is on an account that seems inactive you should consider periods, numbers, underscores, or abbreviations to come up with an available name. They say he violated their terms of service. I took a quick look at the TOS, and don't see anything that having the same name as a celebrity and using your name for your Instagram account would violate. I suppose it is possible that he violated some other term completely unrelated to this whole name thing, and that's why he got kicked off, and then they gave it to the football player even though the football player already had an established, verified, active Instagram account using the same name he uses for his verified Twitter account. There is one TOS term that his name could be construed as violating, if one were take a ridiculous reading of the term. That's Basic Term 12: "You must not use domain names or web URLs in your username without prior written consent from Instagram". The football player has the andresiniesta.es domain. If we take "domain name" in the rule to include the domain name with the TLD portion removed, then any username with the string "andresiniesta" in it would be covered.
e_proxus 11y ago
I had a similar thing happening to me. Friends were traveling and shared their photos on Instagram, so I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few years. On the web page, it says "Your username or password was incorrect." Upon trying to recover my password with my email address I get " That e-mail address or username doesn't have an associated user account. Are you sure you've registered?" When trying with my username instead I get "Sorry, this user is not active." I decided to try to login with the app, and there I got a message basically stating that my account was disabled because of not following the Terms and Conditions (same as OPs, don't remember the exact wording in English). They don't tell you what you did to break those conditions. They do tell you however, that there is no possible way to contact them or to get your account back. All your images are gone, your friends can't follow or contact you again and there is no way you can reactivate the account or get access to the user name. No email was ever sent notifying me of this happening, ever. Worst "customer" experience ever.
- driverdan 11y ago
  > I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few years. If you hadn't logged in for a few years why would you expect it to still be open? It's a perfectly reasonable policy to recapture unused accounts.
  - scintill76 11y ago
    So, who defines "unused account"? I mean, I see your point in this instance, but who wants the chore of logging in to all their accounts every 6 months (or more often?) just to avoid losing them? What if merely logging in becomes "not using it enough" for some services?
tristanho 11y ago
From the Instagram TOS[1]: "5. We reserve the right to force forfeiture of any username for any reason." Not saying that this isn't terrible customer service by Instagram, and they definitely should have given better notice, but when you agree to these terms of service you accept that THEY OWN your username... You signed up for this; it shouldn't be a surprise that they actually have these terms for a reason. [1] https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511 https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511
- _lce0 11y ago
  TIL Github can terminate your account, for any reason, at any time .. GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content in your Account. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#d-cancellation-and-termination https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#d-...
  - driverdan 11y ago
    All companies have a termination clause to protect themselves.
  - obstinate 11y ago
    If you find a TOS of a major website without a clause like this, let us know. That would be a true unicorn.
- olefoo 11y ago
  It's not "Customer Service" it's "User Experience". We are not Instagrams customers. We are the product that Instagram and Facebook sell to their actual customers, the advertisers.
- MisterBastahrd 11y ago
ceasarby 11y ago
I went to Instagram address he mentions and looks like all photos are still there. I'm not sure how designer guy looks like, but it's definitely not football players' headshot: https://instagram.com/ainiesta/ https://instagram.com/ainiesta/
- clamprecht 11y ago
  Maybe Instagram restored it (once they were outed)?
  - mansilladev 11y ago
    We'll never know the whole story. I'm sure it's too damn embarrassing.
- Todd 11y ago
  Yes, it also looks like the footballer is at the same name that he uses on Twitter: https://instagram.com/andresiniesta8 https://instagram.com/andresiniesta8 Appears to be fixed now. It would be interesting to hear a follow up.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  I can confirm that about an hour ago from this point that page displayed a 404 error.
covercash 11y ago
This happened to my friend's wife a few years ago - an Instagram employee hijacked her username: https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-change-5c546662abc0 https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-change-5c54... After being picked up by some of the bigger tech sites, they returned the username to her.
shkkmo 11y ago
The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is a bug that needs to be fixed there. I restrict access to my instagram account to approved followers. Now I wonder if someone could take over an handle of one of my friends and then have access to my posts.
- tsotha 11y ago
  >The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is a bug that needs to be fixed there. I doubt it's a bug. Someone probably complained saying something like "Hey, this guy isn't Andres Iniesta. Someone's squatting on his name to get extra hits." If that's the case anyone following that account must have meant to follow the athlete. They should have contacted the author first, of course, but companies offering free services don't have the money for customer support.
giancarlostoro 11y ago
What really weirds me out is why didn't they go for his full name instead of a shortened version? If it was the PR team, they could have a better time telling people to follow him on Twitter (edit: I mean Instagram) based on his full name wouldn't they? Weird.
Zaheer 11y ago
Same thing happened to me. The trend of larger online services having non-existent customer support worries me.
leeleelee 11y ago
If we operate under the assumption that with free services like facebook, twitter, instagram, gmail, etc -- can and will delete our content and revoke access to the service without warning at any point in time -- doesn't that make the service somewhat useless? Most users operate under the assumption that there is some sort of guarantee that their account will continue to exist and they will have a consistent day-to-day experience. That is a BIG part that makes the service actually "useful".
- tracker1 11y ago
  What bugs me is when a service changes, and you lose your own name... Not talking my given/family name, but the online handle I've used since before the web is "tracker1" ... that was my alias on my google profile (before the switch to google+), and it still hasn't been offered back... half the first to pages of results on google's own search refer to my profile on other sites... it's irksome.
z3t4 11y ago
One part of Internet's success is that it's decentralized. startup idea: Make it easy for "normal" people to have their own "Instagram" or blog.
- twic 11y ago
  It wouldn't be Hacker News if the one genuinely good comment wasn't downvoted :/. A friend made the same true, idealistic, and completely impossible proposal on his blog: http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-ipos http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-ipos
fixxer 11y ago
Well, I'm not going to sign up for Instagram. Wankers. Smells like desperation when companies are willing to alienate their core like this.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cordite 11y ago
It is shameful that it was done, but at the root, it seems to come down to: what is the product, and who are the users being swapped to who is the product, and what are the users. Free services seem easier to hit critical mass with a low barrier to entry, yet unless it is a paid-by-end-users service, end users seem to get trampled like this.
_pdp_ 11y ago
Well my twitter handle is @pdp and there is a political party in Nigeria also named PDP. There is also this thing called "personal development plan". In other words, I need twitter spam filter because people don't know the difference between @ and #. Anyway, if you don't want to get in trouble just come up with a super unique username. Do the same for your personal site and your business site.
planetjones 11y ago
Looks like he's back in business: 5 hours after writing this article, my account has been restored, but still no news from Instagram about what happened or an apology.
davidcollantes 11y ago
He got his account back. Instagram is sorry[0]. [0] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599

337 points by javiercr 11y ago

intrasight 11y ago

Get a new Instagram account. It is a free service.

Fastidious 11y ago
The worse advise. If anything, he should just keep away from Instagram and never go back.
- intrasight 11y ago
  I disagree. If one finds a service valuable, it continues to be valuable if you have a new username. I am not excusing Instagram's behaviour. But I am pointing out the fallacy in believing that you own your username.
  - leeleelee 11y ago
    For the service to be valuable, users are led to believe that when they create a username and a password for themselves, their username will not simply disappear and access revoked at any point in time. That would be quite a useless service wouldn't it?
    - morganvachon 11y ago
      Indeed, especially for a service like Instagram, your identity is your entire reason for using the service. By taking away the article author's username, they also took the entire account away, including any content he posted. For most users this represents months or years of interactions and activity they can never get back. Depending on how much they use the service, their entire online identity could potentially be lost.
      - intrasight 11y ago
        Outsourcing your identity to a company that treats you as the product - good luck with that.

oldmanjay 11y ago

The hyperbole of the talk of violated rights took my sympathy about down to zero. It's a shitty move on Instagram's part to be sure, but I don't think even the most European of Europe's governments defends the right to the Instagram account name of your choice.

venomsnake 11y ago
But probably have the right to not get your IP destroyed. And just transfer the account once it is created.
- adzicg 11y ago
  This is assuming that instagram held the only copy of those pictures (so loss leads to IP being destroyed). I doubt anyone would keep the only copy of any serious IP on a third-party free service. (just to make things clear - I'm not defending instagram, but deleting photos on a service users don't pay for can hardly be called 'destroying IP')
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Instagram's TOS probably gives it an explicit, perpetual license to your IP.
forgottenpass 11y ago
You rescind sympathy because someone has a erroneous thought about the legal nature of the way they were wronged?

notjimhalpert 11y ago

It seems like he should be at least notified before they seized his account, though.

ceasarby 11y ago
What could be the grounds of taking account away from him? This guys is not a spammer, everyone who sees photos there can figure it's not a football player, but different Andreas Iniesta. Football guy could get verified account with nickname Iniesta official or smth. Very sad story, I feel for the poor guy :(

ryanlol 11y ago

The modern policy of no customer support by these services is a little worrying. I'm in a similar situation with google suspending my gmail account because I tried to make play store purchases while traveling (apparently this is a "suspicious access pattern"). Now I'm out 5 years worth of emails and have no way of contacting google (Despite being a paying google apps customer and registered on their payroll system). Frankly, I'd rather like to be able to pay to receive some support from these companies. Oh well, at least they made my emails bounce. tl;dr why don't web companies offer paid support to their users?

adzicg 11y ago
> The modern policy of no customer support by these services is a little worrying. I've got a mixed feeling about this. On one hand, because a friend and I operate a mostly-free opensource online service, I can appreciate the cost associated with even reading customer e-mails and triaging which one is important to reply to. For a free service, especially one that has millions of users, it's just not economically justified to run effective customer support. And it's not a good move to take someone's account away, but then again, it's a free service so pretty much the account belongs to the company, not the person. On the other hand, not being able to get any support from Google when their APIs change and break our stuff is annoying (keeping it polite :). Perhaps there is a model there for services such as Instagram to offer paid support. I'd gladly pay for Google developer support if that was an option, but it doesn't seem that they care enough to offer it.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
Are you really Instagram's customer? As in, they accept money from you?
- ryanlol 11y ago
  I don't use Instagram. But in Googles case, very much yes. And I'd like to give them more money for some customer support.
  - hga 11y ago

Fastidious 11y ago

Assuming Instagram is behind this, it is bad business to do that. Instagram by itself is nothing, it's users are what made the service, and showing a lack of respect for them it is their worse publicity.

ypcx 11y ago

And this while thousands or more spam bot accounts are added daily, and while Instagram could easily ask or force the user to change is handle. Anyway, good to know.

javiercr 11y ago

I am not the author of the post but I thought it was interesting because it's related to something I've been thinking for a while: the "namespace" for humans is quite limited. World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is growing exponentially. Plus, thanks to the Internet, if someone with name X does something "remarkable" that name X will be associated to that individual forever, creating a "digital shadow" over those future individuals with the same name. I remember someone who had my exact same first and last name, and he had bought the domain [fist_name][last_name].com ... The annoying problem was that person was also a developer and his website was awful. I was always worried that someone could google me, find his site and, as he was a developer too, think that poor site was mine.

nathan_f77 11y ago
I have the same problem! http://nathanbroadbent.com/ http://nathanbroadbent.com/
dominotw 11y ago
>World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is growing exponentially. I plan to give my child a new last name for this reason so he/she could have unique google hit. But I am not sure what the legal implications of this are.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Depends where you live. In the UK, the person registering the birth can give any surname: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/2088/regulation/9/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/2088/regulation/9/ma... In the UK, there is no legal formality around changing one's name (you can change it by deed poll if you want a piece of paper, but you change your name by simply using the new name), so they could change it themselves anyway whenever they feel like it.
- 11y ago

planetjones 11y ago

Terrible stuff by Instagram. Iniesta the footballer already has a very successful (5.4 million followers) account on Twitter using the handle andresiniesta8. It looks like versions 1-7 have been deleted. However the guy who wrote the article already has a Twitter account using ainiesta, which clearly isn't one of these imitation or mock accounts. The footballer hasn't moved Instagram handles, but it does look like Instagram are directing the author's alias to the footballer's existing account. Awful.

SuperKlaus 11y ago
fyi, it's "8" cause that's the number on his jersey.
- jpindar 11y ago
  And using a combination of their name and jersey number as a username is very common among athletes, it doesn't mean they couldn't get just the name.
joeyspn 11y ago
> Iniesta the footballer already has a very successful (11.2 million followers) account on Twitter FTFY
- planetjones 11y ago
  Oops! I meant to say Instagram account. He already has 5.4 millions on Instagram using the *8 handle.

xenadu02 11y ago

GitHub did the same thing to me. Changed my SSH keys and renamed my account. I used to have "rbishop", now some other developer has it. No notice, no communication, nothing. When I contacted the person at GitHub who did it he refused to answer any questions or explain anything. So watch out... If you have the same name as an employee's drinking buddy, prepare to have your account removed without notice or explanation.

sopheny 11y ago
github sucks. Use gitlab man :)
- latj 11y ago
  I still like bitbucket
oh_sigh 11y ago
What was your old account name? Just bishop?
- ryanlol 11y ago
  >I used to have "rbishop", now some other developer has it.
lsaferite 11y ago
Was your account inactive by chance? They have rules that after an account is inactive for a significant amount of time it is subject to removal. I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account. It had one repo that was forked years previously and never had any updates. And the user never contributed to any repos or anything. No activity of any type in years. So, I contacted GH support asking about the account and they removed the account and told me I could register it if I was fast.
- simoncion 11y ago
  How much time elapsed between you speaking to GH support and them removing the account? I would very much hope that GH would attempt to contact the account holder before they deleted the account!

tzs 11y ago

The Instagram FAQs on their site say that account names are first come, first serve. They say that if the name you want is on an account that seems inactive you should consider periods, numbers, underscores, or abbreviations to come up with an available name. They say he violated their terms of service. I took a quick look at the TOS, and don't see anything that having the same name as a celebrity and using your name for your Instagram account would violate. I suppose it is possible that he violated some other term completely unrelated to this whole name thing, and that's why he got kicked off, and then they gave it to the football player even though the football player already had an established, verified, active Instagram account using the same name he uses for his verified Twitter account. There is one TOS term that his name could be construed as violating, if one were take a ridiculous reading of the term. That's Basic Term 12: "You must not use domain names or web URLs in your username without prior written consent from Instagram". The football player has the andresiniesta.es domain. If we take "domain name" in the rule to include the domain name with the TLD portion removed, then any username with the string "andresiniesta" in it would be covered.

e_proxus 11y ago

I had a similar thing happening to me. Friends were traveling and shared their photos on Instagram, so I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few years. On the web page, it says "Your username or password was incorrect." Upon trying to recover my password with my email address I get " That e-mail address or username doesn't have an associated user account. Are you sure you've registered?" When trying with my username instead I get "Sorry, this user is not active." I decided to try to login with the app, and there I got a message basically stating that my account was disabled because of not following the Terms and Conditions (same as OPs, don't remember the exact wording in English). They don't tell you what you did to break those conditions. They do tell you however, that there is no possible way to contact them or to get your account back. All your images are gone, your friends can't follow or contact you again and there is no way you can reactivate the account or get access to the user name. No email was ever sent notifying me of this happening, ever. Worst "customer" experience ever.

driverdan 11y ago
> I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few years. If you hadn't logged in for a few years why would you expect it to still be open? It's a perfectly reasonable policy to recapture unused accounts.
- scintill76 11y ago
  So, who defines "unused account"? I mean, I see your point in this instance, but who wants the chore of logging in to all their accounts every 6 months (or more often?) just to avoid losing them? What if merely logging in becomes "not using it enough" for some services?

tristanho 11y ago

From the Instagram TOS[1]: "5. We reserve the right to force forfeiture of any username for any reason." Not saying that this isn't terrible customer service by Instagram, and they definitely should have given better notice, but when you agree to these terms of service you accept that THEY OWN your username... You signed up for this; it shouldn't be a surprise that they actually have these terms for a reason. [1] https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511 https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511

_lce0 11y ago
TIL Github can terminate your account, for any reason, at any time .. GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content in your Account. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#d-cancellation-and-termination https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#d-...
- driverdan 11y ago
  All companies have a termination clause to protect themselves.
- obstinate 11y ago
  If you find a TOS of a major website without a clause like this, let us know. That would be a true unicorn.
olefoo 11y ago
It's not "Customer Service" it's "User Experience". We are not Instagrams customers. We are the product that Instagram and Facebook sell to their actual customers, the advertisers.
MisterBastahrd 11y ago

ceasarby 11y ago

I went to Instagram address he mentions and looks like all photos are still there. I'm not sure how designer guy looks like, but it's definitely not football players' headshot: https://instagram.com/ainiesta/ https://instagram.com/ainiesta/

clamprecht 11y ago
Maybe Instagram restored it (once they were outed)?
- mansilladev 11y ago
  We'll never know the whole story. I'm sure it's too damn embarrassing.
Todd 11y ago
Yes, it also looks like the footballer is at the same name that he uses on Twitter: https://instagram.com/andresiniesta8 https://instagram.com/andresiniesta8 Appears to be fixed now. It would be interesting to hear a follow up.
ryanlol 11y ago
I can confirm that about an hour ago from this point that page displayed a 404 error.

covercash 11y ago

This happened to my friend's wife a few years ago - an Instagram employee hijacked her username: https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-change-5c546662abc0 https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-change-5c54... After being picked up by some of the bigger tech sites, they returned the username to her.

shkkmo 11y ago

The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is a bug that needs to be fixed there. I restrict access to my instagram account to approved followers. Now I wonder if someone could take over an handle of one of my friends and then have access to my posts.

tsotha 11y ago
>The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is a bug that needs to be fixed there. I doubt it's a bug. Someone probably complained saying something like "Hey, this guy isn't Andres Iniesta. Someone's squatting on his name to get extra hits." If that's the case anyone following that account must have meant to follow the athlete. They should have contacted the author first, of course, but companies offering free services don't have the money for customer support.

giancarlostoro 11y ago

What really weirds me out is why didn't they go for his full name instead of a shortened version? If it was the PR team, they could have a better time telling people to follow him on Twitter (edit: I mean Instagram) based on his full name wouldn't they? Weird.

Zaheer 11y ago

Same thing happened to me. The trend of larger online services having non-existent customer support worries me.

leeleelee 11y ago

If we operate under the assumption that with free services like facebook, twitter, instagram, gmail, etc -- can and will delete our content and revoke access to the service without warning at any point in time -- doesn't that make the service somewhat useless? Most users operate under the assumption that there is some sort of guarantee that their account will continue to exist and they will have a consistent day-to-day experience. That is a BIG part that makes the service actually "useful".

tracker1 11y ago
What bugs me is when a service changes, and you lose your own name... Not talking my given/family name, but the online handle I've used since before the web is "tracker1" ... that was my alias on my google profile (before the switch to google+), and it still hasn't been offered back... half the first to pages of results on google's own search refer to my profile on other sites... it's irksome.

z3t4 11y ago

One part of Internet's success is that it's decentralized. startup idea: Make it easy for "normal" people to have their own "Instagram" or blog.

twic 11y ago
It wouldn't be Hacker News if the one genuinely good comment wasn't downvoted :/. A friend made the same true, idealistic, and completely impossible proposal on his blog: http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-ipos http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-ipos

fixxer 11y ago

Well, I'm not going to sign up for Instagram. Wankers. Smells like desperation when companies are willing to alienate their core like this.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cordite 11y ago

It is shameful that it was done, but at the root, it seems to come down to: what is the product, and who are the users being swapped to who is the product, and what are the users. Free services seem easier to hit critical mass with a low barrier to entry, yet unless it is a paid-by-end-users service, end users seem to get trampled like this.

_pdp_ 11y ago

Well my twitter handle is @pdp and there is a political party in Nigeria also named PDP. There is also this thing called "personal development plan". In other words, I need twitter spam filter because people don't know the difference between @ and #. Anyway, if you don't want to get in trouble just come up with a super unique username. Do the same for your personal site and your business site.

planetjones 11y ago

Looks like he's back in business: 5 hours after writing this article, my account has been restored, but still no news from Instagram about what happened or an apology.

davidcollantes 11y ago

He got his account back. Instagram is sorry[0]. [0] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599