My @JFK Twitter account “has been suspended and will not be restored”

I don't think you can impersonate an airport. They should revise the message to say that they're taking his username for "imairportation".

Kind of reminds me of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft

Except in the real world, if you buy the domain name it's yours, while being an early adopter of Twitter just gets your account shut down if Twitter thinks they can make more money by giving it to someone else.

Finally, it's not like he told people to message John Fitzgerald Kelley with complaints about KJFK airport. They did that on their own, and he just took it in stride. That's what passes for a terms of service violation these days.

While I sympathise with the author, the end result was pretty inevitable. Getting a popular handle like that is both a blessing and a curse.

My experience from the other side: There is a well know budget airline here in Australia which (like all budget airlines) is renowned for it's poor service. After one particular bad flight experience a couple of years ago, I hastily sent off an annoyed tweet @airlinename.

A few minutes later, I received a barrage of insults and self righteous tweets from that account. Checking the account history, I see that is is some guy in the UK with the same handle as the airline, and looking at his historical timeline, it seems to be his routine day job to hurl insults at anyone who mistakenly tweets him thinking that is the airline's twitter handle.

Fair enough, I should have checked first. But he never pretended to be a rep from the airline - just a rude, bad tempered git with poor spelling and grammar skills, so I was never mislead, and I just forgot about the incident. Until a few months later when I checked on that account again and discovered that it was now a private account.

He may have not created the account with the intension of misleading anyone, but he lost moral authority when he started replying to tweets in a manner designed to reinforce confusion (for example, by using the pronoun 'we').

Unfortunately, these kinds of things happen all too often. Corporations don't have souls. Someone likely reported the guy and some worker making pennies in the Philippines spent a few seconds on his case and moved on to the next hundred. The only way to get them to care is if you're someone important, or if you kick up a big enough storm. The way companies like Google are moving towards automating human decisions (as evident in Youtube and the Play Store) will only exacerbate the alienation users will face. This is the future we choose with these megacorporations. One user is a not even a raindrop in their ocean and is not worth the monetary expense to them to provide reasonable support for. Of course you're a guest on their platform, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have expectations for how you are treated. The only solution is to move towards platforms where you are in control (like Diaspora) or ones that are small enough to respect you personally. The internet was supposed to bring us closer together, but with things like anonymity and scale, sometimes the worst parts just overwhelm the rest.

The author got me until he showed the screenshots where he impersonated the airport.

I mean, you could complain if you got your Twitter account suspended for no clear reason. Maybe the airport or some other big party attempting to unfairly get your handle. But this does't seem to be the case here.

What a strange blog post. It goes from being a strong argument why he should have the @JFK account to a strong argument why he shouldn't.

> I can’t help feeling like I’m getting the death penalty for a parking violation

I think our obsession with short/cool handles is strange, and even stranger is people building their "empire" on something that can be taken from you so arbitrarily.

It's the same as people expecting to get free-speech on Twitter/FB/Tumblr.

Even domains, which can't be taken from you on a whim, can be made far less "valuable" with the introduction on new TLDs.

TL;DR - Guy with JFK twitter handle decides to impersonate airport. Outcome is predictable.

Ha, I know the early adopter pride. I have a cool phone number from Google Voice and occasionally drop "in my day" from my 10 year old reddit account. I know it's silly, but there's a little bit of pride there.

Must be sad to lose @jfk. I know technically he did have it coming, but it seems like the kind of thing where maybe you could get a warning first or something.

Twitter's namespace belongs to Twitter alone. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.

> I tweeted 9 times in response to people who tweeted at me, who were directing their ire at the wrong place, and who really should just lighten up a bit.

"You should just lighten up" is a good sign that you have no argument and you're being a jerk. It is the catchphrase of a schoolyard bully who never grew out of that phase.

And the best part is it can apply either way. Twitter took your account that you had for 9 years! That's pretty funny! You're not on Twitter any more! Just lighten up, go outside, and stop using Twitter. Get a sense of humor, okay? What, you don't like me turning your argument around on you? Lighten up a bit!

While my account hasn't been suspended I get similar mis-tweeted traffic. Probably because most of the people using Twitter don't know how to use it correctly.

This leaves you with something to think about: Can one assume that one can continue to avail such services forever? Maybe it is only a matter of time when (1) the provider stops offering services (selectively), (2) it becomes paid, (3) it ceases to exist.

Maybe it's good to be prepared that it might happen.

In a perfect world, Twitter would restore your account, and JFK airport would hire you as SVP Customer Service.