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Comment by ryanlol | Hacker News Reader

I recently saw the name @Mat available on instagram, I registered it. Twice.

Both times the name was taken from me by a Facebook employee and eventually given to this Mat Henley guy from Uber.

Screenshots of Facebook staff forcefully resetting the account names:

https://i.succ.in/WuwuV1IH.png https://i.succ.in/WuMMtKTr.png (The revert button does nothing, just offers to change your password)

It seems like FB employees do not need a particularly good reason to go play around with admin tools editing user accounts. If they can edit users accounts this lightly, what does it take for them to look through you private posts or messages?

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Hey, I'm a tech reporter and I'm interested in looking into this further. Can you email me, or perhaps provide contact info? My email is smann@inc.com

I've sent you an email, could go to spam, not sure.

Thanks, I'll check!

Whoa!!! This sounds nefarious and also highly problematic. If employees can arbitrarily change names, how can anyone trust that they wouldn’t be able to change entire conversations, posts, media, etc., and shame someone (at best) or implicate someone as involved in a heinous crime or plotting one? It’s so bizarre if these are possible and have no oversight, policies and punishments.

But _________mat____ is so much catchier.

This needs to be made more of an issue.

Your screenshots show no evidence of "facebook staff" doing anything. Looks to me like an automated notification triggered by a username change on your account. I don't use Instagram so maybe I'm missing something, but you should have done as it said and changed your password after clicking "revert this change".

>Your screenshots show no evidence of "facebook staff" doing anything.

Are you suggesting that Mat Henley from Uber hacked me (or hired someone to hack me?), or that I myself gave up the name and am telling lies now? I think both of those sound tremendously unlikely.

I am 100% sure that neither of these accounts were compromised.

>but you should have done as it said and changed your password after clicking "revert this change".

I did, that's how I found out that the button does not actually revert the change, it just takes you to a prompt which makes you reset your password.

I'm not suggesting anything. All I'm going off is the screenshots you provided which you described as "Screenshots of Facebook staff forcefully resetting the account names".

I don't know what you're suggesting either... that Henley picked up phone to Instagram and said "I want @Mat, give it to me"?? Maybe ask Henley directly, send him a message and ask for your name back. If I were you I'd be pissed off and wouldn't let it slide.

I got Mat Henleys cell number from a friend and contacted him via Signal very shortly after this happened. A day later I got a reply from him: “knock it off, Adrian”

I don’t know any Adrians, he didn’t reply after that.

Especially when we know Mat Henley is a former Facebook employee.

How recently?

Around 20:00 (PDT) on Wednesday, April 04 2018.

Then it looks like it was a mistake in the name registration process, because @Mat is listed in Google's cache going back to mid last year. You shouldn't have been able to register that name.

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