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Comment by xorand | Hacker News Reader

> I want people to walk away from Twitter feeling like they learned something and feeling empowered to some degree. It depresses me when that’s not the general vibe, and inspires me to figure it out. That’s my desire

Last year, in March I deleted all my tweets and closed my account [1]. A month ago I discovered that my account appears as "suspended" [2]. I don't feel empowered by this Tweeter information about me.

[1] https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/i-deleted-f...

[2] https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/twitter-lie...

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Deleting your account freed your username - someone else took it and got themselves suspended.

Perhaps, but when someone tries to open an account then Twitter checks first if the name is taken. Therefore how hard would it be for them to keep all the used names and verify first?

This is just a hypothesis, only Twitter knows. Another hypothesis is that Twitter wants to present those who leave as suspended.

It's very easy to keep a list of all used names and verify first. Twitter does that. You requested to have your account removed from that list. What would even be the point of keeping your username locked after the account deletion?

It's public knowledge https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/help-with-...

> Once you’ve changed your username, it returns to general circulation and may be selected by another account.

So in the case of services where your username is the only thing your account is identified on, it probably makes more sense to delete your tweets and leave the account active. Oh, and post a nonsense message every few months so you don't get deactivated

You are right. Moreover, never give any personal information to any social media corporation, right? There is also an advantage for Twitter: they can claim that they still have active users which are not bots.

Er, but the account name you used to use wasn't taken, because you deleted your account. Doesn't twitter make it clear in their documentation that if you delete your account, your account name is returned to the pool of available account names? And, if that is the case, I don't think it's an unreasonable way of handling the situation.

Re: your hypothesis about twitter wanting to present everyone who leaves as suspended: This is highly, highly unlikely and you'd have to provide significant evidence to the contrary.

All evidence is at Twitter. There is no way to verify any hypothesis without access to what Twitter has, including the hypothesis that the most users on Twitter are not bots. But everybody is free to have any opinion based on the interaction they have with Twitter. In my case, for a reason which is completely under the control of Twitter, my username which can be linked with my real identity is presented as suspended, when in fact I deleted my account. I don't longer have any relation with Twitter but they present an account which contains my name as suspended. Legally true, morally repugnant.

Say you ran a website once. Then you let your domain expire. Someone else bought it, and put up their site on the domain. Would you blame the domain registrar for that?

More like you live in another country and you leave and later discover that when people who know you there look for you, they find out your are on a list of offenders, for a reason known only by the police from that country.

https://twitter.com/Flexi23/status/973219244233158662

This kind of misrepresentation may be legal (or not, IANAL) but I find it infuriating.

What's the point? Then why does Twitter verify if there is another account by the same name name when one opens an account? They could just associate the password with a concatenation of the username with a random number. The same point.

in the clause you signed to delete or deactivate your account, you give that username & account up after the 30 day window.

To close this discussion, I propose a law (maybe in EU) that any interaction with a social media corporation has to be mediated by a provable legal advice from a professional. In this way all these discussions which mix the moral side (users) and the legal side (corporation) will be avoided :)

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