'Metaverse' was her Instagram handle. It disappeared last month | Hacker News Reader

'Metaverse' was her Instagram handle. It disappeared last month

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62 pointsValentineC16 comments

People don't own their social media accounts, the social media companies do. I would bet that the fine print of every signup contract for a social media network would have explictly say that the social media platform has zero legal obligation to provide you services, they can cancel at any time for any reason.

No matter how valuable your username is, you are renting it without renter's rights. It's the equivalent of people building multi-million dollar businesses on land they don't own and can be kicked off of without notice or reason given.

It's even more insane that people use this for communication too and open themselves up to censorship, easedropping, governments listening. Social networks are good for connection but, relying on them and making an archive of sensative information in them is risky.

I make the initial connection in the social network for the network benefits and try to move people to better more secure and reliable channels later.

Facebook clearly spells this out on the sign up pages for both Facebook and Instagram. Further when you upload or post content it is clear in the top header text that Facebook owns and will be paid for the content.

Facebook's linguists and UX designers are world class and clearly set user expectations at every opportunity on all Facebook properties. This complaint is meritless.

and metaverse existed only a month ago. its a meanjngless term for whats barely above vaporware

>you are renting it without renter's rights

You are also renting it without paying rent.

Not true, your data and/or content is the rent you pay.

This headline is all over the internet. But if you read the article till the end, it turns out that the account was restored, and Instagram apologized. As always, when it comes to headlines, clickbait is more important than truth.

The truth is that it took NYT contacting Instagram for anyone to respond at all. It’s a big deal - most people simply can’t escalate like that.

You're right about the NYT making the issue visible, at the same time, it's not at all a big deal. Yes, it sucks if it's your handle, but it's not really important at all.

Not at all a big deal that one’s communication is controlled by an arbitrary entity with no real recourse?

That’s contrary to entire American tradition.

> one’s communication is controlled by an arbitrary entity with no real recourse?

That's not reality though, that's an agenda driven narrative. In reality, users are in complete control of their communication. Getting your handle renamed on instagram is about as unimportant as it gets.

Did we read the same article? The woman had her entire account suspended for weeks and only got it restored after the NYT picked up the story.

It is a big deal but not as big as implied by the headline. There's a difference between 'company hijacking username for their own benefit' and 'company deleted account with no recourse'. The former was the implication I took from the headline which was not at all the truth.

Its the classic we do whatever we want and if no one screams loud enough we move on. If they wanted to use the username they would do exactly the same.

Something similar happened to a twitch streamer with the handle 'squidgame', after people associated her with the tv show. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59140585

The issue here is that a bigger entity can just take over your long standing name, unless you're willing to somehow fight a trademark suite.

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29539822

[dupe]

Couple other discussions of same Times article already

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29539822

Reply on news.ycombinator.com