Hacker News Reader

Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

He said he wasn't using it much. Thus, isn't he basically a squatter?

He's definitely a squatter. If you own something and you don't use it, you're a squatter. I own an old original Nintendo that I haven't used all year. That's why if someone comes into my house and takes it, it's my own fault.

I tend to disagree:

The right of ownership includes to right to use what you own in your own way.

The ownership of twitter namespace is Twitter's alone, not the user's

IIRC, Twitter officially doesn't allow you to sell your handle.

I did not know that but I'm not surprised.

There's an agreement between Twitter and each user. And depending on the name used, Twitter users have own rights too, trade marks and of course domain names are examples.

chmars, I think he was being sarcastic.

I'm not using my home tomorrow morning. Is it alright for just anyone to go in and take ownership of it?

In a naturalistic sense? Yes. You only have a "right" to anything you can defend.

In which case, once I return in the afternoon I will be entitled to shoot whomever is there for trying to steal my home. I'll be 'naturalisticaly' defending it. Sounds like a great way to run a society. I better make sure I have a bigger gun than the rest then. (edit-language)

Is shooting people your first go-to for defense? I prefer arguments and evidence presented to institutions who have both been given permission to shoot people and are willing to do it on my behalf pending their judgements of my arguments and evidence.

Of course, if the institution's judgement is that people can take things that I'm not using at that exact moment, and it is not interested in intervening, then it's not my 'right' to leave my house alone for the day.

Turns out my rights are entirely dependent on the amount of guns I can bring to bear vs. the amount of guns somebody challenging my claim can bring to bear.

When an armed intruder is breaking into my house? Yes shooting them is in fact my first go-to defense. When someone else is intending to do harm to me or someone I love I'm not going to wait around for the police to get there 30 minutes later. All the police are going to find is my dead body by then.

He was talking in a 'naturalistic' way so I responded in kind. In reality if I found someone has stolen my home I'd call the authorities unless of course I feel a danger to my life in which case, had I not lived in the UK where guns are illegal, yes - shooting them would have been the first course of action. That is nothing to do with law or ethics, and lots to do with survival instinct.

Actually, castle doctrine does give you the right shoot someone breaking into your home in almost every state. It is exactly the way our current society is run.

I understand it was a sarcasm, but there's one difference between the two. A Twitter handle or a domain name is something unique as opposed to a game console of which there were millions of copies.

... and it still involves the right of selling the account at the price he wants, even if he's squatting.

Too bad then for the company named "N." They'll have to go with N_company or N_inc or N_co or get really creative if those are taken. There's probably only like 500 names they can choose from relating to "N."

If the username was worthless, no one would have stolen it in the first place or offered $50,000 for it.

So if I have a unique object that I don't use or look at or whatever one does with unique objects (say, a piece of art or something), I'm a squatter and its perfectly ok for someone to take it away from me?

He has 15,000 tweets, but basically stopped tweeting in 2013. I wouldn't call him a squatter.

Let's not confuse digital "property" with physical property. It's disingenuous at best, flat out wrong at worst. On top of that, you don't own a Twitter handle, or for that matter a domain, you rent it.

Twitter's official policy is that an account becomes inactive after 6 months - at that point, they reserve the right to release the account (in practice they rarely do this, though - there isn't an automated job releasing inactive accounts or anything)

https://support.twitter.com/articles/15362-inactive-account-...

@N (now @N_is_stolen)'s last post was 4 months ago, so he is still technically considered an active user.

Activity doesn't require the creation of a tweet though. There are plenty of active accounts where the users just read.

Not logging in for months or years at a stretch counts, IMHO.

No one said he didn't "log in" for years. You can log in every day and leave no trace.

And there's nothing wrong with "just reading". Plenty of people post 100+ times per day and say nothing interesting at all.

Most of the userbase.

That is what I do.

Less than 10 tweets in 3 years and all I do is read other tweets

Doesn't using Medium also coutn as accoutn activity?

He tweeted pretty heavily previously. Was one of the small team who made @echofon. He'd reduced his tweeting, but was still using the account in other ways.

It depends. I know of several people who have Twitter accounts so they can follow other people, but they don't tweet much (or at all) themselves.

But you can use your twitter account to log into some websites now.

Not using something much is not the same as not using it at all, nor is it the same as not planning to use it in future.

It doesn't appear that he is trying to sell it, which is the usual behaviour of an account/name squatter.

I have several domains that I plan to use for little projects over the coming year (though given my lack of free time right now that may not happen like it didn't last year...). Am I a squatter for having paid for something I intend to use but have not got around to doing anything with yet? A couple of them are password/credentials related, for an example of a squatter talk to the person who owns password.net and sends me unsolicited email regularly trying to get me to offer to buy it as it will "help my brand" (the names I've got are the intended "brand", the generic short name is worth no more to me than standard registration fees - who slaps short names into their address bar instead of using a search engine these days?).

No. A squattor who takes over something that is abandoned or little used. Someone who does the abandoning or little uses the thing they own is the one being squatted upon.

Now I reread that, it sounds a little... sexual.

If he was trying to shake down someone who had a legitimate claim to it, yeah. Otherwise he's just a speculator, not a squatter. Or an opportunist maybe.

Ya, the fact that he tweeted a grand total of twice in 2013 (see https://twitter.com/N_is_stolen) makes me have a little less sympathy.

I'm a very casual and infrequent tweeter, and I can't fathom how that makes my username 'up for grabs'. Sorry you have such a twisted view of username ownership :/

Oh it definitely doesn't make your username 'up for grabs'. What happened to you totally sucks and I hope you manage to get your account back.

That being said if you're not actually going to use your account you might want to at least consider giving it to someone who would put it to more active use. Just a thought.

Someone offered him 50 grand for it, and he turned them down. I would be surprised if he hadn't considered it at that point, if not previously.

I've been actively using the account for other purpose than tweeting, and had a vague plan to start using it for tweeting again. Should I have mentioned the plan publicly so that the attacker would have refrained from blackmailing me? I don't think so.

This COULD make sense. Are all other names taken up on twitter? Is it difficult to tweet without using the @N name? I never used twitter before.

Maybe google.com should have built their web site on kljasdklfjnaksdfn.com instead. That would have worked out just as well for them right? I haven't used the web very much.

While sympathetic - I'm also slightly amused at your twisted view about twitter name/account "ownership"…

Just how much of the "real world" law you're alluding to by using the term "ownership" do you suppose applies to Twitter handles? (or Gmail addresses, or Facebook pages, or even domain names?)

The twitter namespace is property of Twitter alone. It's cute that there are those who think the "owners" of these names would be each user.

Well, OK, but a certain level of assured "ownership" is beneficial to everybody. Twitter handles, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc., would not be very useful if Twitter, ISP, postal service, telcos, etc. frequently exercised the right to deny access to previous users at any time.

Seeing how easily GoDaddy handed over the domain, it seems one can't even own a domain properly, and that is supposed to be a lot closer to an "ownership" right than Twitter handles.

The difference between some of those and twitter's namespace is that Twitter is not a public utility. It is a privately operated company with a defacto monopoly on short status updates (micro blogging).

We could look towards email and dns, though, as examples of a more fair distribution of namespace resources.

Organizations would do well to investigate what their options are to retain control over their namespace, lest it fall whim to a mishap such as this instance.

I really don't understand why people still use goDaddy. i wouldn't recommend it to my arch-ennemy

I don't think the user 'owns' it at all. I mean, it's pretty obvious that you're just laying claim to some set of bits in somebody else's system. I'm not confused about that :)

I just don't quite see how a username is 'owed' to other people who would use it more, either.

while it clearly doesn't, I wonder though if someone is using twitter so infrequently they would even care what their handle is. It's not like it has any intrinsic value or meaning. Why not just pick a random guid and use that as a handle (like I did) since I don't care one hoot what the handle is as I use twitter for exactly two things. Machine Learning datasets, and following a dozen or so people. I can do that from a guid as effectively as if I had @2600

If someone had a Mercedes and only drove it twice a year, is it OK for someone to steal it?

No. But I'd feel less bad for that person than someone who drove their Mercedes every day and had it stolen.

Also, a Mercedes and a twitter handle (or domain name) aren't exactly the same thing as a twitter handle is a unique owner of a particular pice of the namespace.

A better analogy would be an owner of a valuable piece of property who wasn't putting it to good use.

> A better analogy would be an owner of a valuable piece of property who wasn't putting it to good use.

So if you were not putting your backyard to good use you would not feel too bad if your neighbors decided to encroach on it?

I think you're deliberately not hearing what I'm saying. Here's a good analogy:

Some rich guy buys an amazing house on a beautiful California beachfront. But then never even bothers to stay there because he's got 3 other vacation homes. It just sits there empty all year long.

Would it be ok for someone to break in and start living there? No, of course not.

But you do have to kind of dislike that guy right? If he doesn't want to use this limited and valuable resource he should maybe give it up so someone else can get good use out of it.

So a minute ago you're saying that a Mercedes can't really compare to a unique Internet handle but somehow owning 4 houses is comparable? I'm really not following your analogy.

Twitter handles are free and multiple tweets are free.

There is no reason he should have to give up @H just because he isn't utilizing it enough. The person that got it better not send a single tweet shorter than the maximum to fit your logic.

> If he doesn't want to use this limited and valuable resource he should maybe give it up so someone else can get good use out of it.

You mean Communism?

Communism would be suggesting that the government should force him to give it up.

There's nothing wrong with advocating the concept of sharing when a person obviously has more resources than he could actually use.

No! We aren't talking about every property ever. Not your backyard, not your car and not your water bottles. Valuable properties. Nobody cares about @d7a8df74a98d or www.fe5461d77vvc.com. We're talking about crumbling buildings near a national monument, or in the technology field, m.com or @N. Domain squatting is awful. Is it genuinely that unintuitive to you?!

And if seizing it is too "communist" for you, then enormous taxes should be close enough to socialism.

If I own it, it's none of your or anyone else's business what I do with it. One should neither pass judgement on how I use it, why I use it, or if I use it, because it's mine (provided what I do with it isn't criminal in nature). Dislike != ok to take my shit.

Did you even read what I wrote?

"Would it be ok for someone to break in and start living there? No, of course not."

Dislike != ok to take my shit but it's still dislike.

EXACTLY. Same thing happened to a friend of mine who was working overseas all year long.

Somebody just moved in and started living in his house. And just tossed all of his personal belongings out.

To be honest, I kind of disliked my friend for a while.

I am trying to understand what you are saying.

I understand that you have not said that the situation the OP faced is deserved, but you don't feel too bad about it.

Unfortunately your defense does make it seem that you are not completely opposed to a framework that would take back "limited resources" not being used well. Most likely this is not your intention at all.

I often come across businesses/store locations and most importantly domain names that are not using even a small fraction of true potential. I do feel sorry for them, but I can't say I dislike them, they might dislike themselves if they knew what I knew.

The only way I can fathom the minutest possibility of disliking them is if they knew how to thrive and did not do anything, if it was common knowledge on how to do it right, but they chose not too.

Unfortunately most people don't know how to use potential or don't recognize it at all, can't dislike them for trying though.

What's funny about this discussion is that many states in the US have laws for this very purpose - known as Adverse Possession. If you occupy a piece of land unchallenged for a period of time (often long, like 10+ years), it becomes yours.

As far as I'm concerned, yes, it would be okay for someone to start living there, and some jurisdictions at some times have had squatting laws that recognize this. Land is essentially a public resource; unlike manufactured goods, I can't create land, and if I claim ownership of a piece thereof, I can only do so by denying use of it to everyone else; the "it's mine and I'll do anything I want with it" property rights that correctly apply to manufactured goods, don't entirely apply to land. A case could be made for saying the same thing of public namespaces.

I have a friend with family in Venezuela. A few years ago, Chavez decided that underutilized land is suddenly free for the poor to squat on. Their family member had bought the land after saving a long time, and was now saving for the funds to build a house on the land. Now the land is gone.

The GP's analogy is extremely weak.

Land is a bit different; there is a fixed supply, and you are not sovereign over it (unless you're the prince of a principality). Depending on the legal system of the country you're in, your ownership isn't really ownership to do with as you see fit - you normally can't pollute on it, can't build without permission, often don't own it all the way to the core of the earth, almost never own all the space above it, etc.

Yes. This is the point of adverse possession: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

Land should not remain unused.

Why shouldn't it remain unused?

"They paved paradise, put up a parking lot." Joni Mitchell

IANAL, but I have a hard time believing that a court of law is going to issue a judgement of adverse possession where the perpetrator used fraud/identity theft, extortion and blackmail to come into possession of it.

Good analogy. Another one is email. If you used an email address for personal conversations and commercial transactions, that should not entitle you to keep the email address. You should give your email address to another person that wants it.

For example, I used one email for most of my life. But recently, I stopped using that email address, and have used another one due to wanting to boycott that company. Since I no longer use that email address, I should have to give the password to another person. This is just the right thing to do in all cases.

That would FREE UP a lot of email addresses. If you have any email addresses that you do not need, you are obligated to give your password to another person. If you don't, then they can't use email.

Just make sure that if you use that email to sign in to other websites using that email and password combination, go to all of those websites and notify your friends that you are giving your email to someone else and you are not the same person if you see future comments using that name.

You might want to mark up your sarcasm slightly better as people are already falling for it in other posts you made.

Poe's law and all that.

I'd have a hard problem going to every single website where I ever made an account and changing the email preferences.. Assuming I'm a normal human being, there are bound to be sites that I forget about and someone dedicated enough could then get access to my accounts on those sites.

Not a security risk I'm willing to take, when I could simply leave that email address dormant. There's not really a huge shortage of good email addresses if you're willing to pay $10 a year for your own domain.

Some email providers actually already free up dormant email addresses for the public to register again. This poses a problem for exactly the reasons you described. I believe hotmail does, for example.

So if I don't really use my $50k collection car, it's as bad if it gets stolen?

To use Twitter, one does not have to tweet.

If you're not interested in creating tweets then you don't really need to be taking up such a valuable piece of the namespace.

Why is it valuable? What amazing things are other single character handles being used for?

Or is it just vaguely notable?

Apparently (according to the author of this blog post) it's worth 50k. That's at least moderately valuable.

shrug

harry works around people that pine for vanity usernames. vanity = big deal in those circles. who knows why. not bad in itself.

places like foursquare, people know people at twitter. if your outside the valley twitter won't even help you when the autosuspender mistakenly pops your account but valley/connected people call an investor or executive and get their vanity handle in hours. seen it happen twice.

it's all who you know and never forget it. when i dealt with twitter support as a normal the disparity between insider service and official was pretty amazing. they are the worst of the valley backscratchers.

bet they would have taken @n if the right person called. what would you do, sue?

Twitter never would have taken @n if the right person called.

Up until maybe 18-24 months ago if you knew the right folks you could generally get an inactive account released but even that is pretty much off the table at this point.

All industries have insiders. In some you can get a twitter handle, in others hard to get concert tickets, in others I bet it's early access to the latest in air ventilation equipment. It's not malicious. It's just personal relationships.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com