Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner | Hacker News Reader

Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner

thenextweb.com

291 pointsowenwil71 comments

It's interesting (and perhaps sad) how these days having a blog in which to complain, if needed, is one of the most foolproof ways to receive proper customer care from certain online companies.

The best customer service I've ever gotten was as a direct result of complaining on Twitter. Most companies care tremendously about their public image but most have yet to get that care to their dedicated customer service lines.

Most of these companies are terrified of SEO probably. There's been a number of cases in the past where a customer's complaint would show up on the first page of results for a company on Google. Once or twice those blogs have even shown up before the official results for something that completely blew up. It could cost these companies a lot more once it's out in the open.

I think it's great. It's not like companies weren't shafting people before; we're just hearing about it more. For decades, companies with money had a big communications advantage. The web has re-leveled the playing field.

>The web has re-leveled the playing field.

Can't say I agree - the original owner of @N has a huge potential reach since he's a writer for medium, and knows how to structure and write an article so that people root for him instead of Twitter.

If @N would've belonged to some Chinese kid, that kid could have written on his unknown blog in Chinese and no-one would have cared.

Edit: Mixed up nextweb.com/medium writers

No, Naoki isn't a writer at thenextweb.com. The may have republished his own blog post from medium.

You're right sorry, changed it

Anyone can write at Medium. You can open an account there yourself.

It's more leveled than before, not (anywhere close to) fully leveled yet, but blogging is playing a positive role not negative (in my opinion).

Right, and before the rise of social media, the Chinese kid couldn't have drawn attention from a popular blog, and also wouldn't have been able to do anything else. The rise of social media obviously doesn't come close to solving anything, but it's strictly an improvement.

The blog is meaningless, you could be a nobody. If I buy a block of cheese tomorrow, and you can see a band-aid in the package, half embedded in the cheese, half hanging out, the internet will go wild. Toss a photo on Reddit with a cheesy headline, and it'll hit the frontpage, then get reposted all over the internet. Within a couple of days the company would issue an official statement, and I'd have copious amounts of free cheese.

It would be a PR nightmare, and they'd be trying to track down the location, employee, and how their scanner for foreign material didn't pick it up. Meanwhile, without the internet, I'd call, never be able to reach anyone of importance, and they'd just apologize and mail me a 50% off coupon.

The internet gives the individual a lot of power, and they can reach millions overnight thanks to social networks. It also forces the company to handle damage control ASAP, since their reputation drops a notch with every passing minute.

Let's be fair: Starting out famous is an enormous boon.

At the same time it's possible for nobodies to be heard as well, provided their message is well presented.

It has, which is great for consumers in cases with these where there is merit. It also means it is easier for anyone to unjustly defame or disrupt the perception of an individual or organization. As per http://boingboing.net/2014/02/25/nsa-and-gchqs-dirty-trickin...

You mean blog + viral traction. There are lots of blogs full of unanswered complaints.

It's not foolproof.

What's more foolproof is a big platform, huge megaphone, and lots of social amplification.

Lots of blogger complaints, twitter campaigns have gone nowhere.

I don't see how this is sad.

I think he means it's sad that @N wasn't able to resolve it through customer support channels at Twitter, GoDaddy, or PayPal.

Plenty of big online companies either try hard to be uncontactable (google!) or will simply have their first line support tell you that it's your own fault and nothing can be done.

It's always been this way. Being a squeaky wheel or someone in power has always been a way to get better service. (Or mortgage rates, or whatever) The web has empowered the squeaky wheels.

You could say it's a shame that customer service is awful, but it's expensive to provide universally good service, so many companies opt to just deal with the fallout. Not everyone can be Tiffany's.

This isn't nearly as exciting as the story of @N, but I just had something strange happen to one of my Twitter accounts, too.

Registered "tweetcoin" handle awhile back for one of the projects I am working on, and posted on Feb 9 (my single tweet) - "Exciting things in the works" was my comment:

https://twitter.com/tweetcoin

Tried logging in today, couldn't log in. Ended up resetting pwd using my email account, and the reset link logged me in as 'tweetcoin1' - that's when I knew that my Twitter handle had changed from 'tweetcoin' to 'tweetcoin1'.

What's even more bizarre - another tweet appeared under that account. It was dated April 2012, and it simply said:

"This isn't your account."

That's pretty strange. Did you contact Twitter?

Not yet. I am not even mad etc.

You should probably tell them, so at least they know how often this kind of thing happens.

It's a ha'nted Twitter account quite obviously.

That's the impression I got. I ended up using the renamed one, after renaming it once again from @tweetcoin1 to @usetweetcoin.

It's less than a fortnight short of 1,000 days ago, since people began criticizing Twitter for this behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2646979.

I believe this is called a "happy @N-ding".

The title is actually "Happy ending: @N has been restored to its rightful owner".

"finally" implies that Twitter was too slow in reacting to this. Please don't editorialize.

I would argue that it is, considering that it was in the press for a little less than a month before this happened.

See: https://medium.com/cyber-security/24eb09e026dd

Twitter never responded to publicly, nor did they actually or take action for well over a month. From @N's feed, it seems that he got it back himself somehow, too.

I don't see why it's not accurate.

    "finally" implies that Twitter was too slow in reacting to this

Were they not?

That's subjective.

Isn't the "happy ending" part subjective too?

"Happy ending" at least is editorializing by the article's author instead of by whoever posted the link.

Yes, but it's part of the original title (and a POV of the article itself), not a subjective addition on the part of link submitter.

I think it was objectively a long time to make the transfer. I would argue that 'finally' implies the slowness, not whether it's negative or positive. So the edit is not a problem.

The text in the article certainly expresses they felt Twitter took a long time.

So the headline definitely accurately represents the text... that's better than most headlines these days!

https://twitter.com/N/status/438431953650339840

> "finally" implies that Twitter was too slow in reacting to this.

No comment on the use of "rightful" or "happy"? It implies that he had a valid claim to the handle and the outcome was good. Why do these pass your test?

Because they are in the title in the original article. On HN, titles should generally be used as they stand originally and not modified, which is what zeckalpha means when he or she refers to editorializing.

Oh! My reading of his comment is that his issue is not with the changing of the title but with its editorialization. I'm still reading it that way, even after you've clarified it for him.

Editorializing is changing a title.

Right, but you don't have to change a title to editorialize. Your comment appears to take issue with the editorialization — not the title change specifically — which might help to explain some of the responses you're getting.

Changing is editing.

Changing to inject opinion is editorializing.

What I want to know is: what was the attacker thinking? A Twitter handle is something that Twitter can easily return to its rightful owner -- it's not exactly something you can steal. I could see some scenario where the attacker would use some information to extort Naoki into not telling Twitter, but that didn't appear to happen here.

So is a domain name, arguably.

Selling it

I've seen a few of these stories that assert Hiroshima lost his account. That misrepresents things a little. What actually happened is he was blackmailed into changing his username; his Twitter account, including his tweet history, followers and everything besides the single-character username, seems to have remained intact and under his control throughout the ordeal.

I hope Mr.Hiroshima writes a blog post detailing what happened. I'm particularly interested in whether Twitter has implemented any changes in the way they handle high value handles/or all to prevent others who've experienced this with their Twitter account.

He did write a pretty nice article about the process of the handle being stolen[1], but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're talking about.

I, too, would like to hear about the process of actually getting the handle back. Apparently I don't read HN enough(something I thought was impossible) so this story is news to me as of this evening.

[1] https://medium.com/cyber-security/24eb09e026dd

In case anyone wants to see the old discussion we had here on HN (before it was restored 27 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7141532

It's nice that Twitter merged @N_IS_STOLEN with his original @N account.

You can rename your Twitter account to any unused handle. All they had to do was delete or rename the account holding @N, then he renamed his @N_IS_STOLEN account to @N. No merging was required.

Was his prior history as @N already lost at that point?

His history as @N was never lost; you can see all 15000 tweets. He voluntarily (under coercion) renamed @N to @N_IS_STOLEN. All his tweets/history stayed with his account, now named @N_IS_STOLEN. The other guy then registered or renamed an account as @N, as anyone in the world could've done at the time. On Twitter, your handle is just an editable property of your account like your profile picture or your e-mail address.

Makes sense, thanks.

I had no idea that Twitter could do that(or that, apparently, you can just change your Twitter handle) and so it caused me to read his Twitter[1] as though the thief had decided to mock either twitter or @N_IS_STOLEN by tweeting lots of things about trying to get @N back to its rightful owner.

It was actually pretty entertaining.

[1] Really?

It also helps having inside contacts at Google, Twitter or Facebook.

"So I rang my friend at Twitter" tends to be a common theme in these blog posts. I believe this was the case here too.

Now he can sell it for $50,000

Given how it all got out in the media I think he can sell it for twice the price.

Does anyone know: what was the account used for in the mean time?

Pretty much nothing, it sat dormant the whole time that Twitter didn't do anything. It briefly had the name of some random news site in the bio but that's it.

I was under the impression that Twitter temporarily suspended the account while they sorted things out?

Interesting. Just a couple of days ago it had some spammy seeming name, instead of not existing like it had for the previous few weeks.

Thank goodness, now I can sleep easy again.

I don't know this means @N!

You see now this is news!

"jon18231 reclaims his right nickname, jon18230!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com