X is selling existing users' handles

Or congratulate yourself on being divested long enough that they don't think you're coming back?

I think people sitting on a handle for 10-20 years without active use is annoying, so I'm fine with them taking them from dormant accounts. I think the selling is sketchy though.

According to the X app:

- the user @hac has existed since 2008

- since then, it has posted 5 tweets totalling 14 words

- it does not follow any accounts

Is this your account, or is this a different account that recently took over the @hac username?

Dormant account reuse should be ok, assuming proper notice is given. Though 30 days is far too strict. A life event could leave someone offline for a month.

Selling I have an issue with, especially the arbitrary selling of “rare” handles. This leaves normal users stuck with junk names and encourages Twitter to be even more of a place for corporate communication above all else.

I think that dormant accounts, where someone has not logged in for, say, 2 years, does not post, does not engage, should be repurposed - with given notice. It's kind of the equivalent of cybersquatting. Also, technically, a platform is within its right to do this. I think the better course of action is to utilize the account. Gmail has made this clear that if you don't log into an account after some time they will repurpose it.

It gets lost in the distracting partisan bickering over Musk/etc, but Twitter has gotten hostile and crappy in many ways like this that have nothing to do with politics. Imagine how much more hostile this action would have seemed in 2010. But now, people put up with it.

Your posts: https://twiiit.com/hac

2020 - "Ping"

2021 - "Pong"

2023 - "Boop."

2023 - "Bleep"

2023 - "will inventing new technology be the solution to our problems?"

Imagine this: you are hit by a car, spend 4 weeks in coma.

Wake up and can't even post one of those cool hospital selfies because Elon really needed that $100K...

It's a drag for sure, but, what were you doing/going to do with it? You almost never posted, and when you did, it didn't contribute to anything.

If I owned a site like X, I'd want some way to reclaim user names in cases like these. I don't doubt X is sneaky or gross about it, but it's a reasonable need too.

Putting the name on a marketplace is weird. I'd simply free it up if it was my platform, and send a note to the original owner explaining what happened. Though I'd send warnings as well.

Something like 'Hey, you haven't [met an engagement metric] for [n period of time]. We're going to shut down your account to make space for other people'. People could game this, sure, but I suspect it would be better than what happened to you.

That is what I like about NOSTR.

Your keys == Your account

It is about time to stop having identities tied to companies.

I see lots of people defending this. What if the owner doesn't post, but reads and uses DM? What if they post the delete their posts when it gets old? Like Michael Burry?

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I was an early adopter on many platforms, and used the same three letter handle on each. I've had the same thing happen to me, even with an account that was being actively used. There's nothing that you can do about it. It's their platform and they can grab your handle if they want it.

It's someone else's (a terrible someone's) platform. Nobody owns their handles.

My 3 letter handle (xrd) is a cryptocurrency. I get all kinds of @ spam where people shilling a cryptocurrency tag me, assuming I'm associated. I really wish I could move the markets and make a quick buck somehow.

I wish Elon would give me a way to sell it before they steal it.

Yeah if only we could really own anything online, unfortunately its basically all rented.

This is what excited me about distributed technologies but fighting capitalism is hard.

Why go through all of the effort of forcing people to signup to read something but also delete accounts after 30 days.

Is the goal to get as many users as possible and also kickoff as many users? Must be two teams competing for different goals.

[dead]

> Losing your account is frustrating. Having it sold to someone else doesn't feel right.

Nit: smells like LLM

This is why even though I've "left" Twitter (I still refuse to call it X) I keep my handle active. It isn't worth anything to anyone but I'd still prefer not to have a bot use it.

I have a 6 letter handle that's my first name.

One day I decided to start being more 'social online'.

Head to X. I was unable to log in with my password. No error. Just redirected me back to the log in screen.

I tried password reset. It asked me my last login date.

I couldn't be sure. Still mentioned a possible date.

I added that this is the same email listed on the X/Twitter account.

You can just send me a password reset mail to this email.

They rejected. Tried that a couple of times, then stopped.

----

Started an account on Threads. Quite fun, less crowded and almost no politics on my feed.

----

I decided to create my Blog and write content there.

Will probably create other accounts to post my blog posts to the socials.

But I am not giving a platform the power to cut me out of my account.

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Videos can be an issue.

Youtube is still the only decent host for Video content.

I think it’s fine. Someone squatted one of my names on GitHub. No activity. Nothing. I emailed them because I wanted it. They gave it to me.

I’m not going to be called improbable_coaster_2740 just because some fool decided it was a good use of his time to register a bunch of usernames.

They sell everything you do on X. The product is you. Always has been, always will be.

It's how it works.

Its all about money in X now, earlier times were good