[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

Why does the absence of posts indicate inactivity? He said in the article he uses it to like posts, but not create content. That doesn't sound inactive to me.

In fact, Instagram basically encourages this type of account use. Any time you try to browse the site they try to get you to sign-up, even if you have zero intention of making your own posts.

It sounds like the guy would have given the account name over either way, so why couldn't they have simply contacted him first and asked?

[zamadatix]

"would you give up your account name" "No" "We have changed your account name"

Is 10x worse than "we have changed your account name". If you're going to do something and there aren't any alternatives don't act like it's a question unless an extremely high ratio will say yes.

[littlestymaar]

What about "would you give up your account name" "No" "Ok fine, I'll have to find a new name. Have a nice day sir.".

This story pretty much sounds like “All animals are equals but some are more equals than others”[1] to me.

[1]Georges Orwell Animal Farm (his best book IMO)

[jdsully]

Isn't the whole premise of royalty that we are explicitly not equal?

[littlestymaar]

But as far as I know, US citizens[1] don't recognize sovereignty of the British Crown since 1776… In that particular days, they even ratified a text saying “that all men are created equal”.

[1] (and Instagram is owned byt a majority of American citizens)

[lucozade]

> US citizens[1] don't recognize sovereignty of the British Crown

While that is clearly true, a surprising number of US citizens do, in my experience, recognize the celebrity of British royals.

The number of times I've been asked about Prince William's children is, quite frankly, astonishing. To such an extent that I even Googled their names so I did't appear too much like I couldn't give a crap.

> they even ratified a text saying “that all men are created equal”.

Right, but those Founding Fathers were pretty good at words. They were very careful to not say that everyone is equal. Largely because most of them didn't actually believe that. What they were most concerned about was someone not lording it over them. They were entirely relaxed about lording it over others, for example.

[jdsully]

The story is about a UK royal taking the handle of another UK citizen. Instagram must recognize the sovereignty of the UK crown while doing business in the UK.

[sbr464]

Great reference. Perfectly fitting.

[will_brown]

>"would you give up your account name"

Sure will you give up all my data, metadata and shadow profile? Oh and don’t forget to forward me all funds you have made selling my data and or serving me Ads to date.

I’d really like ICANN to take away the Instagram domain and reassign it to some royals at their request while we are at it.

[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

I'm not talking about proposing a false question under the pretense that you're going to take it regardless of the answer.

Your assumption that Instagram can grab anything they want just shows the normalcy of this type of behavior. Maybe we, as the consumers of these products, should step up and say that is not cool? If you do it to that person, what is to stop you from doing it to another in the future, to me?

I think it should also be a signal to any one that creates a brand, a business, on Instagram. Instagram can instantly snatch your livelihood without even contacting you.

I'm proposing people being human and remembering that just because a URL path might be a technical creation, there is still a human being behind that and we should treat people as we want to be treated.