[tom_mellior]

1. Most Twitter users are not malicious in the way you suggest.

EDIT: 1'. Twitter has rules and procedures against impersonation: https://help.twitter.com/forms/impersonation though I don't know how effective they are if you are not going by a real name but by an Internet handle that you claim is unique.

2. If you have such an important personal brand to protect, your Twitter account should not be in private mode. It should be public, with a public tweet explaining that you are really you but are choosing not to use Twitter, and where to find you instead.

3. If you have such an important personal brand to protect, you presumably have something interesting to say. Twitter is not a bad platform to say it.

All in all, if they take away your squatted Twitter handle, I wouldn't feel bad for you. Certainly not without a lot more information about why your brand is so special. And, well, if you can keep them from doing it by logging in once every six months, it seems that that is something you can shoulder to protect your brand.

[lonelappde]

What is a "real name" if not the name someone goes by? There is no Earth Name Authority

[tom_mellior]

I get what you're saying. But in the context of this discussion, a "real name" would just be whatever Twitter thinks it is. They use the term a lot in their docs (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22real+name%22+site%3Ahelp.twitte...) but I don't know if they ever define it in a way that would make you happy.

[blondin]

yea. i get the deceased people argument. but this name / brand protection thing is total bollocks. if you are not going to use the precious @firstname or @first.lastname maybe someone who has something important to say would? not fair to be name squatting.

[exit]

> 1. Most Twitter users are not malicious in the way you suggest.

the odds of, at a minimum, any given twitter profile being at least wildly off-brand for your namespace colliding persona are still very high. this looks like a legitimate edge case anxiety to me.

[dmix]

Regardless anyone seeing it will quickly realize it’s not you. From the bio/location/topics etc.

This isn’t that big of a deal at all.

Plus all you have to do is login once in a while to keep it active as far as Twitter is concerned. I think 6 months is way too aggressive though.

[dillonmckay]

We have known instances of people’s twitter accounts being hacked, and then fired from their job, after ‘their’ twitter feed posted objectionable content.

[manicdee]

1. is irrelevant because it only takes one malicious person to ruin your life

As for Twitter’s enforcement, it doesn’t shut down Elon Musk bitcoin scammers but it does shut down women complaining about the revolting DMs they get from men.

[Simon_says]

Regarding 3, Twitter is a bad platform to say anything interesting.

[valerij]

2. is a very sound advice, thank you

[ForHackernews]

> If you have such an important personal brand to protect, you presumably have something interesting to say

Sorry, but do you actually believe this? In my experience, nearly everyone who talks about their "personal brand" is some variation of a dull-as-dishwater marketing drone. Be a human, not a brand.

[tom_mellior]

> Sorry, but do you actually believe this?

I believe it to the extent that if the person "cultivates" GitHub and GitLab profiles, presumably they at least have new releases of interesting features to announce, for whatever software they develop there.

[byteshock]

Do you really think people will draw their concussions about you based on a Twitter account they found with the same username?

[dillonmckay]

It depends on the severity of head injury.