[cryptoz]

Instagram stole @sussexroyal from a real user, and gave it to some entitled "royals" who used the account for like a year before dropping it. So annoying how your handle isn't your handle, it's the company's, and they will steal your handle at a whim.

I never even figured out why the "Royals" wanted specifically @sussexroyal or whatever it was so badly. The Royals can't even be like the rest of us and pick a handle that is available, they have to be like "well no we deserve this one even though someone has it already"

[AdamJacobMuller]

> So annoying how your handle isn't your handle, it's the companies, and they will steal your handle at a whim.

You don't own digital assets in any sense (excepting crypto, which is a whole other set of problems), at best you have a contract with some rights of use.

[adventured]

> You don't own digital assets in any sense

One of the largest classes of digital assets are personal files on individual phones and other personal computers. So yes, sometimes you do very clearly own digital assets (and no, a link about one time where some government broke the law and stole someone's files doesn't refute that).

Your personal photos on your PC are digital, they're a digital asset, and you do own them. No contract necessary. The same is true for all sorts of other types of personal digital files you might hold as personal property, from spreadsheets to backup email records to pdf files of contracts and on it goes.

[AdamJacobMuller]

> on individual phones

But most people don't even own that!

Apple can unilaterally and arbitrarily decide at any time to lock your phone remotely and 100% disable your access to iCloud.

You're correct about stuff which is more bare metal than a phone like a hard drive with data on it, but, I would argue that that only encompasses a tiny if not non-existent amount of data for an average (not HN) user these days.

[indigochill]

You don't own crypto, either - the consensus does. If the consensus is that you don't have the crypto (such as if they fork after you successfully stole millions of dollars worth of crypto on the main chain), you don't.

[AdamJacobMuller]

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you did own crypto. I was singling it out largely because the normal dispute resolution process, the courts and legal system, are irrelevant to crypto. You can't sue bitcoin to make the blockchain reverse a fraudulent transaction the same way you can (ostensibly) sue a bank.