[bccdee]

Squatting is something you do to someone else's property. It implies that there is someone else out there with a more legitimate claim to the @hac handle, which there isn't. It's not as if we're talking about @google or something.

If I stole your house and sold it because I didn't think you were using it properly, that would clearly be illegitimate. I don't see why the rules change when we talk about someone's twitter handle. Nobody needs @hac. X merely wants it and has the power to take it.

[arcfour]

But you don't own it. X does. It's their service, they are free to apportion handles as they see fit. It is nothing like a house where you have an actual ownership claim through the deed.

[hayleox]

It's less like having the house taken away, and more like having your house's street address reassigned to someone else's house. Sure, no one's taken your land. Your deed gives you ownership of parcel #530453080, not of the identifier "123 Vine Street", so nothing you legally own has been taken from you.

But it's your identity. It's the way you've been putting yourself into the world and telling people they can reach you there. It used to be that if someone sent a message to that address, or tried to navigate to that address, they would reach you; but now, they'll be taken to somewhere else, and they perhaps won't even realize what's happened.

And for the ownership issue, sheesh. Yes X, in a literal sense, owns all the usernames. We're talking about whether it's morally right for them to do, not about whether it's illegal. If they had held back these short "valuable" usernames from the beginning, no one would care; it's the act of taking away someone's established identity that is problematic.

[Krasnol]

This "ownership" or rather "identification" is a significant part of the service though.

It wouldn't have been so successful if everybody be called "Anonymous" meaning that they wouldn't be able to make money with it.

They've started to take this away now. Today it's some account with obviously few words. Tomorrow it might be one with wrong words. What you counted as value is nothing. It might be lost tomorrow, so why bother?

[idle_zealot]

Since when do you "own" social media handles? Maybe you should, but that's not reflected in the laws of our countries or the policies of these platforms. They own your presence, your content, and your reach. This is our "solution" to self-publishing. Do you want change? Advocate for it.

Of course, if you advocate for a system with no equivalent to eminent domain you'll quickly discover why the rule exists.

[markstos]

X already owned it.

[bccdee]

Yeah well Google owns my Gmail address, but they'd sure ruin my life if they gave it to someone else. It's not acceptable.