discuss Let @x be a cautionary tale

[Nick]

This is exactly why businesses shouldn't be run solely on social media handles. A domain name should be the FIRST destination for customers.

 

[jberryhill]

Money trumps law or you wouldn’t ask about it.

Exqueeze me?

What do you think I do for a living? You think food magically falls onto my table?

I got a letter from my HOA that my deck is in bad shape and they are going to fine me if it is not fixed. Now, when I bought my place, I was told that the deck is part of the outside fixtures that the community maintains. Well, gee, they changed that on me somewhere along the line.

So, I've been calling around trying to get someone out here in the middle of the g-d-mmed summer to see if I can get my deck fixed and NOT ONE of them cares about the great injustice done to me. They just want to get paid to fix my deck. I had a guy quote me $3000 a while back, I agreed, and he's been a no-show ever since.

Well, s--t, I guess he found something that pays better than solving my problem.

I have NEVER had an auto mechanic, plumber, or any other service provider do a thing for me because, gosh, I deserved to have it done for me. Every damn one of them wants to make sure they get paid first. It was really unfair that my car broke down when it did, or my pipes burst, or whatever.

Back in 1989, I was sitting out on the side of a snow-covered road in the middle of the night in Indiana with an engine that quit on me. I'd finished by doctoral work and was on my way to my first job clean across the country from Delaware to Utah in a 1972 VW bus that gave out in Indiana. I was alone in the cold in the middle of the night. My first son was born two weeks earlier, my wife was recovering from the C-section, I had maybe $500 to my name, and my first paycheck after years of graduate school was another three weeks away, but I needed to get to that job. Tow truck showed up and the guy wanted CASH before he'd back it up to my front end. Can you imagine? If I didn't have money, he'd have left me out there to freeze.

Hell, I was wheeled into an ER with a heart attack five years ago and the first thing THEY wanted to know how they were going to get paid.

I'm supposed to be up in arms about this guy losing his Twitter handle, and give two s--ts of my time so that HE can get paid?

YOU said you'd "even contribute money to this guys case" - that's how the subject of money came up.

I don't know what you do for a living but how about this. Quit doing whatever it is you do, go around helping other people make money for free, and let me know how that works out for you.

This is the United States of America. If I want to give away services for free - like Twitter does - then I can make any danged rules I want. Any business has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason or no reason at all - provided it is not among a short list of prohibited reasons (i.e. public accommodations based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, advanced age, or disability). If I don't want to do business with you because your name is "Kevin" and I don't like people named "Kevin", then I'm free to do that. Maybe next week, I won't do business with anyone named "Bryan" and I can do that too.

If I don't like your attitude, I can kick you out of my bar, my shop, my club or whatever else I'm running that you're using. If walk into my restaurant and I want to use your table for something else, I'll re-seat you somewhere else or you can leave. It's my restaurant and I'll run it my way.

I mean, can you imagine?

How about if I give everyone a free picnic out on my deck every Saturday, if I ever find someone I can afford who feels like actually showing up to fix it. Now, one of my deck chairs rocks and the rest of them just stay in one position, so that chair is more comfortable than the others. Every weekend you show up and you sit in that chair that I provide you for free. One weekend, I decide, you know what, I'd like to sit in that chair instead. You get all worked up at me and say you're going to sue me because I'm not going to let you use the chair that I provide you, for free, on my damned deck? GTFO of here.

I've done a lot of work for people who couldn't pay, and quite a bit for people who didn't pay. But nobody is entitled to freebies - including their Twitter handles.

Oh, yeah, I forgot, one thing you ARE entitled to get for free in the US is a lawyer if you are criminally charged and can't afford one. You can't get a doctor, a plumber, an optometrist, or a chicken dinner for free, but you can get a lawyer.

Anyone who wants to pitch in to get my deck fixed, please DM.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I hate to be another guy that disagrees but I think it's perfectly OK for him to take any handle that he wants, or any that the platform/company wants.

That "news" article only exists as another way to on Elon Musk, rightly or wrongly.

I'm not even a "private company can do what it wants" kind've guy, but you've no right to a specific handle.

Compensation not owed. Suck it up.

 

[anantj]

No offense, your argument is really stupid, not that you have one. I mean your response is dumb as …

Point is, TOS is BS. It should be outlawed but just one of many things that should be addressed for the progressions of online business.

Oh, the irony of this. Just because you do not agree with the TOS does not make it BS or made illegal.
To quote "No offense, your argument is really stupid, not that you have one. I mean your response is dumb as …"

 

[J.R.]

I agree it sucks to have a @handle seized, but it was expected.
On the flip side, everything related to this X.com rebrand has increased value of dotCom domains this week.

1. X.com has the entire world talking about dotCom.
2. Brands should be rethinking their prioritization of their own dotCom.
3.Brands may start to wean themselves off their dependency to third party platforms.

Some claim owner of @ X was offering the handle for $1M and as much as I hate to see the handle seized, it was in violation of Twitter TOS. They can check your DMs and history anytime they please, private or not.

Sure, people have been selling Twitter handles for years, even employees were taking money under the table during the prior regime in violation.

Elon will make a lot of money next year when they start dropping unused handles and auction them to brands and the public.

If you are a brand, the time to focus on your own domain development is now.

 

[jberryhill]

Well alrighty then. I demand to have my geocities website back. Do you hear me, Yahoo!

After that, I demand that AOL turn Instant Messenger back on!

These things were taken from me with no compensation!

 

[jberryhill]

Well, the last line says it all. The ToS and contracts don't matter to you. But that's not how such matters work in the real world. Come to the real world and see what does matter.

For a lot of people who've never actually had to deal with the law, they think it works the same way religion does. I've never met a religious person who didn't share all the same opinions of their god(s). Religion gives them a powerful force who cares about them, looks after them, is on their side, and agrees with pretty much all their opinions. The evildoers are punished and "justice" - defined as what me and my god think should happen to people we don't like - will eventually prevail.

Law doesn't work that way. If you look at the legal forum here, for example, you see all kinds of interesting ideas about how people who've never been involved in a trademark dispute, or who have been involved in an unrepresentative one, think things work. The fact is that sometimes the results aren't what you want them to be, and that the law does not require the outcome you want. Unlike religion, the way you and your gods think things should be, is not always the way things are.

Now, you take a statement like "I think TOS should be outlawed" - to be honest, I don't even know what that means. The simple truth of offering a service of some kind to the public requires that you state the terms on which you are willing to provide that service, unless you are insane.

If you sell hats for five dollars each, you can set up a stand, have a sign that says "Hats $5", and everyone understands what you are offering, what they get, and how much it costs. In the event of a dispute, there is a well-defined set of laws that govern the sale of goods and, absent other terms imposed, provides clarity over what might happen in the range of well-defined disputes that might come up in the course of people selling and buying hats for five dollars.

Services are a lot trickier. If you have a hose, a bucket and some sponges, you can put up a sign that says "Car Wash $5". There's a whole can of worms there. What should the customer expect for their $5? Are you going to get every single spot off of that car? Are you going to vacuum the carpets? Do you scrub convertible roofs? Are you going to wipe the car dry or just wash it? And so on. Now, there may be, in your particular location and culture, a common understanding of what people might expect out of a five dollar car wash. So, if someone pays five dollars and you just dump a bucket of water on their car, then a jury is likely to conclude that you didn't provide the reasonable sort of service that one would ordinarily expect out of a five dollar car wash.

Online services are much, much more difficult to define "Here's what I'm offering, and here is what you can expect" because the world of user expectations is pretty amazing. What is also pretty amazing is the creativity of people who will either harm your ability to provide the service or otherwise use your service to do "bad things". People on Namepros get all up in arms when they see terms like "we can terminate your service if, in our sole discretion, you are doing something we don't like", and they think terms like that are a crime against humanity. But the real problem is that you can offer an online service and say "you are not allowed to do X, Y or Z" in a well-defined list, and then some evil genius comes up with a way to harm you and others which you simply had not thought of.

There are seven BILLION people on this planet. Some of them have internet access and bad intentions. You can try to guess every dumb or rotten thing they are going to do, or you can say, "You do something dumb or rotten and we're going to cut you off."

But the worst ones are the folks who show up to take what you are offering for FREE, at no charge whatsoever, and then believe you owe them something. Now, look, if you show up to use my service and I make money by showing you advertising, that's the deal. You don't get to tell me how to run my service, and I don't owe you anything. So, absolutely, to protect me from freeloaders who show up and then want to tell me how to run my business, I will absolutely post a set of terms that say, "You get what I'm giving and you like it or leave."

That rubs some people the wrong way but, again, how the law treats those kinds of situations is not how your gods might deal with them.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I’ll agree with your point about getting sucked into it, but Twitter is a great platform for news you’re not going to find on media outlets with specific agendas.

Imagine thinking that about it a year ago haha. How things have changed. Thank God it was taken over from the previous incumbent left leaning nut jobs.

I no longer receive a daily dose in my email inbox about the LGB issues of the day from Twitter or telling me to vote for another party.

 

[HotKey]

Lesson is;

Never get too comfy in someone's favorite armchair. Especially at their house.

 

[silentg]

Zuck deleted @THREADS account from Instagram. Don't know if the previous owner got paid

Doesn't matter which social media you're on, you don't own your user handle.

 

[bmugford]

This is pretty f*cked up.

So it was just seized, after being in use since 2007?

Even if the person was offered compensation, it was not like they had any choice.

If they wanted it, they were just going to take it.

This situation shows the value of domain names.

Brad

 

[J.R.]

These are the cases where a lawsuit has to happen to set precedent.

Yes, their TOS says they can remove a handle but it has to be in good faith. I’d sue and even contribute money to this guys case if he wants to proceed.

@jberryhill what are your thoughts on this one? TOS should be abolished or regulated so that companies can’t take your child if it’s in the fine print!

The TOS forbids selling of handles.
Its been reported the @ X former user was trying to sell the handle for $1M.

If its true, Mr. Hwang would be in violation of TOS.

You don't own your twitter handle, X does apparently.

Still, if you believe in his case contact him and set up a gofundme, I'm sure a lawyer somewhere will be glad to take the money during these recessionary times.

 

[cooljub]

I was X before Elon was LOL...

Let's hope he doesn't buy namepros.

 

[decades80]

Such a socialist move I wouldnt expect from Mr. Musk.

 

[cts]

Very sad. Musk could've at least paid the owner of the account @x, even if he's the owner of Twitter..

 

[.X.]

I was X before Elon was LOL...

 

[J.R.]

Was he actively trying to sell or did he say there were offers? Two different things…

And btw, if he broke rules of tos, the timing of Elon stealing his handle is impeccable.

Based on reports he received many offers for the premium @ X handle.
If he was negotiating behind his privacy wall, its something X would have easy access to review.

I don't believe in trusting a business or brand to any third party platform.

X has been suspending non-active users accounts sitting on premium handles all year.

Just thinking about the top 20,000 English dictionary terms and an average sell price of $10K, would bank $200M from this forthcoming public auction.

No way they'd allow Mr. Hwang to sit on X, while other brands pay them $10K, $100K, or -? for premium handles.

 

[silentg]

There's a pattern now

 

[J.R.]

No offense, your argument is really stupid, not that you have one. I mean your response is dumb as …

Yep, my argument that Mr. Hwang was:

1. not an owner, but a user
2. its reported he violated the TOS
3. ludicrous isn't an argument that will hold up in Court
4. Better to have taken $50K, than leave with $0

Very stupid.

Good luck with your case

 

[poweredbyme]

He owns the site. YouTube did this too for certain usernames, they had users on YouTube.com/entertainment for example (I had that username at one time, I still have /gogg, a four letter username, and although I can’t get into my account, I have content on /wgxi) and other usernames, but for usernames like /movies I believe was taken over and YouTube is posting its own content on that url. Some users, you could still access it by going to YouTube.com/user/username, but they had assigned the /username url to another page. So don’t come here and tell me it can’t be done. Yes it may suck, but these site owners own the urls for their domain names.

url and username are not the same thing.

So many terrible analogies on this thread.

Can you provide an example where a registry commandeered an ACTIVE domain name with a website built on it?

An expired domain name or yet to be registered domain name with premium reg price is ENTIRELY different from a domain name purchased, owned and in use THEN snatched by the registrar or registry while still in use.

Agreed. Opposite arguments and examples are irrelevant, non-sense things. One person comes here to compare old websites which are no longer active. Other person comes here to compare url and username. They think site owners don't need any permission from users as they own everything created by users. If it was the case users would not be responsible for choosing illegal usernames, posting illegal content. Opposite arguments have no basic logic, cause-effect consideration, responsibility-authority balance.

Site owners own everything on their sites only if there is no registered users on the site and there is no user generated content. I do own and run such sites, have disabled comments as well. If you own such sites yes you can do anything with those sites.

 

[Nick]

Well, this thread when into a completely different direction than I had anticipated.

 

[anantj]

Users may try to claim compensation for their losses from service providers.

So if you say resell content from a streaming provider and you get shut down by them, you can try to claim compensation from the service provider? Or you crack a software product and sell it/give it away and you get shut down, can you claim compensation from the software provider?

Based on my finance knowledge, one party is not allowed to make profit knowingly from financial losses of other party

There is no financial loss in the sense of the sale of the handle as it is explicitly forbidden by xitter.
If an influence who makes money influencing and their SM account is suspended for any reason that violates the SM content policy which then results in profit for the SM service, are they liable for the financial losses suffered by the influencer?

Financial losses could include but not limited to time, expenses, loss of communication means (one may claim they use the account for communication. Communication is a right protected by constitutions in many countries), loss of commercial or personal prestige, loss of anything one could claim.

only if such a commercial relationship has been established.

Service provider may disable using an account if user breaches some rules. But taking over an account from user for commercial profit without any payment to the user is a bad faith. It's a bad faith because the purpose, the main drive is to make profit from losses of user. It doesn't matter what is written in TOS or contracts.

Well, the last line says it all. The ToS and contracts don't matter to you. But that's not how such matters work in the real world. Come to the real world and see what does matter.

Those examples are irrelevant. If online providers shut down the service completely, they stop making profit from users.

not quite. You're assuming that the provider is a one-trick pony. Shutting down one area of their business might actually make the org more profitable.

 

[Nick]

when he twited about lebron's kid and it was because of the vaccine.....it losses credibilty and he is using his own platform for his own agend, so what good is that?
There are no checks and balances on twitter anymore.

what happens if the Saudis buys twitter ?

I’m just assuming “he” is Elon.

Not sure where you’re from, but here in the US we have a 1st Amendment protected right to free speech.

So, your issue is with him having an opinion and speaking his mind. And what you’re asking for with “checks and balances” is censorship.

Yeah, stick to Meta platforms buddy.

 

[bmugford]

Elon Musk and company take @x handle from its original user. He got zero dollars for it.​

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-take-x-handle-from-original-user

Twitter, the online town hall for free speech, only where they can just snatch your username because they feel like it.

I have even seen some of the biggest Elon fanboys have a major problem with this.

Brad

 

[Nick]

Sure, people have been selling Twitter handles for years, even employees were taking money under the table during the prior regime in violation.

There’s an entire forum for it, just like namePros but for social media handles.