Woman lost @metaverse Instagram handle days after Facebook name change

Baumann’s experience could have a chilling effect on companies’ and individuals’ willingness to participate on social media for fear of having their online identity arbitrarily seized. “Facebook has essentially unfettered discretion to appropriate people’s Instagram user names,” Rebecca Giblin, director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia at the University of Melbourne, told The New York Times. “There can be good reasons for that—for example, if they’re offensive or impersonating someone in a way that causes confusion.”

“But the @metaverse example highlights the breadth of this power,” Giblin said. Users “essentially have no rights.”

Ars Technica

I sure hope giantpaper won’t become a huge thing. 😬

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