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Who Owns Your Social Identity?
wjousts writes "Who actually owns your username on a website? What rights do you have to use it? An IEEE Spectrum podcast reports: 'What happens if Facebook or Twitter or, say, your blog hosting service, makes you take a different user name? Sound impossible? It's happened. Last week, a software researcher named Danah Boyd woke up to find her entire blog had disappeared, and in fact, had been renamed, because her hosting service had given her blog's name to someone else.' And as important as they are, what protects our accounts are the terms of service agreements. If you read them — and who does? — you'd learn, probably to no surprise, that they protect the provider a lot more than they protect you."
whoever has more money gets their way.. it really is that simple. in this case the host will give the name to the one who is most likely to sue and who has the financial backing to do so. I miss the days of first-come-first-serve on the internet.
Or someone like that - someone who will try to make money off it.
...you could lose a gem like this one.
That's very weird practice. The website should preserve your blog name, urls of your articles and so. Otherwise they break all links to the articles and confuse your readers... sadly, the website owner is the one that rules :-/ I hope it never happens to me...
It would make sense that the entity writing the contract would be favored in the contract it had written. Especially when they serve a large number of customers and don't individualize their contracts.
Not just money to sue. But a service whose entire revenue model is dependent on customer generated content creating ad impressions is more likely to hand an identity from someone who produces little revenue to one they think will generate more ad impressions. (So you're safer if your social identity is a big traffic generator, say like a Scoble.)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e01-humancentipad
Why, the same thing that protects you if someone steals your identity in the real world.
Unicorns, vigilante superheroes and the goodwill of corporations like Mastercard - all in equal measure.
for a bulk transaction
Should have bought your own domain name instead. That way it is registered as belonging to you, so long as you don't violate a legitimate trademark (for certain registrars and TLDs). But no, just make a tumblr account because it is easy.
I'm torn on this. As much as I would like the server operators to have control as to what they do with their machines and the data, there is a trust relationship between the users and the service provider, and some rights that users should have are being violated in the name of profits--which is a sign that the model is breaking down in the face of a changing reality and needs to be changed--whenever you see humanity acting as a tool to serve the economy and not the other way around you should reexamine you priorities and goals.
I'd like some sort of first come first serve system, but then you get cyber-squatters who buy up domains with no intention of using them just to extort money from people who would like to put them to good use; the same could be possible with usernames on popular sites but I'm not sure if that's happened before. The question is, how do you stop the squatters while protecting the rights of the little guy who got their first and is legitimately using a username or domain that a big powerful corporation or well connected individual has their eye on?
I was able to register the vanity URL for my real name on Facebook, but if some more famous or powerful person came around with my same name (possible, it's that uncommon of a name) and wanted to take that URL from me I'd want there to be some protection against that. I registered the name first, it's my name so my claim to it is just as valid, money or power shouldn't have a say in who gets it and that seems to be a gap where we need legislation to protect people from the service operators.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
On a similar topic, could Facebook create an account for you "on your behalf" using information acquired from other sources where the fine print said they were allowed to share it?
..is headkase. I've been using it since 2001. Around 2005 I learned there was an Australian band called: Headkase. We have yet to cross paths and I doubt there is even interest, and besides: mine is a lower-case "h" and theirs is upper.. ;)
Shh.
Should have bought your own domain name instead.
Should have read the article instead. I quote: "Last week, a software researcher named Danah Boyd woke up to find her entire blog had disappeared." The link goes to a page on zephoria.org about how the username zephoria on Tumblr got reassigned and then reinstated.
wait, no... In Osama bin Laden's secret lair, your social identity pwns you.
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-disappeared-me.html
Uh, if keeping your online identity is that important to you, then why not just buy your own domain?
What, did you think that Facebook or Twitter were obligated to keep your username intact? If you were on my system, would I be obligated to keep your username and account intact (politeness aside)?
Palm trees and 8
She has her own domain, and she could run her own microblogging system on her own domain if she wanted to.
But I haven't seen evidence of a follow operation across multiple microblog providers. Can a user of Twitter follow users of Tumblr and Identi?
for anyone who writes their name with all lowercase letters.
Please see my reply to AC here.
But what I really want to know: does she shave her pussy?
manage your own services
But how does one link one's own services to the services that people actually use? See my other comment.
If it's free, why complaining? Why should a 3rd party giving you a service FOR FREE should behave the way user expect? Shouldn't we expect the free provider to do what it likes, on his own interest? All this doesn't make sense. And that's exactly the same issue with Facebook, Gmail, you name it... And it's not as if buying a domain name plus a small shared hosting was expensive, it's really cheap to do so. I'd say to anyone complaining: you got what you paid for.
There should be a law against this. Something to enforce your right to control copies of your creative work, and maybe something to make sure nobody uses your unique names, logos, and marks to steal your business trade. We could call it a "copyright and trademark law".
I realize that supporting copyright and trademark law is heresy on Slashdot, but this is *exactly* the sort of situation it was designed to help with. The service provider has the right to shut you down if they want, but if you have trademarked "zephoria" -- a unique identifying phrase which is eminently trademarkable -- they can't re-purpose it without your express permission.
Ok so Blizzard stole my name, what recourse do I have?
http://www.wowhead.com/quest=4122/grark-lorkrub
I clearly have had the name since 1988, even have published short story about the character.
Funny how they never returned my emails....
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
never mind
With RSS?
I don't follow. Twitter doesn't support RSS or Atom. So how do you recommend that people who want to follow both RSS users and Twitter users combine RSS or Atom feeds with Twitter feeds?
Or perhaps by sending people a link
What kind of "send"? Did you mean e-mail? As I understand it, most home ISPs throttle outgoing e-mail so as to frustrate spammers.
With all the shit talking people do here on RMS, he's right on a lot of fundamental things. This includes his campaign against cloud services.
The only reason you would have your host rename your blog or account with no regard to you is because you are not your own host. People enter into these disgusting one sided contracts multiple times per day and then they're surprised when the party holding all the cards actually plays them. It's the definition of stupidity.
Willingly signing your rights away and then run around crying when you get shafted. Then you run crying to the politicians because now you need them to fix it, you don't care what they do but something must be done about it. And of course they seize the moment to push through whatever power grabbing measures that only go one way, ratcheting away everyone else's freedoms too with all sorts of unintended consequences.
Same reason I'll never get a damn kindle.
Liberty.
It's society, right? I mean your social identify is part of a collective society, right?
With no followers, what is the point of writing?
n/c
Don't trust anything online. Have we not learned this lesson many times now? Several people have mentioned that "he who has the most money wins." Yeppers. This story is absolute crap (as in the way the company trounced on this lady), but if you really want to be free you have to have to go really independent of anyone above you that can cut you off. Which, really, is nigh impossible unless your super rich so you can have your own ISP, servers, line, and a team of lawyers. No one will ever try to claim my social identity, as all my projects have ridiculous names (on purpose), so I'm not worried. If someone was dumb enough or greedy enough (refer back to dumb as I make no money on this stuff) to try and take over, I'd let them. Then I'd take my stuff and set up a parody site mocking my former site.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I wrote about a similar problem a few days ago. Facebook and Twitter are the only contact I have with some people, yet they are private businesses with no obligation to provide a service, and they can and do close accounts on a whim.
Here's my blog post about it. The fragility of social networks
A latent existence
If you read the real original post instead of the blog which only mentions this one you'll notice that it affected Tumblr and that the lady in question wasn't very active there.
If you hang on to a free service like Tumblr and are hardly active I don't think it to be that strange that they'll prefer someone more active using your alias.
This is also mentioned in their Terms of service and in a rather fair way IMO: right at the top under the first header "1. Access to services":
"Tumblr may change, suspend or discontinue the Services at any time, including the availability of any feature, database, or Content. Tumblr may also impose limits on certain features and services or restrict Subscriberâ(TM)s access to parts or all of the Services without notice or liability. Tumblr reserves the right, at its discretion, to modify these Terms of Service at any time by posting revised Terms of Service on the Site and by providing notice via e-mail, where possible, or on the Site. Subscriber shall be responsible for reviewing and becoming familiar with any such modifications."
Question should be obvious: If you're that scared of your identify why bother signing up for a service which makes it very obvious that your presence isn't fully yours ? Also note how easy this is to find: find Tumblr using Google and on the main page simply click "Terms of Services" at the bottom. This text will be right there, nearly at the top.
Want some quality with the service you're using? Consider getting a paid account instead, that is bound to remain the same no matter what!
To 'trust' your information to someone else is simply foolishness.
Sure, you might have legal recourse because, well, there's a lawyer under every rock and you can sue anyone for anything. Ultimately, trusting anyone without making your own arrangements/backup for data that's important to you is just silly.
-Styopa
Google owns our socal indenity, so does fasebook. I guess its a wrothwile trade off for getting neet stuff on-line.
I've run into an increasing amount of sites that won't let you "delete" or "turn off" your account. At best you can hide it. The worst I've come across is one where you have to pay them for deletion. But 10 years later, I really don't care to be associated with that car forum/demographic anymore.
Of course, we all agree to this as it is buried in the "Terms Of Use"
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
In my case, I work with a site that pays for a dedicated server that I get space on for my personal stuff, but even if I didn't, a small fee can get you hosting space on a shared host and a domain name and from there you can setup a lot of your own services. I never understood why someone would give someone else control of their blog if they want to be serious about it, particularly with all the integration you can do. I've got blog, e-mail, website, openID, FTP, IRC, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak (2 and 3) and more (not to mention a public system I can remote desktop in to anytime I need) all of which I am fully in control of and in total I only pay $25 a month to help with the hosting bill and about $30 a year for a few domains. Completely worth it to avoid crap like this.
AJ Henderson
Lumpy(tm) is a registered trademark of LumpyCo a subsidary of the Lumpy Foundation.
Honestly, if you pull the same shenanigans that corporations do you can control them.
Trademark your persona along with copyrighting it. then you have a legal standing to FORCE companies like facebook, blogger.com, etc.. to do what you tell them to.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
that's why I host my own websites on my own server, and don't use craptastic milquetoast like wordpress or blogger or fb, etc.
That's your own fault then. Facebook is IMO only useful for getting in touch with people I've lost touch with, but once that happens, we exchange phone numbers and email addresses and there is nothing fragile about the resulting network. Since I don't see the point of Twitter, can't comment on that one.
why doe my commets dissapear? I posted some good pionts earlier and they are not here, sounds like slahsdot is doing sensorship, why it dont make sence.
ID Theft? Even if a social network or other user steals it, or has legal access to it? Can EULA violate the US Constituion and International laws? If so can the EULA be struck down?
In these days of changing laws, and changing terms of service that even some of the best lawyers cannot figure out, one cannot always keep their identity safe or prevent it from being stolen.
Anyone can search for someone on the Internet by name, email address, city, state, zip code, or search public databases. Then they copy the profile picture, create a new profile, pretend to be that person and be an Internet squatter to make a fake profile, web site, and so on of that person. If you keep a watch on Wiki pages you will see the "X is gay" and so on remarks people make and even worse than that. As I edited many Wiki sites I would help out the Wiki by reverting the obvious libel and insults made about people not notable so that these things cannot be seen and ruin the article and person it was written about. If fact back in the BBS days of Fidonet and others, we had to use real names and filter out the profanity and libel about others before it was sent out to the network.
Today freedom of speech trumps libel laws, as many write untrue statements or create fake profiles on others. I had investigated this for the past decade or two, trying to learn what motivates a person to do such things. Even back in the BBS days people had their identity stolen as a simple OS control characters are used as file names or in a game or chained program to the main BBS, making the BBS drop to a command prompt or do things. Lucky for me I had friends write the mods for the BBSes I was on as a COSYSOP or SYSOP but still some got through.
Facebook, Twitter, words (or number of characters typed) are too short and people easily make mistakes without knowing that they did until later. Better off not saying anything at all, I tend to think.