I've been on Twitter since 2007 as @hac.
In recent years I didn't sign in frequently, then last week I saw my handle show up on the new X Handles marketplace.
It seems the account now belongs to X, and because I had a "rare handle" I can't even buy it back. From what I c...
In recent years I didn't sign in frequently, then last week I saw my handle show up on the new X Handles marketplace.
It seems the account now belongs to X, and because I had a "rare handle" I can't even buy it back. From what I can tell, they will wait for some time and then auction the handle for around $100k.
Losing your account is frustrating. Having it sold to someone else doesn't feel right.
Of course, there is no warning when it happens. All you can do to prevent it is sign in every 30 days and read all changes to the TOS.
Comments
By al_borland 2026-03-1120:543 reply Dormant account reuse should be ok, assuming proper notice is given. Though 30 days is far too strict. A life event could leave someone offline for a month.
Selling I have an issue with, especially the arbitrary selling of “rare” handles. This leaves normal users stuck with junk names and encourages Twitter to be even more of a place for corporate communication above all else.
I'd imagine the 30 days just the TOS, if they sell a username that has been active (posting, replying) in the past 6 months then it'd be a big deal for sure. It's not clear when OP last used his account but I'd imagine the people doing auctions look to see if they post or interact at all, not just login once in a while. X should probably clarify this.
By consumer451 2026-03-1121:262 reply > if they sell a username that has been active (posting, replying) in the past 6 months then it'd be a big deal for sure.
What about this scenario:
If you register a domain name, a bot registers a related handle/name/brand pretty quick if you do not.
So, you register a twitter handle to preserve your brand identity right after registering a new domain.
You don't check it for 6 months.
Is it OK for Twitter to sell that handle?
If you don't pay for a domain name you could lose it too.
If I signed up for a free social media account hosted by another company and neither logged in or posted on it for a year then it got autodeleted for inactivity, I wouldn't really feel I had a particularly strong claim to it.
By persumentor 2026-03-1213:49 One thing that makes handle markets uncomfortable is that social media identifiers sit in a strange space between identity and platform resource.
Domain names are usually treated as leased assets with a clear renewal cycle. Social media handles, on the other hand, often feel more like identity markers, especially when someone has used them for years.
When platforms reclaim dormant handles and then auction them, the model shifts from “resource management” to “asset monetization”. That changes user expectations quite a bit.
If a platform wants to recycle dormant identifiers, a transparent policy with predictable timelines and clear notices would probably feel more legitimate than quietly moving them into a marketplace.
If your domain is used as a brand identity, you should register it as a trademark and sue anyone who uses your brand identity as a twitter handle.
By consumer451 2026-03-1122:34 I'm thinking more like solo founder territory here. And apparently, it can be as short as 30 days?
By addandsubtract 2026-03-1122:061 reply Heroku just gave me a 30 day warning for being inactive and threatened to delete all my data if I don't log in within the next 30 days.
By collingreen 2026-03-125:561 reply Will they sell your projects to a account holder after that?
You're gonna be really unhappy with how domain name registrars work, then.
By al_borland 2026-03-1122:29 I am very unhappy with domain name registrars for the same reasons. This is where most of my options on the topic were born.
Your posts: https://twiiit.com/hac
2020 - "Ping"
2021 - "Pong"
2023 - "Boop."
2023 - "Bleep"
2023 - "will inventing new technology be the solution to our problems?"
By conception 2026-03-1121:431 reply People can use Twitter actively and not post. That’s not really a reason to take someone’s handle away.
By fwn 2026-03-1122:07 The obvious reason is, of course, money.
Since rare handles can generate high prices and are returned to auction once the buyer fails to meet their obligations, Twitter has a strong incentive to increase the number of handles in its auction pool.
The relevant product manager has probably ranked existing attractive handles according to their expected mobilisation/outrage potential and started confiscating handles from the bottom of that list.
This is probably also why you won't be notified about their auction of your handle, even though you'll receive email alerts for irrelevant stuff all the time. The process looks designed to be stealthy.
Money really is the trivial Occam's razor explanation here.
I can't believe X would take back the account of such an active and valued member of the community who is clearly not squatting on the name or anything.
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.
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.
By hayleox 2026-03-125:52 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.
By Krasnol 2026-03-1121:40 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?
By oskarw85 2026-03-124:17 God, how I hate all those "well ackchyually" idiots who think TOS are the only contract there ever was ignoring social norms that were there for literally decades.
By applfanboysbgon 2026-03-1121:413 reply [flagged]
By 627467 2026-03-122:17 > can we please not play stupid.
Hmmm who is playing stupid?
Internet monolithic social services are run by private companies with TOS that no one reads and change, services that barely anyone pays for (except through their data).
We should definitely normalize this so that people see what the internet actually is for the vast majority of people.
By nomel 2026-03-1122:36 > but there's something of a grand social contract that keeps the concept of accounts on websites working
no there's not. this is complete and utter fiction. the things that keep it working are ads and normal users putting their eye in front of them, and the tos to make any silly claims of "social contracts" legally and absolutely moot.
By sharifhsn 2026-03-123:02 It’s playing stupid to pretend that the theft of a hardly used handle has anything to do with an actual user account. I’m sure if @hac had a presence online, their handle wouldn’t have been sold from under them.
By idle_zealot 2026-03-1121:32 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.
By bccdee 2026-03-140:50 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.
By darth_avocado 2026-03-1122:04 People have accounts and never post. Since X makes it mandatory to be signed in to read anything on the site meaningfully, there would be millions of such accounts with limited post history. And that doesn’t even include the fact that people sometimes go away from a platform for months for a variety of reasons.
By weare138 2026-03-121:56 [flagged]
By lm28469 2026-03-1121:48 This is unironically deeper than 90% of what's expressed on this platform
By pupppet 2026-03-1122:02 So if you sign-up just to be able to read Twitter's gate-kept content you should assume they can pull the rug out from under you?
By jauco 2026-03-1121:11 I think that account is a work of art and should have been kept as digital heritage.
I mean: ping and then a year later pong? Priceless.
By rahimnathwani 2026-03-1120:50 According to the X app:
- the user @hac has existed since 2008
- since then, it has posted 5 tweets totalling 14 words
- it does not follow any accounts
Is this your account, or is this a different account that recently took over the @hac username?
