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Her Instagram Handle Was 'Metaverse.' Last Month, It Vanished. (nytimes.com) 249

Five days after Facebook changed its name to Meta, an Australian artist found herself blocked, with seemingly no recourse, from an account documenting nearly a decade of her life and work. From a report: In October, Thea-Mai Baumann, an Australian artist and technologist, found herself sitting on prime internet real estate. In 2012, she had started an Instagram account with the handle @metaverse, a name she used in her creative work. On the account, she documented her life in Brisbane, where she studied fine art, and her travels to Shanghai, where she built an augmented reality company called Metaverse Makeovers. She had fewer than 1,000 followers when Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, announced on Oct. 28 that it was changing its name. Henceforth, Facebook would be known as Meta, a reflection of its focus on the metaverse, a virtual world it sees as the future of the internet. In the days before, as word leaked out, Ms. Baumann began receiving messages from strangers offering to buy her Instagram handle. "You are now a millionaire," one person wrote on her account. Another warned: "fb isn't gonna buy it, they're gonna take it." On Nov. 2, exactly that happened.

Early that morning, when she tried to log in to Instagram, she found that the account had been disabled. A message on the screen read: "Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else." Whom, she wondered, was she now supposedly impersonating after nine years? She tried to verify her identity with Instagram, but weeks passed with no response, she said. She talked to an intellectual property lawyer but could afford only a review of Instagram's terms of service. "This account is a decade of my life and work. I didn't want my contribution to the metaverse to be wiped from the internet," she said. "That happens to women in tech, to women of color in tech, all the time," added Ms. Baumann, who has Vietnamese heritage.

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Her Instagram Handle Was 'Metaverse.' Last Month, It Vanished.

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  • play the race card (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:27PM (#62079989)

    play the race card

    • by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:45PM (#62080063)

      Yeah, this has nothing to do with her gender and amount of pigment in her skin, and everything to do with Facebook going "Your stuff is now our stuff because we want it more."

      • I have to agree. I'm Mexican and all for people playing the race card if it's warranted, but it's premature to say that this has anything to do with that. One would have to show that Facebook would be more reluctant to steal the account name of a white male. At this point, I doubt Facebook respects any of its users, whatever their background. One could retort that such experiences of being thrown under the bus are common among minorities, and that is true, but such a generalization is not terribly helpful h
        • Was your father's family home in Mexico, or the US? It doesn't make it any better that it got bulldozed, but if in Mexico then it could hardly be attributed to his being a minority (though things like lower economic status could clearly still be at play).

          It's true that it's often the poor neighborhoods in the US that get freeways cut through them, but at the same time eminent domain is hardly an issue that only affects poor/minority areas. As an example, we could debate the merits of the border wall (but

      • Lie down with Zuck,
        Get up with fleas.

      • by crobarcro ( 6247454 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @05:45AM (#62082193)
        It was always their stuff, they just didn't mention it until now
    • by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:28PM (#62080237) Journal

      play the race card

      You're being modded down, but you're correct: She IS playing the race card, and her being a woman or Vietnamese has nothing to do with what's going on. Facebook would have stolen her account if she were white, black, or purple and polka-dotted. She had something that their company wanted, and they took it because they could get away with taking it. Doesn't matter what's between her legs or what pigment her skin is. She had. They wanted. They took. There's really not anymore to it than that. They would have stolen it from a white man of similar income and status just as quickly.

      Her stupidly playing the race card is going to be a distraction from the very real wrong that was done to her, and hinder her in her fight to set things right.

      • Her account has already been restored. As well-fitting as the "rich person takes from poor person" narrative seems to be, it is much more likely that this was the fault of an automated enforcement system. All the big players are using them now, and further erect very solid barriers between the end-users who are impacted by failures of enforcement and the staff who could fix the error. It saves them a lot of money this way. Google is absolutely notorious for this, which is why I have de-googled my life.

        I

      • by Muros ( 1167213 )

        You're being modded down, but you're correct: She IS playing the race card, and her being a woman or Vietnamese has nothing to do with what's going on

        Really? Does Instagram regularly suspend people's accounts and refuse to engage with them in any way when people contest it, for periods in excess of a month? Is being contacted by the New York Times a prerequisite for an audience with the Grand Arbiters of All Things in the Instagram world? I wouldn't know, I don't have an account there and probably never will, but is that is what it takes to get a response from a fucking SOCIAL media company?

  • Ars? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:28PM (#62079991)

    Weird that you went with the NY Times when this was posted on Ars Technica yesterday.
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]

  • by splutty ( 43475 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:32PM (#62080005)

    And Instagram had no (none) (really) idea what happened. It was allll a mistake, and they really didn't know why this happened. No clue at all.

    • by MattMann ( 102516 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:41PM (#62080045)

      she got her handle back, but where do I get my reputation back? she blamed it on the racism and sexism of white men, and that's all most people will remember

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        She's not wrong.

        They saw someone powerless with something that they wanted and so they figured they just take it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Do you actually believe that the dictatXs-that-be at InstaBookAWhatsaMetaGram that be really knew or cared about her gender, color, pronouns, wokeness, victimness, income, or anything else? They saw, they took, and it would have been exactly the same if the account holder had been a RSWCMGOA (rich straight white Christian male gun-owning American), the most hated, triggering combination for the woke liberal crowd.

          • by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            Except, if the target is capable of putting up a legal battle they're less likely to go forward with it. I'm not making a case for this being about race or the like, just arguing against the point that it would have been the same regardless of the account holder if it stood in FB's way. If it had been Bill Gates, or the like, they might have hesitated first instead of just blindly going forward.
        • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:04PM (#62080135) Homepage Journal

          The problem is that she's being over-specific. Does anyone here really think Facebook would have hesitated for even a nanosecond if she was a strait white dude from Alabama?

          Or conversely that Facebook wouldn't have seriously hesitated if she had a yacht for every season?

          The 99% (or perhaps even the 99.9%) are disadvantaged enough without so willingly falling for divide and conquer tactics.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

          She's not wrong.

          They saw someone powerless with something that they wanted and so they figured they just take it.

          So it is not sexist and racist to call white men sexist and racist? Explain how specific statements based on skin color and brandishing a penis are what makes a person racist and sexist.

          In wokeworld, only white men can be racist, and you can hate them because of their skin color and penis.

          Now defend your belief. I say that the statement is extremely racist and as prejudiced as it is possible to be.

          • by Muros ( 1167213 )

            So it is not sexist and racist to call white men sexist and racist? Explain how specific statements based on skin color and brandishing a penis are what makes a person racist and sexist

            Friendly tip, from someone who is also male and white. Do not brandish it. Not even just the tip.

            • So it is not sexist and racist to call white men sexist and racist? Explain how specific statements based on skin color and brandishing a penis are what makes a person racist and sexist

              Friendly tip, from someone who is also male and white. Do not brandish it. Not even just the tip.

              8^0

        • That had zero, fuck-all to do with race and color. It could have been the whitest, straightest, most middle-aged nothing of a man and it still would have happened if they had the handle metaverse. It's seriously dumb to have tied this story to race/gender/orientation/anything other than Facebook owned property = shit sandwich for the users.

    • I'm pretty sure they did not. =)
  • They stole her work. That's theft.

    • by uncqual ( 836337 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:06PM (#62080141)

      No, Meta didn't steal her work.

      • * Meta wasn't promoting her work as their work.
      • * Meta didn't gain any additional revenue from disabling her account.
      • * Meta didn't prevent her from continuing to sell/promote her work anywhere else - or even on Instagram (she could create a new account for that purpose).

      It's more like she had a gratis lease on a building and either party could cancel the lease with no notice and Meta decided to exercise their cancellation right.

      • And the moral of the story is, dont put any work whatsoever to making the Internet rich with content, as someone can always invoke their cancellation right.

        Like if the roads were privately owned, and the owner decided to rebrand as *I Be Manly* and shut down the roads to a business owning the acronym of the name IBM who existed for years prior. The moral of the story is, if the roads are private dont build a business there. Dont build a structure on a platform that doesnt belong to you.

        • And the moral of the story is, dont put any work whatsoever to making the Internet rich with content, as someone can always invoke their cancellation right.

          The moral is don't have the only copy of your work on the internet. Always have local backups. If one site is canceled, just re-upload somewhere else.

    • I wonder if she has "Metaverse" as a username on Slashdot on some other non-Meta site. If so, she could sue the name out of them in trademark court.

    • They stole her work. That's theft.

      On the internet?

    • The work she posted on someone else's platform for a decade that she paid $0 for?

      The work that is so important that she had made zero backups of while posting it on a free site that she has no agreement with regarding protecting and retaining her life's work?

  • by Striek ( 1811980 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:35PM (#62080017)

    The headline is pure clickbait.

    From TFA:

    On Dec. 2, a month after Ms. Baumann first appealed to Instagram to restore her account, The New York Times contacted Meta to ask why it had been shut down. An Instagram spokesman said that the account had been “incorrectly removed for impersonation” and would be restored. “We’re sorry this error occurred,” he wrote.

    Two days later, the account was back online.

    They restored her account. Possibly because the New York Times was on it and they didn't want the negative press, but that's not my point.

    Stop posting these bullshit headline clearly designed to drive anger and rage clicks. It's despicable.

    • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:07PM (#62080147) Homepage Journal

      Possibly because the New York Times was on it and they didn't want the negative press...

      Ya think? That kind of *IS* the point. A sneak thief who says they're sorry (they got caught) when the lights go on is still a dirty thief. The rage is deserved.

    • Amongst the reasons that do give legitimate and real justification for anger and rage; being falsly accused of wrongdoing is right up there near the top of the list. I'm not normally one to cite scripture; but that one has been considered so heinous for so long there's a commandment on the topic. I'd even say that merely witnessing false accusations should rightly anger and enrage someone; because just because you're not the target now, the false accuser may decide to get his jollies by inventing some fak

    • They restored her account. Possibly because the New York Times was on it and they didn't want the negative press, but that's not my point.

      Stop posting these bullshit headline clearly designed to drive anger and rage clicks. It's despicable.

      Sounds like rage clicks might have solved the problem on this one. Kind of sad the way everyday people are legally steamrolled over whenever a large corporation or billionaire has some new whim and this provides the best chance at some accountability. Well, at least until it’s mildly inconvenient anyway.

    • Dear Dipshit,
      Please note that the word "was" is past-tense. Now get the fuck off my lawn.

  • by sureshot007 ( 1406703 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:35PM (#62080019)
    Someone lost access to free service.
    • Not only a free service, but a free service that she has no agreement with regarding archiving, protecting, and retaining her life's work.

  • by Loki_1929 ( 550940 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:40PM (#62080041) Journal

    "I didn't want my contribution to the metaverse to be wiped from the internet," she said. "That happens to women in tech, to women of color in tech, all the time," added Ms. Baumann, who has Vietnamese heritage."

    Oh give me a fucking break, lady. Beyond the pretentious, self-centered, self-important tone of this bullshit, you had to hang on the coat tails of the civil rights and the women's rights movements too, as if you're Coretta Scott fucking King because some toolbag at Facebook fucked up?

    Should Facebook fix the account issue? Yes.
    Did they fix it? Yes.
    Is this moron Georgia O'Keeffe? No.
    Is she the victim of a hate crime? No.

    But she is very typical of heavy social media users in thinking they're God's gift to the humanities. Get down off your high horse and get back to polishing your mountain of participation trophies.

    • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:55PM (#62080103)

      pretentious, self-centered, self-important tone of this bullshit

      Well, she is an artist...

    • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @03:03PM (#62080127)

      She may be a pretentious git. But that doesn't justify closing her account and falsely accusing her of fraud. The false accusation is especially heinous. Someone, perhaps more than one someone, at instagram deserves to burn for that.

      • Nobody accused her of anything. Somebody hit a wrong button and somebody else undid it.

        Quit blowing simple shit out of proportion. She's not a hero overcoming the Goliath of tech in an epic struggle gaining victories for women and minorities; she's a fucking user whose account was mistakenly closed temporarily and is now fine.

        Someone deserves to burn for that? You want to light a human being on fire because a free Internet service account was temporarily unavailable? You want to set someone on fire? What th

        • Nobody accused her of anything. Somebody hit a wrong button and somebody else undid it.

          The service accused her of "pretending to be someone else". It's pretty fucking naive to think that facegram didn't go after @metaverse on purpose. You think someone just did that shit accidently? That there is some stupid shit.

    • "I didn't want my contribution to the metaverse to be wiped from the internet," she said. "That happens to women in tech, to women of color in tech, all the time," added Ms. Baumann, who has Vietnamese heritage."

      Oh give me a fucking break, lady. Beyond the pretentious, self-centered, self-important tone of this bullshit, you had to hang on the coat tails of the civil rights and the women's rights movements too, as if you're Coretta Scott fucking King because some toolbag at Facebook fucked up?

      Should Facebook fix the account issue? Yes.
      Did they fix it? Yes.
      Is this moron Georgia O'Keeffe? No.
      Is she the victim of a hate crime? No.

      But she is very typical of heavy social media users in thinking they're God's gift to the humanities. Get down off your high horse and get back to polishing your mountain of participation trophies.

      Hell hath no fury like that of a white guy who's worried that someone is playing the race card.

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Hell hath no fury like that of a white guy who's worried that someone is playing the race card.

        I'm a white guy, and 99.9% of the time (go read my comment history if you don't believe me) I'm on the "other" side of this one. But this is ridiculous. The assertion that this was done to her because she's a minority female, or that this wouldn't have happened to her if she was an average white male, is laughable. When all you have is a handful of race cards, and play them any time something doesn't go your way, eventually you're gonna run out of them.

        • Hell hath no fury like that of a white guy who's worried that someone is playing the race card.

          I'm a white guy, and 99.9% of the time (go read my comment history if you don't believe me) I'm on the "other" side of this one. But this is ridiculous. The assertion that this was done to her because she's a minority female, or that this wouldn't have happened to her if she was an average white male, is laughable. When all you have is a handful of race cards, and play them any time something doesn't go your way, eventually you're gonna run out of them.

          I've made the comment elsewhere [slashdot.org] but I absolutely think it's possible (even likely).

          Basically the person needed to decide if she was important enough to keep the account.

          This wasn't a situation where there's a clear standard, this was someone making a judgment call in a unique situation which makes it more likely that unconscious bias comes into play because there's no existing standard to compare your actions against.

          Note, I don't think this was really a decision by Meta or Instagram or whatever, it was jus

    • by dohzer ( 867770 )

      That's so meta of her.

  • by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

    Like is it was a white man they wouldn't have done it. That's the disgusting problem with this world.

    Normal Person: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "Well I knew it would happen from being late all the time".
    Feminist: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "They fired me because I'm an independent women"
    Racial Activist: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "They fired me because I'm not white."

    We c

    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      Total nonsense.

    • by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @02:52PM (#62080079) Homepage

      I know some white right wingers who cried that they got fired because everybody in the company was a leftist.

      Crying and blaming is the only thing that seems to be universal nowadays, crossing race, gender, political side, and everything else.

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Normal Person: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "Well I knew it would happen from being late all the time".

      Well, actually, if comparing more closely, that first bullet point would be "They fired me because I'm a white man and they are just pandering". One thing all races and genders and such have in common is for some of them to manage to find unfair persecution in otherwise mundane bad things in their life.

      Some of them have justified concerns about such persecution, others like the account holder in question do not, at least in this specific instance.

      However, Instagram certainly has a bias issue: they are biase

      • by vux984 ( 928602 )

        Well, actually, if comparing more closely, that first bullet point would be "They fired me because I'm a white man and they are just pandering". One thing all races and genders and such have in common is for some of them to manage to find unfair persecution in otherwise mundane bad things in their life

        No, they said NORMAL PERSON. Whether that person is male, female, white, brown, gay, Chinese or Canadian they can be "normal". And a normal person who is late 30x and gets fired says "Yeah, I knew it would happen."

        You are right though that straight white guys can play the "help help im being opressed" card to cover for their shitty personality and work ethic -- same as anyone else.

        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Sure, but the omission of that class makes a certain implication, and best to be explicit that unfounded whining about persecution based on race/ethnicity/gender/class/etc can come from any sort of person.

    • Like is it was a white man they wouldn't have done it. That's the disgusting problem with this world.

      Normal Person: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "Well I knew it would happen from being late all the time".
      Feminist: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "They fired me because I'm an independent women"
      Racial Activist: Fired from job. Reason: Showed up late for work 30 times over an hour. - "They fired me because I'm not white."

      We can do without these people. There are people who are racist and or sexist, but your car didn't run out of gas because it's racist.

      Right Wing Apologist: White men regularly show up late and are subject to teasing from the manager, black woman shows up late a few times and gets fired. - "I'm so outraged that you're bringing up race & gender when you can't conclusively prove that it was the deciding factor!!!"

  • He'll come along claiming she hijacked the name and claim it for his newly renamed meta company. And with his resources she won't be able to stop him. She'd better backup everything off that name and find a new home for it or he'll claim that's all his, too.

    • by splutty ( 43475 )

      Instagram is already a Metard company, so that's exactly what happened. The media getting involved was a bit too much, though, apparently.

  • Thus has already been resolved (from the media attention if course), quite changes the whole thing:

    âoeThis account was incorrectly removed for impersonation, and weâ(TM)ve now restored it," Stephanie Otway, a Meta company spokesperson, told Ars. "Weâ(TM)re sorry that this happened.â

  • You have no recourse when this kind of thing happens because you are the product, you are not the customer. You are the product as long as it is convenient, if some interest out weighs you as the product then you are done and that is it.

    Giant internet based corporations that make billions of dollars need to have processes to address issues like this, that do not involve calling them out in the media.

  • They are not. They are the product, to be profiled, categorized, advertised to, and manipulated by the platform. Nothing more.

  • It is always about money and power. Take what you can. Mark Zuckerberg sold Meta Platforms Inc. stock almost every weekday of 2021 and the founders of Google began to unload shares in May.. These transactions are part of a surge of selling by the very richest Americans. They unloaded $42.9 billion in stock through the start of December, more than double the $20.2 billion they sold in all of 2020, according to an analysis of transactions by U.S. billionaires on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ran
  • 1. Don't hope a service or web site you don't pay a nickel to over a decade will preserve your work indefinitely. This is especially true if you don't have a documented agreement with them to archive whatever you've placed on their site.

    2. You are responsible for backing your stuff up. Not anyone else.

    3. If you happen to pick a user name the company who is hosting your content likes and/or hates, it may get taken back. Plan accordingly.

  • Hanlon's razor perhaps?
  • So, why did they not just give her a new account name and notify her of the change? Instead, they stole her account name and closed her account. Their actions were simply unnecessary.

    Had she been rich and famous with the resources to fight back, they would have taken the gentler approach.

  • So they lose the ability to post 100% bullshit headline articles?

    Ask for a few million friends
  • Of who their magic name theft was going to affect. They donâ(TM)t care
  • First, Meta (FB) may have been within their legal rights to take it. Before you reach for the pitch-fork, hear me out. It's their web site, so it's their rules. What does the ToS even say about handles? It's like istartedi here on Slashdot. Who really owns it? It's a doo-hicky on somebody's else's web site, and if Slashdot wants to wipe out everything I've ever posted it seems like they're within their rights even though it would be immoral.

    The tricky part is that my ramblings here aren't worth much i

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