People need to be much more aware of the fact that you don't own your gmail address, or your Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Instagram/whatever account. Those companies encourage people to build their reputations and networks and "personal brands" inside their walled gardens, while repeatedly demonstrating that they won't lift a finger to help protect the user's custodianship of "their" usernames.
Unfortunately - when you explain this to people there's no really good answer to their immediate "so what should I do?" question.
I no more "own" the bigiain.com domain than I own "bigiain" on HN, or "[email protected]". While I can ensure I keep paying for it's registration, I have no doubt that if Monsanto or Goldman Sachs or Apple launched an new thing and trademarked it "Bigiain", my registrar would fold instantly to a legal demand from their lawyers, and I'd be just as out-in-the-cold as all those people without friends-of-friends in high enough places at Instafacetwigoo to "fix things", or with publicity platforms like @mat behind them.
I suspect in the future, there'll be a well known way to tie your online activity/reputation/network to a strong public key (with some distributed blockchain-like revocation/renewal audit trail). If anyone's working on something like that - I'd love to hear about it...
Unfortunately - when you explain this to people there's no really good answer to their immediate "so what should I do?" question.
I no more "own" the bigiain.com domain than I own "bigiain" on HN, or "[email protected]". While I can ensure I keep paying for it's registration, I have no doubt that if Monsanto or Goldman Sachs or Apple launched an new thing and trademarked it "Bigiain", my registrar would fold instantly to a legal demand from their lawyers, and I'd be just as out-in-the-cold as all those people without friends-of-friends in high enough places at Instafacetwigoo to "fix things", or with publicity platforms like @mat behind them.
I suspect in the future, there'll be a well known way to tie your online activity/reputation/network to a strong public key (with some distributed blockchain-like revocation/renewal audit trail). If anyone's working on something like that - I'd love to hear about it...