As soon as he directly assigns value to them, he turns the reclamation of accounts from an admin technicality to theft.
Can’t steal something you don’t own. And people should never forget you don’t own anything on these platforms.
I disagree that you don’t own it. Just because a business writes something into its terms and conditions, that doesn’t mean it is legitimate. The user behind the account has a stronger claim to the value of the account than the website - the user was the one who created the value, not the website. The website created the platform and then the marketplace, but the users are the ones who impart the value.
If the username is just a username and not being sold, then there isn’t really anything actionable, but because X are looking to sell it for significant value then it is actionable, and the user has the stronger claim.
This would be like a bank claiming all the money in your savings account because you haven’t made any deposits or withdrawals recently.
This would be like a bank claiming all the money in your savings account because you haven’t made any deposits or withdrawals recently.
someone’s never seen an “inactive account” fee
Someone might live in a country where such fees are illegal.
SWIM lives in such a country, and recently got hit by a “virtual fee” for account inactivity. Since it isn’t a “real fee”, it doesn’t increase debt, which would be illegal, but the bank will still happily apply it the moment SWIM were to ever put any money in the account.
SWIM looked around the web, and there are more people who got hit with that out of the blue… after they apparently introduced the “functionality” in 2018, but decided to “delay it” until 2023 because of COVID and stuff.
Calling it a “virtual fee” and just letting them sit there without doing anything, allows the entity to claim having more clients than they actually have, and look like it’s being owed more that it will ever get paid.
