Until recently, 70% of all Telegram usernames had been reserved in inactive channels by cybersquatters from Iran. This created a graveyard of dead usernames that cluttered search results and prevented millions of Telegram users from selecting appropriate public addresses for their accounts, groups and channels.
now they cannot select "appropriate public addresses for their accounts, groups and channels" as well because most of the names are listed for sale on auction!
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https://t.me/durov/195
now they cannot select "appropriate public addresses for their accounts, groups and channels" as well because most of the names are listed for sale on auction!
They have to pay for servers somehow. Selling long dead channel handles is better than privacy invasion.
It's not better when it comes at the cost of taking some of those handles away from people that were using them.
But they weren't using them. That's the whole point.
There are a number of situations I'm personally aware of where users had usernames revoked for channels they were actively using.
One common case where this occurred is when users used a channel as a "bio" or "blog", and posted to the channel infrequently to update it.
@pg hasn't posted on HN for two years. Can I have his username?
@pg is paying for the servers
But he does not need the account name, right?
However, Aaron Swartz is not paying for reddit servers anymore, can I have u/AaronSw then? Has been inactive for 10 years.
You can't claim reddit usernames but you can claim inactive Subreddits by contacting the mods.