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Comment on Show HN: No more writing shitty regexes to police usernames

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As a counter to my skeptical comments elsewhere, one way this could be a more useful service is if you go poll well known social media sites and see what the handle is associated with.

If the handle is taken by what seems like the same content/brand owner across FB, IG, reddit, X, etc. then that could add weight to a decision to reserve it (and be provided as useful context to your user as to why you recommend it be reserved), and if it's associated with something like hate speech or just crappy content someone who is doing brand research can know to look for alternatives.

YOU NAILED IT! That's part of what I want to explore next too. One of the other common thing I've heard is to check other social media platforms to check if a username is reserved. But, namevine.com already did that. Maybe it doesn't do it as accurately anymore. Almost all platforms are super protective of their API usage in that way. In any case, that's definitely the next challenge to solve for.

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