It's part of ToS you can lose your account at any time for any reason. And it's their first rule.
People like to make the claim that "a handle or username has no value" which is just insane. If it had no value, people wouldn't try to steal them.
If the first line of a bank ToS was "you can lose your account at any time for any reason", would you think that is acceptable? No, because money _obviously has value_. Usernames have value, and in some cases, usernames have more value than many people's bank accounts.
"you can lose your account at any time for any reason" is just an excuse to avoid any concept of _public_ user support.
Doesn't matter. They can still do it to anyone anyway.
> But your logic instagram could just give @kyliejenner to some random person, and you think she would have no recourse?
Well yes. They (Facebook) own the platform, it's a privately owned company and they can do whatever they like either via the ToS or in general. You don't own your account handle. They reserve the right to terminate your account or disable the handle at any time.
Strong disagree. If Facebook tried this against anyone with a moderate following there would be a Tortious interference and/or fraud lawsuit filed _immediately_.
When Trump's twitter account was deleted by a rogue employee for all of 10 minutes, Twitter most definitely did not just sit back and say "We reserve the right to terminate your account at any time".
> it's a privately owned company
I know this is going to sound pedantic, but this is wrong. Facebook is a publicly-owned company.
That one set of rules apply to people in power and another set of rules apply to the general population is certainly something to take into account.
No the original statement was correct, your statement is wrong. If you want to really be pedantic then Facebook is a public company that is privately owned.
A publicly owned company [0] is one that is owned by a government. A public company [1] is one whose shares are traded on a public stock exchange.
Banks' baseline behavior is ruled by law and national banking regulations, not just some ToS. That's probably why paypal and similar are in no rush to become real banking institutions.
https://megous.com/dl/tmp/639eea0ad46fc91d.png
https://www.instagram.com/about/legal/terms/before-january-1...
And it's an old ToS. Looks like they softened it up since then. But it was quite unequivocal back then. ;)