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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

This seems like such needless hassle and pain for everyone involved. If these companies just adopted a username system like most video games, where the user gets to pick any name they want and some arbitrary numbers get tacked on to the end, then this situation would be totally solved.

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The problem is that these usernames are used to represent companies. They say "Follow us on social media: @Swann" but "Follow us on social media: Swann#58139" would be much harder for customers and potential customers to remember, and could lead to fat-fingered phishing and other issues.

You can always treat verified corporations and celebrities differently to the general population... Heck, they already do so it wouldn't be a big change.

Or even easier: make them into a paid product, potentially even a small subscription. now you can milk people that want them

Everyone should be treated equal. Special treatment for certain things is essentially the entire issue under discussion.

'I want your Instagram#0000 account'

Make the number random and exclude numbers under 1000, numbers with special meanings (1337, etc).

> Make the number random and exclude numbers under 1000

So, now 1001 is highly coveted, so lets exclude that as well. Oh, now 1002 is the lowest, lets exclude it as well. And so on.

You don't have to tell people what the lowest number is, and most people won't care if it is something random like 1072.

Even better: the companies should get rid of centralized identities altogether.

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