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Comment by asdajksah2123 | Hacker News Reader

It's not illegal, but how is this not unethical?

What is unethical about it?

Took someone’s identity on the platform, even worse because they have established it for 16 years. Taking it because they rebranded to X on a whim is silly.

How is that unethical?

Wow, I can’t believe you can’t see what is unethical about it.

As it turns out a minor insult is actually not an argument for why something is unethical

It's like if I took your email account you've used since 2007 because I changed my name to yours because I liked it better.

Yeah, he's the owner of the company, legally he can do it. Doesn't make it any less unethical and poor taste.

Because it's breaking at least an implicit promise - that your account is under your control.

The TOS doesn't say anything about that https://twitter.com/en/tos

> We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason

Implicit promise. I know the TOS doesn't promise it - it never does, anywhere. Still, there's an expectation that the account is yours, not a plaything for the owner's whims. And there's an expectation that "for any or no reason" means something more than no reason.

And, yeah, "a verbal promise is worth the paper it's written on" (that is, none). And this wasn't even a verbal promise. Still, I maintain that the expectation really exists, and that companies like exTwitter are perfectly well aware that it exists. That's why doing this is a jerk move.

I honestly don’t know how most people determine if something is ethical. At this point when someone says “unethical” it usually seems equivalent to “mean”.

I think that when people say something is "unethical", what they mean is that thing is not compatible with their ethical code. That's the criteria they're using.

> it usually seems equivalent to “mean”.

Isn't it possible that being "mean" is against their ethical code?

You said it yourself. It's a dick move. Dick moves are inherently unethical.

The definition of unethical seems to have been incredibly weakened if a dick move is unethical.

Lets say I tip 0% instead of the expected 15% for normal service at a restaurant, would that be considered unethical? I expect generally Americans would consider it a dick move. Is anything that could be possibly construed as negative be considered unethical?

Sophistry will get you nowhere. There is an objective truth regardless of whether you choose to participate in seeing it.

I was unaware that after thousands of years of the debate over ethics, that we had settled on a objective set of universal ethics.

Can you please tell me what those universal objective set of ethics are first?

And following that, how this is unethical

Gene X. Hwang's @x account appears to have been paid, hence "verified" according to Twitter/X. So taking a so-called "verified" account and re-assigning the identity behind it is deceptive. So that's how it's unethical.

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