Reclaiming usernames policy

I’d like to update our terms of service to add a note about reclaiming old accounts, so we finally have an official policy. In a nutshell:

  • If you’ve ever had a paid subscription, we will host your blog indefinitely, even after you cancel. You can always export or delete your data, or resubscribe later and all your data will be there.
  • If you’ve never paid and your account has been inactive for one year, we may clear it out so someone else can use the name. You will be notified before this happens.

I say “may” because I think there needs to be some wiggle room for unique situations. There won’t be any automatic deletion of accounts.

Miraz Jordan

Wondering if this means 'host and publish' or just 'hold the data'? : "we will host your blog indefinitely". What's to stop someone from paying you for a bit and then just stop paying any more since their blog is still 'live'? Not planning on doing that 😀 just feel you need to be earning against your expenses…

Miraz Jordan

Looks like a good policy though.

Manton Reece

@Miraz Thanks. Publishing is disabled after cancelling. If someone tried to game the system by stopping and starting their subscription often, I think that would be really annoying for them, and that means they probably aren't really using the product very often either. Good point, though.

Lucien Dupont

I wouldnt mind getting @lucien. looks like its been dormant since 2017. 🙂

Justin Youens

On front page of Hacker News right now, nice.

Manton Reece

@youens Cool!

Rene van Belzen

Have you considered a procedure to freeze an account, so it can't be changed? I'm thinking of people who want to let their blog(s) be permanent after they are no longer able to add to it for whatever reason, IOW, they want it to be a memorial if that happens. Sorry for my possibly poor wording.

Pedro Corá

I really like the thought of not just erasing things of the web. Thanks for providing that!

Phil Bowell

this looks like a good policy. I’d love to get hold of @phil. It looks like it’s been dormant for a very long time.

Simon Woods

This looks good; definitely makes sense in the greater context of Micro.blog as a platform.

There are a number of people who posted just once with "Hello World" and the like; are those accounts likely to be considered as unique situations?

Ben Southwood.

I like this, it’s fair and makes sense.

Manton Reece

@renevanbelzen Yes, that is part of what I had in mind. Although I'm not sure if there needs to be a special "freeze" state or if just letting it effectively sit frozen is enough.

Bob Wertz

I think this is a great policy, but it brought up a question for me. I started Micro.Blog with a different username and then changed to my current username. I've assumed that the old username is available to anyone now. (And I think it should be...) But after reading this, maybe not?

Manton Reece

@bobwertz If you renamed your username, the old username will be available right away for someone else. If you created a new account, though, the old username would still be reserved until you deleted it.

Bob Wertz

That’s what I expected. And thanks for the thoughtfulness you put into every part of Micro.Blog.

Manton Reece @manton
Lightbox Image