Holly Brockwell received a screenshot, out of the blue, with the text “Boom! Holly Brockwell belongs to you now.” laid over a picture of her Twitter info page.
She writes:
My response was less than eloquent: “WTF? WTF is that?!”
As it transpires, it’s from an app called Stolen. I’d never seen it before, was entirely unaware of its existence, and certainly hadn’t opted in. Stolen is a new iOS app that allows you to buy and sell real people’s Twitter accounts as if they were trading cards. Now, before anyone gets too panicky, this doesn’t give you access to their account – it’s more of a bragging rights thing. “I now own @Jack! Yeahh!” – like being the Mayor of somewhere on Foursquare.
Still, it’s tremendously unnerving to have someone tell you out of nowhere that they “own” you now. That your name and likeness is being traded on an app you had no knowledge of and hadn’t given permission to. The whole concept of people being able to own, buy and sell other people without their consent is absolutely abhorrent to us, and raises a slew of problems that it’s clear the team at Stolen haven’t anticipated.
Shortly after the first message, I got another one from the person who ‘bought’ me letting me know that I’d now been sold to a stranger.
Read the post. It’s compelling.
“Yes. That- we need to fix that.”
Bunch of idiots.
There was a very similar game a number of year back on a different site, but same concept.
Yet another thing I don’t have to care about because I don’t Twit.
“The whole concept of people being able to own, buy and sell other people without their consent is absolutely abhorrent to us …”
Isn’t this a bit over the top? Sure, you don’t like it, but it’s hardly something “abhorrent” or evil or whatever. It reminds me of the “safe spaces” thing where they aren’t really talking about safety, but merely comfort.
It’s just bad communication and word usage by the developers. If it were called “Twitter Trading Cards” instead of “Stolen,” no one would have got upset. If you were explicitly buying a card instead of an identity it would also be fine.
Finally … it’s a BETA, and it’s currently invite only.
All of these things would likely have been fixed before it went public, but all the faux outrage has probably already killed it.