
Ask HN: What can be done to protect/restore a Twitter account of a dead person? - slg
Harris Wittels was a comedian and writer who passed away in 2015.  He was the person who originally who coined and popularized the term &quot;humblebrag&quot; from his @humblebrag Twitter account (User ID 214680621).  Both the account and term became a viral hit in the early 2010s and now &quot;humblebrag&quot; is simply part of our common vernacular.<p>It seems on or before June 6th someone hijacked his old account, deleted his old tweets, renamed the account to @micropicss and then to @differlanguages (there might have been other name changes in there too), and setup a spam bot.  It also seems someone setup new accounts to sit on the @humblebrag and @micropicss names.  The @differlanguages now has a few hundred thousand legitimate Twitter followers including lots of high profile users.<p>I have no relation to Wittels or his estate (which would seem to prevent me from opening an official complaint with Twitter according to their help bot), but I hate to see part of his legacy, Twitter&#x27;s history, and the lexiconic record destroyed like this.  Is there anything that can be done to get the old account restored in some way or at the very least stop a spam account from taking advantage of his account&#x27;s followers?
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riffic
This may point you in the right direction:

[https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/contact-
twitt...](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/contact-twitter-
about-media-on-a-deceased-family-members-account)

~~~
slg
Thanks, but that requires action from the head of the estate. There doesn't
seem to be anyway for an unrelated individual to request anything regarding a
notable account like @humblebrag.

