There's a certain Twitter handle I want that has already been taken. I maintain a website at the matching domain name, and I'd like to have the Twitter account to match.
It was last active in 2015, and its owner is deceased. I got in contact with their sister, who took over their estate upon their death, and she said she was happy to let me have the account. However she no longer has the password to the Twitter account nor its recovery email address, and she seemed unwilling to try going through Twitter support. I attempted to offer her something in return, but got no response.
Twitter's policy is that they don't release inactive account usernames:
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/inactive-twitter-accounts
However, a few people seem to have had some success getting an exception to that policy:
https://josephliu.co/twitter-username-taken/
I've attempted the process detailed in that article twice, and haven't had any luck yet.
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Probably more dollars then you're willing to put in to this, but I suspect the most ironclad way to do this would be to establish the name as a trademark you own formally. That means using it in commerce (just a token site selling shirts is fine) and paying to get it registered with the PTO, and then paying a lawyer to write a scary letter to twitter if support is unresponsive to your request.
@Shelvacu If you want to do that for me, I'll pay you M$20,000. :)
(Or possibly more if needed.)
@IsaacKing Unfortunately registering a trademark costs more (in fees alone, not including labor) than the $200 to buy that much mana outright
I'm offering an M$20,000 bounty to anyone who manages to get me this username.
(I'll tell you the username privately if you're seriously interested in pursuing this.)
@IsaacKing buy a blue check and tell support that the late account owner was silencing your right wing beliefs by impersonating you
Someone very sketchy on Reddit provided this method, which sounds... plausible.
It's one of the easiest method to do actually, and it got easier with the latest policy changes. You need to own that verified thing, register your accounts as a company one, etc. Right now I work for a company, I can arrange something and make your account seem like it is our sub-account or something. That way, we can give you a temporary bussiness account pass and this lets your account to have any username. You wrote that its 8 years old so it wouldn't be an issue at all. Our flower organization already pays AUD$1500/month on a Twitter account. Adding affiliated account is going to cost me AUD$75. If you accept paying me 100 USD upfront, its easy to arrange it for me since I manager their social media. Keep it in mind that you would have to keep that organization looking account for at least 30-35 days. After a month, I will not renew your account's subcription, this will lead you to lose your verified mark. But you keep the username and can change your account's looking back to whatever.
(They were asking for payment up front, which I'm obviously not going to do with an anon on Reddit.)