You only need a placeholder if you think the platform matters enough to hold space for. For example: they don't have a placeholder on MySpace.
But if your goal is to prevent other people from having the name altogether, the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked. That forces them to hold your account only to prevent anyone from using it, lest you might sneak back in and say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".
No, I described a way of getting blocked that I personally enjoyed. Haters (me) gonna hate, after all.
I think the FSF should not be on Twitter at all. Sorry if I was unclear about that in my previous comment, but the first paragraph was meant to contradict OP's suggestion.
Stonetoss is a well known comic by an alt-Right Neo-Nazi. He kept his identity secret for years (for obvious reasons), but was outed a few years back. He received a lot of hate over this, and got fired from his tech job over it.
The comic was antitrans, antisemitic (with full-on Holocaust denial), racist, and sexist... but Graebener himself is a Latino, so he gets hated on by both the Left and the Right.
Websites that cater to the alt-Right ban users for saying his real name and ban people who make Stonetoss memes that shit on Graebener for being a Nazi.
And you know why HN is actually a great place? dang isn't going to ban me for repeating verifiable facts.
> People argue and disagree here but somehow in pleasant way I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Turn on `showdead` in your settings (or don’t, probably for the best) and be prepared to read some nasty comments. No substance, only hate. There are a few on this very submission.
> I think it's a mistake to imply that just because a comment is dead because it was flagged that it is hateful.
I wish people would stop inventing arguments and “reading between the lines” when interpreting comments from people they don’t know. There was no implication. Whatever you think you read is only in your head.
Of course not every flagged and dead comment is hateful. But hateful comments do get flagged so that’s where you’ll find them.
I'm about to do what you just asked people not to do. Perhaps, we're so used to dishonest interlocutors online that we search for intentions in people's statements?
That was the thing that got me blocked enough for it to stick. But it was right during the height of that meme, so I doubt it would go far now. Unless a bunch of people all started doing it or something.
If you're looking for something that might actually work right now, though, I think there's still some weird libertarian-ish "principle" they're pretending makes it wrong to post elon's (or others') flight information. At least that would be where I would start, because I don't like to bother people that don't deserve it, so general abusiveness is out, and it's funny to throw their free speech bullshit back in their face.
But if your goal is to prevent other people from having the name altogether, the move I personally enjoyed engaging in was getting my account blocked. That forces them to hold your account only to prevent anyone from using it, lest you might sneak back in and say something "harmful" like "stonetoss is hans kristian graebener".