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Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourself and grab a tissue. No, make that the whole box. We bring you a tale of technological woe, a David and Goliath story in which, alas, the Philistine wins, that will set even the stoniest heart ableed.
Chase Giunta is a 25-year-old graphic designer in Dallas who had the foresight several years ago to snap up his first name as a Twitter handle, thus forcing JPMorgan to adopt the more cumbersome @ChaseNews.
The banking giant was not happy. As the New York Post reported last month, JPMorgan seized the @Chase handle after leaning on Twitter to revoke Giunta’s account.
The message was clear: “I was singled out so Twitter could play into the hands of what JP Morgan wanted,” as he told Fox Business last week.
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Twitter contends that the Giunta’s use of the @Chase handle and the company’s trademark blue logo, under which he aggressively retweeted customers’ complaints about the bank, violated its parody policy, which stipulates that a fake account, among other things, “should not list the exact name of the subject without some other distinguishing word, such as ‘not,’ ‘fake,’ or ‘fan.'”
And yet the saddest part of the story is not the ungodly power of banks, or Twitter’s fig leaf of an excuse for yanking someone’s account. It’s that Giunta turned down an offer of $20,000 for the @Chase handle made by a broker just a few days before. You can tweet him your condolences at @ChaseGiunta.
