Just my personal observation. I earned around half a million dollars by running an "autoclaimer" that would automatically register Instagram names as they'd become available. I'd regularly see Instagram employees grabbing names from my portfolio for themselves.

If you could post before / after screenshots showing proof of this theft somewhere - along with the real-world names of these employees -- that might get a lot of eyeballs.

I can understand the company pulling usernames from an automated name squatter... but I wonder if this happens to fully established accounts too?

Well, I tracked the previous UIDs and saw a lot of names that weren't squatted getting released and shortly after ending up with Instagram employees.

E: Oh yeah, there was also the whole "trademarking" thing that was used to steal generic names from active accounts using obviously invalid trademarks. https://www.vice.com/en/article/zma3w4/scammers-fake-tradema...

How do valuable usernames 'become available'? Like the person deletes their account?

People deleting their accounts, or trying to sell their usernames and messing up the transfer.

Wow that's a shitty thing to do

Meh, it's their site. It's just weird that they don't seem to have any controls around this.

Dont hate the player, hate the game.

This is not kind of game that they're forced to play. So hate both.