Because let’s say you’re Tom Hanks. And you get [email protected]

Well, what’s stopping someone else from adopting [email protected]?

And some platforms minimize the text size of platform, or hide it entirely. So you just might see TomHanks, and think it’s him. But it’s actually a 7 year old Chinese boy with a broken leg in Arizona.

Because anyone can grab the same name, on a different platform.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    221·
    2 months ago

    It should work the same as email: you can trust it’s them if the user account is hosted on their own site, or their employer’s, or if they link to it from another confirmed source.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
      91·
      2 months ago

      Yep. Also, aren’t there already celebrities on Mastodon? I know George Takei is. Granted, you’d have to know he was @mastodon.social versus mstdn.social so that could complicate things for those unfamiliar with the platform.

      OP’s definitely got a point, though.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      One good thing IMO about threads federating, that we get the celebrities, we know they’re verified, but I don’t have to join corpo social media.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      34·
      2 months ago

      But look below in the comments. Can you even tell which of my comments came from Lemmy.World, and which comments didn’t? Some platforms will just show Lost_My_Mind. I can’t tell which platform @AbouBenAdhem is posting via. I just see AbouBenAdhem.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          21·
          2 months ago

          I’m just using a web browser that came with my phone. And if they were all hidden, it wouldn’t matter.

          You’d just register your username. And this would be good for all the fediverse platforms. Once you register your innitial name, only you could register other services under that name. So it’s always you. Even if you never register for a service, you registered the name.

          Then, if you register a new service, even years later, you still have your name.

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I’m not familiar with every client, but on mine it only hides the domain for users on my own server. (Early email used to work exactly the same—you could send an email addressed to just a username with no tld and it would go to the user with that name on your own server by default.)