Because let’s say you’re Tom Hanks. And you get TomHanks@Lemmy.World
Well, what’s stopping someone else from adopting TomHanks@Lemm.ee?
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.
Discord and email worked for a long time with needing something extra after the name. Why would the fediverse be different?
I see this as a benefit. Generally speaking celebrity posts are the most useless threads on most platforms.
What’s stopping that same 7 year old taking TomHanks@Lemmy.World before the real Tom Hanks even knows about Lemmy?
It’s not the lack of unique usernames that’s a problem. It’s the lack of identity verification. Which, I mean, understandably is lacking because it’s not like there are high profile people making accounts here. Well, except of course for Margot Robbie.
If “TomHanks” is his username on every other service, like twitter, and youtube, and tiktok, and instagram, then he would want to use it when he comes to the fediverse. Now, if only ONE person can have the username TomHanks (and it just so happens to be @Lemmy.World), then he could send a cease and disist letter, and if that doesn’t work, a lawsuit. Madonna did it in the 90s with Madonna.com.
However, if TomHanks@Lemmy.World can exist, and TomHanks@Lemm.ee can exist, and TomHanks@piefed.social can exist and…and…and…then it gets a little impossible for him to really own that username, because it can be duplicated on an infinate amount of instances, some that may not even exist when he shows up to the fediverse.
But if only one instance can have TomHanks, than he could absolutely show courts he’s had a vested interest and usership of that identity and thus that’s HIS username. Even on services he’s never signed up for. Like if he doesn’t have an instagram account at all, but someone else starts using TomHanks on instagram, he can take it to the courts that they are not allowed to do that, because that’s his username.
But the way the fediverse is currently set up right now, that’s not feasible. Because he could enter a court battle with TomHanks@Lemm.ee, and then 5 more instances with his username popup. And eventually it becomes harder and harder to prove that people know his ownership of that username if there’s 500 other people also using the same username. It’s the reason you can’t email celebrities. They can’t control their presence in email, so they don’t use that as their identity.
The account with her pic floating around here is real?
Respect
A celebrity can host their own domain to prove authenticity.
So what. On Xitter I can make an account called Tom.Hanks and get the blue mark by paying Elon. Because Tom Hanks has the username Tom_Hanks.
You’re missing the point. You can have Tom.Hanks@twitter.com but you can’t have Tom_Hanks@othertwitter.com
So when you come to the fediverse, instead of searching for Tom_Hanks@tomhanks.com, you just search for Tom_Hanks, and the fediverse will know that defaults to the account Tom_Hanks. Which is the same account on Lemmy, the same account on Peertube, the same account on pixelfed.
Because it’s all Tom_Hanks.
Except Tom@TomHanks.com will come up first because they will surely have the most fooloerrs.
fooloerrs
Typo, but kind of a cool word too. Like people who would fool around
Oh god it looks like I had a stroke at the end of that sentence ahhaha
Yes, but you see. Lemmy users generally don’t give a flat fuck about what celebrities want.
That’s a feature, not a bug. Celebrity culture needs to get in the sea.
The fix for this is for the guilds and unions that represent these celebrities to spin up their own instances. The suffix of the username granting the legitimacy.
It would solve the issue for people who look into it. But what if I registered AstralPath@Lemmy.World? I could pretend to be you. And because most people won’t check, I’d get away with it until people caught on.
Now if you make your living off your public image, and I say horrible things, your career could take a hit. Even if nothing I said is true, and its proven it was never you.
People will just remember “Hey, remember that time AstralPath admitted to having sex with their grandmother?”
“No, that wasn’t actually them.”
“Are you sure? I remember reading about it in (insert tabloid here)”.
And suddenly you have a legit reason not to use a platform that easily ruins your career through no fault of your own.
People will ALWAYS attempt to troll online for the memes. Remember Boaty McBoatface?
If your email address is lostmymind@outlook.com, what prevents someone to create lostmymind@gmail.com and pretend to be you?
A difference between kbin (and mbin?) vs lemmy (and pyfedi) - the former would show the entire name, including instance. If instance was not included, it was because it was local (so you could assume ‘@kbin.social’)
On lemmy/pyfedi the name shows up alone - though you can hover over and see the instance name. But at a glance I can see how someone could get confused. Not the best UX IMHO.
If it was widely known that outlook was the legitimate suffix, there’s no need to worry about this. If SAG-AFTRA had their own instance then any actor’s account username associated with it would carry the suffix chosen by SAG-AFTRA.
TomHanks@sag-aftra.com for example.
TomHanks@lemmy.ml would be instantly recognizable as illegitimate.
This problem already exists in many different forms and is already managed well by the fact that celebrities’ real usernames are well known and bullshit posts from accounts trying to fake them are easily caught just by looking at the user name. There are plenty of parody accounts on X with very similar username formats. Is that a major problem for X users? Not from what I’ve seen.
Celebrities are going to be shocked when they hear about email
Never heard of email
If you are that famous or worried about trademark, you shouldn’t be using someone else’s server. Tom Hanks can just buy e.g
tomhanks.actordomain and set up the@me@tomhanks.actorAP actor.I keep repeating this: the weird part is that we still have all these companies and institutions being okay with depending on someone else’s namespace. Having the NYT still announcing their Twitter or Instagram for social media presence is the same as using aol.com for their email.
You seem to be under the impression that it’s good if this place grows explosively. It’s not. There’s no VC to pay back here (and thank fuckin god for that). There’s no ad revenue here (again, this is good).
Also, not entirely sure what exactly to make of the weirdly targeted quip about a Chinese child, but spidey sense says it’s nothing good.
Not sure what VC stands for…
But the Chinese boy with the broken leg is my 103 year old grandmother in a wheelchair. But he’s not actually Taylor Swift, which is the point of the comparison.
VC = venture capitalism.
The narwal bacons at midnight?
Please no
please seek help
We had a AMA with Will Ropp, an actor a few months ago: https://lemm.ee/post/31335226
We verified it was him by having him send us a message from his IG.
How fun, this should go on a ‘Best of the Fediverse’ type post or something.
Those poor celebrities! What will we do without them?
Account verification is relatively simple, if you have your own website you just add a link back with a special formatting. Problem is, barely anyone applies for self-verification, and several platforms such as Lemmy don’t support self-verification whatsoever. I can see why something like a distributed verification agency should be a thing, if we manage to make the implementation less technical for the end users of course.
I think it might be kind of nice to be Tom Hanks and have the name WilsonsOnlyFriend@lemmy.world and just chat and chill.
