@tchambers You’re onto something there. Of course legacy blue checks are gone now ( or just hidden in code ), but even for just “how do I get verified”, a hand holding walk through would be helpful.
@box464 Very into a "how to get verified wizard idea.
And if you already have a #GitHub, #Medium, #Flipboard or #Gravatar account already, I'll be the wizard could just connect the two and give you a greencheck pretty seamlessly.
@box464 That Spoutible feature used the Twitter API to check verification status, and the API is now showing verified: false for people who won’t pay Musk his extortion fee — so it no longer works.
@Green_Footballs The CEO has mentioned it still works. So I assume they scraped Twitter for legacy blues and made their own database to verify against? Or found something in the API they can use as verification. Sounds like a hack that can be taken away easily.
@box464 It’s possible that some people are still showing as verified in the API, I guess, because everything about Twitter is a hot mess. But I confirmed it’s now false in my API profile, so if they’re still doing this it won’t last long.
@vyr I see where you’re coming from. The appearance of a green check here doesn’t do much for me, either. But my inner geek sure had fun setting them up! I kind of get the feeling the larger community here doesn’t want it to be super simple to join.
It’s fine with me, I kind of dread the day I start seeing the same type of drivel here that I saw on the other site.
For those of you that have been here longer I suspect you’re already seeing that shift.
@box464 green checks can at least be verified independently by each instance. if Eugen added, like, "show us your government ID" verification to mastodon.social tomorrow, he'd have to convince everyone to trust mastodon.social. same problem with third party near-scams like Fedified — who trusts some random asshole to hand out blue checks?
and yeah, there are a lot of people with LinkedIn Brain Syndrome running around that definitely weren't here in 2018. i don't think Fedi needs to become Twitter, or that it has to solve every single problem with social networking and scale to a billion people. i have to ask who benefits from that, and it's definitely not me, or anyone i know, but it does include ad companies, clout farmers, spammers, Nazis, and other parasites that flourish where moderation is hard.
@vyr@box464 I have no problem with verification, but I think the blue checkmark being used to distinguish notables from the ordinary is what caused this mess at Twitter in the first place. If the folks that had the Twitter legacy blue checkmark really cared about verification then the way Mastodon ALREADY does verification, it should be enough. Anything more is only for pure vanity. https://joinmastodon.org/verification
@bryanruby@vyr Oh that’s a good start! For your average non-technical person tho, asking them to add a “rel” link is like asking me to fix a carburetor.
What about a list of apps where a user can just copy their profile links across each to make the verification happen. That’s what most people will understand. Not sure how many there are that support rel-me links…something to research.
It also promotes visibility of their mastodon presence on other social media sites.
@box464@vyr Yes, there should definitely be other ways to verify you are who you are. My main point though is verification (badge or no badge) should be for all not just what one person or entity claims who is notable. Bryan Ruby the IT guy deserves to be verified just as much as Bryan Ruby the MLB baseball player and musician is. Keep the playing field even for all to be verified.
@bryanruby@box464 any system that other instances can't independently verify will not work in a federated context.
so if you want to link your Fedi identity to, idk, something semi-trusted and third-party like your existing Discord or Reddit account, and verifying that link relies on having a Discord or Reddit API key, most instances won't set that up because that's an extra step. and other instances simply won't trust that third party (especially given the frequency of Discord account takeovers).
if you don't care about federation, like Twitter before Musk, Truth Social now, or mastodon.social in a few years, then it's a much easier problem because there's only one server involved, and also a much harder one because it's impossible to verify any of its claims yourself.
@bryanruby You’re right @vyr and I don’t currently think of a green check as true identity verification. All it means to me is that this person is related in some way to the included link. Account ownership, not “show me your government id” type identity verification.
@box464@vyr I disagree. Really the only one that can verify me is me. To rely on third-party entities to validate identity has so many issues (it's why we're here discussing this). Green checks are more than enough. I know Jeff Sikes on Mastodon is the same Jeff Sikes via Github because of the green checks: https://github.com/jeffsikes
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