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.
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.
Yes. Yes we can.
Use a better client that shows you the information? The default UI does, so that’s firmly a problem you’ve inflicted on yourself.
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.
Who manages that centralized service? What prevents it from being bought out, or attacked?
Because it’s not centralized. Every platform/instance just uses the same protocols. Any that try to go against that get defederated by all instances.
How do you identify them? Lemm.ee registers Tom Hanks, does every other instance have to check what information they provided to trust them?
What prevents someone to bribe a small instance to register a celebrity username on their instance?
If anything we want to encourage this.
I like the example of SAG AFTRA hosting their own instance to be official, for example. Celebs typically have their own domains and websites, so easy enough to hire a team to create and manage their own instance that supports the celeb but federates. And you know it’s legit just because it’s on the celeb’s own domain. Ditto for gov’t agencies having their own instances.
Yes.
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.)
I’m not using any client. I’m just using the browser that came with my cell phone.