I have just updated mastodon.social to the latest master.

Link verification for remote accounts has been fixed. Unfortunately it seems like there's still confusion about the :verified: custom emoji that some admins decided to unleash on the fediverse. I mean, I've seen countless people confused by standard unicode checkmarks, and here you got the Twitter badge as a custom emoji. Personally think it's a bit irresponsible. Maybe display names should not support custom emojis after all, god knows they're bad for screen readers anyway.

I know trying to educate about it in a toot is futile 'cause the people who'll be confused by it won't see this message, but I'll do it anyway for the record:

Mastodon does not have a verification badge. And if it did, it would not be near the name where it's so easily spoofed by custom emoji and standard unicode.

What Mastodon does have, in the upcoming version, is link ownership verification, and it's on the profile view.

@Gargron Yeah, verification as a tool has downsides (re: making some voices sound more authoritative on every subject), but it's something that is also kind of missed in a world of people freely willing to spoof the voices of others. Wish I had a better solution.

I don't think it's missed. The way forward should be that everyone's words should be questioned, not that credibility badges should be awarded by a debatable central authority.

@hypolite People have finite hours in the day to do due diligence in making sure that every voice is who they say they are, let alone what they say is worth anything, especially at the speed the internet and news work at though, especially when so much money and political capital exists in making sure that information is less and less easy to get to or trust.

But I admit I don't have a good solution to the problem.

This problem didn't come from nothing. Twitter's extraordinary way of directly connecting millions people from anywhere has been a catalyst of this. If you reduce your social media circle to only people you know, for example, there's less chance for you to be fooled by an impostor. This is essentially a social problem and it won't be solved with purely technological solutions.
Sign in to participate in the conversation
