Kate BevanThis is great work from @daveleeFT, who's pulled together a way for journalists to verify who they are on Mastodon. https://www.presscheck.org/
Richard Bairwell@katebevan @daveleeFT Oh, it's nearly identical to @DataDrivenMD 's https://fedified.com/ service. You can get yourself "verified" by just linking to your Mastodon profile from your employers site using a "rel="me"" link: if your CMS is running on WordPress, then add it under User Profile > About Yourself > Biographical Information section as seen in this screen shot, then link your Mastodon profile to your author page such as https://blog.rac.me.uk/author/richyb . Or nag your website admins!
jlines@rbairwell @katebevan @daveleeFT @DataDrivenMD I think the ultimate solution to Verification is for the publishers/outlets to run their own Fediverse servers - there would be no need to 'verify' @[email protected] - for example. If he also ran his own site, as he might for non journalist things he could set up @[email protected]
@jlines @daveleeFT @rbairwell @DataDrivenMD that doesn't work for freelancers/contractors, though. And if someone on publication-owned site leaves that job, shifting instances isn't friction-free.
@katebevan @daveleeFT @rbairwell @DataDrivenMD That is true, however I understand there is a redirect mechanism to say, essentially @[email protected] is now @[email protected] - this could clearly be broken by the administrators at the old publishers, but I do not think they would want a reputation for treating departing contributors badly.
@katebevan @jlines True, atm you can't transfer your posts across (+it'll be easy for an outlet to block outbound moves of followers). At least the default Mastodon setup allows "self verified" rel="me" links to help freelancers. Of course outlet could still run an instance but more as either as "relay/repost/group" setup or just as a profile directory (so an author can set their *.other.mastadon profile url to that one for verification)
@rbairwell @katebevan Publishers may also have a role as financial middle men - I pay for the BBC through a licence fee, and subscribe to The Guardian, Scientific American etc, and they distribute the money. For the Fediverse to succeed the issue of how it is funded has to be solved.