Jen SimmonsDec 16, 2022

Every news outlet should stand up a Mastondon instance for their reporters & staff.

It’ll be great to see [email protected] or whatever domain they want to use.

Built in verification. Every reporter for the Washington Post on a washpo domain. Every reporter for the New York Times on an NYTimes domain. Etc, etc.

Plus the “local” feed for each instance becomes a feed of all the posts from that institution mixed together — providing extra discovery.

Show threadJake Jarvis Dec 16, 2022
@jensimmons one thousand percent! and account migration easily solves the whole "what about if/when they get a different job?" predicament.
Show threadJake OuelletteDec 16, 2022
@jake @jensimmons I like this, though I am a little worried that (1) a company wouldn't allow your redirect if they fire you (2) what if they contract to multiple places and/or want to pitch their substack from their "official" account?
Show threadPusher Of Pixels (old account)Dec 16, 2022

@Jakeout @jake @jensimmons reputable places won't do that.

There are issues with a federated system that will be hiccups, compared with a seamless single silo, no argument there.

But it really is a pretty well thought out system I think. Built in flexibility on many fronts.

And as for accounts, people had multiple Twitter accounts, no different here

Show threadWill PalmerDec 20, 2022
@pixelpusher220 @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons if anyone ever says "reputable people won't do that" it is a guarantee that there are serious issues on the protocol level.
Show threadPusher Of Pixels (old account)Dec 20, 2022

@wpalmer @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons

Same goes for email.

Comms protocols don't deal with system mgmt issues.

Show threadWill PalmerDec 20, 2022
@pixelpusher220 @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons good protocols leave room for extensions that others can use to fill gaps. I suppose the Mastodon equivalent would be the "metadata slots". One could theoretically fill those with a PGP key ID, but those are traditionally tied to email, which is these-days considered private.
Show threadPusher Of Pixels (old account)

@wpalmer @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons

How would that prevent a bad acting instance host from behaving badly?

Dec 20, 2022 at 5:48pmWeb
Show threadWill PalmerDec 20, 2022
@pixelpusher220 @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons it would allow opportunity for identity verification means to be distributed beforehand through a well-known location, meaning that it could be more-readily known beforehand. In the event of sudden dismissal / lock-out, others may already have what amounts to a "migration token" available to them. Of course, bad actors could update the key id after the fact, but this would not erase history.
Show threadWill PalmerDec 20, 2022
@pixelpusher220 @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons a shorter way of saying that would be: in summary, not very well, which is among the reasons why I think that mastodon needs serious work around identity management, with identity migration being a prime example of an important use-case.
Show threadPusher Of Pixels (old account)Dec 20, 2022

@wpalmer @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons

I think your conflating separate issues. There's behavioral issues you aren't going to solve and some technical things that would be useful as well.

The issue here was the former, and protocols don't solve that. They can attempt to mitigate it, but it's a hammer driving a screw.

Show threadWill PalmerDec 20, 2022
@pixelpusher220 @Jakeout @jake @jensimmons there are behavioural issues, but if there is no protocol-level support for a good solution, then being a bad-actor becomes the default. Good protocols can make it so that good behaviour is easy to the extent that bad behaviour looks suspicious.