(cringe) This is what I'd call technologically illiterate journalism. It's not quite as bad as complaining about the name of the project (insert crying baby gif), but it's not far elevated above that level.

https://medium.com/dark-mountain/fatal-flaw-with-mastodon-1ef0cb1965ed

He mentions that the system is distributed, but obviously hasn't grokked what that actually means.

Servers have user accounts. I know, shocking, isn't it? Same applies for email, xmpp, forums and just about any other service located on a server. They're not all magically synchronized by some universally agreed protocol. Nor would it be reasonable for them to be.

If you want a pre-internet analogy, there could be Bob living in Manchester and Bob living in Glasgow, and they might be different Bobs!

Scandalized? I thought you would be.

@bob You're right that simple identity is not unique across federated systems. But this isn't clear to everyone.

The problem arises from an incorrect assumption on the part of most users, which the implementation has reinforced. Many usere are coming from monolithic platforms, where their handles are globally unique. At times Mastodon clients have not shown fully-qualified handles, so they assume uniqueness here. Unlike email, where FQ ID has been the habit for decades.