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I think the thing that makes sense here, assuming Mastodon actually becomes a popular thing, is for companies and other institutions to run their own servers an
by jp57 4y ago
I think the thing that makes sense here, assuming Mastodon actually becomes a popular thing, is for companies and other institutions to run their own servers and limit accounts to their employees or members. E.g. nytimes or wapo or national review or whatever could run their own servers for their journalists. NBA and NFL for their players. SAG-AFTRA for actors and TV personalities, etc.
I know that there's a kind of verification mechanism already in Mastodon where you put a backlink in your website and then you get a badge. But it is an order of magnitude more complicated than "this server vouches for the identity of this account," and website ownership isn't really identity anyway.
- Macha 4y agoThe issue with the publications running instances for the journalists is it means the journalists social media presence is owned by their employer which is a problem if they change jobs.
- ghaff 4y agoOf course for the publications, that's a feature. They (as well as analyst firms etc.) have been pushing back against their employees having personal brands since social media (including blogs) got big. Emphasizing personal brands in this setting was a big thing for a while which organizations ended up really clamping down on.
- ekianjo 4y agoYou can always migrate your account... or if your account is tied to your publication then too bad, you start from scratch.
- Macha 4y agoThe second part of your post _is_ my point. It might be good for news media to run their own instance, but not so good for their employees to use it
- jallmann 4y agoNot sure if Mastodon supports this, but the account could belong to one instance while being verified by another. This also lets folks be verified by multiple organizations - which also increases trust.
- kevinfiol 4y agoWhich does sound a whole lot like how e-mail domains are treated!