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I have been thinking about how account verification on the Fediverse (esp. Mastodon) seems to be viewed from a Twitter perspective.
TL;DR: You should be in control over your identity.
A thread. (Or friendly rant.)
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Personally I am welcoming anybody to join the Fediverse. But I am unsure how to feel about e.g. services that make transition easier, but treat the Fediverse like a second Twitter.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not out to bash services like "Fedified" linked earlier. It looks useful, the author surely means well, I appreciate the creative DIY-spirit, and if it makes it easier for people to join the Fediverse, then that's great. If impersonation is a worry, then such a website might help.
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But I'm not 100% happy with the fact that in general some services, meant to make it easier to join the Fediverse, are centralised and under the control of somebody else but the person who wants to use it and may depend on it.
Such websites often need curation. What happens if the people behind it cannot maintain it anymore? Or their views don't align with the people who want to use the service? Not to mention fraud.
Control over data and identity must remain with the people concerned.
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"Trust me to verify you" is the Twitter model. But when web services offer to display a connection between Twitter and federated account, "verification" gets slightly more complicated due to the nature of bridging two networks. This in turn makes joining the Fediverse to appear more complicated than necessary.
It's Twitter-think shoved onto to the Fediverse, which seems like a reasonable approach for people new here, but eventually is impractical and a little unjust, I think.
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@floppy@fosstodon.orgAnd I think that leads me to a concern I have been brooding over in the last few weeks:
The #Fediverse is not a drop-in replacement for #Twitter.
And it shouldn't be, because that would undermine the added value that comes
1) from local communities, connected by shared values, that also federate,
2) from empowering individuals to be in control of their identity and data, and
3) from the open standards that allow extending the "language" of the network.
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You got more freedom on the #Fediverse than on #Twitter. Please allow yourself to learn about and use it!
You don't have to depend on some central authority to verify your identity. And you shouldn't. Really. Online identity came to be a thing, and it will surely be even more of a thing in the future. In control of your identity should only be you, and people you have opted-in to trust.
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YMMV, but for me this federated, decentralised network means more independence and agency. Putting control of my matterns back into my hands or people I trust. I decide who I trust, because I have a choice.
The modalities of interaction are not controlled by a central authority and not confined to a walled garden like for most Big Tech social media, so the way instances of the network interact (and hence how people can interact) can evolve naturally and organically, like language.
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Technical excursion as bonus thoughts. If centralised solutions to verify are not the way, what is?
In my opinion: To verify, get a domain or free subdomain. A little more below.
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Personally I would suggest to new people: If you want to get verified on the Fediverse, make use of the freedom you have here. Get a domain (or free subdomain), put up a single page with the rel="me" link and link from Fedi. Done.
Added benefits: A standard domain costs less per year than two months of Twitter verification. 
You actually own your domain and can publish "content" there completely under your control, even if some guy carrying sinks decides to not like you anymore.
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I understand that that's more technical thought and time than most people like to invest.
But then if people are willing to pay for verification on Twitter, paying somebody a one-time fee for such a setup would be cheaper.
Heck, I can also imagine some kind of video walk-through and semi-automatic service that pushes a basic website ready-to-go onto a Github Pages static site.
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@floppy hey it has been years since I was on twitter but I do have my own domain and a static page on gitlab and find it interesting the possibility of verification.
What does *rel="me" link and link from Fedi.* mean?
@amunizp Hey, thanks for asking and sorry for the cryptic hint!
I was referring to how verification is implemented for Mastodon (and I think some other projects).
The gist is that when you specify a URL in one of the tabular fields on a Mastodon profile, Mastodon checks that page for a hyperlink (<a>-tag) with a rel="me" attribute. If it finds a one that links back to the profile on Mastodon, the field with the URL will be highlighted in green.
More details here:
@amunizp You might have seen such green fields on Mastodon profiles already. Our instance admins for example make use of URL-based identity verification.
@floppy thanks! I think I did it already. Not sure how to check if it worked.
@amunizp I see you have linked a website in your profile header. However, when I follow that URL and check the source code (as Mastodon would do), I don't find a hyperlink with a rel="me" attribute to your Mastodon profile. I think that's why the URL doesn't show up green on your profile.
In other words, the website specified by the URL in the profile should contain the following HTML in your case:
<a href="https://fosstodon.org/@amunizp" rel="me">some text</a>
@floppy oK my gitlab Hugo process found an error I think because of the double quotes. I am trying now with single quotes <a rel='me' href='https://fosstodon.org/@amunizp'>Mastodon</a>
@floppy oK. I think I need to compile my page on my computer using #Hugo then commit changes in #gitlab https://gitlab.com/amunizp/c4ad-hugo so that it shows on c4ad.eu cause I updated the toml doc but it is not showing. Not sure mastodon reads rel = "me" as the same as rel = 'me' . But let me get my house in order. After I get some sleep.
Thank you!
@amunizp I had a quick look at the repository. I see you defined a new parameter "fediverse" to /config.toml.
AFAICT, the problem is that this parameter is not getting used in /layouts/partials/contact.html.
I think you have two options: Either hardcode the details into contact.html, or maybe do something like this (cleaner solution):
In config.toml:
fediverse = "https://fosstodon.org/@amunizp"
In contact.html:
<i class="fa fa-comment"></i><a href="{{ .box.fediverse }}" rel="me">Mastodon</a></p>
@amunizp Good luck! Please let me know if it works. :)
Also, please don't forget: Since you are modifying the contact sub-page, you need to link to that sub-page from your Mastodon profile to show the green verification thing.
If you point Mastodon to the homepage and the rel="me" link is on a sub-page, Mastodon cannot make the connection.
Will get some rest now too. :)