@grammargirl Yes, it’s totally resolvable. Developers have just been focused on other issues, and this hasn’t been a major priority. I’m sure that if we ponder it for few mins, we can come up with some possible solutions. One might be to have an instance that is a consortium of news outlets, with fees for maintenance costs on a sliding scale, and which only includes - and in so doing, establishes - that accounts were verified. @herid
@jotaemei @grammargirl as I indicated above I don't think that kind of solution can work. there are too many kinds of people who need verification. It's not just news orgs. It's any public figures. It's governments at all levels, politicians (at all levels including local), scientists, doctors, civil rights activists, particularly in repressive countries etc. whatever the solution it needs to work across all instances or it's not a solution.
@grammargirl @herid There are other solutions we can brainstorm, and hopefully when others ponder this challenge - particularly those who have done the kinds of research on these questions that we’ve not done - they will come up with yet even more possible solutions. These will be discussed and evaluated, for all their trade-offs. My intuition though is that the challenge is not one of scale or that authentication would not be recognized across instances.
@herid @grammargirl I’m guessing though that - unless Mastodon adopts some elaborate tech solution like Blockchain authentication - it will fall down along the lines of reputations of instances that could confirm the identities of members, and that those who would like to be verified (particularly, individuals rather than organizations) would need to consider trade-offs for themselves of which is more important: their verified status or their freedom to move to different hosts.
@herid Are you sure that the possible solution I spitballed was identical to the one you argued would not work on the grounds that small news orgs and municipal governments would not have the financial resources to set up their own servers? @grammargirl