Because let’s say you’re Tom Hanks. And you get TomHanks@Lemmy.World

Well, what’s stopping someone else from adopting TomHanks@Lemm.ee?

And some platforms minimize the text size of platform, or hide it entirely. So you just might see TomHanks, and think it’s him. But it’s actually a 7 year old Chinese boy with a broken leg in Arizona.

Because anyone can grab the same name, on a different platform.

  • Meldrik@lemmy.wtf
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    3 months ago
    • Take picture of proof you are Tom Hanks
    • post picture on Lemmy
    • Pin it to the top on your profile (once that feature exist)
    • ???
    • profit!

    Either way, celebrities will probably never use Lemmy or other social media unless it goes mainstream.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It should work the same as email: you can trust it’s them if the user account is hosted on their own site, or their employer’s, or if they link to it from another confirmed source.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      3 months ago

      Yep. Also, aren’t there already celebrities on Mastodon? I know George Takei is. Granted, you’d have to know he was @mastodon.social versus mstdn.social so that could complicate things for those unfamiliar with the platform.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      3 months ago

      One good thing IMO about threads federating, that we get the celebrities, we know they’re verified, but I don’t have to join corpo social media.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      But look below in the comments. Can you even tell which of my comments came from Lemmy.World, and which comments didn’t? Some platforms will just show Lost_My_Mind. I can’t tell which platform @AbouBenAdhem is posting via. I just see AbouBenAdhem.

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I’m not familiar with every client, but on mine it only hides the domain for users on my own server. (Early email used to work exactly the same—you could send an email addressed to just a username with no tld and it would go to the user with that name on your own server by default.)

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          I’m just using a web browser that came with my phone. And if they were all hidden, it wouldn’t matter.

          You’d just register your username. And this would be good for all the fediverse platforms. Once you register your innitial name, only you could register other services under that name. So it’s always you. Even if you never register for a service, you registered the name.

          Then, if you register a new service, even years later, you still have your name.

            • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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              3 months ago

              Because it’s not centralized. Every platform/instance just uses the same protocols. Any that try to go against that get defederated by all instances.

              • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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                3 months ago

                Any that try to go against that

                How do you identify them? Lemm.ee registers Tom Hanks, does every other instance have to check what information they provided to trust them?

                What prevents someone to bribe a small instance to register a celebrity username on their instance?

        • Dr. Jordan B. Peterson@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Well, to begin with, let’s consider the lobster, which is a remarkable creature—remarkable not only for its physical structure but for what it represents in terms of hierarchical behavior, and in that regard, it becomes a fascinating lens through which we can understand something as intricate and contemporary as the cult of celebrity in modern society. Now, stay with me here because it may seem like a stretch at first, but I assure you the connection between these primordial crustaceans and the modern fixation on fame is anything but superficial. In fact, it cuts to the very heart of human nature and the evolutionary patterns that govern us.

          Lobsters, as you may well know, have existed in their current form for over 350 million years. That’s older than the dinosaurs, older than trees, and certainly older than any social media platform or film studio. These creatures have survived through the ages, not by being passive, but by adapting, evolving, and competing within a well-established social hierarchy. They engage in fierce dominance battles, and from those battles, hierarchies are formed. The dominant lobster is more likely to mate, more likely to secure the best resources, and—this is key—more likely to succeed. Sound familiar?

          Now, let’s leap from the seafloor to modern society. Humans, just like lobsters, are wired to respond to hierarchies. It’s not something we’ve constructed recently; it’s a fundamental part of our biology. We evolved within hierarchical structures, whether in small tribes or large civilizations. In many ways, we’re still those ancient, status-seeking creatures, but instead of fighting over resources at the bottom of the ocean, we’re jockeying for social recognition in our workplaces, our communities, and—here’s where it gets interesting—within the celebrity culture.

          Now, why is that? Why do we elevate certain people to celebrity status and obsess over them? It’s because we’ve evolved to look up to those who seem to represent success within our hierarchy. Celebrities, by virtue of their fame, wealth, or skill, appear to occupy the top rungs of the social ladder. They become, in a sense, the dominant lobsters in our cultural ocean. But here’s the problem: unlike lobsters, whose hierarchies are based on tangible outcomes—who can fight, who can mate, who can survive—our celebrity culture is often based on something far more superficial: visibility, not competence.

          Think about it. In today’s world, you don’t have to be particularly skilled or intelligent to become a celebrity. You don’t even have to provide any real value to society. Often, it’s simply a matter of being seen, of being talked about, of being placed on a pedestal. And what does that do to us, as individuals and as a society? Well, it distorts our sense of what is truly valuable. We start to elevate people who, in many cases, are not worthy of that elevation, and we undermine the natural hierarchy that should be based on merit, on contribution, on real competence.

          This is where the cult of celebrity becomes toxic. In a healthy society, we should aspire to be like those who have demonstrated genuine ability, resilience, and virtue—qualities that, in an evolutionary sense, help the tribe or the group survive and thrive. But when we fixate on fame for fame’s sake, we create a kind of feedback loop of superficiality. We idolize people who, in many cases, are more fragile than the structures they’ve been elevated to. They become the hollow shells of dominant lobsters—creatures who have risen to the top not by strength, not by merit, but by the capricious winds of public attention.

          This has real consequences. Young people, for example, grow up in a world where they’re bombarded with images of these so-called “dominant” figures. They’re told, implicitly, that the path to success is not through hard work, not through building something meaningful, but through the accumulation of attention. And that’s corrosive. It erodes our individual sense of purpose. It pulls us away from the things that actually matter: our relationships, our communities, our personal development.

          Now, consider the lobster once again. In the natural world, when a lobster loses a fight and drops in the hierarchy, it doesn’t spiral into depression because it lost its Twitter followers. It doesn’t collapse under the weight of shame because it was de-platformed from some ephemeral stage. No, it resets its serotonin levels, re-calibrates its sense of place, and starts anew. But what happens to us when we buy into the cult of celebrity and we inevitably fail to live up to those impossible standards? We become disillusioned, resentful, and anxious because we’re measuring our self-worth against a false and fleeting ideal.

          In a way, the cult of celebrity is a distorted reflection of the natural hierarchy that we’ve evolved within for millions of years. But instead of basing our hierarchy on real competence, on the ability to solve problems and contribute meaningfully, we’ve allowed it to be hijacked by the shallow pursuit of fame. And this is dangerous because it not only distorts our individual sense of self-worth but also undermines the values that should guide society as a whole. It’s as if we’ve allowed ourselves to worship false gods, gods made not of substance but of glitter and distraction.

          So, what do we do about this? Well, the first thing is to clean up our own lives. Just as the lobster recalibrates itself after a defeat, we too must recalibrate our sense of value and purpose. We need to recognize that real success is not measured in likes or followers but in the tangible impact we have on the world around us. And we need to be very cautious about whom we elevate to positions of prominence in our culture because when we elevate the wrong people, we’re not just distorting our own lives; we’re distorting the entire structure of society.

          In conclusion, the cult of celebrity is a toxic inversion of the natural, competence-based hierarchies that have guided us for millions of years, just as lobsters have thrived through their dominance hierarchies. If we are to resist this toxicity, we must first recognize it for what it is: a distraction from the things that truly matter. And then, we must do the difficult work of re-centering our values, of finding meaning in real accomplishments, and of ascending the hierarchy—not through fame or notoriety, but through competence, courage, and responsibility.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      Because with celebrities come fanbases.

      Imagine if whoever the new hot artist is put out their next music video exclusively on Peer-Tube.

      Suddenly millions of people would be using peer-tube. Then they’d ask “what is the fediverse?”

      If you want to keep the fediverse small and isolated, go stay on hexbear, or whatever that one isolated instance is.

      I would rather every single human be using the fediverse.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      The other night 337K people all registered to vote, simply because Taylor Swift sent one message on instagram.

      People come to the platforms FOR the celebrities. And that’s just ONE celebrity. The more celebrities on the platform, the more fanbases come with it.

      But celebrities are picky. If they think something will hurt their image, they won’t do it. Even if theres minimal chance it hurts their image. They have to be protective.

      So they need assurance that when they post something, there’s zero chance someone else could be posting “as them”. Ironically enough, that was the original purpose of twitters blue checkmark.

      • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Fuck the celebrities. They aren’t your people, peers, or friends. They adopt platforms only when they determine they can make a buck from it. They’re the kids that break your new toys, and you’re suggesting we keep inviting them over to play.

        They will only bring enshittification. Having a platform that isn’t celebrity friendly is a boon.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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          With the celebrities come their followers. Which is like 97% of the world. I’m trying to get that 97% to adopt the fediverse.

          But they don’t come on their own. They go where their celebrities go. The celebrities bring content for their followers to consume.

          • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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            3 months ago

            You’re arguing quantity over quality. I do not care the least for bootstrapped growth at the detriment of the platform. I also do not care about people who idolize and platform hop in order to follow celebrities. I suspect very few will bring with them value beyond increased traffic.

            If you want this, Reddit is still an option available to you.

            • rglullis@communick.news
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              3 months ago

              Quantity is quality, if you have good filters in place.

              I never understood people that argue something is bad by looking at the median case. The problem of Reddit, Twitter and Facebook is not due to the amount of people they have, and they were absolutely fine until they tried to exploit their userbases.

              (Aside for @blaze@feddit.org: see what I mean about Fedi’s anti-growth and reactionary culture? Our friend here is not an isolated case)

              • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.org
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                3 months ago

                Aside for @blaze@feddit.org: see what I mean about Fedi’s anti-growth and reactionary culture? Our friend here is not an isolated case

                It’s more against having celebrities and their followers coming here en masse, which I get.

                I’ve still seen a few comments mentioning “organic grow” which seems indeed healthier

                • rglullis@communick.news
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                  3 months ago

                  “oh, I want it to grow, I just don’t it want to grow with people that I don’t like”

                  You can dress it however you want, it’s still elitist, reactionary and exclusive.

            • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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              3 months ago

              Right now Lemmy has something like 16K users, and a few hundred instances. Most of which are small instances hosting less than 10 users.

              What I’m suggesting is a few hundred thousand instances, with millions of users, if not billions.

              And I assume the instances would face a point where they need organization. So certain instances start hosting certain types of content.

              So if you personally don’t want to read on home and garden topics, you don’t read those instances. That’s what I’m suggesting. If you want to stick to your small corner of the fediverse, you do that.

              What you’re suggesting is that the fediverse never expand beyond the people you deem worthy of contributing content.

              I tried to give peer-tube a chance. None of my youtube creators are producing content on peer-tube. I gave up when every single instance I found was just linux content.

              With more celebrities bring more content. With more content brings more users. With more users brings more communities, and more niches.

              I’m trying to bring down reddit, and instagram, and youtube, and twitter, and everything else thats considered social media. In its place, social media will default to the fediverse.

              You on the other hand are trying to keep the fediverse from growing.

              • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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                3 months ago

                None of my youtube creators are producing content on peer-tube.

                That’s probably more of a monetization issue than anything related to peertube. If your job is making Youtube videos, then at least some portion of your income is AdSense. Sure, it’s not what it was, but at scale it’s not nothing, and the peertube alternative is… $0.

                (Also, for the non-commercial ones or the ones that are funded outside of Youtube, maybe ask if they’ll use Peertube. I’ve had luck with a couple of people I watched being willing to upload to multiple platforms, but you don’t know if you don’t ask.)

                • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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                  3 months ago

                  I can’t ask, because years ago I watched a video on twitter. It was funny. I tweeted “That killed me”.

                  I was banned for inciting death threats by an automod.

                  They’ve never heard of mastodon.

                  And unless I just have no idea where it is, youtube doesn’t seem to have a direct messaging system. Everything these days is twitter.

                  So I’m trying to change that.

              • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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                3 months ago

                You’re right. I see no more intrinsic value in having 1mil users, versus 15k. And nothing you can say is likely to convince me that quantity determines or makes for a valuable platform. We’ve seen the growth mentality and resulting corporate greed destroy numerous platforms already.

                • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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                  3 months ago

                  Except in this case, there can be no corporate green to destroy the fediverse. They can build and destroy their own instance, and their own communities…but the very nature of the fediverse is that it scales well, and it CAN’T be owned. So growth can only help. Temporarily it may crash the servers with more traffic than it can handle, but more instances and servers will be added, and the userbase will spread out.

          • Darth_Mew@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            celebrities and their cult need to be culled. we don’t want swiftys here lame losers listening to some 40 something year old singing about heartbreak. grow up

      • Mathieu :mastodon:@h4.io
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        @Lost_My_Mind let’s be honest, 99% of celebrities will use threads unless there’s a more popular and better designed activitypub alternative (spoiler: it wont happen for YEARS), so accounts will be centralized for 98% of people and the question about username is for now useless

  • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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    We decided to not host any sort of Buy-Sell-Trade community on our hobby instance for this reason. It’s a small community so a lot of people know usernames of people they know and can trust. It’s very easy for a scammer to use someone’s username and say “I’ll sell you that thing! Send me $150!”.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      I’m on MBin. Your username is displayed as: walden. I can mouse over that to learn that your full username is @walden@sub.wetshaving.social.

      This is the same thing as email domain names and display names. Yes, scammers still exploit that, too, but for the most part, people have gotten used to also looking at the actual full email address, and not just the display name or mailbox name. The same can happen here.

      Still, I would much prefer if the default view here showed the full username and not just the display name.

      • subignition@fedia.io
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        There is an issue on the Mbin repo asking for that as an option if you are or know a developer with free time

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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    Well, what’s stopping someone else from adopting TomHanks@Lemm.ee?

    There’s over 1400 people solely in the US named Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks The Celebrity does not get patent rights or trademarks or copyrights on the name.

    Wanna know which is the Tom Hanks The Celebrity? Check if their profile is authenticated against their personal website, à-la-Mastodon.

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Discord and email worked for a long time with needing something extra after the name. Why would the fediverse be different?

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    What’s stopping that same 7 year old taking TomHanks@Lemmy.World before the real Tom Hanks even knows about Lemmy?

    It’s not the lack of unique usernames that’s a problem. It’s the lack of identity verification. Which, I mean, understandably is lacking because it’s not like there are high profile people making accounts here. Well, except of course for Margot Robbie.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      If “TomHanks” is his username on every other service, like twitter, and youtube, and tiktok, and instagram, then he would want to use it when he comes to the fediverse. Now, if only ONE person can have the username TomHanks (and it just so happens to be @Lemmy.World), then he could send a cease and disist letter, and if that doesn’t work, a lawsuit. Madonna did it in the 90s with Madonna.com.

      However, if TomHanks@Lemmy.World can exist, and TomHanks@Lemm.ee can exist, and TomHanks@piefed.social can exist and…and…and…then it gets a little impossible for him to really own that username, because it can be duplicated on an infinate amount of instances, some that may not even exist when he shows up to the fediverse.

      But if only one instance can have TomHanks, than he could absolutely show courts he’s had a vested interest and usership of that identity and thus that’s HIS username. Even on services he’s never signed up for. Like if he doesn’t have an instagram account at all, but someone else starts using TomHanks on instagram, he can take it to the courts that they are not allowed to do that, because that’s his username.

      But the way the fediverse is currently set up right now, that’s not feasible. Because he could enter a court battle with TomHanks@Lemm.ee, and then 5 more instances with his username popup. And eventually it becomes harder and harder to prove that people know his ownership of that username if there’s 500 other people also using the same username. It’s the reason you can’t email celebrities. They can’t control their presence in email, so they don’t use that as their identity.

  • vamp07@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I see this as a benefit. Generally speaking celebrity posts are the most useless threads on most platforms.