Ohh, this is kinda neat, actually: Don't start a Mastodon instance for all journalists. Start a verification organization to vouch for journalists who can have an account anywhere. This slots right into any account.
Now, whether or not this particular organization is trustworthy and what a verification from them means... well, that's their thing to prove. But, I think the mechanism is the right shape.
@jalefkowit This thing hadn't quite occurred to me until I saw it just now, but now that I've seen it I totally agree!
Also, I'm not sure what the "front door" of the fediverse should look like to onboard new folks.
But, this whole notion of "pick an interest" as a filter is really, really not working out IMO. It's giving entirely the wrong expectations to folks wandering in.
@anji @jalefkowit Oh, PressCheck uses the built-in verification system in Mastodon. You get a rel="me" link to a profile over there, saying that you're verified by that organization.
The worth in that, I think, is if folks end up trusting & valuing PressCheck's process and values for vouching.
@simeon I think that's true too. There should be lots of angles on verification. Like badges or diplomas. You could have a PressCheck verification that conveys whatever their values are, but also an organization-member verification to convey that value too
Also, like, what if verified link in profile but actually it's a web ring? (Someone has to have already come up with this.)
@stefan Yeah, that would be useful too. You can have multiple verified links on your profile, so that can just be one important link of many
@rafial Yeah, I feel like what the front door needs to be is more or less a load balancer fronting a bunch of generic instances. Not at all a "Hey, these are just like subreddits" concept
Dang it. Now my ADHD random hyperfocus ass brain wants to build a fediverse verified profile web ring service this weekend and that's probably a big mistake
@stephtara These are words of wisdom that I rarely heed 😅
@kejames Oh heck yeah
@george That's rather neato!
:ohno: now I even have an idea of how to do it:
A fully static site generator. Profiles listed in a CSV file, just like what Mastodon exports.
Generate individual pages for each vouched profile with rel="me" link back to fediverse profile. Use something like stork or tinysearch for search without a backend server.
Use some JSON & JS to implement webring-style random shuffle and prev/next wandering.
Build the thing with github actions, host it on github pages. Make it easy to move somewhere like Cloudflare Pages or Glitch or AWS S3 or wherever static pages work.
@slothrop This is the only blockchain I support, pal
@galaxis Once upon a time, probably around Christmas, I discovered that I could do FTP-by-email. And also email-by-FidoNet. And also that there was a big collection of Amiga software available via FTP.
So I requested a bunch of files via FTP-by-email-by-FidoNet and very soon after lost my account on that BBS. (I think I was 15 years old at the time)
@lori I was kinda meh on Pokemon Shield, trying to decide if I feel like giving the new ones a try
@ozten Technically, it means a pair of mutual links between your fediverse profile here and some other page on the web.
Notionally, yeah, it could signify you have control over other accounts. Like I self-verified with lmorchard.com
Could also signify that some organization assigns you some role or status by linking to you - and that you agree with that assignment by linking back to them.
You can have lots of those on a Mastodon profile, and a mutual link with a rel="me" attribute causes the green check to appear.
(sudden intrusive thought: i wonder what a blockchain trebuchet would do to a helicopter?)
@yojimbo I kind of wish we had a way to map out the fediverse and visualize the enclaves and such. Though also that could be fraught because some folks would turn that into a battle map
To bring a random thought from :birdsite:: If I had $44 billion lying around, I'd cover the deserts in mirrors and molten salt like a supervillain to harness the cosmic horror energies of the incomprehensibly ancient nuclear fusion fireball hanging in the sky
Like, $44 billion probably goes less far than I'd like to imagine, but I think it could buy a lot of mirrors and molten salt turbines
But, like, for $44 billion I could probably string solar turbines around the globe so when morons are like "durrr what happens when the sun goes down" I could be like "THE SUN NEVER SETS ON THIS PROJECT" and then tweak a few mirrors to vaporize them
@spottyfox I mean sometimes I just stand in front of the fridge and shove lunch meat in my face for dinner, so kudos on your achievement
