"As the social media landscape ebbs and flows, the team at BBC Research & Development are researching social technologies and exploring possibilities for the BBC. One part of our work is to establish a BBC presence in the distributed collection of social networks known as the Fediverse, a collection of social media applications all linked together by common protocols. The most common software used in this area is Mastodon, a Twitter-like social networking service with around 2 million active monthly users. We are now running an experimental BBC Mastodon server at https://social.bbc where you can follow some of the BBC’s social media accounts, including BBC R&D, Radio 4 and 5 Live. We hope to be able to add more accounts from other areas of the BBC at some point."

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[–] Kushi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's true, but to be honest there's already a pretty good verification system on Mastodon, even if you don't host your own instance.

[–] breakfastmtn@geddit.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes and no. And verifying by domain is better, especially for people who are likely to be impersonated (ex. Journalists).

Rel="me" doesn't actually verify a user's identity, it verifies that a user has a relationship with a website. The problem is that you need to leave Mastodon to make sure that the website actually verifies their identity. I've verified a connection between a Mastodon and Pixelfed account, for example, but it doesn't tell you anything about who I am. It's also much easier to spoof a website than it is to get the BBC to give you an account on their private instance.

It really works great the other way though! If you have a known identity here, you can be sure that the linked sites are legit.