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.

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    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.

  • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 months ago

    Tom@tomhanks.com

    A celebrity can host their own domain to prove authenticity.

    So what. On Xitter I can make an account called Tom.Hanks and get the blue mark by paying Elon. Because Tom Hanks has the username Tom_Hanks.

  • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    The fix for this is for the guilds and unions that represent these celebrities to spin up their own instances. The suffix of the username granting the legitimacy.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      It would solve the issue for people who look into it. But what if I registered AstralPath@Lemmy.World? I could pretend to be you. And because most people won’t check, I’d get away with it until people caught on.

      Now if you make your living off your public image, and I say horrible things, your career could take a hit. Even if nothing I said is true, and its proven it was never you.

      People will just remember “Hey, remember that time AstralPath admitted to having sex with their grandmother?”

      “No, that wasn’t actually them.”

      “Are you sure? I remember reading about it in (insert tabloid here)”.

      And suddenly you have a legit reason not to use a platform that easily ruins your career through no fault of your own.

      People will ALWAYS attempt to troll online for the memes. Remember Boaty McBoatface?

        • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          If it was widely known that outlook was the legitimate suffix, there’s no need to worry about this. If SAG-AFTRA had their own instance then any actor’s account username associated with it would carry the suffix chosen by SAG-AFTRA.

          TomHanks@sag-aftra.com for example.

          TomHanks@lemmy.ml would be instantly recognizable as illegitimate.

          This problem already exists in many different forms and is already managed well by the fact that celebrities’ real usernames are well known and bullshit posts from accounts trying to fake them are easily caught just by looking at the user name. There are plenty of parody accounts on X with very similar username formats. Is that a major problem for X users? Not from what I’ve seen.

        • A difference between kbin (and mbin?) vs lemmy (and pyfedi) - the former would show the entire name, including instance. If instance was not included, it was because it was local (so you could assume ‘@kbin.social’)

          On lemmy/pyfedi the name shows up alone - though you can hover over and see the instance name. But at a glance I can see how someone could get confused. Not the best UX IMHO.

  • 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.

      OP’s definitely got a point, though.

    • 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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      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?

                • If anything we want to encourage this.

                  I like the example of SAG AFTRA hosting their own instance to be official, for example. Celebs typically have their own domains and websites, so easy enough to hire a team to create and manage their own instance that supports the celeb but federates. And you know it’s legit just because it’s on the celeb’s own domain. Ditto for gov’t agencies having their own instances.

        • 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.

  • rglullis@communick.news
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    3 months ago

    If you are that famous or worried about trademark, you shouldn’t be using someone else’s server. Tom Hanks can just buy e.g tomhanks.actor domain and set up the @me@tomhanks.actor AP actor.

    I keep repeating this: the weird part is that we still have all these companies and institutions being okay with depending on someone else’s namespace. Having the NYT still announcing their Twitter or Instagram for social media presence is the same as using aol.com for their email.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    You seem to be under the impression that it’s good if this place grows explosively. It’s not. There’s no VC to pay back here (and thank fuckin god for that). There’s no ad revenue here (again, this is good).

    Also, not entirely sure what exactly to make of the weirdly targeted quip about a Chinese child, but spidey sense says it’s nothing good.

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 months ago

    That’s why she hosts her own domain, instead of sending half a million followers to some random fediverse instance.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      This solves the issues of having the same username across all platforms, assuming you host an instance for every platform you want to use. And also mske those domains private. But it doesn’t address that same username being used on another instance/domain.

      Like imagine someone had the usernsme Ada@someoffensivedomain.social and was impersonating you. If you made your living off your name, an imposter would affect your image.

      • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 months ago

        If I was making my living off of my name, I wouldn’t even know some random user with no followers from a troll domain exists.

        Whatever the reason celebs don’t take to the fediverse, this isn’t it…

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Reminds me of ICANN fucking up all the domain names.

    CocaCola.com CocaCola.new CocaCola.drink Cocacola.world CocaCola.bev

    Etc.

    Shameful. One thing that might work for the fediverse is federal institutions running their own Mastadon instances on .gov to move away from announcements on Twitter. You can’t fake .gov domains.

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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    3 months ago

    I’m not here for celebrities and they will always flock to centralized platforms anyways, since they are all about the views.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      they will always flock to centralized platforms anyways,

      I’m trying to change that.

      since they are all about the views.

      Which is why if we make the fediverse normalized for celebrities to host content, they can get more views here.

      I fully believe that this fediverse concept CAN be the future of the entire internet. Services that don’t even exist yet can integrate with the fediverse, and it can scale easily by it’s very nature. But there’s a LOT of rough edges that keep the normies away…for now.

      Right now, the fediverse is more than just decentralized. It’s fractured.

      Imagine posting an update on something, and it goes out to your mastodon, your Lemmy community, your pixelfed, and your peertube accounts. All at once. You wouldn’t follow services, you’d follow people.

      But we’d need all these services to integrate with each other nicely. And part of that would be making it so you don’t have 7 different accounts for 7 different services. You have 1 account, and sign up for each service under that account.

      All your notifications would go to the same place.

      Your identity would be your username. People would know if it’s your username, it’s you.

      • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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        3 months ago

        But people here don’t really care that much about celebrities being here and maybe not even their username being unique. Could probably be anon1, anon2, etc and it wouldn’t matter that much, since real identity is probably not a draw for them. Focus on regular people wanting the userbase to want to use fediverse rather than celebrities which is an off-putting first impression and point of sale for lot of people here.

        You need to pivot is what I’m saying to achieve what you want.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          But you need to get the celebrities here first FOR the regular userbase to follow. Which is the whole point of the post.

          It’s like those dog memes about the stick. “No take! Only throw!” Well, you have to take the stick first, THEN you can throw the stick.

          Well, you need the celebrities here first, THEN the regular userbase will come.

          So how do you get them here? Well first you make a list of every problem that would prevent a celebrity from coming here. Then iron out those rough edges first.

          I’ve already talked in other posts prior how the only way to grow the userbase is to be welcoming of people that you have no interest in interacting with. But it’s fine. Because they don’t want to interact with you either. It doesn’t matter though because you can be on /c/Linuxmemes, and they can be on /c/homeandgarden.

          And if Martha Stewart posted on /c/homeandgarden she’d bring her fanbase with her. And if Ozzy Osborn posted on /c/ozzybitesabat he’d bring his fanbase.

          And so on and so on with each new celebrity. Some of them have overlap, some don’t. But you’re bringing more people, who create more instances, and then niche communities can develop. You get more people posting more content. And the platform grows with more varied topics than just politics, technology and video games.

          Or you could ignore what the celebrities want, and google, and reddit, and instagram will always be the dominant platforms, while nobody will have ever heard of the fediverse.

          I’m trying to bring the current system down.

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

            “Celebrities” is quite a broad term.

            I guess most people here were thinking about people they don’t really share values with (let’s say reality tv influencers for instance). On the other hand, if someone like Keanu Reeves for instance would do an AMA here, I’m pretty sure everyone would be happy and thankful for them to put some light on the Fediverse