WeirdAlex03

Huh. I know Masto doesn’t do Markdown formatting, but I think that would’ve worked here. I guess escaping that does make more sense though

The three -verse terms I’ve heard in use are:

• Fediverse: All the (ActivityPub-based) federated services with at least some degree of interoperability between each other
• Threadiverse: Subset of fediverse focused on threads-based discussion, like link aggregation/forums-style (as opposed to i.e. microblogging)
• Lemmyverse: Subset of threadiverse specifically running Lemmy (as opposed to i.e. Kbin)

Tldr this isn’t really anything new for Mastodon. If you link to a website in your profile, you could verify you own that website (or are a representative of it, ie writer for news or a blog) by having that site link back to your profile with a special rel="me" attribute. The new thing is that Threads now also supports these links, so linking your Threads account on your Mastodon account can show you have verified that you own that Threads account. This also works with any other site that supports rel=me links for verification.

I agree with all y’all that Threads is EEE, but I think this particular feature is a really good thing and I’d love to see more sites implement this as a really simple way to cross-verify (ownership of) accounts

This isn’t entirely true. Verification on Mastodon isn’t verifying your account for a shiny badge, it’s verifying ownership of sites that you link on your profile. If you add a link to a website, and that website links back to your profile, Mastodon will show that one link as verified. But that link needs a special rel="me" attribute to count for verification, which is what Threads now supports.

I am absolutely sure Threads is an attempt at EEE, but this specific feature is a good thing imo. I’d love to see more sites support rel=me links for simple cross-platform account (ownership) verification

While I’m sure Threads as a whole is an attempt at EEE, I don’t think this is that big a deal. In fact, I’d like to see every other site support it, too

As the article mentions, verification on Mastodon is just verifying ownership of some links in your profile (not the entire account), which just checks the target site for a special link back to your profile (specifically adding the rel="me" attribute to it). Now when you add a link to your Threads profile, if it sees a rel=me link pointing back your Threads profile, it will add the rel=me on its end as well. Following the steps in the article, Mastodon will then see the rel=me attribute on the link to your profile there, and show the link as verified, just the same as if it saw any other rel=me link on any other site. And any other site that supports link verification the same way will also now be able to verify ownership of your Threads profile.

Using rel=me links like this is a great simple way to cross-verify all your other accounts and websites without needing to sign in or authorize any access. Just point the two sites at each other and violà!

That’s honestly one of my favorite parts of this, the Canadians were finally allowed to build their flag in peace.