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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    2 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.

        • Dr. Jordan B. Peterson@lemmy.world
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          2 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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      2 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.

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

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

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    2 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.

    • 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.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 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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              2 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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                2 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?

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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        2 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.)

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      2 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.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      2 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.

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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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        2 months ago

        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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    2 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.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    2 months ago

    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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      2 months ago

      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.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Truthiness of a user should be determined with corroboration on 3rd party services.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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      Except no one will. If millions of people were on the fediverse, maybe 1% would confirm.

      We live in a world where people read the headline and believe it, but don’t even open the article.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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          But it would.

          Imagine Kamala Harris as president had a mastodon account. And somebody else made a duplicate Kamala Harris account. And this duplicate announced that the United States has gone to war with Russia.

          Except these media stations don’t know how the fediverse works. They don’t know what an instance is. They just see Kamala Harris on social media announcing war.

          And in media you HAVE to be the first to break the news story. So now you have every major news outlet confirming nuclear war, and the nation is panicing.

          Meanwhile, Harris is trying to figure out how this all started. And this whole thing maybe lasts 10-60 minutes before somebody notices the mistake. Then it takes time to correct themselves and calm everybody down.

          All over something that isn’t happening. All because people don’t check sources.

          Now this is an extreme example, but I could see it happening if the fediverse was bigger, under it’s current setup.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Or, all accounts in the driver’s are anonymous by nature, and if they need to be verified, they are verified on 3rd party sources.

                • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldOP
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                  2 months ago

                  Then people won’t sign up for it.

                  The fediverse as it stands right now is confusing enough as it is for new people. Now you’re saying you want to add in the chaos that comes from everybody being annonomous? They say that the internet, and trolling, and threats of violence are encouraged online because you’re annonomous. And now you want to highlight that feature on a service thats hard enough to grasp without nazis and death threats.

  • vamp07@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

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

  • Today@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I think it might be kind of nice to be Tom Hanks and have the name WilsonsOnlyFriend@lemmy.world and just chat and chill.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    2 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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    2 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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      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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        2 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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          2 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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            2 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