In the latter case, I think it might be feasible to prevent upvotes from being counted multiple times if the username is identical on different instances, since upvotes are public. Is there already a mechanism to do this?

Also, isn’t it much more common in the Fediverse than on central platforms for the same user to have multiple accounts with different usernames? This seems likely to me, if only because popular usernames may already be taken on a given instance. In this case it seems to me hardly possible to prevent double counting. I suppose this would only be possible if the different instances would log IP addresses and share this information with other instances. That doesn’t seem desirable to me at all, and probably wouldn’t be legal, at least in Europe, because of the GDPR. Are there other possibilities? Cookies?

Please excuse the maybe stupid questions - I’m new here and not very good at finding info on my own yet…

  • duringoverflow@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think it would be possible to keep a central database containing only the information which username has already been registered within the Fediverse - a bit like domain registrars. When a new user joins, the operators of an instance could look up whether the desired username is already occupied on another instance. This would certainly mean losing some autonomy, since the instances would no longer have sovereignty over available usernames. But I think it would be beneficial overall if usernames were only assigned once within the Fediverse.

    I don’t think this is realistic at all. It breaks the current philosophy of the fediverse where each instance can be both autonomous and federated. What would happen if for example an instance wanted to federate after they already had a couple accounts. Would they need to delete these users because the username exists? This is the reason that the second part (after the “@”) exists.

    Also look at the email. Ofcourse it is possible to have the same name with users in other email services. It would be very weird not to be allowed to get the yourname@yourfavoriteservice.com because the yourname@anotherservice.com already exists.

    What you are suggesting introduces and requires a central authority that would be responsible for that, but this again, breaks the philosophy of the fediverse itself.