@Gargron @atomicpoet I think the whole problem resolves around presenting yourself as a major authority for these verifications. But I may be missing something as I haven't studied the issue properly.

@Gargron The problem is that they're trying to establish a centralized authority for account verification.

And yeah, nobody is forced to trust those links -- and I won't.

@Gargron @atomicpoet I think this speaks to wider issues which are going to repeat re governance. Servers should be free to decide which services they trust, and requiring a centralised source of truth for anything isn’t compatible with federation. The cause for concern for me would be if anyone operating a service like this starts to pressure code maintainers to integrate their service across all servers and whether governance is strong enough to resist this.

@Gargron @atomicpoet I think as long as it sits alongside other types of link, it's fair game. If they got to the point where huge numbers of people look to them as a trusted source, good for them. I don't see it as very different to, say, the Nobel Foundation having a links page where they validated the accounts of Laureates. Or indeed validating if someone owns a Twitter account based on link in bio. As long as we all have options then I don't think one type of validation will eat the others.