@lycaon I was thinking more something that would help an admin see at a glance the difference between two accounts, so they can make their own decision on what to do

@blackle the following stuff could possibly be faked?

@theoutrider this is true, thinking about it again I think that instead the admin should see both users side-by-side, so they can open the followers and following tabs themselves

@blackle the "similarity" could be displayed to admins as an easy thing tbh but I'm not sure what they could do with it

@blackle On the back end, for a system with robust banning and blocking, the admin should have access to more information than guesswork based on who an account follows. IP information, things like that.

Obviously there's a balance with privacy concerns. But with a foss project, even if the dev is resistant because of one ideological choice over another (privacy vs security) the possibility exists to fork and create a version with different features.

@blackle It's an interesting discussion though. Glad I saw your posts. :)

@bottitytto I mean, in order to impersonate someone you'd have to get a large majority of their followers to follow you, which wouldn't happen if the other is saying "that's not me"

@blackle But... then that discounts the people who selectively follow people, and who only verify followers (and in doing so, keep their follower count low).

@bottitytto I just realized I'm making the assumption that the "fake" account is the most recently made one, which won't always be true... hmmmm

@blackle Yeah... It is a very complex problem, isn't it? XD

@wire that would be like 2 factor, which I don't think should be mandatory (some people don't have phones, or don't want to give out their numbers)

@frankiesaxx I've heard from others who are very worried about the concept of being impersonated on other instances, so I'm weary of dismissing their concerns.

I suppose the most "tech" solution for discouraging impersonation is to integrate an identity verification system like keybase into mastodon

@blackle It's not a concern people are gonna stop raising, but it's not always based in reasonable understanding.

I've been seeing a few people who think of a username as personal brand territory that they're staking out and putting a fence around, and who don't understand someone else having similar on a different instance isn't impersonating and that frankie@social.tchncs.de is a totally different username than frankie@mastodon.social & that's a user education issue.

@frankiesaxx that's why there should be a report mechanism for that kinda thing, so a moderator can say "oh they're not impersonating, they just happen to have the same name as you" vs "they are definitely impersonating, they've copied your bio, avatar, and everything"

@blackle There is a report feature I think? Our admin on tchncs.de mentioned last night that 'similar user name' isn't something that needs reporting because people had been reporting it. Or maybe they emailed about it? Not sure. But definitely people are finding a way to report it. XD

@copiesofcopies that's a good point, there are replies in this thread where other people bring up a similar point (with my response)

@blackle whoops, whole thread hadn't loaded when I replied. I think more information is more better :)

@StreetWanderer that could work as an identity verification system. there are other responses in this thread where others bring up similar points which might be worth reading (including my own responses)

@Birch yeah! I've heard people bring up different ways to confirm identity and I think this is a good one