@keithpp @CobaltVelvet I don't think it's any more fatal than the fact there are lots of John Smiths in one town or another. At least here there is only one per town (instance). People deal with that fine in real life, why not online. This also remove the feeling we need to have a globally unique handle for everyone to know us. That's not feasible with 7 billion people. When you see post from the truncated name you can then click their id to see the instance. It's a natural thing to me.
@rateldajer @CobaltVelvet Please read and comprehend. I actually address what yoiu say re many with the name John Smith. But if we have an ID on this network, eg @keithpp and no one is going to look beyond that, then it has to be unique across the network as @keithpp not required where registered. It may be a natural thing for techies, not for the average user.
@keithpp @rateldajer It's confusing because we're used to Twitter, but everyone got used to e-mail addresses. We're used to copy-paste them and check them.
@CobaltVelvet @rateldajer No, not the same as e-mail, though I agree appears superficially so. To have any utility, and I make the point, this is a network, not isolated islands with weak links, @keithpp has to function across the network with no additional qualifier. The e-mail analogy is flawed because that is across the internet, not a specific network.
@keithpp @rateldajer I'm not sure what you're implying, but SMTP is indeed across the Internet working on many compatible servers in the exact same way Mastodon is.
Protocols are very alike, architecture is the same.
@keithpp @rateldajer You can always write @ keithpp @ octodon . social if you prefer, it will always work. It's only on the same instance that you can drop the second part (which also works with e-mail, it's just very rarely done because we're used to the full format)
@keithpp @rateldajer and if you're talking about instance blacklists, it is also still the same with e-mail, we're commonly blocking most of the Internet because of spam. Some providers are extremely strict and require very specific conditions to accept e-mail from an ISP or country, and it's very common to share e-mail IP blacklists.
@CobaltVelvet @rateldajer I have made no mention of blacklists
@keithpp @CobaltVelvet @rateldajer there is NO network as a whole as you think. there is a bunch of DISTINCTS servers, talking to other servers (with the same language), dispatching messages from their respective users to other server's users. exactly as email servers are working for +50 years. packaging is more pretty, that's all.
@keithpp @rateldajer Now I have deep technical understanding of both protocols and yes, I can assure you both are across the same kind of networks.