@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.
@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.