Does decentralization mean people on other instances can sign up with the same @ username? Can I move @potentato to another instance?
@StephenReid that seems like potentially a problem to me, I can imagine impersonation being an issue. But I could just not "get it" yet?
@potentato Yeah, I mean... it'd be easy to maliciously impersonate someone, at least superficially. Of course that happens on Twitter (see: all the Trump parody accounts with just one letter different in handle).
@potentato It'd be practically impossible to get your username on every instance, basically.
@StephenReid well yeah, that's kinda the point though, I don't want to have to sign up on more than one instance, just to keep my digital *me* secure. Not that I'm worried about people impersonating my nobody ass, but still
@potentato Yep. It's an issue. A weird one to crack, too. Especially as no-one is really in 'charge'. :D
@potentato Curious about this myself. Seems strange that the user name would not be reserved across network.
@potentato I signed up with the same username on 2 instances FWIW
@potentato I was actually curious about this too. And can a person read across all instances at once?
Like can I follow @user@instance and @user2@instance2 and read both in the same timeline?
@Pixxella the federated timeline would let you read both, yes.
@potentato @Pixxella I wonder, what's the point in tweeting/tooting anyway. We could get back to running blogs and publish blogrolls (or not, privacy and the such). The perfect decentralization.
@potentato (1) yes, but their username would be @username@instance (2) don't think so, but you could create it... then again maybe there are export/import settings?