I was recently approached by a user claiming to be the developer of Sync for Lemmy who wanted to be a moderator of the community I created, !syncforlemmy.

I was able to verify this user was indeed LJ Dawson as I knew where to contact him on Discord.

It is quite possible that an impostor user on another instance may be created, for example ljdawson@beehaw.org could easily be made.

Should Lemmy have a verified user marker for members who are of importance to any given community? Are there any other options to protect users against nefarious persons playing impostor?

  • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Unless the Lemmy devs create their own app, the vast majority of users are going to use third party apps like mlem and Memmy.

    So it’s still a problem with the platform if the username databases for instances don’t validate against each other to prevent reuse and impersonation.