add rel=me support #1037

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untitaker wants to merge 1 commit from untitaker/rel-me into master

untitaker commented

2023-10-04 14:03:20 -04:00

(Migrated from github.com)

This is to support link verification in Mastodon.

Mastodon does not have any equivalent to Twitter's blue-tick, so if you
want to decorate your profile with some sense of authenticity, you can
verify your profile to be associated with a particular URL: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification

GitHub gained native support for this sort of verification sometime
between last November and now, and so when you have a bidirectional link
between your GitHub profile and Mastodon profile, the link to GitHub
will be green.

However, Twitter does not support rel=me, and is unlikely to.

With this change, one can link their profile in their Mastodon bio using
nitter.net/username, and for as long as their mastodon profile is linked
back in their Twitter's "URL" field, it will be verified.

There have been similar attempts with "trusted" proxy URLs in the past,
i.e. Twitter profile mirrors that are set up for the sole purpose of
supporting rel=me verification. Those proxies are however unknown to
most people, and the entire domain-based verification system kind of
breaks down if nobody knows whether the domain can be trusted.

People know nitter.net, however, and trust what is written on there to
match what is written on twitter.com¹

Who knows whether the same is true for the unofficial Nitter instances,
but I think one can ignore them for this purpose. Of course I can deploy
this fork today on nitter.woodland.cafe and then verify
@untitaker@woodland.cafe against nitter.woodland.cafe/untitaker, but
that's kind of pointless.

At the moment this is probably pointless to roll out though, because
nitter.net blocks a lot of datacenter ASNs due to intense scraping
efforts. So it would likely block all Mastodon servers.

Whether it is really known may be debatable, but of all Twitter
mirrors/proxies, I think nitter.net and maybe fxtwitter.com have the
highest domain reputation and the best chance at making this kind of
verification system work for Twitter. ↩︎

This is to support link verification in Mastodon. Mastodon does not have any equivalent to Twitter's blue-tick, so if you want to decorate your profile with some sense of authenticity, you can verify your profile to be associated with a particular URL: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification GitHub gained native support for this sort of verification sometime between last November and now, and so when you have a bidirectional link between your GitHub profile and Mastodon profile, the link to GitHub will be green. However, Twitter does not support rel=me, and is unlikely to. With this change, one can link their profile in their Mastodon bio using `nitter.net/username`, and for as long as their mastodon profile is linked back in their Twitter's "URL" field, it will be verified. There have been similar attempts with "trusted" proxy URLs in the past, i.e. Twitter profile mirrors that are set up for the sole purpose of supporting rel=me verification. Those proxies are however unknown to most people, and the entire domain-based verification system kind of breaks down if nobody knows whether the domain can be trusted. People know `nitter.net`, however, and trust what is written on there to match what is written on twitter.com[^1] Who knows whether the same is true for the unofficial Nitter instances, but I think one can ignore them for this purpose. Of course I can deploy this fork today on nitter.woodland.cafe and then verify `@untitaker@woodland.cafe` against `nitter.woodland.cafe/untitaker`, but that's kind of pointless. At the moment this is probably pointless to roll out though, because `nitter.net` blocks a lot of datacenter ASNs due to intense scraping efforts. So it would likely block all Mastodon servers. ---- [^1]: Whether it is really *known* may be debatable, but of all Twitter mirrors/proxies, I think nitter.net and maybe fxtwitter.com have the highest domain reputation and the best chance at making this kind of verification system work for Twitter.

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Checkout

From your project repository, check out a new branch and test the changes.

git fetch -u origin untitaker/rel-me:untitaker/rel-me

git switch untitaker/rel-me

Merge

Merge the changes and update on Forgejo.

Warning: The "Autodetect manual merge" setting is not enabled for this repository, you will have to mark this pull request as manually merged afterwards.

git switch master

git merge --no-ff untitaker/rel-me

git switch untitaker/rel-me

git rebase master

git switch master

git merge --ff-only untitaker/rel-me

git switch untitaker/rel-me

git rebase master

git switch master

git merge --no-ff untitaker/rel-me

git switch master

git merge --squash untitaker/rel-me