Re: Standardizing the printed and HTML version of a an ActivityPub handle

Hi Johannes and everyone,

This has been a good discussion, and I wasn't going to chime in, but I
feel that someone should make the case for eventually standardizing on
simple domains and subdomains for handles. I bring this up because it
could influence what the answer to Johannes's question is.

Right now, the clear convention is Mastodon / WebFinger-style handles:

@manton@example.com

There are two problems with this: it looks like an email address, even
with the "@" prefix, and it implies identity is usually tied to a server
that someone else is running. There is no natural progression for solo
instances in the way there is with subdomain → domain name .

I would love to see a gradual transition to:

@manton.example.com

And simply:

@manton.org

This is obviously a big change and won't happen soon, but I think it's
worth working toward. There have been proposals to map it in a
compatible way with existing software too, e.g. special names with an
underscore like ?resource=acct:_@manton.example.com. ActivityPub itself
wouldn't need any changes.

I don't see how we'll ever get to a universal social web identifier —
one where you could put a single handle on a business card and it works
across blogs, the fediverse, atmosphere, etc. — without doing this.

— Manton

On September 16, 2025, Johannes Ernst <johannes.ernst@dazzlelabs.net>
wrote:
> During registration for FediForum (which is coming up again, by the
> way!) we are asking people for their social web handles:
>
> Here is a selection of what they give us when they probably mean
> ActivityPub
>
> @foo@bar
> AP: @foo@bar
> <https://bar/@foo>
> foo@bar
> foo (???)
> acct:foo@bar
>
> Is it time to define a canonical version?
>
> Perhaps there could also be a canonical, clickable HTML version.
>
> Just a thought.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
>
> Johannes.