Conversation

Notices

Embed this notice
mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 12:15:51 JST mcc

Consider a Mastodon/Fediverse handle, like @username@domain.example . What kinds of restrictions are there on "username"? Can I assume any valid unicode could go in there?

In conversation about 3 months ago from mastodon.social permalink
- Embed this notice
  Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 12:15:51 JST Evan Prodromou
  in reply to
  
  @mcc unfortunately, it's very restrictive. It feels like a huge opportunity for us to reach the majority of people on the planet who use non-Latin characters for their names, but the network right now is mostly Latin.
  https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink
  Attachments
  1. No result found on File_thumbnail lookup.
    
    ActivityPub and WebFinger
    
    Identifiers in ActivityPub tend to be HTTPS URIs. The use of WebFinger (as defined in [RFC7033]) allows for discovery of an actor's identifier given a username and a hostname, which may be more socially salient or otherwise easier to communicate across various contexts and media. The username and hostname are resolved at the WebFinger endpoint of the hostname in order to discover a link to an actor associated with the user's account, and that actor similarly can be back-linked to the username and hostname.
- Embed this notice
  Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 12:19:49 JST Evan Prodromou
  in reply to
  - Julian Fietkau
  @julian @mcc it's a good discussion!
  
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink
- Embed this notice
  Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Feb-2026 12:19:53 JST Julian Fietkau
  in reply to
  
  @mcc In practice, it varies a lot. In theory, I have seen different people come to different conclusions based on the RFCs involved.
  Related discussion:
  https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-webfinger/issues/9
  https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/internationalise-the-fediverse/
  In conversation about 3 months ago permalink
  Attachments
  1. Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: shkspr.mobi
    
    Internationalise The Fediverse
    
    from @edent
    
    We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use [...]
  2. Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: opengraph.githubassets.com
    
    Allowed characters in preferredUsername · Issue #9 · swicg/activitypub-webfinger
    
    How does the acct: URI format constrain the structure of preferredUsername? https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7565.html#section-7

Public

Conversation

Notices

Feeds