I love that we can have screen names as well as the unique account username, but I'm wondering: if I look at a comment thread containing two people using the same display name (in the worst case, where one is trying to impersonate the other) is there a clear indicator to see that Person A is not Person B?

In discord this used to be done with the four digit number after the display name, but that doesn't seem to be a thing here, and so far as I can tell it's not displaying my account name on my comments and posts.

I worry that, as Lemmy grows, perhaps an issue with impersonators could develop if distinguishing between different users with the same display name requires checking their account pages, since most people won't check. But maybe I'm missing something?

To be clear, I'm not remotely arguing for getting rid of the display names. I love the display names, keep the display names. Especially when I'm just imagining a hypothetical future problem that may not even turn out to be much of a problem.

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[–] mifuyne 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You asked for it 🙃 but I'm curious too! So far, I just hover over the usernames and check the link, but a more visible mark would be good! Something like what Calckey does, where on the right side, you can see a symbol and the name of the instance they came from.

[–] Lowbird 4 points 1 year ago

Haha, thank you! xD

Good to know I can hover my mouse over the usernames, that does help a little. But yeah, something like you say would be good. And/or maybe something like having every person using the same username within a thread show up as a different color, or with a little number tag automatically appended after the name.