@rudolf Right, sharing the profile URL is always an option. ;)

What I am trying to avoid, though, is ending up on a web page of a #Mastodon instance that is not one's own, perhaps even on a device where Mastodon's web interface isn't used at all, and then having to either sign in or still copy&paste some URL to follow someone.

Just providing an acct URI like this would solve this nicely, I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acct_URI_scheme

#acctURI

2/

#acctURI has a way of representing user accounts on other hosts — sort of similar to the #fingerProtocol

For example —

acct:reiver%40mastodon.social@calckey.social

(Notice that the "@" in "reiver@mastodon.social" gets percent-encoded as "%40".)

#WebFinger uses acct-URIs.

And the #Fediverse used WebFinger.

This is how you could represent a user on one Fediverse instance being used on another Fediverse instance without necessarily having to create a new account.

1/

Why can't I use my #Fediverse user account from one instance on other instances‽ Why do I have to create a new user account everywhere‽

For example, why can't I use @reiver on calckey.social ‽ Why do I have to create a new account on, for example, calckey.social ‽

I might not have to —

There are 2 technologies that the Fediverse uses (other than #ActivityPub ) that could make this possible — #acctURI & #webFinger

I'll explain —

A #URI type for #Ed25519 public-keys might be useful.

Maybe something like:

id:ed25519:hex.f034e38aae519cbf34c29a755f08b27ffb8175a9863405ebe572b18b65ec7fd9

(With a hexadecimal encoding.)

Which might be equivalent to

id:ed25519:b64.8DTjiq5RnL80wpp1Xwiyf_uBdamGNAXr5XKxi2Xsf9k

(With a base64url encoding.)

That way you could use it as a personal ID, in many contexts.

(I suppose this is a bit like the #acctURI )