zlacker

> This is why mastodon , webfinger and ACME uss .well-known uri prefix

This is not how Mastodon does verification (at least not the main method). Mastodon doesn't just link users -> domain. It can link user -> webpage, for example to link social profiles between sites.

If you have a website with user generated content, and a user can set an arbitrary html attribute (rel="me") in a link pointing back to their profile, they can claim ownership of the page on Mastodon. Likewise, if they can set a link tag in the head element of the page for some reason.

Presumably this is somewhat harder to exploit than a (new, poorly thought out) dependency on a static file under /xrpc, but Mastodon does introduce more authentication footguns for sites than just .well-known! https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification

Edit: authentication -> verification, since Mastodon distinguishes between the two (see below)

>>bscphi+(OP)
Neither of these are 'authentication'

You're thinking of how Mastodon does verified links. You could do something similar, provide a verified link on your profile to a file in an S3 bucket, but there's very utility (or risk) in that.

Mastodon also allows you to be discoverable via a custom domain, using .well-known as parent mentioned https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/webfinger/ https://www.hanselman.com/blog/use-your-own-user-domain-for-...

>>madeof+14
I'm thinking, mainly, of how these features are exposed in the UI and how users experience it. What matters is that users take (rightly or wrongly) a verified profile link to mean "I control this webpage". So e.g. if you could verify a Twitter handle on Mastodon, it would mean "if you trust the identity of this Twitter handle, you should also trust the validity of this Mastodon user". That's extremely important to get right no matter what you call it.

I'm not sure what Bluesky was attempting to do here but what they achieved in practice was allowing a user to claim control of a domain by claiming control of a page. But if you allow user generated content on the home page of your site, there's not a distinction (from a Mastodon user point of view) between the two. It's effectively the same problem if I can "verify" yourdomain.com on Mastodon - and my point is that you can do that without using .well-known.

>>bscphi+D7
> But if you allow user generated content on the home page of your site, there's not a distinction (from a Mastodon user point of view) between the two.

If you allow UGC with *arbitrary HTML* or explicitly support generating rel=me. Both are you explicitly giving someone control of the site (or at least letting them claim they have it).