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Verification

Verification on Mastodon works less like Twitter and more like an identity service. That is, you do not need to prove your association with your own brand or to pay a fee, you are only showing that you are the owner of one (or more) accounts on separate services to substantiate your digital identity.

Here's what it looks like when a profile has verified via their GitHub identity:

Screenshot of profile for user quintessence, showing avatar, header and relevantly the verified GitHub URL field which is highlighted in green and has a green checkmark next to the URL.

GitHub shows as verified with a green checkmark and complete URL, including username / handle. (Note GitHub has different instructions than usual, more on that in a moment.)

How to verify

How to verify, in general

In general, when you verify you will do so by using the following HTML on the page you are editing, like a personal site or blog:

<a rel="me" href="https://hachyderm.io/@username">Hachyderm</a>

If you would like to avoid using a visible link, like the above, you can also put the following in the page headers:

<link rel="me" href="https://hachyderm.io/@username">

After doing either of the above, you will need to add the URL of the site to your Hachyderm / Mastodon profile. You will do that by:

  1. Go to Edit Profile
  2. In one of the four fields of Profile Metadata, add the URL of the destination you are verifying
  3. Save changes

Here is an example profile with two separate sources of identity verification:

Screenshot of profile for user Matty Stratton, used with permission, showing two sources of URL verification. One is his own website, mattstratton.com and the other is his Keyoxide account. Both are highlighted in green with green checkmarks next to the URL to show they are verified.

GitHub - Workarounds

Your GitHub Profile

Updated with new information

There are two ways to verify your GitHub. Both of these differ from the regular verification instructions above.

First Option: Profile Bio Field

Note: This method will not work if your Hachyderm username matches your, or anyone's, GitHub username, because GitHub will turn the username into a link, breaking the verification process.

  1. Add your full Hachyderm / Mastodon username to your GitHub bio.
  2. Save changes.

It looks like this:

Screenshot GitHub profile edit page with @username@hachyderm.io in in the bio field

Second Option: Website in Profile1

  1. Add your Hachyderm / Mastodon URL to the website field of your GitHub profile, e.g. https://hachyderm.io/@username
    • Note: You should not include "rel=me" for GitHub verification / use raw HTML
  2. Save changes.

It looks like this:

Screenshot GitHub profile edit page with https://hachyderm.io/@username in the website field

Note: In order for this to work this MUST be sit in the profile web link under your profile picture. This field will automatically add the required rel=me tag to your URL, whereas the other locations will strip the tags automatically. You cannot embed the URL in a README on your profile page.

Unfortunately you will not be able to post another URL in the website location; even though hachyderm.io will continue to show you as verified, other instances will do their own verification check when users on those instances view your profile.

On Hachyderm / Mastodon

Whichever of the above you choose, after you have saved your changes go to your Hachyderm / Mastodon account and:

  1. Go to Edit Profile
  2. In one of the four fields of Profile Metadata, add the URL to your GitHub account, e.g. https://github.com/username
  3. Save changes.

Verification should appear almost instantaneously.

Please note that this only applies to personal GitHub profiles. Currently, there is no way to verify organizational GitHub profiles as the rel=me tag is not added here.

Your GitHub.io Page

If you do not want to sacrifice your web page field on your GitHub profile, then another way to verify is to verify your username.github.io page. This is a workaround documented by Simon Willison on his blog.1 In this case, you supply the regular link with the rel="me" attribute, again either using a regular link or placing it in the header information. As an example, Simon Willison's code for his GitHub.io page is here.

The result is this:

Screenshot of profile for user Simon Willison, showing that he has verified his Blog and GitHub.io pages. Note he is a Mastodon, but not a Hachyderm, user.

Note:

  • This image is only the metadata information that he also included in his blog post.
  • He is running his own self-hosted Mastodon instance.

How long does verification persist?

Verification is checked upon saving your profile. Thus, as long as you don't change anything, your verified identities will persist and you're free to change back the website on your GitHub profile2.

Alternatives

If you would like to verify your identity with more services than the metadata allows, you might want to consider using a service like Keyoxide or Keybase for the majority of your identity verification, and then verify Hachyderm / Mastodon with that identity management service.

Who should verify

We do not have a policy for regular users to verify or not - that is up to you! If you have a special account type, for example a corporate or open source project account, please see the instructions for those accounts for what verification we'd need.

Footnotes

  1. Second example, GitHub as well as GitHub.io https://til.simonwillison.net/mastodon/verifying-github-on-mastodon ↩ ↩2

  2. Source for verifying GitHub https://jan.wildeboer.net/2022/06/Quick-Fix-Verified-Mastodon-Github/#the-solution ↩