commented:
I love the idea of a Fediverse symbol with a Unicode codepoint. ⁂ is
unique, rarely used, and looks better (IMO) than the rainbow star
symbol currently in use. I keep forgetting that that symbol means
Fediverse when I see it; Lemmy uses it as an icon for “view on
original server”, and it looks so busy as a small icon that it’s hard
to distinguish what it is at first.
This is a stretch, but I wonder if this symbol could be incorporated
into a standard way to express Fediverse addresses (instead of the
double @ currently in use). Something like ⁂arnelson@fosstodon.org or
arnelson⁂fosstodon.org. It could be written with *** which Fediverse
apps would convert to the symbol: ***arnelson@fosstodon.org or
arnelson***fosstodon.org.
…actually never mind, that just looks like some censored letters. And
it would interact strangely with Markdown. So maybe not.

  commented:
(⁂)arnelson@fosstodon.org might disambiguate it enough that it doesn’t
look like something was censored.

  commented:
Also it’s impossible to type without copying or looking up some weird
keyboard shortcut they may or may not exist on all devices/OSes (I
can’t find it on my phone right now)

  commented:
Nobody said the Fediverse was easy

  commented:
An unfortunate truth…

  commented:
You could say this about almost every glyph depending on what keyboard
is installed. Most world speakers/typers aren’t using a Latin script,
but we regularly see programmers only accommodate for Latin scripts,
or worse only ASCII. Modify & add the symbol to you AltGr or
compose layer if you think you will use it enough to warrant it (shame
on your OS if you can’t make such modifications). Some programs like
Kitty terminal have an easy-to-use Unicode pickers built in or Vim’s
digraphs that don’t disrupt typing flow.

  commented:
An easy(?) solution would be for Fediverse platforms like Mastodon to
include it in their built-in emoji picker.

  commented:
Re the ‘double-@‘: I was pondering the other way why we don’t use
proper URIs for this. @user@example.org is not much use outside of its
context; and we have this awkward cross-instance dance to follow
people that often breaks. I’ve found mastodon/Fediverse software and
clients generally know what to do if I supply https://example.org/user
instead, and that has the advantage that, taken out of context, it
might still be useful.

  commented:
The way the @ sign is used is extremely weird, because its use in
email is to separate the username from the hostname; it’s almost …
used to emphasize the fact that any given username isn’t unique and
that different hosts will have their own distinct sets of users. But
then Twitter picked it up to mean … basically the opposite; the
username stands alone, and there’s only ever going to be one hostname
that matters ever, which was stupid, but consistent with their values
of centralization and control.
Then in the fediverse, they somehow imported both the twitter-style @
sign and the email-style @ sign. It’s so strange.

  commented:
Kinda looks like the Chinese character for forests: 森, which is
actually pretty fitting, since it’s often used as a metaphor for a
community of people.

  commented:
I’m Chinese and I’ve not seen 森 being used for a community of people.
On the other hand 众 (people; the public) would be pretty fitting for
the Fediverse

  commented:
Eh… The first thing I thought when I saw it was, “Snowflakes? What
does that have to do with the Fediverse?”
I’d personally opt for a specifically-designed logo rather than rely
on fonts and “claiming” a Unicode code point to do it for us.

  commented:
I love this idea. I kicked off a conversation about its accessibility
- in my test of “Read this page” mode in Mobile Safari the character
was ignored entirely, but apparently other screen readers like NVDA
and Jaws pronounce it out loud:
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/113009270804330085

  commented:
That’s a good angle to test it out! I tried to summarise the position
we are at in a blog post. I like the fact this is an existing Unicode
symbol.
https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/23/on-symbolism/
Also, feels somewhat connected to mention that today is the
anniversary of the hashtag!

  commented:
Sure, seems like a perfectly reasonable symbol.

  commented:
I like this symbol.
If it catches on, I hope somebody can add *** to the default compose
key map shipped with linux distros. It always feels silly having to
search for a unicode character online and copy+paste.

  commented:
Hijacking existing characters never ends well…

  commented:
This is literally how email ended up using the @ sign.

  commented:
I prefer to not adopt any symbol for this since this website doesn’t
recognize Pleroma as a federated platform.

  commented:
On the front page, Pleroma is second in the list of Fediverse
platforms. Am I missing something?

  commented:
I’m confused, what do you mean by this?

  commented:
Propose they add it to their text?
.