I was recently approached by a user claiming to be the developer of Sync for Lemmy who wanted to be a moderator of the community I created, !syncforlemmy.
I was able to verify this user was indeed LJ Dawson as I knew where to contact him on Discord.
It is quite possible that an impostor user on another instance may be created, for example ljdawson@beehaw.org could easily be made.
Should Lemmy have a verified user marker for members who are of importance to any given community? Are there any other options to protect users against nefarious persons playing impostor?
This is where systems like NOSTR could help out. You could also verify somebody’s identity by checking their public key against their NOSTR identity. There are tons of good ideas in this area. At the end of the day, it will always involve some work but it’s not an impossible issue to solve. I would love it if the fediverse incorporated access and validation of keys from NOSTR.