The new option won't require another app, or ID :)

Finding verification providers that meet our standards around privacy and not collecting information we don't need has been... tricky, to say the least. But we know it's possible! Despite its limitations, Canada Post's Identity+ only tells us that someone is human and over 18.

Our thinking is to give people choices. Different methods come with different trade-offs, including what information they require. We'd rather be upfront about those trade-offs and let people decide what works best for them.

It's definitely still a bit controversial! And there's a lot we need to work through. We're trying to be as open and honest about it as we can. It's very much a work in progress. We've got a pretty nifty second verification option on the way, and ideally more after that.

We've always designed for it but there's of course some work to get things tee'd up, do it carefully, make sure the UX is clear.

Thanks for the share! We are pretty excited about these releases. The dev team has been hard at work figuring stuff out and preserving interoperability as they do it. Speaking of... that's coming up. About half of each dev cycle is spent on it right now.

A lovely little Gander update landed yesterday. 🌙 Dark Mode: cozier Gandering that's easy on the eyes. 🔇 MUTE WORDS + TAGS! FOR A DAY! A WEEK! FOREVER! EXCLUDE PEOPLE YOU FOLLOW! Oops. Sorry. Volume was on high. ✨ For You Page: tweaks to bring you more interesting convos from further afield.

Running dark mode through its paces. Or, as one member of the Gander team described it: “The cozy kind of dark mode.” Right in time for fall.

Groups are coming to Gander. (Once we are done testing them). Open and invite-only communities + cozier spaces for your closest people. They'll even be able to share into the main Gander feed. We’re following the ATProto Spaces alpha design, interop groups are the goal.

We do ask folks to verify, and the difference is that we actually ask. It's your choice. We don’t receive your ID or personal information, just a thumbs up that you’re an adult human. We know it’s a pain, and we’re working on more options so folks have more choice.

You've heard of surveillance advertising... but have you tried surveillance age verification?

Not the first time this has happened. Probably not the last either haha.

Yup, of course. All of Gander is a work in progress. Always will be too.

Not in the near term. We do know that it's a popular way to post/share these days. There is a lot to sort through on the moderation + policy side. So plotting that out will need to happen before we can add any temp. posting. Until then happy posting and deleting. They are your posts, do you!

It's live over on Gander. Also, it's just a threaded post (3x300) in a trench coat. Some clever work by the dev team to apply the splits :) Also, interestingly, people asked for it like crazy and (some) people definitely use the full 900. Plenty of folks have kept to shorter posts too.

There are also a quite a few considerations for us from the sovereignty and moderation side of things -- make sure folks know before they are posting outside of Gander, consuming content we haven't moderated etc. And probably a bunch of both cool and challenging things we haven't thought of yet.

It sure would. And we are avidly following a lot of that work. The intention is to be fully interoperable (development started on that this week). We've always designed Gander in such a way that we can introduce interoperability. Most likely it will be a staged process as we sort through things.