Feature request: Do not recognize @a@b.com as an email address

[mcclure]

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I contribute to an Android client for a project known as "Mastodon", "ActivityPub" or "The Fediverse". This is an effort to build a social network, similar to Instagram or Twitter, but distributed across many server hosts and following a (w3 standard) open protocol. ActivityPub is growing in popularity of late: currently it is believed to have about ten million registered users; multiple unique apps in addition to Mastodon, such as Lemmy and Pixelfed, now exist implemented on top of it; and companies such as Tumblr, Facebook and Flickr have discussed integrating their products with it.

In ActivityPub/Mastodon, a username is denoted by a little @@ sigil, like @mcc_test_tusky@mastodon.social. This is supposed to call to mind the "@username" convention on sites like Twitter or Instagram, but it has the user@host structure of an email (because like email, ActivityPub usernames are scoped to their host domains).

Mastodon usernames confuse Github's markdown. As you can see above, the markdown parser ignores the leading @ and interprets the username@hostname as an email, creating a mailto: link. This is incorrect, since most Mastodon addresses do not have corresponding SMTP mailboxes, and so mis-marking these usernames as emails is incorrect could cause confusion.

I have experienced this mis-marking with issues on our Android Mastodon project and it is sort of irritating. My "expected behavior" is that when you see a @username@domain, you should not flag it as an email or (because there is currently no recognized URL scheme for sending a browser directly to a Fediverse profile) specially mark it in any other way. Just treat it like normal text.

Although this is a minor problem, the costs to fixing it are low because no one would ever write an email like @username@domain on purpose.

(For the record "Bluesky", another new social network not related to ActivityPub but with aspirations to someday adopt a distributed open protocol, is not affected by this problem because its usernames consist only of a domain, like @username.bsky.com .)

This problem is afaik common to anything involving Github flavored Markdown, including Issues as well as Discussions and possibly Pages, but it seems most relevant to Issues and there is not a specific feedback section for Github Flavored Markdown.

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[the-eater]

I concur, and would like to make a small amendment, that there is a way to resolve Mastodon/Fediverse handles, via the WebFinger (Wiki / RFC 7033) protocol, e.g. https://cijber.social/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:eater@cijber.social will result in a JSON definition with links to my profile.

Which if desired by github could be used to correctly resolve these handles, and create accompanying links

[rayannott]

I have a couple ideas on how to trick Markdown into not seeing "@some@text.here" as an email address:

• put it inside a code field: @some@text.here usind backtics:

`@some@text.here`

• or even inside a code block (then people can use the copy to clipboard button) using triple backticks:

@some@text.here

• make it an empty link: @some@text.here:

[@some@text.here]()

• paste empty unicode charachters after the @ symbols: @‎some‎@text.here
  you can get them, say, here: https://emptycharacter.com/

Hope this helps.

[artfulrobot]

The unicode characters (which I was fascinated to read, thanks for sharing!) seems the least helpful as it prevents it being a link, yes, but it's confusing because it can't be copy-pasted but it looks like it can, so it becomes for visual users only. (at)me(at)fediverse.something might be clearer.

Not to detract from the OP's point, which I think is very valid, but until double-@ is automatically linkified correctly here, I think the best thing might be for authors simply not to use these handles and just put in a link e.g. https://fosstodon.org/@artfulrobot because that's instantly accessible to all: everyone can click it (thereby improving fediverse discoverability) and fediverse users will spot that it's something they can search in their app.

[rayannott]

Yes, the empty characters are just for visuals, they break the option of copying the usename manually. Personally, I'd probably use the backtics @like@th.is, but "(at)this(at)also.works" (although looks a little ugly).