I see what you are saying, I think it would be advantageous to try to use tags in badge descriptions to segregate between types of clients for example #gitbadge or add some meta data to the nip.

I don’t think there is anything nefarious at face value gate keeping badges, I just think it’s a bad signal about what else, as it’s just one user mentioning another… a client white listing who could mention in kind 1 would be a huge red flag. where as client where mentions just aren’t rendered is more nurtural, wouldn’t be useful, but isn’t a red flag.

I hope users are sophisticated enough to not have a crazy number of badges on their profile, or to highlight joke/meta badges issued while users explored this new nip. And if they are that loose with it, I doubt they will gain many sophisticated followers that way.