That’s not how verification is meant to work at all, it’s irrelevant that some ppl do that rn and “verify” random ppl.
nostr:npub1pnpez7cn4h04pxg07dmmklzyz7u7fm0w2ddrw220qh785rq3m42ql452zw nostr:npub108pv4cg5ag52nq082kd5leu9ffrn2gdg6g4xdwatn73y36uzplmq9uyev6 nostr:npub1grd6pp385tevd8psx9nxzjd4vutg7pycjj49cs3q8gujpg77sjps4752zz nostr:npub1sn40xanqyfdrztf8m0mj4n6csyrxvn2yf02r9vwgqpxp37ssn43sv3asfw nostr:npub1cdak4q4f3h3k3sgyh0rd5dj4w8k95f3mquzh6z3ew76vqkh60e3slyczgz nostr:npub1zxxp06lma7hh358kc36fytf6psy3ra0v6r53epxrwssgnvm5plhs06u452 nostr:npub1znavx0efn9y7a9tjux6pchjdurmw2e84fxwxflmauupjz0558x0sqmwtpl "Verify identity" with whom? The owner of the domain, obviously.
Well, I own a domain and I "verify identity" of people you hate. I do it on purpose because it makes you mad and I'm a big meanie troll doodoohead.
The people I verify just so happen to like talking to each other. They're a community. Maybe they talk out-of-band on Matrix or Discord or whatever.
Lots of people hate that community because they and the one who "verifies" them are a bunch of booger eaters. So what's the obvious solution? Let a person block the entire domain--any pubkey verified by that domain doesn't show up anymore.
Or maybe I'm just a spammer who wants to break through everyone's clients by "verifying" my many spam accounts (so many that nobody can hope to manually report them all). I buy my own cheap domain name and use it to get a fancy little checkmark or whatever clients decide to show, and then spam away. The obvious solution? Don't trust that domain to verify pubkeys.
This sort of thing is going to become commonplace.
"Verification" works when you trust the verifiers. Right now Nostr has mostly good (albeit very boring) actors and verifiers, but that is going to change if momentum picks up.
Discussion
Rather than verify lets say nip05 makes your identifier distinct but readable/ memorable vs the npub which is distinct but not memorable. Anyone can create a copycat display name and PFP so without the nip05 anyone you aren't following would be difficult to distinguish.
We actually had this issue with a user who is using an AI PFP and a bunch of other people joined with that PFP to fuck with them but at least with the nip05 you can say "that's user a, that's user b etc" in a thread without following them.
this is why