I fantasized last night about an algorithm that converts instance names or even full handles to a small set of emoji to give each a unique fingerprint that takes up little screen space but allows instant visual recognition.
does anyone think this would actually be a good idea?

@abgd The 'display name' Could possibly be used for that. One of many problems, though, is that it can contain only very few emojis.

@yair I haven't done the math yet, but considering how many emoji there are, I'm guessing three might be enough to encode a larger namespace than the fediverse would ever need.

@abgd True, but many emoji are utterly useless and translating literal puns to visual ones is something that I think is way beyond any current algorithm and better left as an exercise for the :poop: :envelope: er.