@atomicpoet a possible middle road here might be Professional Certifications like @jeff is doing at verifiedjournalist.org

Such verification platforms could be integrated with the #fediverse as an accreditation extension. Servers like newsie.social could beta test it.

You can imagine this being applied to other professions as well, e.g. medical practitioners, PhDs.., really any field of,practice that can feasibly manage a database of certificates.