I don't think the suggestion is for Mastodon to replace internal communication, but to use it as a social media outlet for your organization.
But if there is an official CNN Mastodon instance, it’s suddenly real easy to see if someone claiming to be a CNN reporter is real or not.
Are they @john.smith@cnn.news? If not they’re a fake.
It would also work for official Microsoft accounts or Colgate-Palmolive or the government.
Seems like a good idea to me. And if you like federation it sounds better than a semi-official instance everyone uses that verifies things, sort of recreating a mini-Twitter “super” instance that is “more equal” than the others.
I can put an @microsoft.come email in my profile, but it’s meaningless because it’s not verified.
But if MS has their own instance, then your handle(?) proves you have an account on that instance. And presumably only employees and company accounts would be allowed to have such user accounts.
Note, however, that Mastodon has a sort-of identity-ish verification system, in that a website link in your profile will be shown with a green check if the website links back to your profile with a `rel=me` attribute.