Displaying your seal
A seal is a claim about your record, so it only means something if it matches the record behind it. This page covers which seal you have earned, where you can put it, and the one rule that is never bent: the word attached to the seal has to be true.
Which seal is yours
Section titled “Which seal is yours”| Seal | Level | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Registered | “This avatar is mine, and I declared it on this date.” A private self-declaration. | |
| Verified | Everything Registered says, plus an identity check confirmed a real human is behind it. Public. |
See The seal for the full visual reference, colors and anatomy. This page is about using it, not designing it.
The part that trips people up: green has nowhere public to point
Section titled “The part that trips people up: green has nowhere public to point”A free Registered record is private. It has no page at a public URL, it does not appear in the directory, and it is not returned by the API. So if you show the green seal somewhere public, a bio, a video description, a website footer, there is nothing behind it that a stranger can click through and check. It is an honest statement of fact about you, but it is not, on its own, something anyone else can verify.
A Verified record is different: it gets a real, stable
page at /r/<slug>, listed in the directory and served
by the API. That page is what turns “I say I registered this” into
“anyone can look it up and confirm it”. If the point of displaying a
seal is to be checked, verification is what makes that possible.
Where to put it, once you can link to it
Section titled “Where to put it, once you can link to it”- A bio or profile description: the platform, channel or site where the avatar operates.
- A video description, alongside the avatar’s first appearance or any deepfake-adjacent content, where a transparency notice is expected anyway.
- A website footer or about page, next to the avatar’s name.
In every case, the seal should sit next to a link to the record’s page
(/r/<slug>), not float on its own. A seal image with
no way to check it behind it is just a picture.
The honesty rule
Section titled “The honesty rule”The free level is never called “verified”. This is deliberate and non-negotiable: the word next to the green seal is always “Registered” or “declared”, never “verified”. Calling a self-declaration “verified” would claim an identity check that never happened.
The same honesty applies in reverse: the seal is not an official certification or a government mark, gold or green. It says TheHumanBehind checked (or did not yet check) an identity, nothing more. Presenting it as legal compliance or as an accreditation from any authority misrepresents what it is.
Common mistakes
Section titled “Common mistakes”- Showing “Verified” before you actually are. Wait for the check to complete and the seal to turn gold before using that word.
- A seal with no working link. If people cannot click through to the record, it is not doing its job.
- Using an old color after a change. If your record’s level changes, update the seal you display, rather than leaving a stale one in an old post or a cached image.