As more celebrities and popular influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service faces further concerns about impersonation and verified identities.
The Bluesky Safety team announced Friday that the company has updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “accounts that impersonate or take over the handle will be removed.”
The company said it has quadrupled the size of its moderation team, which should allow it to respond more quickly to reports of impersonation, but the influx of new users has resulted in a “large backlog of moderation reports.” There are still some left.
As a side note, I've noticed an increase in Bluesky posts over the past few weeks asking, “Is this a real person or a parody account?” There is no clear answer in the reply. Other users are also starting to create their own verification lists and badges.
One reason for the confusion is that Bluesky doesn't have a verified user badge like the one popularized by Twitter (now known as X, which replaced the old verification with a paid subscription) . Instead, it relies on other signals, such as verified domains in the user handle, to indicate an account's authenticity. For example, if a person's handle includes the “bsky.team” domain, you know they are actually affiliated with Bluesky.
On this front, Bluesky also said that it is “working behind the scenes to help many organizations and prominent individuals set up verified domain handles.”
Parody and fan accounts are allowed, “but you must clearly identify yourself in both your display name and profile so others know that the account is not official.” ” the company said. And since “identity agitation” is not allowed, Bruski said, “If you set up an impersonation account just to gain followers, and then switch to a different identity that is no longer the impersonation in order to maintain that account. , the account will be deleted.”
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said earlier this week that the company may eventually do more to authenticate accounts while also allowing other apps and organizations to provide their own authentication. Ta. own. “
Similarly, the Bluesky Safety team concludes their update with the following: We are exploring additional options to strengthen account authentication and look forward to sharing more options soon. ”