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Fast-growing social networking startup Bluesky, a Twitter/X alternative built on open web principles, was unveiled on Live broadcast on Monday How its approach to user account verification will differ from existing services, such as Meta and X. While traditional social media has shifted to a pay-for-verification model, where users pay for the privilege of a blue check that confirms their identity, Bluesky envisions a system in which there are multiple verification providers to serve the needs of the broader community.
Currently, the only way to verify your Bluesky account is to adopt a custom domain name, something the company began offering an option for last year. This is how you know the account @nytimes.com On Bluesky belongs to the real New York Times Publishing, for example. Additionally, Bluesky addresses impersonation issues directly as they arise.
However, Bluesky believes that custom domains may only be part of the solution when it comes to moving forward with the verification process.
In the future, the company is considering a model in which multiple verification providers coexist.
Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky, explained, “…we could be a verification provider – and we might do that at some point (well, no, I’m not sure when). But it might be something you can access through one app, so it might There may be another app and there may be other services and they can choose to trust us – check with the Bluesky team – or they can do it themselves. Or other people can do it themselves.
Or to put it another way, Plosky proposes a verification system where one entity—the company itself—does not have individual control over who gets the “verified” mark and who doesn’t.
This represents a rethinking of the verification process compared to how these systems have traditionally worked and how they have evolved recently.
On Twitter, verification has been fraught with complications and concerns over the years. Originally, Twitter would verify some high-profile users but ignore others they thought deserved verification as well, creating a two-tier caste system.
Under new owner Elon Musk, the company has tried to reform this system to make it more democratic by allowing anyone to pay to verify themselves. But as you might expect, this dramatic shift did not go well, as users purchased verification checks in order to impersonate others on the platform, causing chaos.
Even today, X still has trouble with verified bots, devaluing what verified verification means.
Meanwhile, Meta has followed Twitter/X with a paid verification that mainly serves to help creators and businesses on its platform.
Bluesky, on the other hand, aims to build an infrastructure that allows anyone to verify others according to their own rules and policies, similar to how today it allows anyone to build their own feeds, moderation systems, and algorithms.
While Bluesky itself could choose to focus on verifying high-profile users, others could create verification systems that would screen people against other criteria.
For example, Graber suggested that a university could verify users as alumni, or a fan group such as Swifties People can be verified as community members. These verification providers can choose to be selective about who is verified, or they can offer more comprehensive services, where verification across a range of different affiliations is part of their offering.
The challenge is how to provide multiple verifications to the end user so it’s not confusing, the CEO said. The company needs to know how these verifications will appear, perhaps in the form of badges? -And whether third-party Bluesky apps will need to display in the same way as the company’s official client.
“…We’re trying to design more apps (and) more services for the long term, beyond our own,” for the business, Graber noted.
Timing is another question.
The company’s 20-person team is working to keep up with Bluesky’s surge in growth as users begin to leave Musk’s a job. Since the election, Plosky has Added 8.7 million new users Today it topped 22.7 million total usersleaving Meta’s X’s rival threads scrambling towards it Confront the threat With its own set of features similar to Bluesky, such as switching your default feed along with updating its algorithm.
In the live stream, the Bluesky team talked about other long-term plans, such as how they will design Bluesky profiles to connect users to their broader web presence, including their personal website and other social media accounts, similar to something like Linktree.
The company said it cannot yet commit to rolling out specific features or a timeline, given its rapid growth.
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