From today, Bluesky deploys a new verification system, with familiar blue check marks popularized by Twitter.
The social platform, which has experienced rapid growth since its opening to the public at the beginning of 2024, previously relied on an unconventional self-truth system where users could authenticate by including personalized areas in their web handles. Now he adopts a more proactive and traditional verification strategyWith the Bluesky team identifying notable accounts and giving blue check marks.
“It will be a rolling process because the functionality stabilizes, then we will launch a public form that people can use to request verification,” said CEO Jay Graber. The most priority accounts at the moment are government representatives, press organizations and journalists and celebrities.
As Bluesky grew up, he saw an increase in imitators posing as public figures, as MIT Technology Review documented Last year. To meet the growing demand for means to confirm that the accounts are legitimate, some Bluesky Power USERS have taken on them to create their own verification systems. While the application continues to attract celebrity users – the president of the training Barack Obama joined this spring earlier – a more formal verification process will help reassure public figures that Bluesky is a safe digital meeting space. “We want to reduce fraud and identity and drive a more reliable environment on Bluesky,” says Graber.
Launching what is close enough to a dupe of the original verification system of Twitter is not revolutionary things. It is nevertheless wise. The reason why social networks like Instagram and Tiktok saw the Blue Check approach are not because they necessarily wanted to copy the features of a rival. It is because these symbols had been successfully established as a visual signal that an account had been verified.
When Elon Musk served the blue check brands inherited from the microblogging platform in favor of a payment approach, he zapped the practical value of the symbol within the X ecosystem and gave the gratuities and pranks everywhere a nice gift. However, outside X, a blue check remains an easy shortcut for “probably not false”.
In addition to this traditional descending verification approach, Bluesky also offers a “confidence verifier” status to a limited group of approved organizations. These organizations will receive a scalloped blue check in their Bluesky accounts. The initial lot of selected publications as trust verifiers includes the New York Times and Wired, with more work.
That an account is verified by Bluesky itself or by these “trusted verifiers” third, the blue check that it receives will be identical. When users click or press the check, they will see a list of the verified organizations. For example, click on a blue verification next to the name of a wired journalist would show that Wired has verified their identity and can show that Bluesky and other organizations have also checked it. “Several organizations can check an account,” explains Graber.
The introduction of the confidence verification system in addition to the conventional centralized verification offer is a wink to Bluesky General philosophy of decentralization. It is also, a suspicion, a deeply practical decision, because the number of heads of the company remains less than 25 people.
Bluesky users should start to see the first official blue check notes today.
