ARE WE LEARNING HOW “SOCIAL MEDIA” WORKS YET HUMANITY?
Seriously. How many more fucking times do we need to go around this goddamn merry go round until we just start calling each other on the phone and meeting face to face again. You know, where the only enshittification is the one you bring with you. It’s fucking boring me now, how many of these stupid ass things I didn’t join because I’ve already, apparently, gotten the memo and how, inevitably, something like this happens, and everyone acts surprised and disappointed , as though inevitability was a concept they felt they’d been given a sabbatical from or something.
This. Shit. Ain’t. Free. There is an inherent cost, an “effort” required to communicate with others. You pay it with money, time or privacy. The overwhelming choice lately has been “privacy”, but it’s obviously something that not everyone is comfortable with, because we didn’t have the term “enshittification” before we started this flavor of our collective idiocy.
this is unnecessary with custom domains
No one disliked the check mark before “Genghis Kunt” started selling it
Then come over to Mastodon…
Bluesky is the new X. After canceling the accounts of Turkish protesters this is the next step for the big money behind Bluesky. That’s why I deleted my account a few days ago.
What’s the story with the Turkish protesters?
Bluesky has basically bowed to the Turkish regime: https://www.turkishminute.com/2025/04/17/bluesky-restrict-access-72-account-turk-amid-government-pressure/
Exactly, Bluesky has been shitty for a while for lots of reasons. I’m not understanding why this is the line in the sand.
Same. Deleted my account when they started to censor the Turkish protestors. Not that I used the account really but still.
Preaching to the choir
But anyway anyone who thinks bluesky is actually decentralised will learn sooner rather than later that that’s not the case
Yous are hyping it a basic verification system which can’t be bought and is handed out for the sake of showing credibility is a good thing
The sake of credibility? What decides that though? Likes? Likes are a big problem imo. It doesn’t really do anything except create echo chambers.
IMO it’s not that blue check equals credibility, but rather it equals that you are who you say you are. This is a good thing particularly when it comes to public figures/officials — not for their sake, mind you, but for the sake of other people who may see a tweet from them. If the checkmark is there, then it’s them. If not, then it’s an impersonator. Right now it’s difficult to tell.
Tl;dr: it doesn’t make what they say real, it just makes them real.
Something like this unavoidable.
Example, ted cruz the car mechanic in marfa Texas has just has much right to use blusky as
professional shit bagsenator ted cruz. But hiw do tell the real one from the racid sack of weasels.People use usernames like they always have, and rely on reputation to distinguish themselves from the fakes? Senator ted ceuz makes an account called ‘senatortedcruz’ or if thats taken ‘therealsenatortedcruz’, and the mechanic makes one called ‘tedcruzcars’ or whatever. I dont see how your example is even relevant, because under a checkmark verification system both the mechanic ted cruz, and the senator ted cruz would be valid and deserving of a check mark, so there has to be some other way of distinguishing them anyway.
Its whay the original lawsuit that created checkmarks was about.
What is? How does a checkmark help distinguish between two people that have the same name? The checkmark just shows that the person is who they say they are.
mastodon exists
So long as the checkmark isn’t bought through some subscription service, I’m fine with this.
The whole reason why verification exists is because other will steal the name of someone famous and masquerade as them, with real world consequences. A verification system now means that certain platforms and people will get more attracted to be there, and thus Bluesky will grow.
It’s not.
Not yet 😏
My default is to just assume that they aren’t the same person unless corroborated by that person.
Unfortunately, the forecast isn’t good for the integrity of what should be a simple system. Under Dorsey, the Twitter blue checkmark had already become a tool for showing content approval by Twitter. In various instances users had their status removed based on their content and not on a question of if they were who they claimed to be.
This shitshow sounds familiar.
To quote my well known journalist friend after switching from twitter “what’s that? Oh, that open source stuff? Hahaha nah bruh, mastodon is silly”
Reminds me of a meeting my co-worker and I had with the IT staff of a company that is a customer using research instruments in our facility. The meeting was to ask us to enable data synchronization through SharePoint. (We’re a Linux shop.) We asked what the issue was with getting their data files with SFTP. They said, “It’s open source.”
Then, a few beats of silence as it sinks in for us that there is no next step in the chain of logic. That is the totality of their objection.
Ok so they knew enough about software to use open source correctly in a sentence, but could not even list one reason why they didn’t want to use it.
We had to fight tooth and nail to get even a few of us able to use Ubuntu on our development machines (even though 90% of our servers are Ubuntu). The old heads in IT were like, “Uhh that open-source stuff? We use Windows for security”. Like wtf?? Lack of cognitive dissonance much? They are completely brainwashed by the old Microsoft FUD
Normies will not go on Mastodon.
This was always bait to keep people using corporate social media instead of decentralizing. I am not sorry for the users one bit.
idk man I haven’t seen anyone complaining about it on Bluesky
This is a net positive, nice to have a social media where verification checks are…actually used for verifying the person behind an account
Based on how verification was revoked for some users on Twitter based on their content rather than question of their identity, I’m cautious about this system turning into the status symbol it became on Twitter rather than the verification it claimed to be.
Most of the complaints I’ve seen were about Bluesky’s lack of a formal verification system.
They could never figure out how the current system of checking the username.
But isn’t the domain already doing that?
Domains only help you verify organizations and individuals you recognize directly.
This verification system also allows 3rd parties (it’s NOT just bluesky themselves!) to issue attestations that s given account belongs to who they say they are, which would help people like independent journalists, etc.
Idk. Celebrities and Politicians usually have other vetted channels such as their own website or a website of their ogranization representing them. It should be basic journalistic work to see if their social media links link to the account in question or not.
The problem with domains is that regular people would need to know what a domain is and what verified ownership says about the account in question.
Even then, reading domains is quite difficult, even for people who know about the topic: Humans are Bad at URLs and Fonts Don’t Matter
Excellent post as usual from Troy, but use Bitwarden, not 1Password
That link was a super interesting read!
I feel like domain usernames are still inherently susceptible to phishing, you can get a typo or similar character to try and trick someone that your username is an official one
I saw some small talk about it, and it really just boiled down to domain verification is great for more tech savvy folks, but trying to get larger accounts (think politicians, celebrities, etc) is a lot harder. Having a visual check, using tools within the app or site, is a lot easier.
And personally I like the idea of verification checks as long as it remains a simple means to do just that: verify the owner of the account. Morons like Musk and his ilk always thought it was a clout thing, and for a small minority that was probably the case, but by and large before he ruined it, it was great.
If they are, and there isn’t anything to display it, how are we to know what’s been vetted and what’s slipped through the cracks? Especially on a new account?
It’s the username so already quite visible.
For example someone at say, NPR, could use a name like @bob.npr.org which is only possible by verifying ownership of the npr.org domain name, so there is no need to vet anything.
That’s great for an organization like NPR which may have the resources to tie its own domain name into Bluesky. For some freelance reporter or otherwise verifiable person, I’m not sure it’s quite so practical.
I do not see anything to be angry or disappointed about?
Verification badge was good, the dumb thing Twitter did was throw it away by letting anyone pay for it.
This is just a web of trust model, aka a decentralized model of verification. This thread is mostly people that haven’t read the details that want to confirm that “Bluesky has been enshittified”.
If the same authority is doing verification that is also doing moderation and both ultimately in a for profit setting, that has conflict of interest.
We dont know how reliable bluesky moderation will stay. We dont know how they will respond to political pressure. We dont know how they will monetize past the growth phase and then could also argue a “service fee” for verification.
In a perfect world none of these would happen, but then everybody could still be on twitter and be fine there.
Nah it was not good. Domain names already do that and are accessible to all at all times with full transparency and decentralization. Bluesky is literally regressing.
Even mastodon’s verification system is better than checkmarks.
“Everyone should be able to setup their own domain and mess with DNS records to get a verified account”
Do you realize how utterly disconnected from reality this sounds?? Technical people that have absolutely not clue on how make good UX for end users is how we got Mastodon in the first place, and why its adoption is abysmal.
You can pay someone to do that for you tho it’s not any different form paying someone to verify you ina centralized way. Its really not that hard.
Even with more complex setups like mastodon servers you already see markets for this. You can get a basic managed instance for yourself for like 15$/mo - that’s basically nothing for anyone who needs to verify themselves as a brand.
This is not a “pay for verification” model. Have you even read the article or anything related to it? It is literally not centralized, it’s web of trust.
domain names do that for people with well known domain names, and verification processes do that for people without
Yup. Need something like EV certs to really verify… And that would only make sense if it’s a “no (non-real) screennames” kind of thing.
i think the .id.au domain licensing rules are a pretty reasonable middle-ground:
https://www.auda.org.au/au-domain-names/the-different-au-domain-names/id-au-domain-names/
The id.au domain name you choose must match or be an acronym or abbreviation of your first name or family name, or your nickname
you have to provide ID to register any .au, so you’re verified as a person, and though they don’t pre-check your nickname, AFAIK if there’s a complaint you do have to prove that you’re “known by” that name
Far from perfect, but I think it’s good to have a layer that very visibly shows ‘yes, this is the account you want’.
Domains are a worthwhile addition, but they run into almost the same problem as usernames and handles. Can be made misleading easily - sure, I could often go to the web address and verify it (if they don’t put up a convincing fake site), but that’s much lower visibilty.
Eg, you can probably register nintendo@nintendoamerico.com or similar and get it by some folks just as easily as registering the Twitter handle. There’s a payment step to get the domain, but that’s about it.
The centralization problem you mention is a good point though. It was a fine system, if you felt like you could trust Twitter as a verifier. Today obviously, one could not. But Bsky seems to at least theoretically have a ‘choose your verification provider’ idea in mind, which would (again theoretically) resolve a lot of that issue.
