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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Bluesky is cracking down on impersonators and scammers.
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But it’s federated! I can just choose that name somewhere else! Right? … Right?
Kneel before the corporate overlords!
This will absolutely be used to squash legitimate users who happen to share the same name with a company or person who is more popular. Bluesky is just twitter 2.0, which I doubt is a surprise to anyone but they are already taking the same significant steps on the same path.
? Did you read what the article? The change here is pretty minor and just reserving the @name.bsk.social if they verify with a domain to something like @domain.tld
Now, users that verify their account by linking their domain name get to automatically keep the default @username.bsky.social username
there are a lot of kneejerk, tinfoil hat individuals on lemmy that seem to get rather dramatic over bluesky.
bluesky adds new fonts in webapp
“THIS IS WHAT THE CORPORATE OVERLORDS WANT. THESE FONTS ARE JUST LIKE TWITTER. WAKE UP SHEEPLE! IF YOU DON’T USE MASTODON, YOURE GOING TO GET MEASLES AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL PERISH!”
(/s but you get what I mean)
There’s a lot of tlds. Do they explain the policy when two people have the same domain on different tlds? I mean oldest registered makes sense to me. But not without problems.
I don’t think the name part of the bsky handle comes from the domain you use.
You just no longer lose the handle you picked when you registered, when you switch to using your own domain as your handle.
Before, once you switched, someone else could grab that original handle you registered with and pretend to be you.
How I read it, they want to use a domain to validate the use of a handle. With the huge variety of tlds the same domain part could be registered many many times.
If I did misunderstand, then sorry. It’s how I read it.
Using a domain for your handle means it entirely replaces the original bsky handle you signed up with.
I could go from being
mentaledge.bsky.socialtomentaledge.com, for example. (And they don’t need to be the same “username” so to speak, I could have registeredtherealmental.bsky.social, but then becomementaledge.com, provided I own the domain.)The main difference is that the orignal handle is a subdomain of bsky, while you can be the root domain if you use your own.
Before, you’d lose your original handle, meaning someone else could grab it once you did this, and then pretend to be you. Now they can’t.
Aha OK. Then yeah I misread it. That makes a lot more sense.
Do you expext them not to pull the rug out of joke accounts that got to the bsky.social name first once the corporate website is used to verify their .com. address?
I fully expect them to use that as justification.
That’s not what they are doing right now
I’m also going be real that this is also the least of my concerns for a platform. If they make some people change their handle that don’t need to, it really isn’t a massive deal in the grand scheme of things. Especially since when handles are changed on Bluesky, all the references to that handle also change because they have a constant ID for all accounts. Impersonations leading people to scams is a much larger issue
I am not saying ghey are doing it now. I am saying they are heading down that path by initially justifying it based on scammers (an actual concern), but that is generally how it starts and if they don’t say they will limit it to scammers and other criminal activity then they are most likely not going to limit it to that.
They are also focusing on ‘squatters’, which shows they care more about famous people and companies than whoever registered first.
So they shouldn’t address actual concerns?
This change is tiny. Bluesky currently allows people who own domains to use those domains for their handle. (Anyone can buy domains, not just companies, I own two) Before, doing so would “release” the default
name.bsky.socialhandle, allowing someone else to use it.This literally doesn’t take away any handles from anyone, except people who grabbed handles that were “released” by their original owners. It DOES NOT allow someone who shows up with a new spechul domain to take away the handle of a user that already exists.
They should address actual concerns, but make it clear they won’t overstep afterwards like all of the other social media apps before them.
That is what I wrote.
You say they are only acting on ones where the company switched away from bsky.social, but squatters and scammers are not limited to only the ones they switched away from. To address squatters and scammers they will need to address those how got there first too. That is a necessity, but also the start of a slippery slope that they need to put the brakes on before they go down the familiar path to taking joke accounts.
Ok. But again, this isn’t that.
No part of this particular change, is even step one of what you’re talking about.
This is literally only stopping new users from registering accounts under handles someone used before, but switched away from.
It’s straight up a "correct " solution.
Maybe, but this isn’t about that.
Not YET.
Just so we’re clear, Bluesky is federated just like this place. Twitter was the community square of the planet until Elmo bought it and brought his own kitchen sink because he thought he knew how to run Twitter. That same delusional individual is now advising the elected Orange in charge of the USA.
Whilst Twitter had its problems, they were nothing compared to the cesspool it is today.
Bluesky will no doubt go through growing pains, but I don’t see evidence of the same mistakes as you appear to be suggesting.
So, no, I don’t think that you’re portraying a realistic viewpoint, instead you’re fear mongering for no discernible reason, other than to discredit a platform that is evolving and flourishing.
Source: I’ve been on Xitter, Bluesky and various fediverse platforms, Reddit, Slashdot and I’ve also been here since Usenet was a thing and experienced Eternal September first hand.
I appreciate your optimism, but I’m more on the cautious side of things. At the end of the day they are still a corporation that needs to profit as much as they can, so we have yet to see what happens when they become the dominant player in the space. Hell, it was just reported that they are now planning a subscription model, waaay earlier than Elon did with twitter.
They have like 20 employees and are a public benefit corporation with profit motives to benefit society rather than maximise shareholder value.
Just so we’re clear, Bluesky is federated just like this place.
Yes, rule wouldn’t apply to another instance like poop.social, but when 90% of the content is through bsky.social there is a massive chilling effect.
but I don’t see evidence of the same mistakes as you appear to be suggesting.
Oh so minting another new US billionaire who is deep into cryptocurrency already (that’s literally how Jay Graber got her start in the industry) just so they can turn around and use that money to start influencing US politics just like Musk is a good idea?
You really think just making a new billionaire is a great idea? But I mean you’re not far off, that’s a user mistake, not a company mistake.
Can’t say I mind when it happens to scammers and actual cybersquatters.
Sure, but we wouldn’t have superbowl on reddit and lemmy if they followed this approach which is said to be about scammers but will also crush early adopters who made joke accounts.
