Social media platform Bluesky says it will authenticate high-profile users with a verification badge that is reminiscent of similar marks of honor found on competing services like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram.
The verification system follows a milestone month for Bluesky, which ended March with more than 32 million registered accounts — a fraction of which are active users on a monthly basis.
As the platform becomes more popular, it has been afflicted with growing pains that are similar to other social media services, including a rise in impersonation and organization accounts launched by fans of certain products or services, but who otherwise have no legitimate connection to them.
The verification system is intended to remedy that problem by making to clear to Bluesky users when a high-profile user or organization joins and uses the service. A blue verification badge (which Bluesky errantly called a “blue check” — the check is white) will be affixed to account profiles verified by Bluesky’s moderation team.
“Blue (badges) issued by platforms are just one form of trust,” a Bluesky official wrote in a blog post on Monday “But trust doesn’t come only from the top down; it emerges from relationships, communities, and shared context.”
For this reason, Bluesky is crowdsourcing its verification initiative by allowing “trusted” organizations to have pseudo-moderation abilities, which allows them to nominate other Bluesky users for verification badges. Trusted organizations will have a “scalloped” blue badge, which will communicate to other users that those organizations have the ability to pick the winners of who will receive what is sure to be a coveted blue badge.
Bluesky says users won’t be able to lobby the company for a verification badge — however, there isn’t anything stopping users from demanding a verification badge from a trusted organization, and that is almost certainly likely to happen.
In the meantime, Bluesky says the best way users can verify themselves is to sign up for an account using a domain name they’ve purchased from a third party registrar.
