Bluesky brings back bluechecks. But currently you can only be verified by: (1) Bluesky, the company (2) The New York Times (& their sports brand The Athletic), and (3) WIRED magazine. So many thoughts...I'll start a thread:

Bluesky brings back bluechecks. But currently you can only be verified by: (1) Bluesky, the company (2) The New York Times (& their sports brand The Athletic), and (3) WIRED magazine. So many thoughts...I'll start a thread:
https://bsky.social/about/blog/04-21-2025-verification

Software Engineer @ Cadence Design Systems. B4: Stanford EE / Illinois ECE

1. NYTimes and Wired have both given glowing coverage to Bluesky & Jay Graber especially. Not that she doesn't deserve it, but the quid-pro-quo seems to be coming full circle here. Interestingly, Nilay Patel at The Verge leaned more into Threads thinking Zuck would be the anti-Musk, and he was for a hot minute, until Trump got elected and then Zuck lined up to kiss the ring. Nilay ended up getting a Bluesky account even later than I did. As a result, even though he's 99% ideologically aligned with Bluesky values, he's not included as a launch partner. Maybe it wouldn't have happened anyway, but it pays to be early.

2. Good thread here from an ex-Mozilla employee musing about the analogy between selecting Root Certificate Authorities for a browser and Bluesky picking the trusted verifiers by default.

3. It's worth reflecting on the Powerbadge experiment and how it was different. Powerbadges were based on what you did on Farcaster, the protocol, not on Warpcast the client, even though Warpcast was issuing the badge over-the-top, in much the same way spam labels are provided as a black-box API (& it has to be this way to prevent spam gamesmanship). This feels an order-of-magnitude less impressive. It's just, as mary puts it: lazy.

3. It's worth reflecting on the Powerbadge experiment and how it was different. Powerbadges were based on what you did on Farcaster, the protocol, not on Warpcast the client, even though Warpcast was issuing the badge over-the-top, in much the same way spam labels are provided as a black-box API (& it has to be this way to prevent spam gamesmanship). This feels an order-of-magnitude less impressive. It's just, as mary puts it: lazy. https://bsky.app/profile/mary.my.id/post/3lng4fill6k2f

4. Great quote from Henry: "bluesky needs 2025 solutions, not 2015 solutions with decentralization sprinkled on top, and that’s what this feels like."
To which Why from the BSky team replies:
"The main problem this is solving for us in the immediate term is that celebs and journalists and public figures join and normies can't easily tell the difference between the real ones and some scam/troll account, and most people are used to a checkmark being the symbol of 'not lying about identity'"

Ser...this doesn't answer the question. You've now created a new problem: you're now the kingmakers of verification. When Twitter does it, it's bad, but when we delegate to NYTimes & Wired, it's now okay again? Why can't you run Pagerank? I guess zero cost to signup is why & then you'd have to init the pagerank weights with some subjective discernment...

5. Anyway, this could be great if it were Opt-In, as in on the Welcome/Sign-Up flow, you can toggle on or off verifications from different services, just like you can opt-in to different moderation & content labeling services.

6. In conclusion, this tends to confirm my priors about Bluesky: that they are heavily leaning into Acela Corridor Cabal social capital as a way to kingmake themselves by returning the favor to the deepstate journos & politicos. Will it work? Maybe, if the revenue endgame for Bluesky is to be permafunded by NGOs and not by the users.

2. Good thread here from an ex-Mozilla employee musing about the analogy between selecting Root Certificate Authorities for a browser and Bluesky picking the trusted verifiers by default. https://bsky.app/profile/frankhecker.com/post/3lnh7gslzsc22