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In my humble opinion: The basic premise is itself is wrong. Why should BlueSky (or X or Mastodon) should be the sole arbitrator of truth? Who are these prophets that we need to preserve the sanctity of their messages?

If I want to hear what a journalist has to say, I would go to their official website like NYT or Tagesspeigel and read it there. Should we be interested in what Kim Sang yun or Sebastian Mustermann has said few minutes ago?

The problem of spam and impersonation goes way beyond Blue Checks.



Are you saying that the problems of spam and impersonation are so insurmountable that there’s no point trying to mitigate them?


They definitely did not say that and what is this constant need for people on the internet to respond to someone saying "maybe this isn't the right way to do something" with "Oh well then you're saying that something can't be done at all and it's pointless and why even try!!!11"


In this case, they aren't the sole arbiter. They do happen to be the one that their client is advertising, but they can add others.

You are borderline arguing that information is bad (because that's all a verification is).


> You are borderline arguing that information is bad

Your words not mine.

I questioned why sites like X or BlueSky or Reddit can be sole in charge of who is "verified" and Real™. We can listen to what the Journalists, UN officials etc have to say on their own media websites, right?

Too much news is bad for us anyway [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054


This is some grade A navelgazing. This is an actual, real, practical problem that decreases the signal to noise ratio in these communities. Spammers pretend to be popular people and use it to scam, steal, and otherwise take advantage of people. It's a good thing to reduce that and makes the service better for everyone.


Why should BlueSky (or X or Mastodon) should be the sole arbitrator of truth?

Are they the sole arbitrator if they simply use a DNS record?

That's the same tech used to verify their official website.




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