Bluesky: Many copies of celebrity accounts, simpler verification under review
The recent flood of new accounts at Bluesky has apparently been accompanied by an increase in "doppelganger" accounts. The service is examining countermeasures.
(Image: Diego Thomazini/Shutterstock.com)
Bluesky has specified the requirements for labeling accounts as parody, satire or fan accounts, apparently in response to a growing problem with accounts that do not belong to the celebrities whose names they bear. This was announced by the short message service before the weekend; two days earlier, a researcher from the USA had determined that a "doppelganger" existed for 44 of the 100 largest accounts on Bluesky. However, only 16 percent of these are labeled as such. Bluesky now wants to enforce this more strictly and label accounts that do not comply as "impersonations". At the same time, the Twitter alternative promises that further verification options will be examined.
Difficult verification
The problems that unverified accounts on a short message service can cause became clear after Elon Musk took over Twitter. He changed the much-criticized system with a blue tick to indicate accounts verified by Twitter several times, with sometimes chaotic consequences. The symbol is now available for a fee and is no longer associated with verification. On Bluesky, individuals or organizations can verify themselves in two different ways using their own domain. This becomes part of the account name. However, both are not necessarily trivial, and in return the replaced account name with the ending "bsky.social" becomes free again.
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The Bluesky safety team now explains that many users have asked for additional ways of verification. Further options are being examined and they hope to be able to provide more information soon. Along with the criticism, reference is often made to the procedure used by competitor Mastodon. There, it is sufficient to link to a Mastodon profile on a website and add the rel=me attribute to the link. The URL of this page is then displayed on the linked profile with a green tick. Because many services already support this, a Mastodon account does not necessarily have to be verified with its own homepage; this also works via an account on GitHub, for example. Bluesky could adopt this procedure.
The extent of the problem with accounts on Bluesky that do not belong to the people or organizations they claim to be is unclear. However, one indication comes from Alexios Mantzarlis, who researches security and trust on the internet at Cornell University. A few days ago, he took a look at the biggest accounts on Bluesky and searched for copies of each one. He found a surprising number of them. Of the 100 largest accounts belonging to one person, 44 had a doppelganger, but according to him, only 7 were labeled accordingly. Most of them only had a few dozen followers. But that already puts them in the top percent. He even found an account where the "doppelganger" had registered a domain in order to appear more genuine than the original with a "bsky.social" handle.
(mho)
