I’ve seen this movie before.
Something like this unavoidable.
Example, ted cruz the car mechanic in marfa Texas has just has much right to use blusky as
professional shit bagsenator ted cruz. But hiw do tell the real one from the racid sack of weasels.People use usernames like they always have, and rely on reputation to distinguish themselves from the fakes? Senator ted ceuz makes an account called ‘senatortedcruz’ or if thats taken ‘therealsenatortedcruz’, and the mechanic makes one called ‘tedcruzcars’ or whatever. I dont see how your example is even relevant, because under a checkmark verification system both the mechanic ted cruz, and the senator ted cruz would be valid and deserving of a check mark, so there has to be some other way of distinguishing them anyway.
Its whay the original lawsuit that created checkmarks was about.
What is? How does a checkmark help distinguish between two people that have the same name? The checkmark just shows that the person is who they say they are.
Well the original point was to verify famous people and groups.
It’s easy: cryptographic signatures. If you want to prove your identify, post a public key on something that you need to prove identity for (personal website or something) and sign your posts with the same key. That way everyone can tell the that the same key listed on the website is used for SM posts. Clients can check this automatically and flag anything on your “official” account that’s signed with a different key.
This is much better than a checkmark system, because accounts get hacked and whatnot. It’s really easy to check a cryptographic signature, and it’s really hard to fake. If the website gets hacked, the signature won’t match previous posts.
The main concern here is losing the key. If someone steals your key, generate a new one, and sign it with the old key and the new one. Boom, now everyone can tell you control both keys, while the attacker only controls the old one.
But how would a user see that this poat was made with the right crypto key. Maybe some check mark on the Post or some sign.
Ideally, they wouldn’t see anything if everything is good. If there’s an anomaly, flag it with a warning.
But yeah, you could put a checkmark on it, but then it actually means something more than “this person spent money.” Ideally, the checkmark would only show if it’s a publicly verifiable key outside the platform.
Yeah that’s a better system then. We need something that shows the user then post or user is verified. How it works doesn’t matrer to them. Amd the key system would be betterment
That’s only easy for nerds, and it doesn’t help if the private key is on a device that gets compromised.
Regular people wouldn’t need identity verification, and the keys can be something the user never sees, just like with Signal. The UX can be pretty good here.
Figured they would go down this route. Don’t use it anyway
To quote my well known journalist friend after switching from twitter “what’s that? Oh, that open source stuff? Hahaha nah bruh, mastodon is silly”
Reminds me of a meeting my co-worker and I had with the IT staff of a company that is a customer using research instruments in our facility. The meeting was to ask us to enable data synchronization through SharePoint. (We’re a Linux shop.) We asked what the issue was with getting their data files with SFTP. They said, “It’s open source.”
Then, a few beats of silence as it sinks in for us that there is no next step in the chain of logic. That is the totality of their objection.
Ok so they knew enough about software to use open source correctly in a sentence, but could not even list one reason why they didn’t want to use it.
We had to fight tooth and nail to get even a few of us able to use Ubuntu on our development machines (even though 90% of our servers are Ubuntu). The old heads in IT were like, “Uhh that open-source stuff? We use Windows for security”. Like wtf?? Lack of cognitive dissonance much? They are completely brainwashed by the old Microsoft FUD
The amount of moments of “and therefore?” This stumps me equally with my small child as it does clients. Like, why TF are you saying this thing? How is that your supporting argument. There’s no argument! What’s your fucking thesis statement damnit?!
Normies will not go on Mastodon.
Then come over to Mastodon…
Yeah I deleted my Bluesky. All public companies eventually turn to shit because of the shareholders unending greed.
The fuck did anyone expect?
Anyone who is surprised that BlueSky is going down the same path as Twitter (X, not withstanding) belongs on BlueSky.
I think a few more people “get it” every time the cycle repeats, but also, a sucker is born every minute.
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Would it be so bad if it follows the same path as Twitter? If it connects people and organizations in an honest and helpful way for fifteen years?
Or we could all just keep shitting on it while it facilitates social and political movements and enables rapid communication across the planet. Then more than a decade from now when some Ultra-Nazi trillionaire buys it, we can all say “I told you so,” and be real smug about it.
If it ends Elon, I’m gonna allow it. If Twitter fails, his stock in Tesla will have to back it. If that tanks… he’ll have to work his way out of bankruptcy. Just squeeze….
Yeah for the masses they will likely always flock to commercialized easy to use social media that reaches critical mass the fastest, so them being willing to move and keep moving is best we can hope for. For rest of us stuff like fediverse will be there to use.
He’s already sold Twitter/X to xAI; he’s got his arse covered when the bottom eventually falls out.
That raised some eyebrows. Not sure it’ll hold just yet. Still. His world is getting smaller.
Good thing AI can’t fail.
Oh, no doubt - but he’s no longer personally on the hook for Twitter’s $44b debt-loan!
So when it eventually fails, it’ll be a corporate write-off and Elon’s wealth across Tesla and SpaceX are protected.
Wait is that what happened? Investors in his AI company are on the hook for Twitter now?
The rich really are a vampiric class.
Yes, that’s what happened: https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/03/28/elon-musk-says-xai-has-purchased-x-formerly-known-as-twitter-for-33-billion/
For what it’s worth, xAI is still a private company - so at least it’s not retail investors on the hook, just venture capital.
Preaching to the choir
But anyway anyone who thinks bluesky is actually decentralised will learn sooner rather than later that that’s not the case
This was always bait to keep people using corporate social media instead of decentralizing. I am not sorry for the users one bit.
I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Pikachushocked, even.
If they really, really want to fix 99.8% of the problems with hate speech (and many other issues), each user needs to agree to have their real name, home address, email address, and phone number available to the public, in their profile. While what I’ve just said is completely absurd, for almost everyone, it’s the anonymity that empowers people to say the absolute worst things.
Why don’t most people in the checkout line (queue) at the grocery store act the same way they do in a traffic jam on a roadway? Because they’re much more likely to be held personally accountable for their conduct. I wonder how much traffic would change, if our name, address and telephone numbers were required to be posted on all sides of our vehicles?
I didn’t read what you said but I like it, everyone gets a license plate on bluesky.
it’s the anonymity that empowers people to say the absolute worst things.
humans behave badly when they perceive they have social license to do so. anonymity has little to do with it
- exhibit A: public robberies of German Jews in the 1930s
- exhibit B: rwandan genocide
- exhibit C: any public confrontation video shot during the Covid pandemic
your second paragraph makes you sound like Larry Ellison. all you’re arguing for is the extension of the capacity of corporations to constrain and coerce invidiual behaviour, which is gross
I think anonymity has a lot to do with it, but you certainly point out that there’s more than anonymity to factor in. I also agree that, especially in our problemed data sharing environment, having our data on public display would be troublesome (understatement of the year). My comments weren’t so much of a “we should do this,” as much as a point of the cost of fixing the problem. Fixing the problem would be worse than the problem itself, but not by much, since all of our data is collected anyway. I personally believe that social media should mostly be outlawed - but I’m old enough to remember a better world before it existed.
I can’t believe the guy who originally administered the creation of Twitter would do all the exact same things that originally made him billions of dollars selling the company to Elon Musk.
There’s no way he’s just speed-running what he did last time in hopes of another $44B buyout.
Tbh I’ve seen more people asking for this than the people complaining.
There’s been a lot of impersonated accounts popping up lately, so it doesn’t surprise me they’ve opted to do something like this.
Bluesky already has domain based verification which solves that perfectly, I guess people just don’t want to use it.
Oh yeah, they are literally everywhere. And a lot of them are impersonating people that haven’t switched from Twitter yet to take advantage of it specifically.
How come they don’t use the already built in domain verification? It’s basically fool proof to certify that an account is owned by a specific entity.
I think having both is nice
It’s what Twitter had and most people on blueksy just want Twitter before Elon. It sucks but that is really what the majority of people even want. They don’t care about the decentralized stuff.
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