'Parody, Satire, Or Fan Accounts Are Allowed On Bluesky,' But They Must Label Themselves

Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform, is experiencing a remarkable rise in popularity.

With its innovative approach to making a social media platform, it emerged as the getaway for a lot of people, especially following the mass exodus that happened after Twitter becomes X, following Elon Musk's acquisition of the platform.

This influx has transformed Bluesky into a thriving, diverse community, igniting fresh conversations and fostering unique connections.

However, the platform's growing popularity is also presenting challenges.

A significant issue stems from users bringing their parody accounts along. While these accounts can add humor and creativity, their proliferation risks disrupting the platform’s balance.

To address this, Bluesky needs to issue clear guidelines outlining acceptable user behavior.

Establishing these boundaries early will help prevent misuse and ensure the community continues to grow in a healthy and engaging way.

Bluesky is still in its early stages, and its infrastructure isn't fully equipped to handle the challenges of rapid growth.

In other words, it still has weak feet.

The platform's meteoric rise in popularity has propelled it into the social media spotlight, leaving little time for preparation and adaptation.

This surge has brought several growing pains: frequent outages, ongoing struggles with content moderation, and perhaps most notably, a serious issue with imposter accounts.

Without a formal verification process, celebrities and other prominent figures are finding themselves increasingly targeted by impersonators, creating confusion and undermining trust in the platform.

"We are working behind the scenes to help many organizations and high-profile individuals set up their verified domain handles. In the meantime, we’ve updated our impersonation policy to be more aggressive. Impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed," said Bluesky.

The company added that the they've "quadrupled" the size of the moderation team in order to deal with "impersonation reports more quickly."

"Parody, satire, or fan accounts are allowed on Bluesky, but they must clearly label themselves in both the display name and bio to help others know the account isn’t official. Accounts with only one of these elements will receive an impersonation label," Bluesky explained.

Bluesky was designed to rival X right from the start, and its unique design creates both opportunities and challenges in managing user identities.

As a distributed platform built on the AT Protocol, Bluesky doesn’t directly own users' identities. This limits its ability to govern identities in the same way platforms like X do, such as through verified badges or robust infrastructure for identity verification.

This means individuals and brands might struggle to fully protect their identities on Bluesky.

However, this isn’t entirely a dead end.

While the Bluesky team works on distinguishing imposters, it offers users a way for users to confirm their authenticity—by leveraging their own domain.

This approach enables users to link their Bluesky account, handle, and identity to a domain they control.

It’s a decentralized method of verification that puts the power back in the hands of the user, offering a new and innovative way to establish trust on the platform.

While this method of verification has potential, it’s not without its limitations.

Businesses and brands often own domains, but individuals are far less likely to have one. Even many notable figures, including well-known personalities, haven’t taken the step of registering their own domain.

Moreover, the process of verifying through a domain is far from straightforward. It requires modifying the domain’s DNS records to link it with Bluesky, a technical task that can be daunting for users without technical expertise.

Despite these challenges, this remains the best available method for verification on Bluesky at this time.

The Bluesky team acknowledges that this solution isn’t ideal. However, as the platform evolves, it may refine its approach to make identity verification more accessible and user-friendly for everyone.

They concluded its updates by saying, "We also hear your feedback: users want more ways to verify their identity beyond domain verification. We’re exploring additional options to enhance account verification, and we hope to share more shortly."

Previously, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said that the company could eventually do more work to verify accounts while also enabling other apps or organizations to provide their own verification.

"They can choose to trust us — the Bluesky team’s verification — or they could do their own," she said.

Further reading: How 'Bluesky' Finally Became The Old-School Twitter That X Could Never Be