Oh, and starter packs! If you have followers, add other people to a starter pack to vouch for them! You don't have to follow everyone in a starter pack; you can pick and choose. But if someone you trust has vouched for them, that's pretty good vetting.

FYI, if you do change your handle, your follows, followers, likes stay with you.

That said, there is a process for reporting frauds. And they control the *.bsky.social domain, so they could add some mechanism for claiming to be a particular handle from another platform, but hopefully people will just get on board with domain names.

If bluesky verified people directly, then they'd be the ones deciding who was worthy of verification, and they don't want any centralized organization having control over who's worth listening to or worth blocking.

Verification here is like email.

Tim.onion@theonion.com or bencollins@theonion.com must actually write for the onion. Here, he might be @bencollins.theonion.com or @tim-onion.theonion.com.

A handle like @bencollins.bsky.social is like bencollins@gmail.com - he could just be some guy.

Verification here is like email.

Tim.onion@theonion.com or bencollins@theonion.com must actually write for the onion. Here, he might be @bencollins.theonion.com or @tim-onion.theonion.com.

A handle like @bencollins.bsky.social is like bencollins@gmail.com - he could just be some guy.

Who me?