As more celebrities and high-profile influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service faces more concerns about impersonation and identity theft.
The Bluesky Safety team posted on Friday that the company had updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and squatter accounts will be removed.”
The company said it “still has a large backlog of review reports due to the influx of new users,” but that its moderation team has quadrupled in size, so it should be able to act more quickly on impersonation reports.
Anecdotally, over the past few weeks I’ve noticed an increasing number of Bluesky posts asking “Is this a real person or a parody account?” There is no definitive answer. Other users have also started creating their own verification lists and badges.
One reason it’s confusing: Bluesky lacks verified user badges like those popularized by Twitter (now known as X, which replaced the old verification with a paid subscription program). Instead, it uses other signals, such as the verified domain of the user’s handle, to indicate the trustworthiness of the account. For example, if the handle contains the domain “bsky.team”, you’ll know that someone is actually affiliated with Bluesky.
Bluesky also said that “we are working behind the scenes to help many organizations and public figures set up verified domain handles.”
Parody and fan accounts are allowed, but “you must clearly identify yourself in both your display name and bio so others know that the account is not official,” the company said. And Bluesky says “identity churn” is not allowed, so “if you set up an impersonation account just to gain followers and switch to a different identity that you no longer impersonate in order to maintain that account, your account will be removed.”
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber said earlier this week that the company could eventually do more to verify accounts while allowing other apps or organizations to provide their own verification. “They can choose to trust us, which is the confirmation of the Bluesky team, and they own it.”
Likewise, the Bluesky Safety team says, “We also listen to you. Users want more ways to verify their identity beyond domain verification. “We are exploring additional options to enhance account verification and hope to share more information soon.”
