The fedi discourse on Bluesky's verification is very frustrating Don't et me wrong, there's a lot to critique with Bluesky's approach of combining their own platform-level verification with initially annointing a handful of third-party verifiers:
community-oriented verification, along the lines that
@rudyfraser.comBlackskyRude1. suggests, would be much more power-distributive and equitable
as
@ngerakines.meNick Gerakines notes, Bluesky's approach is missing something critical: consent
as
@DataDrivenMDJorge Caballero, MD points out, the current framework functionally disenfranchises community organizers who lack social networks with access to mainstream media and other institutions that are designed to exclude marginalized peoplejust like on Twitter, he people initially verified are overwhelmingly cis, white, and male;
the three initial external verifiers include the anti-trans NYTimes and one of their subsidiaries
Bluesky hasn't said anything about their process for making decisions about who's "notable" enough for them to verify and how they decide somebody's "authentic".
To be fair, I am seeing a bit of discussion of some of these issues here. But I'm not seeing anything about consent, or community moderation, or equity. Instead, the vast majority of what I'm seeing is people saying hat the approach of external verifiers (run by entities other than Bluesky) and the Bluesky app attaching privileged semantics to the annointed ones isn't "decentraized."
Is that really the important thing here?
