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by FlyingSnake 430 days ago
In my humble opinion: The basic premise is itself is wrong. Why should BlueSky (or X or Mastodon) should be the sole arbitrator of truth? Who are these prophets that we need to preserve the sanctity of their messages?

If I want to hear what a journalist has to say, I would go to their official website like NYT or Tagesspeigel and read it there. Should we be interested in what Kim Sang yun or Sebastian Mustermann has said few minutes ago?

The problem of spam and impersonation goes way beyond Blue Checks.
4 comments
brookst 430 days ago
Are you saying that the problems of spam and impersonation are so insurmountable that there’s no point trying to mitigate them?
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pc86 430 days ago
They definitely did not say that and what is this constant need for people on the internet to respond to someone saying "maybe this isn't the right way to do something" with "Oh well then you're saying that something can't be done at all and it's pointless and why even try!!!11"
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maxerickson 430 days ago
In this case, they aren't the sole arbiter. They do happen to be the one that their client is advertising, but they can add others.

You are borderline arguing that information is bad (because that's all a verification is).

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FlyingSnake 430 days ago
> You are borderline arguing that information is bad

Your words not mine.

I questioned why sites like X or BlueSky or Reddit can be sole in charge of who is "verified" and Real™. We can listen to what the Journalists, UN officials etc have to say on their own media websites, right?

Too much news is bad for us anyway [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054

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idiotsecant 429 days ago
This is some grade A navelgazing. This is an actual, real, practical problem that decreases the signal to noise ratio in these communities. Spammers pretend to be popular people and use it to scam, steal, and otherwise take advantage of people. It's a good thing to reduce that and makes the service better for everyone.
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k__ 430 days ago
Why should BlueSky (or X or Mastodon) should be the sole arbitrator of truth?

Are they the sole arbitrator if they simply use a DNS record?

That's the same tech used to verify their official website.

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