Bluesky is cracking down on parody accounts and impersonators

Bluesky Social is having a moment, but that new influx of users is creating an impersonation problem. Thus, the decentralized platform is rolling out a "more aggressive" policy on parody accounts that aren’t clearly labeled.

In a thread on the platform's safety account, Bluesky stated, "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."

Additionally, the platform is cracking down on "identity churning," where accounts create impersonation profiles to gain followers and then rebrand themselves entirely.

The changes to Bluesky’s terms of service aren’t without reason. In his newsletter Faked Up, Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, noted that "44 percent of the top 100 most-followed accounts on Bluesky had at least one doppelganger."

Bluesky's unconventional approach to verification has become a fertile ground for copycats, especially as celebrities and political figures migrate over. Without a traditional verification process, users must "self-verify" with custom domain names. This manual process requires access by adding a string of text to the DNS record associated with the domain. For instance, major accounts like the New York Times use their own domains, such as @nytimes.com, instead of the default @person.bsky.social.

This has created a new problem of "handle squatting" as outlets that do switch to custom names often have to squat on their old accounts to prevent impersonators from taking them.