Bluesky is cracking down on parody accounts and impersonators

Thus, the decentralized platform is rolling out a "more aggressive" policy on parody accounts that aren’t clearly labeled.

If it were decentralised, it wouldn't be possible for the platform to set a network wide policy on parody accounts...

Yep, I've been particularly irked with the way people keep calling Bluesky "decentralized". Simply having multiple servers doesn't make it decentralized, that's like saying YouTube is decentralized because they have dozens of CDN centers.

If every endpoint on the network is owned and controlled by a single entity that manages white/blacklists, then it is not decentralized. I'm not sure what you would call it, maybe "pluralized"? Not sure, but definitely not "decentralized". A decentralized network will have no such authority that controls who can and cannot join it.
- It's federated in name only. It would cost millions in storage and networking to set up another Bluesky node because each node is essentially a full mirror (not that you couldn't code custom filters or something I'd guess?).
  
  No one is ever going to bother unless conservatives want to set up their own server where they can't be banned for trolling.
- This isn't entirely accurate. Main issue is that this is all very new and moving very fast, so while it's not fair to call atprotocol completely open it's not fair to call it centralized either.
  
  Right now you can run a relay independently and you can scrape bluesky's PDS set with it (guy did that in July and it cost about 150 bucks a month, probably more expensive now. https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3kwzl7tye6u2y) there's just not much incentive to do so. This recent policing of accounts might change the calculus on that thought process, but for now it's not really that you "can't" it just nobody really wants to. (Additionally there's only like one client that lets you set multiple relays and/or appviews, so the front-ends haven't caught up with this idea either.)
  
  Theres about 760 or so independent PDSs right now: https://blue.mackuba.eu/directory/pdses and the list is growing.
  
  You can host an independent blog using your own PDS and not even using bluesky's Relay network at all: https://github.com/haileyok/blug
  
  Or you can still have your data independent on your PDS but still allow the relay to scrape your blog update mentions: https://whtwnd.com/
  
  More detailed is here: https://whtwnd.com/alexia.bsky.cyrneko.eu/3l727v7zlis2i
  
  tl;Dr:
  
  They are VC-Funded, they will inevitably screw over everyone!
  
  I understand where this notion might come from, though, ATproto has already matured enough that it could be used without BlueSky PBC existing. It could die tomorrow, and with little effort the ~650 non-bsky PDSs and a relay (which would have to handle much less data at that point) could be ran by volunteers and interested people.
- I'm not sure what you would call it, maybe "pluralized"?
  
  Distributed is the term, and to be more precise - it’s not federated because ownership and control is not distributed, even if the servers are
- Ok.....so then doesn't that take ALL power away from every mod?
  
  Let's say you ban Lost_My_Mind@Lemmy.world
  
  But then I could create Lost_My_Mind@Lemm.ee
  
  And you could ban it. And I could create Lost_My_Mind@Shit.just.works (or however it's formatted).
  
  And then this cat and mouse could happen, all day every day. Just a series of me creating accounts, you blocking them, but it then becoming a full time job making sure I'm currently banned, and me evading the system.
  
  Or am I missing something?

So they just want parody accounts to be clearly labeled? With the number of people constantly eating the onion, I'm gonna say that's not the most terrible thing. People are dumb. They believe dumb shit.

Edit: Given that public officials use Bluesky and the whole check mark fiasco over on shitter, I'm just gonna say maybe they should have learned their lesson before now and enacted policies like this a long time ago but I guess better late than never. Can't have a CDC parody account saying to drink bleach.

I mean they did, you can verify yourself with an official domain name. I think a lot of the problem is new Bluesky users not understanding one that if they are a high profile user they need to do that, and two that users need to look for officially verified domains to see if a user is legit. If you look at the official steam accounts, they are all verified with official Valve owned domains.
And considering there's so many new accounts, its not like one can go back and check the post history to see if what they're saying adds up.

There were accounts, posting seemingly "up to date" information with no way to really fact check. There were some political "personal" accounts just testing the waters with BS. Stuff like: "It's me. I'm not going to say anything else yet, but, here I am." It made it kinda hard to discern.

Ahh, the plight of every young social media site as it makes the transition from childhood to adulthood in order to be taken seriously.

A tale old as time.

All conservative accounts should be labeled as a parody of reality.

Makes sense... I've only used the app for about a week or two and now I started noticing its changes from primarily "ah, great to be on bluesky" to now where Elon apparently is following me... a person with like 3 followers.

Even Elon is leaving Twitter? Now that's how you know it's dead.

Hey fuck this shit

It's already going down the toilet apparently. That didn't take long