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Bluesky Passes Threads for Active Website Users, But Confronts 'Scammers and Impersonators' (engadget.com) 122

Bluesky now has more active website users than Threads in the U.S., according to a graph from the Financial Times. And though Threads still leads in app usage, "Prior to November 5 Threads had five times more daily active users in the U.S. than Bluesky... Now, Threads is only 1.5 times larger than its rival, Similarweb said."

But "the influx of new users has opened up new opportunities for scammers and impersonators," Engadget reported this week: A recent analysis by Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech found that 44 percent of the top 100 most-followed accounts on Bluesky had at least one "doppelganger," with most looking like "cheap knock-offs of the bigger account, down to the same bio and profile picture," Mantzarlis wrote in his newsletter Faked Up.
The article highlighted issues with Bluesky's loose account verification policies. And then, Bluesky announced a new change-of-policy Friday. Engadget reports: The Bluesky Safety account said that the social media service is removing accounts that are impersonating other people and those squatting on handles... Bluesky now requires parody, satire or fan accounts to label themselves as such in both their handles and their bio. If they don't, or if they only indicate the nature of their account in one of those elements, then they'll be treated as an impersonator and will be removed from the platform. Bluesky now explicitly prohibits identity churning, as well. Accounts that start as impersonators with the purpose of gaining new users, and who then switch to a different identity in an attempt to circumvent the ban, will still get booted off the app. Finally, it says it's exploring "additional options to enhance account verification," though they're not quite ready for rollout.
Bluesky says they've "quadrupled the size of our moderation team, in part to action impersonation reports more quickly. We still have a large backlog of moderation reports due to the influx of new users as we shared previously, though we are making progress." And in addition, "We are working behind the scenes to help many organizations and high-profile individuals set up their verified domain handles."

And there's another problem. "The EU's executive arm on Monday said Bluesky didn't provide information it was required to share under the bloc's Digital Services Act," reports Bloomberg. Bluesky responded that it's working to comply, " consulting with its lawyer to follow the EU's information disclosure rules, a Bluesky spokesperson wrote on Tuesday in an email." "All platforms in the EU have to have a dedicated page on their websites where it says how many user numbers they have in the EU and where they are legally established," Thomas Regnier, the commission's spokesperson on digital matters, told reporters. "This is not the case with Bluesky, so this is not followed...."

Under the DSA, platforms with more than 45 million users in the bloc qualify as "very large online platforms" and need to follow stricter content moderation rules under the commission's supervision. Breaches can result in fines of up to 6% of their global annual sales... Smaller platforms are still required to comply with the law, but are regulated by the EU country where they have a legal presence. That's so far unclear in the case of Bluesky, which was created expressly to avoid a centralized ownership structure.

The commission asked EU member countries' national authorities to investigate "and see if they can find any trace of Bluesky" in their jurisdictions, Regnier said

Bluesky Passes Threads for Active Website Users, But Confronts 'Scammers and Impersonators'

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  • I thought ... (Score:2, Informative)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    Bluesky now has more active website users than Threads

    ... Bluesky was feeding off the disgruntled X users because of its politics. Not so much Threads. But I can understand their concern. As the easiest marks leave X or Threads and head over to Bluesky, so too will all the scammers feeding off of them.

    • I'm a lefty and I really wish it was but I really do think it's just people leaving it because Twitter is just so full of pussy pics in bio bots and neo Nazis and snuff films. If you're trying to promote a brand which a lot of people use Twitter for you just can't afford to be associated with that kind of crap and Twitter's owner refuses to moderate the platform for anything besides criticism of said owner.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        Twitter is just so full of pussy pics in bio bots and neo Nazis and snuff films.

        That's only the Media Matters fiction [cnbc.com] version of Twitter. You are not going to find those things unless you specifically go looking for them.

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Exactly. The only neo-nazi's I've seen are those times Harry Sisson and his Democrat youth team put on BRAND NEW shiny swastika gear to march and pretend they are part of MAGA.

        • Over on YouTube and the are bailing on Twitter because they've noticed the Nazis and the sex bots, not to mention the snuff films. There as apolitical group as you can find. That was one I knew it had gotten really bad.

          It doesn't really matter because the advertisers will come back for the sake of funneling money to powerful men. But the site itself is dead. It's just going to be a money laundering operation in 12 months. And if you are a member of the right wing then you can get your daily dose over
      • by edis ( 266347 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @04:56PM (#64983833) Journal

        All this, lads, and because:
        1. Transition to Bsky has started and is ongoing, wish it luck to stay for the cause of the freedoms.
        2. More, than any issues with the moderation, former Twitter, current X, as in crossed-out at a killing task, is suffering rape of the algorithm - my timeline "for you" feed is drown in misfits, opposite to my personal interests - ruZZian, anti-Israel, MAGA propaganda, something ruZZian troll factories are or would-be producing. Marking not being interested and irrelevant does not lead to any improvement. Algorithm death is the slaughter of the platform.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          You get what you engage with and you [like most people] are probably more likely to comment to argue than agree. They really should dial that back. I think part of the reason it is turned up is they need to farm more ad views because of the left-wing boycotts for free speech.

          That said the claims of material being russian, maga being propaganda, pro-ukraine, etc are mostly misinformation and you are more likely to see the truth on X. This causes cognitive dissonance for people who've been taken for a ride by

          • by edis ( 266347 )

            Your assumptions are fundamentally wrong and to be discarded because of a single fact - this happens out of sudden, platform becomes rigged at some time, for some period. May be made permanent, sure.

            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              "this happens out of sudden, platform becomes rigged at some time, for some period. May be made permanent, sure."

              Obviously we don't agree on everything but to be clear this isn't a dig or slam; I can't parse this.

              My best guess as to what you are trying to say again comes from what I see on the platform. The impact hits heavy and then after a time it backs up or even reverses for awhile?

              I just think that is the algorithm not being very smooth in its steering... take the four hours it gave you stuff you wante

              • by edis ( 266347 )

                You do not properly account the severity of the interference. I see it clearly in time, when platform shifts into propaganda overdrive - upon that, I am flooded with the content, which is irrelevant to me, which I do oppose. There is no point or possibility to argue against the flood. Sometimes I do the work marking, as mentioned above, then my timeline consists of clusters in tens of records one after another, promising I will see less content like this, yet half an hour will not pass, as those same entrie

      • by corrie ( 111769 )

        Twitter is just so full of pussy pics in bio bots and neo Nazis and snuff films

        I might have to join X now. Or is this content free?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        "Twitter is just so full of pussy pics in bio bots and neo Nazis and snuff films"

        As a regular X user I can tell you get your opinion from your left wing echochamber rather than personal experience. There is less censorship of political views and more lax enforcement of politically correct speech and otherwise it is moderated more or less the same as any other platform.

        Roll back the clock to 2010 before woke and critical theories of social justice took over and most every respectable platform looked akin to

        • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @05:48PM (#64983927)

          As a regular X user I can tell you get your opinion from your left wing echochamber rather than personal experience. There is less censorship of political views and more lax enforcement of politically correct speech and otherwise it is moderated more or less the same as any other platform.

          Evidence suggests otherwise.

          https://qz.com/elon-musk-x-twi... [qz.com]
          https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
          https://www.theverge.com/2024/... [theverge.com]
          https://fortune.com/2023/06/21... [fortune.com]

          Maybe you live in an echo chamber as well.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            So you have links showing a blocked illegal document that all other news outlets also refused to publish and that government censorship requests are up?

            That is a whole lot of links which contradict nothing I've said.

            • Errr you're literally able to test this. I know it won't achieve the same result as an ad hominem attack, but really what you say is irrelevant since your "free speech" platform will automatically hide your post (and tell you it hid your post) if you do so much as post the word "cisgender" in any context what so ever.

              This isn't doing research on vaccines. You don't need a science degree to understand a complex paper here. Literally any moron with a single digit IQ can verify some of the things in those link

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @05:51PM (#64983935) Homepage Journal

          There is heavy censorship of left and progressive politics. Musk banned the word "cis", for crying out loud.

          The fact that a lot of people have left the platform seems to have helped it lurch even further right, as there just aren't the users there to post counter arguments or do community notes.

          It's become a huge hard right echo chamber.

          • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            "There is heavy censorship of left and progressive politics."

            No, there is more balanced moderation of left and progressive politics. But I understand how it can feel that way when you are used to such privilege and repression of opposing narratives. When I argue with left/progressives I get a giant feed of nothing but that because I engaged, it is definitely NOT censoring them but rather failing to give them an advantage.

            "Musk banned the word "cis", for crying out loud."

            It's a slur for someone who isn't men

            • Enjoy watching the leopard eat everyone else's face first.
            • by dknj ( 441802 )

              The cool thing is that with Trump in the POTUS seat he can deny immunity for official acts and privilege to the intelligence officials/prosecutors/leo who were involved in it all.... they derive those from him.

              Didn't realize POTUS was part of the judicial branch. Everything else you wrote is spot on, but lets not get carried away here. I think you need to reread what qualified immunity means. All that means is that the president can fire officials, but that doesn't mean they can be prosecuted. Comey, as an example, was never prosecuted.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Even if you are daft enough to think that cis is a slur, surely Mr. Free Speech Absolutionist shouldn't have it automatically limit visibility of posts containing it. If calling someone all kinds of racial and misogynistic slurs, if posting "your body, my choice", if people can have swastikas in their avatars, how can you possibly argue that using the word cis is somehow a step too far and must be censored?

        • Because I didn't talk about censorship or anything of the sort I'm talking about spam. So I don't think you're post is real but if it is I feel sad for you having wasted your time repeating talking points from a billionaire who couldn't care less about you or your family or anyone you care about or anything you care about.

          Remember what George Carlin said, it's a big club and you ain't in it.

          And when those tariffs hit and inflation spikes and the Federal reserve cranks interest rates causing mass layo
        • I also remember there not being newspeak words such as "unalived" and "sewer slide" back in 2010 because people weren't being monstered by hallucinating AI robocop mods back then.
        • call him Elonia and question his 'gender affirming' jawline.

          Interesting to point out someone else in an echo chamber while so deep in your own. That you think there is less censorship shows where you stand - what you meant to say is less censorship of shit you agree with.

        • As a regular X user I can tell you get your opinion from your left wing echochamber rather than personal experience.

          That might actually be the funniest thing I've ever read on this site.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Strange, I don't see any scams on BlueSky. I don't go on twitter much these days, but when I do it's full of crypto and fake news.

      Musk recently changed it to heavily down-rank posts with links in them, which really helped the fake news stuff get promoted over stuff that comes with sources.

      Some of the more prominent conservative accounts seems to have had Community Notes disabled for them, and notes pointing out issues with right wing talking points often get deleted.

      It's got far worse since the election, ev

    • The easiest marks, the ones eating up all the conspiracies and buying the Ivermectin won't leave. The ones that try, because they are starved of their primitive drive to 'own the libs', will wither up and die from lack of the oxygen they need. X will largely become like Slashdot, where conservatives have sorta killed real engagement through bullying and misinformation. With a much better user driven moderation system, it will be difficult for actual scammers and miscreants of misinformation to survive, l

    • Re:I thought ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @10:51PM (#64984357)

      Its not just the politics, its the atmosphere in X is just straight up poisonous now. People are incredibly hostile there over politics. And like, yeah I get it , the americans just had a pretty acrimonious election, but for the once, (unlikely now) 70+ percent of the sites users that are not american, it got pretty frusturating to have a situation where almost any given conversation would innevitably get invaded by spammers with blue ticks ranting about american politics.

      My mother, solidly in the boomer category, used to use twitter to talk about genealogy and her favorite soap and reality tv stars but quit in frusturation a year ago because she would see almost any conversation, whether it was about the latest antics of the kardashians, or about migrations of norwegian settlers in the 1500s get bombed by hostile political people yelling at people and calling stranger "fags" or "commies" or whatever. Of course she got out.

      She's moved to threads, place seems pretty boomery, fairly polite, she's happy there. I moved to Bsky, because I've set my feed to game developers, software engineers, dungeons and dragons fan art creators (No AI slop so far!) and prog rock fans, and......thats all I'm getting. No people yelling at me about american poltics, no antivaxers shouting at me because I'm vaccinated, just polite folks discussing software engineering, their favorite genesis albums and youngsters doing impressive drawings of drizzt. Perfect.

      Im sure there are people yelling at each other about politics on there, but I didnt opt into it, so its not showing me that, just like I want.

  • m. b.
  • Mastodon has a big amount of users for a while, until they started eating themselves.
    Then again Mastodon and bluesky look to have attracted the biggest scum of the internet.
  • 1. Do exactly what had the old Twitter losing money.
    2. Somehow get all the users.
    3. Find a way to ban or sabotage X
    4. Profit!
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > Do exactly what had the old Twitter losing money.

      What's the "right" way to run Twitter?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Twitter was profitable for a couple of years before the pandemic, when ad spending was cut massively.

      Musk reduced income by over 85% in the first year. Cost cuts caused the site to become unstable, and his poor decisions lead to many users leaving it. A lot of "anchor" users went, large accounts that kept other users coming back. I don't just mean influences and the like, I mean people like Technology Connections, important people in Open Source, insightful journalists, people who provided real value.

  • But Confronts 'Scammers and Impersonators'

    So it's becoming like X already.

  • There are so many antisocial media companies come and gone, all of the good names get used up, and the new sites are forced to use names like "Hbviv" and "Zxytxi"?

    (I'm in the US and never heard of "Blue Sky" till now and there seems to be lots of fly by night anti social media companies these days).

  • Yeah sure, join yet another social media company until it turns into yet another right-wing shithole. Hard pass.
  • by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @09:49PM (#64984329) Journal
    I'd love to get some Slashdot coverage of Bluesky's opensource and data roots.
    1. Bluesky is a public benefit company (they can legally prioritize keeping their data open over profits)
    2. Bluesky is federated (can bridge with other federated systems)
    3. Uses the open-source AT protocol

    I'm much more excited about these things than the rest of the plafform
  • The folks who are leaving Twitter are doing so not because they were not permitted to express their opinion, but because others *are* permitted to express theirs. Freedom of speech means that people I don't like get to say things I don't like.
    • This shit has been copy pasted so many times on this article, I'm wondering what dumbfuck talking head you're copy-pasting from.
      Enlighten us- where do you get your talking points, since it's obvious the sentence wasn't composed by you.

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