The fast-growing social networking startup Bluesky, a Twitter/X alternative based on open web principles, outlined in a livestream Monday how its take on user account verification will be different from those offered by other services, including Meta and X. Traditional social media have evolved toward a pay-for-verification model where users pay for the privilege of the blue check confirming their identity. According to Bluesky, they see a future system of multiple verification providers serving its larger community's needs.

Currently, the only way to confirm your account on Bluesky is to take a custom domain name, something the company started offering an option last year. That's how you know that the account @nytimes.com on Bluesky belongs to the real The New York Times publication, for example. In addition, Bluesky tackles impersonation issues directly, as they arise.

However, Bluesky believes that custom domains may only be part of the solution around verification going forward.

In the future, the company is considering a model where multiple verification providers co-exist.

Explained Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, "…we could be a verification provider — and we might at some point (and also, no, I'm not sure when). But it would be something where you’re accessing through one app, and then there might be another app and there might be other services,” she continued. “And they can choose to trust us — the Bluesky team’s verification — or they could do their own. Or other people could do their own.”

Or, in other words, Bluesky is proposing a verification system where one entity-the company itself, that is-is not singularly in control over who gets the "verified" label and who does not.

This is a rethinking of verification compared with how such systems have traditionally worked and how they have more recently evolved.

Verification on the platform has been plagued with confusion and controversy over the years on Twitter. Twitter has traditionally verified some high profile users but ignored others believing they too deserved verification creating a two-tier class of sorts.

Under new owner Elon Musk, the company tried to revamp this system to make it more democratic by allowing anyone to pay to verify themselves. But, as you may expect, this dramatic switch did not go well, as users bought verification checks in order to impersonate others on the platform, causing chaos.

Even today, X still has a problem with bots that are verified, which has devalued what a verified check means.

Meta, meanwhile followed Twitter/X with paid verification that serves mainly to help creators and businesses on its platform.

But in a way, that's exactly what Bluesky's trying to do: making infrastructure where anyone can have the power to verify any other according to their rule and policy, much as it currently allows anyone to create their feeds, moderation system, and algorithms.

Other people may choose to vet people based on other reasons, while Bluesky itself decides to focus on high-profile users.

For example, Graber proposed that a university could verify users as alums, or a fan group like the Swifties could verify people as community members. Such verification providers may choose to be picky about who gets verified, or they may provide more comprehensive services, whereby verification across a range of different affiliations is part of their offerings.

The challenge, the CEO said, would be in how to present multiple verifications to the end user so it wouldn't be confusing. The company needs to figure out how these verifications would appear — as badges, perhaps? — and whether other third-party Bluesky apps would need to display them in the same way as the company's official client.

“…We’re trying to design long-term for more applications [and] more services, beyond our own, to operate,” noted Graber.

Timing is another question.

The company’s 20-person team has been working to keep up with Bluesky’s growth spike as users began to leave Musk’s X following the U.S. presidential elections and other policy changes, like those that allow X to train AI on user data, and other policies around blocks work. Since the election, Bluesky has added 8.7 million new users and today has topped 22.7 million total users, leaving Meta's X competitor Threads scrambling to counter the threat with its own set of Bluesky-like features, like switching your default feed alongside an update to its algorithm.

On the livestream, Bluesky's team discussed other long-term plans, such as how Bluesky profiles could be designed to connect users to their broader web presence, including their personal website and other social accounts, similar to something like Linktree.

The company said it couldn't yet commit to rolling out specific features or a timeline, given its rapid growth.