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Bluesky is bigger than ever. But as the upstart social media service surges, the platform is facing some growing pains. Among them: The influx of new users has opened up new opportunities for scammers and impersonators hoping to capitalize on the attention and Blueskys lack of a conventional verification system. 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. Unlike many of its counterparts, which offer checkmarks and official badges to government officials, celebrities and other high profile accounts, Bluesky has a more hands-off approach to verification. Instead of proactively verifying notable accounts itself, the company encourages users to use a custom domain name as their handle in order to self-verify. For example, my employer Engadget currently has the Bluesky handle engadget.bsky.social. But if we wanted to verify our account, we could opt to change it to Engadget.com. Some media organizations, like The New York Times, Bloomberg and The Onion have done this for their official accounts. Individuals are also able to verify by using a personal website. But, the process is more complicated than simply changing your handle. It also requires entities to add a string of text to the DNS record associated with their domain. While in some ways its a clever solution to verification only the actual owner of a website would be able to access the DNS record for a domain it also has a number of drawbacks. Its a manual process thats not readily accessible to everyone who might wish to be verified. (Bluesky does sell custom domains for users who dont already have one.) Verification is even more complex for those wishing to verify multiple accounts associated with the same domain, which may explain why some outlets, like The New York Times and NPR have custom handles, but dont extend that verification to their reporters on Bluesky. Even Blueskys own tutorial suggests organizations seek assistance from their IT departments. There are other issues. Once you change your handle to match a domain you own, your old alias (engadget.bksy.social, for instance) becomes available again. So youll either need to set up a new account to squat on your old handle, or risk an impersonator scooping it up. And even if you add a custom domain, it doesnt offer foolproof protection against impersonation. A dedicated scammer could use a lookalike domain and verify an imposter account. Both accounts belong to AOC, but only the top one is "verified" under Bluesky's current system. Screenshot via Bluesky To make things more confusing, Bluesky itself gives no indication, other than the handle name, that an account has been verified. Verified accounts dont have a visual indicator like a check or a badge that differentiates them from unverified ones, To combat this, some Bluesky users are coming up with their own makeshift workarounds. Hunter Walker, an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo and early Bluesky user, has been proactively verifying journalists, celebrities and other high-profile accounts himself. So far, hes verified more than 330 people, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Flavor Flav, Mark Cuban and Barbra Streisand. I have a pretty high standard for journalism and reporting, and everything I say, I like to triple check the sources, Walker tells Engadget. I like to make sure it's confirmed. And it became apparent to me, participating in Bluesky, that on a basic level, nothing was confirmed. Walker estimates hes spent about 16 hours over the last couple weeks verifying accounts. He has different methods depending on the user, but it often involves communicating with someone from another account officially linked to them, like a company email address. For celebrities, their representatives are often able to confirm their official Bluesky handles. Ive caught so many scammers and imposters, and it's not always who you would expect, Walker says. Regular journalists sometimes have three or four imposters. He says hes been inundated with requests for his unofficial verification, and notes that a number of people hes verified also use a custom domain. They want something else because a domain is not verification of identity. Walker maintains starter packs of journalists and other prominent accounts hes verified. Recently, he took it a step further, working with another user to create a custom labeling service that will append different emojis to accounts hes verified to make his verification more prominent. Users who subscribe to the service will see a next to celebrities and public figures, and a next to journalists. The labeling service that uses emojis to show accounts verified by Walker.Screenshot via Bluesky While these kinds of efforts can act as a stopgap, Walker wont be able to verify every notable account on Bluesky himself. Hes suggested that other communities, like university researchers, could undertake a similar ad hoc verification effort. But, without help from Bluesky o a third-party identity service, he expects impersonation to remain an issue. And widespread impersonation can often lead to bigger problems for a platform like Bluesky. Sloppy verification is an early signal of broader deception and catnip for organized disinformation actors, Cornell Techs Mantzarlis wrote, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris at one point had 20 impersonator accounts on Bluesky even though shes never had an official presence on the platform. On its part, Bluesky has acknowledged that impersonation is an issue. In an update this week, the company said it had seen a predictable uptick in harmful content that coincided with its recent growth. In a statement to Engadget, Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said the company had quadrupled its moderation team, which would help ensure reports of impersonation are handled more quickly. Liu also said that Bluesky was working on easier visual signals we could use for verification so it's a better user experience, though its not yet clear what form that might take. But Bluesky, which currently has just 20 full-time employees, seems reluctant to consider other approaches to verification outside of custom domains. We've been working behind the scenes with official organizations and high-profile individuals like celebrities and elected officials to get their accounts verified on Bluesky with their website, Liu said. With domains as verification, we want to put the tools of verification in each org's hands, instead of making Bluesky the company the sole arbiter of who deserves to be verified on the network. Blueskys hesitation to play the role of verifier is in many ways understandable. Verification has a long and messy history on other platforms. On Twitter, a symbol that was originally created to fight impersonators quickly morphed into a sometimes divisive status symbol. On Instagram, verification has often been exploited by scammers. Now, both companies allow users to buy blue checkmarks, though both platforms also proactively verify certain types of accounts, like those belonging to government officials. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, however, has signaled that shes potentially open to alternate approaches to verification. In a livestream on Twitch this week, she said the company might at some point become a verification provider. TechCrunch, which reported the remarks, said that her comments suggested a future system in which there are multiple providers of verification. Graber added that shes not sure when such a scenario would play out. Walker, who repeated several times his firm belief that Bluesky has the juice, hopes that his verification project might be able to nudge Bluesky to take a different approach. I'm really hoping that people pay attention to the question of trust and the question of identity. The cool thing about the open source nature of it all, is we have a chance to build things on this and make it how we want it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-has-a-verification-problem-190047733.html?src=rss
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Its been more than a hot minute since weve seen some new Sega Genesis classics in the Nintendo Switch online library, but were finally getting some today. The Switch Online Expansion Pack brings the frantic platformer VectorMan, the run-n-gunner Wolf of the Battlefield: MERCS and the totally awesome ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron to the Switchs classic games library. VectorMan from BlueSky Software is a 2D platformer with impressive graphics for its time that often gets overlooked in the long hallway of the Sega Genesis legacy. The protagonist is a robot made of floating left on a resource ravaged Earth to clean up the mess humanity made when one of the supervisor robots named WarHead connects to a nuclear weapon and holds the planet hostage. VectorMan must blast his way through waves of enemies to free the Earth from WarHeads clutches. So just think of VectorMan as Wall-E with a deathwish. The game has a pretty notorious degree of difficulty, but the slick graphics and fast pace of the gameplay makes VectorMan an underrated gem. Wolf of the Battlefield: MERCS is a top-down military style shooter that started in the arcade before migrating to Segas Mega Drive and the Genesis in the early 90s. The concept is simple: run across the screen and shoot everything that moves before it shoots you. MERCS also has a huge arsenal of special weapons and some really cool boss battles that pit your puny mercenaries against a big ol battleship and even a harrier jet. If you dont know the names ToeJam & Earl, then welcome to one of the greatest slices of joy from gamings history. The most 90s video game duo ever got the sequel treatment with Panic on Funkotron in 1993. The second ToeJam & Earl title took its titular alien heroes away from the unique isometric map that made the first game so memorable to a more traditional 2D platform game but they are just as vibrant, goofy and animated in their second outing. This is the first Sega Genesis update for the Nintendo Switch in over a year. The previous Genesis pack was released in June of 2023 and came with four games including Ghouls n Ghosts, The Revenge of Shinobi, Landstalker and Crusader of Centy.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-latest-switch-online-expansion-pack-update-includes-three-classic-sega-genesis-games-184621721.html?src=rss
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Sony has revealed some games that PlayStation Plus members can claim in December, to help keep them busy throughout the long winter. This is a pretty good drop, and one pick is a bona-fide GOTY-winner. First up, the co-op delight It Takes Two. We enjoyed this split-screen co-op adventure, even if we found the story to be a bit on the cheesy side. Simply put, the game is a strictly two-player affair and each person controls one half of a married couple as they navigate areas inspired by Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and other movies in which people shrink down for some reason. It was a legitimate hit upon release back in 2021, eventually winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards. Temtem is monster-taming RPG, also known as a Pokémon clone. Pikachu-heads will find plenty to like here, including familiar turn-based battles and a whole bunch of cute (and deadly) creatures to collect. This game has a more robust online feature set than any Pokémon title, however, with an open world filled with actual people and their fighting pets. Players can chat and challenge these other tamers to battles. The entire game can also be played cooperatively with a friend. Finally, theres Aliens: Dark Descent, a real-time strategy game in which players command a squad of marines as they try to stop a Xenomorph outbreak. As indicated by the title, its set in the universe of the Alien franchise, complete with sinister agents of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. The large open levels are fun to navigate and the vibes are stellar. Incidentally, this game also hit Xbox Game Pass today. All three games will be available to PlayStation Plus members on December 3 until January 6. Also, PlayStation Plus members only have until December 2 to add last months games, which included Hot Wheels Unleashed 2, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Death Note Killer.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/decembers-ps-plus-monthly-games-include-it-takes-two-and-temtem-181039449.html?src=rss
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