Getting verified by Bluesky: a surprisingly easy process, no ID upload needed

My Bluesky account now has one thing in common with my pre-2023 Twitter account: a white checkmark inside a blue circle. But unlike the social-media status symbol that I’d spent a couple of weeks in 2014 lightly working the refs at Twitter to get, this one required no ongoing effort on my part and probably wasn’t necessary anyway.

That last part is because I had taken advantage of Bluesky’s domain name-based verification two years ago, after figuring out some wonkiness with WordPress.com domain registrations. That was an easy choice, since converting my Bluesky handle to @robpegoraro.com tied my identity there to a site at which I’ve been writing since the spring of 2011.

But I recognized how a domain-rooted verification regime could break in practice. What if an attacker registered a first name-last name domain to try to con a widely-followed journalist? What if somebody registered a domain name through Bluesky’s option to do that and then had that domain name only point to their own Bluesky profile?

So when Bluesky introduced a decentralized verification system in April, including the option of having a “trusted verifier” organization vouch for your account, I had to try it out. And by “had,” I mean I set it aside for the next month and change until my journalist pal Dwight Silverman, the Houston Chronicle’s longstanding tech columnist, got verified about three weeks ago.

That spurred me to fill out the Google Docs form for Bluesky verification. The form noted that Bluesky management reserved the right to require ID-based verification “at a later date” via an unspecified form of document and outlined such requirements as having an account representing “a real person, registered business, organization, or legitimate entity” and being ranked as “notable within your field and geographic region.”

After I selected “Journalist/News Organization” from an opening list of “Verification Categories,” the form requested my role at my publication, the address of that news organization’s site, and links to three recent stories under my byline. (I leaned on my PCMag affiliation for this part.) An essay-question screen invited up to 500 words of self-promotional copy, which I provided with an elevator-pitch version of my LinkedIn profile.

Twenty-two days later, a “Welcome to Bluesky Verification!” e-mail landed in my inbox. That Monday-evening message brought the heartwarming news that “you are notable and that we’ve confirmed you are who you claim to be, helping other users find and trust your account on the Bluesky app.”

It further advised that I should “avoid changing account names or handles,” not let my account go dormant for too long (no risk!), and refrain from violating Bluesky’s community guidelines.

I can live with all that. I also appreciate that this is the first verification badge which I’ve picked up on social media after playing strictly by a platform’s rules: My Twitter verification started with an IRL chat with a Twitter employee at a journalism conference in 2014, while somebody at Facebook verified my now-deprecated public page without me asking.

I got no such favor at Instagram, and seeing that platform ignore my reports of an obvious impostor has left me exceedingly uninterested in paying for “Meta Verification.” Which means my checkmark at Bluesky may be my only official social-media validation for some time to come, and I’m okay with that.

Thrive in obscurity via Jeet Mehta [Shared]

Most things take forever to bear fruit.

Even the most successful creators have spent years (if not decades) putting content out in obscurity. Just a complete total void. Youtube videos with 4 views. Newsletters with 3 subscribers. Podcasts with 10 listeners. Blogs with 6 readers. Songs with 4 downloads. No one but their parents and their spouse consuming their work. And sometimes not even that.

If you’re in it purely for the promised land of love, praise, followers, and fame from millions of people - it’s impossible to sustain. In every field, it takes years of practice, repetition, and “failed performances” before the first hit. In the worst case, artists go their entire life without ever receiving the praise they deserved.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/07/15/thrive-in-obscurity-via-jeet-mehta-shared/

Startup idea:

Problem Solving:

I Thought I Was Done Chasing Gold Stars

The slow unraveling of a lifetime of needing to be praised Continue reading on The Writing Cooperative »
https://writingcooperative.com/i-thought-i-was-done-chasing-gold-stars-1f210335ae8

#insecurity #midlife #validation #anxiety #selfworth
@indieauthors

https://www.europesays.com/fr/242242/ Girondins : l’allusion d’Oliver Létang à la situation dramatique de Bordeaux #actu #Actualités #allusion #Après #Bordeaux #danger #dramatique #EU #europe #faut #FR #France #funambules #Girondins #institutions #Letang #Ligue #losc #mache #mettent #mots #News #NouvelleAquitaine #OL #Oliver #président #RépubliqueFrançaise #situation #validation

Code quality is what typically comes to mind when talking about "good packages". Does that package pass standard checks? What is the Unit test coverage? How many dependencies does the package have? This post discusses how we use code quality when determining the package litmus score.

#rstats #litmus #validation #code #scoring
https://www.jumpingrivers.com/blog/r-validation-code-quality-litmus/

Michaela Klauck introducing us into #verification and #validation at the @ACM @SIGSOFT #Summerschool on #SE-Robotics

Stateful Wizards in a Stateless World: Building Multi-Step Forms with Quarkus
A Hands-On Guide to Session Management, Validation, and CSRF Protection in Modern Cloud-Native Java Web Applications
https://myfear.substack.com/p/quarkus-multi-step-form-session-csrf
#Java #CSRF #Wizards #SessionState #Validation

The popularity of an R package can be measured using package downloads and reverse dependencies. While these measures clearly have issues, they do provide a good indication of the package health. Our latest blog post looks at these measures in more detail.

#rstats #validation #litmus #packagequality
https://www.jumpingrivers.com/blog/r-validation-author-popularity-litmus/

Validating Shiny Apps in Regulated Environments by our Data Scientist Pedro Silva at R/Medicine is now out!

In this talk, Pedro explores how to make Shiny apps trustworthy and compliant in regulated settings. From validation principles to practical tools like the Litmusverse, it’s a must-watch for anyone building clinical or healthcare dashboards with R.

#RStats #Shiny #RMedicine2025 #Validation #ClinicalResearch #PharmaTech #Litmusve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebIk2fxFUfI