My decision about whether to try Bluesky depends on what everyone else does. I just want to be where everyone else is, and not be around too many Nazis. My needs are simple.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m https://bsky.app/profile/mattblaze.bsky.social on Bluesky. We’ll see.

I have no idea whether I’ll stick around there. I don’t want a zillion different accounts to check all the time, so whatever ends up feeling like home is probably where I’ll stay.

There’s a lot I like about this place and the fediverse concept, but frankly, I still feel like a slightly unwelcome guest here six months in. Who knows.

The different account "verification" semantics on Mastodon vs Bluesky vs. (old) Twitter are interesting. Here, you prove you control one or more web pages listed in your profile. On Bluesky, you prove you control a the DNS of a domain, which becomes your username. So verified names there are more likely to be tied to a PERSONAL domain, but on Mastodon you can more easily tie it to, e.g., your web page at a well-known employer.

The DNS-based verification is probably more "secure", insofar that taking over someones DNS is usually a more heavyweight attack than simply slipping something in on a web page. But it's probably more meaningful to confirm that I'm the Matt Blaze who has a web page at Georgetown than that I'm whoever owns mattblaze.org.

Another difference is that with the DNS-becomes-your-name scheme, you're limited to binding your identity to a single domain. On Mastodon, you can list and verify as many web pages as you want in your profile.

Either way, much richer than Twitter, where it was "someone thinks this person is worth verifying" or (now) simply "has $8/month to burn".