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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea of a trust hierarchy. Bluesky verifies NYT, then NYT verifies all their journalists. Makes the entire process a lot more scalable.

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NYT journalists as a privileged class… With actions like this, Bluesky is not exactly beating the allegations.

I actually don't know what you are talking about.

I presume he’s saying that Bluesky’s a very left wing social media platform.

Calling NYT left wing is patently absurd.

They've spent the past 4-8 years platforming writers to say absolute horseshit about trans people and equivocate between Biden having like 6 leftover classified documents in his house vs Trumps bathroom of for sale state secrets.

Everything that doesn't worship the Emperor is left wing these days.

Believe it or not, plenty of left wingers have a bone to pick with the East Coast traditional media establishment as well, NY Times in particular.

And the traditional media also seems to have a symbiotic relationship with Trump, whose chaos drives news ratings.

NYT journalists are in a different class from random Bluesky users — if they spread unfounded conspiracy theories on their corporate-approved account, they can be fired from their jobs.

Put another way, a Bluesky post saying "BREAKING: Trump dies from natural causes" from an employed NYT journo carries a different salience than the same post from a random Bluesky user.

>if they spread unfounded conspiracy theories on their corporate-approved account, they can be fired from their jobs.

Or… you know… win a Pulitzer.

Correct. I'd like the example of NYT as a verifying authority better if I trusted the Times more than I trusted some of their journalists (blessed few, mind you).

I think it's pretty hilarious that the Times, of all people, count as 'trusted'. It makes me automatically distrust BlueSky verification, which doesn't sound like the intention.

It’s not that you need to trust the New York Times as a whole, it’s that you can trust that account is linked to that organisation. A verification tick does not imply endorsement, just that they are who they say they are.

That would be nice, I guess. In normie world a blue tick is supposed to mean 'vouched for and trustworthy, also high status so you should maybe show deference'. You can say it means whatever you want, but then watch how people fight for these things and argue about/rebel against them.

In practical terms, no, they are status markers.

If you're treating a "this person is who they say they are" checkmark as a status symbol, that's a you problem.

That’s the problem with a lot of people, tho. They DO give deference to the checkmark.

> I think it's pretty hilarious that the Times, of all people, count as 'trusted'.

Why? Who do you trust?

I look at all media organizations skeptically. There are so many ways to distort the truth besides outright lying, and I notice this with the Times - both in what they choose to cover and their tone when covering.

With that said, the Times is one of the better media orgs. But IMO they should very much not be trusted blindly.

My media diet is a blend of various sources: The Atlantic, The Economist, The Free Press, Reason, Semaphore, Politico, New Statesman, and Axios. Even the Drudge Report sometimes.

I wish I had more right-leaning sources to follow, but I often find their content inflammatory and rage-bait-ey (before anyone complains that liberal media does this too, yes, I agree. HuffPo and similar are cancer.)

From my experience you can better spent time reading history than news.

I agree in that it's important to take it all skeptically. Also I avoid anything that exists to further a particular cause.

> I wish I had more right-leaning sources to follow, but I often find their content inflammatory and rage-bait-ey

Agreed. I recommend David French, the NYT columnist; easily the best I've read.

The blog post is unclear on if they will only be allowed to verify accounts as being part of NYT or if they will be allowed to give out blue checks to anyone in general. It sounds like it's the latter. If not it shouldn't be a blue check at all, it should just inform users that the account is associated with NYT.

News organizations have in recent years started selling so-called "contributor" positions. Anyone with enough money can be a journalist and influence public opinion. And NYT and similar outlets are not trustworthy sources either way, they sneak edit articles when they get caught spreading misinformation but regularly don't disclose what was actually changed. Basically rewriting their reporting as the narrative changes.

> The blog post is unclear on if they will only be allowed to verify accounts as being part of NYT or if they will be allowed to give out blue checks to anyone in general.

On a technical level, any account can "verify" any other account.

On a practical level, blue checks are shown only if that verification comes from someone BlueSky trusts. Right now, that's bsky.app and nytimes.com.

That’s very interesting. Does It mean NYTimes can also provide a Blue Check to someone from BBC, Reuters or even from a completely different org?

At the protocol level, any account can verify any other account. If you have one, you can verify anyone you'd like right now. The NYT can verify any account, even ones from those organizations, or not even from a news organization.

The only difference is that Bluesky won't show a blue check for just any verification, only ones from accounts they trust. That's a social relationship, not a technical one, and so I'm sure if the NYT decided to go rogue, Bluesky would have them not be an input into the blue check any more.

> News organizations have in recent years started selling so-called "contributor" positions.

Which ones? I've heard of that with lower credibility organizations (Forbes, I think), but nothing like the NYT.

> they sneak edit articles when they get caught spreading misinformation but regularly don't disclose what was actually changed.

I think they correct things. I'm not sure they have ever been in the habit if notifying people of every correction, though it would be interestesting to have an edit history with diffs.

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