Web Domains: The Universal Handle
How to own your name on the internet
In the world of traditional social media, verification was handed out as either a trophy for people deemed worthy by an app or for those who were willing to pay. There's some usefulness behind the verification there, but not as much as people would have hoped—it hasn't exactly panned out perfectly. There are other ways that you can verify your account without relying on a company to deem you worthy, the easiest of which to do is by owning a web domain.
Web Domains
URLs. That's really all we're talking about here.
These are all examples of web domains that can be used to verify that the owner of this account is the owner of that website. This is because domains are purchased. People own them, usually for a yearly cost.
The price of a domain can range anywhere from a few dollars to millions of dollars depending on a number of factors that we're not going to get into here, but it's mostly because of demand.
How To Do This Yourself
The easiest way to get a domain for your Bluesky handle is by buying one through a website called Marque. Marque is a domain seller and host for domains that's powered by the Atmosphere, meaning that the domain and all of the relevant configuration is stored in your personal data store, instead of on someone else's servers—it moves with you.
"Wait? Configuration? I don't know how to do that, nor do I want to do that..."
That's where Marque being part of the Atmosphere is super helpful: it gets set up for you automatically. When you want to set your handle to your new domain you bought, all it takes is the click of a button and a sign in to have Marque automatically handle all of the configuration that's required to make this work. You never have to think about it.
Why I Think You Should Care
This is another one of the ways that we can take back our social media experience from corporations. This is a way to show real human ownership of an account without being tied to whether or not a corporation wants to consider someone verified. Your handle is yours, and nobody can take it from you without your consent.
