Option to redirect from the bsky.social handle to a custom domain instead of freeing the bsky.social handle

[rubenlg]

Describe the Feature

According to the documentation: "Note: if you change your default Bluesky username (with the .bsky.social suffix) to a custom domain, your old username will be available for someone else to use."

This isn't ideal because of bad actors seeking to impersonate businesses. While some people might prefer freeing the old {USERNAME}.bsky.social ID, others who use {OFFICIAL_COMPANY_NAME}.bsky.social might prefer holding onto their original ID to avoid impersonation.

Could we add an option to preserve and redirect the original .bsky.social username when switching to a custom domain? This would let users choose whether to release or retain their original username, helping prevent impersonation while still giving flexibility to those who want to free up their old username.

Attachments

No response

Describe Alternatives

The alternative is to create a separate account after transitioning to the custom domain, for the sole purpose of reserving the ID, maybe with a profile description that points to the custom domain. But it sounds wasteful in terms of resources.

Additional Context

No response

[Tamschi]

I think this (along with matching redirects of nested URLs!) is important to encourage users to move to a custom domain handle.
It's also important that the user can then switch back to the redirected handle later on, if necessary.

(It likely would do wonders for domain handle uptake if the process was that smooth and reversible. The current method is a little scary even from my tech-affine perspective.)

[madeindex]

This seems like a big issue that many people are interested in!

There are so many questions the feature leaves one asking.

Such as, what would happen to the link to this issue on Bluesky? https://bsky.app/profile/madeindex.bsky.social/post/3lacl6scs4i26

After a name change, the old name or links should simply 301 redirect to the new ones. That is also the method recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

[trivikr]

I know folks who created BlueSky accounts before custom domains were available, who are reluctant to migrate to avoid their existing <handle>.bsky.social to be impersonated.

Some of them are choosing to create a dummy account which follows the custom domain to avoid impersonation. But that shows two BlueSky accounts with the same name in search results.

I feel the redirect from the bsky.social handle to a custom domain should happen automatically when someone migrates.

[chylex]

If this is implemented, what happens with the existing dummy accounts? I just created an account, and I don't know if it's better to wait for the redirect, or create a dummy account now with the expectation that I'll be able to merge the accounts later.

[Tamschi]

This is somewhat relevant: #5303
It seems like the team is at least aware of the issue.

[volcanodiscovery]

It seems an important (missing) feature to me. I would propose that every account gets a .bsky.social handle, which always serves as the primary identifier and always resolves to this account, while a custom-domain handle should be an optional alias that is simply shown instead and can be used to resolve to the original handle.

[Tamschi]

That's not necessary, there already is a stable identifier (usually) of the form did:plc:….
That's surfaced sometimes when you use the share link feature on Bluesky, since that's how you make permalinks on Bluesky.

What's needed is 'just' reserving the second handle and having it continue forward to the account.
(Of course this is a quite bit more complicated in practice than me writing that down, but doesn't sound terribly difficult at least for someone already familiar with the system.)

[climatebrad]

This is a very important safety and security feature.

[janaka]

there has been discussion about this since early/mid last year iirc. Surprised 1) not to find an older issue tracking it 2) only 30 👍🏾.

Hopfully, the bsky team gets to this soon ish.

I'm holding out. I don't want to give up my vanity bsky.social handle :)

[trivikr]

I'm also holding on my vanity.bluesky.social handle.

Post a skeet on your BlueSky account requesting followers who would like this feature to 👍 .
That will give data to BlueSky team to prioritize this feature request.

[janaka]

also just found this https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3kh6re46yd42k

[volcanodiscovery]

also just found this https://bsky.app/profile/jacob.gold/post/3kh6re46yd42k
Unfortunately, this isn't a solution: Setting CNAME on the domain seems to require to actually use the same custom (sub)domain as handle already and giving up on the bsky handle.

[trusktr]

This would be a nice feature.

For now the workaround is to create a second account with the bsky.app username but it requires a second email address. For example:

• https://bsky.app/profile/joe.trusktr.io
• https://bsky.app/profile/trusktr.bsky.social

Do it as soon as you switch to a new domain username, and most likely someone won't snipe your username, unless you're so popular that someone set up a bot to snipe it as soon as you release it.

Having an official option will prevent people/bots from sniping the name.