Sharing names isn't the issue here, my understanding is that some parts of handle resolution are failing due to the massive influx of new users. This could be the official PDSes under https://bsky.social (which are very much on fire) or any part in the app logic itself.
Bluesky handles are verified through a DNS lookup, this is how custom handles work - the owner domain must store a _atproto TXT record that specifies a user DID, and that user then may use that particular handle.
And Bluesky's verification of that is struggling now, leading to handle errors.
In more layman terms:
To be able to use (any) domain as your handle, that domain point back to that user.
The same way you'd access a website, the domain references a unique user ID.
An account then announces its handle, and Bluesky has to ask the domain to confirm that - which is failing right now.
So too many people coming in to properly say "here's your ID card". Guess gonna be a bit of time for them to play catch-up and hopefully able to separate ones that got a domain set vs. unset in the system and update overtime. I'm guessing a few weeks but I dunno computers enough so I'll trust you.
It's really just all bsky servers being overwhelmed, that's it. An account must register with a domain (even if it's a https://bsky.social domain, provided by bsky). The part that handles domain verification is separate, and it's being brought down by everything else being brought down.
funny that you can't actually ping an invalid handle here, since it tries to resolve the DID first (unique identifier that persists through handle changes) and the user mention facet uses the resolved DID
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And Bluesky's verification of that is struggling now, leading to handle errors.
To be able to use (any) domain as your handle, that domain point back to that user.
The same way you'd access a website, the domain references a unique user ID.
An account then announces its handle, and Bluesky has to ask the domain to confirm that - which is failing right now.
I guess in this case it's https://bsky.social dying more though?