Difference between a profile and an account

[hexandcube]

When applying a label to an account, a note is displayed that it is considered "a strong intervention", and it's suggested that a moderator might want to apply the label to the user's profile instead. However, the difference between a profile and an account is never explained. What is the difference, and why a moderator might want to apply a label to a profile instead of an account? I'm sure this has something to do with how user profiles are handled in the network, but I've looked through the Bluesky Documentation and was unable to find an answer.

[bnewbold]

There is some mention in the Ozone user guide, particularly at the end: https://github.com/bluesky-social/ozone/blob/main/docs/userguide.md

The technical distinction is that the "profile" is a type of content, somewhat specific to the Bluesky microblogging app, and contains things like the account distinction and images (avatar, background). On the other hand "account" refers to the overall identity, not any specific content. One fine-grained piece of info is that an account handle is part of the identity, but the display name is part of the profile.

It is kind of a wonky and confusing distinction! Within the context of the Bluesky app alone, they are pretty entwined. In the future context of additional atproto apps, which don't use the bluesky "profile", it would make more sense: you wouldn't want labels/behaviors specific to a bluesky profile to show up in other apps, while behaviors by the account overall (eg, "this is a spammer") would be generic and show up everywhere.

The exact details of how labels on a profile vs. labels on an account appear in app have changed before and could change again; that are hard to get correct from a design and expectations perspective.

The current guidance is to label profiles for things relevant to the content of the profile: imagery in the avatar or background, keywords or URLs in the profile description or display name. Use labels on the account for account-wide behaviors, or for "badges".