Twitter Kicks Off Decentralized Social Media Development Project ‘Bluesky’

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Jeff Fawkes
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Jack Dorsey starts with the memories of the early days of Twitter. When it was decentralized and some people were saying they should continue that way. Yet, the dangers of the modern Internet influenced the development and Twitter was intensively centralized to solve several troubles.

However, now Twitter CEO is seeing some new challenges and he claims that centralized social media cannot solve them. For instance, centralized enforcement of global policies cannot address abuse and misleading information in the longterm. Jack says that governments will have to put too many burdens on people to enact visible changes in this field.

He highlights that social media has lost its value as the content hosting measure, yet gained as the tool of directing the attention of the masses. Jack says it is bad that one cannot create and manage algorithms directing his attention to the correct information.

Dorsey claims that the conversations often burn down to personal attacks and negative. This must be fixed with some system that can filter the conversations and rate them according to the usefulness. User must not see controversy and outrage, would be better for him to immediately engage in healthy and informative chats.

With Decentralized Social Media Protocol, Twitter Will Conquer Future

He has invited up to five developers who will write code for a risky initiative. He is ready to fund a project that can put social media projects on blockchain, with censorship resistance and all the fancy features used to seduce the consumer today.

A small team of independent architects will develop code for a decentralized platform for social media. Twitter will not own it, instead, it will connect to the platform as a client and will facilitate it as an external protocol.

In the late months, many companies have started understanding the positive sides of having their project revolving in the blockchain space. Instead of trying to beat the long road to mainstream media, a blockchain-related startup will reach the same level of recognition by simply asking some outlet to write an article about the project. Sometimes you have to pay for that, sometimes not, in the end, people will at least see your product and remember the name.

In a year or two, when they’ll see that your company name is still in the space, they’ll start digging the info seriously. This is the goal of most blockchain companies: to get early recognition.

Jack Dorsey Propose Either New Blockchain or the Old One

Regarding the choice of the blockchain platform, Twitter head wrote that their freelance code masers should find some fitting project and help it move forward. If they won’t find one, they have permission to create a platform from scratch. He shared:

“Square is doing exactly this for bitcoin with @SqCrypto. For social media, we’d like this team to either find an existing decentralized standard they can help move forward, or failing that, create one from scratch. That’s the only direction we at Twitter, Inc. will provide.”

Jack then focuses on innovations and improvements in open recommendation algorithms. They are vital in moving forward to constructive conversations. He stresses that the work on the projects must be done openly, without the centralized control of a single entity. Jack claims that Twitter’s centralized architecture brought disadvantages that he wants to address now.

So the programmers expected to be able to create an ecosystem around the development. Gather press, researchers, organizations, civil society leaders, all the people who show concerns about the future. He doesn’t expect the results in the early days, claiming that the success will take years. Only after substantial development, the team should be able to present code that will satisfy the needs of Twitter.

Twitter CEO Gains Inspiration from Decentralized Tech Gurus

Blockchain party isn’t over, with huge projects joining the game. Telegram‘s TON, Facebook‘s Libra and now Twitter’s Bluesky initiatives pop up here and there. Despite Bluesky didn’t mention they will facilitate some token, this scenario is probable. Imagine TwitterCoin with super low fees and fast KYC, this can change the game for millions of people. Dorsey admits his thoughts were inspired by Stephen Wolfram:

“Some of these issues were emphasized by @stephen_wolfram in a blog post following his Senate hearing titled “Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms”

Jack also wants to thank Mike Masnick for his substantial research, Jack was spending much time on it:

“Recently we came across @mmasnick’s article “Protocols, Not Platforms” which captures a number of the challenges and solutions. But more importantly, it reminded us of a credible path forward: hire folks to develop a standard in the open.”

Without a blockchain, even the large social media platforms don’t have the chance to fight dollar or bitcoin. It’s hard to bite off a piece of remittance market. However, before getting over the dollar dominance, social media must improve. It lacks the quality of presented content and the moral rules of the companies’ high management.

“Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of trolling, bigotry, and hatred. Meanwhile, others feel that these platforms have become too aggressive in policing language and are systematically silencing or censoring certain viewpoints. And that’s not even touching on the question of privacy and what these platforms are doing (or not doing) with all of the data they collect,” explained Masnick.

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Author: Jeff Fawkes

Jeff Fawkes is a seasoned investment professional and a crypto analyst covering the blockchain space. He has a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing and is passionate when it comes to how technology impacts our society.

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