The new challenge of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to make Twitter decentralised was announced directly on the social network through a series of tweets that introduced the new independent Bluesky team dedicated to the mission.
Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵
— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) December 11, 2019
In short, Dorsey described the reasons that motivated the decision to make Twitter a decentralised social media, citing some current circumstances that centralised applications have difficulties with.
Not only that, Dorsey also specifies that the algorithmic process is under the attention of a single owner and that therefore it is not possible to choose or create alternatives.
Social media centralisation, according to Dorsey, involves an incentive mechanism whereby it causes
“attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health”.
An opposite situation to the open and decentralised standard that new technologies such as blockchain can solve involving open and durable hosting, governance and even monetisation.
Dorsey’s tweets end with references to the new Bluesky team that Twitter’s CEO intends to fund from today until the creation of the solid, scalable and applicable decentralised standard for social media, specifying that it will take years.
In this regard, many crypto players commented on the social media, here are some of the tweets.
Twitter and Bluesky: the reactions
Anthony Pompliano, founder of Morgan Creek, appreciated the whole speech made by Dorsey, calling him the entrepreneur who most of all understood how the future will work and thanked him for boosting the pace of innovation.
Jack Dorsey may understand the future better than any entrepreneur on the planet right now. https://t.co/L7rsUsCvx9
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) December 11, 2019
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, comments positively on the fact that Twitter is more interested in protocols than platforms.
Cool to see Twitter investing in protocols (not platforms).
Protocols are much harder (scaling them, upgrading them, they even slow innovating in some ways) but they have nice properties around fair use, promoting good behavior, and lowering barriers to entry for newcomers. https://t.co/rgDfAPntxi
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 11, 2019
Changpeng Zhao – CZ, CEO of the main crypto-exchange Binance, also joined the Twitter discussion by listing the topics that most impressed him about Dorsey’s speech.
Social media
Free speech
Self/decentralized governance
Protocol > platform
Blockchain@jack gets it#Bitcoin still not dead https://t.co/r0p6lOH3fc— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) December 12, 2019
Finally, among the replies, while Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK behind Cardano, tweets “I’m in Jack. Just let me know what you need”, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger expresses his doubt by concluding his tweet with an “I’ll believe it when I see it”.
