It is an ambitious initiative by Jack Dorsey (ex-CEO Twitter) to decentralise social media and build a protocol that can stand against the government censorships and moderations done by a single entity.
๐. In simpler terms - Today, millions of apps run on top of Android OS. Similarly, Bluesky aims to be an open-source platform where multiple social media apps could run independently without any central governance and Twitter just being one app on the platform.ย
๐ช๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ฑ๐ผ๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ผ ๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐?
Imagine tens and thousands of social communities built on top of this protocol with different news feed recommendation algorithms, brand new interfaces and more while still making the content posted on one app available to all other apps in the network as everything is decentralised.
Yes, this would absolutely be possible as apps will follow certain guidelines and protocol standards while being built on Bluesky. A system like this will enable communities to decide their own terms like which content and users to allow or ban from the platform.
๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ป ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐ฎ๐น๐น ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐?
The Bluesky initiative was announced back in December 2019 and Parag Agrawal (then CTO, now CEO Twitter) was appointed to find a lead who can steer the entire initiative forward. A small group of 5 open source architects, engineers and designers were funded by Twitter to kick start the project and find existing decentralised solutions that can be scaled or build a completely new one from scratch.
๐ง๐๐ถ๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ผ๐๐๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ฏ ๐ณ๐ผ๐ฐ๐๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ ๐ฎ๐ ๐ด๐ผ๐ฎ๐น๐ ๐ณ๐ผ๐ฟ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ท๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ ๐๐น๐๐ฒ๐ฆ๐ธ๐ ๐๐ผ ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฑ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐๐:
1๏ธโฃ To facilitate enhanced efforts to address abuse and misleading information
2๏ธโฃ. To enable users and the broader community to have more input into platform algorithms
3๏ธโฃ. To improve conversational health by giving people more input into platform rules
๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐ฎ๐ป๐ป๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐๐:
In August 2021, Twitter announced that Jay Graber (founder of decentralized social platform Happening), will be leading the BlueSky initiative while Twitter will continue to fund it. Earlier this year she has published a broader vision of how the BlueSky - decentralised social ecosystem should be and is currently in the process of making the project come to life.
While the entire project is still in the early development stages and could take a few more years to get into proper shape, it'll be interesting to wait and see if BlueSky becomes a standard protocol for all decentralised social media apps in the future.
Do you think a protocol like BlueSky (by decentralising social media) will help solve existing problems like hate speech and violence online or add more fuel to it as there is no central entity to moderate the content?ย
#twitter #bluesky #decentralization #socialmedia
