Twitter is funding bluesky, an independent effort to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media, with the goal of Twitter being a client of it
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey outlines … Shoshana Wodinsky / Adweek : Twitter Will Fund the Development of a Decentralized Social Media Standard Rob Price / Business Insider : Twitter is trying to build a new decentralized social media service that could transform … Reuters : Twitter plans to build a ‘decentralized standard’ for social networks Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing : Twitter wants to develop an open, decentralized, federated social media standard...and then join it Christine Fisher / Engadget : Twitter will fund development of an open social media standard Emilio Janus / Bitcoinist.com : Jack Dorsey Funds Development Of Decentralized Social Media Standard Ana Alexandre / Cointelegraph : Jack Dorsey: Twitter Developing Decentralized Standard for Social Media Celia Wan / The Block : Twitter is funding five developers to build decentralized standards for social media Tweets: @jack : twitter was so open early on that many saw its potential to be a decentralized internet standard, like SMTP (email protocol). For a variety of reasons, all reasonable at the time, we took a different path and increasingly centralized Twitter. But a lot's changed over the years... Parag Agrawal / @paraga : I'm incredibly excited for Twitter to kick off @bluesky, a new independent effort to develop a decentralized standard for social media. Please see @jack's thread for more context. I have the privilege of finding a lead for this team. https://twitter.com/... @jack : 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. https://knightcolumbia.org/... @jack : Finally, new technologies have emerged to make a decentralized approach more viable. Blockchain points to a series of decentralized solutions for open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization. Much work to be done, but the fundamentals are there. Fred Wilson / @fredwilson : I am so pleased that @jack and the Twitter team are looking into this. Having been there when “we took a different path for reasons that were reasonable at the time”, I have long wished that Twitter had been built after Bitcoin not before it https://twitter.com/... @jack : Why is this good for Twitter? It will allow us to access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation, focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation, and will force us to be far more innovative than in the past. Kevin Marks / @kevinmarks : Hi chaps, we may be able to save you a lot of effort, as we already have a set of open standards developed by the #indieweb community and standardised through w3c - micropub, webmention, websub and more in development with microsub too http://chat.indieweb.org for more Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : The fundamental argument behind much anti-tech Sturm und Drang is “What are people allowed to say and consume online and who makes that decision?” Distributed protocols (and E2E encryption) can be used to punt that decision away without solving the base disagreements. https://twitter.com/... Vijaya Gadde / @vijaya : 1. Apart from the technical elements outlined by @jack here, this is fundamentally about openly exploring the fullest and most participatory vision of our Twitter. In 2020, we will be using our voice to more prominently support and foster the values of a free and open internet. https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : When I look at Twitter's challenges, I don't think to myself “They would be so much better off if Tweets could never be deleted and every participant in the system had 100% visibility into everybody's interactions with no possibility of data protection.” https://twitter.com/... Joe Colangelo / @itsjoeco : Fool me one shame on you fool me twice shame on me Thousands of developers dedicated themselves to projects built on Twitter's API, making the platform accessible to the masses Their reward was Twitter creating a walled garden and throttling their access. Why try again? Mastodon / @mastodonproject : Jack... https://twitter.com/... Vitalik.Eth / @vitalikbuterin : This seems interesting and important. https://twitter.com/... Sriram Krishnan / @sriramk : 👨💻🚨 [new blog post] Was inspired by @jack's tweet storm to write up some early thoughts on @bluesky thanks to free time on a long flight. TLDR: think open dev + a marketplace of solutions for relevance algo are key. More below. https://sriramk.com/... Andr Staltz / @andrestaltz : Very relevant context for what Twitter is looking for can be found not in Jack's thread but Parag's thread: https://twitter.com/... This rules out a lot of existing projects. IMO rules out ActivityPub, SSB, Matrix, etc Quilldub Veepick / @monkchips : twitter has 99 problems but not being built on a blockchain ain't one. https://twitter.com/... Celestine / @celestocalculus : Building your own competition! A decentralised social media is an amazing idea. Everyone from Diaspora & http://App.net has tried to do this in the past. I think that having a major social platform backing might be the difference this time. Godspeed! https://twitter.com/... William Shatner / @williamshatner : #Promising What needs to happen is for all social media platforms to agree on how to handle issues as one or farm out those procedural decisions to a unbiased third party which is what this is trying to I believe. So👍🏻 https://twitter.com/... @jack : First, we're facing entirely new challenges centralized solutions are struggling to meet. For instance, centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people. Ross Dawson / @rossdawson : Really good analysis from @techdirt of @jack's announcement that Twitter will fund development of an open and decentralized standard for social media. As @mmasnick says, it has the *potential* to presage a long-term shift in how the online world works https://www.techdirt.com/... @kottke : Jack Dorsey wants to decentralize Twitter. If only the problems with contemporary social media were technological. Blockchain isn't magic fairy dust. https://decrypt.co/... Rob Pegoraro / @robpegoraro : Being willing to learn from outsiders is a seriously underrated trait in tech. Y'all should read Dorsey's thread, then set aside a few minutes to digest Masnick's essay, which looks back to Usenet to draw some useful ideas for today from that open-but-brittle social network. https://twitter.com/... Vijaya Gadde / @vijaya : 2. Twitter has always believed in the principles of a democratic, open Internet — we believe the future of our industry rests in community-focused initiatives & direct engagement with emerging innovators. We look forward to continuing this public conversation next year. @jack : Third, existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health. Wagatwe Wanjuki / @wagatwe : All the people tagged in this thread are men. And the articles linked are both by white guys. I hope the resulting team and references used will reflect way more diversity https://twitter.com/... Eric Weinstein / @ericrweinstein : Do not ignore this quoted tweet. There are layers and layers with this. I think @jack is likely moves ahead here. Don't let your frustrations with current Twitter and it's Terms of Service or Trust & Safety issues blind you to what is likely to be the fate of social media. https://twitter.com/... Alexis C. Madrigal / @alexismadrigal : I would be more persuaded by this if @jack reckoned, in public, with why Twitter made the centralizing choices it did. “All reasonable at the time” is doing a lot of work here. https://twitter.com/... @bluesky : lo https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : The big trend in 2019 is social media companies saying we can't solve the social problems on our platforms so we're going to punt on them. https://twitter.com/... Rat King / @mikeisaac : this whole thread is super interesting way to look at platform abuse highly doubt Facebook would ever support a solution that supports the open web but it's a reminder that Facebook still wants to be *the* internet, and puts at least some pressure on them https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : For example, what happens if different people on the same thread are using different apps that hide different tweets? What if someone creates a client that makes abuse easier? Or more likely? What if that's just a by-product? Does @jack start banning clients? @rabble : It'll be a lot more like http://Scuttlebutt.nz if I had to speculate. Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : I am very curious as to how one could reduce the flow of disinformation and toxic abuse on Twitter while also fragmenting and decentralising the user experience @jack : We're calling this team @bluesky. Our CTO @ParagA will be running point to find a lead, who will then hire and direct the rest of the team. Please follow or DM @bluesky if you're interested in learning more or joining! 🌐💬💙 @jack : Second, the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one's attention. Unfortunately, these algorithms are typically proprietary, and one can't choose or build alternatives. Yet. Chris Messina / @chrismessina : Lest we forget that early Twitter supported XMPP thanks to @blaine and others... I'm curious what lessons it might offer today. https://metajack.im/... https://twitter.com/... Dave Winer / @davewiner : This is how shit happens in tech. There were people who said the same kind of thing to the W3C when they embarked on an NIH approach. ;-) pic.twitter.com/E2bjK8e9Jk Aram Zucker-Scharff / @chronotope : This is about tech companies removing themselves from the community of the web, creating an alternative set of web standards, and making it harder for anyone to ever compete in the same way they did. https://twitter.com/... Parag Agrawal / @paraga : The path ahead for @bluesky is full of uncertainty and challenges, which will be difficult but energizing for the right team. Some of the hurdles we can predict include: Mastodon / @mastodonproject : This thought from Twitter's CTO, charged with figuring out their Totally New Decentralized Protocol, is deeply troubling. The vast majority of the internet is powered by protocols which were achieved via consensus. This feels like laying groundwork for TwitterPub™. https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : I see this as Jack's response to Zuck's “pivot to privacy”, but one that fits Twitter's public content model better. Both companies want to be out of the “controlling what people say” business. Celebration by Twitterati who often call for more speech control seems premature. Anil Dash / @anildash : Don't develop it, invest in the efforts that exist. Have the courage to listen to the community first this time. https://twitter.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : My quick writeup on @jack's protocols announcement this morning... https://twitter.com/... Greg Ferenstein / @ferenstein : Jack, ignore the haters. i think this is a wonderful experiment. its bold and (incredibly) difficult. if it works, it'll probably work in ways we cant even imagine, which is something that tends to bring out trolling snark and criticism. Ill be watching with earnest! Miguel Ros-Berros / @miguelrios : Very excited about this. One tiny deet: Twitter should make @bluesky an independent B-Corp from day 1. https://twitter.com/... James Titcomb / @jamestitcomb : I am extremely unclear on how decentralisation addresses the problems described in this thread or Twitter's other problems https://twitter.com/... Dave Winer / @davewiner : I'd like to see Twitter do this in a different way. You already have the bugs and scaling issues solved for a global notification network. Let's add a few APIs and create a new universe. It'll happen a lot faster with much better results imho. Mike Murphy / @mcwm : won't solve the nazi problem tho https://www.theverge.com/... Drew Olanoff / @yoda : super interesting thread. if twitter can pull this off, it would be pretty huge. https://twitter.com/... Sriram Krishnan / @sriramk : This is really exciting for many reasons but my favorite is: it tries to return us to how the internet originally got built - completely in the open. https://twitter.com/... Matthew Panzarino / @panzer : Interesting. Plenty have tried but everyone ran up against the big problem: twitter existed. https://twitter.com/... Tracy Chou / @triketora : this twitter account @bluesky is something else https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
twitter was so open early on that many saw its potential to be a decentralized internet standard, like SMTP (email protocol). For a variety of reasons, all reasonable at the time, we took a different path and increasingly centralized Twitter. But a lot's changed over the years...
I'm incredibly excited for Twitter to kick off @bluesky, a new independent effort to develop a decentralized standard for social media. Please see @jack's thread for more context. I have the privilege of finding a lead for this team. https://twitter.com/...
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. https://knightcolumbia.org/...
Finally, new technologies have emerged to make a decentralized approach more viable. Blockchain points to a series of decentralized solutions for open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization. Much work to be done, but the fundamentals are there.
I am so pleased that @jack and the Twitter team are looking into this. Having been there when “we took a different path for reasons that were reasonable at the time”, I have long wished that Twitter had been built after Bitcoin not before it https://twitter.com/...
Why is this good for Twitter? It will allow us to access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation, focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation, and will force us to be far more innovative than in the past.
Hi chaps, we may be able to save you a lot of effort, as we already have a set of open standards developed by the #indieweb community and standardised through w3c - micropub, webmention, websub and more in development with microsub too http://chat.indieweb.org for more
The fundamental argument behind much anti-tech Sturm und Drang is “What are people allowed to say and consume online and who makes that decision?” Distributed protocols (and E2E encryption) can be used to punt that decision away without solving the base disagreements. https://twi…
1. Apart from the technical elements outlined by @jack here, this is fundamentally about openly exploring the fullest and most participatory vision of our Twitter. In 2020, we will be using our voice to more prominently support and foster the values of a free and open internet. h…
When I look at Twitter's challenges, I don't think to myself “They would be so much better off if Tweets could never be deleted and every participant in the system had 100% visibility into everybody's interactions with no possibility of data protection.” https://twitter.com/...
Fool me one shame on you fool me twice shame on me Thousands of developers dedicated themselves to projects built on Twitter's API, making the platform accessible to the masses Their reward was Twitter creating a walled garden and throttling their access. Why try again?
👨💻🚨 [new blog post] Was inspired by @jack's tweet storm to write up some early thoughts on @bluesky thanks to free time on a long flight. TLDR: think open dev + a marketplace of solutions for relevance algo are key. More below. https://sriramk.com/...
Very relevant context for what Twitter is looking for can be found not in Jack's thread but Parag's thread: https://twitter.com/... This rules out a lot of existing projects. IMO rules out ActivityPub, SSB, Matrix, etc
Building your own competition! A decentralised social media is an amazing idea. Everyone from Diaspora & http://App.net has tried to do this in the past. I think that having a major social platform backing might be the difference this time. Godspeed! https://twitter.com/...
#Promising What needs to happen is for all social media platforms to agree on how to handle issues as one or farm out those procedural decisions to a unbiased third party which is what this is trying to I believe. So👍🏻 https://twitter.com/...
First, we're facing entirely new challenges centralized solutions are struggling to meet. For instance, centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people.
Really good analysis from @techdirt of @jack's announcement that Twitter will fund development of an open and decentralized standard for social media. As @mmasnick says, it has the *potential* to presage a long-term shift in how the online world works https://www.techdirt.com/...
Jack Dorsey wants to decentralize Twitter. If only the problems with contemporary social media were technological. Blockchain isn't magic fairy dust. https://decrypt.co/...
Being willing to learn from outsiders is a seriously underrated trait in tech. Y'all should read Dorsey's thread, then set aside a few minutes to digest Masnick's essay, which looks back to Usenet to draw some useful ideas for today from that open-but-brittle social network. http…
2. Twitter has always believed in the principles of a democratic, open Internet — we believe the future of our industry rests in community-focused initiatives & direct engagement with emerging innovators. We look forward to continuing this public conversation next year.
Third, existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health.
All the people tagged in this thread are men. And the articles linked are both by white guys. I hope the resulting team and references used will reflect way more diversity https://twitter.com/...
Do not ignore this quoted tweet. There are layers and layers with this. I think @jack is likely moves ahead here. Don't let your frustrations with current Twitter and it's Terms of Service or Trust & Safety issues blind you to what is likely to be the fate of social media. https:…
I would be more persuaded by this if @jack reckoned, in public, with why Twitter made the centralizing choices it did. “All reasonable at the time” is doing a lot of work here. https://twitter.com/...
The big trend in 2019 is social media companies saying we can't solve the social problems on our platforms so we're going to punt on them. https://twitter.com/...
this whole thread is super interesting way to look at platform abuse highly doubt Facebook would ever support a solution that supports the open web but it's a reminder that Facebook still wants to be *the* internet, and puts at least some pressure on them https://twitter.com/...
For example, what happens if different people on the same thread are using different apps that hide different tweets? What if someone creates a client that makes abuse easier? Or more likely? What if that's just a by-product? Does @jack start banning clients?
I am very curious as to how one could reduce the flow of disinformation and toxic abuse on Twitter while also fragmenting and decentralising the user experience
We're calling this team @bluesky. Our CTO @ParagA will be running point to find a lead, who will then hire and direct the rest of the team. Please follow or DM @bluesky if you're interested in learning more or joining! 🌐💬💙
Second, the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one's attention. Unfortunately, these algorithms are typically proprietary, and one can't choose or build alternatives. Yet.
Lest we forget that early Twitter supported XMPP thanks to @blaine and others... I'm curious what lessons it might offer today. https://metajack.im/... https://twitter.com/...
This is how shit happens in tech. There were people who said the same kind of thing to the W3C when they embarked on an NIH approach. ;-) pic.twitter.com/E2bjK8e9Jk
This is about tech companies removing themselves from the community of the web, creating an alternative set of web standards, and making it harder for anyone to ever compete in the same way they did. https://twitter.com/...
The path ahead for @bluesky is full of uncertainty and challenges, which will be difficult but energizing for the right team. Some of the hurdles we can predict include:
This thought from Twitter's CTO, charged with figuring out their Totally New Decentralized Protocol, is deeply troubling. The vast majority of the internet is powered by protocols which were achieved via consensus. This feels like laying groundwork for TwitterPub™. https://twitte…
I see this as Jack's response to Zuck's “pivot to privacy”, but one that fits Twitter's public content model better. Both companies want to be out of the “controlling what people say” business. Celebration by Twitterati who often call for more speech control seems premature.
Jack, ignore the haters. i think this is a wonderful experiment. its bold and (incredibly) difficult. if it works, it'll probably work in ways we cant even imagine, which is something that tends to bring out trolling snark and criticism. Ill be watching with earnest!
I'd like to see Twitter do this in a different way. You already have the bugs and scaling issues solved for a global notification network. Let's add a few APIs and create a new universe. It'll happen a lot faster with much better results imho.
This is really exciting for many reasons but my favorite is: it tries to return us to how the internet originally got built - completely in the open. https://twitter.com/...