Twitter & "bluesky"

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As you may have heard, Jack Dorsey has announced that Twitter will commission an independent team to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The project is codenamed "bluesky", which you can follow bluesky@bluesky on Twitter.

Currently, bluesky is in its infancy, with the key goal being to find a leader for the project. All options are open at this point, and once the team is assembled, they'll build a standard at their discretion, not Twitter's.

This does not mean that "Twitter is entering crypto". Firstly, as mentioned before, the standard will be developed independent of Twitter, and if the platform is deemed successful, Twitter will become a client of it. That said, Jack seems to be all in on blockchain, and indeed did call this project akin to what Square has done for bitcoin. It's very likely the standard will use blockchain technologies in some part, but it may also simply be an evolution of existing standards like ActivityPub or Mastodon that do so without blockchain. I'd imagine it'd take some bits of ActivityPub and Mastodon, use Ethereum 2.0, and build a lot of new tech. Twitter CTO, Parag Agarwal, also replied to Mastodon saying that the intention would be to work with Mastodon and others to collaboratively build something.

Those who follow my blog will know that I've harped on about Steem's lack of any privacy for years now, and I'm glad to see the CTO identify privacy as the number one challenge for an open standard. The other challenges are also well-identified: building sustainable business models, and speeding up consensus building to keep in touch with the rapidly evolving world of social media. Based on the above, you'll notice that the CTO too does seem to be imagining a blockchain-based standard.

This is definitely a long-term project that'll take years to develop. We have no idea if Twitter (or anyone else) will adopt the standard even if it's developed successfully. Based on the tweets by Jack and Parag, I'm optimistic that they understand what is required, and will commission the right team for the job.

As for Steem, this is a second opportunity to listen to the people who know what they are doing and have proven they can run a large scale social media platform, and focus on solving the problems that have made this a failed platform in its current state. Beginning with privacy.

Twitter & "bluesky" | Ecency