What is Bluesky? The Twitter side-project that could take down Twitter | indy100

Twitter Picks Crypto Developer Jay Graber to Run Decentralized Social Media Wing …

Video

For three years, Twitter Inc. has funded Bluesky, an independent project dedicated to developing decentralized social media but since Elon Musk acquired Twitter last week, some have wondered what will happen to the project.

Bluesky was initially founded in 2019, with Twitter's co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey serving as a key player on the project.

Just as Musk was finalizing his acquisition of Twitter, Dorsey announced Bluesky's first platform, AT Protocol, was in beta-testing leading to chatter online.

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

"On Tuesday, Jack Dorsey announced beta testing of his new Twitter competitor Bluesky, two days later Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 Billion," a Twitter user wrote.

Some speculated that Bluesky would become the new Twitter, or at the very least, serve as competition.

"Twitter doesn't stand a chance with Musk at the helm. I hope Jack Dorsey's Bluesky puts both Twitter & Musk under water. Exactly where Musk belongs," Kyra wrote.

\u201cTwitter's funding of Bluesky is not subject to any conditions except one: that Bluesky is to research and develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation.\u201d
— bluesky (@bluesky) 1650923082

What is Bluesky?

Despite being financially backed by Twitter, Bluesky is a completely independent entity, having no connection to Twitter shareholders.

The company was created as an "initiative to develop a decentralized social network protocol." Meaning separate social networks could interact with each other through an open standard, despite having separate systems of curation and moderation.

Earlier this year, Bluesky announced its first server, AT Protocol which allows users to see the content they want they want to across multiple social networks.

\u201cFirst, we\u2019re 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.\u201d
— jack (@jack) 1576073591

Dorsey did not help create Bluesky or AT Protocol as a rival to Twitter or Musk's takeover but the concept of Bluesky reflects much of what Musk has in mind for Twitter.

It's open-sourced and puts content moderation in the hands of those on the platform.

But should Musk fumble the ball in his Twitter takeover, users looking for Musk's vision may be motivated to move to AT Protocol.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.