Bluesky: the social network that may replace Twitter

Since Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter in late October, the company has fallen into chaos. As a result, some users are seeking alternative platforms. Bluesky, a Twitter offshoot, has caught the attention of a few of these users after announcing the upcoming launch of its beta testing app.

Photo: Bluesky Social Web

Twitter has changed a lot since Musk took over. According to the L.A. Times, to test the new owner and his "free speech absolutism," some extremist users started sharing hate memes and spewing racial slurs. Companies suffered from impersonators that used the CEO's paid verification system until he decided to pull it.

Things don't look much better inside the company. The new CEO has fired thousands of employees along with key executives. Twitter also experienced a wave of resignations after Elon Musk sent an email asking workers to commit to the new "extremely hardcore" culture or leave.

In that context, users are searching for alternatives to the platform, and the beta app of Bluesky, a project commissioned by the former CEO Jack Dorsey, has appeared as an alternative. The offshoot is not exactly a social media platform but a protocol in which different social networks can interact.

Dorsey announced the creation of a team that would prepare a protocol to "decentralize" the internet in 2019. He claimed to want to reduce single internet corporations' power over the content users see and their data. The team would operate independently, financed by Twitter. More than two years later, Bluesky started operations when Dorsey had already left the company.

Whether Elon Musk will endorse the project is still a fundamental question for Bluesky. According to CNBC, after Dorsey resigned and his successor Parag Agrawal was fired, Bluesky officially lost two of its biggest supporters from within Twitter. That left the financing from the company in question.

However, a message exchange between Dorsey and Musk raised hope for Bluesky's financial future. According to Forbes, the new CEO called the protocol "a super interesting idea." "I think it's worth trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that's decentralized," Musk wrote to Dorsey.

What Bluesky is building is called AT (Authenticated Trasport) protocol. According to CNBC, it will provide users with four features: "account portability, algorithmic choice, interoperation, and performance." That means you could change social networks without losing data. You could also see the same content and choose an app with better curation.

Photo: Twitter - @bluesky

Bluesky operates similarly to email. It is possible to send a message to a Hotmail account using Gmail because both providers use common standards. The project aims to create a common standard for social media while giving users the power to choose the algorithm. For example, if you don't like how Instagram chooses the images you see in your feed, you can change to a platform with a different algorithm and see the same without losing your data.

Bluesky was Dorsey's response to the issue of speech regulation in social media. He believed that giving users access to options with different moderation policies and algorithms would stop single companies from deciding the limits of free speech or what content is more visible. That responsibility would return to users.

Dorsey ensured his objective by making Bluesky a public benefit corporation instead of a company. The former Twitter CEO joined Bluesky's board in February, a few months after his resignation. According to Reuters, he has admitted that the vision could take years to come to fruition.

Dorsey hoped to fix what he believed was Twitter's "original sin." Court documents collected by Fobes revealed Dorsey told Musk that Twitter "should have never been a company." The former CEO thought the solution was to create a protocol handled by an organization that could not own it, like a foundation.

Bluesky started accepting users for its beta app in November. According to CNBC, the launch has been a success, with 30,000 signups for its waitlist in less than two days. The project can be an alternative to Twitter as users become more disappointed with the platform.

Jack Dorsey created Bluesky in 2019, hoping to introduce Twitter in its protocol, not to build a replacement. Neither CEO has made an official move, but the leaked conversations between Dorsey and Musk suggest that a collaboration between Twitter and Bluesky is possible.

It is not the first time that Jack Dorsey has done a similar operation. In 2004, he worked at Odeo, a podcasting platform that featured Twitter as an internal service for the company, in which users could share short statuses, launched in 2006. Seeing its potential, Jack Dorsey parted ways with Odeo that same year and bet everything on Twitter.

The future of Bluesky is still uncertain, but it is undeniable that the public corporation could completely change the social media landscape. Enabling different social platforms to operate together can shift the control over the content users produce and consume.