While Elon Musk is making his revolution on Twitter, the former CEO of the social network is preparing to launch a competing service: BlueSky Social. The idea? Give users control over the algorithms and their personal data.
Twitter users are very worried about the takeover of the social network by Elon Musk, especially since the whimsical billionaire has multiplied controversial decisions and statements since his arrival. After dismissing the leaders and threatening to part with 75% of the employees, he attacked the very functioning of the platform. He has already announced that the certification badge could only be obtained via a paid subscription and that he was going to relax the moderation rules, deemed too strict. Many tweeters, so big brands and personalities, fear that the blue bird will become a lawless zone where hatred and misinformation proliferate, and are worried about the political turn it is taking (see our article) . It is in this context that the hashtag #TwitterMigration has become popular and many are already looking for a “replacement” to go to nest. And the solution could come no more and no less than the former CEO of Twitter – who resigned in November 2021 – Jack Dorsey!
BlueSky Social: a decentralized and federated social network
Indeed, on October 25, a few days before the official takeover of Twitter, Jack Dorsey inaugurated his new social network, BlueSky Social, on which he has been working since 2019 – long before having therefore resigned. While the new platform isn’t even in beta yet, it has already garnered over 30,000 signups just two days after its inauguration. It must be said that his concept has something to seduce on paper. The entrepreneur intends neither more nor less than to revolutionize the functioning of social networks! He wants to develop a common standard that would allow different services to communicate with each other – that’s what we call interoperability. It’s like how email works – where it doesn’t matter which email is used, the email always gets to the recipient – but for social networks. An ambitious project – perhaps too much?
You should know that the main social network services, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, are centralized, that is to say that they store all the data in one place, that they can modify what the user and how they use the platform as they see fit. They are in charge of everything that happens on it! Of course, this has an impact on important issues such as data privacy, moderation and even censorship in some cases – just in case, let’s mention WeChat, which serves as a model for Elon Musk. On the contrary, a decentralized social network is neither controlled nor managed by a single entity, and this with the objective of giving users more power, more freedom and guaranteeing the protection of their privacy – such as Mastodon, DTube , Diaspora, etc. This is how BlueSky Social will use. It consists of several servers managed by different entities – this is called a federated social network. But it doesn’t just have benefits, because you have to find a way for people all over the world to work together to run a system without being able to modify or remove the algorithms that make it work.
BlueSky Social: power and control to users
BlueSky Social uses the open protocol AT (Authenticated Transfer Protocol) which does not belong to the leaders of the platform. It allows an unlimited amount of different services to work with each other as long as they use said protocol. A person can even create his own social network, with his own infrastructure or the host he has chosen, and communicate with BlueSky Social. “While the Web exchanges documents, the AT Protocol exchanges schematic and semantic information, allowing software from different organizations to understand each other’s data. This gives ATP clients the freedom to produce user interfaces independently of servers and removes the need to swap rendering code (HTML/JS/CSS) when browsing content“, explains BlueSky Social on his blog.
The objective of BlueSky Social is to give back to the user the complete control of his personal data. The platform has already sketched out the main lines of its operation. Each member will have a digital identity that he will be the only one to hold. This can be transferred from one platform to another without any restrictions or limits from Jack Dorsey’s new social network or anyone else. “A person’s online identity should not be owned by corporations with no accountability to their users”explains the company in a blog post.
Internet users will also be able to control the recommendation algorithms in order to decide for themselves what content they want to consume, and how the social network works for them. “Algorithms dictate what we see and who we can reach. We must have control of our algorithms if we are to trust our online spaces” , says the company. However, she did not explain how the user could manipulate the algorithm at will. Further details should be released soon.
BlueSky Social: a serious competitor for Twitter?
No launch date for BlueSky Social has been given yet. However, it is possible to register on the waiting list on https://bsky.app/ in order to test the beta version, which should not take long. Subsequently, if all goes well, it will be open to the general public, as indicated by the leaders of the new social network, without giving further details. Initially, the platform will only be available via a web browser, but a mobile application should arrive later – otherwise the project could not work.
But can BlueSky Social become a serious competitor for Twitter? It is still far too early to tell, given that the social network is still in its infancy. The context is certainly favorable with the controversies aroused by the decisions and announcements of Elon Musk, and the status of Jack Dorsey brings visibility and legitimacy to the project. The principle of this social network is in any case very innovative, but it must prove itself to hope to attract the general public. And this is one of the difficulties with any new social network: as incredible as its concept, it is uninteresting as long as there are not many people on it – the Wikipedia social network can attest to this. And the risk of BlueSky Social is the same as for Mastodon – which is currently experiencing a spike in popularity thanks to the takeover of Twitter – namely the complexity of its operation, which may prove to be too technical for most users.