Since the announcement of the Bluesky project in 2019 by Jack Dorsey, this division of Twitter has always had the same objective: to create a decentralized social network. The company, which is dedicated to open source, has just released its first code. Bluesky became a public utility company independent in February 2022 and she invites programmers to ” player with its code.
Control of data by users
The code distributed by Bluesky on Github, a collaborative code-sharing platform, is that of a system called Authenticated Data Experiment (ADX). These are the foundations of a decentralized social network. Jay Graber, who has led the project since 2021, said the developers are ” Free to play with the code, but don’t try to build the next big social networking app with it just yet. Some things are missing and many more will change. »
The repository on GitHub provides an overview of the code. This helps to better understand the objectives of ADX. It is not a code to create a social network, it is a protocol whose principle is based on a personal database controlled by users. Developers can choose to integrate it into their social network.
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This protocol aims to make it possible to transfer publications or even “likes” from one social network to another without impacting the content moderation capacities of each platform.
Bluesky explains that in the web, data primarily exists on the platforms where it was created. In ADX the data lives in a personal data directory which belongs to the user. Platforms can choose to index only part of the content.
Towards a decentralized Twitter?
Following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Bluesky explained that Twitter funding has only one condition: ” research and develop technologies to enable open and decentralized public conversation. A position reminiscent of that of the boss of Tesla who declared that he wanted to make the Twitter algorithm open source. He also claims that this acquisition will contribute to freedom of expression.
Twitter’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.
— bluesky (@bluesky) April 25, 2022
In the future Twitter could make use of the decentralization protocols developed by Bluesky. At the time of Musk’s takeover, the social network Mastodon came forward claiming that no billionaire could buy him out. This platform uses the decentralization protocol developed by ActivityPub.