Cofounder of Twitter Jack Dorsey recently left the Bluesky board and closed his account on the decentralized X alternative. Many people are surprised by this action, considering that in the early days of Elon Musk’s leadership, Dorsey had backed Bluesky as an alternative to X.
The beginning of Bluesky
The discussion over Dorsey’s original intentions on the platform began right after he left Bluesky. His original vision for Bluesky was a decentralized social media system that would be integrated into Twitter. Unfortunately, Dorsey didn’t know that once Musk took control and Twitter was relaunched as X, Bluesky would go on to become its own separate business.
Repeating past mistakes
Dorsey recently voiced his dissatisfaction with Bluesky in an interview, saying that it is “repeating all the mistakes” that Twitter made while he was in charge. In particular, he took issue with Bluesky’s choice to provide moderating tools, believing that it restricted users’ freedom of speech.
“Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd,” said Dorsey in the interview. “But little by little, they started asking Jay and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off. And unfortunately, they followed through with it.”
Bluesky’s response
In response to Dorsey’s remarks, Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber, emphasized that his company differs structurally from Twitter and claims it is built to be approachable, familiar and available to all users. But there appears to be a difference between Dorsey’s initial plan and Bluesky’s present course.
Bluesky’s protocol engineer, Paul Frazee, also had something to say against Dorsey’s statements. He said that the concept of an unmoderated social media network is unrealistic and may run afoul of the law.
Now that he is not satisfied with Bluesky, Dorsey is supporting another decentralized social media network called Nostr.
Featured image courtesy: Bluesky