Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that making a platform resistant to corporate or government control is a solution to Twitter’s censorship issues.
Resistant to Corporate Control
Dorsey highlighted some potential solutions to the Twitter platform’s current problems in a post. According to the former Twitter CEO, this includes making it resistant to corporate or government control, granting the right to remove content solely to the original author, and implementing moderation through algorithmic choice.
He explained that he believed that any content produced by anyone on the internet should be permanent until a time when the original author chooses to delete it. According to him, the content should always be available and addressable. Content takedowns and suspensions should not be possible.
Dorsey believes that the Twitter platform under his leadership and the current Twitter do not meet the three principles he mentioned, and he blames himself for not fighting for the platform.
He wrote;
“This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company”.
Dorsey also stated that the biggest mistake was focusing on building tools to manage public conversation rather than ones that allow Twitter users to manage it for themselves. “This burdened the company with too much power,” he added. According to the former CEO, this exposed the company to external pressure.
Dorsey also shared the GitHub link to a censorship-resistant open protocol that is currently being developed in a tweet. The “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted” project aims to enable the creation of decentralized social networks based on cryptographic keys and signatures.
Bluesky Social Coming Soon
Dorsey also announced new developments for Bluesky Social, a decentralized social media project launched in 2019. There will be no company that can decide what is published on the platform. Rather, a marketplace of businesses will decide what to “carry to their audiences.”
Little is known about the new social app, Bluesky Social, other than that it will “launch soon” and that users can currently join a private waitlist to test the beta before it is made available to the general public.
The decentralized social platform could be one solution to the centralized manipulation of social media feeds, accounts, and data, which has been criticized by many as harmful to social cohesion.
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