Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said in a blog post on Tuesday that he would give encrypted messaging app Signal a US$1 million (about Rs8 billion) a year grant, the first in a series of grants he is supporting wants to give support to “Open Internet Development.”
Social media should not be “owned by a single company or group of companies” and must be “resilient to corporate and government influence”. Dorsey wrote in a post on Revue, a newsletter service by Twitter.
Back in October, Dorsey divided Details on the development of the decentralized social networking initiative “Bluesky” that the former Twitter co-founder is working on. The protocol, which is currently being built, will test features such as account portability, algorithmic selection and interoperability, according to Dorsey.
Bluesky will use “Authentic Transfer Protocol” or the AT protocol, Dorsey revealed at the time. According to an official statement, the Bluesky Initiative’s AT protocol integrates ideas from the latest decentralized technologies into a simple, fast and open network.
A blog post at the time stated that the AT protocol would allow users to identify themselves by compatible domain names like “@alice.com”. These domain names would be mapped to cryptographic URLs and protect both the user’s account and data.
Bluesky’s AT protocol would also offer “Account Portability”, allowing users to move their accounts from one provider to another without risking the loss of their data. With this feature, Dorsey said he aims to take large corporations out of their control over people’s online identities.
Similarly, the AT protocol’s “algorithmic choice” would allow Bluesky to break away from the current trend of algorithms dictating what users browse and see online on social networks. Instead, users are presented with an open market of algorithms to choose from or opt for a no-algorithm model.
