A meta-proposal for Twitter's bluesky project by Jad Esber, Boaz Sender, Ethan Zuckerman, Crystal Lee, Nana Nwachukwu, Oumou Ly, Peter Suber, Primavera De Filippi, Sahar Massachi, Samuel Klein, Tom Zick :: SSRN
papers.ssrn.com
Members of the Berkman Klein community, representing academics, activists, lawyers and technologists, came together to discuss the bluesky project, Twitter's pr

Over the course of the last month, members of the Berkman Klein community, representing academics, activists, lawyers and technologists, came together to discuss the Twitter BlueSky project. The discussions culminated in this “meta-proposal” for the BlueSky team and community, which presents suggestions on how to go about considering proposals and building out BlueSky.

  • Jeffrey
    2·
    4 years ago

    This meta-proposal basically recommends all the same foundational principles that the fediverse is built upon, so I’m curious to see if Twitter follows this advice.

    In terms of legal business structure, BlueSky should be structured as a non-profit entity and should maintain its open-source commitment. At the outset, we do not think BlueSky, as a base protocol, needs a revenue model.

    Twitter doesn’t have a profitable business model right now, it will be interesting to see if Twitter is successfully able to pivot to become a for-profit company whose primary product is not-for-profit.

    Hopefully some interesting innovations come out of the project, and it’s at least a step in the right direction.

    • haloOP
      4·
      4 years ago

      Obligatory XKCD

      I like the publicity this gives to fediverse. I do not think ignoring existing protocols right from the start inspires hope in as much as Twitter and Harvard do not explicitly mention existing options. I hope I am wrong in the long run.

        • haloOP
          2·
          4 years ago

          I agree. It is hard to see how a centralized powerful entity would cede that power to a decentralized system if their aim is not to turn decentralized communities into name-only but centralized in practice.