Jack Dorsey leaves Bluesky, calls Twitter "freedom technology"
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, is no longer on the board of Bluesky, as the social network has confirmed. Dorsey’s interest in Bluesky has clearly waned, as he deleted his Bluesky account some time ago.
Meanwhile, it seems Dorsey’s been busy on his old platform, Twitter. TechCrunch states Dorsey deleted almost everyone he was following (save for three accounts). Even odder (and what spurred this post) is Dorsey referred to Twitter as “freedom technology”; to quote the TechCrunch article:
Back on X, Dorsey has had a pretty active weekend. In addition to dropping corporate news, he’s also weighed in on the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, unfollowed nearly every other account, and posted, “don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’re on one)”
Real “freedom technology” isn’t Twitter
Despite what Dorsey might believe, Twitter’s the opposite of “freedom technology.” The platform’s now owned by Elon Musk, who can and has banned whoever he wishes, while allowing hate speech, trolls, racists, etc. to flourish in the name of “free speech.” (Trump being allowed back on was my final straw for leaving Twitter.) Musk has also messed with Twitter’s basic workings to a nonsensical degree, such as removing headlines, throttling links to competing social networks, etc.
But Twitter’s also built on a closed, proprietary platform… and one reason it’s hard for some users to leave, since it might mean leaving behind their Twitter friends. A real “freedom technology” online platform would be built on open standards (versus proprietary platforms), providing users with flexible options and not locking them in… a.k.a., well, actual freedom. It’d also provide robust moderation/blocking tools; “free speech” doesn’t meant users have to listen to or tolerate racists, homophobes, anti-vaxxers, etc.
Actual “freedom technology” online platforms
Examples of actual “freedom technology,” as far as online platforms are concerned, include:
Blogs/websites, using (if nothing else) one of the oldest open standards, HTML.
Email, another old internet standby.
Newsletters, which make use of on the aforementioned email.
WordPress, open source software one can use to host any type of blog or website.
Ghost, an open source blogging/newsletter platform (based on JavaScript).
ActivityPub, an open source social networking protocol that’s the basis for federated platforms such as Mastodon (its most famous example) and Pixelfed. ActivityPub has seen an uptick in popularity, with various platforms adding support, including Threads, Flipboard, and Ghost.
Dorsey’s now-former stomping grounds Bluesky is also based on the idea of open standards, as it’s based on its own federated protocol, AT Protocol. However, AT Protocol hasn’t seen much of an uptake versus ActivityPub. Granted, ActivityPub has a few advantages in my opinion: some features AT Protocol/Bluesky are missing; it’s an older standard; and it’s officially verified as an open standard by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Overall, if you want real “freedom technology,” it won’t come from a proprietary site now overrun by trolls and bigots. Hopefully, the future of social media (and the internet) will rely on something with better standards than Twitter.