Twitter co -founder and general director of Block Jack Dorsey are not only new social applications, such as Bitchat and Sun Day, invested $ 10 million, trying to finance experimental open source projects and other tools that can ultimately transform the social media landscape.
These efforts are directed through an online collective entitled “and other things“Established in May, whose team includes Dorsey; the first Twitter employee, Evan Henshaw-Plath;” Calle “, creator of the e-Mom. Cascu; Alex Gleason, they were Engineering head really social; AND Jeff GardnerFourth employee in Intercom.
The group was originally met through cooperation OurAn open, “apolitical” social network protocol, which received most of Dorsey's attention from Twitter sales to Elon Musk and his paragraph from the BlueSky social network board. However, the team also experiments with other tools, such as Activitypub, a protocol that drives the decentralized Mastodon and others application, as well as Caslu.
In recent years, Dorsey is more critical of how social media platforms have evolved, saying that Twitter should never be a company and that BlueSky seemed to repeat the mistakes he and others made on Twitter.
As a result, the band “and other things” is determined so as not to build a company, but instead it works like a “hacker community”, explains Henshaw-Plath. Together they work on creating technologies that may include new consumer social applications as well Various experiments, such as development tools or librariesThis would allow others to build applications for yourself.
For example, the team is behind an application called Shakespearewhich is like a platform for building application SympatheticBut especially for building social applications based on nosta with the help of AI.
The group is also on the back HeynowApplication for a voice note built on nostep; Cassu wallet; private messenger White noise; and based on NOSTR Social community +chorusIn addition to the application, Dorsey has already released.
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Henshaw-Plath emphasizes that changes in coding based on artificial intelligence have enabled such experiments in the same way as such technologies Web 2.0.
In connection with these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat down with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, Revolution.social with @rabble. (Henshaw-platha handle on x is @mob.)
Because Dorsey lives in Costa Rica and Henshaw-Plath lives in New Zealand, they both met in Hackathon, Switzerland in chat. In the almost hour episode of Dorsey he delves into the story of Twitter, as well as his philosophers around the place where social media went wrong and how they can be fixed.
“It took me a long time to realize … I didn't really express this word until I came back as the general director for the second time. But it is difficult to (Twitter) to be a company, because you have corporate incentives when he wants to be a protocol,” says Dorsey. He notes that Twitter was at the grace of his advertisers – something that Musk also encounters, despite taking Twitter, now called X, private. Musk even threatened the advertisers with lawsuits over advertising boycothes powered by their fears regarding the lack of moderation and controversial comments.
While Dorsey understands that catering for advertisers was correct for the company and the price of Twitter shares, it was “the wrong thing for the Internet.”
“They can simply remove money – your money – and your revenues are completely falling,” says Dorse about the strength of advertisers. “So if (Twitter) were an open protocol, if it were a really open project, you can build a company and you can build a very healthy business.”
Dorsey finally financed efforts to build an open protocol on Twitter, which later thrown out to become blues. But Dorsey believes that BlueSky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of its structure – is financed by VCS, like other startups. He points out that he had to bow to government conclusions and face the challenges related to moderation.
“I think that (CEO BlueSky) Jay (Graba) is great. I think the team is great,” said Dorsey Henshaw-Plath, “But the structure is what I do not agree with … I want to press energy in a different direction, which is more like bitcoins, which is completely open and not having no one from the protocol layer. This is what I see in nosty.” “That's where I want to push my energy … rather in a more corporate direction, even if it is a corporation of public benefits,” adds Dorsey.
In later episodes, Henshaw-Plath will interview others who have insight into the evolution of social media and technology, including journalists, such as Kara Swisher and Taylor Lorenz, former head of Trum of Trum of Turle & Safety Yoel Roth, co-founder of Suback Chris Best, Medium CEO TONBBLINE, Medium CEO TONBLE, Cory Doctorow (who came up with this term “Enshittification“Describe the state of the majority of the current network) and the well -known researcher of the disinformation Renée Direst.
Team in “and other things“Work on also social media “Card of rights,“-says Henshaw-Plath, who determines what social media platforms You must ensure In areas such as privacy, security, interoperability, transparency, identity, local government and portability.
They think that this will help platforms, including BlueSky and others, to remain responsible to users despite any external pressure.
Dorsey's initial investment has increased the new non -profit organization, and he worked on some of the initial iOS applications. Meanwhile, others contribute to the construction of the Android version, programming tools and various experiments on social media.
Henshaw-Plath says more that it still works.
“There are things that we are not ready to talk about, which will be very exciting,” he teases.
