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Bluesky Social now on Apple Store - adding to the list of decentralized social media

 

By Nerly Shammah Mar 1, 2023

 

 

In a private beta release, Jack Dorsey's idea for a decentralized social media - Bluesky Social - is now live on the Apple store. The former Twitter CEO has been openly expressing the urgency and value of a decentralized social media platform having left Twitter to focus on what is now launched as a "federated social media" offering users the ability to control how they use and interact on social platforms. 

 

 

Due to the increasing censorship felt on centralized social media platforms, there has been a rather expansive development surrounding Web3 and decentralized networks. In the not-so-distant past, a similarly federated social network - Mastodon - saw a huge influx of users as a result of the growing censorship they felt on Twitter. Although this traffic has so far not been growing or even sustained, a number of other decentralized social platforms have emerged including Nostr, a network of relays where users are incentivized in Bitcoin via tips powered by the lightning network. 

 

Additionally, Leofinance launched a public Alpha of a Twitter alternative that looks to solve the flaws of Twitter on the blockchain, the base layer design of the platform allows for each user to own their content regardless of if the platform goes away. Unlike Leofinance, Bluesky is not built on a blockchain and thus, most likely lacks any incentives for running a server. 

 

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Bluesky is an alternative to Twitter, which made massive headlines in 2022. Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky, has made it clear that there is no blockchain involved in Bluesky, tweeting about this misrepresentation far back in October 2022. Rather, Bluesky uses a “federated network.” However, Graber notes that Bluesky is created on AT Protocol, allowing easier integration with cryptocurrencies

 

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Jack Dorsey has been openly promoting the idea of Web5" which in his theory is the merging of Web2 and Web3, this has been because he believes that Web3 is already populated with venture capitals which a rather large number of the crypto users have perceived as unhealthy for the emerging technology. On this note, Bluesky is built with this in mind, which explains the elimination of  "blockchain" but rather allows both ecosystems to be widely interoperable. As with Jack not being a big fan of alternate projects in the crypto space other than Bitcoin, thus this dismissal of the idea of a "blockchain-based and tokenized social media", other influential personalities like Elon Musk have pointed out how "Twitter on a blockchain" isn't quite possible as the company looks to better it's algorithm, user experience, and plug-in monetization. 

 

Following the private beta release, it is safe to anticipate that Bluesky Social might be near hitting the market for the general public to engage, whether or not there will be incentivization and how there would work is yet to be unveiled, however, projects like leofinance are currently riding on the luxury of multi-functional monetization with smart media tokens and redistributed ad revenues.