- Jack Dorsey announced his departure from Bluesky.
- Rumors are circulating about Dorsey’s motives for leaving.
- Bluesky’s vision was to achieve uncensorable social media.
Bluesky is pitched as a decentralized social media platform, and Jack Dorsey’s chance at redemption follows the mess Twitter had become at the time of his departure. However, just as Bluesky was making progress, including opening its platform to the public in February 2024, Dorsey surprised everyone by stating he had cut ties with the company.
Dorsey’s abrupt departure from Bluesky, a project he once championed as the path to censor-free social media, has sent the rumor mill into overdrive regarding his motives for leaving.
Jack Dorsey’s Shock Bluesky Departure
Jack Dorsey surprised his millions of followers recently by declaring that he had left the board of directors at Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform he had previously backed. The admission sparked an outpouring of questions about Dorsey’s motives for abandoning a project he had once described as “an open decentralized standard for social media.”
Sponsored
The revelation came in a tweet thread where Dorsey signaled his willingness to make “long term grants for open protocols,” following his recent $21 million donation to OpenSats, a charity that funds Bitcoin-related and open-source technologies.
Notably, Dorsey had donated $10 million to OpenSats around a year ago to the day, demonstrating his consistent financial backing of open source and decentralized projects.
However, his willingness to pour substantial sums into such initiatives while simultaneously departing Bluesky’s board has prompted speculation on his motives for leaving the Twitter spinoff and whether Bluesky has somehow deviated from its founding unbiased, decentralized vision.
Sponsored
Adding fuel to the rumor mill, Dorsey posted a tweet several hours after disclosing his Bluesky departure, cautioning that individuals should not rely on companies to grant freedom. Instead, he advocated fighting for freedom through “freedom technology,” citing X as one such tool.
While Dorsey did not expand on his Bluesky departure, reading between the lines may infer that the company failed to achieve its unbiased, decentralized social media promise.
Failed Twitter 2.0?
Bluesky originated in 2019 as a Twitter project to explore decentralized social media’s viability. Although it received $13 million in funding from Twitter, Bluesky claimed to operate independently from the outset. The initial research delved into decentralized concepts like “self-authenticating protocols” that could incorporate scalability and trust.
By the time Bluesky went live as an invite-only platform in February 2023, devs had opted to go with the “AT” protocol, which offers a means of creating a federated, decentralized social network. Yet, the project has faced criticism over its UI similarity to X in terms of look and feel.
By early 2022, Elon Musk had openly declared his intention to buy Twitter as a response to the censorship and perceived left-leaning bias plaguing the platform. This set the stage for Bluesky to flourish as an independent, decentralized alternative potentially, but Dorsey’s departure casts doubt on where the platform goes from here.
On the Flipside
- Since Musk took control, the number of X users has dropped by around 33 million to 336 million.
- Dorsey‘s reputation as a freedom lover was particularly strained following the banning of Donald Trump from X, who was a sitting president at the time.
- Trump’s account was reinstated under Musk, but the former president created his own Truth Social platform.
Why This Matters
While there are no clear answers on Dorsey’s motives for leaving Bluesky, the issue has rehashed the circumstances around the Twitter buyout and the ongoing influence of three letter agencies on social media.
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