On May 5, Bluesky, Twitter’s decentralised social media project, released the code for their “Authenticated Data eXperiment” (ADX) protocol in the blog post titled “Working in Public”. Bluesky stated that “it is not viable to create a useful social network without moderation”. By ‘social network without moderation’, Bluesky teams means that moderation on social media reduces abusive, vulgar, and hateful remarks, making the platform safer for everyone and allowing firms to improve their online profile. So, without moderation the social media platform won’t be safe. The network will be moderated using the “speech and reach” paradigm.
The Bluesky team emphasised that the platform’s development approach will be made public by the end of 2022 by “releasing work before it’s complete, but also giving ourselves time to workshop new directions at early stages.” Developers may now experiment with the network architecture, while Bluesky notes that it is still very basic; “things are missing, and things are going to change.”
The ADX protocol will use “self-authenticating data” at this point, which is a methodology that allows network activities to be verified independently without the need for a centralised host or authority. The main concept is that users will have sovereignty over their data and will be able to move it from platform to platform without authorisation, which is key to the Web3 movement.
According to the announcement:
“Self-authenticating data moves authority to the user and therefore preserves the liveness of data across every hosting service. Moderation occurs in multiple layers through the system, including in aggregation algorithms, thresholds based on reputation, and end-user choice. There’s no one company that can decide what gets published; instead there is a marketplace of companies deciding what to carry to their audiences.”
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first announced Bluesky in late 2019, but the initiative became self-sufficient in February after receiving $13 million funding from Twitter. However, Dorsey is still part of Bluesky’s board of directors. According to Bluesky, hosting providers will still be legally compelled to “remove illegal content in accordance with their local laws”.
