May 10, 2024 14:49:00

An interview has appeared in which Jack Dorsey is asked directly why he left Bluesky

Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter (now X), who played a major role in the birth of the SNS 'Bluesky',

retired as a director of Bluesky PBC in May 2024. Dorsey also deleted his Bluesky account, and although he acknowledged his resignation, he did not provide details, so it was a mystery as to what circumstances had occurred. However, Mike Solana of IT newsletter Pirates Wires interviewed Dorsey after his resignation and found out the reason.

An Interview With Jack Dorsey
https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana

Solana began by asking, 'Why did you leave Bluesky?' Dorsey began by explaining the background to why, but the final words he came up with were, 'Because Bluesky wasn't what I thought it would be.'

Dorsey is the founder of Twitter and also the founder of the payment service 'Square' (now Block), where he provided funding to open source developers of the Bitcoin protocol, which ultimately led to a direct profit for Square.

Why is Square, another service created by the CEO of Twitter, which is rumored to be sold, the only one growing so fast? - GIGAZINE

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John Verive

Dorsey wanted to create a similar system for Twitter, but he said it was difficult to implement a similar initiative at Twitter because of account-related issues and because Twitter was a publicly traded company based on a brand advertising model.

So Dorsey thought that 'it is necessary to separate Twitter's protocol layer and make it impossible for Twitter to control the protocol layer,' and came up with the idea of building an open standard protocol by a team independent of Twitter and having Twitter use it as well. This is the 2019 declaration of 'Promoting the Development of Open Standards for Decentralized Social Media.'

Twitter CEO announces promotion of development of 'open standard for decentralized social media' - GIGAZINE

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PhotoMIX-Company

Jay Graeber, currently CEO of Bluesky, was appointed project leader in August 2021. It seems that he spent about two years interviewing various protocol developers.

Cryptocurrency developer appointed as project leader for Twitter's decentralized social media open standard 'bluesky' - GIGAZINE

Among the developers interviewed was fiatjaf, the creator of the decentralized social networking protocol 'Nostr,' but for some reason he was not hired. Dorsey did not attend the meeting with fiatjaf, so he did not know the content of the meeting and said he 'did not pay attention at all.'

What is 'Nostr', a SNS protocol that is attracting attention as an alternative to Twitter? - GIGAZINE

Dorsey, who selected Graeber as the leader, invested $14 million in the project and pushed forward with protocol development. At this point, Dorsey had already decided to step down as CEO of Twitter and hand over the reins to Parag Agrawal.

The project was amicably spun off from Twitter as 'Bluesky PBLLC' about half a year later at the end of 2021. In an interview with news site The Verge, Graeber explained the reason for his independence: 'The protocol development project was being promoted by Dorsey as CEO of Twitter, and there was a risk that the project would be scrapped if the CEO were to change.'

Jay Graeber, CEO of SNS 'Bluesky', talks about 'Why we left Twitter' and 'The relationship between Bluesky and AT Protocol' - GIGAZINE

According to Dorsey, the discrepancy between his ideals and Bluesky's policies started around the time Bluesky separated from Twitter. When asked by Why, a technical advisor at Bluesky, he said,

When Bluesky became independent, Twitter was given the right to choose one person to serve on Bluesky's board of directors, and Dorsey was chosen. However, Dorsey said, 'An 'advisory' seat was prepared for me, but I was not provided with any input.'

Furthermore, as Dorsey saw Graeber and others raise funds from venture capitalists and assemble a board of directors, he thought, 'This isn't the direction I'm happy with. That wasn't the intention.'

For Dorsey, who wanted open protocols and decentralization, the important thing was the 'protocol,' and Bluesky initially positioned the decentralized SNS protocol 'AT Protocol (formerly known as ADX)' as its main product. However, Bluesky changed its direction to SNS development to show 'what kind of services can be created with the protocol,' leading to the announcement of the SNS 'Bluesky' in October 2022.

A decentralized social networking protocol development group launched by Twitter founder announces new social networking site 'Bluesky' - GIGAZINE

In addition, after Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk in November 2022, problems erupted, making Bluesky one of the 'destinations for people moving from Twitter.'

'Bluesky' account creation procedure & how to actually use it Review, it's very similar to Twitter, so it's quite a good place to switch or move - GIGAZINE

As the number of users grew, rather than the 'algorithmic store where you can choose what the conversations look like,' which Dorsey thought was a great idea, users began asking for moderation tools and pushing other users out. Bluesky became 'not what I wanted it to be, and not what I intended to help create.'

Dorsey described Bluesky as 'literally repeating every mistake that Twitter made. It's not a decentralized protocol. It's just another app following in Twitter's footsteps.'

Dorsey later said he was sympathetic to Nostr and provided funding to the project. He also revealed that he was focusing on Nostr after stepping down from his position as director of Bluesky, saying, 'I don't think the Nostr project needs or wants a board of directors.'

After the interview with Dorsey was published, Bluesky CEO Graeber said, '(Bluesky's protocol) is developed as open source. All of our code is public, and every part of the system is executable by anyone. Bluesky's UI and UX may be similar to Twitter's, but that's because Twitter was a system that didn't require significant changes.' He is promoting the openness of Bluesky's protocol (AT Protocol).

There's a marketplace of algorithms. It's open source — every line of code we write is public. Moderation is composable. Anyone can run any part of the system. And yet it looks and feels like it could be Twitter because we built a protocol Twitter could run on without drastic changes.

— Jay ������ ( @jay.bsky.team ) May 10, 2024 at 9:32

In addition, Why explained why Bluesky is focusing on developing not only the protocol but also the SNS app, saying, 'A protocol without an actual product will not survive and will disappear,' and argues that the development of the Bluesky app is a necessary attempt to keep the AT Protocol alive.

As a fellow decentralized protocol person for the past decade, Paul is 100% spot on here. Without someone focusing on building an actual *product* with the intention of it sticking around for longer than it takes for them to get bored, these projects will die.

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— Why ( @why.bsky.team ) May 10, 2024 at 6:24

The source code for AT Protocol and the Bluesky app can be found at the following links.

bluesky-social · GitHub
https://github.com/bluesky-social