The co -founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is not just the encoding of new social applications, such as Bitchat and Sun Day. It has also invested $ 10 million in an effort to finance open source experimental projects and other tools that could eventually turn the social media landscape.
These attempts are channeled through an online collective called ”Andotherstuff“Created in May, whose team includes Dorsey, Twitter first employee, Evan Henshaw-Plath,” Calle “, creator of the e-Cash platform Cashu; Alex Gleason, former mechanical head In the truth social; and Jeff GardnerThe fourth employee of Intercom.
The team initially met through cooperation ListenerAn open, “apolitical” social networking protocol that received most of Dorsey’s attention from the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk and his departure from the Social Network Bluesky Board of Directors. However, the team will experiment with other tools, such as ActivityPub, the protocol that authorizes the decentralized Mastodon and more, as well as Cashu.
In recent years, Dorsey has been more critical of how social media platforms evolved, saying that twitter should never have been a company and that Bluesky seemed to repeat the mistakes made by others on Twitter.
As a result, the team in “Andotherstuff” is determined not to build a company, but acts as a “hacker community”, explains Henshaw-Plath. Together, they work to create technologies that could include new social consumer applications as well as Various Experiments such as Developer Tools or LibrariesThis would allow others to build applications for themselves.
For example, the group is behind an application called Shakespearethat is like the application construction platform LovableBut especially for the building of social applications based on NOSTR with AI.
The team is also back upa voice note application built on Nostr. Cashu wallet; private messenger White noise; And nostr based on community +choirIn addition to the applications already released by Dorsey.
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Developments in AI-based coding have made this kind of experimentation strong, Henshaw-Plath points out, in the same way that technologies such as Ruby on Rails, Django and Json have helped feed a previous version of the web, Dubbed Web 2.0.
About these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, Revolution.Social with @rabble. (Henshaw-Plath’s handle on x is @mob.)
Since Dorsey lives in Costa Rica and Henhaw-Plath lives in New Zealand, the two met in a Hackathon in Switzerland for the conversation. In an almost hour episode, Dorsey sinks into the story of Twitter as well as his philosophies around the point where social media went wrong and how it can be corrected.
“It took me a long time to realize this … I didn’t really put it in words until I returned as CEO for the second time. But it’s hard for something like [Twitter] To be a company, because you have corporate incentives when it wants to be a protocol, “says Dorsey, notes that twitter was at the mercy of his advertisers – something Musk also faces Twitter, now called X, private.
While Dorsey understands that the supply to advertisers was right for the business and for the price of Twitter shares, was the “mistake for the internet”.
“They can just deduct the money – your money – and your revenue is completely reduced,” Dorsey says of the power of advertisers. ‘So if [Twitter] It was an open protocol, if it was really an open project, you could create a business over it, and you could create a very healthy business over it. “
Dorsey finally funded an attempt to build an open protocol on Twitter, which he later returned to become bluesky. But Dorsey believes that Bluesky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of his structure – funded by VCs, as well as other newly established businesses. Already, he had to succumb to government demands and face the challenges of moderation, he points out.
“Think [Bluesky CEO] Jay [Graber] It’s great. I think the team is great, “Dorsey told Henshaw-Plath,” but the structure is what I disagree with … I want to push the energy in a different direction, which is more like bitcoin, which is completely open and does not belong to anyone from a protocol layer. That’s what I see in Nostr too, “he says.” There I want to push my energy … in the most corporate direction, even if it is a public benefit company, “Dorsey adds.
In later episodes, Henshaw-Plath will talk to others who have a picture of how social media and technology have evolved, including journalists such as Kara Swisher and Taylor Lorenz. Former Head of Confidence and Security Twitter Yoel Roth. The co -founder Chris Best? Middle CEO Tony Stubblebine? Cory Doctorow (Who created the term “guarantees“To describe the status of the large part of current tissue) and the well -known Renéesta misinformation researcher.
The team in “Andotherstuff” also works on a social media “bill,“Says Henshaw-Plath, who explains which social media platforms We must provide In areas such as privacy, security, interoperability, transparency, identity, self -government and portability.
This, they believe, will help platforms, including bluesky and others, remain responsible for their users despite external pressure.
Dorsey’s initial investment has gotten the new non -profit repit -up and worked in some of the original iOS applications. Meanwhile, others contribute to their time for the construction of Android versions, developer tools and different social media experiments.
More is still in the projects, says Henshaw-Plath.
“There are things that we are not ready to talk about yet that it will be very exciting,” he minds.
