There's a lot of misinformation circulating that obscures or softens Jack Dorsey's relationship to #Bluesky, Bluesky to Twitter, &/or Dorsey to Musk/Twitter.
On Dec 11, 2019, Dorsey announced on Twitter that he'd started Bluesky as part of Twitter, to serve Twitter, & funded by Twitter $, "to develop an open & decentralized standard for social media." (One already existed. Clearly the goal was one he controlled.)
"The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this [Bluesky] standard."
"The goal was to build a decentralized social network protocol that could eventually hook into Twitter — making it interoperable with other networks unrelated to the company...#Bluesky was set up as an independent entity producing nonproprietary open-source work — even as it was funded by Twitter"
Serving Musk's Twitter as a client remains a goal. Jack remains.
"[Q]:Dorsey is on your board and helped dream this all up....Has there been a change with his involvement in Bluesky?
Graber: Nope..."
"Bluesky was launched under Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s leadership back in 2019, & its initial manager was Parag Agrawal, then Twitter’s CTO and later Dorsey’s replacement."
It took Jack 2 years to "hand select" someone he wanted to put in charge of Twitter's #Bluesky project. That was Jay Graber, a cryptocurrency developer.
"Bluesky was formally organized as a public benefit LLC led by software engineer Jay Graber in late 2021, and as of April, it had received $13 million from Twitter."
(For two years, Jay Graber gave no interviews to the public. Zero transparency. So much for Dorsey's "out in the open" promises.)
During that time, Dorsey privately (later, publicly) lobbied for Musk, "the singular solution I trust" to take over Twitter.
Dorsey helped fund Musk's takeover to the tune of $1 billion, making him one of Musk's top backers (after Qatar).
"Musk reportedly ended the company’s ties with #Bluesky [sometime after] he took over Twitter."
But why decentralization?
Here's where Jack's longstanding "moral flexibility" towards anti-Semites & fascists comes in. He never watned to ban/moderate them.
"Dorsey imagined decentralization as a way to sidestep increasingly bitter content moderation debates among law- & policy-makers. Decentralized social networking protocols like ActivityPub (which powers Mastodon) already existed, and to the extent #Bluesky has a unique vision, it reflects ideas like Dorsey’s love of “algorithmic choice”
Dorsey will be happy with one arm of #Bluesky being used by his advisor Ali Alexander to plan the next armed Proud Boys/GOP attack on the Capitol building - and the other arm being used by you to fruitlessly bemoan SCOTUS corruption & the New Jim Crow voting restrictions, & what he & Musk undoubtedly delight, behind closed doors, in referring to as "woke nonsense." The $ & power asymmetry makes this work for the GOP.
No content moderation means no pesky Congressional hearings for him & Musk.
I have run out of spoons. I will try to clean up quotes etc. but probably won't be able to respond until tomorrow.
I'm tired of fighting the same battles against the same people only to have our allies resurrect the same villains. Aren't you tired?
Anyway, TL;DR
Yes, #Bluesky was a Twitter project & funded by Twitter, to serve Twitter as a client.
Yes, it's Jack Dorsey's project, yes he is still its funder/founder & Board Member.
Yes, he hand picked its CEO (a cryptocurrency dev).
Yes, it can still operate hand in glove with Twitter, & Dorsey & Musk are tied by bonds of $ & affinity.
No, Jack did not make sure Jay & the project operated with transparency out in the open.
Let's use strategic intelligence in advance, for once.
Erin Conroy
Rodrigo Jácome