In 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first announced the Bluesky initiative on Twitter. In early 2020, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Parag Agrawal, invited the first members of the working group.
Representatives from the decentralized networks Mastodon and Activity Pub joined the group. The group communicated using the Element chat software.
Jay Graber of the Happening decentralized social network was commissioned by Twitter to write a technical review of the decentralized social network landscape. In August 2021, she was hired as the Bluesky project lead.
Twitter executives agreed on the initiative’s scope and goals, which include what the protocol should include and what should be left up to applications the social networks built atop the standard.
Among these objectives are allowing applications to customize their moderation system, making applications accountable for compliance and takedown requests, and preventing virality algorithms from reinforcing controversy and moral indignation.
Is Bluesky owned by Twitter?
Bluesky is a project to create a decentralized social network protocol. It was announced in 2019 as a non-profit initiative by Twitter and is currently in the research phase as of 2022.
Bluesky is entirely owned by the team, with no controlling stake held by Twitter.