More power to the users? Bluesky takes on Twitter to decentralize the social media experience with AT Protocol

Ever since Twitter was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk, the user base on the platform has become highly polarized. While half of Twitter’s population is on board with the new development, the other half is not happy at all. People wanted a better alternative and soon platforms like Twitter started to emerge. From Mastodon to Substack Notes, they all claimed to offer something different, but none were able to generate the same buzz as BlueSky. The platform was conceptualized and designed by former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey and is built on the promise of creating a decentralized platform using the innovative Authenticated Transfer Protocol (AT Protocol) as its foundation.

And the combination of a decentralized social media platform and the Twitter cofounder’s seal of approval has turned a lot of eyes. Currently, Bluesky is invite-only and has around 50,000 users. But according to reports, more than 1 million people have joined the waiting list, including celebrities such as US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and comedian Dril.

But the question is, what exactly is this decentralized platform and how does it innovate the existing social media experience?

In short, today’s social media experience is largely based around engagement. Users get markers like ‘Like’, ‘Share’, ‘Retweet’, ‘Upvote’, ‘Comment’ etc. to show whether they find a particular content shared on the platform interesting or not. A post that has a high number of likes, shares or comments is generally considered ‘viral’.

Now, when it comes to the developers’ side, these viral posts indicate what interests people the most. Therefore, most suggestions select these posts at the top of user feeds and most users interact with these posts first.

The problem with this is that the nature of these posts is often provocative, sensational and opinionated, which can often create a toxic space for users who do not agree with the opinion. Furthermore, it also means that having a large community to support such content may also lead to a biased perception of the entire user base in crafting this kind of virality.

That’s where BlueSky wants to differ. Jack Dorsey first started working on BlueSky in 2019, when he was still at Twitter, with the aim of eliminating these algorithm-based loopholes and creating a platform where real-life conversations and interactions can be simulated. Virality should not be rewarded for.

The solution to their problem was the AT protocol which enables users to create a decentralized platform.

Consider this, maybe you like a group of people you’re connected with on a social media platform and you’d like to see their posts, but the platform continues to push politically charged content, including You are not interested. The AT protocol will allow you to access posts from your group via an open domain and move it to a different platform (which you can either create or join after someone else has created one) using one of the algorithms. With a different set that aligns with your social media usage.

In theory, each user on the platform can create for themselves a different version of social media governed by their own principles and functionalities.

Of course, there are significant barriers to achieving this, and adoption of such complex technology by users is a primary issue. So, it remains to be seen how Dorsey’s platform solves this problem to make decentralized social media more accessible to the masses.

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