Twitter mulls giving control of newsfeed back to the masses
What's the story
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey may have committed high heresy in the eyes of his Big Tech peers. He envisioned giving people back the control of their newsfeed during the recent earnings call. He intends to decentralize Twitter by giving people a say in the microblogging platform's behavior. This will be achieved by letting people choose between multiple algorithms shaping their feeds in diverse ways.
No manipulation
Dorsey wants to build an app store for algorithms
The Twitter CEO contends that it can put people back in charge by building an app store for algorithms that allows the masses to choose the newsfeed they want. This is a part of Dorsey's recent push for decentralization, where the audience can decide what it sees and takes that control away from Twitter or any third parties.
Strategic move
Move will improve quality and diversity of content, boost growth
The decentralization vision involves setting up a marketplace where Twitter offers its own ranking algorithms. The company can not only host its own options, but ostensibly also allow third parties to field their own algorithms. Dorsey contends this will lead to diversity of ideas and create higher quality and quantity of content that is ultimately essential for the continued growth of the platform.
Decentralized target
Decentralized Twitter will also shield it from Section 230 'problems'
Dorsey's latest brainchild is also touted as a means to "address some of the problems" around Section 230. The law provides entities such as Twitter limited protection from frivolous lawsuits stemming from user-generated content. Decentralizing Twitter could potentially provide a failsafe, absolving it from a litany of recent Section 230 lawsuits and any future enforcement of stricter rules surrounding user content.
Not a pioneer
Dorsey is late to the decentralized social media party
Twitter has been working toward this concept dubbed Bluesky since 2019, but the project doesn't even have a Project Manager yet. However, Dorsey is far from being the pioneer of this concept. There have been a number of decentralized Twitter alternatives in the past. In fact, the Bluesky announcement was met with derision from existing decentralized platforms such as Mastodon—none of which trust Twitter.