Policing speech on social media sites has needed hefty investment, while still failing to stem criticism from users who find the policies either too aggressive or too lax. However, the open standard could upend Twitter’s business model in the process, giving rise to competitor services that offer filters, content suggestions or other tools that prove more popular with consumers. In an article that Dorsey shared titled Protocols, Not Platforms, tech news site Techdirt founder Mike Masnick outlined how an open standard could give rise to a “competition for business models” among developers. Dorsey said that Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal would be in charge of hiring a lead for the research team, called BlueSky, which Twitter would fund — likely over many years — but would not direct, he said. He went on to recommend that blockchain technology might provide a model for decentralizing content hosting, oversight and even monetization of social media, without elaborating on possible alternatives to Twitter’s ads-driven business.

Source: Taipei Times December 12, 2019 15:56 UTC