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Notes -
Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, now conspicuous 2.4% stake owner in Elon Musk's Twitter just unveiled a new social media venture: BlueSky Social and the AT Protocol.
This is on paper what he's been telegraphing for a while as a decentralized base for social media that puts control of accounts and algorithmic curation back in the hands of the user using similar tech as pioneers like GNUSocial and Mastodon. But now with large enough potential backing to break the network effects that robbed us of an opportunity for interoperability in this space so far.
It's hard not to see this convenient turn of events as something of a plan. There was for a long time some rumor that Dorsey was something of a hostage during his tenure as CEO, an old school tech libertarian who helmed the notoriously censorious and partisan centralized platform (which was so in part on direct orders from the State as we now know) despite seemingly contradictory personal views.
This could just be opportunism and seizing the moment to promote what is now his pet project, but given what Elon Musk has insinuated about his vision for Twitter and the hypothetical X "everything app", and their common affection for web3 and decentralization, maybe this was more than just happenstance.
So what do you guys think, is this yet another decentralized social media flash in the pan, which will be forgotten like the countless others that also had some names backing them up (including Tim Berners Lee at one point) or is this actually part of a dastardly scheme that might form the base of the new twitter that will rise from the current turmoil?
The Intercept ran a pretty damning piece of investigation that goes into detail about DHS efforts against "disinformation", and includes among other things a web portal (that is still up btw) where government officials can just straight up demand things be taken down on those grounds, regular coordination meetings between feds and social media companies for the express purposes of such censorship and other fun stuff like that.
I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up with impeachment after the midterms actually given there are actual ties to the white house in there and this is the tip of the iceberg. But given we're talking about conduct as blatantly unconstitutional as the Snowden affair, it would also not be surprising if nothing comes of it.
My surface level thought after you mentioning impeachment is that there actually is a path to Biden’s removal here. Democrats want him out, and they’re already sharpening their knives and preparing post-midterm hit pieces. Republicans will want to impeach when they take the house. If that happens on these grounds, the party could let swing state senators vote for removal if that’s the public sentiment. Biden either sees which way the wind is blowing and resigns or he’s convicted and removed. Kamala takes the reins and begins campaigning from office for 2022.
Strategically, the question is are dems willing to make Kamala the incumbent. She’s probably not their best 2022 shot.
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