Decentralized Twitter Spinoff Company Distances Itself From Musk

Decentralized Twitter Spinoff Company Distances Itself From Musk
A sign is posted on the exterior of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on July 26, 2018. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Benzinga
Updated:
Bluesky, the project developing a decentralized Twitter Inc. alternative announced in 2019, distanced itself from its parent company after it was acquired by tech tycoon and the world’s richest man Elon Musk.

What Happened:

In a Monday Twitter thread, Bluesky announced that it wanted to leverage “the surge of interest in Twitter’s future [...] to clarify the relationship between Bluesky and Twitter.” The team announced that while the project originated inside Twitter in 2019, the public benefit limited liability company established to run the project “is an independent company focused on decentralized social network” research and development.

One tweet reads: “The “public benefit” part of our structure gives us the freedom to put our resources towards our mission without an obligation to return money to shareholders. The company is owned by the team itself, without any controlling stake held by Twitter.”

Bluesky even received $13 million of funding to ensure its ability to independently conduct its research and development. Despite this focus on independence, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is on the board and a former Twitter security engineer joined the team.

Bluesky’s declaration apparently aims to highlight that the organization is an entirely separate entity unaffected by Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. The team goes as far as to note that the only condition that the initiative is subject to is that it has “to research and develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation.”

By Adrian Zmudzinski
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