The Verge: Twitter’s decentralized, open-source offshoot just released its first code
— Project Bluesky calls it the Authenticated Data Experiment (ADX)
Bluesky, Twitter’s open-source offshoot, has released early code for a decentralized social network protocol. The system is dubbed the Authenticated Data Experiment (or ADX) and is available on GitHub for developers to test, although Bluesky emphasizes that it’s incomplete. It’s one of the most substantive windows into Bluesky’s workings since the project was conceived in 2019 and formally incorporated in early 2022.
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber writes that ADX will be the start of a semi-public development process. “We’re going to take a middle path of releasing work before it’s complete, but also giving ourselves time to workshop new directions at early stages,” Graber says. The GitHub repository includes an overview of ADX’s goals and design as well as some experimental code. “Feel free to play around, but don’t try to build your next big social app on this yet. Things are missing, and things are going to change,” Graber says. The code is available under an open-source MIT License.
“Feel free to play around, but don’t try to build your next big social app on this yet.” — Jay Grabber
ADX isn’t a single, standalone social network design. It’s a protocol built around user-controlled “Personal Data Repositories” that social network developers could choose to support. Among other things, it’s supposed to let users transfer social media posts or engagement between networks without eroding the networks’ own moderation options. “On the Web, this data lives on the social platform where it was created. In ADX, this data will live in Personal Data Repositories owned by the user,” the overview explains. Platforms can choose to only index some of this content — drawing a distinction between “speech,” or the ability to keep data in the repository, and “reach,” or being able to see that data on a given platform.
Personally it reminds me of the SOLID project from Sir Tim Berners-Lee and that project's aim at making "personal data sovereignty" more of "a thing"... I like it.
Also I'd like to see ADX as a practical (yet experimental) collaborative development towards social posts and social graph as migratable digital assets, and attempt at separating free speech from free reach...
All currently still very much pie-in-the-sky (pun kinda intended), but still though.
———
#Twitter #Bluesky #FederatedSocialMedia #DecentralizedSocialMedia / #fz_links #fz_thinkingOutLoud / May 2022
