Twitter is funding a group to create an 'open and decentralised standard' for social media

Twitter Inc plans to set up an independent research group to create an "open and decentralised standard" for social media networks, a model which the microblogging platform aspires to follow, Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said on Wednesday.Centralised solutions are struggling to meet many new challenges faced by social networks, including large scale content moderation, Dorsey said, adding that the new standard will not be owned by any single private corporation.[caption id="attachment_7288511" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

Twitter Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal will be in charge of hiring a lead for the research team, called Bluesky. Image: Reuters[/caption]"Centralised enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people," he tweeted.

Twitter Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal will be in charge of hiring a lead for the research team, called Bluesky, Dorsey said, while acknowledging that the project would take many years to complete.Parag Agarwal has also emphasised on the challenges that they will see in this project, explaining three of them on Twitter. He tweeted, " First is, a standard that enables consumer choice between many data-intensive algorithms, while protecting privacy, may struggle to compete on quality with centralised approaches."Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter has also stepped in to tell people that the company believes that "in 2020, we will be using our voice to more prominently support and foster the values of a free and open internet."(Also read: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey calls Facebook’s experiment to hide ‘likes’ a ‘great step’)Dorsey went on to explain how blockchain technology can provide a model for decentralising content hosting, oversight and even monetisation of social media."It will allow us to access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation, focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation ... ," he said, detailing how the move would be beneficial for Twitter.The research group Bluesky has also tweeted explaining how they are planning to work on this project:Meanwhile, taking a dig at Twitter CEO, rival Mastodon tweeted saying "he knows we exist and he literally follows us."(Also read: US Senator Elizabeth Warren also wants to break up Apple alongside Google, Facebook, Amazon)Firefox has offered its help to twitter, saying that they are extremely invested in the free and open internet and so they can help.People are also reacting to this news on Twitter. Several users have pointed out that Twitter is copying its rival Mastodon. Well, we all saw this one coming, didn't we? On the other hand, some are really appreciating this new initiative by Twitter:With inputs from Reuters