Bluesky has confirmed the departure of Jack Dorsey from its board with the decentralized social media platform now seeking a replacement to take his place at the top table.
Having assisted the fledgling app in its initial stages, Bluesky publicly thanked the Twitter co-founder for his contribution, adding it wants to appoint a new representative “who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience.”
Following the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk and the subsequent rebranding to X, Dorsey now appears to have aligned himself with the direction and ethos of X, as outlined in the post below when he wrote the following endorsement:
“Don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. Defend them yourself using freedom technology. (You’re on one).”
don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights.
defend them yourself using freedom technology.(you’re on one)
— jack (@jack) May 4, 2024
Dorsey’s new direction as he moves on from Bluesky
The 47-year-old internet entrepreneur also reduced his X follow list to just three accounts, appearing to underline the message he wants to portray. Those accounts belong to Musk, Edward Snowden, and Stella Assange, wife of the imprisoned WikiLeaks supremo, Julian Assange.
Neither Bluesky nor Dorsey have made it clear why they have gone their separate ways, but for now, Jay Graeber (CEO) and Jeremie Miller remain as the other two board members.
Dorsey got involved with Bluesky back in 2019 when he envisaged an open-source social media construct to migrate Twitter to, later joining its board but there are suggestions his level of input wasn’t significant.
Graeber was previously asked about Dorsey’s contribution to Bluesky to which she replied she gets “some feedback occasionally” with a hint that he was “being Jack Dorsey on a cloud”. The comments came months after Dorsey had shut down his account on the app.
As of March this year, Bluesky opened up to allow anyone interested to sign up to the app after an invite-only process that lasted almost a year. Within one day, the platform onboarded around 800,000 new users.
Image credit: Ideogram