Isn't this called ActivityPub and hasn't this been working well for the last couple of years?
Are there genuine technical shortcomings in the ActivityPub standard that Twitter's engineering team has identified? Why not talk about that and contribute improvements to the standard?
Are there shortcomings to being part of the standardization process in the W3C? Then talk about that and make the processes better.
Is it that he needs his name stamped on a new protocol? I'm not sure we can do much about the terminal egotism of the ultra wealthy and its pernicious effects on our society. Solving this will take a tremendous amount of collective effort.
He doesn't care about decentralization. ActivityPub is impossible to directly control and it has no innate analytics, advertising or monetization layers. This makes it impossible for Twitter to utilize such a protocol.
If anything, Dorsey wants to embrace, extend, and extinguish AP by making an incompatible protocol that he can then pump VC money into in order to have it gain traction on Twitter's terms - with all the ads, spyware and analytics that Twitter desires.
The protocol wars begin anew.
Your doubts are correct. From the thread:
>@halcy: So, ActivityPub?
>@jack: Team will have charge to choose whatever is best, be that what exists today or start from scratch.
Dorsey follows the Mastodon twitter account - he knows about it.