News: 0178421682

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Jack Dorsey Pumps $10M Into a Nonprofit Focused on Open Source Social Media (techcrunch.com)

(Sunday July 20, 2025 @04:02AM (EditorDavid) from the investing-in-interacting dept.)


Twitter co-founder/Block CEO Jack Dorsey isn't just vibe coding new apps like [1]Bitchat and [2]Sun Day . He's also "invested $10 million in an effort to fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape," [3]reports TechCrunch ," funding the projects through an online collective formed in May called " [4]andOtherStuff :

> [T]he team at "andOtherStuff" is determined not to build a company but is instead operating like a "community of hackers," explains Evan Henshaw-Plath [who handles UX/onboarding and was also Twitter's first employee]. Together, they're working to create technologies that could include new consumer social apps as well as [5]various experiments, like developer tools or libraries , that would allow others to build apps for themselves.

>

> For instance, the team is behind an app called [6]Shakespeare , which is like the [7]app-building platform [8]Lovable , but specifically for building [9]Nostr -based social apps with AI assistance. The group is also behind [10]heynow , a voice note app built on Nostr; [11]Cashu wallet ; private [12]messenger [13]White Noise ; and the Nostr-based [14]social community [15]+chorus , in addition to the apps Dorsey has already released. Developments in AI-based coding have made this type of experimentation possible, Henshaw-Plath points out, in the same way that technologies like Ruby on Rails, Django, and JSON helped to fuel an earlier version of the web, dubbed [16]Web 2.0 .

>

> Related to these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat down with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, [17]revolution.social with @rabble ... Dorsey believes Bluesky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of its structure — it's funded by VCs, like other startups. Already, it has had to [18]bow to government requests and [19]faced moderation challenges , he points out. "I think [Bluesky CEO] Jay [Graber] is great. I think the team is great," Dorsey told Henshaw-Plath, "but the structure is what I disagree with ... I want to push the energy in a different direction, which is more like Bitcoin, which is completely open and not owned by anyone from a protocol layer...."

>

> Dorsey's initial investment has gotten the new nonprofit up and running, and he worked on some of its initial iOS apps. Meanwhile, others are contributing their time to build Android versions, developer tools, and different social media experiments. More is still in the works, says Henshaw-Plath.

>

> "There are things that we're not ready to talk about yet that'll be very exciting," he teases.



[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/10/0117206/jack-dorsey-says-his-secure-new-bitchat-app-has-not-been-tested-for-security

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/jack-dorseys-latest-app-tracks-sun-exposure/

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/16/jack-dorsey-pumps-10m-into-a-nonprofit-focused-on-open-source-social-media/

[4] https://andotherstuff.org/

[5] https://github.com/orgs/andotherstuff/repositories

[6] https://shakespeare.diy/

[7] https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/25/swedens-lovable-an-app-building-ai-platform-rakes-in-16m-after-spectacular-growth/

[8] https://lovable.dev/

[9] https://nostr.com/

[10] https://github.com/andotherstuff/heynow

[11] https://github.com/andotherstuff/cashu-wallet

[12] https://cryptoslate.com/jack-dorsey-endorses-privacy-focused-chat-app-white-noise-amid-own-app-launch-plan/

[13] https://www.whitenoise.chat/

[14] https://chorus.community/

[15] https://github.com/andotherstuff/chorus

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

[17] https://www.youtube.com/@rabble

[18] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/23/government-censorship-comes-to-bluesky-but-not-its-third-party-apps-yet/

[19] https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/24/bluesky-ceo-confronts-content-moderation-in-the-fediverse/



RFC 561, 1459, 1945, 4287... (Score:3, Insightful)

by Grady Martin ( 4197307 )

> ... more like Bitcoin, which is completely open and not owned by anyone from a protocol layer...

It is sad that the go-to example of an open protocol has come to this.

Translation (Score:4, Interesting)

by markdavis ( 642305 )

So he wants to create another Mastodon without mentioning Mastodon nor explaining why Mastodon wouldn't fit his "vision".

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(social_network)

Re: (Score:2)

by allo ( 1728082 )

He can implement whatever he wants as long as the backend uses ActivityPub. The Fediverse is neither opposed to new services nor to reinventing the wheel, as long as the wheels are fully compatible.

I don't wanna argue, and I don't wanna fight,
But there will definitely be a party tonight...