• Thousands of Twitter users experienced an outage on March 1st as Jack Dorsey’s new project, Bluesky, went into beta testing.
• The majority of reported issues were from mobile app users and website users.
• Since Elon Musk took over the social media platform, Twitter has reduced its staff numbers from 7,500 to under 2,000.
Twitter Outage
Thousands of Twitter users were unable to view tweets on March 1st when the platform suffered another outage. Data from Downdetector showed thousands of issue reports from 9am UTC with 59% being reported by mobile app users and 35% by website users. While there has been no update yet on the cause of the outage, it affected various parts of the world including the “Following” and “For You” feeds not displaying any content.
Jack Dorsey’s Project
The same day saw Jack Dorsey’s new project Bluesky go into beta testing as a decentralized social network available through invitation only. Aimed at creating a censorship-resistant alternative to centralized platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, it is intended to be an open-source protocol that allows anyone to create their own social media network or application.
Twitter Staff Redundancies
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2020 there have been significant staff redundancies reducing numbers from above 7,500 to around 2,000 employees. Reports indicate product managers, data scientists and engineers were among those who lost their jobs in the restructuring process over the weekend prior to the outage taking place.
Decentralized Platforms
Whilst traditional platforms such as Twitter remain vulnerable to censorship and interference from governments and other powerful entities, decentralized networks offer an alternative solution through peer-to-peer technology which cuts out middlemen servers who control access to content or data stored on them. This could provide a more secure environment for people who wish to express their opinions without fear of suppression or deletion due to political pressure or ideological differences with those controlling these centralized platforms that dominate online communication today.
Conclusion
As decentralized networks become more popular – evidenced by projects like Bluesky – they may start providing real competition for traditional centralized platforms like Twitter in terms of user experience while offering improved security features that are less likely to be subject censorship or meddling by external forces