Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban has expressed his willingness to finance a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT protocol, and also participated in… Tik Tok video Published on Wednesday. In anticipation of what’s coming TikTok banned in the United Stateswhich will pass on Sunday unless The Supreme Court stopped it,users were fleeing to other video platforms, Including the Chinese application RedNote. But investors like Cuban see the potential for a more open social network that includes an ecosystem of apps powered by the same technology that today powers the Bluesky social network.
the AT protocol It is a newer, open protocol designed for decentralized social media applications. It aims to address what some developers think shortcomings With the current decentralized protocol ActivityPub, used by Mastodon and other social services. While Bluesky is the main implementation of AT Protocol at the moment, there are… Many other services They are now being built with technology.
Consumer demand for open social apps is also in full swing, with Bluesky itself seeing an increase in new subscriptions in the wake of the US presidential election, which has led to the network growing to include 27.6+ million usersfrom 10 million+ in September. Meanwhile, on Wednesday we published the news of A Bluesky’s next client is called Flashes That would focus on images rather than text.
Cuban says he’d like to see — and return — something that competes with TikTok but is built on the AT protocol.
In the video, he briefly describes how ATProto (as it’s called for short) allows people to create their own social networking servers and applications.
He then adds: “I would be open to investing in backing anyone – or anyone who creates an alternative to TikTok built on the AT protocol. So, if you have this ability, let me know in the comments. “If you create an MVP — the minimum viable product — so I can see it, that’s even better, because obviously, I think you’re going to get a lot of support,” Cuban says.
“More importantly, when you build on the AT protocol, it’s scalable, meaning no one can just buy it, no one can just shut it down,” the investor notes, referring to the account portability aspects of building an open social network. .
That is, users who want to move their accounts to another server can do so without losing their followers, content, and other data.
In part, Cuban’s interest in ATProto isn’t just about expanding the open social network; It’s also about stoking competition with Elon Musk’s X. Cuban has done so very publicly In a feud with Musk On X and elsewhere, he criticizes X’s approach to content moderation, misinformation and more.
Cuban asked interested developers to respond in the comments on the TikTok post.
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